BACK TO THE DUCHY OF MUSCOVY
Back in the 1990s, I wrote Back to the Duchy of Muscovy, describing how the centuries of Russia’s relentless expansion from the small area around Moscow to a geographical behemoth – see A Short History of Russia – may well work in reverse.
A relentless shrinking would occur, I surmised, with one region after another breaking apart from the Kremlin’s grasp if Russia did not embrace freedom and democracy but continued its authoritarian ways after the extinction of the Soviet Union.
Alas, my Back to… article is gone with the wind of a quarter-century ago. Then along comes Sergej Sumlenny, a Russian scholar of Russia’s history with its conquered people and neighbors. Here is a spectacularly informative YouTube interview of him explaining how Russia could soon be on its way back to the Duchy of Muscovy. Enjoy!
RUSSIA IS A FAKE POWER
Winston Churchill famously called Russia "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." A more accurate description of the current Russian Federation is a forgery wrapped in a deception inside a lie.
Numerous analysts have focused on Moscow’s campaign of disinformation to undermine the West, but they have barely noticed that the most important subject of disinformation is Russia itself. Moscow has a long record of deceiving Westerners and depicting its empire as invincible.
In a previous imperial incarnation, Soviet communism and socialist internationalism were supposed to ensure salvation for all humanity. Until, that is, they were exposed as a fraud. Today’s Russia has created an image of great power status, economic strength, and military power that is rapidly unraveling in Ukraine. This is revealing that the Russian state structure itself stands on rotting foundations.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY KNOWING WHAT MATTERS TO YOU
Changing behavior, learning new skills, overcoming personal limitations, all take consciousness, time and willpower.
Willpower works like a muscle: it strengthens with use over time, but it also takes energy. When our reserves get depleted – through fatigue, hunger, or overuse – it can weaken. But what if we have to do things anyway?
I think we’ve all been there at some point, and somehow we rise to the occasion. How can this be when our willpower is spent? What makes the difference?
What it all comes down to is that we care enough. Big things can happen when something matters enough to us.
COURTSHIP IN THE GALAPAGOS
The male Magnificent Frigatebird has a flap of loose bright red skin on his neck called a “gular sac.” During mating season, they huff and puff, filling it with air to blow it up like a balloon. They then parade around showing off for the ladies, for the bigger the red balloon, the more the ladies are aroused. Size matters, even in the Galapagos.
This is only one of many courtship displays among the birds and animals of these extraordinary islands. No wonder the Galapagos are called “evolution’s laboratory.” (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #199 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
ARE YOU A GROOMER?
Do you talk about sex with 5-year-olds behind their parents' back?- Do you begin sentences with, "Don't tell your parents, but..."
- Do you encourage kids to cut off their sex organs?
- Are you a Disney Executive?
- Did you quit your teaching job after they passed the Parental Rights Act in Florida?
- Does taking other people's kids to a drag show and calling it a "field trip" seem ok to you?
- Are you now, or have you ever been, a politician?
- Have you ever helped a child acquire sex hormones without their parent's knowledge?
- Does David French think you're a "blessing of liberty”?
Tally up your number of "Yes" answers and consult this chart:
1-2: Oh no! You're a groomer!
3-4: Wow. Definitely a groomer.
5-6: Yep, still groomer.
7-8: There's a Law & Order SVU episode with your name on it.
9: Ok, we're calling the police.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE CRUSADER FORTRESS IN THE CAUCASUS
This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.
American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons. They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/08/22
Russian war crime scene, Bucha, Ukraine, April 5, 2022
The Russian soldiers who did this to five innocent civilian Ukrainians, two men, two women, one child, can no longer be considered human, but subhuman barbarian monsters. Their goal – now a common sentiment expressed by many Russians on the Internet – is the complete physical extinction of the Ukrainian people.
Their Final Solution for Ukraine is the same as Nazi Germany’s for the Jews. Denial of one is just as morally depraved as denial of the other.
Survivors of the Bucha Massacre remain in a state of shock with no answer to their question, “Why do the Russians hate us so much?” It may be an unanswerable question just as why did the Nazi Germans hate Jews so much. Right now the answer doesn’t matter. All that matters is the defeat of such genocidal insanity.
For it’s not just Bucha – it’s what’s found in any place liberated by Ukrainian forces from Russian occupation.
THE NIHILIST OMELETTE OF THE LEFT
The last 14 months have offered one of the rare occasions in recent American history when the hard Left has operated all the levers of federal government. The presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the permanent bureaucratic state are all in progressive hands.
And the result is a disaster that is uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists whose crazy ideas are tearing apart the fabric of the country.
In pursuit of its nihilist utopian omelet, the Left cares little about the millions of middle-class Americans it must break to make it.
The result is an unmitigated disaster that not only has tarred the Democrat Party, corrupted once-revered agencies, and alienated half the country from our cultural institutions, but now endangers the very health and security of the United States.
AGIOS LAZAROS
We’re all familiar with the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead four days after his entombment in John 11:1-44. But what happened to Lazarus afterwards – what did he do with the rest of his (second) life?
He left Judea to live on the island of Cyprus. There he met Paul the Apostle and his evangelizing partner Barnabas who was a Cypriot. They appointed him the first Bishop of Kition (present day Lanarca), where he lived for another 30 years, then upon his second death was buried for the last time.
A church was built over his marble sarcophagus which has undergone many resurrections itself over the last two millennia. But here it stands today after all those ravages of time, Agios Lazaros, the Church of St. Lazarus, over his still-preserved sarcophagus. On every Lazarus Saturday (eight says before Easter), an icon of St. Lazarus is taken in procession through the streets of Lanarca. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #165 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 04/07/22
No doubt about it – The Babylon Bee is the absolute best satire site on the Internet, just see the above. But this is a real BB news story:
Free speech absolutist Elon Musk buys largest chunk of Twitter stock, and the Woke are freaking out:
Liberals Rattled After Elon Musk Joins Twitter Board.
Or as The Babylon Bee reports it:
[Note by Jack – this is Skye’s best yet – you’ve got to read it entire!]