The economic foundation of a world war

The economic foundation of a world war

The ongoing welfare of the capitalism comes from the two World Wars which destroyed the accumulated capital stock, and thus brought back the profitability. The armament has played a similar role in the years following 1945. Wherever and whenever the full use of productive resources was achieved, it has been provided by the expansion of the state-induced "nonprofit" production. A section of this increase is a result of the measures of public welfare and foreign aid; most of it is the product of military expenditures. It is through inflation, debt accumulation, production stimulated by the State, preparation for war and the actual war, that the dominant capitalist nations were capable of approaching the full employment. In previous years, the economic fluctuations were accomplishing their duties of destroying the accumulated capital. But in the beginning of the 20th century, this has reached such a point that the fluctuations are no longer enough. It has been seen that the economic fluctuation has reached the end of the attribution of being a tool of accumulation, or, more precisely, the economic fluctuation has become a world-wars "FLUCTUATION". Consequently, we can say that in the actual course of the events, the current economic situation may set the stage for a new World War in order to bring a radical solution to the on-going problem and set the foundations of a new prolonged economic growth by restoring the falling profitability through the destruction of the production park. 

the funeral of friend

The funeral of a friend

It is a cold Sunday in winter and it is five o’clock in the morning. You have passed away just three days ago and today I’m attending your funeral. The procession is on the move and I am alone behind it while you are in front of me. My mind is in the fog whereas you, you are in your last wine just like last week. In front there’s a pale horse whereas behind there’s only me who is crying. It so sad to see that there’s no wind blow to shake my chrysanthemum. If I were God, I think I would have some remorse, now that’s it is snowing.

We are crossing the city in the very early morning but as it is, for me it looks like a ruin. But you don’t know this because you are sleeping but it is very hard to be forced to leave while the city is still sleeping. I am dying of the feeling of wanting to wake up people in order to invent you some kind of a family just for your funeral. And if I were God, I think I would not be very proud of this but I know, we have to do what we can but traditions are there, as usual. 

We have arrived to your tomb and the priest has started to pray but what good does it do when you are gone. And now they are putting you into this pit which marks the end of your last trip in this grey and sad world. I am the last person to put some soil upon it, rest in peace my friend. There is nobody around us, just you and me. I look up to the sky and I want to ask a question to God: “Why him and not me?”

I want you to know that I will return very often to this damn field where you will rest. In the summer, I will place a shadow upon you, we will toast silence in the name of all the women we once knew together who never cared about you. And, today the big men are so incompetent that they will wage war against the humanity. Then I will come for good to sleep in your graveyard. And now God, I have some accounts to settle with you and for that, you are not going to have a great laugh for I am going to cry, and cry and cry...

Man in the next 1000 years

Man in the next 1000 years.

We are in the second decade of the 21^st century and events are unfolding very fast. Man’s history is very long and as far as the written records are concerned, the man’s development as a civilized entity has been slow, due to the limited characteristic of the communication: news spread slowly around the world and the technological developments were fast compared to the civilizations of the time and but very slow as compared to nowadays. The climate and some geographical factors had important roles in the difference of development among the various civilizations which had proliferated all around the earth. Some of them disappeared through wars (the Abbasids who were destroyed by the Mongol armies) and pestilence (Aztecs who were decimated by the smallpox), even natural disasters (such as the civilizations of Atlantis and Crete).

The Western Civilization which started to overtake the world through the great achievements in various fields such as technology and economic development reached the zenith in 1928 by the means of exportation while controlling a great part of the known world through the colonies. But the two world wars put an end to this trend by the bankruptcy of the metropolitan powers and the emancipation of the subjugated people during the era of decolonization. Though the balance of power had shifted towards the east (Soviet Union) and to the west (United States), the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the rise of China and upcoming of Islam have started to redefine the conception of the balance of power in the world where new centers of power are emerging in the form of economic blocs.

For the time being, these economic blocs do not constitute a real political power in themselves for; their structure does not support the leitmotiv which should drive them. On paper, their strength is mighty but on the operational stage, they are weak, especially the Western Civilization where two major blocs have been constituted: NAFTA and the European Union. While the definition of the civilization has much to be desired in terms of reference, the cross-cultural interference between the major powers follows a pattern similar to the one that the world has come to know prior to the First World War: the speed of the economic growth was hampered by a dissimulated tariff war which in turn pushed the major powers to run after imperial objectives which inevitably produced a clash of the titans with the well known consequences.

Today, the aforementioned similarity is intriguingly disturbing because the balance of power is being destabilized through a hidden trade war between China and the West (mainly the United States). This state of the affairs will inevitably force the move towards new alliances where the West will enlarge itself by inviting Russia into NATO whereas the Islamic world will favor China. The latest developments in the race for rearmement have a tendency to confirm this and it will trigger a clash of arms which will be unparalleled in the history of the mankind.

Most probably, the conflict will embrace both sides of the Eurasia where we might see the clash of the two civilizations over the hinterland of the energy and natural resources. These two civilizations will namely be the West (North America, Europe and Russia) and the East (China and the Islamic world).

The direct consequences of such a clash will be the death of hundreds million of persons, the destruction of major cities and the spreading of the war between the 45^th parallel and the Tropic of the Cancer as all the major energy sources lay between those two parallels. Subsequently, the Eastern powers will come to place their flags of the borders of the Danube and the Rhine with an open access to the Atlantic. The West will be confronted with a major political and military crisis which can be expected to be solved through the unification of the command under one great political leader who would repulse the enemy definitely.

Following the war, a new era will emerge where the political affairs will change dramatically up to a point where the world leaders will accept to transfer their gigantic powers to a centralized representative form of government in which the states will act as provinces. The root of this has been set in 2009 by the creation of G-20 and we also have the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) which was created in 1930. At the same time, the destruction of the production park will cause massive investments which in turn will lay the ground for a sustained long term economic growth and the reversal of the falling profit rates across various industries. Also, we would see a redefinition of the culture and the religion for, changes will occur in the Church: it will not survive the cataclysm in the way we know it and will have to reform itself on a new basis. This will mean a radical departure from its current state, thus a new church but the same religion.

The effect upon people will be far more different than anyone can expect. Every 26000 years, the solar system passes through the centre of the galaxy and the effect it exerts is so great that the genes of the mankind will change slightly, like it did before. We only need to look in the past in order to able to see these changes in the Neanderthal, the Cro-Magnon, the Homo Sapiens and the current Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Most probably, the new specie would be Homo Sapiens 3 who will evolve in a different fashion with more spiritual and intelligence abilities.

Due to this, the humanity will see a jump in science and technology which will solve most of the problems that the world has encountered over the millenniums and more importantly, people will consider each other not on the basis of religion and race but on the basis of knowledge and intellectual capacity. Moreover, the new concepts that will emerge concerning the sociopolitical matters will embrace the world with new ideas but will definitely lack the emotions that should drive them.

But this will come to an end by 2050 for until then, the humanity will again face major challenges such as a zero growth in the population and the starting of depletion of natural resources thus forcing a severe drop in the production of natural resources which will not meet the ever growing demand (Hubbert's peak) which in turn, will force them to confront each other once more but this time, while some other set of events may enter into play such as major upheavals. We may, quite tentatively, say that the humanity will be committed either into another major war, a natural upheaval or both. Whatever will this be, the result will be the almost quasi destruction of the human kind. This will be followed by the rethinking of men about the state of the conscious and the way they look at the world and most probably, the change of mind will occur then.

This area, which we could define as the Golden Age, will last 1000 years in an uptrend fashion until its final end in 3000. At that point, time will change and the mankind will start to revert to its old desires and problems. The ensuing downward trend will mark the end of the Golden Age and possibly a grim end of the mankind itself.

The more dramatic end of the mankind may be a global catastrophe that could be triggered from outside the earth, something similar that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The ensuing breakdown of the food chain will turn men into cannibals and the remaining men could be transported to other solar systems by the outer world civilizations that we still don't know anything about them as we are still killing each other instead of cooperating for the future of the mankind… 

how old is man

How old is man?

Introduction

Man has always wondered how old is the man on this place we call earth; to be precise, he asked himself where his ancestors come from and he sought the answers in mainly two different areas: anthropology and religion. Since the early times of the human kind, man looked around to define his position on earth and for that matter, sought the aid of the stars and the nature. And for his most immediate past, he sought the memories of the older men in the clan which was transferred from one generation to the other. But, even with this process, one was limited to the extent of the knowledge it had about the real past of the mankind and with the advent of basic religion in around 50000 years B.C., that knowledge started to take shape in a form that moved towards its written form in 3000 B.C, commonly known as the holy books. With the development of the science and mainly the anthropology during the 18^th and 19^th century, man was able to answer the question regarding the age of the mankind. But, though the science has enlightened the question “how old is man?” in various forms, the conservative minded persons still rely on Holy Books in order to find the right answer. Under these circumstances,  we will try to answer this question by first asking to ourselves the age of the man according to the anthropology, followed by taking the point of view of the Holy Books on this matter, and finally to arrive to debate of the conservatives and the scientists on the matter.

I.             The age of the man according to the anthropology

1.   The term anthropology was first used in its proper sense by Emmanuel Kant who wrote one of the first majors treaties on anthropology, his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View which took him 25 years to write it but who begun teaching an annual course in anthropology in 1772. Anthropology is thus primarily an Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment endeavourer this movement evolved rapidly with the advent of colonialism and imperialism with the quest for the origins of the man. Charles Darwin wrote the book On the Origin of Species in 1859 where he postulated the theory of natural selection which in turn turned to become the basic mechanism of evolution from the 1930s to the 1950s. Thus, one would ask to itself when did the first man appear on earth or who is our first parental man and how old is he?

2.   The anthropology has many views on man as a whole but the main breakthrough it had was to solve the mystery of the age of the man on earth. Based on facts, the oldest man maybe as old as 7 million years. How old is the man depends on what one call “man”. The skull of a hominoid who lived 7 million years ago looks partly like a chimpanzee’s skull and partly like a human’s skull. Is that creature a man? No sharp line separates early apes from early men. Instead, it is a continuation whose nature we decipher from sparse fossil remains. Earliest men looked much like we do now; they walked on two legs as we do and by 3 million years ago, they were nearly as efficient walkers as we: their pelvises (round like a bowl for stable support) and feet (long and skinny with arches for strength) looked more like ours than a chimpanzee’s. Their heads were different from modern humans. Tiny brain cases (about a third our size) big faces, big teeth with thick enamel, large jaws, and powerful jaw muscles. How to tell if an early hominid was an early man? Walking upright is the hallmark. Apes first learned to walk on two feet and that allowed them to develop intelligence. Bipedality is the first critical criterion; the other thing would be a reduced canine (smaller than in other primates). If a creature meets these two conditions (walking upright and small canines) we define him to be a man.

3.   From here, we shall follow hominids forward and look at candidates for the “earliest man”, thus arrive to the answer to the question “how old is man?”

7 to 6 million years ago: Sahelanthropus tchadensis. This creature is a good candidate but we know too little yet about the species to be certain. The way the neck muscles attach to the skull indicates an upright walk and its teeth are more like ours (small canine).

6 million years ago: Orronin tugenensis. Though not a promising candidate but an early ape, it was perhaps bipedal and a tree climber. If it turns out that the creature was bipedal, then it would likely be the early man.

5.5 to 4.5 million years ago: Ardipithecus ramidus. It was possibly a bipedal and may have been a forest dweller thus a fair candidate as an early man.

4.2 to 3.0 million years ago: Australopithecines. This group of hominids was definitely bipedal, had small canine teeth and, therefore, were early men.

2.4 to 1.5 million years ago: Homo habilis. It was bipedal and similar to the australopithecines; definitely an early man and possibly able to talk.

So, the answer to this question would be: man is, maybe, as old as 7 million years old and surely, as old as 2.4. Million years.

II.           The age of the man according to the holy books.

 

1.   The Holy Books state that the first man came from heaven through a seed. Though they have been written in the past, the writers did not differ too much about the past of the man, thus his age. From the first civilizations of the Mesopotamia (Sumer, Assyria) and the Nile region (Ancient Egypt) and the first holy book (the book of the dead) to the most recent holy book (the Quran), people have always stipulated as to the origin of the man and to his age. This task was left to the priesthood who preferred to simplify the matters by sticking to a theory they came up with, which placed the man in a relatively short period of time in the human history inside the books but sufficiently long enough to endure the passage of time due to the lack of knowledge until the Renaissance period, by stating that Adam was the first man who was sent away from heaven.

2.   After the fall of the Roman Empire, the confrontation of man with the realities of the time necessitated the preservation of the knowledge and thus, the question “how old is man?” remained unanswered for more than 1000 years, a period we refer to as the “Dark Ages”. The holy books and scripts were read out to people as the true knowledge and no one contested them, to a point where the true age of the man was answered trough the calculation present in the Holy Books, without any need for inquiring any further the matter, possibly by the fear that the true answer would destroy the credibility of the Holy Books and thus the religious institution which based its foundation.    

3.   HOW OLD is the man according to the Bible?

If we go back 500 years, we come to the time of martin Luther (born in 1483), and Colombus, who sailed the Atlantic in 1492.

If we go back 1000 years, we come to the time of Leif Ericson, a Christian Explorer who preached Christ to pagans.

If we go back 2000 years, we come to the birth of Jesus Christ. The Western calendar is dated from His birth.

If we go back 3000 years, we come to the time of David and Solomon; they ruled Israel about 1000 B.C.

If we go back 4000 years, we come to the time of Abraham (2000 B.C.), the ancestor of Arabs and Jews.

If we go back 5000 years, we come to the time of Enoch, who walked with God 300 years and God took him into Heaven.

If we go back 6000 years, we come to the time of Creation, and Adam and Eve (4000 B.C.). Luke, evangelist and historian, records Adam as the first man (Luke 3:38).

The man is about 6000 years old. Let the people of the God rejoice in Him who made them! (Psalm 149:2)

III.          Conservatives, Materialists and Scientists: How old is the man?

1.   People prefer to limit themselves to what is already known and they try to find the answers in the Holy Books by accepting them as the absolute truth on any matter relating to the man. Thus, when wondering about the age of man, they rely on the simple arithmetic calculations postulated in the Holy Book without questioning it. At this point, the inquiry on the matter seems to be pointless though some scientist are able to separate religion and science in their real world and thus be able to provide an answer to the question. But, when Charles Darwin stated that the man’s origin was an ape like creature and later the science proved the theory as to be right, many conservatives tried to refute the thesis by attacking it strongly through the Holy Book and thus tried to bring an answer to the question “how old is man” by simply substituting the essence of science with the metaphysical element of the matter, thus bypassing the issue through ignoring the reality in order to implement the old point of view. This way, they solved the mystery of the question “how old is man” by eluding any possible inquiry of the believers in faith.

2.         When criticizing with the religion, the materialists state that, by its very nature, the religion refutes the existence of the man as the predecessor of the ape like creatures (hominids) and replace it by a false vision of the man’s age, fabricated on the basis of the old school which has very limited depth as to knowledge itself which was limited to common things such as stars and natural events. The advent of the agriculture forced man to adopt a hierarchal organization, placing the state and the priesthood at the top. The duo wrote the rules of ruling the ancient society and thus kept the monopoly of the knowledge at hand for thousands of years, which in turn permitted the preservation of the social dilemma where men were subjected to the duality of bad and good, set in the interests of the ruling class. To avoid any questioning of the set order, written Holy Books were declared as responding to everything unknown in the name of God and the State backed it up, thus preventing any inquiry as to the age of man, among other matters. The advent of scientific development refuted this situation with the Renaissance and the matter became a major topic of the Materialists who were in quest of the answer as to the age of the man, among other questions which still remain unanswered.

3.   Interestingly, the scientist, mainly anthropologist, came up with an answer this question: man is older than what the Holy Books stipulate. With the passage of time, the man’s knowledge developed and forced its way through and joined partially the materialists’ point of view where science and materialism converge on the meaning of life and the origin of the man, both of which provide a justified answer as to the age of man. While early man differ from the ape by the fact that he is a bipedal hominid and is able to speak (a sign of developed intelligence),  the dynamic behind the concept is sound and is opposed to the Holy Book which postulates the Adam theory as stated above. But there’s a point that one must not forget: science is dynamic while the Holy Book is static.

 Conclusion.

We have currently entered into the second decade of the 21^st century and with the rapid development of science in many fields, the answer to the question “how old is man?” has been a major event. The development in genetics and biochemistry has opened new ways in the quest of the answer while the Holy Books and the religion itself remained stoic; they represent a three dimensional aspect of the man which is static by its nature and is in total contrast with the science which, in turn, represents a four dimensional aspect of the man. Motion outpaces immobility and the anthropology provides the answer: the man is 7 million years old…

Turks and Turkey

Turkish culture, nationalism and military prowess

Turks have invariably tried to be Persians, Arabs, Jews, Slavs, Hittite, and even Urartian. They do have a point; Turks are, generally speaking, more Greek, Armenian, Arab, Assyrian, Jewish and Kurdish than Turkic. Their language is thoroughly bastardized, containing more Arabic, Persian and Latin expressions than Turkish ones. Their script used to be Arabic; presently it is Latin, tomorrow... God knows what it will be. Their cuisine, that Europeans seem to love so much, is a combination of common Arabic, Armenian and Greek dishes. Their greatest intellectuals and artists have been Armenians and Greeks and their greatest architectural monuments have been the works of Armenians and Greeks. Though they have an Islamic heritage, they try to impress their European neighbors by claiming that they are a bunch of secular atheists (as if that is supposed to be impressive). In short, Turks do not have a “national culture” to be proud of. Hence, they are in an ever ending search for belonging, which is why they are knocking on the “European” doors.

Turkey is a superficial nation fabricated by the Allied powers after the First World War that is held together today by primitive warlords, but is a state ruled by a corrupt class and built on the bones of the past. Europeans do not admire Turkish prowess in Arms. It is the numbers of the Turkish Armed Forces, and in particular, the levies that they have on reserve that are a factor always to be taken in account. In essence, Turkey is a paper tiger. Turkish military exploits are not as impressive when one considers the many circumstantial factors and sheer luck that has lead Turks into military victory throughout their bloody history (one cannot deny the fact that, the Mongol style of warfare utilized by the Turks, was a superior way to conduct warfare (and also modern) in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. When their way of warfare was surpassed by Technological Achievements of other countries, and they failed to modernize, they succumbed to the superior European technology). Granted, circumstances of history have always favored them. They seem to have always been in the right place at the right time. The first Turkic tribes, the Seljuk’s, were allowed into Asia Minor because of the centuries old rivalry between Armenians and Greeks that had utterly exhausted both peoples to a point where they were not able to defend their previously impregnable highlands. Moreover, the general disgust and disdain of the native Greek and Armenian populations toward the corrupt and self-indulgent aristocrats and clergy within Constantinople was the primary reason why so many of the natives, Greek and Armenian, converted to Islam and accepted Turkish hegemony, instead of protecting the Eastern Roman Empire.

The primary reason why the Ottomans rose to power was because their emergence coincided at about the same time when Mongol, Turkmen and Tatar hoards, having ravaged Eastern Europe, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, were in a fast decline, thereby, giving the Ottomans an ideal opportunity to “fill in the vacuum”. Moreover, two centuries of senseless bloodshed within the Levant during the Crusades had dispirited and weakened the European nations to a point that they could not check Ottoman expansion. However, when the Europeans did get their act straight, such as when the Poles defeated the large Ottoman Army at the gates of Vienna, the Turks proved to be no match against the European military (to be honest and objective, the Ottoman Army was not really suited to operate in the cold climate of Northern Europe, and what is more, they lacked the European adaptability and professionalism to adapt themselves and subsequently operate under any climate, in the manner that the Legions used to, for instance. Also, Kanuni Suleyman’s supply lines were stretched way too thin, and lacking an adequately professional Logistics Department, their Army operated way below its peak efficiency). In hindsight, the most important achievements of the Ottoman Turks, was not military, but rather, administrative. The enthusiastic readiness of the primitive Turks in giving their non-Turkic subjects active roles within the Ottoman Empire was the single most fundamental reason why the Ottoman Empire was so successful. What’s more, Turks fully recognized and respected the martial and intellectual capabilities of the non-Turkic Christian subjects of their empire. This is why the Janissaries, for example, were comprised of Armenians, Georgians, Greeks and Slavs.

Today, for some strange reason Europeans are still stinging from the defeat at Gallipoli. What happened within Gallipoli was more of an English military fiasco than a Turkish military achievement. And, the defeat of the Greek invasion force of 1922 was a result of the overconfidence and poor military planning of Greek commanders coupled with English, French, Italian and American betrayal. Turks have been very successful in exploiting their enemies’ faults and, Turkey being a powerful nation situated in a strategically important geo-political area, had geopolitics bended to her favor: everything was served to them cooked well-done... However, the invincibility of their military is a fable. The majority of the Turkish population is extremely unsophisticated and has a slave-like psychology that has served them well within wars of yesteryear. Moreover, generally speaking, the historic Turk, being less civilized than the native populations of Eastern Europe, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, fought with senseless ferocity and barbarity. The Turkish soldiers are a bunch of brainless robots that show absolutely no improvisational skills, creativity and/or adaptability. Their military doctrines are based on primitive military concepts, reflecting the intellectual capability of their troops. However, they do follow orders without question. Nevertheless, Turkish conscripts would be useless within modern warfare, especially, against relatively sophisticated foe (war, and especially, landlers war is always primitive).

While all this is true, one has extreme difficulties to answer the critical question: what we are going to do with the Turks? As Turkey certainly does not belong into the EU (or Europe in general) one has to accept the fact that Turkey is a rapidly growing country which exerts a lot of demographic pressure upon Europe. As a Fortress Europe does not work anymore (if it ever did is another question), Europeans will have to find a way to keep them in Turkey. As long as there still is a big economical gap, that will be next to impossible. For, is it just what Europe needs... 80 million Muslims? Europe does not need more Muslims, it needs less Muslims. Turkey is an Asiatic country, which the average German or Swede does not need. Multiculturalism simply does not work anywhere in the world. Europeans need to preserve their culture, not to destroy it gradually.