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Thursday, March 31, 2022

“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

In Ogden Nash’s poem, “The Purist,” there is a Professor Twist who obsesses too much about language:

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

The Empires and the Passion for Proselytization

An empire is a proselytizing entity. Its primary aim is not to wage wars. It is not to exercise dictatorial control over other nations. It is to proselytize other nations—get them to adopt the empire’s language, religion, cultural values, and economic systems. 

The British Empire was a successful empire, since it managed to get a large number of countries to adopt its language, its religion, and some aspects of its culture and economy. The American Empire, which has been built on the foundation of the British Empire, is an utter disaster because in most places where the Americans have gone, they have antagonized the masses and turned them against the West. Even though the Soviet Union fell in 1991, it was a successful empire—it managed to get a large number of countries, including Western ones, to adopt a socialist culture. 

In the twenty-first century, America, Britain, and other Western countries are being targeted for proselytization by several non-Western empires. The West will lose this battle.

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

On Bose’s Mission to Defeat the British Empire

In the 1920s, when the British Empire was at its highest point and seemed invincible, Subhas Chandra Bose realized that this empire was doomed. The important question for him was: What would happen to India when the British Empire fell? In a speech that he gave in September 1929, he talked about the changing balance of power between Asia and Europe in the past, and proposed that a rejuvenated Asia could arise again:

“History tells us how in the days of old Asia conquered and held sway over a large portion of Europe and in those days Europe was mightily afraid of Asia. The tables are turned now… Asia is at the present moment throwing off the yoke of thralldom and the time is not far off when rejuvenated Asia will rise resplendent in power and glory out of the darkness of the past and take her legitimate place in the comity of free nations.”

In the final section of his book, The Indian Struggle (1935), Bose talks about the possibility of a synthesis between the communist and the fascist forces for defeating the British Empire. To achieve such a synthesis, he met several European leaders, including Hitler and Mussolini, in the early 1940s. He was also close to some leaders of Ireland and France. He tried to meet Stalin but the Russian government discouraged him from coming to Moscow because they did not want to antagonize the British.

Bose wanted the Indian National Congress to be organized as a broad anti-imperialist front which would wage war on the British and drive them out of India. He thought that India should win independence through warfare; he had little faith in having independence through the process of reforms and negotiations.

Our Mistakes are the Drivers of Our Life

"The most expensive part of a building is the mistakes." ~ Ken Follett in The Pillars of the Earth

This is true. The biggest price that we pay in life is for our mistakes. The life of every human being is driven mostly by his mistakes and to a small extent by his correct ideas—that is why history reads like a compendium of manmade disasters. All men constantly face the danger of being wrong, of being very wrong, of being hopelessly wrong.

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

The Dilemma of Education

When education is available to many, it becomes a tool for indoctrination; when it is available to only a few, it becomes a tool for social repression.

The Devil Comes at the Highest Point

“At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.” ~ Denzel Washington

These are brilliant words by Washington. He said this to Will Smith who, by his shocking tantrum at the Oscar ceremony, revealed to the world that he is a boorish man-child and a quick-tempered lunatic. I can’t bear to watch Smith’s frivolous and third-class movies. He is a really bad actor. I like Washington’s serious kind of movies. Washington’s words were probably wasted on a man-child like Smith.

Washington’s words apply to nations too. When a nation is at its highest moment, when it has become powerful and prosperous—that is when the devil comes for it. A nation at its highest moment does terrible things to its own people and to outsiders, and eventually it self-destructs.

Monday, March 28, 2022

The Most Dangerous Bull in the Herd

The war in Ukraine will help us find the answer to the complicated question: Which nation is the most dangerous bull in the herd of nations on this planet? It is possible that by the time this war ends, several new dangerous bulls (superpowers) will get crowned.

Maxim Gorky: On America’s Contribution to Socialism

“If anyone wants to become a socialist in a hurry, he should come to the United States.” ~ Maxim Gorky in American Sketches

Gorky is right. America claims to be a capitalist country, but it has done more to popularize socialism and communism than the ideologues of the erstwhile Soviet Union. By flexing their economic and military muscle in nations whose culture and history they did not understand, the Americans have sullied the reputation of democracy and free markets, and made people think that socialism and communism could be a better option. Since the 1920s, America has been the world’s most powerful teacher of socialism and communism.

As long as America is a superpower there will be no freedom from the three false “isms” of our time: socialism, communism, and capitalism. When America declines, then the three false “isms” will become irrelevant and will be discarded into the dustbin of history.

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Russia: The Unconquered Moby Dick

Russia is a big fish; it is a giant whale like Moby Dick. America and Britain will not catch Russia with such poor bait as Ukraine. When President Biden threatens Russia with dire consequences, he sounds like Captain Ahab, standing in front of the crew of his whaling ship Pequod, and vowing to take terrible vengeance on Moby Dick. But in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick, the whale remains unconquered; it is Pequod that gets sunk.

Saturday, March 26, 2022

The Media Campaign Against Maxim Gorky

After the abortive 1905 attempt by the communist revolutionaries to seize power in Russia, the Russian author Maxim Gorky (Aleksei M. Peshkov), accompanied by his wife, actress Maria Andreyeva, came to the United States on April 10, 1906. He was on a political mission—Lenin had told him to raise money from American donors for the cause of the Russian revolution.

Gorky and his wife received a royal reception at Hoboken where their ship docked. Since they did not speak in English, an interpreter had come with them. Thousands of Russian immigrants cheered Gorky and carried him on their shoulders. Later in the day, he was the chief guest at a white-tie party that Mark Twain gave in his honor. Twain, then seventy years old, saw himself as a revolutionary and an iconoclast. Gorky’s tour was being sponsored by a group of intellectuals who called themselves the A Club. A committee with Twain as chairman was formed to handle the arrangements for Gorky’s tour.

William Randolph Hearst, publisher of The New York American, had promised to help Gorky in raising money for the Bolshevik cause. In return for Hearst’s help, Gorky agreed to have an exclusive agreement with the Hearst newspapers. As it turned out, the exclusive agreement with Hearst newspapers was Gorky’s mistake. It turned other newspapers against him. Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of The New York World, was peeved because Gorky had sold himself to Hearst.

Determined to tarnish Gorky’s reputation, Pulitzer got his newspaper to publish a scandalous front-page story under the title: “Gorky Brings Actress Here as Mme. Gorky.” The story revealed that Maria Andreyeva was not Gorky’s legal wife—she was a common law wife. The story was lavishly illustrated with pictures of Maria Andreyeva, and Gorky’s real wife and children who were in Moscow. Many of these pictures were supplied by the tsar’s diplomats who intended to trap Gorky in a scandal and make it difficult for him to raise money for the revolutionaries. Gorky might have divorced his legal wife and married Maria, but in those days divorce was difficult in Russia.

Other newspapers were doing similar stories on Gorky and Maria. They portrayed him as a Russian radical and libertine who had arrived with the aim of destroying American moral values. Late in the night, Gorky and Maria were thrown out of their suite in New York’s Hotel Belleclaire. The hotel’s owner told Gorky that “my hotel is a family hotel.” Gorky continued to insist that Maria was his wife. To the reporters, he said: “My wife is my wife—the wife of Maxim Gorky. She and I both consider it below us to go into any explanation.”

An acquaintance arrived to take them to the Hotel Lafayette-Brevoort. At this hotel they were told that they could have their meals there but they could not be allowed to sleep. But the hotel owner found rooms for them across the street in the Rhinelander apartments.

Twain was worried that his association with Gorky would make him unpopular with his American audience. He felt that by bringing with him a woman, who was not his lawfully wedded wife, Gorky had lost the moral stature of a Russian revolutionary. He cancelled most of his commitments with Gorky, and two days later he resigned from the post of the chairman of the committee. After that Gorky and Twain had some harsh things to say about each other.

When the owner of Rhinelander apartments came to know of the real identity of his guests, he ordered them to leave. Gorky’s entourage hailed some cabs and fled to a secret place. Later on it was discovered that they were living with some Fabian socialists who were the members of the A Club. Gorky’s contempt for the bourgeois soul was deepened—reflecting on his bad experience in New York, he said, “New York was a monstrous city which boiled people alive.” His tour of America was ruined, but several Russian immigrants still supported him and through them he was able to raise some funds for the Bolsheviks.

He spent a few days in the house of John Dewey who, unlike Twain, was not concerned about socializing with a man who was being denounced in the newspapers as a Russian libertine. The British author H G Wells, who was himself on a tour of America, spent a day with Gorky. In 1906, Gorky left America for Naples, and he settled down in a villa in Capri. In 1913, he was granted an amnesty by the tsar, enabling him to return to Russia.

Due to his closeness to Stalin, Gorky’s reputation has suffered. He was a very good writer. The autobiographical sketches that he has written in his trilogy My Childhood, In the World, My Universities gives a picture of his development as a writer, while also offering a moving account of the Russian life that he had experienced. His memoir of Tolstoy is very impressive. On his experiences in America, he wrote six essays which are available in the book called In America. These essays are scathing denunciations of American life. Gorky compares America with hell where people were slaves of the “Yellow Devil: Gold.”

Nietzsche’s Two Questions on God

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?” – Friedrich Nietzsche, based on his writing in The Twilight of the Idols.

Nietzsche’s first question is ontologically unanswerable. His second question is metaphysically unanswerable. The answers to these questions would fall into the category of matters of faith. Either you have faith in ontology and metaphysics, or you don’t.

Friday, March 25, 2022

Propaganda in the Ukraine War

“And rumor walked blazing among them…” ~ Homer, The Iliad

Rumor is blazing in the Ukraine war. Much of this rumor is Western propaganda. The newspapers and the TV channels are full of it. The websites are full of it. If you don’t see through this propaganda, you are either a globalist and an imperialist or a fool. If you do not understand the concerns that are motivating the Russian military action, then you have no sense of history.

In the Ukraine War, the Russians are the good guys, the Western political establishment are the bad guys, and the Ukrainians are the patsies of the West.

In 1823, President James Monroe formulated the Monroe doctrine which stipulates that the entire Western Hemisphere is America’s backyard in which no foreign power is allowed to develop a military base. For two hundred years, the Americans have strictly enforced the Monroe doctrine. Remember how the Americans reacted when Cuba tried to have Soviet missiles on its soil. They will never allow any South American country to develop alliances with Asian powers.

The problem is that America (along with its collaborators in Western Europe) wants to control the Eastern Hemispheres too. If one power wants to dominate the whole world, then wars become inevitable. Russia was forced to invade Ukraine to keep the Americans out of its backyard. If the Americans were to take control of Ukraine, then Russia would be their next target. To save itself, Russia had to invade Ukraine.

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

The Myth of Freedom of the Press

Freedom of the press is a tool that those in power use to mislead the masses into believing that they live in a free country. The press is among the biggest businesses in the world and like all big businesses it is close to the ruling class. Safeguarding the interests of the ruling class, not that of the nation or the masses, is the priority for the press. 

The newspapers and TV channels create propaganda on behalf of the government and deceptively project it as a sign of national freedom. With their 24/7 propaganda they lower the intellectual standards and dumb down the nation, rendering people incapable of understanding the full complexity of the problems that their society faces.

There is as much corruption, dogmatism, and perversion in the press as there is in the ruling class. Most nations where the press industry is very powerful tend to be fascistic and dumb, even though outwardly they might create the impression of being a democracy.

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Mr. Biden’s Plans for a New World Order

In a speech President Joe Biden accepted that America is aiming to create a “new world order.” Here’s an excerpt from his speech:

“You know, we are at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy — not just the world economy, in the world. It occurs every three or four generations. As one of — as one of the top military people said to me in a secure meeting the other day, 60 — 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946. And since then, we’ve established a liberal world order, and that hadn’t happened in a long while. A lot of people are dying, but nowhere near the chaos. And now is a time when things are shifting. We’re going to — there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”

A “Made in America” world order would be nihilistic, corrupt, scandalous, and violent—like the movies and serials on the theme of post-apocalypse dystopia that we watch on Netflix. I won’t be surprised if there are zombies in the new world order—anything is possible when the illuminati are in control. Does Biden believe that 60 million people might die soon, just as they died between 1900 and 1946? This is scary.

A new world order is coming, but it won’t be a “Made in America” world order because American power is declining at a fast pace. It is likely to be a Made in Asia world order. China, Russia and several other major economies are trying to self-isolate themselves from America and Western Europe—they will eventually become the dominant players in the world economy. Biden can keep discussing the new world order with his top military people, but the Americans will not lead it.

The Quest for an Equitable World Order

80 percent of the world’s population resides in the non-Western parts of the world, but 80 percent of the world’s economic and military power resides in the Western nations. Such is Western power that if America and Western Europe agree, then they can devalue the currency of any country and shatter its economy—they recently did this to Russia.  

The primary cause of the imbalance between population size and economic and military power is the 400 years of colonization and imperialism which led to a massive transfer of wealth, land, and resources to the West. This kind of imbalance has now become unsustainable because the non-Western nations have become tired of playing second fiddle to the satraps of the West.

Across the globe, economic woes, political instability, wars, and even civil wars will continue to erupt and intensify till an equitable balance of power is established. The West has enjoyed absolute power for too long. Now it is time for a change.

Monday, March 21, 2022

The Myth of Indispensable Nation

In 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Lesley Stahl in the show called 60 Minutes

Lesley Stahl asked: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s answer: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” If Putin or any minister in his government were to say something like this in context of the Ukraine war, all Russians would be demonized endlessly by the Western media. 

In a 1998 interview with the Today Show, Albright defended the American action in Iraq: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.” More than a million people died during America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. But this war was started on the false claim that Iraq had WMDs.

After winning the Second World War in 1945, power went into the head of America’s political and intellectual class. Driven by hubris, they were convinced that they were the “indispensable nation,” that it was their “manifest destiny” to dominate the globe. Instead of maintaining order, they have destroyed tens of millions of lives in Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, South America, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and North Africa. 

The economic policies, healthcare policies, climate policies, and environmental policies that America has imposed upon the world after 1945 are as destructive (anti development) as its military policies—these policies are designed to hinder other countries from becoming developed independent of America. There is no logical basis for the claim that America is an indispensable nation. It is an empire like so many empires of the past.

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Creative Lies, Banal Truths

To be really creative, you need to be a liar. Truth is dull, because it consists of simple and straightforward depictions of reality; it does not require imagination, because it is an exposition of things that should be obvious to all; it is banal, because it is observable and verifiable. But a lie is enmeshed in twists and turns, because it is antithetical to reality; it is interesting to read, because it is expressed through very well-written and well-argued essays, stories, and treatises; it is seldom banal, because it is motivated by imagination, rationalizations, and hidden agendas. Any man with a mediocre brain can see the truth in most cases, if he chooses to use his mind, but to create a powerful world-transforming lie, you need brilliant intellectuals and politicians.

The Violence of Shakespeare

The distinction of being the world’s most violent playwright goes to Shakespeare. His plays are full of wars, massacres, rapes, assassinations, bloody combat, and suicides. 

I don’t know of any culture, other than the British (Western) culture, that has a major playwright as violent as Shakespeare. Perhaps the violence we find in Shakespeare is a reflection of the Western method of fighting political battles, in Europe and elsewhere in the globe, with great ruthlessness and ferocity. Europe has become relatively peaceful after 1945 (after the Second World War), before that the Europeans were among the most efficient killers on earth. In his plays, Shakespeare is dwelling on the warlike character of the Europeans of his time. 

Tolstoy used to say that at bedtime he always locked his bookshelf because he wanted to ensure that the murderers of Shakespeare would not come out and kill his family.

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Nietzsche and the Mainstream Media

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.” ~ Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil (Aphorism 183) 

Nietzsche is right. Those who are caught lying lose their credibility. You can’t be sure that they won’t lie to you again. The satraps of the mainstream media should pay heed—their credibility is gone. The newspapers and the TV channels have been lying so outrageously to their readers and viewers that now it is impossible for people like me to trust their stories. 

Paraphrasing Nietzsche's words: “I'm upset that from now on I can't believe the newspapers and the TV channels.” A significant part of what goes around as daily news is propaganda.

Three Sides of the Ukraine War

In the Ukraine war, there are three sides (American, Russian, and Ukrainian): One side is stupid, the second is insane, and the third is both stupid and insane. With so much stupidity and insanity going around, the outcome of this war cannot be decided in Ukraine. A much higher level of carnage is needed to flush out the stupidity and insanity that clogs the world’s political systems. 

In the next one to three years, Western Europe, North America, and parts of Asia and North Africa will become a battleground. The heartlands of the Western Empire (Western Europe and North America) have not experienced a major conflict after the Second World War (for almost three generations). In the next three years, they will find out how it feels to live in a city or town that is under attack by enemy forces.

The nations which aspire for global power must at some point of time become the venue for a global conflict. The First and the Second World Wars were fought in Europe because, for 300 years, the Europeans were trying to rule the world. Nature has a way of balancing things—with the positive comes the negative; with global power comes global war.

Friday, March 18, 2022

Two Types of Empires: Don Quixote and Hamlet

Empires are of two kinds: Don Quixote Empires and Hamlet Empires. Those who have read Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Shakespeare’s Hamlet would know that Don Quixote and Hamlet are the polar opposite of each other. Don Quixote does not think at all—he simply acts; he unthinkingly goes on the offensive. Hamlet is the brooding thoughtful type, who contemplates such deep questions: “To be or not to be.” He is so engrossed in his thoughts and soliloquies that he fails to act until it is too late. The Don Quixote Empires act without thinking. The Hamlet Empires think profusely but are incapable of acting.

Good War for Good Peace

There is nothing more difficult than to find a good war, because without one, you will not achieve a good peace. In Ukraine, I hope that America, Western Europe, and Russia have found a good war, one that would teach them some critical lessons about the limits of economic and military power, and eventually the world will achieve a good peace.

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Tolstoy’s Criticism of Shakespeare and Chekhov

Tolstoy despised Shakespeare. In his essay on Shakespeare, he wrote, “reading "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium…” He believed that the tendency of some writers and spectators to find non-existent merits in Shakespeare was the source of “great evil, as is every untruth.” When Tolstoy was bedridden due to illness at his home in Gaspra, Chekhov paid a visit. When Chekhov was leaving, Tolstoy whispered into his ear: “You know, I hate your plays. Shakespeare was a bad writer, and I consider your plays even worse than his.”

Modern Men: The Creators of Hell

Modern men are rogues. In their technologies and philosophies, they look for a way of creating paradise (utopia), but first and foremost they are the creators of hell. 

The foundations of paradise always rest on hell’s unforgiving ground. Since a paradise is built on the ground that is hell, there exists a symbiotic relationship between paradise and hell. Hell comes first; the process of civilization starts with the creation of hell. It is in hell that the cultural norms and political doctrines are first conceived and propagated. Paradise is built at a later stage.

To build a paradise for the few, the modern man must first create a hell for many. After a hell of sufficient size and scope has been created, the campaign for building a relatively small paradise can commence. In the hands of the modern man, the technologies and philosophies become the tools for creating hell for many and a paradise for the few.

The Failure of Pax Americana in Ukraine

If you love liberty, rejoice with me at the failure of Pax Americana in Ukraine. Ukraine’s naive, decadent, and corrupt leaders sealed the fate of their countrymen by allowing their country to become a venue for Western expansionist policies, nihilistic politics, and corruption.

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Ukraine is America’s Tribute to Russia

Consider this scenario: The high level operatives of Russia and America had a series of secret negotiations in 2020 and 2021. In these secret negotiations it was agreed that Russia would be allowed to take control of a significant part of Ukraine in 2022, and in exchange for America not doing anything to repulse the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia would support American action in other areas of the globe: these other areas could be in South America, Africa, or the Middle East. The target could even be any Chinese territory. 

This scenario is fictional—it seems fit for a new John le Carré novel. But what if it is true? This would not be the first time that the cunning Western powers have sold Eastern Europe to have peace for themselves. Before the Second World War, the British sold Czechoslovakia to Hitler. After the Second World War, America and Britain sold all of Eastern Europe to Stalin. In the 1970s, they sold Cambodia to the Chinese and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge (to counter the Soviet Union). And in 2022, they might have sold Ukraine to Russia. 

It was clear from the middle of 2021 that the Russians were planning an invasion of Ukraine—America and Britain have been warning their citizens to leave Ukraine since December 2021. But the Americans did nothing to arm the Ukrainians. After the invasion started, they passed a few toothless United Nations resolutions and imposed some sanctions—all of which Russia could easily circumvent. From the lukewarm American response to the Russian invasion, it seems that there was a secret agreement between Russia and America.

The political leadership in America is aware that their country’s power is waning; they know that they need Russia on their side to counter China and other powers. Ukraine could be the tribute (the sacrificial goat) that America has given to Russia to seal a secret deal between the two countries. America is a country of greedy traders—they will sell anything, including any non-Western country, to make profits and maintain their global hegemony.

War is the Promise of Peace

War is nothing other than the promise of peace in the future. We fight wars because we aspire for peace.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

On Russian Literature: Gogol, Belinsky, and Dostoevsky

“Proponent of the knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and Stygian darkness, panegyrist of Tartar morals – what are you about! Look beneath your feet – you are standing on the brink of an abyss!” ~ Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky to the great Russian (Ukrainian) writer Nikolai Gogol, in a famous public letter dated July 15, 1847. 

Gogol tore Belinsky’s letter to shreds after reading it, but he was so shocked that he fell into depression. He died of psychological problems and malnutrition on 21 February 1852.

Belinsky was the most powerful Russian literary critic of his time. He had promoted Gogol’s earlier works—The Inspector General, The Overcoat, and The Dead Souls. But when Gogol published his book, Correspondence With Friends, Belinsky became convinced that Gogol had betrayed the cause of the Russian serfs and he turned against him. 

Belinsky believed that the true purpose of literature was to express the social truth—this meant the writer should not only describe the social conditions but also communicate the enlightenment values of liberty, atheism, and individualism. He bitterly denounced serfdom. He wanted to free Russia of the tsarist political system, and establish a secular and socialist society. He became a powerful protagonist of the Russian radicals (including the socialists).  

In his Correspondence With Friends, Gogol surprised his readers by supporting serfdom. He exhorted the landlords to burn 10 ruble notes (which was a considerable sum in those days) in front of the serfs to make them realize that the masters did not care for money, only for the moral welfare of the serfs. A large number of Gogol’s readers (including Belinsky) thought that he had gone insane or something worse had happened: that he had sold his writing to the tsarist and feudal oppressors. 

Belinsky had a keen eye for literary talent. In 1844, he read Dostoevsky’s first novel Poor Folk. He was so impressed by the novel’s description of the miserable life of Russian serfs that he rushed to the apartment where Dostoevsky was living. He embraced Dostoevsky, kissed him thrice on his cheeks, and declared that he was the future of Russian literature. 

Reminiscing about his first meeting with Belinsky, Dostoevsky later wrote, “That was one of the rare moments in my life when I was truly happy.” Belinsky died due to health complications in 1848, on the eve of his arrest for his political views.

In his early years, Dostoevsky accepted Belinsky’s view of the social purpose of literature (though later he rejected Belinsky’s socialism). He used to read Belinsky’s letter to Gogol aloud in public meetings. He also became involved in clandestine printing and distribution of the Belinsky letter. For these crimes, he was arrested, convicted, and condemned to death in 1849. His death sentence was later commuted to 4 years of incarceration in a Siberian prison camp.

Russia and China are Hunting for Big Game

A big game hunting season is underway. It seems that Russia and China are now hunting for the biggest game of the last 100 years: America. Ukraine is too small to feed the massive appetites of Russia and China—the long term project of these two countries is to overthrow American (Western) hegemony. 

Russia and China (supported by a number of their secret allies) represent a formidable power. They will cause some serious damage to America, and that will lead to geopolitical shifts. But America is not going to be an easy prey—it is the world’s most warlike nation. The hunters could become the hunted.

There is no innocent and moral David in this fight. It is evil Goliath versus evil Goliath—the Russian and Chinese Goliath versus the American (Western) Goliath.

Monday, March 14, 2022

The Five Levels of War

You can always detect a fool, for he is the man who will tell you that he knows which side will win in a war. But a war is a fluid situation—it can take thousands of shapes; it can veer off into unexpected directions, creating chaos and conflicts in other areas; it can lead to consequences that no one ever predicted. A war is simultaneously fought on five levels—the propaganda level, the diplomatic level, the financial level, the level of military combat, and finally, the level of the negotiations for ending the war. It is not necessary that the side that wins militarily will prevail during the level of negotiations. If the losing side has shrewd negotiators, they can make important gains for their country at the negotiation table. 

In the ongoing Ukraine war, there are two sides—the Western side (led by NATO, basically America) and the Russian side. The Western side enjoys an advantage in the areas of propaganda (the West controls the global mainstream media and the Internet) and finance (they control the global financial institutions, and they have the dollar, which is the world’s official reserve currency). The Russian side has an advantage in the areas of diplomacy (America has failed to get most nations, including traditional allies like Germany, Israel, China, and Saudi Arabia, to support its sanctions against Russia), military power (Russian military has captured a significant part of Ukraine), and post-war negotiations (if the wars of the last 75 years are taken as a trend, then we find that the Western side generally does not do well in negotiations—after the Second World War, Stalin forced Churchill and Roosevelt to concede all of Eastern Europe, including half of Germany, to the Soviet Union; in the conflicts in South Korea, the Middle East, and Afghanistan, America was forced to make significant concessions during the negotiations).

The Ukraine war could continue for a few weeks. While the Russian troops advance on the ground, the negotiations between the two sides are going on. The negotiations could go on for more than a year, and lead to significant geopolitical shifts, especially if other powers—like China and the Middle Eastern powers—decide to get involved in the negotiations.

Sunday, March 13, 2022

On The Tragedy Of Man’s Life

“All’s well that ends well.” ~ Shakespeare.

Man’s life is a tragedy. Man’s endeavors and his life never end well. In the end, everyone dies—death, I presume, is not a happy ending because most people will want to go on living. Every civilization declines and falls in the end. Every house falls in the end. Every business fails in the end. Even the planet earth will not have a happy ending. Earth itself will die when the sun dies—though the end of these celestial bodies will come billions of years after humans are extinct. The happy endings are merely a mistake of man’s mind. 

In the play, “All’s well that ends well,” which is a comedy, Shakespeare is describing the life of his characters to a certain point—the point at which Helena, the low-born ward of a French-Spanish countess, gets united with the man who is the love of her life, Bertram, the countess’s son. When Helena and Bertram are united, the play ends. If they were real people, their life would not end at the point where they got united. Their life would go on and they would find new ways of being miserable; one day they would grow old and die.

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Shalya’s Advise to Karna

“A jackal, O Karna, residing in the forest in the midst of hares regards himself a lion till he actually sees a lion.” ~ King Shalya of Madra Kingdom (who is the brother of Madri, the mother of Nakula and Sahadeva) says these words to Karna during the great Mahabharata War, when Karna asserts that no power can stop him from fighting Arjuna in the battlefield. 

The age of relative peace that had dawned in Europe after the Second World War, due to some historical factors and Pax Americana, had made the West European nations believe that they were the lions in a world full of hares. Now that Pax Americana is dead, the West Europeans will by and by discover they are not lions—they are jackals and the “real lions” are coming after them.

Friday, March 11, 2022

Nirad Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Jaico Publishing House

Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is among the few books that I have read twice. I first read the book in 1997, and in February 2022, I read it again. In my first reading, I had not empathized with his bitter view of India and his obsession with England, but twenty-five years later, I read his book again, because I felt like revisiting his account of his personal misfortunes and his disappointments with India. 

He was not a happy man. In a passage in the book’s final section he contemplates a sort of metaphorical death: “There never was a time in my life when I was so passively and weakly pessimistic. I thought continuously of death, as if death ever helped a weak creature to find release from the punishment he was gratuitously bringing on himself through his own folly.” 

He was born in 1897, when the Bengali Renaissance had reached its climax. The story of his life proceeds against the backdrop of the political developments that are taking place in the country, primarily in the state where he lives, Bengal. He sees India as a dystopia mired in effete traditions and lacking in intellectual capacities. He thinks that British influence is necessary for modernizing India. The book does not read like a “gutter inspector’s report,” a phrase that Gandhi used for Katherine Mayo’s 1927 book Mother India, but it is certainly a compendium of Indian deficiencies.

Nirad is not optimistic about India’s future but he is not pessimistic either. He leaves the fate of the country hanging in a balance. He is convinced that if India succeeds, it will do so under the tutelage of the Englishman, and if it fails, its failure will be such a tepid affair that hardly anyone, certainly not the Indians, will notice that their country has failed. In the Preface to the book, he writes, “Very few people seem to realise that nations stand in need of leadership in order to perish or to rot away no less than to rise and achieve greatness.” He does not have a high opinion of Indian politicians. He thinks that visionary leaders cannot arise in a country of petty minded folks.
 
The book is divided into four parts. In the first part, Nirad presents his reflections on life in the villages of his father and mother. In the chapter titled, “England,” he describes the preoccupation of the people around him with England. He writes, “If I may put it that way, the chiaroscuro of our knowledge of England was extremely sensational. It had intense highlights in certain places and deep unrelieved shades in others, so that what we knew gripped us with immeasurably greater power than it would have done had we seen it in more diffused and, consequently, more realistic light. On the other hand, what we did not know was so dark that we could easily people the void with phantasms evoked out of our ignorance.” The sensational, almost mythological, view of England that he developed in the early years of his life had a consequence: he became torn between his plebeian Indian life and his aristocratic English aspirations. Eventually, he became alienated from India. 
 
How Indians compare to the Englishmen in Nirad’s eyes can be gauged from the reference that he makes to an essay by Bankim Chandra Chatterji. He says that Chatterjee “has written a satirical piece on Englishmen whose most sardonic and barbed point is reserved for his countrymen. A meeting of Englishmen is represented as a meeting of tigers, but the indigenes are shown as monkeys discreetly hiding themselves among the branches and leaves.” In the next paragraph, Nirad sarcastically notes that even the tallest leader of the Indians, Gandhi, used terms associated with England—“Harrow boy,” “Cambridge graduate,” and “barrister”—when he wanted to praise Nehru.
 
Nirad begins the book’s second part with this assertion: “Men do not become aware of the precise quality of their early years until late in life.” He points out that Aksakov, Renan, Anatole France, Hudson, and Tagore wrote their autobiographical works when they were in their advanced years. He must have considered himself in this context but was probably too modest to put himself in the list of such illustrious authors. He was fifty-four in 1951, when his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian was published. 

This section of the book is about the first twelve years of his life. He briefly dwells on the Indian renaissance which was a short-lived affair. “Our cultural movement began in the early part of the nineteenth century and reached its apogee in about one hundred years. Then it began to break up. If I were asked to specify when the signs of decay made their first appearance I should say in the years between 1916 and 1918. After the end of the First World War, and in the years immediately following, the change had become perceptible.” He hails Raja Rammohan Roy, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, and Swami Vivekanand as the tallest leaders of Indian renaissance, but he asserts that the achievement of these three leaders was not wholly Indian, since they were exposed to western intellectualism. 

Between 1908 and 1919, Nirad says, Hindu nationalism made a dramatic entry into his world. He could not resist the currents of nationalist ideas, and became a supporter of the swadeshi movement. He points out that the attitude of Hindus towards the Muslims was shaped not by the swadeshi movement but by tradition. “In the first place, we felt a retrospective hostility toward the Muslims for their one-time domination of us, the Hindus; secondly, on a plane of thought we were utterly indifferent to the Muslims as an element in contemporary society; thirdly, we had friendliness for the Muslim of our own economic and social status with whom we came into personal contact; our fourth feeling was mixed concern and concept for the Muslim peasant, whom we saw in the same light as we saw our low-caste Hindu tenants, or, in other words, as our live-stock.” He credits Hindu-Muslim rivalry as a factor in the progress of Indian nationalism.
 
In the book’s third part, Nirad’s family has left their ancestral home in Kishorganj for Calcutta, where Nirad would live from June 1910 to March 1942. In his description of Calcutta during the rainy season, when the sewers overflowed and the streets turned into canals with the water in dirtiest shade of brown, he makes a western connection, suggesting that the city felt like “Venice with a vengeance.” There are Indian-style descriptions too, like this one: people used to joke that “such and such street in Calcutta was flooded if a dog raised its hind leg.” On his experience of the first Hindu-Muslim riot that he witnessed in Calcutta, he writes, “The Calcutta riot of 1910 was the outcome of sheer hooliganism, a clean thing compared with what was to come afterwards, and thus it was great fun.” 

Nirad mentions several books which he read during his student years. In one passage he mentions three books which had a decisive influence on him: Stubbs’s The Constitutional History of England in Its Origin and Development, Green’s Short History of the English People, and Mommsen’s History of Rome. It is clear that the history of Western civilization was an area of interest for Nirad. I don’t think that he had access to the history books which present the dark side of the West, especially the British empire—he does not dwell on the Western genocides in the colonies and slavery. 

Despite his extensive reading, and despite doing well in his B.A., he failed to clear his M.A. examination. For his academic failure, Nirad blames his over-ambitiousness as an undergraduate. He says that even though he read a lot, his reading was too “diffuse and haphazard.” He ruefully confesses that “I never commanded the will-power to carry out my own deliberate projects.”
 
In his “Prefatory Note” to the book’s fourth part, Nirad says, “Hindu society does not teach its youth to face life bravely.” He was now engaged in a desperate struggle to make a place for himself in Calcutta’s society. He felt that the city was overtaken by pathological megalopolitanism. It did not occur to him that the pathological megalopolitanism, which he decried, was a consequence of British influence. In most pages of the book, he appears painfully aware of the fact that life was not kind to him. He writes: “I entered the world in 1921, and for sixteen years after that I suffered such poverty, want, and humiliation as I cannot wish even an enemy, if I had any, to be punished with.”
 
He was not impressed by every Englishman. He was contemptuous of the local English, especially those who held bureaucratic positions in the government of British India. This could be a case of familiarity breeding contempt—he was contemptuous of the Englishmen with whom he was familiar. “As long as I lived in Calcutta I wore no article of English clothing and had none. In general, I disliked and despised the local English. To my mind they alone justified the idea that the English were a nation of shopkeepers.” 

When India becomes independent, he laments that the “British Empire in India has perished without my ever coming into intimate personal contact with Englishmen, with the exception of less than half a dozen whom I have known more or less.” He had not visited England yet. He could not think of traveling because all his energy was consumed by his struggles to survive in Calcutta. He admired the older generation of anglicized Bengalis. He laments that he “never had the opportunity of coming in direct personal contact with them.” His mind was filled with the notion that an ideal life would be one in which he would have intimate contact with cultured Englishmen, who he imagined existed in England.

He has dedicated his book to the British Empire: “To the memory of the British Empire in India which conferred subjecthood upon us but withheld citizenship; to which yet every one of us threw out the challenge: "Civis Britannicus sum” because all that was good and living within us was made, shaped and quickened by the same British rule.” His phrase “Civis Britannicus sum,” is inspired by the phrase, “Civis romanus sum” (I am a Roman citizen), which Cicero uses while pleading for the rights of a Roman citizen. 
 
Nirad does not treat Gandhi with reverence—in several passages, he is very hostile to him. He presents Gandhi as any other shrewd politician. In the pre-Gandhi period of Indian politics, Nirad, as I pointed out earlier in this article, fully shared the passions of the Indian nationalist movement because he was convinced that this movement could bring historical and political consciousness to the Indian masses. When Gandhi became the dominant figure in Indian politics, Nirad started feeling alienated from Indian nationalism.

He blames Gandhi for removing all aspects of historical and political consciousness from Indian nationalism, and weakening the movement’s intellectual foundations. He was disgusted by Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement. He says that he and few older nationalist leaders were seized by a fear of “the monstrous abortion that was taking shape in the womb of the future.” He blames Gandhi for degrading the Indian nationalist movement by oversimplifying its agenda. But he holds that the oversimplification made Indian nationalism palatable to the simple minded population of India. 

With the rising popularity of Gandhian politics, rues Nirad, the Indian nationalistic movement became one with Gandhi’s purportedly saintly lifestyle. He felt that Gandhi had learned nothing from his English education and his high station in life.

He puts a big question mark on Gandhi’s moral values: Gandhi’s morality “remained the morality of the servus, very pure and lofty certainly, nonetheless bearing in all its manifestations the unmistakable stamp of its lowly origin. Only a noble slave could have propounded this doctrine, a slave who was too weak, too modest and meek, and too passive to break his chains, but was capable of making them immaterial in an ecstatic contemplation of his hypostasis of goodness and right.” 

He ends his book on a sad note: “My low spirits were absolute. There seemed to be no cure for them.” He saw independent India as a dead civilization. He could not imagine life without British rule. He went to England for the first time at the age of fifty-seven—he has described the journey in his book A Passage to England. The irony is that he could not find happiness there either.

The Right Response to Old Slogans

What is the right response to the proclamation “the king is dead”? Long live the king. 

What is the right response to the Nietzschean observation “God is dead!”? Now everything is allowed and nihilism reigns.

What is the right response to Rousseau’s slogan “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains”: Man is condemned to be free.

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Political Ideology & Beauty

Political ideology is like beauty; it is not a property of the material world but an impression in the eye of the ideologues and their followers. It is in the eye of the beholder. To expect the ideological movements to be fully objective would be naive. They are the creatures of emotion.

Captain Ahab's Obsessive Quest for Revenge

“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.” ~ Captain Ahab speaks these words, in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick, when Starbuck, his first mate on the whaling ship called Pequod, opines that it might be blasphemous to be driven by an intense desire for revenge. 

In the world of Pequod, Captain Ahab is the supreme leader—his sailors obey his every command. He has a godlike view of himself. When he sees a coin that has the image of the three peaks, he says: "There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here, three peaks as proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self.” 

Ahab is obsessed with the notion that the white whale called Moby Dick has insulted him by inflicting a life-wound on him, resulting in the loss of his leg. He is determined to exact revenge on Moby Dick. He personifies megalomaniac passion and single-mindedness. His cycloptic vision is contrasted with whale vision: the whale’s eyes are on the sides of its head, and each eye works independently, showing both sides of everything, something that humans with eyes located in the front cannot match. Ahab’s obsession to kill Moby Dick leads to not only his death but also the destruction of his ship and the death of almost the entire crew. 

Thus, the whale Moby Dick that had eyes on both sides of its head, and was, metaphorically speaking, capable of looking at both sides of every issue, won the battle against Ahab, who was authoritarian and had an obsessive cycloptic vision. One member of Pequod’s crew survived to tell the tale—he is the novel’s narrator, Ishmael. We are with Ishmael with the novel’s first line, “Call me Ishmael,” and he is there to describe the grisly climax.

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Good Politics and Good Manners

Essentially, good politics is related to good manners. When people endeavor to understand each other, when they are honest and sincere, when they respect the rights of others, when they are concerned about the well being of society as a whole, when they use their reason as well as emotions to judge any issue—in other words, when they are good mannered—they have good politics. The great enemy of good politics is bad manners. The non-technocratic and traditional societies (unfairly depicted as barbarians by the technocratic-intellectual class) are certainly capable of good manners—they are capable of understanding, sincerity, empathy, and tolerance. Whether a society of technocrats and intellectuals is, remains doubtful.

The Postage Stamp Analogy

If the portraits of the head of the government in your country are larger than a postage stamp, then you are living in a tyranny.

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

The Multinational Oligarchs

What kind of people does the word “oligarch” bring to mind? The Russians: Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Ukrainians: Rinat Akhmetov, Victor Pinchuk, Kostyantyn Zhevago, Ihor Kolomoyskyi. You might think of the Middle Eastern and Chinese tycoons. You might think of the drug czars of South America. But you are unlikely to think of the Western tycoons as oligarchs. This is because of the power of Western propaganda, which has convinced most people that oligarchy is a problem of the non-Western nations.  

Some of the most notorious oligarchs of the last 400 years were Western. Sir Francis Drake was a British oligarch of the sixteenth century. He was among the richest Englishmen of his time—he ran a piracy operation which looted and destroyed the ships belonging to Britain’s rivals. The East India Company was a powerful oligarchic entity of its time. They were involved in every possible crime and atrocity—they overthrew governments, they conducted massacres, they profited from piracy and slavery, they smuggled opium, and they looted the countries where they operated. 

During the Age of Imperialism, the Western powers managed to conquer the world because of the operations of their oligarchic organizations: Sir Francis Drake’s privateers, the East India Company, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Royal Africa Corporation, the British South Africa Company (led by Cecil Rhodes), and several others.

Oligarchy is primarily a Western problem. Even in the twentieth century, the Western oil, mineral, and defense multinationals have been exercising an oligarchic control on the oil and natural gas resources in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. The Western digital companies control the global flow of information. The Western Pharma companies dictate the health-related agenda of many countries. The Western banks and insurance companies have the power to make or break the economies of several nations, including the Western ones.

The predatory methods of the oligarchic multinationals has made it impossible for genuine free market societies to emerge anywhere in the world.

Strange Opinions on the Ukraine War

Among the “intelligent opinions” on the Ukraine war that I have seen in the social media, there is finally this one: Joe Biden might be Napoleon in disguise, and Boris Johnson might be Churchill. These opinions are intelligent because they are strange—Napoleon’s army froze to death in the Russian winter, and Churchill was used and then discarded by the Russian supremo Stalin.

Monday, March 7, 2022

Sulla and Pompey

After his victory in the Sertorian War in 80 BC, Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (future Pompey the Great) met Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (Sulla), the Roman general who had seized power in Rome and become the first man of the Roman Republic, for a dinner. 

Pompey wanted to hold a triumphal procession through the streets of Rome to celebrate his victory. Sulla was not willing to let the young and ambitious Pompey have that honor. According to the account given by Plutarch, Pompey told Sulla: “It would be unwise to say no to me. More worship the rising than the setting sun.” He was challenging Sulla by comparing his own good health and rising career with Sulla’s bad health and fading career. 

Sulla was then sixty years old but the decades of wars and massacres had extracted a heavy toll on his health. His tired response was: “I see, then, it is my destiny to contend with children in my old age.” He cried out to his court: “Let him have his triumph.”

Russia Drinks, America Gets Drunk

All the world knows that America gets intoxicated when Russia drinks a bottle of vodka.

Sunday, March 6, 2022

The Superpower’s Machiavellian Instincts

The status of a superpower brings wealth, resources, and glory to a country, but it doesn’t bring wisdom, clean conscience, and a clean pair of hands. When the rulers of a superpower realize that their government is mired in intractable domestic problems, they drag their countrymen into a new foreign adventure—they start a new war, even though they don’t know how the war will be won; they hope that when the war is underway and everything is in flux, they will see not only the way of winning the war but also the solution to their country’s domestic problems.

Wakefulness & War

A nation is asleep until it goes to war.

Saturday, March 5, 2022

Stunned Because it is a European War

Some elites are stunned by the outbreak of the Ukraine war. It seems that they believed that such violence could never come to a European country. They have no sense of history. They don’t know that Europe was the most violent place on earth till 1945. In the twentieth century, they had two World Wars which claimed millions of lives. In the last 2500 years, Europe had more wars, crusades, pogroms, riots, bloody revolutions, enslavements, and genocides than any other place on earth.

Here is a sample of the naive statements that the stunned folks are making in the media:  

“They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking… War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone.” ~ former Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan talking about the Ukrainian refugees in an article in The Daily Telegraph.

“It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed, children being killed every day by Putin’s missiles, helicopters and rockets.” ~ Ukraine’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, talking about the Ukrainian casualties in an interview with the BBC.

“The unthinkable has happened…This is not a developing, third-world nation; this is Europe!” ~ Lucy Watson, ITV news correspondent.  

“What is compelling is that just looking at them, the way they’re dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people, these are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa; they look like any European family that you would live next door to.” ~ Peter Dobbie, presenter at Al-Jazeera English 

“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.” ~ Charlie D’Agata, foreign correspondent at CBS News 

These people need a crash course in Europe’s violent history. Europe even had a 30-year war and a 100-year war. The Roman Empire was in a state of war throughout its existence.

The New Western Dark Age is Coming

The irony is that in the twenty-first century, Russia and China seem to stand as the last line of defense against the power hungry machiavellians of the West (which is being led by the American financial interests and deep state). 

In the twentieth century, people believed that the West stood for liberty and free markets, but in the twenty-first century the realization has dawned, that the West wants to lockdown everything and control everything, even though they fail to run most things that they control. If Russia and China fail to break the West’s monopoly on economic and military power, then the Western machiavellians will drag mankind into a new Dark Age. 

To fight the Western monsters, we need the Russian and Chinese monsters.

Friday, March 4, 2022

The Fall of the Dollar

The FED has come to accept the painful and unsettling fact: the dollar has been beaten. In his March 2 testimony, the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said: “Over a period of time… it would diminish our status as reserve currency. It is also possible that the world will have more than one large reserve currency. There have been times when that was the case… so it is not really clear.” This is the FED’s acceptance of the dollar’s decline.

If the dollar is no longer the only reserve currency, then America is no longer the only superpower. The defeat of the dollar is a bigger event than the defeat of Pax Americana in Ukraine. Powell did not name the currencies which could play (or are already playing) the role of reserve currency. It could be crypto—it could be the Chinese Yuan, the Japanese Yen, and the European Euro. If America tries to maintain the dollar’s supreme position, it will cause an endless hemorrhaging of the world economy and it will fail in the end. In the long run, it would be cheaper for America to accept coexistence with other reserve currencies and financial systems. 

India has had its own currency model for trade with Russia for many years. China has recently reverted to its own currency in pursuing trade with Russia. The combined population of Russia, China, and India is about 3 billion—this implies that close to half the population of this planet will now be doing their trade outside the SWIFT system and through non-dollar currencies.

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Liberty and Power

Liberty is wasted without power, because it makes strength powerless and weakness powerful.

The Propaganda in Ukraine War

"One of the most horrible features of war is that all war propaganda, all the screaming and lies, and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." ~ Orwell

Orwell could as well be talking about the ongoing Ukraine war. Much of the propaganda, much of the screaming and lies, much of the hatred is coming from America and Britain—both nations have saturated the newspapers, TV channels, and the internet with their propaganda. They refuse to send their own soldiers to fight in Ukraine, they are not prepared to make a realistic financial commitment, but they are relentless in egging the Ukrainians to keep fighting. The Ukrainian position is hopeless in Eastern Ukraine where the demography is indistinguishable from that of Russia. This region is already under the control of the Russian military—the only way out is negotiation with Putin.

This war has happened because, since 1991 (after the Soviet Union’s fall), America and Britain were following the policy of expanding their hegemony over all of Eastern Europe.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Modern Man and the Wisdom of Gilgamesh

One of the teachings of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Mesopotamian (Sumerian) epic dated to 2100 BC, is that the success of a hero is not measured by the feats that he performs—the lands he conquers, the monsters he slays, the mysteries he solves, and the wealth he distributes among his people—but by the wisdom that he accumulates during the course of his life. It seems that modern man has forgotten this important teaching. The heroes (the most powerful and wealthy) of our age are technocratic and dogmatic; they are lacking in wisdom; they are in awe of their worldly feats; they are motivated by utopian notions of creating a paradise on earth; they do not accept the human limitations; they do not accept that man’s life is a tragedy.

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

The Two Elephants: America and Russia

“When two elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” ~ ancient African saying. America and Russia are the two elephants engaged in a fight, and Ukraine is the grass that is getting trampled. 

The war that the two elephants, America and Russia, have started in Ukraine is already having a global fallout. There are signs that Germany is planning to remilitarize. On Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that Germany would boost its military spending from 1.4 percent to more than 2 percent of GDP. They probably want to lower their dependence on NATO which, they believe, caters primarily to the American and British interests. In Japan, the ex-prime minister Shinzo Abe has said in a TV interview that “it is time Japan considered nuclear weapons.” He wants Japan to revisit the debate on nuclear policy. The Russian giant Gazprom has signed a biggest-ever natural gas supply deal with China—this shows the growing closeness between Russia and China. It is most likely that there exists a secret military pact between the two nations. 

When empires stretch beyond their capacity, they break. For decades, the Western Empire (led by America and Britain) has been stretched beyond its capacity. When the Western Empire breaks, the elephants will run amok in several nations, trampling their grass.

Ukraine: The Pitfalls of American Support

The American politicians and journalists are talking about arming the Ukrainian insurgents to fight the Russians. This is such an evil proposal. Do they remember the catastrophic consequences of Ronald Reagan’s arming of the Afghan insurgents in the 1980s to fight the Soviet army? His government armed the most fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan. These America-armed fundamentalist groups destroyed Afghan culture and created the global problem of religious terrorism.

The Ukrainians should fight on their own; they should never accept American weapons. If they accept American weapons, their country will turn into an Afghanistan like lawless place for the next 50 years. The Americans don’t give a damn about Ukraine; all they care about is their own global power play. They will arm the worst groups in Ukraine, the ones which are made up of unruly and fundamentalist elements (like they have done in Afghanistan and several other places). These groups will do more damage to Ukrainian culture than to the Russian military. 

Lot of damage has already been done to Ukraine because they became too close to the corrupt and machiavellian political establishment in America. Now Ukraine should aspire for independence from both Russia and America.