@kbrown: Untitled, 2023
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THE OTHER ONE
We meet between no and yes.
She has my voice, my face,
my shadow interrupting
moon-shadow of the blinds.
My dreams belong to her,
the one who stayed behind —
who’ll ride red Warsaw streetcars
for the rest of my life.
The one who married someone else,
the one who had a child —
the one who said,
Why should I sacrifice for art?
She’s been to China
and the Himalayas; divorced
a linguist, met a shaman;
raised a red-haired son.
I show her my rejection slips,
petals from flowers of despair;
ghost children hug me
with their unborn arms.
On sleepless nights we hold
our separate ceremonies of regret.
If only we could slip
into each other’s lives,
and close the blinds —
But she’d find my
staring at the wall, fine-tuning
words, no life at all —
she’d rather bathe a baby,
soap the slippery small body.
On milky California mornings
I read and scribble,
sipping hot cocoa as in childhood;
she rushes about the kitchen
before going to work —
suddenly stops, unravels in hoarse sobs.
Mostly we walk the opposite way,
wearing our choices
like a coat of fog.
I’d like to stop her, give her
the black silk rose from Antonina’s hat,
our great-grandmother —
iron lips of a general, the burning
eyes of a heretic or saint.
Will we ever sit together,
I and I, my other one?
When will we speak at last
of all that hasn’t happened?
But she’s more and more
difficult to see, a figure in the crowd,
her footsteps’ decaying echoes
on the other side of time.
~ Oriana
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Mary:
Oriana:
One manifestation of the human condition.
I had a dear friend whose dream was to live in Coronado, a beautiful "old money" part of San Diego. And oddly enough the old electrical wiring made her house unsafe, and while rebuilding was going on, thanks to insurance she was able to live for some months in a bright, spacious apartment in Coronado. True, eventually she had to move back to her updated house in National City, a very modest (to put it gently) neighborhood -- but having finally experienced her dream.
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“It was for decay that man was born. We are not ideal savage creatures. We are mortal and imperfect beings conscious of mortality, even though we keep pushing it forward, which ends up not working due to our own complications.
When we mourn our losses, we become so saddened, that we cry, for better or for worse, also for ourselves. For what we were. For what we are no longer. For one day we'll be nothing.”
~ Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
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AUGUSTUS AND THE BIRTH OF THE WEST
~ While the works of Alexander the Great and Napoleon disappeared with their exit from the stage of history, and where George Washington and Winston Churchill worked on a smaller canvas, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus created and dominated a political system that set the Western world on its path for the succeeding two thousand years. In forgetting the death of Rome’s first emperor and ignoring his legacy, Americans continue to impoverish their understanding of the world they now bestride.
Two thousand years after his death, the Rome that Augustus built is perhaps more popular than ever. A new generation of historians is publishing gripping histories and biographies of Rome and her greatest figures, including Augustus himself. Mystery novels set in both Republican and imperial Rome fill shelves in bookstores, while, only a few years ago, the lavishly produced Gladiator won the Academy Award for Best Picture. When President George W. Bush launched America into war with Iraq in 2003, a blizzard of opinion pieces, articles, and books questioned whether the United States had become an empire like Rome. Likewise, some see the European Union as only the latest manifestation of a dream to reunite a Europe that has been unnaturally divided since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D.
None of that would have happened, and indeed the West itself would not exist as we know it, without Augustus’s extraordinary achievement. Few today know much about his deeds. Perhaps that is due to the fact that his life and actions have been the source of disagreement among classicists for generations. The pre-war British historian Ronald Syme saw Augustus as little more than the thuggish leader of a faction, summing up the sanguinary record of the princeps in his classic The Roman Revolution (1939) thusly: “When a party has triumphed in violence and seized control of the State, it would be plain folly to regard the new government as a collection of amiable and virtuous characters.”
On a contrary view, H. H. Scullard, in his survey From the Gracchi to Nero (1959, 1982), saw Augustus as a savior: “the ruthlessness of youth was replaced by an unshakeable sense of duty . . . ; proceeding by trial and error, he succeeded where a more doctrinaire approach would have led to disaster.” More recently, Anthony Everitt lauded the first emperor as a cautious, moderate, and simple-living man who brought peace and stability to a world wracked by internecine fighting (Augustus, 2006). As happens so often in the case of great figures of history, all these interpreters are right in their assessments of his character.
What is indisputable is that Augustus created an enduring concept of political stability: a devil’s bargain between security and freedom, where real power was disguised by the trappings of shared authority (in his case, a “restored” republic with a dyarchy between princeps and Senate), and where the interests of state demanded a seriousness and probity of character that remained the ideal long after the reality of imperial licentiousness provided a focus for all subsequent anti-monarchist sensibilities.
The magnitude of Augustus’s accomplishment is hard to overstate. By the time young Octavian threw himself into the civil wars, Rome had been wracked for nearly a century by ever-worsening cycles of political conflict. The first political violence that had spilled blood inside Rome in hundreds of years — the killing of the populist tribune Tiberius Gracchus by his political opponents in 133 B.C.— fatally upset the delicate balance among patricians, plebians, the military, Romans, and non-Romans, drawing in ever more groups of antagonists to use public power for personal ends and twist the organs of state to factional use. Many, at the time and after, have decried as a cause of the erosion of republican morals the wealth that poured into Rome from conquest in the East and from the domination of the Mediterranean world that Rome achieved with the destruction of Carthage in the final Punic War that ended in 146 B.C.
When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49, it seemed as though disorder had become the natural way of things. The Senate had long ceased to be an effective body, and violent factions had taken over public business and corrupted Rome’s actions abroad. The dictator Sulla had foreshadowed Rome’s fate by marching his troops into the city in 88 B.C., thereby legitimizing the use of what were now essentially private armies to settle political disputes. The decline of the citizen army and its transformation into bands loyal to their commander had itself taken shape under the influence of Sulla’s great enemy, Marius, in the previous decades. Thus, in just half a century, from roughly 100–50, Republican Rome’s domestic consensus, political effectiveness, and security structure had degraded beyond repair. A crisis was inevitable.
After the Ides of March, the teenaged Octavian figured in no one’s political calculations. Mark Antony was the dominant figure, and Brutus and Cassius retained significant forces. Yet within just a few years, it would be Antony and Octavian fighting for the ultimate supremacy of the Western world. To read of Octavian’s cautious, calculating, and sure moves during the two decades of civil war, leading to his victory at Actium in 31 B.C., is to encounter political genius of the rarest kind. With his indispensable partner, Agrippa, Octavian then did what had escaped even the great Caesar: establish a durable and impregnable political system to capitalize on his military victory. Thus ended both a century of civil war and Rome’s traditional freedoms. To a world desperate for stability, Augustus was accepted as the unquestioned and irreplaceable arbiter of order.
Augustus’s legacy did not stop with politics, for the Rome of our dreams, too, is largely his creation, carried to its ultimate expression by his successors. The world might not still be fascinated with a city of brick had not Augustus left it one of marble, to paraphrase his famous saying. The fora, baths, Colosseum, and palaces of eternal Rome maintained, even enhanced, their spell over men’s imaginations by their ruins, as much as in their pristine prime. Even the anti-monarchical Americans drew legitimacy from Rome’s material forms. Washington, D.C. is modeled more on imperial Rome than Greece, with its Capitol Hill and classic architecture.
Yet even here, Augustus’s achievement is not uncritically praised. The classicist Edith Hamilton, in her Roman Way to Western Civilization (1932), bemoaned the Romans’ materialism and pedestrian pride in the abundance of the things they possessed, seeing it as a fatal flaw in their character. Whereas Athens was the “school of Greece,” in Pericles’ ringing words, Augustus was a mere, if grandiose, property developer, in Hamilton’s view. From there, it was a short step to bread and circuses, the deadening of the human spirit, and the Rome of brutality and oppression, despite the lingering example of the Spartan-like lifestyle of the Western world’s master, an irony no less powerful twenty centuries later.
Possibly, Rome’s history would have turned out differently, and been far less bloody, with a different set of post-Augustus emperors, perhaps descending from his preferred heir, his nephew Marcellus. Even the majestic Augustus, however, could not cheat Death of his wages of the Julian clan, leaving only an unwanted stepson, Tiberius, to carry on the imperial line. That, however, is to view Rome through a modern sentimental glass, imposing a contemporary sensibility on a race of warriors who had been constantly at battle for centuries by the time Augustus closed the doors of the Temple of Janus after his victory over Mark Antony, thereby symbolizing the end of war.
Little of this would matter to us had Rome not been mistress of the ancient world. Empire is what continues to draw our modern attention: some to praise it, some to bury the concept. Succeeding centuries of war, ethnic cleansing, inquisitions, and the like have made the dream of pax Romana a constant siren’s call, regardless of the brutality that by necessity created the conditions of stability. The idea of global order, of commonwealth and cosmopolitanism, has been a shimmering mirage alike for those who glorify power and those who seek a brotherhood of man.
The closest successors to Augustus have been the impersonal British and American global hegemonies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which are less concerned with territorial control than with imposing a form of value-inspired international order. The world has benefited as greatly from the largely liberal policies of London and Washington as it did from the rule of the emperors. Trade, development, scholarship, law, even tourism, have all flourished in our past century and a half of international order, just as they did under Rome’s tutelage. Even the three great wars of the twentieth century (if one includes the Cold War) did little to interrupt the progress of pax liberalis.
Today, Augustus is perhaps most relevant in light of our struggles to maintain that global order. The idea of empire that he fashioned has become distorted over the centuries to reflect the prejudices of its critics. As the inheritors of a long era of decolonization and national self-determination, our eyes are trained to see Augustus’s kind of order as little more than brute control. Oppression there was, to be sure, but also flexibility and autonomy. There is more similarity between the Roman and American historical experiences of empire than appears on the surface, but also far less than the criticisms of those who simply condemn the use of power abroad. Both powers shared elements of capriciousness—and made disastrous decisions—but both also provided the reality and hope of order that allowed other fruits of human effort to flower.
The great struggle today is to settle on what kind of international order is best. Revisionist powers such as Russia and China seek to return to a nineteenth-century model of power politics based on cynicism and grievance. On the other side of the spectrum, those who believe in cooperation and multilateral approaches betake of an idealism that assumes a type of universal rationality and the possibility of change in human nature. Yet Augustus lived through decades in which human nature was revealed at its most base, and in which rationality could be claimed equally by Cicero, in his defense of the traditional Republic, and by Julius Caesar, in his destruction of it. Only Augustus cut the Gordian knot by providing both order and an illusion of political freedom that nonetheless contained elements of true individual liberty. That his successors did not equally maintain the balance does not detract from its revolutionary nature.
America today may be the world’s only superpower, but the coming decades look to be more unstable, both at home and abroad, than even the unsettled recent ones. There remains much for us to learn from Augustus’s life and times: from the corrosive effects of faction and governing incompetence to the desperate need for a vision of the future that is both inspiring and also rooted in reality.
Above all, there is the lesson on the eternal need for order. Discovering how to achieve it without limiting our own precious freedom would serve as a fitting coda to the last 2,000 years of Western history. The anniversary of Caesar Augustus’s death provides an excuse to look back, so as to understand our future better. ~
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2014/12/augustus-the-birth-of-the-west
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HAMAS AND ITS UNDERGROUND CITY
~ Why is Hamas so stressed about the lack of fuel in the Gaza Strip?
It is crucial to understand what is happening in Gaza’s underground. This murderous terrorist organization has created an entire city underground with 1300 branched maze-like tunnels, Located 70 meters (230 feet) under the surface with a total length of 500 km (310 miles).
These tunnels are made from the exact concrete that the Western World donated, that was actually meant for schools, hospitals, kindergartens and other civilian infrastructure and services. These tunnels protect high ranked Hamas officials, commanders and 30 thousand terrorists.
Now here’s why Hamas is so stressed about the fuel:
The air to the tunnels is supplied by a ventilation system. The system is operated by fuel powered engines. This is their only source of oxygen. No fuel means no air, no oxygen. If there is no air, it means they have to come out of the tunnels to breathe. Coming out of the tunnels means they will be annihilated by the IDF.
At the moment, Hamas has stolen all the fuel from UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] which is meant to be used in hospitals and for refugees. ~ Roro, Quora
Hamas tunnel, part of the "Gaza metro,"an extensive labyrinth of tunnels built by the Hamas militant group stretches across the densely populated strip, hiding fighters, their rocket arsenal and over 200 hostages they now hold (AP).
Tami Stone:
The generators are kept underground and the exhaust is diffused to leave no heat signature by the time it reaches the surface. Fuel is also needed to run the cars and trucks they use to sneak their rockets around for launching. Without that ability they will expose themselves lugging rockets around by foot.
Donald Rich:
No fuel or electricity also means no pumping to remove the water that seeps into the tunnels.
Toro:
The deepest tunnels are 70 meters deep. Some are 30 and some less.
It is their (Hamas) shelter against the Israeli bunker penetrating bombs. And where most high command centers are placed.
Interesting they don’t build shelters for citizens in the same way huh?
Joseph Fitzsimmons:
And does Hamas let any Gazans into these tunnels to escape Israel’s bombs? Nope.
Stewart Page:
On both sides you have an influential minority of zealots who simply believe the people on the other side should not exist. ‘ They should all just die or move away because the land they are living on is ours’ is pretty much the attitude.
The majority of less absolutely certain of their righteousness Israelis or Palestinians, those with some empathy towards the other side, recognition that they have legitimate rights, some recognition of their shared suffering as human beings, are sidelined, ridiculed, cowed and certainly not elected to lead their people because very commonly efforts at compromise and tolerance are repaid by the other side with violence. Compromise is taken as weakness. Israel is the graveyard of good intentions. So people are just afraid. They have stopped thinking and just react.
Hamas knew that if they slaughter Israelis, the Israelis will come straight back and slaughter Palestinians in far greater numbers. That didn’t seem to bother them.
Hamas has previously claimed the tunnels stretch for 500km (310 miles).
Many have entrances hidden within houses, mosques, schools and other
public buildings.
Pat Mason:
There is no moral equivalency. If the Muslims threw down their guns there would be peace. If the Jews threw down their guns there would be no Israel.
Mary:
The information about Hamas dependence on fuel to maintain their tunnel system could be part of an effective plan to destroy them, or at least cripple their efforts. It seems an obvious Achilles’ heel.
Oriana:
The very fact that they used humanitarian donations for building those tunnels, rather than for food, medical supplies, and other needs of their people, tells me everything about their values. Terribly sad.
At the very least they could allow civilians to use them as bomb shelter. But that's the privilege of the Hamas elite. Otherwise it's "No Lives Matter."
Mary:
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TEN TRUTHS WE CAN’T ESCAPE
You are not going to exist forever. You’re just a tiny speck in this vast universe and your time in this world is limited.
Anything harsh said to a loved one in anger leaves a permanent scar, no matter how much you try to bandage it.
Health is the most important wealth you can acquire. No matter how much gold you own, it can not quell the torture of an illness.
Every old person was once as old as you are today. Time stops for none.
Things which are most important for you today might be worthless tomorrow. Avoid spending money on urges.
Something as simple as saying sorry first can prevent countless disputes. It is not a sign of weakness.
Who your friends are determine who you become.
To become good at conversation, learn to be a good listener first.
Luck favors those who don’t give up.
Be grateful if you have a roof for shelter, clean water to drink, food on your table, and a healthy functioning body. Try to imagine the absence of even one of these in your life. ~ Raunak Brij, Quora
Oriana:
These are not absolutes. Friends do not "determine" who you become. Your genes are certainly more important, though in part, yes, they influence your perception of who you'd like to be friends with.
In this brief compilation, if there is an eternal truth that's also useful, it's the last item. Gratitude and counting your blessings should be a daily ritual.
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COULD FRANCE HAVE DEFEATED NAZI GERMANY?
~ No, they couldn’t have.
France had the technology. It had the industrial might. It had the largest army in Europe. It had more tanks than Germany and had the second-largest navy in Europe.
Please know that the individual French soldier was no coward.
Thousands fought bravely and lost their lives while the bureaucracy and disorganization left them without the means to succeed. While estimates vary, on average, during the very short German attack of just 46 days in May-June 1940, around 110,000 French soldiers died, and 180,000 wounded. This equates to something like almost NINE THOUSAND casualties per day.
But still, France didn’t stand a chance against the Third Reich. Several reasons:
1. France did not want war: France was among the countries that suffered the most from the First World War, just two decades before. France lost 1.7 million people; more than the sum of all the dead from the United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Belgium, and Greece. Worse yet, unlike most other countries, the bloodiest, scorched-earth battles of this war occurred in France. Horrible battles such as Somme and Verdun (at the time called “the meat grinder”):
Poison gas killed countless soldiers, civilians, and livestock. Germany, in contrast, lost the war, but with its social and industrial infrastructure intact. Practically no allied soldier ever set foot on German soil.
The example that proves the point of France's unwillingness to enter this conflict is that, having declared war on Germany on September 1939, they never attacked them, despite the fact that Germany was distracted fighting Poland. France sat idle until they were attacked. One morning, in fact, French troops crossed the border, invaded some small German town, no shots were fired and promptly returned that same day behind their borders.
2. France was a Country Divided. Political differences had grown into an unbridgeable void. A large percent of the population, with communist inclinations, felt more kinship with the Soviet Union (then a Hitler ally) than with their own country. The fact that Hitler had made a non-aggression pact with Stalin made unity in France almost impossible.
Pictured: Conflicting messages in French posters of the time:
Anti-communist ones:
By the time Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the French Resistance did unite, as communist Russia and the West fought a common foe — but by then, France was divided, invaded and with a collaborationist government in Vichy.
3. France used a failed strategy:
Because the Great War had been fought in trenches, and France had been on the winning side, this reaffirmed their commitment to trench warfare in the future. They created the mother of all trenches: The Maginot line, thousands of kilometers bordering the country from Switzerland to Belgium.
This was a highly advanced bunker system with automatic feeding artillery, reinforced concrete, pillboxes for machine gun emplacements, with berths and galleys for thousands, underground rail transport, wired communications, etc.
The Germans either went around, flew over the Maginot line, and most importantly, broke through it in a matter of hours, by crossing the Ardennes forest, thought to be impassable for any army, and hitting the line at its weakest and least manned point.
In addition to that, France fell for the German trick of believing that the invasion would follow the same path than it had in WWI: Through Belgium in the northern border. Hitler did send significant armored divisions from Belgium, but the main body of the attack went through the Ardennes forest, up till then considered impassable by any significant force. It broke through the Maginot line around the town of Sedan, and in short time, cut the country in two.
4 France Lacked Effective Commanders.
It had passive, careful and timid generals such as Maurice Gamelin, 67, or Maxime Weygand, 72, who lacked the spirit to drive a country to success.
This attitude was also mirrored by France’s president, Edouard Daladier, who was almost dragged to comply to the defense of Poland by a humiliated Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister. The French failed to create a successful strategy and remained stuck to war tactics completely surpassed by the technology of the time. They also dismissed offhand the desperate requests of the pompous but undeniably brave Charles De Gaulle.
As soon as they realized the campaign was not going their way, France’s leaders were just too quick to retreat, to negotiate, to capitulate, to flee with their possessions, and eventually, to infamously collaborate. Pictured below, Pétain, in his “amicable” surrender to Nazi Germany. He then became the leader of the German ally and leader of the Vichy Republic.
And his successor, Pierre Laval, actively worked for the Germans, going above and beyond the wishes of his masters in Berlin, rounding up Jews for deportation to the concentration camps. He claimed he had acted in the best interests of the French people.
After the war ended, both were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. In consideration of Pétain's age and honorable services during WW1, he was never executed. Laval wasn't as lucky. In a trial many have considered being biased and political, Pierre Laval faced a firing squad on a chilly Monday morning, October, 15th, 1945 at the Fresnes Prison yard. He was 62.
Compare the French leadership actions with Stalin's attitude facing a similar situation just one year later. When the Huns were at the gates of Moscow, he stayed in the city and forced his cabinet to do so, under pain of death. Facing no other choice than defending the city to the last man, they, with the help of General Winter, stopped the German juggernaut in its tracks.
~ Pram Osmu, Quora
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WHY THE SOVIET UNION LET THE REPUBLICS GO
~ “Why did the Russians, despite all that one would expect from them given the histories of the downfalls of empires, decide not to fight and to let the empire fall?” asked Serhii Plokhii, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, at a 29 April 2013 lecture at the Kennan Institute. Plokhii discussed the fall of the Soviet Union in the context of the last five months of the Soviet Union in order to explain why it was not accompanied by the violent conflicts triggered by the collapse of previous empires.
Plokhii argued that the fall of the Soviet Union is a unique case in the history of empires: “Russia let most of the republics go without a fight, without a struggle.” While there were slogans and campaigns for independence among the Union republics in the months before the collapse, none were campaigning for the complete disintegration of the empire. Rather, each was struggling against the central authority to augment its own independent power base. Even the Baltic states, the most independently minded of the republics, operated along these lines. Other republics, such as those in Central Asia, were not struggling at all against the Union for political independence.
It is common for scholars to mark the Soviet Union’s de facto end in August 1991, when Boris Yeltsin suspended the activities of the Communist party on the territory of the Russian Federation. However, Plokhii stated that this action alone did not precipitate the end of the USSR and independence of its constituent parts. Plokhii contended that only the exit of the Baltic States was inevitable at that moment; the status of other republics like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Ukraine was not fully understood until December 1991.
Consequently, Plokhii focused on the five month period between August and December 1991, because it was still not clear at the time what would happen to the Soviet Union. Early on in this period the goal of both Russian and republic elites was to save the Soviet Union in some form. However, over time, decisions taken by Russia’s first elected president, Boris Yeltsin, increasingly convinced Russian elites that it was time to exit the Soviet Union.
The Russian democratic movement starting in 1989 undertook a widespread switch in allegiance from Soviet to Russian institutions to realize their political aspirations. The Russian democratic leaders believed it would get more traction in the Russian Duma than in the all-Union Supreme Soviet, because Gorbachev was mobilizing the more conservative votes in the Union parliament against the democratic movement. This switch in allegiance was facilitated by the institutional structure at the time, which consisted of parallel national and republic state structures. As a result, Yeltsin’s Russian Federation was able to replicate and replace Soviet state control across Russia.
Yeltsin’s next move came when he disbanded the Communist Party in August 1991. In so doing, Yeltsin effectively undermined in one stroke one of Gorbachev’s most powerful instruments of political power as president of the Soviet Union. Immediately following this move, the Russian state moved to take complete control of the institutions of the Soviet Union. Plokhii explained that it was Russia’s takeover of Soviet institutions that prompted the declarations of Ukrainian independence that echoed throughout the Soviet Union over the following week.
Once Russia’s attempt to take over Union institutions failed in the wake of Ukrainian declaration of independence, Yeltsin knew his political career depended upon successfully governing Russia rather than preserving or replacing the Soviet Union. Drastic economic reforms were to be planned with only Russia in mind, disregarding the republics. Ethnic and religious considerations also played a role in Yeltsin and Russian elites deciding to abandon the Union: Once it was clear that Ukraine was lost, Russia was not interested in a union with a greatly diminished Slavic influence relative to the populations of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
In the end, Russian control over the natural resources on its territory played perhaps the most important role in convincing Yeltsin and Russian elites to abandon the Soviet empire. Plokhii observed that unlike previous large empires that had external colonies with vital natural and economic resources, the Soviet empire’s resources were concentrated largely within the Russian Federation itself: “Russia left the empire with natural and economic resources, leaving the former colonies struggling without them.”
“The thinking in August and September 1991 was that Russia needed time to use its resources to rebuild its economy,” said Plokhii. Russian elites thought that eventually the republics would have to return to the Russian fold to get access to Russian resources and trade. Ultimately, explained Plokhii, “the idea was not there that the split would be permanent, and Putin’s foreign policy of the last decade has not departed much from this vision.”
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-let-the-republics-go-revisiting-the-fall-the-ussr
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THE ROLE OF UKRAINE IN THE DISSOLUTION OF THE SOVIET UNION
~ A few weeks before the Soviet Union collapsed, the CIA issued a report with expert prognosis on how long the USSR will last.
The report said that despite the recent attempt of a coup in the Soviet Union (August 1991), the economic reforms of 1980s, Perestroika and Glasnost, the USSR would exist at least until the year 2020.
This report was produced in November 1991, and on 8 December 1991 presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia signed the decree that dissolved the Soviet Union.
Kravchuk, Shushkevich, Yeltsin signing the dissolution of the Soviet Union
How did it happen that experienced and educated CIA analysts, best of the best, couldn’t predict the event that was looming and eventuated in just weeks, putting an end to America’s long-term enemy state?
They underestimated the role of an individual in history.
No, it wasn’t caused by Mikhail Gorbachev, the first President of the USSR, who is blamed by Vladimir Putin for “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” (which, according to Putin, was the collapse of the Soviet Union).
It wasn’t even Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, who was one of the three leaders of the Soviet republics that started the process.
It was Leonid Kravchuk, the first President of Ukraine, who said to Yeltsin: “When foreign presidents come to Kyiv, they’ll come to me. When foreign presidents come to Moscow, they’ll come to Gorbachev”.
Yeltsin, prior to this meeting, was going to follow Gorbachev’s instructions to maintain the connections between republics within the Soviet Union. Gorbachev did everything he could to keep the USSR together.
But it was because of Leonid Kravchuk’s idea that Yeltsin jumped on the opportunity to dissolve the USSR, journalist Dmitry Gordon revealed in his recent video.
Kravchuk said, “We had a referendum in Ukraine and people voted for independence”. He had the mandate of the Ukrainian people and he followed their will.
Kravchuk was elected on 1 December 1991, just days prior to the date of meeting with presidents of Russia and Belarus at the state residence near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Belarus). Kravchuk scored 61.6 % of votes in the election.
It was on the same date, 1 December 1991, that Ukraine voted for independence: 90.3% of Ukrainians voted for independence. More people in Ukraine voted for country’s independence than voted for Kravchuk.
Kravchuk took upon his duties as the president on 5 December.
The 3 presidents met in Belarus on 7 December. The meeting didn’t have the agenda to cancel the Soviet Union. According to Belarus president Shushkevich, “The idea [to dissolve the USSR] was spontaneous”.
The will of Ukrainian people was realized on 8 December by dissolving the Soviet Union and thus making Ukraine independent.
Apparently, the UK’s prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the USA’s president George Bush asked the Ukrainian president not to go independent.
Western politicians couldn’t imagine the world without the Soviet Union. They didn’t have it in their picture of the world, how it could exist with no USSR.
But Leonid Kravchuk, the President of Ukraine, followed the will of his nation and put an end to the monstrous state that was threatening the world for decades. The state which the CIA predicted to remain in the picture for another 30 years.
In fact, it was the will of the Ukrainian people that put an end to the Soviet Union in 1991.
In 2022, presidents of the USA, Germany, France can’t imagine the world without the Russian Federation (or even the Russian Federation without Putin).
But Ukrainian people can.
Just as the CIA experts were giving Ukraine in February 2022 merely a week before it would be crushed by Russia’s military machine – and made a critical mistake, the underestimation of the year: underestimating Ukraine and its people, their ability to fight back; it could be also called the overestimation of the year – overestimating Russia’s military prowess.
In 1991, the CIA experts overestimated the strength of the Soviet Union and underestimated nations’ drive to be free. It only took one president – the Ukrainian president – to tip the scales.
In 2022, it was again the Ukrainian president – president Zelensky – who tipped the scales by refusing to evacuate and staying in Kyiv to defend it against the Russian forces, when no one expected Ukraine to last longer than a few weeks: “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition”, Zelensky said.
Never underestimate the role of an individual in history. Because every turn in the labyrinth of history is determined by a willing individual who tips the scales. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
AltDermative:
This is the negative thing about Marxist thought. They can't think individuals. Sometimes the individual matters more than the group. For good or bad.
Elena Gold:
Analysts often look only at the “objective reasons” or “foundations”. There are objective reasons for Russians to revolt, but they don’t — simply because there are no individuals who could lead a revolt. But if a revolution happens tomorrow, analysts will point out to all the reasons that objectively existed to make it happen.
At every turn in history, it was up to an individual to push the stone off the mountain.
Tee-totaler Putin and Yeltsin, whose alcoholism became legendary.
Andreas De Wulf:
Yeltsin's moves were about keeping the resources inside Russia for Russia alone. They didn't believe their periphery could make it economically without them.
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ONLY IN RUSSIA
This is the new railway in Tuva. 12 years ago, Vladimir Putin personally launched its construction.
Yet nothing has been built in 12 years.
This is what modern Russia is about: lies and theft under the cries of greatness.
Pompous launch of the road to nowhere.
There are a lot of things had been built —mansions, yachts — the list goes on. But not in Tuva.
Russia is stuck on the road to nowhere.
And it can’t go back either. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
Giovanni B:
First picture looks like Nihilistic art. Somehow representing the direction taken by that country, as you aptly say.
Elena Gold:
In 2021, Interfax wrote that the financing of the project hadn’t been allocated. And the project is “delayed until 2026”. Maybe it was just damage control because of the public outcry.
Markku Head:
Putin is stuck on the idea of taking Russia back.
He wants to restore the relevance of Soviet Union in the 1970’s.
He wants to fight Nazis and Bandera in the 1940’s.
He wants the Russian borders in the 1860’s.
Unfortunately, the clocks and calendars keep going steadily the other way.
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THE HUNGARIAN UPRISING OF 1956
On October 23, 1956, an anti-Soviet uprising began in Hungary — the first, and perhaps the only attempt in history to overthrow the communist dictatorship with weapons in hands.
The 1956 uprising lasted over 2 weeks - from October 23 to November 9.
On October 23, a mass demonstration took place in Budapest, in which 200,000 people took part.
In the city center, demonstrators toppled and destroyed a huge monument to Stalin.
The rebels entered the territory of several military units and seized weapons.
A significant part of the Hungarian army and police swapped sides and joined the rebels. The population of the country supported the anti-communist revolution.
But then the USSR troops stationed in Hungary came into play.
On October 25, units of the Soviet army entered Budapest. During the protest near the parliament building, a Soviet tank was burned. In response, Soviet troops opened fire at the rebels, killing more than 60 people.
After that, rebels began attacking officers of internal security and communists all over the country.
Over the next 3 days, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Budapest.
Imre Nagy formed a government on a multi-party basis.
The new government announced a ceasefire, the dissolution of the Hungarian People's Army and the creation of new armed forces, as well as the beginning of negotiations with the USSR on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.
It seemed that the revolutionaries had won.
But on October 31, things went wrong.
The rebels surrounded the building of the Budapest Communist Party Committee. In response, shots were fired and protesters fell, wounded and dead.
The angry crowd broke into the city committee and lynched about 20 people, including the first secretary, Imre Mezo.
Throughout the city, rebels began catching and hanging from trees state security officers, who were recognized by the yellow uniform boots.
This dramatically changed the moods in Moscow.
USSR Marshal Ivan Konev, who commanded the Soviet troops, used the same tactics in Budapest that he used during the storming of Berlin: he brought a big number of tanks into the narrow streets of the city.
The defenders of Budapest pelted tanks with Molotov cocktails and fired at them from the upper floors of buildings.
Over the course of 3 days, 2,652 Hungarians and 640 Soviet soldiers were killed. 19,226 Hungarians and 1,251 Soviet soldiers were wounded.
Officially, after the uprising, 6 death sentences were imposed: for the Prime Minister of Hungary Imre Nagy, who led the liberation movement, the Minister of Defense Pal Maleter, the publicist Miklos Gimes and 3 other persons involved in other trials.
846 people were taken to Soviet GULAG camps and prisons, about 13,000 were locked in prisons in Hungary.
The head of the Catholic Church of Hungary, Cardinal József Mindszenty, who on November 3 spoke on the radio calling for the country's neutrality and freedom of conscience, took refuge in the American embassy after Soviet troops entered Budapest.
He lived in the embassy, without leaving the building, for almost 15 years, which is a record of this kind. Only in 1971, thanks to the efforts of Vatican, the authorities of communist Hungary allowed him to leave for the West.
What is most noteworthy, is that the children and grandchildren of those who crushed the residents of Budapest with tanks and to this day do not regret anything, still believe today that they have the right to “teach” people how they should live their lives — “teach” by driving tanks over people’s bodies and shooting.
In the history textbooks of Russian schools, the 1956 revolution is called a “fascist coup.”
And the Russians chant, following their leaders, “We can repeat!”
~ Elena Gold, Quora
Balazs Ivan József:
My grandmother had a dream that my would-be father died. She was so upset, that she went and searched him (a student at the time) in the demonstrating crowd at the Kossuth Square, where she knew him to be. She scolded and dragged him and the scene became so inconvenient, that he gave up and rather let her escort him away. Soon the crowd was shot at.
Tim Doherty:
The first fight to overthrow Communism took place during the Civil War in Ukraine almost a hundred years ago. As we can see, Russia went full circle.
Irena Votavova:
Prague Spring wasn’t violent, yet we got the same “brotherly help” from Soviet tanks in 1968. It was simply a matter of USSR not allowing its vassal states break free.
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PYRAMIDS INSTEAD OF CROSSES IN A RUSSIAN CEMETERY (Misha Firer)
Yekaterinburg cemetery
Christian crosses were removed and heathen pyramids were installed in the military cemetery in Yekaterinburg where Wagner Group mercenaries are buried. In the pseudo-Christian country where the pseudonym of the most popular singer is Shaman, it’s no wonder that Ancient Egyptian pyramids are used as gravestones.
Schizophrenia or cognitive dissonance if you like is widespread — Russians continue to use Western products and services, they drive Mercedes and VW rather than substandard Lada and at the same time they brag about being locked in a clinch against degenerate West.
“I’m Russian to spite the whole world!” sings patriotic pop singer Shaman, a name reminiscent of the direction that Russia has taken under the guidance of Putin — smoke and mirrors for the uninitiated and wealth for the inner circle and those in the know.
Russia is not an empire, but rather a colony where a group of wealthy colonists occupy the territory to suck resources and administer the subjugated aborigines by providing trinkets, circus-grade entertainment, and using propaganda to mess with their heads. ~ Quora
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CAN RUSSIA FALL APART AS THE USSR DID? (Dima Vorobiev)
No, for two solid reasons.
Nationalism
One is nationalism. It was ethnic nationalism that buried the USSR and brought about the Russia of Yeltsin and Putin.
This is essential. Nationalism was the enemy of the USSR and a friend of the Russian Federation. Ethnic Russians constitute about 4/5ths of the population. The expedited nation-building that culminated in the Ukraine war, makes it stronger, not weaker. Any possible collapse—highly unlikely—if it happens, comes from somewhere else.
Agents of change
Two is the driving political force.
The Dolkschtoss [stab in the back] theory about CIA machinations and Gorbachev’s treason goes strong in Moscow nowadays. But this is just a propaganda device, a smokescreen over what really happened.
What happened was that the majority of the Soviet political class, the middle- and low-level Party functionaries and state servants, made a disorganized but powerful effort to dismantle the system from within.
These were the cogs and levers in the Communist machine, tens and hundreds of thousands of them. Detente allowed them to see the West with their own eyes. At the same time, the elders in Nomenklatura clogged the system. No Stalinist purges meant stagnation.
Ownership is king
As a result, throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the younger part of our political class came to the conclusion they would be better off privatizing the whole thing altogether. Brezhnev’s elders lost touch with reality. They took the foolish decision to endorse Gorbachev’s Perestroika. The young Turks around the USSR saw a window of opportunity and poured into it en masse.
This was how President Putin and his men became some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. Their plan worked. No wonder there was no Nuremberg trial over Communism in the 1990s, and no restitution to victims of the Marxist project. These guys were no idiots to shoot in their own foot.
There’s no comparable driving force for dismantling the Russian Federation today.
A Soviet superpower ruled by Orthodox Communists who rejected the progressive garbage and are proud of our imperial past. Call it a kind of post-Maoist China with a white man’s face. This was the vision of people who ruined the Soviet Union from the inside.
These people own Russia today. They are super-rich and intend to stay this way indefinitely. Why would they want to ruin it? ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora
Gennady Zhivotov: Twilight of the General Secretaries, 1983
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RUSSIAN WOMEN AND CHINESE MEN
In the Russian Far East, there’s a peculiar but not surprising trend that started long before the COVID pandemic. Russian women are pressed by their drunk and jobless husbands to find a Chinese lover and sleep with him for money. Sometimes they do it out of desperation, at other times to continue drinking and not go to work.
In contrast, Chinese men work a lot, don’t drink alcohol, and have money although they start off as migrants making far less than locals do.
They also don’t force Russian women to work — all they need is a married partner in order to have a plot of land to plant soybeans — foreigners are not allowed to own land nor take out bank loans.
In the end, they make up to five times more profits than in China and many become millionaires over the years, buying big houses and driving SUVs.
For example, while Jews are fighting with Arabs over scarce land in Israel, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (where Yiddish used to be the official language) in the Russian Far East has 40% of land cultivated by Chinese nationals.
Likewise, Chinese migrants sign contracts with Russian firms that formally own the companies that they operate.
Russian women like to marry Chinese men for the stability that they bring to the table in terms of employment and finances — Russian men are notoriously unpredictable and reckless — while the Chinese like Russian women for their beauty.
Russia is an authoritarian state. People are not permitted to create wealth unless the state gets directly involved. Any initiative is attacked. Creativity stifled. Ambition is a dirty word.
At the same time, one experiences life as unstructured and permissible. It’s liberating — you can do what you want as long as you manage to get away with it — and frustrating — the state counteracts lack of structure with oppressive policies.
The State Duma deputy Gurilev (Russian answer to Lindsey Graham) suggested, “to exterminate 20% of the Russian citizens who don’t support Putin.”
If you can’t jail critics, why not kill them all, while at the same time pretending that you’re a democratic regime and conducting presidential elections?
The Commission of Ethics in the State Duma concluded that “it’s his opinion and personal position” and also “the natural right of the deputy…it’s not an insult.”
If you suggest that Putin is an illegitimate president and that war is not peace you’re a traitor and crossed the line, but if a member of parliament wants to exterminate you it’s ethical and democratic.
Conceptually, it’s impossible for Russia to become a developed country without some fundamental changes on every level. In its absence, there’s barbarism, half-ass attempts to copy Western institutions and general disorder. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Ray Ryan:
Only China may infiltrate Russian society. This will be a good thing for both societies.
Russians need a New Way and China has it for you. Their way works for them and it will for you. China is the Borg of the world, looking for entities to absorb. It is ready to teach Russians how to live the Chinese way. Rail lines and highways will need to be built, petro pipelines, some language learning. There is no ocean in the way, maybe some mountains and distance.
Having China imprint itself on Russia and remake Russian DNA would be a good thing for world stability at least in the near term. Russia needs help and China wants to give it. The west will have to come to terms with this United Eurasian juggernaut nation and share the planet. We’ll all still have plenty of nukes no matter what so we might as well just get along.
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MORE “RUSSIA AS USUAL” (Misha Firer)
“Isolate the 50 richest Jews, and the wars will stop”, Moscow city Duma deputy Ekaterina Engalycheva wrote on her Telegram channel.
“Why such unprecedented generosity towards the Israelis at our expense?”
To be fair, residents of Russia’s border regions with Ukraine that are constantly being shelled and bombarded don’t get any freebies from the mobile operators.
Ethnic Russians feel they’re treated as second-class citizens, which of course they are in their own country. It should be noted that ethnic Russian citizens do not have their country and never have had since Mongols enslaved them back in the 13th century.
The Russian Empire comprises hundreds of nationalities and doesn’t begin nor end anywhere, therefore ethnic Russians must suffer silently and commit to their lot of unstoppable personal sacrifice to their comrades in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East.
Free international calls to Israelis is the least of Russians’ sacrifices. Putin has recently written off tens of billions of dollars of debts from Africa in order to provide them with more financial aid in their war against Western imperialism.
As for Moscow City Council Deputy Engalycheva, she can barely hide her rampant anti-Semitism. Last year she proposed to “isolate the 50 richest Jews to stop wars.”
Engalycheva and many of her compatriots believe in the conspiracy theory that purports that all wars are started by Jews with the goal of world domination, citing Volodymir Zelensky who resisted the Russian invasion as a primary example. Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov also subscribes to this view, claiming in an interview that Adolph Hitler is part Jewish.
I won’t be surprised if the permanent representative of Russia to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia who last year blamed Ukraine for breeding combat mosquitoes in the swampy lowlands of Kherson that assaulted ethnic Russians infecting them with deadly diseases like malaria would pronounce that Napoleon and Genghis Khan were Jewish, too.
Engalycheva has also exposed the West’s plans to develop a “psycho-electronic weapon” and fought tooth and nail against anti-COVID measures as she wasn’t satisfied that only one million Russian citizens died from COVID-19 and wanted her country to set the world record.
Engalycheva who’s by any metric not the sharpest corkscrew in the drawer got elected into Moscow City Council by Alexey Navalny and his anti-corruption team FBK’s project “Smart Voting.”
Smart Voting is imprisoned opposition leader’s odd idea to engineer an election campaign to put in the seats of regional government candidates who are not from the United Russia ruling party through voting for the candidates from FBK’s list.
It’s like coming to the restaurant where the waiter promptly orders you what to eat and gives you a tip for compliance. In Russia, elections elect you.
Engalycheva, however, is a crook like anyone else from the ruling party.
She broke up with her husband and cohabited with businessman Sergei Skuratov, who left his family for her sake, and after his death which happened under suspicious circumstances, she attempted to take control of the management of his company.
When Skuratova’s family was about to sue Engalycheva, she preemptively sued them.
During the trial, Engalycheva stated that she lived with the deceased for more than four years, purchased several apartments with him, and therefore has the right to them and demanded to be included as a co-founder of Travel Company Country of Tourism LLC, which belonged to her partner. However, Engalycheva failed to seize the property of her common-law husband.
Concurrently, Engalycheva attempted to take over Skuratov’s business by creating a clone company “Country of Space Tourism” with a turnover of 37 million rubles to attract all the customers from her former lover’s company using the company’s assistant who also left his wife and children for Engalycheva to help out with the hostile takeover.
Engalycheva was accused of hiding her property in order not to pay taxes and was arrested and fined twice for illegal meetings to propagate her conspiracy theories to the masses.
So much for family values and smart voting. All seems to be a major fraud and profanity in the Federation of Russia. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Gerhard Mansfeld:
Thanks for the latest news from the criminal mental asylum aka motherland.
It's very entertaining as long as you don't become a victim of it.
Elena Gold:
And retired general Andrey Gurulev (head of Russia’s defense committee in State Duma) supported Hamas. Because “Iran and groups from Muslim World are our allies, and Israeli is the ally of the USA.”
Now you know. Russia has never been a friend of Israel. They lied.
Andrey GurulevGeorge Swanson:
Know what I love Misha for? The answer is always different from the question, the good ‘ol Jewish classic.
Kid goes to a Rabbi and asks:
— Rabbi, where do you believe we go after we die?
— Where do you think we go?
— I don’t know, that’s why I am asking this question
— Why do you think you are asking these questions?
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THE SOVIET N1 “MOON ROCKET”
The N1 was a big moon rocket, the Soviet’s answer to the Saturn V. It had 30 (THIRTY!) rocket engines in its first stage. This kind of complexity required control computers that did not yet exist, so it blew up. Every time it attempted to fly. After the final failure (which happened AFTER Apollo 11 landed on the moon) it was abandoned and all mention of it was hidden for decades.
N1 rocket
Andrew in Minnesota:
Even had the N1 worked, the Soviet moon program would still have to be madly rushed to beat the U.S.
The first N1 launch — where a leak at 25 seconds caused a fire, leading the computer to shut down the motors — did not happen until February 1969, less than five months before Apollo 11 lifted off. This came 15 months before the first Saturn V launch, which didn’t result in men on the moon for another 20 months. Also, the capsule and life-support system wasn’t ready in July 1969 (it wouldn’t be launched on an unmanned test, using a Soyuz-L rocket, until November 1970).
Note: The Soviets actually had two moon programs. One featured the N1 intended to land on the moon’s surface, whereas the other featured a Proton rocket intended only to orbit the moon. The latter was cancelled because, again, while the rocket was ready, the capsule and life-support system were not. And after Apollo 8 circled the moon, the Soviet leadership quit caring about an orbital mission.
Ken Foster:
What were they thinking? Thirty rockets — what could go wrong.
Jim Reich:
30 rocket engines with Soviet quality control and minimal testing, and only 2 flight attempts to get it right. There’s nothing wrong with 30 rockets, as the 27 engined Falcon Heavy has shown. In fact, it’s the only way to make propulsive landing work.
It now turns out, that the Soviets actually had it right. It just took a mad genius with a billion dollars in his pocket, a super competent team and no fear of failure to show us that. And it wasn’t even the issue of electronics, as a bunch of people are claiming. Given a dozen attempts to get it right, I’m pretty sure Soviet analog computers could have handled the controls. They would just have to have the ability to repeatably produce super high quality engines and the time and resources to fully test them, including static fires on the pad.
Theodore Carlin:
If I am remembering that final try, the whole thing blew up, killing quite a lot of people including a general in the rocket forces and a lot of engineers and scientists. The kind of mistake of making too complex a machine is almost a guarantee of disaster. Kind of makes you wonder how they built an Atomic bomb…
Oh yeah. The U.S designed it, they copied it. They likely got the design for the hydrogen Bomb the same way. They once made the biggest hydrogen bomb ever with a yield of 40 megatons and they called the Tsar. It was so huge it had to be moved to the test site on 2 railroad cars.
Tim Nichols:
The N-1 was a failure because Korolev was dead.
He died in 1966 [Oriana: due in large part to the injuries he sustained while imprisoned in Siberia on false charges], and the person who came after him was not as good at getting funding. The result was that corners were cut. Things which should've been tested weren't. The result was not surprising: the N-1 failed.
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THE NEANDERTHAL “FLOWER BURIAL” — OR PERHAPS NOT
The clumps of pollen found in the large cave in northern Iraq contained traces of hyacinth, bachelor’s button and hollyhock. These elements alone would not make your average pollen remarkable, but these clumps were found in the 1950s near 10 Neanderthal skeletal remains at Shanidar cave, in the Zagros Mountains.
The US archaeologist Ralph Solecki, along with pollen analysts and palynologists (who study fossilized plant pollen) called the site they excavated the ‘Flower Burial’. In a series of papers and books published in the 1970s detailing their findings, they suggested that Neanderthals had intentionally buried, and then placed flora around their dead in a show of funerary ritual.
All aspiring archaeologists read about the Flower Burial in school, says Graeme Barker, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge. It was never just about the flowers, but about what they meant about Neanderthals’ inner emotional lives. The Flower Burial expanded ideas about what Neanderthals, an extinct species or subspecies of ancient humans, were cognitively capable of. If Neanderthals treated their dead in this way, they might have been feeling emotions such as compassion and grief, or considering what death means.
‘With the findings of flowers in association with Neanderthals, we are brought suddenly to the realization that the universality of mankind and the love of beauty go beyond the boundary of our own species,’ wrote Solecki in his book Shanidar: The First Flower People (1971).
In 2011, the Kurdistan Regional Government invited Barker to re-excavate Shanidar. In 2014, Barker’s initial trip ended suddenly when the terrorist group ISIS got too close to the site, but he returned the following year, joined in 2016 by the Cambridge paleoanthropologist Emma Pomeroy. They have found themselves facing questions raised by the Flower Burial more than 60 years ago.
‘In many ways, Shanidar is at the beginning of the debates about Neanderthals and how similar or different they were to Homo sapiens,’ Barker says. ‘At the heart of that is how did they deal with the dead, and what do they think about death?’
Fossils of 10 Neanderthals were unearthed in Shanidar Cave in the foothills of the Baradost Mountains in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region.
When Barker was invited to Shanidar, he says his goal wasn’t to find more remains or to disprove the Flower Burial. He targeted the spots where Solecki found Neanderthals, in order to date them using modern techniques but then he and his team happened upon more, previously undiscovered, Neanderthal remains by chance. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ Barker says.
In 2015 and 2016, they found leg bones from Solecki’s so-called ‘Shanidar 4’ Neanderthal. In 2017, they spotted the bones of a new individual near the Flower Burial that they then excavated in 2018 and 2019: a crushed skull of an adult, and parts of arms and upper torso. The burial dates to between 70,000 and 60,000 years ago, some 30,000 years older than the previous remains at the site. They called it Shanidar Z.
When Solecki found the remains of the Neanderthal individuals in the 1950s, their bodies contained provocative indications of something like emotional lives. One body appears to be a man who had been crippled when he was younger, but died as an adult. ‘That raises all sorts of questions about how he must have been looked after by the community to survive,’ Barker says, and whether Neanderthals cared for the sick or the disabled, and why.
But there were doubts about the meaning of the pollen early on. Some of the workmen at the original excavation liked to put flowers in their belts that could have shed pollen, and wild flowers grew all around the cave, with pollen that could be brought in by rodents or wind. People visiting the cave might have tracked in pollen on the bottom of their shoes.
In a study from August 2023, Barker, Pomeroy and others proposed that the pollen is probably better explained by nesting solitary bees who burrow into the ground and walls of the caves, bringing pollen with them. ‘The pollen loads of individual bees can contain more than one species if they are foraging different species at once,’ the researchers wrote. This would help explain why the original analysis of the pollen clusters contained ‘two or three different species of agglutinated pollens’, which would be hard to explain if the pollen came only from flowers placed on top of bodies.
This means that the pollen that sparked curiosity about our distant relatives is probably not a relic of Neanderthal grieving – but that doesn’t mean that the cave can’t act as a window into the psychological past, and how Neanderthals treated their dead.
Even if the Flower Burial pollen was carried by bees, continuing to find so many bones altogether is likely not a coincidence, indicating it might have been a burial site, not just a place people died by happenstance. ‘The flowers captured people’s imagination,’ says Pomeroy. ‘But the fact that you’ve got this really tight cluster of individuals has received a lot less attention.’
One way of identifying whether a behavior is something practical or more symbolic is to look for patterning, Pomeroy says. Shanidar 4 and Shanidar Z are positioned in the same way, and facing the same direction – towards the entrance of the cave.
‘If the direction you put a body in doesn’t mean anything, then we probably expect them to be fairly random,’ Pomeroy says. In the cave, there’s a large vertical pillar of rock that fell down from the ceiling that would have been there in the time when the Neanderthals were burying the bodies. Barker says it could have served as potential markers for the graves.
There are open questions about why Neanderthals went extinct, and how similar their behavior was to humans. By looking at the sediments in the cave in more detail, Barker, Pomeroy and the team have also been able to find charred plants, showing that the Neanderthals were making pastes with wild grains and nuts, and cooking them. They’ve also found evidence for hearths where fires were created for short periods of time. ‘We’re getting these snapshots of the real everyday stuff,’ says Pomeroy.
Studying soils and sediments from the site at a microscopic level, an approach known as micromorphology, the team has even found evidence of more pollen deeper in the ground – though it’s unclear what its source is. They’ve also shown that there’s sediment between the Neanderthal remains suggesting that some skeletons were buried above the others. This could mean that people returned back to the caves for burials, to that exact spot, and more than once.
The word ‘Neanderthal’ is still used widely as a slur, meaning less intelligent or unrefined. ‘It’s rarely used for somebody where you think he’s a fine poet,’ Barker says. While they’re trying to avoid undue storytelling, he thinks that what’s clear from their continued findings is evidence of deliberate, thoughtful behavior, repeated over time.
‘It fits with an awful lot of other evidence that these species were much more complicated in many ways than we thought a few years ago,’ Barker says.
Neanderthals are not our direct ancestors, though all humans have some Neanderthal DNA. Ancient humans and Neanderthals lived alongside each other. That Neanderthals cared about the placement of their dead in some ways could help to reveal the path by which ancient humans too came to care about and bury their dead.
Neanderthal skeleton and modern Homo sapiens skeleton
‘How did we end up being this kind of animal that uses symbolism and behaves in these complex ways and has these huge brains and, and has been able to sort of create this highly complex world?’ Pomeroy says. ‘That’s why understanding other related species is so important. We can’t answer that question unless we look back into our evolutionary past.’ ~
https://psyche.co/ideas/digging-for-answers-in-a-cave-filled-with-neanderthal-skeletons?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=0577e4cce7-
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LEAVING ISLAM
I had no intentions of leaving Islam, but was literally forced out of it due to the events after I married a Hindu. After I married, my brothers, uncles, male cousins, and other acquaintances suddenly made it their life mission to call me at least three to four times a day to tell me the horrible things they were going to do to me and my husband for my having married a Hindu.
This continued for the next 2 months until all my attempts to make peace with them failed, and I then changed my number. I got deaths threats, acid attack threats, rape threats while they told me that they would kill my husband and chop him into small pieces (boti-boti) and feed to the dogs, or that I would find his dead body in a garbage dump one day.
It was such a terrible experience that I was disgusted by this religion that had turned my own brothers, uncles and cousins into potential killers and rapists. I decided to leave Islam. I also decided I would do everything I could to cure as many as possible of this disease. So far, I have helped around 20 Muslims, mostly women, save themselves from it. ~ Aisha Ghosh, Quora
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About a quarter of adults who were raised Muslim (23%) no longer identify as members of the faith, roughly on par with the share of Americans who were raised Christian and no longer identify with Christianity (22%), according to a new analysis of the 2014 Religious Landscape Study. But while the share of American Muslim adults who are converts to Islam also is about one-quarter (23%), a much smaller share of current Christians (6%) are converts.
A 2017 Pew Research Center survey
of U.S. Muslims, using slightly different questions than the 2014
survey, found a similar estimate (24%) of the share of those who were
raised Muslim but have left Islam. Among this group, 55% no longer
identify with any religion, according to the 2017 survey. Fewer identify
as Christian (22%), and an additional one-in-five (21%) identify with a
wide variety of smaller groups, including faiths such as Buddhism,
Hinduism, Judaism, or as generally “spiritual.”
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PLASTIC-EATING BACTERIA
~ In 2001, a group of Japanese scientists made a startling discovery at a rubbish dump. In trenches packed with dirt and waste, they found a slimy film of bacteria that had been happily chewing through plastic bottles, toys and other bric-a-brac. As they broke down the trash, the bacteria harvested the carbon in the plastic for energy, which they used to grow, move and divide into even more plastic-hungry bacteria. Even if not in quite the hand-to-mouth-to-stomach way we normally understand it, the bacteria were eating the plastic.
The scientists were led by Kohei Oda, a professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology. His team was looking for substances that could soften synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, which is made from the same kind of plastic used in most beverage bottles. Oda is a microbiologist, and he believes that whatever scientific problem one faces, microbes have probably already worked out a solution. “I say to people, watch this part of nature very carefully. It often has very good ideas,” Oda told me recently.
What Oda and his colleagues found in that rubbish dump had never been seen before. They had hoped to discover some micro-organism that had evolved a simple way to attack the surface of plastic. But these bacteria were doing much more than that – they appeared to be breaking down plastic fully and processing it into basic nutrients. From our vantage point, hyperaware of the scale of plastic pollution, the potential of this discovery seems obvious. But back in 2001 – still three years before the term “microplastic” even came into use – it was “not considered a topic of great interest”, Oda said. The preliminary papers on the bacteria his team put together were never published.
In the years since the group’s discovery, plastic pollution has become impossible to ignore. Within that roughly 20-year span, we have generated 2.5bn tons of plastic waste and each year we produce about 380 million tonnes more, with that amount projected to triple again by 2060. A patch of plastic rubbish seven times the size of Great Britain sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and plastic waste chokes beaches and overspills landfills across the world. At the miniature scale, microplastic and nanoplastic particles have been found in fruits and vegetables, having passed into them through the plants’ roots. And they have been found lodged in nearly every human organ – they can even pass from mother to child through breast milk.
Current methods of breaking down or recycling plastics are woefully inadequate. The vast majority of plastic recycling involves a crushing and grinding stage, which frays and snaps the fibers that make up plastic, leaving them in a lower-quality state. While a glass or aluminum container can be melted down and reformed an unlimited number of times, the smooth plastic of a water bottle, say, degrades every time it is recycled. A recycled plastic bottle becomes a mottled bag, which becomes fibrous jacket insulation, which then becomes road filler, never to be recycled again. And that is the best case scenario. In reality, hardly any plastic – just 9% – ever enters a recycling plant. The sole permanent way we’ve found to dispose of plastic is incineration, which is the fate of nearly 70 million tons of plastic every year – but incineration drives the climate crisis by releasing the carbon in the plastic into the air, as well as any noxious chemicals it might be mixed with.
In the years after their discovery, Oda and his student Kazumi Hiraga, now a professor, continued corresponding and conducting experiments. When they finally published their work in the prestigious journal Science in 2016, it emerged into a world desperate for solutions to the plastic crisis, and it was a blockbuster hit. Oda and his colleagues named the bacterium that they had discovered in the rubbish dump Ideonella sakaiensis – after the city of Sakai, where it was found – and in the paper, they described a specific enzyme that the bacterium was producing, which allowed it to break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the most common plastic found in clothing and packaging. The paper was reported widely in the press, and it currently has more than 1,000 scientific citations, placing it in the top 0.1% of all papers.
But the real hope is that this goes beyond a single species of bacteria that can eat a single kind of plastic. Over the past half-century, microbiology – the study of small organisms including bacteria and some fungi – has undergone a revolution that Jo Handelsman, former president of the American Society for Microbiology, and a science adviser to the Obama White House, described to me as possibly the most significant biological advance since Darwin’s discovery of evolution. We now know that micro-organisms constitute a vast, hidden world entwined with our own. We are only beginning to grasp their variety, and their often incredible powers. Many scientists have come around to Oda’s view – that for the host of seemingly intractable problems we are working on, microbes may have already begun to find a solution. All we need to do is look.
A discovery like Oda’s is only a starting point. To have any hope of mitigating this globe-spanning environmental disaster of our own making, the bacteria will have to work faster and better. When Oda and his group originally tested the bacteria in the lab, they placed them in a tube with a 2cm-long piece of plastic film weighing a 20th of a gram. Left at room temperature, they broke down the tiny bit of plastic into its precursor liquids in about seven weeks. This was very impressive and far too slow to have any meaningful impact on plastic waste at scale.
Fortunately, over the past four decades, scientists have become remarkably proficient at engineering and manipulating enzymes. When it comes to plastic chewing, “the Ideonella enzyme is actually very early in its evolutionary development”, says Andy Pickford, a professor of molecular biophysics at the University of Portsmouth. It is the goal of human scientists to take it the rest of the way.
When any living organism wishes to break down a larger compound – whether a string of DNA, or a complex sugar, or plastic – they turn to enzymes, tiny molecular machines within a cell, specialized for that task. Enzymes work by helping chemical reactions happen at a microscopic scale, sometimes forcing reactive atoms closer together to bind them, or twisting complex molecules at specific points to make them weaker and more likely to break apart.
If you want to improve natural enzyme performance, there are approaches that work in almost every case. Chemical reactions tend to work better at higher temperatures, for instance (this is why, if you want to make a cake, it is better to set the oven at 180C rather than 50C); but most enzymes are most stable at the ambient temperature of the organism they work in – 37C in the case of humans. By rewriting the DNA that codes an enzyme, scientists can tweak its structure and function, making it more stable at higher temperatures, say, which helps it work faster.
This power sounds godlike, but there are many limitations. “It is often two steps forward, one step back,” says Elizabeth Bell, a researcher at the US government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado. Evolution itself involves tradeoffs, and while scientists understand how most enzymes work, it remains difficult to predict the tweaks that will make them work better. “Logical design tends not to work very well, so we have to take other approaches,” says Bell.
Bell’s own work – which focuses on PETase, the enzyme that Ideonella sakaiensis produces to break down PET plastics – takes a brute-force approach in order to turbocharge natural evolution. Bell takes the regions of the enzyme that work directly on plastic and uses genetic engineering to subject them to every possible mutation. In the wild, a mutation in an enzyme might occur only once in every few thousand times the bacteria divide. Bell ensures she gets hundreds or thousands of potentially beneficial mutants to test. She then measures each one for its ability to degrade plastic. Any candidates that show even marginal improvement get another round of mutations. The head of the NREL research group, Gregg Beckham, refers to it as “evolving the crap out of an enzyme”.
Last year, she published her latest findings, on a PETase enzyme she had engineered that could degrade PET many times faster than the original enzyme.
But building an enzyme that suits our purposes isn’t just a case of scientists tinkering until they get the perfect tool. Before the publication of Oda’s paper in 2016, no one knew that bacteria capable of digesting plastic existed. Now, we have one solidly documented case. Given that we have discovered only a tiny fraction of microbial life, a far better candidate might be out there. In engineering terms, we may currently be trying to squeeze elite racing performance out of a Toyota Yaris engine, when somewhere, yet to be discovered, there is the bacterial equivalent of a Ferrari. “This is something we constantly struggle with,” says Beckham. “Do we go back to the well to search and see if nature has the solution? Or do we take the small footholds we have to the lab and work on them now?”
This question has led to a boom in what is known as bioprospecting. Like panning for gold in a river, bioprospectors travel the world looking to discover interesting and potentially lucrative microbes. In 2019, a team at Gwangju National University in South Korea took a construction drilling rig to the municipal dump outside town, and drilled 15 meters. Efforts like Waksman’s were relatively rare.
It wasn’t until the discovery of simple chemical techniques to read the sequence of DNA – first emerging in the 1970s, but widely and commercially available from the mid-1980s – that things began to change. Suddenly the microbes under the microscope could be catalogued and identified by their DNA, which also hinted at how they might grow and function. Not only that, says Handelsman, “the genetic diversity we were seeing was enormous”. It turned out that “these life forms that looked quite similar are in fact very, very different. It opened this door to realizing how much more was out there.”
About 25 years ago, the consensus among scientists was that there were probably fewer than ten million species of microbes on the planet; in the past decade, some new studies have put the number as high as a trillion, the vast majority still unknown. In our bodies, scientists have found microbes that affect everything from our ability to resist disease to our very moods. In the deep seas, scientists have found microbes that live on boiling thermal vents. In crude oil deposits, they have found microbes that have evolved to break down fossil fuels. The more we look, the more extraordinary discoveries we will make.
Their adaptability makes microbes the ideal companion for our turbulent times. Microbes evolve in ways and at speeds that would have shocked Darwin and his contemporaries. Partly because they divide quickly and can have population sizes in the billions, and partly because they often have access to evolutionary tricks unknown to more complex lifeforms – rapidly swapping DNA between individuals, for instance – they have found ways to thrive in extreme environments.
And, at this historical moment, humans are creating more extreme environments across the globe at an alarming rate. Where other animals and plants have no hope of evolving a solution quickly enough to outpace their changing habitats, microbes are adapting fast. They bloom in acidified water, and are discovered chewing up some of the putrid chemicals we slough off into the natural world. Just as Kohei Oda suggested, for many of our self-created problems, they are proposing their own solutions.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
Mary:
There is great hope in the investigations into microorganisms that can break down and actually digest plastics. What is so marvelous is that we are discovering the great range and pervasiveness of life, with its seeming determination to adapt to any and all conditions, even the most extreme and hostile...existing and flourishing in places we would think inimical to any form of life. I think of the fungal life growing on the walls of the failed and highly radioactive Chernobyl reactor, and of the microbes living in the boiling thermal vents of the deep ocean.
How can such adaptive organisms be used or modified to solve problems like pollution...can we amplify their evolution to make them even more effective? Can we find more already in existence that are already better at digesting plastic waste...or fossil fuel spills? This is exciting and encouraging — makes me think with this kind of inventive adaptability any problem can be resolved. So much great and fascinating work to do! So much to learn!
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BERBERINE APPEARS TO PREVENT OR ALLEVIATE DEMENTIA
Since metformin has been found to protect against dementia, it makes sense to expect that the supplement berberine, which provides many of the same benefits, would also be neuroprotective, lowering the risk of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS, and other neurological diseases.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9895386/
Berberine, an important protoberberine isoquinoline alkaloid, has
several pharmacological activities, including antimicrobial, glucose-
and cholesterol-lowering, antitumoral, and immunomodulatory properties.
Substantial studies suggest that berberine may be beneficial to
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by limiting the pathogenesis of extracellular
amyloid plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles. Increasing
evidence has indicated that berberine exerts a protective role in
atherosclerosis related to lipid- and glucose-lowering properties,
implicating that berberine has the potential to inhibit these risk
factors for AD.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055107/
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HOW FRUCTOSE PROMOTES OBESITY; OBESITY AS A LOW-ENERGY STATE
The authors propose that fructose resets cell metabolism, increasing hunger and driving the desire for energy-rich foods, such as fats and carbohydrates, which results in weight gain.
Obesity is a growing problem worldwide. Obesity rates have tripled since 1975, with 13% of all adults now classified as having obesity.
In the United States, between 1980 and 2008, obesity rates rose from 13.4% to 34.3% of adults, and by 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 41.9% of adults in the U.S. had obesity.
Having obesity increases the risk of many health conditions and adverse events, such as sleep apnea, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke.
It may also increase the likelihood of developing certain cancers, and is linked to issues with the digestive system, skin, fertility, and mental health.
Now, a paper from the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine proposes that a single substance — fructose — is the main driver of obesity.
The authors have built on their previous work about the effect of fructose on cells, formulating the “fructose survival hypothesis” to explain the rapid increase in obesity rates.
Obesity is not merely a result of consuming excessive energy but, instead, a condition of low energy, marked by insufficient ATP [adenosine triphosphate], due to the types and amounts of food consumed.
THE FRUCTOSE SURVIVAL HYPOTHESIS
When a person eats food, most of the energy ingested is converted to adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the molecule that supplies energy to cells. If too much food is eaten, that excess energy is stored as fat.
If the food contains fructose, the fructose initially undergoes the same conversion to ATP to fuel all the body’s functions.
However, as more fructose is ingested, it suppresses the activity of mitochondria — the organelles that produce ATP — in the cells, reducing levels of ATP.
When ATP levels drop, this sends an alarm signal that the cell might run out of energy, which stimulates a number of biological responses, among them hunger, thirst, increased energy intake, insulin resistance, increased food absorption and reduced resting metabolism.
Where food is abundant, and much of it contains fructose, these changes are likely to lead to weight gain.
Fructose is the naturally occurring sugar in fruit and vegetables. However, Costa advised that this should not discourage people from eating whole fruits.
“While most whole fruits naturally contain fructose, their consumption is not associated with obesity or weight gain in humans, as the presence of dietary fibers, bioactive compounds, and essential nutrients counteracts the effects of fructose on satiety and insulin sensitivity,” she told us.
The problem arises when fruits are processed, or fructose is added to foods.
And it is not only sweet foods, such as sodas, sweetened juices and packaged desserts and cakes, that contain it. Foods that we regard as savory, including bread, canned soups, prepackaged meals, cereals and many fast foods are all likely to contain fructose in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.
“The proposed ‘fructose survival switch’ potentially underlies the influence of ultra-processed foods on energy intake and weight gain. High salt content often found in these foods could further stimulate fructose production, exacerbating the energy imbalance and contributing to obesity,” according to Kelsey Costa.
Fructose is also present in table sugar, or sucrose — which is made up of glucose and fructose — and it is made in the body from glucose and other carbohydrates, as Costa explained.
“The body can also convert glucose to fructose through the polyol pathway, activated by various triggers such as diabetes, high glycemic or high carbohydrate diets, high salt intake, low water intake, purine-rich foods, or stress conditions, leading to obesity and other metabolic effects. Alcohol intensifies this process, stimulating more fructose production,” she told MNT.
Lead author Prof. Richard Johnson, professor of medicine – renal diseases and hypertension in the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, explained in a press release that “fructose is what triggers our metabolism to go into low power mode and lose our control of appetite, but fatty foods become the major source of calories that drive weight gain.”
“This theory views obesity as a low-energy state,” he added. “Identifying fructose as the conduit that redirects active energy replacement to fat storage shows that fructose is what drives energy imbalance, which unites theories of obesity.”
Lowering fructose consumption includes reducing consumption of sodium, refined and high-glycemic carbohydrates, purine-rich foods like red processed meats, and alcohol to limit fructose production in the body. ~
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-fructose-the-unifying-factor-of-all-mechanisms-underlying-obesity#Moderate-fructose-intake-to-help-manage-weight
Oriana:
What stays in my mind is a paragraph in Dr. Gundry's book about the summer when they decided: This time, no fruit. He and his wife lost 5 lbs each. Less fructose improves energy production. We are not bears and don't need to fatten up for winter.
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PATHOLOGIES THAT STEM FROM OBESITY
Increased mortality (death risk) from all causes
high blood pressure (hypertension)
high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (dyslipidemia)
type 2 diabetes
coronary heart disease
stroke
osteoarthritis — a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint
sleep apnea and breathing problems
many types of cancer
A report published in August 2022 gave the following warning: “Given dire implications in terms of comorbidities and mortality, these updated epidemiological findings call for coordinated actions from local and regional governments, the scientific community and individual patients alike, as well as the food industry for the obesity pandemic to be controlled and alleviated.”
The authors called for coordinated international efforts to combat the obesity pandemic similar to those used against COVID-19.
We live in an obesogenic environment with increase in per capita food supply, increased availability and marketing of high-calorie and high-glycemic-index foods and drinks, larger food portions, leisure time physical activities being replaced with sedentary activities such as watching television and use of electronic devices, inadequate sleep, and the use of medications that increase weight.
RISE IN CHILDHOOD OBESITY
Obesity is not increasing only in adults — the number of children with obesity has risen alarmingly. Worldwide, the number of children and adolescents with obesity has increased tenfold since 1975. If t his trend continues, soon there may be more children with obesity than there are underweight children.
This is particularly worrying, as obesity when young predisposes a person to many health issues.
The younger a child is when developing obesity, the higher the chances of developing health problems as an adult. Furthermore, the earlier the child suffers from obesity, the earlier the health problems begin.
These health problems may include fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, menstrual abnormalities, impaired balance, and orthopedic problems.
And children with obesity are likely to continue with obesity into adolescence and adulthood. 55% of children with obesity will go on to have obesity in adolescence, and 80% of those adolescents will still have obesity when adults.
However, the same analysis notes that of adults with obesity, 70% did not have childhood obesity, so targeting childhood obesity is unlikely to solve the problem.
According to the World Health Organization, obesity and overweight are no longer just a problem for individuals, but a global epidemic — which it refers to as “globesity” — that is taking over in many parts of the world. And it is not only an issue in industrialized countries; obesity is a growing concern in developing countries.
There is little evidence that community-based interventions and social marketing campaigns specifically targeting obesity provide substantial or lasting benefit. Instead, a more appropriate strategy would be to enact high-level policy and legislative changes to alter the obesogenic environments in which we live by providing incentives for healthy eating and increased levels of physical activity.
But combating the global problem of obesity will take more than just telling people to eat less and exercise more. We need to understand how people interact with their environments, and how that environment influences food intake.
IS FOOD MARKETING TO BLAME?
It is a given that people want plentiful, safe, convenient, and inexpensive food — we need food to stay alive. And food manufacturing is a lucrative business, so manufacturers and retailers make huge efforts to persuade us to buy it.
Pricing is perhaps the most powerful in persuading people to overeat. The review noted that pricing was the strongest predictor of increased energy intake and obesity. When consumers pay less for a food product, they not only eat more of it, but they also tend to eat it more rapidly.
So-called healthy options can be deceptive. One study found hat low-fat nutrition labels increased people’s perceptions of the appropriate serving size and decreased the guilt associated with eating the food, thereby increasing intake.
Another factor is package size. Larger packs provide better value for money for the consumer, but several older studies have shown that they increase consumption.
So, perhaps the key is persuading food manufacturers and retailers that they can still turn a profit when they are helping consumers to eat better, rather than promoting unhealthy foods.
And maybe consumers need to develop a different attitude to food, regarding it as a means of achieving and maintaining good health. This is where culinary medicine might make an impact.
CULINARY MEDICINE
Culinary medicine has evolved from the growing interest in the relationship of food, eating, and cooking to health. It has been described as “a new evidence-based field in medicine that blends the art of food and cooking with the science of medicine.”
Culinary medicine uses a high-quality, tailored diet, to prevent and treat disease and maintain well-being. The anti-inflammatory diet, for instance, can provide relief from rheumatoid arthritis, and the Mediterranean diet — which emphasizes fruits, vegetables, olive oil, legumes, and whole grains, and includes less ultra-processed foods and meat than a typical Western diet — is effective in preventing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
Culinary medicine is the discipline of educating and empowering people to choose and cook healthy foods. However, as with other methods of weight loss, each individual will respond differently to this approach and thus have varying degrees of success.
Key to its success is ensuring that healthy food gives pleasure, and is not seen as a poor substitute for the unhealthy food it replaces.
Combating obesity on a population level requires political will, not just individual action. Culinary medicine may be one approach to the problem, but until governments legislate to make healthy food affordable for all, obesity will remain a health risk. ~
Oriana:
Fortunately, there is one positive trend: Americans are eating out less, and cooking at home instead. “Six out of ten Americans cook at home more than five times a week. Back in 2019, only 33.14% of Americans had declared the same, and another 37.22% said they only manage to cook meals at home three to five times a week.”
https://www.testhut.com/how-many-americans-cook-statistics/
At least 50% of Americans cook dinner every day.
Dinner is the most-cooked meal of Americans, and Monday is the day when 60% of them make an effort to prepare it from scratch. Data also shows that the share of Americans cooking dinner throughout the week declines to 49% on Fridays and 50% on Saturdays, which are the days when most decide to either eat out or prepare their meal from pre-packaged or frozen food.
Additionally, 58% of Americans said that they eat homemade dinner on Tuesdays, and 56% said the same for Wednesdays and Thursdays.
As for making healthy food affordable: in my experience, most healthy food is already affordable. Vegetables don't cost much. It's junk food that's expensive. We also know that sugary and salty junk food is addictive.
Would it be too great a leap to label sugar as poison, the way it was successfully done with tobacco products?
Healthy food served in inexpensive cafeterias might also go a long way.
Above all, it takes awareness. The anti-smoking campaign persistently pointed out health damage caused by smoking. We need more voices out there speaking out against sugar, cookies, cake, and junk food in general. And taxes on junk food would be great. After all, taxes on cigarettes did work. Why should Hostess Ding-Dongs enjoy the non-taxable status along with broccoli and carrots?
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UNTREATED ADULT ADHD NEARLY TRIPLES THE RISK OF DEMENTIA
~ Dementia is a syndrome characterized by dysfunction in daily life due to cognitive impairment. It ranks as a leading cause of disability and mortality. It is estimated that in 2022, among US individuals aged 65 years or older, 6.5 million had dementia, a figure that is predicted to increase to 13.8 million by 2060. Hence, identifying risk and preventive factors for dementia is an international priority.
Although generally defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder, evidence supports the concept of adult-onset attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Research has reported that 5% of children with ADHD meet ADHD criteria in adulthood, constituting 3% of adult ADHD cases. Studies also show that child and adult ADHD present different social, psychological, and genetic profiles. Despite being distinct from childhood ADHD, little is known about adult ADHD.
Adult ADHD may be associated with an increased risk of dementia based on common health outcomes, clinical observations, family-based research, and epidemiologic risk studies. Meta-analyses have identified 6 health outcomes (ie, depression, midlife hypertension, smoking, type 2 diabetes, and low levels of education and physical activity) that are modifiable dementia risk factors and consequences of ADHD. Clinical observations and research suggest that adult ADHD appears to mimic some cognitive symptoms of dementia (eg, memory loss).
Nonetheless, ADHD is underascertained in specialist old age clinics with a dementia focus. Family-based research demonstrates that ADHD is associated with dementia across generations, but the magnitude of the association is attenuated by less genetic kinship, suggesting shared familial risk between the diagnoses. Most, but not all, epidemiologic studies support a significant association between ADHD and the risk of dementia. However, the association is null in some studies and is stronger among males than females.
The association between adult ADHD and dementia risk remains a topic of interest because of inconsistent results and key factors are yet to be studied. These factors include prescribed psychostimulant medications and reverse causation. Psychostimulant medications are cognitive enhancers used to treat ADHD and so may modify the potential trajectory of cognitive impairment. Reverse causation challenges the association between adult ADHD and dementia because adult ADHD is accompanied by cognitive impairments that resemble dementia and coincide with the onset of the protracted preclinical phase of dementia.
This prospective cohort study examined the association between adult ADHD and dementia risk. The present study results showed that an adult ADHD diagnosis was associated with a 2.77-fold increased risk of incident dementia. Complementary analyses generally supported this association.
The present study finding that adult ADHD is associated with a higher dementia risk is consistent with most, but not all prior epidemiologic studies. It may be plausible that adult ADHD reflects a brain pathobiological process that reduces the ability to compensate for the effects of later-life neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular processes. Less cognitive and brain reserve may result in pathobiological processes of ADHD that, in turn, reduce compensatory abilities. This explanation is consistent with our findings that show, for the first time to our knowledge, that the association between adult ADHD and dementia risk showed mild evidence of reverse causation.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this cohort study of 109 218 participants followed up to 17.2 years, after adjustment for 18 potential sources of confounding, the primary analysis indicated that an adult ADHD diagnosis was associated with a 2.77-fold increased dementia risk. Complementary analyses generally did not attenuate the conclusion of the primary analysis. This finding suggests that policy makers, caregivers, patients, and clinicians may wish to monitor ADHD in old age.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2810766
Oriana:
The great news here is that the ADHD patients taking neurostimulants (e.g. Ritalin, a form of amphetamine) showed no increased risk of dementia.
It's also worth noting that ADHD and dementia both involve a deficit in the inhibitory function. Yet this function is amenable to training. You can learn to stop being distracted by sensory overload. Meditation is one proven method. And you don't need to "do it right." Doing it badly still has benefits. Focus on the phrase "The quiet brain."
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ending on beauty:
Sometimes I wonder about my father’s
years on those islands: why
was he so attractive
to women? He was in straits then, I suppose
desperate, I believe
women like to see a man
still whole, still standing, but
about to go to pieces; such
disintegration reminds them
of passion. I think of them as living
their whole lives
completely undressed.
~ Louise Glück, from Telemachus’ Fantasy
(Image: The Sorrow of Telemachus, by Angelica Kauffmann)
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