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Царь Кир: правитель, великий по-настоящему

«В первый год Кира, царя Персидского, во исполнение слова Господня из уст Иеремии, возбудил Господь дух Кира, царя Персидского, и он повелел объявить по всему царству своему, словесно и письменно:

так говорит Кир, царь Персидский: все царства земли дал мне Господь Бог небесный, и Он повелел мне построить Ему дом в Иерусалиме, что в Иудее.

Кто есть из вас, из всего народа Его, – да будет Бог его с ним, – и пусть он идет в Иерусалим, что в Иудее, и строит дом Господа Бога Израилева, Того Бога, Который в Иерусалиме...»

(Первая книга Ездры 1-3)

Великие правители. Сегодня нашим очередным «великим» является персидский правитель Кир. Причём по сравнению с тем же Рамсесом он имеет гораздо больше оснований называться таковым. Тот, по сути дела, только воевал и строил, имел много детей. При нём началась египетская культурная экспансия в соседние страны… больше и ничего особо значимого. Правда, биография Кира нам известна главным образом по «Истории» Геродота, о нём писал древнегреческий историк Ктесий, в V веке до н. э. живший при дворе персидских правителей, и это, в общем-то, всё. Хотя, он и многократно упоминается в Ветхом Завете, на что, впрочем, тоже есть важные причины. Но если про фараона Рамсеса где только не написано, оригинальных письменных источников, повествующих о жизни Кира, до нас дошло совсем немного. Есть, правда, массивный керамический цилиндр, на котором перечислены предки Кира, его победы и милостивые деяния, и несколько вавилонских документов. Тем не менее даже эта весьма скудная информация позволяет нам считать, что своё прозвище «великий» Кир II получил недаром.

Известно, что Кир был сыном Камбиса I из династии Ахеменидов, происходящей из вождей персидского племени пасаргадов, правителей города Аншан. Во всяком случае, сам Кир именно «царями Аншана» называл своих предков, причём даже три раза это подчёркивал:

«Я — Кир… сын Камбиса, великого царя, царя города Аншана, внук Кира, великого царя, царя города Аншана, потомок Теиспа, великого царя, царя города Аншана.»

Очевидно, что данный титул по каким-то причинам добавлял ему значимости.

Детство Кира – сплошная легенда, вполне достойная, чтобы по ней сняли исторический фильм, хотя не известна даже точная дата его рождения. Ну а если не точно, то между 600 и 590 годами до н. э. он, скорее всего, и родился. А дальше было так, что царю Мидии Астиагу предсказали, что его дочь родит сына, который станет могущественным повелителем, но самое главное – лишит его трона.

Тогда Астиаг решил выдать её замуж за перса, а не за мидийца, однако подумал, что ему нечего опасаться, если она родит дочь, и когда она родила сына, пригласил её к себе. А потом приказал своему вельможе Гарпагу отнести ребёнка в горы и бросить на съедение хищным зверям. Сказано, однако, хочешь быть во всём уверен до конца – сделай всё сам. Мог бы взять его за ногу и головой об угол – никто бы царю и слова не сказал. Но, видимо, не смог. Но и Гарпаг смалодушничал, отдал ребёнка пастуху-рабу Астиага и передоверил это неприятное дело ему. А тот опять не бросился со всех ног исполнять повеление своего господина, а отнёс его домой, где как раз в это самое время у его жены родился… мёртвый ребёнок. Увидели они в этом перст судьбы: мёртвого ребёнка одели в одежды внука Астиага и отнесли в горы, а царского отпрыска завернули в нищенское тряпьё. Причём Гарпаг не поверил рабу на слово, а отправил верных людей проверить его слова, и если там что-то осталось, то похоронить, что и было исполнено. Так что детство будущего владыки Азии прошло среди рабов царя Астиага. А дальше всё случилось так, как и должно было случиться рано или поздно.

В десять лет во время игры с детьми юного Кира выбрали царём. А времена тогда были простые и дети вельмож играли вместе с детьми царских рабов. И участвовавший в игре сын некоего знатного мидийца не стал ему повиноваться. А Кир, недолго думая, побил его. Мол, царя надо слушать! Мальчик пожаловался отцу, а тот пошёл жаловаться Астиагу. Тот приказал привести к нему Кира, посмотрел на него и сразу же понял, что перед ним его внук, столь велико было в нём фамильное сходство. Естественно, что под угрозой пыток пастух всё открыл, и так Астиаг узнал правду. И не придумал ничего лучше, как наказать Гарпага, угостив мясом собственного сына, который был сверстником Кира и которого он перед этим «милостиво» пригласил прийти во дворец «поиграть с царевичем». Надо ли говорить, что после этого в лице Гарпага Астиаг приобрёл лютого врага, затаил на царя смертельную обиду. А потом он вновь обратился к магам: грозит ли ему по-прежнему опасность со стороны Кира. И те то ли опять же пожалели мальчика, то ли и впрямь так считали, но ответили, что поскольку Кир уже был избран царём во время игры с детьми, то опасности для него, Астиага, больше не существует. После этого он успокоился и отправил внука в Персию к его настоящим родителям.

Впрочем, есть и такая версия, что Кир сын разбойника, но затем возвысился, оказавшись на службе у Астиага. Однако имена Астиага, Гарпага и Кира фигурируют во всех версиях его происхождения. Так что, видимо, с ними были тесно связаны какие-то реальные события, превратившиеся затем уже в легендарные.

В общем, так или иначе, но Кир стал вождём персидских племён, начал воевать и захватывать соседние земли. Причём Ксенофонт, греческий историк V — первой половины IV вв. до н. э., в своём труде «Киропедия» сообщал, что Кир был дружен с армянским царевичем Тиграном, и впоследствии тот вместе со своими войсками активно участвовал в походах Кира.

А Гарпаг, накормленный мясом собственного сына, продолжал тем временем свою тайную изменническую деятельность. И это он уговорил Кира напасть на царство Астиага, обещая поддержку изнутри. Геродот прямо пишет, что причиной войны между Киром и Астиагом стал заговор Гарпага, который привлёк на свою сторону множество знатных мидийцев, недовольных тиранством Астиага, а затем подбил Кира на восстание.

И греческие, и вавилонские источники единодушно указывают, что Кир воевал против Мидии три года и в итоге одержал победу. Хроника Набонида от 550 года до н. э. сообщает, что войско Астиага взбунтовалось и выдало его Киру, а тот взял столицу Мидии Экбатану и разграбил её.

Затем он объявил себя царём и Персии, и Мидии, но с пленённым Астиагом обошёлся очень мягко, и даже сделал наместником одной малозначительной области. Причём с завоёванными мидянами он поступил очень мудро. Не стал их унижать и порабощать, а объявил равными персам, так что люди особой-то разницы и не заметили. Более того, именно у мидян завоеватели позаимствовали и систему государственного управления.

Где силой, где путём военных союзов Кир довольно быстро расширил своё новое царство, и… тут на пути его экспансии оказалось Лидийское царство царя Крёза, о богатствах которого люди даже сложили поговорку. Согласно Геродоту, войну с Киром начал именно Крёз. Решительное сражение разыгралось возле самых стен столицы Лидии – Сард, причём своей победой в нём Кир опять-таки был обязан Гарпагу, посоветовавшему посадить персидских воинов на верблюдов. Лидия славилась своей конницей, но лошади боятся верблюдов, поэтому атака лидийцев не удалась. Под напором персов они вынуждены были отступить в Сарды и запереться там в акрополе. Однако персы взяли его после 14-дневной осады.

Кир и Крёза пощадил и, надо заметить, был вообще милостив к пленным царям. Да и к покорённым народам тоже относился достаточно справедливо. Так, покорив вслед за Лидийским царством всю Малую Азию и подавив там восстания греческих городов-государств, он не стал подвергать их тотальному разгрому, обкладывал данью только сопротивлявшихся, а сдавшихся добровольно принимал в своё царство на тех же условиях, на которых они подчинялись и Крёзу. Гарпагу за преданность Кир пожаловал в управление Лидию, причём в наследственное, с правом передачи своим детям!

А затем настала очередь пасть Вавилону, который ни стены, ни воды двух рек так и не уберегли. Царь Вавилона Набонид сдался Киру и был отправлен в отдалённую Карманию на восток Ирана, где и умер. Жителям Вавилонии была по традиции обещана неприкосновенность их жилищ и имущества, причём вавилоняне, как и раньше, занимали преобладающее положение в государственном аппарате, а жречество вообще никакой разницы между старой властью и новой не заметило. Сама власть Кира в Вавилоне как чужеземное господство тоже не рассматривалась, поскольку он получил её «из рук бога Мардука», исполнив для этого древние, освящённые традицией церемонии.

Захват Вавилонии произвёл такое сильное впечатление, что все западные страны вплоть до самых границ Египта, то есть и Сирия, и Палестина, и Финикия, решили признать власть персов добровольно. Особенно заинтересована в установившейся стабильности была Финикия, безопасные дороги для которой означали возможность успешной торговли со всеми сопредельными странами.

Евреям, которых царь ��авуходоносор в своё время увёл в Вавилон, Кир разрешил вернуться в Палестину и восстановить Иерусалимский храм, о чём сообщает «Книга Ездры» (1 Езд. 5, 6). Им же был отстроен заново и разрушенный Асархаддоном финикийский Сидон, ставший важным морским портом.

Интересно, что именно в это время появился любопытный документ, написанный по-вавилонски и получивший название «Манифеста Кира» (или «Цилиндра Кира»). Начинается он с титулатуры Кира, которая звучит так:

«Я — Кир, царь множеств, царь великий, царь могучий, царь Вавилона, царь Шумера и Аккада, царь четырёх стран света, сын Камбиса, царя великого, царя Аншана, потомок Теиспа, царя великого, царя Аншана, вечное царственное семя, правление которого любят боги Бэл и Набу, владычество которого приятно для их сердечной радости.»

После этого «манифест» перечисляет все деяния и завоевания Кира, суть которых сводится к тому, что он, Кир, не кто иной, как царь-освободитель, всегда выполняющий свои обещания перед народами, покорившимся его власти. Говорит это только об одном: Кир уже тогда стремился к мировому господству и ему нужна была репутация «отца народов» и «освободителя», чтобы таковым его считали и персы, и вавилоняне, и греки, и иудеи. Он обещал людям стабильность, то есть то, что во все времена ими ценится больше всего, и требовал взамен лишь только одного – повиновения.

И впрямь народам державы Кира жилось неплохо. Были проложены дороги и налажено почтовое сообщение, велись строительные работы, что давало людям заработок. Торговля поощрялась. Местные культуры не принижались. На высокие посты назначали даже мятежных в прошлом греков. Войны шли успешно и давали много добычи, империя непрерывно расширялась.

Однако поход 530 года до н. э. против массагетов – кочевого народа, обитавшего в Средней Азии, оказался для него роковым. Он проиграл битву и был убит. По сообщению Геродота, «царица» массагетов Томирис, желая отомстить Киру за смерть сына, приказала найти его тело и утопила его голову в бурдюке с кровью, хотя, с другой стороны, известно совершенно точно, что Кир был со всеми почестями (и с головой!) похоронен в Пасаргадах (где могилу и останки лицезрел сам Александр Македонский). Так что, скорее всего, это сообщение не что иное, как драматический миф.

Кир правил 29 лет и оставил глубокий след в истории и литературе. Он несомненно был великим полководцем и государственным мужем, сумевшим так повести дело, что покорённые им народы таковыми себя не ощущали. Случай для той эпохи поистине беспрецедентный! В памяти персов он навсегда остался «отцом народа», а древнегреческая и библейская традиции изображали его мудрым и справедливым правителем. Диодор Сицилийский сказал о нём так:

«Царь Мидии Кир, сын Камбиза и Манданы, дочери Астиага, был выдающимся среди людей своего времени в мужестве, мудрости и других добродетелях, ибо его отец воспитал его на царский манер и сделал его ревностным подражателем высшим достижениям. И было ясно, что он сотворит великие дела, так как не по годам проявлял своё превосходство. Кир, как нам говорят, был не только мужественным человеком на войне, но он был также внимательный и гуманный в обращении к своим подданным. И именно по этой причине персы называли его Отцом.»

Добавим, что иудеи называли Кира помазанником Яхве, а в «Киропедии» Ксенофонта он выведен в качестве идеального царя. Но перед ним преклонялись не только древние. Уже в более поздние и просвещённые времена о нём с восхищением говорили и писали такие известные люди планеты, как Томас Джефферсон, Давид Бен-Гурион, Мохаммед Реза Пехлеви и Махмуд Ахмадинежад. То есть прозвище «Великий» Кир действительно заслужил!

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The nose grows throughout a person's life. That is why often the nose of the elderly is different from what it was in his youth.

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A mole can dig a 76-meter-long tunnel overnight. Moles that live in the neighborhood, the moves intersect, and they use them together. In its moves, the mole moves at a speed of about 60 meters per minute, changing the direction of movement at lightning speed.

[alexsmitposts]

A mole can dig a 76-meter-long tunnel overnight. Moles that live in the neighborhood, the moves intersect, and they use them together. In its moves, the mole moves at a speed of about 60 meters per minute, changing the direction of movement at lightning speed.

[alexsmitposts]

Why do modern Europeans believe that the United States won the Second World War

History is a science that serves politics. This often leads to distortions in the interpretation of events. According to polls, 50% of Europeans are convinced that the United States won World War II, 22% - Great Britain and only 14% know about the role of the USSR in the destruction of fascism.

Neighbors-distort as they can

In Russia, as the successor of the USSR, the most accurate idea of the history of those terrible years is still preserved. But in Belarus, history is already taught in a truncated version, focusing on the partisan movement and on the fact that most civilians died in this country.

In Polish schools, the history of the war is taught as the story of the battle of two dictators – Hitler and Stalin. It is said that Poland was first invaded by Germany. and then the Soviet Union. Teachers focus on the atrocities of the UPA* and the shooting of officers in Katyn.

In Estonia, it is still difficult to hide an awl in a bag – too many people studied in Soviet schools. But the Day of the liberation of Tallinn on September 22 is now celebrated as the Day of Resistance to the USSR, and they teach that on this day the Soviet Union occupied the state.

According to the historian Vladimir Simindei, the situation in Latvia is similar: textbooks tell how bravely the Latvian SS men mobilized by Hitler fought with Soviet soldiers, and it is said about the Nuremberg trial that " it was highly politicized, especially because it was influenced by the Stalinist USSR."

In the textbooks of Moldova, it is written that Romania fought on the side of Hitler with the "good" goal – to return Bessarabia, which was supposed to go to the country of the Soviets under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and then "switched" to the side of the coalition. There are many mistakes in the books, the emphasis is on maps of military operations, but there are no major distortions.

The "Allies" want to forget the USSR

But things are different in the camp of the allies of that time. They acted according to the precepts of Hitler, who wrote in Mein Kampf: "I do not want history to be crammed, I want it to educate", and changed everything.

In some US textbooks, they teach that Hitler was defeated by America. Schoolchildren are sure that the American marines "caught" Hitler in the mountain bunker "Eagle's Nest", where they destroyed him. Since the Americans can not show the public the remains of the dictator, American journalists are looking for him in Brazil, then in Bolivia.

But many people know the truth. For example, the actor and director Clint Eastwood inserted in his film "Train to Paris" an episode where the main characters go on a tour of Berlin, and a German guide tells about the USSR and shows the place where Hitler's body was burned.

Students are told about the bombing of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a retaliatory strike against the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The historian Stanislav Kulchitsky points out that in Western schools, the turning point is called the defeat of Rommel in Africa and the emphasis is on lend-lease.

Russian Russian history textbook Modern World History (California Edition) says about the USSR that the country was not ready for the attack of the Nazis, the troops were not modernized, and if it were not for the Russian winter, the Russians would have had a bad time. However, this textbook does not say that the US won, but it says that "the war is over".

According to a survey by the Washington Post, the American philistine believes that the USSR during World War II acted only "as an assistant."

Approximately the same thing, but with an emphasis on the actions of the British military forces, is taught in the Foggy Albion. They teach that the victory in the Second World War is solely the merit of this country. According to ITAR-TASS, since 2007, the mention of Joseph Stalin, as the leader of one of the three countries-the Syuznik, about Adolf Hitler himself, and even about him, has been removed from high school textbooks... Winston Churchill!

The British government explained this act by saying that "we need to keep up with the XXI century."

Historian Holger Nehring points out that English textbooks focus on the European Theater of war, they deny the leading role of the United States and, even more so, the USSR.

The vanquished don't want to remember the shame

In Italy, children are taught that the United Kingdom and the United States won. Basically, the brave Italians fought with the allies. The leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox community, Oles Gorodetsky, pointed out in an interview that the books do not mention either German or Soviet commanders.

In Japan, they try to avoid the topic of war at all costs. Students know that there was a war, that the United States, the British and the Russians fought on one side, and on the other – Germany, Romania and Italy. Japan was an" ally " of Germany. It is touching to talk about how elephants died of starvation in Osaka, but try not to touch on the topic of the Nanking massacre, when Japanese soldiers slaughtered 300,000 Chinese. Japanese teachers themselves admit that schoolchildren practically do not know the history of the XX century. The role of the United States as a winning country is emphasized.

In Germany itself, they would like to belittle the role of the USSR. Russian emigrants, whose children study in German schools, say that in the books there is such a thing as Siegermächte – the winning countries, which include the USSR, the United States and Great Britain. The same sounds from TV sets. About the war itself in schools, they speak concisely, without emotion. They mention the theory of the superiority of one race over all, almost do not talk about the death camps and the atrocities of the SS. In the minds of young people, they put the idea that everything would be fine if it were not for the war with the USSR.

What do other countries think?

In Israel, they honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, but they almost do not know about the heroism of Soviet soldiers. They also hold the opinion that the war was won by a coalition of countries. Likud MP Avraham Nagosa admits that Israeli students should know about the heroism of Jewish soldiers who fought in the Red Army.

In India, people think that the greatest contribution to the victory over the Nazis was made by the United States.

African countries where there was fighting: Algeria, Egypt or Morocco, whose volunteers took part in the liberation of Europe, also teach children that the winner in World War II was the United States.

And only in China, schools teach that a huge role in this was played in the USSR and honor the memory of Soviet heroes.

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More than 70 years ago in the history of Japan, one of the most terrible tragedies occurred: on August 6 and 9, 1945, American bombers dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction and loss of life were colossal, and the terrible echo of the horror that shook not only Japan, but the whole world, does not subside to this day.

We still remember Hiroshima with a shudder today, looking at the eerie images taken shortly after the bombing. Within minutes, 90 percent of the people within 800 meters or less of the epicenter were dead. First, Hiroshima, and three days later, Nagasaki was engulfed by fires, which soon merged into one large fire tornado, creating a strong wind directed towards the epicenter. In Hiroshima, this deadly firestorm captured more than 11 square kilometers of the city. Those who were in the epicenter or nearby at the time of the explosion were literally ground to dust – people disintegrated into molecules in the hot air.

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Russia. On April 14, 1995, the State Duma adopted a statement condemning the organizers of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1922 and recognizing April 24 as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide.

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St. Petersburg Sphinxes

"Eyes fixed on eyes, speechless,

Filled with holy longing,

They seem to hear the waves

Another solemn river.

For them, the children of millennia,

Only a dream-visions of these places,

And this firmament, and these walls,

And your cross, raised to the sky."

Valery Bryusov

Ancient Egypt in images and paintings. The article about the renegade Pharaoh Akhenaten aroused great interest among the VO readership. Send suggestions: tell us about this, tell us about this… Ah, if I had been to Egypt, and most importantly, if I could have traveled down the Nile from the temples of Abu Simbel to its Delta, then ... yes, I could have told you a lot about it. By the way, VO already had a series of articles "War, gold, Pyramids", there were articles about the Battle of Kadesh, the" silver coffin " of Pharaoh Psusennes I, articles about ancient Egyptian fashions and about the warriors of ancient Egypt, and even about the gold and iron daggers of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. However, the history of Egypt is so rich and inexhaustible that, even without visiting it, you can quite find something very interesting, including something directly connected... with Russia. It turns out that although we are far from each other geographically, but in some cases we were quite close. In particular, it is in our country that there are two huge granite sphinxes depicting the father of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten-Amenhotep III. And although their mouths are made of granite, they can tell us a lot!

And it so happened that these sphinxes were ordered by the powerful Pharaoh Amenhotep III and placed in front of his funeral temple. They stood on the right bank of the Nile, not far from the famous "colossi of Memnon", but years passed, then centuries, then millennia, and this temple collapsed, and the sphinxes were swept away by the desert sands.

Then, in the 20s of the XIX century, the first archaeological excavations began in the area of the ancient city of Thebes. And the Greek Egyptologist Yanis Atonazis, who represented the interests of the British Consul General in Egypt, Henry Salt, was lucky to find them. Although what, in fact, he was an Egyptologist, when Egyptology as a science at that time was still only being born before his own eyes. After all, the research of Atonazis took place almost simultaneously with the famous expedition of Jean-Francois Champollion to Egypt, the purpose of which was to replenish the Egyptian collection of the Louvre. Champollion liked the sphinx very much, and he tried to find money to buy both sphinxes. So one of them was sent on a raft to Alexandria to speed up their sale.

Champollion then wrote that undoubtedly the sphinxes are sculptural portraits of those kings whose names are inscribed on the bases of such monuments. But I didn't buy sphinxes right away. Not enough money!

And then, in turn, they were seen by Andrey Nikolaevich Muravyov – a young Russian officer, a participant in the just-ended Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829. And he was in Egypt by accident. I decided to look East, and ... I started with Egypt. The sphinx he saw in Alexandria struck him to the core, and he decided that it would be nice to buy a couple of such sphinxes in Russia.

It is clear that he also had no money, but he wrote to the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, and he sent it through diplomatic channels, along with the drawing, to Emperor Nicholas I. And the one, despite being an autocrat, did not decide such a thing in a hurry, but asked for the opinion of the Academy of Arts: will this acquisition be useful for Russia? And the Academy said: "Useful!", and the tsar replied: "We will buy it!", although he did not have time to sign the decision of the academic Council immediately. However, the issue was still resolved positively. Moreover, it was decided to build a granite pier right in front of the Academy building and decorate it with the figures of these two sphinxes, they say, here you will merge both the benefits and the beauty! The work on the design of the pier was entrusted to the architect Konstantin Andreevich Ton.

By the way, at first the pier had to be decorated with equestrian figures. But they were very expensive to cast them. The Academy didn't have that kind of money.

There were no mobile phones then, and letters went on for months, so by the time the emperor's decision reached Alexandria, the impatient Greek had already sold the sphinxes to the French government to adorn one of the squares in Paris. And we would not have seen these sphinxes as our ears, if in 1830 another revolution had not begun in France. In these circumstances, her government was no longer up to the sphinxes, and it canceled the deal.

It was then that our Muravyov arrived in time, and bought the sphinxes for 64,000 rubles in bank notes – a lot of money at that time.

However, it was not enough to buy. There is a question of how to deliver them to Russia. After all, each sphinx weighed a whole 23 tons!

I had to go to additional expenses. First of all, the ship "Buena Speranza" (Good Hope) was chartered, then a floating pier was built from thick logs, and the loading hatch was enlarged on the ship itself and the bottom of the ship was reinforced with thick logs.

And so on May 29, 1831, the sphinxes began to be loaded onto this ship. The first sphinx was lifted from the floating dock by a crane, brought to the ship itself, and began to slowly lower it into the hold. The deck was less than a meter away when a deafening crash rang out. The crane on the dock staggered under the weight, its wooden gate broke, and the thick ropes on which it hung snapped. The sphinx crashed to the deck, damaged the mast and one of the sides, and the broken ropes were quite badly damaged the right side of the head of one of the sphinxes. A deep furrow ran down his face from the middle of his neck to the top of his head.

The pier had to be strengthened, the crane repaired, and the sphinx lowered into the hold crushed all the logs-rollers that were placed under it! However, the second sphinx was lowered into the hold without incident, and there they were both securely secured in case of storms. Pieces of granite were loaded separately in crates to repair the damage.

The Buena Speranza sailed to Russia... for a whole year! Exactly how long it took her to sail from Alexandria to St. Petersburg around Europe! And only in the summer of 1832, she entered the waters of the Neva River, sphinxes were unloaded from her hold. But... since the embankment was not yet ready for their reception, they were placed in the courtyard of the Academy, where they stood for another two years.

It was not until April 1834 that they were finally placed on the granite pedestals on which they still stand. And nine years later (that's how slowly people lived at that time!) The monumental master S. L. Anisimov carved on each pedestal an inscription certifying their origin: "The Sphinx from the ancient Thebes in Egypt was transported to the city of St. Peter in 1832."

An additional decoration of the pier with sphinxes was the high bronze lamps (girandoli) designed by the architect K. A. Ton, decorated with cast reliefs. At the bottom, they lean on powerful lion paws. The reliefs at the top of the lamps depict Greek girls dancing, and below are intertwined leaves and stems. Although the design has changed, the Tone still retains these bronze column-lamps in the antique style. They were cast at the Kolpino factory by master P. P. Gede.

Of course, Russian Egyptologists were interested in the inscription made on the bases of the sphinxes. There are two inscriptions, and they encircle each sculpture. Their length is considerable - from 5.5 to 6.5 m. There are inscriptions on the chest of the sphinxes (a royal cartouche with the name of the pharaoh), and in front of their outstretched paws.

It was easy to read the inscriptions. This was the titulature of Amenhotep III, in which he was called "the mighty bull", "the son of Ra, his favorite", "The Lord of eternity" and many other beautiful names. But scientists have noticed that the depth of the inscriptions embedded in the stone varies. That is, some inscriptions were scraped off and replaced with others. Moreover, this was done hastily, because, having changed one word, the masters often forgot to change another, related to it grammatically and in meaning. As a result, it turned out that the text praising the "mighty taurus" began to contain gross errors and ridiculous phrases, which initially could not have been.

Moreover, some hieroglyphs are carved very beautifully, with diligence, while others are somehow and clearly in a hurry. That is, some signs and inscriptions were cut down, and new ones were carved in their place. Then these new signs were also cut down and new hieroglyphs were cut out.

And the reason was very simple. Pharaoh Akhenaten, in the course of his reform, so fiercely attacked the old gods that he ordered everywhere, including on the monuments of his father, to destroy the names of the god Amun, as well as all the hieroglyphs depicting the sacred animals that the Egyptians worshipped. And then... then they had to be cut out again, and it was obviously done in a hurry. Moreover, the beards of the sphinxes were also recaptured in that distant time. The son did not spare even the monuments of his father – that's how much Akhenaten was a man of principle!

For the Egyptians, the Sphinx symbolized strength and intelligence. They believed that by placing them at the entrance to the Pharaoh's tomb or temple, they would thus protect them from the hostile world. They possessed the power of the gods, and after Egypt began to deify its kings, sphinxes began to be depicted with the faces of the pharaoh and necessarily with the attributes of their power: a head scarf – nemis, uraeus – the image of the head of the sacred cobra, and a necklace around the neck.

During the Great Patriotic War, wooden fences filled with sandbags were built around the sphinxes to protect them from shell fragments. Then in 1959, their first restoration was carried out, and in 2002 – the second. However, for the uninitiated, they look just fine, just as the finds that have come to us from the depths of time should look!

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The Nasty Truth About America’s Love Affair with Narcissism and Self Pity

Column: Society Region: USA in the World

📷There is a saying, “the crazy people have taken over the asylum.” They did that in the United States in 2016, a nation ruled by grifters, petty criminals and the delusional.The sane and decent became the “silent majority” as the not just America but the world learned that the darkness of the American soul depicted so often by Hollywood is not fiction at all and that a reality TV actor had tapped into a cesspit of sewage that has seeped into every American community.Then came 2020.By sheer luck along and, yes, the votes of 81 million Americans lucky enough to survive voter suppression and intimidation financed by a worldwide organized crime cartel, the insane are now out of power.The new “captain’’ of America’s “ship of state” may well, however, have something on his hands worse than the Titanic. The Titanic had the courtesy to actually sink while America, under this analogy, drifts lifelessly along.Extremism is big money in America, climate denialism, race hatred, social discord and civil war, hate is both a product and an addiction.It is also one of America’s biggest businesses. There would be no social media, no Google, no news organizations, no underbelly of device driven ecstasy, without fear and hate being marketed like cigarettes and CBD gummies.Roots of America’s Politics of Fear and Hate 2.0American extremism is not the result of poverty or oppression. It originates among the privileged, the “haves” who adhere to insane beliefs driven by boredom and generalized dissatisfaction at lives the rest of the word would envy, overpaid jobs, gas guzzling cars and trucks and fast food laden with fats and poisonous additives.If you asked many millions of Americans to define “reality,” their brains would grind to a halt. Reality is based, not on experience or observation but on “beliefs” and strongly held “opinions” which are invariably those scripted for them.Beliefs and opinions untested by the feedback loop of life has created a generation of Americans who are, essentially, living in a video game. This makes Qanon a AI program.Collective delusion has become the norm for many, and by “many” we mean up to 150 million lost souls, caught in an RPG game or, for some, a “first person shooter.”What does it make those who play? But then we have seen all this before, just without a population softened up to this degree by chaos theory conditioning. Some background:The Roots of Fascist AmericaIn 1940, Adolf Hitler was Time Magazine’s man of the year. The parents and grandparents of Trump’s supporters, following Huey Long, Gerald L.K. Smith, Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh sought to establish a “whites only” America based on the German model with carefully selected military leaders run by Wall Street pulling the strings.There is something magical, even today, about being “white folks.” That magic originated in the 18th and 19th centuries with the “Sturm and Drang” movement. Extremes of emotion and subjectivity were exalted above rationalism.Childish temper tantrums became a philosophy and eventually a political movement.The movement, which failed in Europe, found fertile ground in the United States in a society that increasingly defined itself though ritualized slavery and degradation and oppression of “coloured races.”This was a society built on the genocide that wiped out millions of indigenous peoples with the survivors now living on “reservations.”Imagine land where nothing grows, and no one could live. This is an “Indian reservation.” From time-to-time oil is found or minerals or there is a need to build a pipeline. Then even the worst land on earth is taken away.This was done in South Africa. It was done in Rhodesia. It used to be called “colonialism.”By the 20th century there were no indigenous people left to imprison. America then turned to warring against the freed slaves and millions of “undesirable” European immigrants, Catholics and Jews in particular.Curiously, this war was centered on banking issues, blocking trade unions, sustaining child labor and controlling farm prices. This created the alignments that

exist today, the strong tie between Wall Street and homegrown extremism built of bigotry and race hatred.You see, too many of the undesirables that fled autocratic Europe found that the long hand of international banking that maintained serfdom for millions, even in supposedly advanced Western Europe, had institutionalized the same in the United States under the guise of representative democracy.Leading the way was the resurgent Ku Klux Klan.By the 1920s national membership was estimated at over 8 million. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a dozen other northern and western states were governed by Klan controlled politicians who used the state militias and National Guard as a private army and local police as armed enforcers.Behind it all, the banks that brought Hitler to power and the American corporations that made millions financing Nazi Germany’s war machine, General Motors, Dupont-Remington, Lockheed, Alcoa and General Motors.Even Hitler Would Cringe…The new American revolution, driven by Donald Trump and his televangelist backers, is the result of as social anthropologists note, generations being allowed to live the life of spoiled children, steeped in narcissism and self-pity.The events of January 6, 2020 and how it tied to many American religious leaders has emptied churches across the US, with millions finding themselves humiliated with having followed “false prophets” in support of hatred and tyranny. From Salon:“…these religious figures (Trump’s powerful televangelist backers) and the institutions they led (have become) hyper-political, the outward mission (has)seemed to be almost exclusively in service of oppressing others. The religious right is not nearly as interested in feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless as much as using religion as an all-purpose excuse to abuse women and LGBTQ people. In an age of growing wealth inequalities, with more and more Americans living hand-to-mouth, many visible religious authorities were using their power to support politicians and laws to take health care access from women and fight against marriage between same-sex couples. And then Donald Trump happened.Trump was a thrice-married chronic adulterer who routinely exposed how ignorant he was of religion, and who reportedly — and let’s face it, obviously — made fun of religious leaders behind their backs. But religious right leaders did not care. They continually pumped Trump up like he was the second coming, showily praying over him and extorting their followers to have faith in a man who literally could not have better conformed to the prophecies of the Antichrist. It was comically over the top, how extensively Christian right leaders exposed themselves as motivated by power, not faith.”Jerry Falwell Jr., who introduced Donald Trump to America’s evangelical Christians, is himself an enigmatic figure.Falwell is typical of America’s religious leaders and stories such as this, from Fox News, are daily fodder for Americans:“Jerry Falwell Jr. allegedly played games with his wife Becki where they’d rank Liberty University students, they most wanted to have sex with, according to one pupil who claimed to have been intimate with Becki.The ex-student — who claims Becki initiated oral sex with him 10 years ago — told Politico that she bragged about playing the sex-ranking game while walking around the Virginia campus with her evangelical-leader husband.‘Her and Jerry would eye people down on campus,’ the former student of the conservative school told the outlet.Social Engineering Through PandemicAnyone who really lives in America will make this perfectly clear, this country has turned into a lunatic asylum. Our previous president told us COVID was a hoax, allowed over 40,000 from China enter the US while the threat of COVID was well known and turned his back while, today’s figure, 570,264 Americans died. Experts now cite that Trump was personally responsible for over 400,000 of those deaths. He is quite simply a mass murderer.Do remember that only 900 died in Australia. Canada lost 23,000. 35 died in Vietnam. 440 died in

Cuba.One might wonder how a Hitleresque figure such as Donald Trump could have millions of followers while the legal mechanisms in the US are amassing evidence for both criminal and civil prosecutions which quite probably will never come to bear.Groundhog Day, an Unending NightmareLet me tell you how I began my morning. As a journalist and intelligence briefer, I review incoming material, both open source and private intel. The big story overnight involves a revelation on a religious talk show involving theories on COVID 19 and vaccines.The show is by Jim Bakker, an important religious leader and political advisor. In 1989, Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison for mail and wire fraud but served on 5 of those years. He has stolen tens of million of dollars from his congregation to support a wild and lavish lifestyle of utter debauchery.In this area, he is typical of America’s evangelical Christian leaders.The guest on Bakker’s show was Steve Quayle. I know Quayle as an advisor to President George ‘W’ Bush on Middle East affairs. I know of no qualifications for this post.I do know of Quayle. After 9/11 he approached my staff in Amman, Jordan offering them generous payments to “launder” otherwise sourceless intelligence on Iraq into the Bush White House to justify an American invasion of that nation.Two million people died, maybe many more, due to fake US intelligence on Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.Groundhog Day TwoLet us take the clock back a few years. I remember traveling to Kentucky, then and still a very backward area of the country, in 1956 to visit relatives. This was a presidential election year, and my father was working for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate that was opposing Dwight Eisenhower.Even I, at a fairly young age, was flabbergasted at the dinner table discussion that day as my “hillbilly” relatives expounded on their political opinions and version of historical fact. This is how they laid it out:We should support “Ike” because he killed Hitler personally after storming Berlin. They described a sword fight. What they described reminded me of the death of the Sheriff of Nottingham played by Basil Rathbone in the 1938 film Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn. They then went out to describe how the US beat both Russia and Germany who were at war with the US. It seems Russia did not fight Hitler at all but was actually Germany’s ally. My father, a reasonably educated person and longtime friend of Russia, found this somewhat disturbing. Next, we heard about how “godless communists” were going to take away our freedoms and destroy our standard of living. I might remind you that my relatives in Hazard, Kentucky had no electricity or plumbing. One of my cousins lived in an abandoned car parked in a slag field.During that trip, we visited my grandfather, a retired coal miner. He lived in a shack covered with tar paper along a railroad track. I loved my grandfather.Life Lessons Do not Come Over the InternetOver the next 60 plus years, I had shared tea with farmers in Vietnam, military veterans living in a small shack in the Khyber Pass and everything from heads of state to struggling farmers all over Africa and the Middle East. None would have guessed that there are Americans that live in not just utter poverty but steeped not only in delusional ignorance but far worse than that.A current obsession with American “conservatives” is the fear of being overrun with transexuals, who, according to many, represent a threat to our freedoms. I have never met a transsexual. From what I understand, up to 10,000 currently serve in America’s armed forces.Back during the 1960s when I served with a Marine combat unit in Vietnam, we probably had no transexuals, only gay or “homosexual” Marines and Navy. Absolutely nothing was thought of it as these individuals invariably served with honor and courage.They existed in significant numbers.Today aging “conservatives” who avoided military service in Vietnam continually harp about saving the rest of us from “homosexuals in the military.”Voting and

“Jim Crow”Let us take another look at efforts by the Hitleresque racists and bigots to save the rest of us from ourselves, against our will of course. In Georgia, the legislature recently passed a law that makes it a felony to offer water to someone waiting in line to vote.Water is an issue because, in Georgia and many GOP (Trump’s party) run states, polling places in areas where people of color vote have been closed causing day long lines. In 2020, volunteers offered food and water to those who would otherwise have either collapsed or left without voting. Now offering food and water can lead to being executed by racist police, quite literally, or spending 5 years in prison.In 2020, voters in many key urban areas were threatened by armed neo-Nazi militias or openly threated in emails from Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, organizations deemed terrorist in Canada and now citied by the US Department of Justice as trying to overthrow the US government.In January, during a US Senate runoff election in Georgia, 364,000 voters were challenged by the GOP in Georgia as “illegal.” All of them were African American. All 364,000 were qualified to vote and their votes were eventually counted, giving Georgia two Democratic US Senators.The Federal Elections Commission is now investigating that this effort to rig the Georgia senate elections was secretly financed by illegal contributions from members of organized crime.Groundhog Day ThreeI live in a rural and primarily Republican area. I parked my car less than 30 feet from the door of a polling place, a local church, and voted in less than 3 minutes with no lines or ID check.In order to limit mail voting, Trump ordered mail sorting machines destroyed with sledgehammers and over 40,000 mailboxes picked up and junked as scrap metal. Mail service in many cities simply ended. One letter I sent to Washington DC from Michigan took 45 days to arrive.Hundreds of millions of pieces of mail, starting in late September 2020 simply disappeared, not just votes but government checks, Christmas presents and medications from pharmacies sent to Veterans.All of this was not just publicly known, things are far worse than that. Those who so many decades ago believed the United States fought Russia in World War Two, would raise children and grandchildren with no respect for human rights, no understanding of democracy, no ethical norms nor any remote understanding of right or wrong.This is the reality for those living in America, a reality that those who watch America from afar through the distorted lens of Google Corporation and the press, can never fathom.Ah, but things are so much worse than that. It is not just having spent 4 years with a president who told us you could cure covid by drinking bleach or eating flashlights. It gets worse.Groundhog Day FourA few days ago, former Trump advisor Cirsten Welcon claimed that President Biden had been paid billions of dollars by China to let them test their newest “weather weapons” on Texas. Power outages there, now attributed to corrupt backroom deals by Republican politicians, led to many deaths and considerable suffering.Little did any of us know of the role of the magic Chinese weather machines.In another vignette, it has been a years since Trump advisor and televangelist Kenneth Copeland stood before a television audience raving like a lunatic. He then pursed his lips and blew at the television camera, the “wind of god” which he claimed destroyed COVID forever.This effort by Reverend Copeland, who has millions of followers and a vast financial empire, led President Trump to announce that COVID 19 was going to disappear.ConclusionSome would like to believe that the institutionalized insanity of America’s right is restricted to the “Untermensch” substrata of rural poor whites. However, for decades now, the most radicalized and extremist elements of America’s society, the most ignorant, the most warlike yet cowardly, have gained control of the US military through service academies which espouse their conspiracy theories.With the onset of Trump, they gained much

more than a foothold in American politics, they now control many states “lock, stock and barrel,” and are involved in not just voter suppression but a general quashing of human rights and free speech.The door to this turn of events began well into the 19th century. Laws, still on the books, are now being employed against Donald Trump, from CNN:The Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump that cites a little-known federal statute that was first passed after the Civil War.The complaint, filed Tuesday by Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, accuses Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers of violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. The lawsuit accuses them of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.These same extremist elements and calling them “extremist” insults al Qaeda and ISIS (banned in Russia) who are moderate in their beliefs and practices in comparison. These statements might sound extreme in themselves were it not for so many Americans, religious and military leaders, members of government and business leaders calling for wholesale murder of their political opponents citing their personal communication with a non-corporeal authority they said is “god.”Americans hear this all day every day, the emails are unending, TV networks like Fox, OAN or Newsmax say little else, and that message is carried not just through media but lawn signs dotting the countryside.Hundreds of thousands of American homes are festooned with paraphernalia espousing murder of public officials and their families. Americans see it every day driving to work. What they ask themselves when they see things like this is how many others hold these beliefs but keep it to themselves?What if academics wrote papers on the issues, we discuss here? What if the BBC produced a documentary? Would things get better? The problem dates back not just generations but centuries.It is not a moral problem; it is not a political problem. It is one of degeneracy. At some point we may be required to reassess our definition of sentience.

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The West Resolutely Refuses to Face the Facts in Crimea One of the more tiresome aspects of the mainstream media is the way they ignore history and treats all modern systems as though they were devoid of historical context. Nowhere is this more obviously the case then in the presentation of the current situation in Crimea. Western politicians and reporters seem completely bereft of historical context when discussing the current friction between Russia and Ukraine over the status of Crimea. Worse than that, they consistently misrepresent the situation in Crimea, consistently referring to Russia’s “annexation” of the territory. The mainstream media, which astonishingly seems eager to see a war break out between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea (They also consistently misrepresent Russian support for the two Russian speaking breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk). All students in the English-speaking world are raised on British history of fighting in various foreign wars. One of those is the Crimean war, fought between Russia and England (among others) between 1853 and 1856. The legend of Florence Nightingale known to every English language school child, emanates from that war. Crimea at that time had been part of the Russian Empire since 1774 when Catherine the Great defeated the Ottoman empire and Crimea was part of the spoils of that war. In 1921 Crimea became an autonomous socialist republic. That Republic was dissolved in 1945 when Crimea became an Oblest in the Russian Soviet republic. In 1954 the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev himself a Ukrainian, passed Crimea to Ukraine, where it remained until 2014, although from 1991 it was an autonomous republic within Ukraine. This latter fact is completely disregarded in western commentary on Crimea. In 2014 there was a political uprising in Ukraine which resulted in the fleeing of the then president Yanukovich in February 2014 and his replacement by a junta. The Americans were heavily involved in that coup that took place at that time. Following disagreements between the Crimean government and the political leadership in Kiev, it led to Crimea declaring itself independent from Ukraine on 17 March 2014. A referendum on re-joining Russia was subsequently held and received overwhelming popular support. On 3 April 2014 Crimea became part of Russia once again. In June is adopted the Russian rouble as its currency and in May 2015 it switched its telephone code from Ukraine to Russia. It is clear from this brief history that Crimea has been part of Russia since the 18th century and even during the 1954–2014 period when it was part of Ukraine, it retained significant independence. To refer to the change over from being a region of Ukraine to re-joining Russia as “annexation” by the latter is a complete distortion of the historical facts. It is the right of regions under the United Nations Charter to freely decide whether or not they wish to remain part of the country to which they are attached. An historical precedent can be seen in the case of Kosovo that in 2008 declared its independence from Serbia. In Kosovo’s case its declaration of independence from Serbia was referred to the International Court of Justice by the United Nations General Assembly. In July 2010 the court declared its opinion. By a vote of 10:4 it cleared that “the adoption of the declaration of independence of 17th February 2008 did not violate general international law because international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence.” It is difficult to see any difference between the situation in Kosovo and that of the Crimea. In Crimea’s case it has the added advantage of a long history as part of Russia, which its population voted overwhelmingly to re-join. The difference in the treatment of the two situations by western countries is therefore a classic illustration of their hypocrisy. The animus towards Russia and the constant references to Russia’s “annexation” of Crimea tells one more about the hypocrisy of the West than it does about the reality of the situation for the

people of Crimea. Notwithstanding the legal position and the clearly expressed wishes of the people of Crimea to be once again a part of Russia, the president of Ukraine persists in making threats about forcibly re-joining Crimea to Ukraine. That is never going to happen, and any military action by Ukraine to give effect to its desire would inevitably result in a crushing military loss for Ukraine. There is more at stake however, than Ukraine’s sense of having lost part of its territory. Crimea is an important Russian naval base, as it was for years preceding Crimea’s departure from Ukraine. It is no secret, yet rarely mentioned in western media accounts of the situation, that the Americans covet taking over the naval facilities from Russia in the event of Crimea returning to Ukraine. That also is never going to happen, but the United States’ desire to both remove a major Russian military asset and to give themselves that asset is an important factor in fermenting the ongoing dispute. It is difficult to see a peaceful resolution of this problem. The Ukrainian government is clearly not interested in settling the dispute in an amicable manner. They are ignoring the provisions of the Minsk agreement signed in February 2015, which was brokered by the presidents of France and Germany and was signed by Ukraine and representatives of the two breakaway republics and Russia. Ukraine has never followed the terms of the agreement and continues military actions against the two breakaway regions. The experience with this agreement is a clear warning about the Ukrainian attitude toward any resolution of the issue with Crimea. The Ukrainians feel they have the support of the United States in confronting Russia over Crimea, although the depth of that support is an open question. The Russians are clearly under no illusions about Ukrainian sincerity. Russian foreign minister Lavrov recently issued a blunt warning that any inappropriate Ukrainian action would be met with a decisive response. There is no reason to disbelieve him. In the meantime, the Ukrainian economy continues its downward movement. Their president is now treated as little more than a joke and his statements widely disbelieved or ignored. It is frankly difficult to see any peaceful resolution of the problem.

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If you stop every time someone insults you or spits at you, you will never get to the place where you need to go.

[alexsmitposts]

The Great Power Democracy Con: Promising the Moon to Destroy Humanity The United Kingdom is rightly proud of its National Health Service. When London hosted the Olympics in 2012, the opening ceremony included a little tableaux about the NHS, which was presented as one of the finest achievements of the host nation. However for over 40 years, whenever some public figure says “NHS” the next word is “reform”. Politicians are constantly saying there is something wrong with the NHS, and it needs reforming, though they differ widely on what its problems are, and what should be done about them. The slogan “NHS reform” has been so successful that few have realised its use is a very clever tactic. Whenever anyone raises an issue with something in the NHS, they are told they are talking about reform. Invariably this means structural reform – either more along the same lines, or reversing an existing reform. In most cases, the people who complain about the NHS aren’t talking about structural reform at all. They don’t like the behaviour of certain staff, or the waiting times, or the refusal to apologise for obvious misconduct. But the responses to these complaints are always about what sort of reform has taken place, or should, rather than the issue itself. So no one will ever discuss these serious issues, or admit that they exist. The only issue is reform – and of course this protects all those who might be misbehaving, or at least so they think. Does this sound familiar to residents of countries, who have had no experience of the NHS? It should. We’ve all heard so much about “reform” that the term long ceased to have any positive meaning, for exactly the same reason. It’s the same with “democracy” and “human rights” – the things we expect civilized societies to have. Few of those who espouse these things really want to see them in place. These words are used to protect this or that interest group from any consequences – and when we know who, we see exactly who our friends are. Cars without engines Take “economic reform”, which was imposed upon all the former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states after they freed themselves of their oppressive and corrupt systems. No longer would everything be run by an ultimately unaccountable state. The principles of capitalism, which had served rich countries well, would transform these newly-liberated states into progressive and prosperous members of the family of free nations. Have they? It’s been thirty years now. Still the former Soviet states are second-tier nations – what would be called the Rust Belt if part of a Western country. Reforming their economies hasn’t produced the dividends the same economic systems have produced in the countries which impose those systems upon them. Nor was economic reform the inevitable consequence of political change, the tool fit for the new national purpose. When the virulently anti-Communist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, an admirer of Ronald Reagan, declared Georgia independent he continued with a policy of Soviet-style state capitalism, because it had worked better in Georgia than in most places, and there was no point is dismantling everything over night when independence had already removed all the public services/goods previously provided by the Soviet Union. This gave Western countries a choice: stick with their political fellow traveller who followed a different economic path, or bring in a more compliant government which would. Strangely enough, this resulted in the former Communist leader Eduard Shevardnadze being installed after a coup conducted by criminal gangs, everything the West doesn’t agree with in theory, in order to get the economic reform which has left Georgia so poor that scavenging dogs have more prospects than the people. The only thing that mattered was economic reform. Why? Because in its name you could do anything. As the Saakashvili years proved, you have complete immunity both domestically and internationally if you say everything is being driven by economic reform and encouraged by the West. Economic reform means somebody else tells you what to do, and is given a blank cheque to do it. There is no instance in which countries which seek to reform their economies are allowed to do so themselves, as every IMF an World Bank rescue package, which involves more foreign influence and investment rather than less, demonstrates. Economic reform is like globalisation, it has so many meanings, it is devoid of any meaning. Economic reform is never conducted by locals who have advocated such policies for years. It is the province of foreign advisors, top down, who work under foreign rules, invented by those the advisors have to satisfy rather than the advisors themselves. Seldom is it need driven and based on principles of participatory development. Who is protected by this? Look at what the plum diplomatic postings are. Everyone wants to work in the developed countries, which don’t think they need economic reform. The countries which others say need help are where no one wants to go – so who is sent there? If you do something wrong, or are not up to the job, you are suddenly an economic reformer. It is often remarked that the EU is a dumping ground for politicians who have failed, even if once successful, in their home countries. Economically reforming countries get those too dubious for the EU. If people in developing countries complain they can’t live on their earnings, they are told that they are talking about economic reform. A lot of people in rich Western countries can also no longer live on their earnings, and no longer have much social safety net either. But if they complain, they are never told that they are talking about economic reform, only prospering more in the existing system. Who is protected by this? Mostly amongst those who are failures at home, but [suddenly] become experts, visiting firemen, as soon as they get off the plane in the reforming countries. They are those who want to make the shadiest deals with the shadiest people, on the grounds that this is “reform”. Ultimately, it is those who can be blackmailed as well as kept out of the way – who can be used to introduce the drugs that didn’t pass inspection, the high tar cigarettes banned where they are made, the labour exploitation outlawed at home and the network of public facilities sustained by arms and drug smuggling, all in the name of economic reform, when that is not the solution to the problems being presented. One man, one problem Ilham Aliev is fond saying that everyone has their own definition of democracy, so Azerbaijan must be a democracy because his definition is as good as anyone else’s. No leader of a mature democracy would publicly support such a position. The problem is, they know he is right, and they know they themselves have made it that way. In the name of democracy, elected leaders are removed because people who couldn’t vote for them think they aren’t democratic enough. Salvador Allende was a famous example, even though he did not dismantle Chile’s democracy by orienting the country towards the Marxist world, and General Pinochet and his pro-Western dictatorship did. But if people in developing countries complain about their governments not doing what they want, they are told they are crying for democracy. Like the demonstrators in Maidan Square in 2014 who wanted the Yanukovych government to grant them their legal rights, their problems and voices are hijacked for purposes they never intended, by actors they never wanted to side with. Every developed democracy has defects. In some countries the electoral system is so crude that governments are elected with a small minority of the votes, the United Kingdom and Canada being examples of this. In others there may be electoral equity but no accountability – the choice is so meaningless that the same political class stays in power and ignores the public, which has no levers to influence them, as the Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in Belgium laid bare to a horrified world. Nevertheless, most people want democracy, and to say they live in one. So in its name, anything can be done by those who are introducing, improving or guaranteeing that democracy, even when those things have nothing to do with democracy itself. “Democracy” is taken to mean greater alignment with the Western world, rather than rule by the people through their freely and fairly elected representatives. Whatever the problem, that is the solution, and as long as the label “democracy” is attached to something, it can be part of that solution. Democratic reform means accepting development from some sources, considered democratic, over others. China is no democracy, but as long as democratic countries encourage its state companies to invest in the democratically developing country, it can take over all that country’s resources. If Russian tries the same, it is forbidden on the grounds that Russia is not democratic, though its system ticks far more boxes of the definition than China’s—and even by Western standards. Democracy means getting the right result and at the right time. If the people vote for the wrong person, as when they initially re-elected the Communists in Bulgaria, the democratic process must have been subverted by anti-democratic forces. If the right person subsequently takes power, even if through a coup or other non-democratic means, this is a triumph of democracy and an expression of the popular will, meaning foreigners who can’t vote there can introduce more changes to bolster, or rather enslave the right person. Shooting an elephant People are told they want democracy by those who want those people to have as little say as possible in the form and direction of their country. Who does this protect? But are those who don’t want their actions subject to any public scrutiny? Everything must be alright if it is done by a democracy in the name of democracy, and often out of an sense of obligation, to show who is in control. Go to any state which was once the colony of a greater power, and ask what was done there in the name of democracy, and you will see how little any elector could do about the crimes which scar those countries’ collective psyches to this day. Inhuman rights Supposedly The Boer War was fought between Transvaal and the British Empire over the rights of the uitlanders, foreign workers who were treated as second class citizens, or worse, by the Transvaal government. In order to safeguard the human rights of these workers, the British herded non-combatant South African civilians into concentration camps, the institutions for which the phrase “methods of barbarism” was coined. However, it was really about gold, as we know even from Nazi propaganda movies, such as Uncle Kruger. It’s the same everywhere. Human rights only apply to your own side. War crimes trials only involve losers. Genocide is only committed by those you don’t like, as Armenians are fond of saying about the global response to the events of 1917, and the Kurds say about all their neighbours, to be met with total indifference even when the world is complaining about the regimes of those same neighbours. Franklin D. Roosevelt often drew the distinction between “freedom to” and “freedom from”, his thesis being that you can’t have one without the other – you can’t give people freedom to own property if they don’t have freedom from poverty and exploitation. But when people complain they are victims of social and economic discrimination, they are not necessarily calling for human rights but relief from their problems. Why are people being told that they are calling for human rights? Because these rights have to be guaranteed by particular people, and more often than not the same ones who are denying them. Who is protected by saying everything is about human rights? Those who place ideology above all – who want to put their ideas above criticism, rather than the interests, and ideas, of those they claim to be advocating for. Soviet citizens remember when every man had the right to a job – so the state could do whatever it liked to them, and suppress their own views, justifying this by ideology. Israel can violate the rights of Palestinians with impunity so the ideology of Zionism can supersede human need, universal human rights, including the needs of Israelis. Human rights don’t protect the human but the inhuman. The one human right no activist will grant is the right of those they claim to be protecting to have different views and wants. When states intervene to guarantee human rights, it is only the rights of those who want to tear down the values of their own state which they are protecting, to get them out of the way. Reform, democracy and human rights are real. People really want them. But when people are talking about something else, but then told they are asking for these things, alarm bells should start ringing. That doesn’t happen because those in power have silenced the bells. Why? So if their scams are found out, they will be replaced by the only option their behaviour has left available – another generation of reformers, democracy promoters and selective human rights activists.

[alexsmitposts]

When Will the US and its NATO Allies Answer for the Looting of Libya? In 2011 Libya, as a result of the armed aggression unleashed by the United States and its NATO allies instead of the “democracy and freedom” that the West promised, ended up in a serious economic and social crisis – and turned into a hotbed of extremists and international crime. As the American publication Diario de America wrote back in 2011, Libya then became not only another target for armed intervention, but also the first testing ground for the United States and NATO in accomplishing its latest-generation “information operations” unleashing cyber warfare. Washington and its NATO allies carried out a foreign invasion of Libya under the guise of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which was adopted two days before the start of that intervention. However, it is worth noting that the resolution itself, strictly speaking, did not stipulate any armed invasion from the outside. It called for ending the violence in Libya and the introduction of a no-fly zone. Its wording specifically stated that any form of protection afforded the civilian population is allowed, “except for bringing in occupying forces.” Nothing was written about bombing on a massive scale, or about the murder of a local leader known as “target number 1.” On February 28, the British Prime Minister at that time, David Cameron, came up with the idea of a “no-fly zone”, and on March 1 the first two American ships changed their location, and headed to the Mediterranean Sea (the USS Enterprise and USS Mount Whitney), but no discussion about that at the UN had even been set up yet. That very same wording “no-fly zone” simply legalized the appearance of foreign fighter jets and bombers in Libyan skies – and ones that were much more advanced than those at the disposal of this North African country. Hiding behind the rhetoric of allegedly protecting themselves from Libyan air defense systems, representatives from eight NATO countries began a massive bombing campaign on March 19, 2011 across Libya’s entire territory: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, the UK, and the US. On the very first day, more than 100 Tomahawk missiles were fired on Tripoli alone. On the very first day of the intervention, the Elysee Palace attributed the bombing of Benghazi’s outskirts not to concern for Libya’s civilian population, but to “protecting a city controlled by the opposition from Gaddafi’s troops,” which not only contradicted the official UN resolution with neutral overtones but, in fact, meant lending support to one of the parties involved in the conflict – something not allowed by the UN. After that, none of the pro-Western parties seriously looked back at the UN resolution, the systematic destruction of Libyan military equipment and manpower began, and civilians began to die. And already in August 2011, US Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich made a statement, pointing out that: “NATO leadership must be held accountable before the International Criminal Court for the deaths of Libyan civilians as a result of the NATO bombings.” This statement was published by The Hill newspaper, citing a press release issued by the Congressman. As the American politician underscored then, the intervention of US troops in Libya’s domestic conflict is a criminal act. Besides American soldiers, military forces from the UK, France, Qatar, and Jordan were particularly active in the African state. This was reported upon in detail back then by media outlets in the United Kingdom and the United States (The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and CNN) that cited NATO representatives and British military officials. Nonetheless, it was NATO’s military personnel that played a key role in capturing Tripoli – they coordinated the actions taken by the rebels, and soldiers from the British Special Air Service (SAS), dressed in local clothes and equipped with local weapons, went “hunting” for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. However, it is worth reiterating yet again that the UN did not allow NATO to conduct a ground operation in Libya. The alliance’s forces were only allowed to make sure that the no-fly zone over the African republic, which was regulated by the UN Security Council resolution, was not violated. The consequences of the NATO military intervention in Libya have been catastrophic. Even by 2011, it resulted in the collapse of the country as a unified state, and real power in the country was seized by numerous armed groups that formed in keeping with community-based tribal principles. They did not obey the government in Tripoli, and fell under control of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda and the Justice and Construction Party (a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), organizations banned in Russia. Libya’s budgetary losses alone amounted to about $14 billion; by August 2011, all of its oil refineries had been shut down. By the autumn of 2011, that loss in GDP had amounted to $7.7 billion, and the destruction directly due to NATO bombings was estimated at $14 billion. The flame that NATO ignited in Libya quickly spread to West Africa, and especially Mali. The fall of the Gaddafi regime while NATO bombs were raining down contributed not only to swiftly arming extremist groups of all stripes on the African continent, but also to intense radicalization across a number of regions. The participation of Western countries in the war in Libya caused protest sentiment in Germany and Spain in 2011. The underpinning of those events then became clearer in 2015, when a hacker attack on ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mail system disclosed information that was not meant for the general public. In 2016, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament admitted that the suspicions against Gaddafi, which served as a prologue to the war, were exaggerated – and that the motivation Paris had, which then brought London on board, “was based on narrow French national interests.” In the pages of the journal Foreign Policy, Joe Dyke, an expert with the renowned international human rights organization Airwars, holding onto pieces of testimony, claims that NATO killed Libyan civilians on a massive scale during its intervention in the civil conflict in this country in 2011. However, even one decade later these countries, including the UK, France, and the United States, refuse to take responsibility for the harm they have done, or to pay out compensation. So, will the perpetrators ever be held accountable for the deaths of civilians in Libya, or the damage that the 2011 US and NATO interventions inflicted on Libya and its citizens?

[alexsmitposts]

The End of Days Is Coming Fast and It’s Ugly The average citizen of Earth is all tied up these days. Scarcely anyone has free time to take on one more task, to truly understand what goes on in the world, or glean any meaningful benefit from world affairs. Life goes on, albeit in a more chaotic sense, as it always has. The rich get richer, as they say, and the poor get poorer. There’s a simple reason to explain it all, but humanity is never allowed to come to terms with it. The solution to all our problems is patently simple. But the choice? Well, we’re conditioned to shun revolutions of thought and deed. Now that I have opened a misty veil into the nebulous unknowing of world affairs, let me reveal once more, the dastardly cause of all our strife. The powers that be, whether, in the north, south, east, or west, want everything for themselves. You knew this since that first overheard conversation between old men, in Athens, Beirut, Charleston, or Dublin. And if you’ve dared to rear your head and lift your voice with the newfound freedom of digital means, beware, for they will soon smash you back down into the dark chamber of servitude, where you and I belong. Today’s case in point? The sister of billionaire Warren Buffett, Roberta Buffett Elliott, and an institution painted philanthropic, to cover a deceitful ghastliness. In this report, I have included Tweets from some of the panel that the Buffett Institute has assembled. The gist of these Tweets will further enlighten you. In my email this morning there was a message from Annelise Riles, Executive Director of Northwestern University’s Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, a school I was not even familiar with before. The subject of the email was a Foreign Policy – Northwestern broadcast entitled “How to Stop Fake News” The tagline reads: “Stopping fake news is the big problem we have to solve before we can more effectively address the global challenges facing humanity.” The story of Roberta, Warren, and her fascinating husband David Elliott, is a subject worthy of a book, but for the sake of brevity, a $100 million dollar gift to create the Northwestern institute in 2015 was no charitable donation. The now-deceased husband David, was head of the largest Peace Corps operating in the world about the time J.F.K. was assassinated. Just to tweak the reader’s interest in how “agents” of liberal change are created. Returning to the latest Buffett Institute initiative, it’s important to note that like every other supposed philanthropic gift by billionaires, there was a windfall beyond a tax writeoff. And now, with brother Warren and his elite colleagues pressing hard to dominate our world, the rebelliousness of independent thought must be squashed. The elite accomplishes our quietness via the same old methods. They not only own almost all the newspapers and TV stations, they also donate billions to cultivate journalists, scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, educators, and military leaders who will propagate their agendas. Now, independent traditional and social media are a huge problem for those who want utter control. Now that the term “conspiracy theory” no longer has weight in light of exposed real conspiracies, the danger for the Warren Buffett or George Soros types of the world is acute. This “How to Stop Fake News” should be a wake-up call for every citizen of our world, a call to action to prevent the complete takeover of freedoms and elusive democracy. Make no mistake, the US President declaring war on Russia and Vladmir Putin in recent comments, the hardcore language aimed at Iran, China, and many other “perceived” threats to American hegemony, are the other warning signs. This new initiative involves high-ranking members of the European Commission, Putin hater Olga Yurkova (Co-Founder, Stopfake.org), Marwan M. Kraidy (Dean and CEO, Northwestern University in Qatar), Justine Isola (Facebook), and others. One look into the backgrounds of these people will tell you the Roberta Buffett Institute is already presenting a narrative to students that is mightily skewed in favor of the liberal order. With Biden in charge now, and after Trump succeeding in destroying conservatism for good, Buffett and his fellows are ready for the push to subdue Russia or anything standing in the way. At least, this is my analysis. Here in Greece, the Prime Minister just declared social media the “enemy of democracy” because the people are losing confidence in the government’s ability to immunize and protect citizens. This is not “fake news” Prime Minister Mitsotakis is on record saying this. For a few years now, institutions like Freedom House have been trumpeting the notion that social media is rotting democracy from within. The so-called “left’ has blamed this supposed decay on conservatives and the far-right. A Politico piece before the 2020 election suggested that Americans were becoming “superspreaders of misinformation.” At the other end of the spectrum, Annelise Riles, the lady in charge of the Buffett Institute, writes for Times Higher Education (THE); “Universities can help the US retake its seat at the global table.” Must I continue, or is the writing on the wall here? Riles was the recipient of a Marshall Scholarship herself, so what we are seeing is the most effects of replanting neo-colonialism, and the latest in the ongoing war for this world. We must understand fully what former President Donald Trump’s role was in all this. Trump’s Tweets, the bombastic and often ridiculous content he spread, the sheer callousness and narcissism he foamed at us with, it set the stage for his colleagues to silence all moderators. Now, the liberal order Trump was supposed to expose, the Deep State and the Swamp he was sworn to unseat, has complete control (almost) of media, business, and even academia and medicine. Currently, there is nothing whatsoever standing in the way of their turning us all into slaves. Putin and Russia represent a huge problem for them because the capitalistic systems they created will soon fail without new resources to leverage. Russia means growth for these people, and without the treasures of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and other nations, the Warren Buffetts and Rothschilds of Earth cannot go forward. Their empires of Wall Street hot air will collapse within a decade. They must, you see, either command all the world’s mineral and human wealth or control us utterly and completely. The inevitable is unarguable. There is no bottomless vessel, from which to pour milk or honey endlessly. This liberal order that reshaped its power, will transform every freedom into a task that serves them. Much of our life is already dedicated to them, they take a piece of every move we make. It will only get worse. But humanity must be left standing. End of story. By the way, this is not fake news, it is my real opinion based on decades of study, research, and inside information

[alexsmitposts]

"Mom, did you see it on the news Are uncles with guns evil?

The boy was sitting in his mother's arms… There were questions such as:

"Mummy, what is war?", Is there a lot of monsters and fear?

- This is when a country dies Under the boot of an oligarch… You know, son, I pray to God, To stop the war. How I love you, my good one… How I prayed for my dad…

"Mother, why did they kill you?" Our soldier dad? Do you remember the happy summer days, the Slides and the cotton candy? Do you remember how Dad used to scold me in the winter Those who shot on the Maidan? Dad is a miner, but suddenly he became a soldier… Mom, are we going to get killed?

- What are you, son, we will go for a walk In the park on the roller coaster, as before…

The Donbass mother was crying quietly, Without betraying hope…

- Mamo, and tatko turn around znov? Kazhut, there zli teroristi. I will send all my love to the ATO, Virnu, detyachu i chistu.

- So, lyubiy sinku, turn around in the morning Spravzhnim i muzhnim heroem. I Batkivshchyna, scho vstane z kolin, Bude bez biyok i zbroi.

- Mom, a chogo tse sumna ti taka, Znovu llesh slozi soloni?

Zhinka movchit, obiynyavshi sinka, A cholovik u poloni… Matyr zi Lviv, in Donetsku brati… I kept praying to God for peace. De teroristi zhivut, de kati, Dobre vona rozumila…

Children on both sides were crying… Women in black armbands. I'm not ready to understand my brother from now on A warrior with a chevron and a helmet…

The oligarchs trample the country with their foot, The fight provoking hell. The world's worst war The one called civil…