How I've Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Empire

The Last Mughal Emperor - He died drugged on heroin and hooked on his harem

People like to rebel against authorities. Especially those of which you are not apart of. Like in contemporary times, when the American Hegemony takes a financial hit in the secret hearts of millions of Russians, Chinese and Arabs they rejoice at seeing their Great Satan race, run, stumble and fall. It's natural. However, the Collapse of Empires is never-ever a happy time for the happy helots inhabiting this planet.

Everytime an Empire collapses, millions die to establish a new status quo. To create a New World Order. It's only practical. Everyone Great Power wants to have a shot at being number one. A good example of this is the Great Chaos after World War I. How many Empires collapsed in that conflict? Far too many. Three Empires bit the dust. The Hohenzollern German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. The aftermaths of all these collapsing continue to plague us unto the next century.

Who replaced the Second Reich? Why the Third Reich of course. Its was a reactionary element of Germany to recover the power they'd lost to the Entente in the aftermath of the First World War. Millions in Africa, Asia and Europe died as a result as Nazis systematically killed the ones "responsible" for their collapse. Be it Jew, Gypsy or Communist.

When Austro-Hungary collapsed the dozen or so subject people under Austrian rule breathed a sigh of relief yet thousands of them died in the struggle for the creation of the Slavic utopia - Yugoslavia. When the utopia became synonym for bedlam genocide against Muslims became a past time for the Serbs as they butchered and raped them in large numbers. That's the thing about Empires, when they collapse the minorities always suffer. Just as the Jews did, Kosovars got the worse of it in the 90s and only gained a state a decade later after NATO bombed the nation using stealth bombers. Even as Austro-Hungary was collapsing Balkan Wars in the lead up to this conflict was the result of a fracturing dual-state which could not operate without German aid.

When Russia collapsed, a Russian civil war against Poles, the old aristrocracy and the new soviets enveloped European Russia and killed up to 9 million more Russians. The First World War simply did not end in the East as Ukrainians, Poles and Georgians who just got their independance through the idealism of Woodrow Wilson saw much of it slip away to the Soviets. The aristrocracy, well find any old Russian and ask them about the Kulaks. Those landowners were eradicated to make way for the communal soviet living the new Russia espoused. The Caucasus became an ethnic goulash and no amount of scrumptious blini could make Central Asia a happy place again. The Russians who'd settle there during the Empire had to hold their own against the Kazakhs and Turkmens who probably wanted them dead.

The Ottoman Empire had it really bad. Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Armenians and even Kurds rebelled. The Turks were forced to concede a lot of their age old Empire to save the ethos of their nation - Anatolia or modern Turkey. As a result, the collapsing Empire tried to take down as much of its minorities with it starting with the Armenians who died in droves. During the Turkish War of Independance over 1 million Greeks were forced to leave land they'd been inhabiting for close to 3000 years! The Kurds, well they just got stomped on now and then. Also, the Kurds did what the Kurds do best and took over Armenian land when most of the Armenians from Turkey were either marching in some Syrian desert, dead or in Soviet Armenia. Jews, emboldened with this collapse moved to Palestine in droves which helped culminate in the current Middle East headache.

Even do when Empires collapse, it's for a lot more reasons other than the military ones which ended those dinosaurs I've just described. For instance, economic collapse. For that example, I gotta bring up Habspurg Spain. The big, bad wolf of Europe since 1492. I gotta say, then Castile and Aragon combined twas a happy day for Iberia. Those two kingdoms drove out their Muslims and Christians had enough left over troops to fight France in Italy and conquer the Americas carving out a huge latitude spanner from California to the Straits of Magellan. Gold from the Carribean and Silver from Mexico and Peru payed for Spanish armies all over Europe especially in the already mentioned Italy and the Netherlands which started rebelling during the reign of Felipe II. The huge silver mine at Potosi financed the Habspurg Military Industrial Complex for close to 200 years until it came sputtering to a halt.

All that gold and silver drove up prices for objects, just like Egypt had experienced after Mansa Musa's pilgrimage had touched down there. Of course, merchants were all to happy to sell the products at the increased price. Especially Dutch merchants. They weakened their enemies by selling their wares to them like porcelain and clothing. They began relying more and more on credit from the Low Countries but small farmers lost everything at anytime of market volatility and were forced to move into the cities. Also, Spain's population began growing slower when it wasn't as rich as before, especially when poor people migrated to Mexico, Argentina and Peru to have some chance....after all white people in Latin America were better than Indians according to the caste system there. Poor Castilian farmers couldn't afford anything and exports to other countries got harder than before, especially wool. This plus Dutch Sea-Beggars, the Thirty Years' War, Ottoman Turks and the constant meddling of France made Spain even adopt the French Bourbon dynasty. A great humiliation.

A really bad collapse is that of the Mughals. It all started with a pot-head, boy-loving warlord named Barbur from a place called Ferghana north of modern Afghanistan and nearly won all of India - incredible. His dad died when he was young and he had to fight all his relatives for the rest of his chieftainship. Eventually he got Kabul, a stinking wreck but probably a great prize for him. Probably thought it was beautiful between raping boys and chewing a form of pot.

Around 1519, this upstart started raiding India from Afghanistan. He didn't really like India but he liked the stuff he could squeeze out of it like gems, ivory, peacocks and the teeming millions to tax. Nothing was beyond this descendant of Timur the Lame. He raided the Punjab and apparently met the original prophet of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak and returned to his homeland. But he kept coming back and each time he did he brought technologies like matchlock pistols and cannon from his Persian friends in Central Asia. In 1525, he marched on Delhi and he defeated the combined power of the kings of Northern India. When he died they sent his body back to Afghanistan.

His son Humayun, wasn't so lucky. He was chased out of India by his enemies (really, his other brothers) but with Persian support he was back in power in 1555. The really great Mughal Emperor was Akbar. He inherited the throne after his dad tripped down a flight of stairs and died and set about conquering most of India. He gave favours to the Rajputs, Hindu warriors who fought for him to show their gratitude. He also let Rajput princesses into his harem to cement alliances with these small Rajput states and was as tolerant as a ruler could be in India at that time. Even gifted the Sikhs with some land where a very important shrine now lies - Amritsar. All of this "toleration" ended. The Sikhs began to train themselves in warfare and won battles against the Mughals due to persecution from Shah Jahan. This became even worse when Aurangzeb came to power. He wished to convert the entire Mughal Empire to Islam, if not the only other option was - death. The Maratha people led by Shivaji began waging guerrilla warfare against the Mughals. Guru Gobind Singh's son led a full revolt against the Mughal Empire and the mighty edifice began to fall apart due to Maratha and Sikh attacks, just in time for the British East Indian Company to arrive. Religious intolerance drove the Mughal's subject peoples crazy and made them rebel.

Another good warfare example is Imperial Japan. Everything they'd done was culminated through war. They defeated China to become the chief Asian through war. Seized Korea too. Defeated Russia to be treated as a world power through conflict. Got Asian colonies in World War I because of War. Got stuck in a Chinese quagmire, invaded too many European countries and attacked the United States and got involved in a epic Pacific War fought over thousands of miles of islands and open water ending in the atomic destruction of two cities.

Political dissolution is always possible to. It wasn't an army that felled the British Empire, financial woes or religious intolerance although all were a factor. It was political will for self-determination in places like India, Kenya and other countries which ended the largest Empire ever. Britain had conquered its empire through nationalism and jingoism. It's ironic as soon as their subject peoples discover the wonderful powers of this phenomenon, they lose it all in some 40 years. It got so bad, they had to fight Argentina over some islands in the South Atlantic and nearly lost too.

Can America fall? Due to economic collapse - not that quickly. It would take a slow decline for 30% going onto 40% of the World's GDP losing it all, and destroying all our livelihoods too. Also, the US still possesses some big industries. Religious intolerance? 90% of American are Christian. They only need to fear extremist from foreign religions which threaten them. Finally, political dissolution? Yes, that is possible. The Americans like to believe they don't have an Empire. Not a formal one anyway. As soon as they discover they do have one, they could give it up like the Philippines. Since their power is an invisible hegemony, it might not happen.

I could never survive the apocalypse caused by the sudden vaccuum of American power. Although it maybe arbitrarily unfair, and sickening at its worst... I don't know about you but i'm just a parasite riding the Moby Dick called the US of A.

The Inka: Communist, Imperialist Theocrats

The Inka: Imperial Communists

It's been awhile since i've written on a historical people or a warrior culture still living. I've covered the Seljuq Turks, the Normans, the tribes of the Horn of Africa, the French and now I i'm going to do the Inca or Inka empire. I'll go with the Quechua spelling. Sounds more authentic. These guys rose from being a small tribe living by the lake having some good times to the greatest Andean Culture ever. They really do have my respect, because in some ways they're still fighting today to recreate Tawantinsuyu or - the Inka Empire with about 12 million people.

Out of all the places on Earth. The Andes mountains and coastal zone nearby is one of the most difficult places to create a civilization. Yet, people have done so. For over 5000 years. The Andes along with Mesoamerica, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus River Valley, Yangtze and Yellow Rivers are the cradles of civilization. Somehow peopled eked out a living whether they had to live 2000 meters high in bitterly cold mountains or 2000 meters below on a desert coastal plain. Two cultures before the Inka were the Wari and Tiwanku cultures. These two empire builders existed at the same time. The Wari had the high Andes and some southern colonies and the Tiwanku was near the shore of lake Titicaca in modern day Bolivia and it was a major religious site. Pilgrims would come in the thousands to go to the temple, get high and sacrifice some llamas to the Sun God. The Wari were more belligerent, they'd forceably remove whole peoples from the mountains to the coast to grow corn and men had to labour to pay taxes.

Both Empires collapsed about the same time.

Growing food was hard in the Andes for the people who came to live there. You could grow amaranth, potatoes (domesticated here), corn (which was mostly for the aristocrats) and for meat there was always llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs and dried fish since there tended to be a lot of it on the coast.

The Inka began as a tiny tribe on the shore of lake Cuzco (or Qosqo) which became a city-state in a world in turmoil. You see to these Andeans, the World was the Andes and that world had sunken into chaos since the last two great empires had fallen. Now these Inkans had to pick up the pieces. Manco Qapak or however you'd like to spell it was the son of the Sun God and as such all his sacred, inbred (for they married their sisters) royal family were seen as wise, just and perfect. After all, they were Demi-Gods.

An Inka named Pachacuti who was the ninth Sapa Inka (or Emperor) would tranform his tribe into an Empire. His name meant "Earth-Shaker" and he was about to shake the Andean world. Pachacuti would send spies to report to him about neighbouring kingdoms and states and he would offer them to join the Empire. Or die of course. They'd try diplomacy, economic deals, marriage exchanges, political alliances to get kingdoms to join his expanding empire. Failing that, he'd go to war to get what he wanted. These imperialists had the smarts to take over a chaotic world.

The Inka had the best organized army around. If they didn't, some other people like the Chimu would conquer them, take their wives and pillage their crops. The Inka brought a variety of weapons to battle but the most interesting thing as that they lacked iron weapons. They had bronze weapons but not iron. A reason why is that the Inka liked they're metals to be flexible, not hard. The Inka used slings which could throw flaming rocks wrapped in cotton at foes, shields made out of hardwood, helmets due to the projectile nature of their warfare, axes (which was reserved for the elite in battle), clubs and bronze swords. Each soldier wore cotton tunics and if they were nobility they could sport awards or jewelry in battle.

After a region was conquered, it'd have to play by Inka rules.. or else. The Inka would pretty much leave a tribe alone most of the time as long as your swore allegiance and did labour when they asked you to. Like the Soviets, they'd resettle a restless population if it was getting too uppity or put them in different locations to stop a potential revolt. This was made easy by the roads they built so that troops could move to these areas quickly and suppress an uprising or go to the frontier to battle a new enemy. The Sapa Inka would also intermarry daughters from different tribes to get a hold over an ethnic group so that they were now allied with the new elite - the Inka.

As highland Inka moved to a more reasonable sea-level things got better. They could grow more and more diversified crops. They could have more children who didn't have to feel cold all of the time. Also, there was peace. But being forceably moved along with the rest of your tribe is never a fun and happy time and doing labour for the Sapa Inka was time away from the farm terraces. Since the Inka were communists and everyone belonged to the head of state, the Sapa Inka. Things like food were distributed on his whim. Food, weapons, clothes and other material were stored so that they could be distributed when the people need them like during a famine or an unexpected campaign north. All of this was measured by knots on strings called Quipus because to most socialist societies, keeping stats on things was very important. Such as the fancy cloth made out of the softest Vicuna fur which was a symbol of status and wealth.

The religious ideas of the Inka also allowed them to govern an Empire in the first place. Since the Sapa Inka was a direct descendant from the highest God in their pantheon ; Inti the Sun God who created the world. It was the right thing to do to bow to his will, accept his judgement and generally shut up when things went bad for you and your family. Having a Demi-God on Earth ruling over must've made the Inka feel safe and special, but not even warm and happy feelings could save these theocrats from the Civil War they were about to have... or the Castilian Spaniards.

Inka rule wasn't a set pattern. The oldest son wasn't always the heir to the throne. Brothers would compete with each other to rule such as the sons of Huayna Qapak. Around 1500 his armies conquered Quito in modern day Ecuador and to seal the deal he married one of their princesses. They had a son named Atahualpa. He died in 1525 due to smallpox which in an epidemic killed him and a third of the remaining Inka in the Empire after smallpox had just wiped out a third of the Aztecs further north in Mesoamerica. Huascar, the pure Inka son of Wayna or Huayna Qapaq (i'm sticking with pure Inka spelling after this) took control of Qosqo.

Atahualpa gathered in army in Quito but Huascar quickly moved his forces north and after a fierce battle captured him. However, during a party to celebrate he escaped due to a woman who came to visit him during his imprisonment. He created a new army to do battle with his half-brother. After 3 years of warfare and an estimated 500,000 dead it seemed like Atahualpa was winning and he came to Cajamarca to relax and that's when he heard of the Spanish arrival.

It seems fitting that the die-hard Inka warriors would be subdued with a people who's had a harder history than they had. The Spaniards weren't even called Spaniards then. The ones who spoke Spanish were Castilians and they had a hard life. For more than 700 years they've been fighting each other and Muslims from Africa who'd conquered Iberia. They launched a reconquista to take back their homeland which finally happened in 1492 with the fall of Granada. The conquistadors mainly came from a province called Extremadura which was extremely poor and the best way for young men from there to make money was to become a soldier. Thats what Francisco Pizarro and his cousin Hernan Cortez did.

Most people know the story of the battle of Cajamarca where less than 200 Castilians defeated 20,000 hardened Inka warriors but the modern excuse is that the Inka were celebrating the end of the war but the weapons the Spanish used were devastating to the Inka. Horses made them swift and struck fear into the Inka who'd never seen them before. Their iron shields, swords and armour protected and struck down natives easily. Although the arquebus (long musket) was useful i'd imagine it was impossible to use considering that before you could get a shot in you'd get an arrow in the eye just trying to fire the damn thing. Crossbows were just easier to use.

Atahualpa was captured and strangled after giving the Castilians an amazing ransom to be set free but he was later strangled probably because if he escaped, the Castilians knew he'd just gather an army to defeat them. That's when the Inka rebellions began.

Years after the Spanish conquest, Inka armies were besieging their old capital Qosqo to reclaim their empire but after 10 months of siege the rebellion led by Manco Inka Yupanqui failed to conquer the city. After an unsuccessful Spanish siege of the fortress city of Ollantaytabmo he retreated from the mountains to the jungles of the city of Vilacabamba where an residual Inka state was run. All the while, Quechuas and Aymaras (the people who made up the Inka Empire) rebelled against Spanish rule as typhus, smallpox and measles at away at their numbers until there was only 2 million people left in Peru. In 1572, the last Inka Emperor Tupac Amaru (that's where Tupac Shakur, the wrapper got his name from I believe) was attacked by the Spanish viceroy and after a heroic fight the last Inka emperor was hanged. Other Inka descendants fled around the world to avoid death as far flung as Sicily and the US.

If you think the Inka rebellions are over, they're not. Even today, the mainly Quechua Shining Path is once again resurgent in Peru after a bloody conflict in the 1980s which killed thousand of people. The natives are at it against the Spanish conquistadors descendants who own most of th wealth and the fancy clothing. I can't blame them for trying to be communist like their ancestors did. They're just lucky their descendants are in the millions still speaking Quechua. I'm sure there's only a million Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs left in Mexico. Some tribes get all the luck, especially if you're born a conquerer. Must be that mountain air....

America Becomes GM

The deficit of the US is the biggest since the Second World War at 12 percent and not because we're facing the forces of Imperial Japan or the Third Reich. It's because poor people who wanted to live the American Dream got hit with the reality that they couldn't and they'll have to lose their homes, jobs and sanity. Fitting. A ulitarian society like the US where the "Pursuit of Happiness" is the national ideal goes mad when people can't be happy without their materiel goods. It's like a Marxists wet dream.

When the budget passes sometime in April, according to Obama it will save us and defeat the Recession. Wrong. I'm sure half of that money shall be spent on pork. In fact, the whole thing smells like bacon anyway. Spending money on construction projects like it's 1990s Japan. Sickening. Didn't help the Japanese much did it? Blame it on the Baby-Boomers.

The Baby-boomers were the worst generation to have ever been born. Their sense of entitlement, absolute greed and their lust for life pretty much wrecked the planet. Going from pollution, to terrorism etc. Things will just get worse when these parasites retire.

The Age Wave theory suggests that because of the baby-boomers retiring, the US stock market will peak between 2007 and 2009 after which we'll experience rising unemployment, decline in house values and stock prices. Gee, I wonder what's happening right now?

The US government's response has been strange. Since Mr Obama is a worldy man, bringing in foreign ideas seems to be the right thing to do. Making the US more like France isn't a wise idea. After all, he's crushing that Protestant Work-Ethic, Anglo-Saxon Free Market tradition with high returns and disastrous losses. Worse than Jim Cramer can make you lose in a week while investing in GE, but that's a story for later.

Let's imagine the United States as a car company and for the purpose of my diatribe, GM. It's been beating out competitors for years, and investing in itself until one day a better, faster model comes along that's learned from the older one (GM). It conquers its foreign markets, even in its own homeland. GM is losing money because of the Union deals its homeland makes it agree to with its workers. So, GM loses out to lets say... Geely/Tata.

The US economy and prestige has taken too many hits during the George W Bush era. Iraq was bad. Real bad. If America the car brand became powerful due to the suicidal behaviour of Volkswagen and lets say Toyota. It's going down the path that its former rivals had taken decades before. The reason why I said Geely is because Geely is a Chinese car company that's now trying to enter the North American car market. Let them try, after all it's a free market. Tata is slowly trying to maneouvre itself as the 3rd World's favourite necessity, besides the AK-47.

America is GM because even though GM currently nearly 200,000 employees, it must pay benefits to over 1 million former workers who don't provide very much to the company. This is why GM and America are going bankrupt, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

The Rise and Fall of Iraqi Christianity

One of the unfortunate consequences of the Iraq War is the destruction of Iraqi Christianity. Ever since the Americans first rolled into the country, some 300,000 have fled the violence in their homeland due to gangs of Muslims killing them, their priests and torching their churches. What caused the population of Iraq to go from mostly Christian to today's mostly Shia Muslim?

Iraq has been Christian for almost 2000 years. After the Roman Empire was declared Christian in the year 392 AD, Mesopotamians embraced Christianity whole-heartedly with some helpings of Zoroastrianism due to Persian influence and attacks. Then came Islam, and that changed everything.

When Arabian tribes invaded Mesopotamia they didn't force everyone to convert to Islam under the threat of death. No, it was much more complicated than that. In the 7th and 8th centuries populations in Egypt, Persia and Mesopotamia converted to Islam rather slowly. Being a Muslim was a priviliege in those times. For Muslims, did not have to pay a special tax for not being Muslim. Being a member of the People of the Book was expensive. As the ruling Umayyad Dynasty became more and more luxurious the People of the Book felt the need to convert. So, the Caliphate's tax base shrunk and that led to the end of them and the rise of the Abbasids. Large Christian populations managed to survive on the power of their clerics in mostly the Levant, Egypt and Iraq. Iraqi Christianity morphed into Assyrian, Syriac,Nestorian and other forms of Orthodox Christianity.

For hundreds of years, these branches of Christianity kept the faith. The Nestorians did extremely well as they spread their faith from Mesopotamia to the western deserts and plains of modern day China. This sort of networking gained them alliances with these Central Asian peoples and soon to be the top dog of Eurasia, the Mongols. Yes, there was some truth to the legend of Prester John from the Middle Ages. The Nestorian church made many converts in Mongolia where many Khans had names like Mark and George. Genghis Khan's daughter-in-law

Sorghaq-Tani was a Christian. How fortunate for the Crusader States in the Levant when the Khan of the time Mongka was familiar with Christianity. Western ambassadors begged the Khan for help and he did by sending his brother Hulagu to destroy Islam. He nearly did too.

The Mongol army destroyed the Assassin cult, killed the last Caliph of Islam and throughly destroyed Iraqi irrigation and the city of Baghdad. However, when the Crusaders saw their Asiatic saviours they weren't too thrilled. Perhaps Attila the Hun was still fresh in the European memory. Still, Christianity in the Middle East was saved by Buddhist horsemen. Sadly, they fell to an Egyptian Mameluke army.

From this high point, Iraqi Christianity was going to face some very bad lows coming in the form of Timur the Lame or Tamerlane. Another Central Asian but he was Muslim this time and he killed hundreds of thousands of Christians in Northern Iraq by piling their heads in mounds to prove it. The chess playing warlord depopulated northern Assyrian Iraq and created the spiral Iraqi Christianity finds itself in today. Like in the wake of World War I, Iraqi Christians were attacked and massacred for supporting the British Mandate over their country.

In the height of Saddam's reign, there was more than 1 million Iraqi Christians. Now, there's less than 700,000 in the country. Thousands of fled to the Kurdish/Christian North or to Syria and to European countries like Sweden. Half the country's Christians have fled making most of the Iraqi refugees. Hard to believe that secular Ba'athist Iraq was a better place for Christians than today's new democractic Iraq.

I forsee the decline of Iraqi Christianity to the point where derelict Churches and octogenarian priests will have to attend to an aging and depressed flock. Far too bombed, threatened and torture to thrive but far too stubborn to leave. After all, Iraq is home.