Indo-European ghosts

 

An interesting new theory about the peculiar nature of the Greek language in the Indo-European language family, where Greek doesn´t seem to have any close relatives (Armenian might be a very distant one). This kind of doesn´t make any sense on the traditional view of how the Indo-European languages developed. A new paper suggests a solution: the Greek and language is derived from a different Proto-Indo-European ancestral population than the other Indo-European languages. 

In the classical scenario, the PIEs are identified with the Eurasian steppe culture known as Yamnaya. The paper have found genetic markers among Greeks poiting to their ancestors being a different steppe group group, a PIE "ghost population". The YouTube video above argues that this elusive people isn´t unknown at all. *They* are the Yamnaya. In this scenario, both Greeks and Armenians have partial Yamnayan ancestry and so have their respective languages. Presumably, the original Yamnaya tongue was heavily mixed with the lingos of the Neolithic farmers in the southern Balkans and the Transcaucasus.

In Europe outside the Balkans, another (nameless) Indo-European group gave rise to the Corded Ware culture, the Bell-beaker culture, and so on. Here, Neolithic farmers were more sparse, which explains why these languages have a more "pure" Indo-European character. 

Thus, the Proto-Indo-Europeans during the Copper Stone Age were already split into different groups speaking somewhat different languages or dialects. Which, I suppose, raises the question where and when the PIE language first arose (if that´s even a meaningful question).   

The content-creator (Fortress of Lugh) also speculates about what this could mean for comparative mythology. Maybe Greek mythology can´t be easily correlated with, say, Celtic mythology. He doesn´t mention Norse or Vedic mythology, but that´s another obvious conclusion. Here, however, it´s important to bear in mind that there isn´t a one-to-one correspondence between genes, language and culture (including mythology). I mean, how do you explain the similarity between the figure on the Pashupati seal and Cernunnos?

Still, it´s an interesting contribution.         

Unfaithful

 

A short addendum to my blog post "Suspicions". It struck me that Russia has dumped two long-term allies in the Transcaucasus and the Middle East: Armenia and the Baathist regime in Syria. In return, they have gained new allies which are surely more fickle: Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Not sure if that´s the best Machiavellian power move. Sometimes, faithfulness pays. 

But then, I´m not Vladimir Putin´s advisor. :P 

   

Psykotiskt?

 

Jag stödjer som bekant Israels rätt att existera. Och försvara sig. Men...inte ens jag håller med om de här dumheterna. Alltså kravet att man inte ska kunna bli svensk medborgare om man inte erkänner Israels rätt att existera. 

Observera också att Teodorescu inte helt enkelt vill stoppa anti-israeliska muslimer från att bli medborgare med lite provokativa formuleringar i ansökningshandlingen, nej, det handlar om ett mer principiellt ställningstagande. Hon anser egentligen att *ingen* ska kunna vara medborgare i Sverige utan att "erkänna Israels rätt att existera". Att medborgarskap i ett land innefattar en lojalitetsförklaring till ett helt annat land torde vara unikt...och är givetvis en form av globalism.

Judar brukar ju bli anklagade för "dubbla lojaliteter". Här har vi alltså ett bisarrt exempel på en hedning som vill att *alla* ska ha dubbla lojaliteter till Israel?! Jag tror att anti-semiterna är väldigt glada nu...

Finns annars andra länder man skulle kunna kräva obligatorisk uppslutning bakom. Jag menar, vad sägs om Armenien?   

"Inför trohetsed till Israel"

"Inga vänsternazister på våra gator"

Objective history?

 

”De kristna i Mellersta Östern” (The Christians in the Middle East) is a book by Ingmar Karlsson, published this year. The author is a Swedish diplomat who used to work in Syria. He published a classical book on religious minority groups in the Middle East already in 1991, “Korset och halvmånen” (The Cross and the Crescent), which is available in many Swedish public libraries. In his new book, Karlsson tries – the best he can – to retell the history of Christianity in the Middle East (here also including Egypt) as objectively as possible. I think he succeeds remarkably well, except in the last chapter, where he retells his mostly negative experiences from Syria. He also touches upon the more general history of the region.

Thus, Karlsson points out that Monophysite Christians played a leading intellectual role in the medieval Muslim world, collecting ancient Greek or Roman manuscripts, and then translating them into Semitic languages. In the “multi-culturalist” pro-Muslim propaganda, this is often credited to the Muslims themselves.  The Catholic crusader states were multi-ethnic and multi-religious (except for the city of Jerusalem, where only Christians were allowed to live). Medieval Muslim historians considered the crusades to be a minor nuisance, instead viewing the Mongols as the larger threat. When a German emperor during the 19^th century wanted to pay homage to Saladin, it took considerable time to locate the tomb of the legendary Muslim leader, since it had been almost forgotten! Muslim obsession with the crusades is mostly a 20^th century phenomenon, a kind of counterpoint to the *modern* Western encroachments on the Middle East (and, of course, Israel). It works in tandem with Western obsessions about the same thing, positive or negative. The roots of the present situation in the Middle East are in any case to be found in the aftermath of World War I, and has nothing to do with the Middle Ages.

Karlsson does consider the Turkish/Kurdish massacres of the Armenians to have been a genocide, but also points out that the Armenians supported Russia during World War I (which technically made them traitors, since the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany), that Armenian terrorist groups existed long before the genocide, and that they often targeted Kurdish civilians. One Armenian group even massacred Kurds in the hope that they would retaliate and the ensuing chaos provoke a British intervention (which never materialized). The Turks are often cast as evil oppressors by liberals and leftists in the West, but were just as often on the receiving end of violence and ethnic cleansing, for instance in Greece and Bulgaria during the 19^th century Balkan wars. The Greeks began their liberation struggle against the Ottoman Empire by large scale massacres of Turks in the Peloponnese. I get the impression that Karlsson has a (perhaps involuntary) admiration for Kemal Atatürk, the authoritarian Turkish nationalist who managed to stop the dismemberment of Turkey in the aftermath of World War I.

More recent alliances in the region are often extremely confusing. Thus, the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army (SLA) during the Lebanese civil war was led by an Eastern Catholic and mostly consisted of Shia Muslims?! The Armenian Churches outside Armenia are part-Arab, since affiliating with these Churches gives you a higher social standing. In Iraq, about half of the Christians belong to a Shia-dominated pro-Iranian coalition. The Iraqi gentleman who spent most of last year burning Qurans in Sweden have a background in this milieu. One thing not mentioned in the book are the weird alliances of the Druze, a peculiar minority religion found in both Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Maybe the next edition can fill us in?

The most controversial chapter is probably the last one, in which Karlsson makes negative comments about the “Assyrian” immigration to Sweden from Syria during the 1970´s and 1980´s. He wonders why nobody was surprised about the fact that a people who disappeared from history 2,600 years ago suddenly re-appeared…in the Swedish town of Södertälje! Most of the “Assyrians” were members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and hence didn´t identify as Assyrian. Mass immigration of Syriac Orthodox from Syria to Sweden mainly took place from the Qamishly district, where no Syriac were persecuted by the Assad regime, many of the regional officials and officers were Syriac, and a Syriac church stood next to the building of the secret police. One of the first persons from Qamishly to get political asylum in Sweden as a refugee was a local boss of the ruling Baath party! Many of the “refugees” regularly returned to Qamishly (even greeting the Swedish “refugee coordinator”), forged and strangely uniform documents proving “persecution” were legion, one of the “banned Assyrian organizations” was actually legal and complained about the exodus, and so on. Delegations of “refugees” often visited Syria in order to construct new “native languages” which were then taught in Swedish schools (at the tax-payers expense) to Syriac children. The Syriac Christians referred to Sweden as “Ammo Djebbo”, a naïve and stupid character who tries to become popular by giving everyone money, while people laugh behind his back…

Karlsson claims that the political parties in Sweden each had their own favorite refugee/immigrant group during the 1970´s and 1980´s. The Social Democrats promoted Latin Americans, the Left Party the Kurds, the Center Party the West Saharans (!), the Conservatives anti-Communists from the Soviet bloc, and the Liberal Party “Christians from the Middle East” – actually, mostly the Syriac Orthodox. However, at the end of the book, it becomes obvious that Karlsson doesn´t really oppose immigration. *Today* the Christians in the Middle East are more persecuted than ever (he blames one George W Bush for this), and presumably wants the Western world to give them asylum. Instead, Ammo Djebbo has suddenly become jaded and cynical, and now doesn´t want to let anyone inside.

With that, I end this little review.

Upplopp i paradiset

 

Kanaker och fransmän har ju aldrig gillat varandra, men den senaste tidens våldsamheter på Nya Kaledonien verkar vara orsakade av Kina, Ryssland och Azerbaijan (sic). 

Kina expanderar i Söderhavet. Ryssland expanderar på Frankrikes bekostnad i Västafrika. Och Azerbaijan är sura på Frankrikes stöd till Armenien. Eftersom Ryssland för närvarande har dåliga relationer med Armenien (annars en traditionell allierad), så kan man väl inte utesluta något slags rysk koppling även här.

Frankrikes president Macron har åtminstone retoriskt intagit en offensiv hållning i konflikten i Ukraina. Säkerligen p.g.a. de geopolitiska spänningarna med Ryssland. Kinas expansion i Stilla Havs-regionen kolliderar givetvis också med franska intressen. Har för mig att vissa småländer i regionen faktiskt varit pro-ryska tidigare, men jag antar att Kina är huvudaktören där.

Återstår att se om detta bara är en försöksballong, eller ett allvarligt menat försök att öppna en ny anti-västlig front från Rysslands och Kinas sida.    

Totalt kaos på paradisön

Undantagstillstånd i paradiset

Fake anti-Pabloite fulmination

 

LOL. Imagine writing stuff like this, all but un-ironically. 

Also, Manouchian seems to have been a Stalinoid and so was the French Communist Resistance, so why does the super-duper-Trotskyite "World Socialist Web Site" express political support for him all of a sudden? Shouldn´t this notoriously sectarian group vomit all over Manouchian, too? 

I link to this stuff for no particular reason at all. Just killing time at 4:15 AM local time...   

Macron pays false tribute to French-Armenian resistance fighter Missak Manouchian

Running scared

 

Some people demand that Israel be kicked out of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) due to the war in Gaza. You know, genocide, ethnic cleansing, that kind of stuff. 

But there is *another* nation that could also be accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing by the same logic, which also participates in the ESC, and yet, almost nobody protests *its* participation.

Yes, that would be Azerbaijan. Why? 

Guess the religion of their victims...

The court jester

 

My dear Hassein, have I told you the tale of
the gringo LOL-bertarians who actually believed
an Argentine jester was the real thing?

So Argentina´s new president Milei plays court jester at Davos in front of the WEF before his inevitable sell out to global capitalism through dollarization and "free" markets?

Got it in one.

I assumed the court jester position became vacant after Greta Thunberg joined the Qassam Brigades, but it seems the WEF have found a suitable replacement! 

:D  

The Fourth Way

 

So I asked Bing AI to imagine Beelzebub telling tales to his grandson onboard a spaceship, and the above was the result...

Actually quite good! But whatever you do, don´t show it to your local Fourth Way cult.  

Better off without them

 

Credit: Oleg Bor

Some stray thoughts on our Turkish predicament...

I long wondered why on earth the United States tolerates Turkey´s and Hungary´s rather obvious attempts to bloc Swedish NATO membership. Which only plays into the hands of Russia, with which NATO is presently involved in a proxy war in Ukraine.

My best current guess is bureaucratic inertia. NATO coyly calculates that no NATO member-state will ever be attacked, cuz nuclear deterrent or something. And the United States can fix their own specific problems by going it alone. Proxy wars, targeted assassinations, that kind of stuff. So the apparatchiks might very well wheel and deal with the likes of Erdogan, cuz who cares? Fill in complaint about lucrative military-industrial complex contracts here! As for Hungary, well, read up on how the EU "works" sometimes (or, really, don´t). 

All these applecarts were upset when Russia launched its full-scale unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Suddenly, Sweden and Finland wanted to join NATO. And the United States wanted them in. There is just one little problem. Yes, you´ve guessed it: Turkey (and their quasi-conquered little Hungarian vilayet). The old wheeling and dealing approach doesn´t work anymore. Instead, Erdogan´s notorious multi-vectoralism has pushed NATO further and further towards a split. The recent events in the Transcaucasus and now the Hamas pogroms in southern Israel may be the Rubicon. Turkey clearly doesn´t want to line up behind the United States and Israel (a "partner" to NATO). Suggesting they won´t clear Sweden for NATO membership this time around either. 

Perhaps it´s time for the other NATO member-states to finally realize that geopolitical realities have changed. Yes, maybe it´s time to de-ratify Türkiye´s NATO membership? Make no mistake: it would be a huge blow to the alliance and its "southern flank". But the damage has already been done. In the long run, and maybe even in the short, NATO is better off without being blocked by a Putinversteher heading a quasi-Islamist autocracy with geopolitical goals clearly incompatible with those of the Western world. 

What is the alternative? Regime change, perhaps. But that´s hardly on the table. Wheeling and dealing with the mercurial Erdogan if and when Putin decides to test NATO´s resolve by taking the Suwalki corridor or bomb some island off the Swedish coast?

It´s time for Erdogan to chose. Once and for all. Otherwise, we´re better off without a "southern flank" that for all intents and purposes may already have fallen...

Geopolitical tango

Turkey and Azerbaijan are notorious multi-vectoralists, trying to maintain good relations with both Russia and the West. With a certain pro-Russian slant. But where does that leave Armenia, one of Russia´s oldest allies in the region, but also an enemy of the Turks and Azeris? 

According to this CNN report, Armenia has began doing some multi-vectoralist dance moves themselves...away from Putin and towards the West. Although it´s probably at the level of trial balloons at this stage, since Russia apparently still has a huge military base in the country! 

Armenia: Is one of Russia´s oldest allies slipping from the Kremlin´s orbit?

Equal to the apostles

 

?????!!!!!

Saint Nino

Middag med Pol Pot

Åsa Linderborg slår till igen, med en mycket baserad tagning. Blev faktiskt själv förvånad för ett tag sedan när jag insåg att Forum för levande historia faktiskt är en *bokstavlig* statlig myndighet! 

"Lägg ner Forum för levande historia"

The Devil we didn´t know

 

Finally, some informed opinions on Yazidism, the peculiar minority religion of Kurdistan. 

Testa gränserna

Ukrainas moderna gränser är faktiskt en kommunistisk skapelse. Det gäller alla gamla sovjetrepubliker utom Estland, Lettland och Litauen. När Sovjetunionen upplöstes 1991 behöll de nya staterna de gamla sovjetrepublikernas gränser. Det kanske var den mest pragmatiska lösningen just då, men det orsakade även en hel del problem och konflikter. Områden med rysk befolkning hamnade plötsligt på "fel" sida nygamla gränser. Exempelvis de mångomtalade regionerna Krim, Donetsk och Luhansk. Något svenska liberaler såklart skiter i. Men ryssarna skiter inte i det. 

Och inte armenierna heller...

Rötterna till konflikten om Nagorno-Karabach går också tillbaka till Sovjets upplösning. Under den sovjetiska tiden lydde Nagorno-Karabach under den azeriska sovjetrepubliken. Den nya staten Azerbaijan fick alltså behålla Nagorno-Karabach. Problemet är att en stor del av området har armenisk befolkning. De ville tillhöra Armenien. Det tyckte Armenien också. Och då blev det krig.

Naturligtvis gäller även det motsatta: områden där det knappt bor några ryssar hamnade i Ryssland. Ett välkänt exempel är Tjetjenien. Området ville bli självständigt, men eftersom Tjetjenien inte varit en "riktig" sovjetrepublik utan sorterat under den ryska sovjetrepubliken (RSFSR) var detta omöjligt. Tjetjenien fortsatte att vara under rysk kontroll även efter kommunismens fall. När Tjetjenien trots detta utropade sin självständighet, svarade Ryssland med att bomba området tillbaka till stenåldern. 

Ovanstående är inte i sig självt ett argument för att ändra de nuvarande "sovjetiska" gränserna (även om det givetvis *kan* vara det). Det är likväl viktigt att känna till bakgrunden. Annars framstår man som ett korkat mähä som i stort sett inte fattar just någonting alls. Svenska reportrar verkar genuint förbryllade över att befolkningen i Donbass hälsade Putins erkännande av "folkrepublikerna" med att hissa ryska flaggor och smälla av fyrverkerier. De är fortfarande förvirrade över att i stort sett alla på Krim röstade för Rysslands annektering av halvön 2014. Men varför är det konstigt att ryssar vill tillhöra Ryssland? Det är väl inte konstigare än att ukrainare i allmänhet *inte* vill göra det. Eller balter. Eller tjetjener. Eller judar...

Jag tror att många förståsigpåare i Sverige fortfarande inte har förlikat sig med att de flesta i det forna östblocket faktiskt inte var goda västerländska liberaler (och absolut inte vänsterliberaler). De bara låtsades vara det så länge detta renderade dem stöd från västvärlden. I själva verket var de alltid i grunden auktoritära nationalister, religiösa konservativa, eller rena skurkar. De gillade inte judar heller. Jag är fortfarande uppriktigt förvånad över att Zelenskyj kunde bli vald till Ukrainas president. De anti-semitiska traditionerna i Ukraina har länge varit ungefär lika militanta som i Ryssland. (Zelenskyj är alltså jude.) 

Jag undrar vad som händer när den svenska medieeliten inser att ukrainarna faktiskt inte är homosexliberala Femen-aktivister med drömmar om att bli konsulter i Wärdegrund på TikTok, utan i allmänhet är grekisk-katoliker med en märklig fixering vid "språket" (ja, detta märkliga "språk" som underligt nog har något med nationell identitet att göra, tänka sig). Förmodligen händer just ingenting alls, eftersom de fortfarande inte kommer att gilla Putte. Vilket jag inte tenderar att göra heller. Fast bakom kulisserna kan moralpaniken ju bli riktigt, riktigt intressant...

Welcome to the real world, Neo! 

The end of multi-vectoralism

The pro-Russian blog "The Saker" on Kazakhstan and the recent events there. Argues that Russia had foreknowledge of the attempted insurrection. Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus are now even more subordinate to Russia than before, this being a huge defeat for the United States. While I obviously disagree with the fanaticized Greater Russian nationalism of this particular raptor, his analysis is nevertheless interesting. It could even be true - from Putin´s perspective!

Who "lost" Kazakhstan and to whom?

A different spaceship

"A Different Christianity" is a book published in 1995. The author, Robin Amis, is almost unknown, but his little band of followers have nevertheless written an extensive entry on him at Wikipedia (it wasn´t there a few years ago). Apparently, Amis (a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy) was an officially recognized "fellow traveler" of sorts to the monks at Mount Athos. His book is an extremely difficult read, and I don´t claim to have understood it completely myself. However, I don´t think it correctly reports Orthodox mysticism or hesychasm. A more charitable way of putting it, is that Amis wasn´t a *main line* Orthodox Christian. Religions, after all, can and do change...

Amis was a supporter of Boris Mouravieff, a Russian military officer who left Russia after the Bolshevik revolution (he had also served as Alexander Kerensky´s secretary) and eventually settled in Switzerland. In Constantinople, Mouravieff had met the idiosyncratic spiritual teacher G I Gurdjieff and his chief apostle (or ex-apostle or would-be apostle...) P D Ouspensky. Years later, Mouravieff published a three-volume work called "Gnosis" (Amis translated it to English) in which he attempted a synthesis of the Fourth Way (the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky), Eastern Orthodoxy and (perhaps) some form of Freemasonry, claiming that this was the true esoteric message of the Orthodox Church and the "Great Brotherhood". Amis frequently references both Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Mouravieff, but note that of these, only the latter claimed to be Christian or Orthodox (no, some remark on the fly about the Fourth Way being "esoteric Christianity" doesn´t count). Amis clearly believes that there is a secret tradition within Christianity, but he admits that it might not be an unbroken chain going all the way back to the apostles, but a message that has disappeared and been reconstructed at several points in the past. Perhaps be believes that the Mouravieff phenomenon is the latest such reconstruction?

"A Different Christianity" does have a take on the Christian message which will strike many readers as very different from the usual one. Amis has a strong perennialist tendency (really a syncretist one), and often compares Orthodox hesychasm with Hindu yoga, including kundalini-related experiences (although he never uses that very term). He believes that there isn´t any difference between Western and Eastern system at their base, all of them representing the same "faith". Demons don´t really exist - they are really psychological projections of our own inner "demons". By this logic, could it be said that angels don´t exist either? The apocalypse is an allegory for the personal enlightenment of the believer. At one point, Amis says that we get saved by faith alone, and that works are products of our faith - the Protestant position. I find it ironic that Amis rejects the Gnostics from his irenic synthesis, while including the Hindus. Among the Church Fathers, he is especially interested in Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Evagrius of Ponticus, all three of whom were considered problematic from the standpoint of strict Church orthodoxy. More unusual sources of inspiration include alchemy and "The Book of Abramelin the Mage"!

Amis seems to reject the standard Christian notion that the human person is *both* a body and a spirit. Instead, he sees the spirit exclusively as the seat of the personality. This presumably explains his interest in Evagrius, who was often criticized for exactly this position himself. There seems to be a tension in the book between two strikingly different conceptions of mysticism (although I suppose the author may have seen them as two distinct stages). First, there is the idea that the goal of mysticism is to abide in a kind of almost nirvanic stillness ("noetic ascesis"), something that would make all persons strikingly similar, and presumably unaware of their physical bodies. Second, is the opposite idea of mysticism as Eros, as transformed sexual energy, indeed as "energy" in general, an energy which fills the physical body and eventually leads to a dramatic experience of the divine Light. In Orthodoxy, this experience is said to transform the physical body into an imperishable resurrection body (if only for a moment), but this aspect seems to be of no interest to Amis - yet, *that* is surely the original goal of hesychasm. It was precisely this "material" aspect of the new mysticism which made the medieval critics of the hesychasts suspect that they were really "Messalian" heretics. To Amis, the important thing is the spirit, and I suspect that the real goal is the noetic stillness, rather than the more dramatic manifestations, but it´s nevertheless intriguing (in a book about asceticism) that the author talks about sex and Eros so often, even to the point of quoting Allan Bloom!

I admit that my spiritual (and, I suppose, bodily) preferences are very different from those of "A Different Christianity", which may explain why my hydrogens weren´t magnetized by this gospel...

If you want to own all hard books about mysticism, you might consider adding this to your collection. 

Simply Turkish

I just finished reading "Turkiets historia" (The History of Turkey) by Ingmar Karlsson. Although the author is a former Swedish diplomat, the book is mostly a popularized account of Ottoman and modern Turkish history, rather than a sensational tell-it-all about Mideast conspiracies. The book was published in 2015, and therefore doesn´t mention the 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan. If the book has a political tendency, it´s "pro-European" and argues that "Turkey is part of Europe". This is ironic, since anyone reading it would surely draw the opposite conclusion: that Ottoman, Turkic or Turkish civilization, whatever else it might be, is very definitely *not* European, but another planet entirely. Karlsson tries to blame France and Germany (and perhaps Cyprus) for the failure of EU to integrate a very willing and pro-EU Turkey, but its obvious from his account that most Turks always opposed secular Kemalism and prefer conservative Islam combined with Turkish nationalism. While Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey, was indeed very positive towards the latter, he actively opposed the former. The entire history of modern Turkey is really the history of the religious elites and "the silent majority" to break away from all or most of Kemalism´s six founding principles. Erdogan and the AKP are simply the latest example, and the most succesful. Yes, Erdogan used to be pro-EU, but in hindsight, his hybrid of Islamism, Turkish nationalism and "Neo-Ottoman" foreign policy ambitions sound much more politically logical than a Turkey modernized around Northwest European lines (let alone "woke" ones). 

Karlsson´s book starts out with several chapters on Ottoman history, unfortunately rather distracted ones, as he jumps back and forth in the chronology, never mentions the Bektashi order, says very little about the slave trade, and at one point writes "Russian" when he really means "Ottoman". He also resurrects Bayezid after his captivity and death at the hands of Timur Lenk! Still, the chapters *are* interesting, especially if you think "Islam" and "Christianity" are necessarily in conflict with each other. Realpolitik (and, shall we say, Real-commerce) frequently trumps both the jihad and the crusading spirit. Both Venetians and the Genoese frequently aided various Ottoman factions in their power struggles. France had an outright military alliance with the Ottoman Empire against the Habsburgs. One of the reasons why the Protestant Reformation succeeded may have been Ottoman pressure on the Habsburg domains in Central Europe, which forced the Catholic emperors to compromise with the Protestant princes. For a long time, Orthodox Christians (outside Russia) preferred the Muslim crescent to the Catholic crusaders. So did the Jews! And yes, our very own warrior-king extraordinaire, Karl XII, tried to ally Sweden with the Porte against Russia. 

It´s interesting to note that the conflict between modernizers and traditionalists existed already during Ottoman times, in earnest from the 19th century, but to some extent already during the 15th century. The famous portrait of Mehmed Fatih, the conqueror of Constantinople, was made by an Italian and sold by Mehmed´s successor Bayezid II, who regarded portrait painting as anti-Muslim. That´s how the portrait eventually ended up in the United Kingdom! Another thing that seems to be "same old, same old" is the idea of an imperialist "humanitarian intervention". This wasn´t something invented during the 1990´s (which many leftists seem to think). As early as 1827, the great powers intervened (with the best of intentions, obviously) to aid the Greeks against the Ottomans. Next in line was an intervention to aid the Bulgarians. Karlsson points out that nobody cared much about the Turks ethnically cleansed from the Balkans due to these great power interventions. (Of course, an alternative interpretation - equally unpalatable to modern wokesters - is that *Russia* was the great liberator of the Balkan peoples from the sick man at the Bosphorus.) 

While Karlsson (of course) opposes the Armenian Genocide, he also makes a valiant (and perhaps slightly controversial) attempt to place it in context. Armenians were a minority in "Ottoman Armenia", and actively supported the Russians during World War I, while the Ottoman Empire fought on the German side. Karlsson also notes that the Kurds actively supported the Turks in the attacks on the Armenians. Later, the Kurds themselves would be oppressed by the new Turkish regime. Thanks to Kemal Atatürk´s military campaigns, Turkey was the only losing power in World War I that succesfully challenged the diktats of the victorious Entente, which in the Turkish case would have meant near-dismemberment. I can´t help thinking that Karlsson might have *some* kind of pro-Turkish sympathies! His description of the Cyprus conflict is also very "objective".

As for modern Turkey, I have already commented on the Kemalist-Islamist conflicts. It´s interesting to note that Erdogan and other Islamist politicians in Turkey tend to be economically neo-liberal, not left-of-center, while in practice combining neo-liberalism with a kind of crony capitalism. Either way, the Islamists seem to be based on a seemingly unnatural alliance of a neo-liberal bourgeoisie and a vast plebs of religiously conservative peasants or underemployed ex-peasants in the large cities. I´m not entirely sure how this alliance can hold together - Karlsson seems to suggest that the Sufi orders play an important role here as clientelistic networks aiding but also incorporating the poor in the Islamist project (Westerners with an over-romantic view of Sufis may take note here). Erdogan seems to be the Bonaparte or great leader of said project. 

The role of the Gülen movement is unclear to me. They claim to stand for a kind of Muslim modernization and democratization of Turkey, and rather obviously seek Western support (Gülen lives in the United States), but how do we really know this? Gülen´s supporters were long allied with Erdogan and strongly oppose Kemalism. Are their modernizing stances just a form of taqyyia? Interestingly, they are strong Turkish nationalists and hence opposed to Kurdish independence. 

Personally, I strongly favor secularism and Western modernization (thank you!), but Turkey seems to be another example of the fact that Occidental modernity really isn´t the teleological or otherwise inevitable end point of human political evolution, or even of capitalism. Islam grows stronger, the more capitalist and/or democratic Turkey becomes, not always as a counter-reaction but *in alliance* with the modern forces. Yet, this is not a "modernist Islam", but a conservative form married to a bourgeoisie and even elements of globalization! (In a different way, China is another example of "two, three, many modernities".) While Turkey isn´t "Europe", it is a bridge between East and West, but not in a way easily recognizable by people with a Western mindset. What should be done about this, if anything, is perhaps an interesting question. Above all, Turkey is simply Turkish...

There will be flash wars

 

"The future of modern warfare" is one of the scariest documentaries I´ve ever seen. I somehow assumed, a bit cynically to be sure, that the existence of nuclear weapons made world war *less* likely, indeed, almost impossible. This production, made by the German public broadcaster DW but with most content in English, shows how a nuclear war can start anyway. The reason? IT. Or more precisely, cyber attacks... 

Apparently, many of NATO´s early warning systems against Russian nuclear missiles are vulnerable, since they use digital signals rather than the good old analogous ones. Digital technology can be hacked. Indeed, in a world where everything and everyone is hacked on a daily basis by both state and private actors, it´s difficult to see a situation in which military systems would somehow be exempted from this. Further, the early warning systems are often "multi-task", and are used to track both nuclear and conventional missiles. This means that Russia has a vested interest in hacking them even if they *don´t* intend to start a nuclear war, a move that would then be interpreted by the United States as a preparation for exactly such a war! Thus, an escalation of cyber hostilites between the superpowers could potentially lead to a nuclear conflagration, as both sides misinterpret the purpose of the other side´s actions...

Another thing that could transform the battlefields of the future are "autonomous systems", weapons based on Artificial Intelligence that can operate on their own, without any human guiding them. One example is called "loitering munitions", really a kind of weaponized drones that can fly around autonomously for hours after launch ("loiter"), scanning a wide area for targets, and then destroy it by essentially flying right at it, hence their nickname "kamikaze drones". Israel is a leading manufacturer of this technology, and it was used by Azerbaijan in its recent war against Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The documentary shows some pretty absurd Azeri propaganda clips showing this deadly weapon. Even more problematic are "swarms", i.e. swarms of drones used to confuse or attack the air defence systems of the enemy. Swarms can only be fought by other swarms, and will therefore lead to a new arms race. Since the swarming drones are autonomous, we might even get a situation in which a war escalates with no human imput whatever! This is known as a "flash war". 

Like cyber attacks, drone development is virtually impossible to stop, since drone technology and AI also have a host of civilian applications. Another thing making arms control extremely difficult is that these new weapon systems are "software" rather than "hardware". It´s one thing to control physical missiles, quite another to regulate the programming capabilities of the enemy. The great powers are reluctant to get onboard any control measures. For instance, China opposes "use" of these killer robots, but not their development.

One thing never explained in "The future of modern warfare" is where the microchips come from. I assume drones have such? Is this state of the art technology just as dependent on Taiwan as the mobile phone or computer industries? If so, what happens if China takes Taiwan? Also, can terrorist groups or even individuals somehow get their hands on these drones, and if so, can they learn how to use them? Private actors can certainly learn how to hack sensitive systems... 

As usual, I tend to become "philosophical" when watching stuff like this. Since our problems seem downright impossible to solve, what in heaven´s name are we supposed to *learn* from our human-earthly existence? That the material world really, truly sucks? OK, message recieved. 

If DW is right, I wouldn´t be too surprised if a nuclear war (á la Dr Strangelove) might take place at some point during the 21st century. Perhaps even within my lifetime...

Neither King nor Kaiser: The Tragedy of World War I

"Första världskriget" is a recently published book by Dick Harrison, Swedish popularizer of world history extraordinaire. This time, Harrison takes on World War I.

"The war to end all wars" is (or should be) part of everyone's common knowledge. Who hasn't heard of the trenches on the Western front, the poison gas, the first tanks or the US entry into the war? And of course the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which supposedly triggered the whole thing! Harrison's book does contain the usual (and frankly disturbing) information on these things, but he also takes us to other theatres. The war on the Eastern front is extensively covered, as is the Alpine confrontations between Italy and Austria-Hungary, and the complex war in the Balkans. The Armenian Genocide gets a full chapter. The author also exposits on events in the colonial empires, including some I never heard about before. I had no idea that a naval battle between the Germans and the British was fought off the Falkland Islands, or that Brazil was a target of German U-boats! I had heard about the undefeated German colonial troops in East Africa (perhaps in another book by the same author).

World War I has often been depicted as a righteous attempt to stop Germany from making a bid for world domination. Harrison doesn't share such a perspective. He sees little difference between the Entente and the Central Powers. All great powers had colonial empires, or were empires in their own right. All treated their soldiers like cannon fodder. World War I was an unmitigated disaster, and both the war and the absurd peace treaties (such as the Versailles treaty) triggered a whole new series of calamities: Communism, Nazism, the Middle East conflict, and (most notably) World War II. The First World War ended an extended period of peace, progress and prosperity in Europe. It also destroyed the strong belief in progress prevalent at the time - at least, progress through gradual evolution of the existing societies and institutions. In hindsight, World War I shouldn't have been allowed to happen. That being said, the war and its aftershocks were probably inevitable. 

The altogether happier end of World War II and, some would argue, the Cold War gave belief in progress a new boost (despite Mutually Assured Destruction, silent springs and population bombs). And now, a century after the Great War, it feels like we're back to square one. Makes me wonder where we could have been had the war never taken place...