Wall Painting From A Christian Church, Qocho (Gaochang), 683–770 CE. The Murals From The Christian
Wall painting from a Christian church, Qocho (Gaochang), 683–770 CE. The murals from the Christian temple at Qocho (German: Wandbilder aus einem christlichen Tempel, Chotscho) consist of three fragments from Church of the East wall paintings—Palm Sunday, Repentance, and Entry into Jerusalem. These were discovered by the German Turpan expedition in the early 20th century, led by archaeologists Albert Grünwedel and Albert von Le Coq.
Dating from the 7th to 9th centuries, the murals originated in a now-ruined Church of the East structure in Qocho, an ancient oasis city in Chinese Turkestan—modern-day Xinjiang, China—which once served as the capital of the Uyghur Kingdom of Qocho. The original Entry into Jerusalem mural has been lost; only a line drawing made by Grünwedel survives. Today, the surviving murals are housed in the Museum of Asian Art in Dahlem, Berlin.
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BRICS+: Bright or Dark Perspectives of a Block of Countries in the Path to Real or Delusional Multipolarity
When last August, in the XV BRICS summit (22-24.8.2023), it was announced that the five constituent members of the Block (China, India, Russia, and Brazil, as initial members in 2006, with the addition of South Africa in 2010) agreed to admit another six (6) countries, namely Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE (herewith mentioned in alphabetic order; Argentina did not make use of the offer, following the recent presidential elections), the member states ushered the world community in a new era. The groundbreaking decision will be effect January 1st 2024. The development -in and by itself- is neither good nor bad; the outcome will depend on the choices that will be made and the changes that will be implemented with respect to the nature, the status, the function, the targets, and the international role of the Block itself. In fact, right now, all options are open.
Contents
I - What BRICS is and what it is not
II - Strong points of BRICS
III - Weak points of BRICS
IV - The Expansion of BRICS
V - What next for the BRICS?
VI - Economic interests can be the basis of only loosely associated states (or a League), not a union of states
VII - Multilateral organizations of states can never be established as an opposite pole of a world power
VIII - Multipolarity: a reality or a delusion?
IX - Multipolarity tomorrow: a reality only through the isolation of the unipolar world center
What is better or more suitable? Is it wise to enlarge BRICS or to deepen the integration of this block of 11 countries? The challenges are enormous and the repercussions will be cataclysmic for the entire world. This topic has indeed been controversial for some time; Russia, India and Brazil were not enthusiastic about China's incessant suggestions for the "influx of fresh blood". In fact, the decision to invite six emerging market group countries was a compromise; several other states had expressed their wish to join, but after numerous deliberations, for various reasons they were not accepted now.
Before new members arrive, the existing partners should define what they truly want BRICS or BRICS+ to be; this issue is still perplex, diverse and vague. In this regard, it is crucial to always recall that the original concept of BRIC (for only four countries) is credited to an Englishman, namely Jim O'Neill (Baron O'Neill of Gatley), who was at the time the chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management; the idea was first expressed within very different context -quite noticeably- in November 2001.
However, the governments concerned took some time to explore and evaluate the thought before adapting it to their interests and perspectives; the first high-level meetings started in 2006, and the first formal summit (4 members) was held in Yekaterinburg in July 2009. Everyone today effortlessly understands that the world was very different at the time; meanwhile, the achievements of the 5-country block, although significant for the beneficiaries, were modest at the international level.
Consequently, before considering BRICS as the perfect counterbalance to the West (as President Putin stated openly last year), it is essential for anyone to accurately understand what BRICS is, what it is not, what it can be, and what it cannot.
I - What BRICS is and what it is not
BRICS is not an 'organization' like the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), which is a Eurasian political, economic, international security and defense organization, and the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), which is an economic union of several post-Soviet states located in Eurasia. To be constructive and effective in his approach to this topic, an astute observer should dissociate three totally distinct issues:
a- the hitherto achievements of the 5-country block;
b- what BRICS is nowadays; and
c- what BRICS can become in the future. In this regard, what Muhammad Kamal wrote in the Egyptian daily Al Masry al Yom (« نحو عضوية «البريكس; Towards BRICS Membership) is totally inconsistent; worse, his pessimism for Egypt's adhesion to the 5-country block only reflects the wishes of the idiotic and corrupt stooges of Western embassies in Cairo. This type of thought may be disastrous for Egypt. If BRICS did not achieve 'much' in the past, this fact hinges on eventually misplaced worldviews and pointless considerations that the member states may have had. All the same, with a new approach, with an accurate perception of what an expanded BRICS can or cannot become, and with a strong commitment to the interests of these countries' populations, one can certainly mark a spectacular success.
Definitely, BRICS is not an organization; it is not an economic bloc, in spite of the numerous projects launched and materialized, such as the New Development Bank (launched in 2014-2015), the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), the BRIC Cable (the construction of which has not yet started), joint publications, and various initiatives. Under discussion are issues of paramount importance, namely a potential BRICS payment system and an eventual common currency. It becomes therefore evident that there are slow steps toward a comprehensive partnership.
Precisely because BRICS is not an organization, they don't have a proper portal, as it happens in the case of existing international bodies like the SCO, the Turkic Union or the African Union. Instead, they have a rudimentary site with basic info, and every annual meeting comes up with a separate, new site.
The rest is up to private initiatives, think tanks, research centers, online magazines, and the world's mass media.
As group of countries, BRICS is a heteroclite array of states with certain common interests, but also with very divergent economies, structures and legislations, and partly different socioeconomic visions; until now, no common long-term perspective has been envisaged – let alone agreed upon. This means that the governments of the member states have to seriously consider and scrupulously study how they will manage to set up a common economic space and how to first offer themselves the necessary tools in order to advance in that direction.
Many charts, tables, drawings and tables have been produced in order to highlight to all what BRICS really is; but this approach comprises also a drawback that can cause confusion and misjudgment. This is due to the fact that each visual representation highlights only one aspect of the reality; however one gets a complete idea of the reality, only if one goes through illustrations of all the existing aspects of the reality. One missing diagram about the BRICS is enough to obscure our understanding and confuse our perception.
II - Strong points of BRICS
As of end 2023, over 3.3 billion people lived in the BRICS countries, making more than 40% of the world population; BRICS states stretch over 30% of the world's land surface and account for 26% of the global economy. The 5-country block represents 18% of trade in goods and 25% of foreign investment. At this point, we already face some challenges in our effort to quantify the reality. Verifiable facts like the area and the population of a country are undeniable points of reference; the area of a country is measured in kilometers square, whereas the population is estimated in millions or thousands of people. However, when it comes to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country, there are two diametrically opposed methods of calculation; the end results may be very divergent.
GDP estimates published by financial and statistical institutions are calculated at market or government official exchange rates. But what is called 'Nominal GDP' is stated without taking into consideration the existing differences in the cost of living among the countries. This means that the data presented can vary enormously from one year to another due to fluctuations in the currency exchange rates; but this may be temporary and therefore irrelevant.
That is why GDP (PPP) forecast estimates are to be considered as a better reflection of the economic realities, and of the comparison between two countries; to sort this data and publish their databases, financial and statistical institutions calculate using both, market and government official exchange rates. PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) is a method of measuring that takes into consideration the relative cost of local goods, services and inflation rates of the country.
The ensuing difference can be colossal: China's nominal GDP for the year 2023 is 19.37 trillion US$, but the PPP-based GDP of China for the same year is 33 trillion US$; on the contrary, on either case, US GDP amounts to 26.85 trillion US$. As it can be surmised, PPP-based GDP is preferable for comparison; all the same, the size of an economy being also a matter of political propaganda, many Anglo-Saxon institutions deliberately show a predilection for Nominal GDP in order to occasionally show that Russia is not among the top ten economies of the world.
III - Weak points of BRICS
Be that as it may, the aforementioned impressive figures about the BRICS are not attested on other occasions; for instance, the total voting quota of the 5-country block in the IMF is only 14.7%, although in 2021 they accounted for about a third of world GDP, a fifth of world trade, about a quarter of direct investment, and their foreign exchange reserves reached 35% of the world's total. This point was highlighted by President Putin in his address to President Xi Jinping on 22nd June 2022.
On another note, in the US$ 109 trillion world stock market, BRICS represent only a small segment of the world market capitalization (around 20%), whereas the US, which is home to 39 of the 100 largest companies in the world, has more than 40% of the market and the European Union amounts to ca. 11%.
IV - The Expansion of BRICS
On the basis of the above mentioned data, one can understand that the recently admitted six (6) countries do not constitute a major expansion. When it comes to total area (in kilometers square), the six states {Argentina (2.780.400 km2), Saudi Arabia (2.149.690 km2), Iran (1.648.195 km2), Ethiopia (1.104.300 km2), Egypt (1.002.450 km2) and UAE (83.600 km2)} amount to ca. 20% (8768635 km2) of the land surface of the BRICS countries (ca. 40 million km2).
Similarly, with respect to population, the six newly accepted states {Ethiopia (107.334.000), Egypt (105.388.000), Iran (85.298.600), Argentina (46.654.581), Saudi Arabia (32.175.224) and UAE (9.282.410)} have a total population of 386.132.815 people, which is around 10% of the current population of BRICS. However, the 11-country block will be home to almost half the population of the world (46%); this marks a significant threshold indeed.
Similar conclusions we draw concerning the economic indicators of the six newly admitted states and notably their PPP-based GDP; combined the GDP of the six countries {Saudi Arabia (2.300.967 US$ million), Egypt (1.803.584 US$ million), Iran (1.691.819 US$ million), Argentina (1.274.807 US$ million), UAE (890.171 US$ million), Ethiopia (393.847 US$ million)} is around 8.350.000 US$ million; in other words, the six states produce only one seventh (1/7) of the total GDP of the current BRICS member states (56 US$ trillion).
This aspect was duly discerned also by those who are accustomed to rather take into account the nominal GDP; that's why they underscored the fact that "Saudi Arabia is the only trillion-dollar economy being added to the BRICS".
Combined the nominal GDP of the six new member states {Saudi Arabia (1.061.902 US$ million), Argentina (641.102 US$ million), UAE (498.978 US$ million), Egypt (378.110 US$ million), Iran (367.970 US$ million), Ethiopia (156.083 US$ million)} amounts to 3.1 US$ trillion; this is about one ninth (1/9) of the nominal GDP of the current BRICS member states (27.7 US$ trillion).
If we stop at this point and we do not further explore the manifold aspects of BRICS expansion, we will be left with the idea that, due to necessary compromises, the first major phase of BRICS expansion did not include several other countries, which also expressed the interest to join, notably Algeria, Belarus, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Vietnam, etc. But this will prevent us from observing a very interesting and crucial aspect of the development. As a matter of fact, this was not particularly highlighted by anyone in the world's mainstream mass media. There is indeed one economic sector in which the present stage of BRICS expansion made a significant breakthrough; this is the energy sector, and more particularly, the Oil production.
As a matter of fact, the addition of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE will more than double BRICS' share of global oil production. With six out of the nine top oil producers being BRICS+ member states (Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Brazil, Iran, UAE), the 11-country block represents 43% of the world oil production.
This means that, in spite of the compromises made, BRICS made a big step ahead in preparing their forthcoming transformation from an ill-defined block of countries to a well-defined organization that will change the post-WW II world drastically and irrevocably. As I already said, the concept that they will have to adopt for their alliance is that of the common economic space.
V - What next for the BRICS?
Dangling between long term strategy and everyday opportunities, the governments of the 5- or 11-country block can really make of their partnership whatever they want. They can turn it to the tool par excellence for the transformation of the present world; indeed, they can make of the BRICS+ the cornerstone in the foundation of a human world order of unity, equity, justice, lawfulness, concord, and worldwide cordiality. Reversely, they can neglect their imagination, fail to create a vision, ignore their intellect, and thus waste their time.
In this regard, it is clear that BRICS+ will be the reflection of the shared vision that the member states, the respective governments, and -above all- the civil societies will initiate. It is therefore essential to avoid extreme optimism or pessimism and to make an effort not to mix a long term perspective with any type of unnecessary political propaganda. The difference can be understood in the following examples:
Speaking about Russia’s vision of the BRICS+ format as early as February 2018, Sergey Ryabkov, a noteworthy statesman and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister since 2008, stated: «we suggest that our partners consider BRICS+ as a platform for developing what could be termed an 'integration of integrations'».
This sounds as sheer advocacy of the 'single economic space' concept, which leads to economic union. Quite contrarily, Sergei Lavrov (Center for World Politics and Strategic Analysis) and Kirill Babaev (Director of the Institute of China and Modern Asia), both of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in their article «И вширь, и вглубь - Пути укрепления институциональной основы БРИКС» (Both in breadth and in depth - Ways to strengthen the institutional framework of BRICS / Бабаев К.В., Лавров С.В. И вширь, и вглубь // Россия в глобальной политике. 2023. Т. 21. № 5. С. 69–81)
present a far more realistic approach, opting for the 'common economic space' concept.
There are important differences between the two concepts, and it is essential to make this point clear, because the 'single economic space' concept simply cannot work in the case of BRICS, and even more so that of BRICS+. This is exactly what the authors of the aforementioned article do; the question is whether this is enough.
VI - Economic interests can be the basis of only loosely associated states (or a League), not a union of states
At this point, taking into consideration the international situation as it is evidently downgrading over the past few years, the governments of the BRICS+ member states must truly become consciously serious in their judgment, drastically bold in their action, and greatly resourceful in their vision before they are soon met with an aggravated deterioration of the world order in which their efforts will unfortunately be irrevocably meaningless.
Although BRICS+ governments are correct in their analyses and conclusions as regards the major structural problems of the world economy, they all apparently fail to understand where the world community is led to; this is due to the prevailing, very confusing, and definitely perplex situation. But the present condition of the world affairs makes of the aforementioned economic problems only a tiny sector of the very grave troubles that currently exist and impact every human across the Earth.
Consequently, in spite of the fact that the world economy is in major trouble, all its aspects cannot be tackled independently of the other, grave and thorny, issues of intellectual, academic, educational, scientific, cultural, and socio-governmental order that we are currently facing. As a matter of fact, erroneous intellectual concepts, delusional interpretations of the reality, intentional distortions of World History, ideological aberrations, and overwhelming oppression of indigenous cultures are at the origin of developments that brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. Scientific absurdities, military interventions, and corrupt governmental practices contributed to the overall deterioration, and have therefore to be also taken into consideration.
As far as BRICS+ member states are concerned, there is one word that terminally encapsulates the aforementioned reality in its totality: Western colonialism. What matters in this regard is that this term is not to be identified with only its military, political and economic dimensions.
Colonialism is basically a criminal and anti-human development the most crucial dimension of which is cultural; culture determines the psychology of people, nations, ruling classes and governments, and this -in turn- impacts the local economy.
In addition to the aforementioned points, there is a critical factor which must also be taken into account: only a union of loosely associated states can ever be successfully established on the basis of economic interests. This is a fundamental condition to retain. As situation, it is due to the fact that states do not exist in themselves, but constitute the receptacle of human activity related to the administration and the governance of the society.
Consequently, a number of states can form an effective organization that will impact worldwide developments only on the basis of major decisions taken by conscious peoples and statesmen genuinely representing their societies, which are known for their historically diverse values, distinct moral principles, varied cultural heritage, but shared goals and common vision. But this is much broader than an economic union.
The perfect example of failure is in this regard offered by the European Union. The debilitated union of states started before 72 years with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC; 1952), which was designed to integrate the coal and steel industries in Western Europe (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Evaluated for that purpose, ECSC was good, but it could never progress in the direction of transformation from an economic community to one nation-state.
Different peoples do not integrate into one nation-state without a unifying force; this can certainly be a faith, a cult, a worldview or even an ideology, but never economic interests. That is why BRICS+ member states, although they are forced to define how to set up a 'common economic space', have to broaden the box and try to see things as widely as they can.
VII - Multilateral organizations of states can never be established as an opposite pole of a world power
In spite of the urgency of their economic demands for new standards and rules or a new world order (as many people say), BRICS+ member states have got to approach the world affairs in a different, far broader, and definitely comprehensive manner. This imperative is due to both, their incomparably enormous size and the undeniable fact that they altogether constitute a worldwide organization with major, not only economic, interests that they have in common. Actually, the troubles that all these countries face at the level of the international trade and world economy are due to
a- political developments that took place over the last70-80 years,
b- two successive World Wars,
c- numerous earlier conflicts,
d- extreme ideological aberrations,
e- preposterous intellectual assumptions,
f- outrageous educational-academic forgeries, and
g- a 5-century long, nefarious and calamitous, colonial legacy.
In this case, BRICS+ member states cannot possibly imagine that they are able to rectify a so deeply rooted injustice and inhumanity that prevail worldwide by merely sidestepping the US dollar via
- local currency trading,
- Mbridge (a multi-central bank digital currency platform, which is shared among participating central banks and commercial banks, as it is built on distributed ledger technology in order to enable instant cross-border payments and settlement) or
- other alternative payment routes and methods of de-dollarization.
In fact, their true problem is what is accurately called 'the Collective West' in its entirety. The US dollar replaced indeed the British pound as the world’s reserve currency (in 1944 following the Bretton Woods Agreement); it ceased unilaterally to be convertible to gold (in 1971, due to the so-called Nixon shock); and it became the sole currency in which Saudi Arabia is paid for Oil (in 1974, as per the terms of the Saudi Arabia and US Agreement on Cooperation, signed June 8, that made the petrodollar possible, which also known as 'the petrocurrency effect' and 'the petrodollar recycling').
However, all these developments consist, truly speaking, in Microhistory, if viewed within a wider context. In fact, they constitute only in the latest episodes of the colonial conquest, contamination and putrefaction, which have progressively enveloped the world. That is why BRICS+ member states must see things within a macrohistorical context and shape their decision making processes accordingly.
Precisely because the aspects of the world troubles are so many, BRICS+ member states have to realize that the country, which capitalized on its monetary privilege, namely the petrodollar, did so while also defending all the other aspects of the 5-century long Western predominance, which proved to be catastrophic for the entire world, except for the West European colonial powers and their annexes.
As a matter of fact, the historically true definition of the USA is not "the country with the US dollar as national currency", but "the heir of 5-century long, colonial legacy". This is what the US stands for – not just a currency.
Indeed, the US dollar is not only the default world currency, but at the same time, the strongest currency of the Western world. All the same, people often tend to forget that the American currency was first one of the strongest in the Western world, then its strongest, and only 'recently' the world's medium of exchange. It is therefore undeniable that, also at the financial and economic level, it represents the 'Collective West'.
Due to the successive historical developments, which led the entire Mankind to the present occurrence and on which the US predominance has persistently based its delusional legitimacy, it would be foolish to believe that the US will ever accept the reduction of the systemically omnipotent Western world into merely two or three poles (EU, US, and -eventually- Japan) of a delusional multipolar system composed by them and by the rising, major BRICS+ forces. Nuclear wars of any form are far more plausible to take place than a multipolar world to be potentially formed with the participation of the EU and the US.
To put it in simple words, you can never possibly ask someone, who considers himself as extraordinarily enormous as a 'dinosaur', to condescend to accept few 'cockroaches' as equal; this metaphor does not constitute the exact representation of the reality, but it accurately reflects the mentality of the people who currently run the EU, the US, the UK and their annexes. These forces have by now carried out a fully obvious colonial agenda across the Earth; even worse, they are evidently intending to implement the next parts of the agenda, which has already been proven as inherently unacceptable to the mankind – the majority of the misfortunate inhabitants of the Collective West included. In other words, the world situation is far worse than what most of the foolish or fooled leaders of the BRICS+ member states have imagined.
VIII - Multipolarity: a reality or a delusion?
Discussing about the chances for the emergence of a multipolar world system does not hinge only on a qualitative examination of intentions and a quest for world peace and security; it is not sufficient to only scrutinize the purposes of the decayed and ailing but raucous and rancorous elites of US, Germany, France, England and Italy from one side and assess the aspirations of the ruling classes of China, India, Russia, Brazil and a nebula of several heavily populated countries, namely Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Mexico, Ethiopia, Egypt, Congo, Vietnam, Turkey, Iran, Thailand, Tanzania and South Africa.
Despite the undeniable importance of all the aforementioned parameters, there is another factor that determines even more conclusively the outcome of the present cleavage. This pertains to the process of historical developments that brought about the present state of international affairs. There are only specific procedures that allow a multipolar world community to be formed; it cannot rise anytime anywhere.
The past eighty (80) years have been characterized by a unipolar system of world governance; this was not the first time in World History in which a very large part of the Earth was under the control of one state (the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Achaemenid Iran, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, the Chagatai Empire of Timur/Tamerlane, etc.) without any other state being able to challenge it.
Several political commentators often dare to portray the present period as the first time in which one country 'controlled' almost the totality of the surface of the Earth, but this is definitely a maximalist approach. In fact, as description, it is wrong. As conclusion, it has only a nominal value; this is so because the 'control' was asserted only via various layers of proxies, who were, practically speaking, unable to always govern all the territory that they claimed to possess.
It is essential not to confuse the present conjecture with the days that antedated WW II or WW I; many irrelevant historians and inconsistent intellectuals are pleased to draw parallels between 1914 and 2024 or between 1939 and 2024, but they are very wrong, confusing, and dangerously deceitful.
Parallels as regards the ensuing consequences or outcome cannot be drawn between a past circumstance and the present occurrence; this is so because people know what came next, after the past circumstance that they take as one pole of the parallel, but only assume that the other pole (namely the present occurrence) will have the same exit (namely a war).
Parallels can be drawn between a past circumstance and the present occurrence only with respect to the anteriority of both moments that are taken as parallels. In this case, we know very well that no unipolar system of world governance existed either in the period 1870-1914 or during the interval between the two world wars.
Prior to WW II, the world community revolved around six major poles, i.e. England (as the British Empire), USSR, USA, France, Japan and Germany; the six powers gradually formed two heteroclite groups of allies of which one prevailed in 1945.
Prior to WW I, the world community revolved around nine major poles, i.e. England (as the British Empire), the Russian Empire, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, USA, and Japan.
It is very critical at this point to comprehensively comprehend that those major poles or constituents of the world community did not seek to establish a multipolar system of world governance either in 1914 or in 1939; it is actually necessary to take into consideration the fact that the concept of 'world community' had not yet been formed or formulated as a substitute to the criminal colonial activities of England and France, which attempted to divide Africa, Western and South Asia, and Oceania among themselves.
Even worse for the silly raiders of the lost multipolarity, it is even more crucial to take into account that, if a proposal for the establishment of a multipolar system of world governance was made back in 1914, the colonial powers England and France would be the first to reject it. Actually, the criminal gangsters, who always ruled Paris and London and later hijacked Washington D.C., deliberately triggered WW I, by duly utilizing their paranoid Serbian lackeys.
Why England and France back in 1914 would vehemently oppose any proposal for the establishment of a multipolar system of world governance is easy to assess; this development would block their effort to terminally dismantle Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, while also effectively carrying out cruel operations of regime change in the German and the Russian Empires.
Furthermore, we have to also reckon with the fact that, if someone advanced a proposal as regards the establishment of a multipolar system of world governance back in 1939, he would surely be resolutely reprimanded by the criminal colonial rascals of London and Paris. England and France declared war on Germany, because they did not want to establish a multipolar world community including the USSR, Japan, Germany, and Berlin's ally Italy. As we all know, regime change operations took place in the latter three states in 1945, and 40-45 years later in the (until then greatly marginalized, continually defamed, and shamelessly vilified) USSR.
So, to conclude the present assessment, we have to perceive the establishment of the so-called 'world community' and the inception of the 'international law' as mere tricks, intentional schemes, and colonial contrivance deceitfully presented but successfully elaborated by England, France and their successor, namely the US. In fact, on multiple occasions over the past 80 years, it was fully proven that there is no world community, but a perilous jungle inhabited by ferocious monsters, which are more incensed and more devilish than any wild animal, those of the Mesozoic included.
The sole reality is this: what the mankind attested for 300 years -from the Carnatic Wars (1740-1763; Anglo-French wars in India) to the end of WW II- was only the rise of the Western colonial powers to world predominance. The world impressively shifted from a multipolar system of world belligerency (with 11 poles, namely Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid-Afshar Iran, Mughal India, and Qing China) to a unipolar system of world governance, which can be conclusively described as the Western barbarism and colonial tyranny over mankind.
The above makes clear to all that the termination of a unipolar system of world governance can never happen through negotiations with the central pole of the system; in a Jurassic environment, only idiots would believe in and count on such 'negotiations'.
IX - Multipolarity tomorrow: a reality only through the isolation of the unipolar world center
It would be anything between foolish and paranoid to imagine that the forces, which controlled the Western states and elites over the past five centuries, will be ready to yield power to those whom they have been considering, for at least 350-400 years, as targets for conquest and world dominance.
BRICS+ member states stand therefore in front of a dilemma: either reject the Western unipolar dominance or capitulate. Since the latter is a non-option, it would be useful to explore the possible ways to reject the barbarian, catastrophic and heinous Western rule. However, before pondering on how the 5-century long colonial impact can be overthrown by the countries that represent ca. 90% of the world population, it would be essential for all of them, and more particularly, for the BRICS+ governments, to specify the sectors in which the rejection of the colonial rule (or unipolar system of world governance) must take place.
Because it will be partly functional and basically ineffective, if the BRICS+ member states challenge the Collective West only at the monetary, financial and economic levels, it is imperative for the respective governments to come to an agreement about launching BRICS+ commissions specializing in almost all the sectors for which there are presently fully-fledged UN Specialized Agencies, Programmes and Funds, Research and Training Institutes, Other Entities and Bodies, as well as Related Organizations. A separate commission in Decolonization and De-Westernization should be added, involving groups of study and rejection of all aspects of academic, educational, scientific, intellectual, cultural, moral, behavioral and socio-governmental colonialism.
Following a 6-month period of tense consultations, the commissions and the groups of study should come up with conclusive proposals about the restructuring of all the international bodies, their priorities, works, methods and processes. Effectively backed by a comprehensive refutation of the 5-century long Western colonial order, an overwhelming denunciation of the racist and fallacious Western version of World History, and an all-encompassing condemnation of the preposterous and biased function of the UN for 80 years, BRICS+ member states and all their allies should irrevocably withdraw from all the UN organizations, unequivocally deny any legitimacy to the fake international body, and immediately launch the All Peoples Assembly, as the sole legitimate international body. This will convene initially for an indefinite period of time and institute the fair, just, unquestionably multilateral, and solid international milieu to which all the people worldwide have long aspired. A new Internet will have to be rapidly launched for all the member states totally independently from the US-based legacy system.
This will be tantamount to complete transformation of the BRICS+ into the new international body, which has been badly missing to almost all the people across the Earth. All the employees of the new international body and its specialized agencies, institutes and related organization will have to be proportionally hired on the basis of ethnic origin, language and religion/belief. It will therefore be impossible for a group that constitutes approximately 0.2% of the 8 billion world population to literally invade key positions, promote sectarianism, and thus become the well-justified reason of its own rejection by all the rest.
Subsequently, BRICS+ member states and all their allies will be accepted as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (CSO), which will turn out to be the de facto guarantee of worldwide peace and security. International relations with the NATO member states, their allies and satellites will be totally severed at all levels, commercial, educational, recreational, academic, intellectual, scientific, technological, economic, social, governmental and military.
This abrupt separation will evidently produce a tremendous international economic shock; but the BRICS+-led countries will be able to face the challenge, recover in relatively short time, and adapt in a far better environment totally void of the Western colonial barbarism, horrific criminality, heinous inhumanity, and evil delusions.
The Collective West must die and it will die; powerfully quarantined, asphyxiated within its borders, economically collapsed, socially imploded, and irreversibly poisoned by the evil delusions, sick literature, inhuman governance, rotten thoughts, insidious ideas, demented ideologies, corrupt arts, suicidal philosophies, absurd disbelief, and utter nonsense that their supposed spiritual, religious, intellectual and social leaders produced, the Western world will totally perish in the most deserved hecatomb, which will be the price they will pay for the unipolar system of world governance that they imposed and for the plans of human annihilation that they developed.
Quite unfortunately for the BRICS+ member states and their allies, there is no alternative; by totally isolating the unipolar world center (namely Canada, USA, UK, EU, Australia and New Zealand), which is what is called the 'Collective West', they will be in a position to effectively install a genuinely representative, peaceful, secure, sustainable multipolar system of world governance, which will extend covering the quasi-totality (ca. 90%) of the world population.
The only other possible transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world is nuclear; if the eventually foolish and fooled leaders of the BRICS+ member states do not truly know or do not duly expect this, it will certainly be too bad for them. If they do not act immediately according to the aforementioned description, they will inevitably offer their worst enemies the privilege of a surprise attack. This is so because the Collective West is very close to the point of no return; they reached the stage of irreparable social disintegration. Consequently, their own chance of survival is to trigger further wars abroad. This is actually what these barbarians have always done after 1492; but this time, it will surely be nuclear.
All those, who 'calmly' wait for the US presidential elections to take place and -even worse- anticipate the victory of Donald Trump, will be proven as the best, although unpaid, agents of the Collective West among the leadership of the BRICS+ member states.
And the establishment of a country, which is hit by a nuclear attack of any type, will have either to cause tremendous nuclear devastation -which involves also terrible collateral damages- or to leave in History the memory of a protracted but failed tenure. It will be a shame and an example to avoid.
Cosmas Megalommatis, Ra: World Mythology-1989
Κοσμάς Μεγαλομμάτης, Ρα: Παγκόσμια Μυθολογία, Ελληνική Εκπαιδευτική Εγκυκλοπαίδεια, 1989
Кузьма Мегаломматис, Ра: мировая мифология, Греческая педагогическая энциклопедия, 1989
Kosmas Megalommatis, Re (oder Ra): Weltmythologie, Griechische Pädagogische Enzyklopädie, 1989
Kosmas Gözübüyükoğlu, Ra: Dünya Mitolojisi, Yunan Pedagoji Ansiklopedisi, 1989
قزمان ميغالوماتيس، رع : اساطیر جهانی، دایره المعارف آموزشی یونانی، 1989
Côme Megalommatis, Rê (ou Râ): Mythologie mondiale, Encyclopédie pédagogique grecque, 1989
1989 قزمان ميغالوماتيس، رع : الأساطير العالمية، الموسوعة التربوية اليونانية،
Cosimo Megalommatis, Ra (o Rê oppure Rha): mitologia mondiale, Enciclopedia pedagogica greca, 1989
Cosimo Megalommatis, Ra: mitología mundial, Enciclopedia pedagógica griega, 1989
Cosmas Megalommatis, Ra: World Mythology, Greek Pedagogical Encyclopedia, 1989
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Σουννίτες και Σιίτες: στη ρίζα της διαφοράς, του Κοσμά Μεγαλομμάτη
Σουννίτες και Σιίτες: στη ρίζα της διαφοράς, του Κοσμά Μεγαλομμάτη – Εποπτεία 119, Ιανουάριος 1987, σελ. 29-37
Sunnis and Shiites: at the root of the dispute, by Cosmas Megalommatis: Epopteia (‘Overview’) 119, January 1987, p. 29-37
Сунниты и шииты: в основе спора, (автор:) Кузьма Мегаломматис: Эпоптея («Обзор») 119, январь 1987 г., с. 29-37
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Σχόλιο
(σχετικά με την ηλεκτρονική αναδημοσίευση του αρχικά προ 36 ετών δημοσιευμένου άρθρου μου) 21 Δεκεμβρίου 2023
Αναδημοσιεύοντας στο Ιντερνέτ αυτό το κείμενο, το οποίο έγραψα περαστικός από την Αθήνα τον Οκτώβριο ή τον Νοέμβριο του 1986, ασφαλώς και εντυπωσιάζομαι. Πριν από 36 χρόνια, είχα ήδη ολοκληρώσει πέντε-έξι χρόνια μεταπτυχιακών σπουδών (σε Παρίσι. Λονδίνο και Βρυξέλλες) ειδικευόμενος σε ασσυριολογία, αιγυπτιολογία, χιττιτολογία, ιρανολογία, μυστηριακές θρησκείες της Ύστερης Αρχαιότητας, Γνώση, Μανιχεϊσμό, θρησκευτικό συγκρητισμό, και καταγωγή των Χριστιανισμών. Είχα ήδη συμπληρώσει τρία χρόνια έρευνας σε Ανατολική Τουρκία, Συρία, Ισραήλ, Ιράκ, Ιορδανία, Κουβέιτ, και Ιράν, ετοιμάζοντας την διδακτορική διατριβή μου στην (Δυτική) Γερμανία. Και είχα μόλις αρχίζει να μελετώ το Ισλάμ, Ισλαμική Ιστορία, ισλαμικές επιστήμες, τέχνες, σοφία και μυστικισμό, ξεκινώντας με μαθήματα στη Σχολή (Μεντρέσα) Σουχάντα του Αγιατολλάχ Γιάχγυα Αλαμέχ Νουρί (σχετικά: https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/story/2008/01/080119_mf_nouri; σε φαρσί).
Όταν λοιπόν έγραψα αυτό το άρθρο, είχα παύσει να είμαι χριστιανός ορθόδοξος και ήμουν άθρησκος πολίτης της Ελλάδας (επισήμως – αυτό αναφερόταν στην ταυτότητά μου). Είχα αρχίσει να εξοικειώνμαι με το Ισλάμ ως λαϊκή θρησκεία και καθημερινή ζωή, δοξασίες και λατρεία, είχα αρχίσει να αντιλαμβάνομαι το χάος που χωρίζει από την ιστορική αλήθεια και τους δυτικούς ισλαμολόγους και τους μουσουλμάνους θεολόγους, και είχα αρχίσει να καταλαβαίνω το πόσο πολυδιάστατο ιστορικό θέμα είναι το Ισλάμ. Αλλά σε καμμία περίπτωση τότε δεν θα πίστευα ότι μόλις έξι χρόνια μετά την συγγραφή του εν λόγω άρθρου εκ μέρους μου θα αποδεχόμουν το Ισλάμ και θα γινόμουν μουσουλμάνος. Μάλλον θα γελούσα, αν κάποιος μου έλεγε τότε κάτι τέτοιο, έτσι προφητεύοντας το μέλλον.
Εκείνη η περίοδος χαρακτηρίστηκε από την τάση μου να πάρω ίσες αποστάσεις από τα πάντα, ώστε να εξουδετερώσω ξένες επιδράσεις επάνω μου και να δω την ιστορική εξέλιξη αντικειμενικά και ψυχρά, ή μάλλον (για να είμαι ακριβής) ζεστά, δηλαδή αγαπώντας το αντικείμενο της έρευνας και της μελέτης μου. Έτσι, απόλυτα εκτιμωντας το βάρος της ιστορικής παράδοσης της Ανατολής (δηλαδή Μεσοποταμία, Αίγυπτος, Ανατολία, Χαναάν, και Ιράν), το οποίο πέρασε μέσα στο τότε κυοφορούμενο Ισλάμ, κατάφερα να διακρίνω και να επισημάνω την ουσία των καταστάσεων και περιστάσεων που προκλήθηκαν γύρω αποό τον προφήτη Μωάμεθ - κάτι το οποίο κανένας δυτικός ισλαμολόγος και κανένας μουσουλμάνος θεολόγος δεν μπόρεσε να εντοπίσει: όταν γύρω από τον ετοιμοθάνατο Μωάμεθ δύο ομάδες πιστών συγκρούονταν για το ποιον θα ακολουθούσαν, 4000 χρόνια σουμεριακής, ακκαδικής, ασσυροβαβυλωνιακής και ιρανικής ιστορίας, παράδοσης, κληρονομιάς, αυτοκρατορικού ουνιβερσαλισμού, και εσχατολογικών προσδοκιών βάρυναν πάνω στις καρδιές και τα μυαλά τους, χωρίς εκείνοι να το αντιλαμβάνονται.
Είμαι λοιπόν σήμερα στα 67 μου πολύ χαρούμενος βλέποντας ότι στα 30 μου, με λίγο Ταμπαρί και λιγώτερο Τερμεζί, είχα καταφέρει να γράψω την επάνω αριστερά παράγραφο της σελίδας 31, η οποία αρχίζει με τις λέξεις: "το περίπλοκο της όλης υπόθεσης". Σήμερα, μουσουλμάνος και όχι άθρησκος, όχι μόνον δεν θα άλλαζα ούτε μία λέξη στην παράγραφο αυτή, αλλά επιπλέον θα έλεγα ότι η παρατήρηση αυτή αποτελεί την μόνη δυνατή βάση αντίληψης, κατανόησης και αποτιμησης του Ισλάμ και της εν γένει κυοφορίας και γέννησής του. Όλα τα άλλα όλων των μουσουλμάνων θεολόγων, αφελών μέσα στην αμορφωσιά και την επιπολαιότητά τους, και όλων των δυτικών ισλαμολόγων, δηλητηριασμένων μέσα στο αντι-χριστιανικό, αντι-ισλαμικό και αντι-θεϊκό μίσος τους, είναι απλώς παιδαριώδη και ασυνάρτητα. Μη βιαστείτε να νομίσετε ότι στην παράγραφο αυτή θα βρείτε όλη την Αλήθεια! Όμως σίγουρα θα βρείτε τους παράλληλους δρόμους τους οποίους πρέπει να βαδίσετε για να φθάσετε.
Υπάρχουν δύο μικρά τυπογραφικά λάθη (τότε τα κείμενα παραδίδονταν ως απλά χειρόγραφα και εύκολα ένα νεοελληνικό υ συγχέεται με ένα ν, σε επισεσυρμένη γραφή, όταν ο γράφων είναι μάλιστα βιαστικός. Όταν μάλιστα η επιμέλεια κειμένου γίνεται από άτομο που δεν κατέχει το θέμα, τότε ένα μικρό λάθος διπλασιάζεται. Οι δύο τελευταίες λέξεις στην πρώτη γραμμή της δεξιάς στήλης στην τελευταία σελίδα πρέπει να αναγνωσθούν ως: «των Χαουαρίτζ». Προφανώς, ο επιμελητής κειμένου, αφού διάβασε το όνομα ως «Χαοναρίτζ» (η σειρά «αουα» θα φάνηκε ως κάτι το πολύ ξενικό για ένα Νεοέλληνα), το εξέλαβε ως όνομα άνδρα, ενώ είναι όνομα ομάδας: οι Χαουαρίτζ (Khawarij ή Kharijites/ الخوارج).
Σήμερα, 36 χρόνια μετά, παρά τον αναγκαστικό συγχρωτισμό με μουσουλμάνους (εντός του πλαισίου της παγκοσμιοποίησης) και παρά τις ηυξημένες σχέσεις της Ελλάδας με αρκετά μουσουλμανικά κράτη, η μεροληπτική και τυφλή Ελλάδα των αμόρφωτων ψευτο-πανεπιστημιακών και των άξεστων δήθεν γεωπολιτικών αναλυτών που ξερνάνε απόβλητα και παραλογισμούς στις τηλεοράσεις, στα ραδιόφωνα και στο Ιντερνέτ, η κατάσταση δεν έχει σε τίποτα αλλάξει. Η λέξη «Χαουαρίτζ» φέρνει ελάχιστα αποτελέσματα σε μία online search, και φυσικά δεν υπάρχει καν λήμμα στην ελληνική Wikipedia παρά το γεγονός ότι τα αντίστοιχα λήμματα είναι μεγάλα (Hâricîler/Хариджиты/哈里吉派/خوارج) όπως άλλωστε πρέπει.
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Comment
(about the online republication of my article, which was originally published before 36 years) 21 December 2023
Republishing on the Internet this text, which I wrote when passing from Athens in October or November 1986, I am certainly impressed. 36 years ago, I had already completed five or six years of postgraduate studies (in Paris, London and Brussels) specializing in Assyriology, Egyptology, Hittitology, Iranology, Late Antiquity mystery religions, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, religious syncretism, and the origins of Christianity. I had already completed three years of research in Eastern Turkey, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Iran while preparing my PhD thesis in (West) Germany. I had just begun to study Islam, Islamic history, Islamic sciences, arts, wisdom & mysticism, starting at the Madrasah Shuhada of Ayatollah Yahya Alameh Nouri (https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/story/2008/01/080119_mf_nouri; in Farsi).
So, when I wrote this article, I had ceased to be an Orthodox Christian and I was an 'irreligious' Greek citizen (officially; it was mentioned on my identity card). I had started to familiarize myself with Islam at the level of popular religion and daily life, belief and cult; I had begun to perceive the chaos that separates the historical truth from the Western Islamologists and from the Muslim theologians; in addition, I had commenced to fathom what a multidimensional historical subject Islam is. But in no way would I then have thought that just six years after writing the article in question I would accept Islam and become a Muslim. I would have probably laughed if someone had said something like that to me at the time, thus foreseeing the future.
That period was characterized by my inclination to take equal distances from everything, in order to neutralize external influences on me and to see the historical development objectively and 'coldly' (or rather, to put it better, 'warmly'; namely expressing deep love for the object of my research and study). Consequently, comprehensively appreciating the weight of the historical tradition of the Orient (i.e., Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Canaan, and Iran), which was introduced into the then-embryonic Islam, I was able to discern and comprehend the essence of all the situations and the circumstances, which arose around the prophet Muhammad - something that no Western Islamologist and no Muslim theologian managed to detect: when around the dying Muhammad two groups of believers clashed over who to follow, 4000 years of Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian-Babylonian and Iranian history, tradition, heritage, imperial universalism, and eschatological expectations weighed upon their hearts and minds, without them understanding it.
So, today at 67, I am very happy to see that, when I was 30, having little knowledge of Tabari and even less of al-Tirmidhi, I managed to write a text like that of the top left paragraph of page 31, which begins with the words: "the complexity of the whole affair". Today, being a Muslim and not an irreligious man, not only would I not change a single word in this paragraph, but I would also say that this observation is the only possible foundation for the accurate perception, comprehension and evaluation of Islam, and of the entire process of its inception and emergence. All the rest, said or written by either the Muslim theologians, who are gullible in their ignorance and frivolity, or the Western Islamologists, who are poisoned in their anti-Christian, anti-Islamic and anti-Godly hatred, is just childish and nonsensical. Do not come fast to the conclusion that in this paragraph you will find the entire Truth! All the same, you will definitely find the parallel roads that you have to walk in order to get there.
There are two small typographical errors (at the time, the texts were submitted as manuscripts, and a Modern Greek -u can be easily confused with a -n, in cursive writing, particularly when the author writes fast. When the editing of the text is done by a person, who does not know the subject, then a small error is doubled. The last two words on the first line of the right-hand column on the last page should be read as: "of the Khawarij". Apparently the copy editor, having absolutely misread the name as "Khaonarij" (the sequence "awa" being apparently too alien for a Modern Greek), considered it as the name of a man, whereas it is that of a group: the Khawarij (Khawarij or Kharijites/ الخوارج).
Today, 36 years later, despite the forced acculturation (within the globalization context) and in spite of Greece's increased relations with several Muslim states, the biased and blind Greek state infested with uneducated pseudo-academics and uncouth, fake geopolitical analysts, who spew rubbish and nonsense on TV channels, radio programs, and on the web, the situation has not changed at all. The word " Khawarij", written in Greek, brings up very few results in an online search, and of course, there is not even an entry in the Greek Wikipedia despite the fact that the respective entries are as long (Hâricîler/Хариджиты/哈里吉派/خوارج) as they should be.
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Комментарий
(об онлайн-переиздании моей статьи, первоначально опубликованной до 36 лет) 21 декабря 2023 г.
Перепечатывая в Интернете этот текст, который я написал, проезжая из Афин в октябре или ноябре 1986 года, я, конечно, впечатлен. 36 лет назад я уже закончил пять или шесть лет аспирантуры (в Париже, Лондоне и Брюсселе) по ассириологии, египтологии, хеттитологии, иранологии, мистическим религиям поздней античности, гностицизму, манихейству, религиозному синкретизму и истокам христианства. Я уже провел три года исследований в Восточной Турции, Сирии, Израиле, Ираке, Иордании, Кувейте и Иране, одновременно готовя докторскую диссертацию в (Западной) Германии. Я только начал изучать ислам, исламскую историю, исламские науки, искусство, мудрость и мистицизм, начиная с медресе Шухада аятоллы Яхья Аламе Нури (https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/story/2008/01). /080119_mf_nouri; на фарси).
Итак, когда я писал эту статью, я перестал быть православным христианином и был «нерелигиозным» гражданином Греции (официально это было указано в моем удостоверении личности). Я начал знакомиться с исламом на уровне популярной религии и повседневной жизни, верований и культов; Я начал осознавать хаос, который отделяет историческую правду от западных исламологов и мусульманских богословов; кроме того, я начал понимать, каким многомерным историческим субъектом является ислам. Но ни в коем случае я бы тогда не мог подумать, что всего через шесть лет после написания рассматриваемой статьи я приму ислам и стану мусульманином. Я бы, наверное, рассмеялся, если бы кто-то сказал мне тогда что-то подобное, предвидя таким образом будущее.
Этот период характеризовался моей склонностью отходить от всего на равной дистанции, чтобы нейтрализовать внешние воздействия на меня и видеть историческое развитие объективно и «холодно» (или, лучше сказать, «тепло», а именно выражая глубокую любовь для объекта моего исследования и изучения). Таким образом, всесторонне оценивая вес исторической традиции Востока (т. е. Месопотамии, Египта, Анатолии, Ханаана и Ирана), которая была внедрена в тогда еще зарождающийся ислам, я смог различить и понять суть всех ситуации и обстоятельства, возникшие вокруг пророка Мухаммеда - то, что не удалось обнаружить ни одному западному исламологу и ни одному мусульманскому богослову: когда вокруг умирающего Мухаммеда две группы верующих спорили о том, кому следовать, 4000 лет шумерской, аккадской, ассирийско-вавилонской и иранской истории, традиций, наследия, имперского универсализма и эсхатологических ожиданий легли бременем на их сердца и умы, хотя они этого и не поняли.
Итак, сегодня, когда мне 67 лет, я очень рад это видеть, когда мне было 30, имея мало знаний о Табари и еще меньше об ат-Тирмизи, мне удалось написать текст, подобный верхнему левому абзацу страницы 31, который начинается со слов: «сложность всего дела». Сегодня, будучи мусульманином, а не нерелигиозным человеком, я не только не изменил бы ни одного слова в этом абзаце, но и сказал бы, что это наблюдение является единственно возможным основанием для правильного восприятия, понимания и оценки Ислама, а также всего процесса его зарождения и возникновения. Все остальное, сказанное или написанное либо легковерными в своем невежестве и легкомыслии мусульманскими богословами, либо западными исламологами, отравленными своей антихристианской, антиисламской и антибожественной ненавистью, - это просто ребячество и бессмысленно. Не приходите сразу к выводу, что в этом абзаце вы найдете всю Истину! Тем не менее, вы обязательно найдете параллельные дороги, по которым придется пройти, чтобы туда попасть.
Есть две небольшие опечатки (в то время тексты были представлены в виде рукописей, а новогреческое -u можно легко спутать с -n при рукописном письме, особенно когда автор пишет быстро. Когда редактирование текста делается человеком, который не знает тему текста, тогда небольшая ошибка удваивается. Последние два слова в первой строке правой колонки на последней странице следует читать как: «Хариджитов». Судя по всему, редактор, совершенно неправильно прочитав имя как «Хаонаридж» (последовательность «а-у-а», по-видимому, слишком чужда новогреческому языку), посчитал его именем человека, тогда как это имя группы: хариджитов (хаваридж или хариджитов/الخوارج).
Сегодня, 36 лет спустя, несмотря на насильственную аккультурацию (в контексте глобализации) и несмотря на расширение отношений Греции с несколькими мусульманскими государствами, предвзятое и слепое греческое государство, кишащее необразованными псевдоакадемистами и неотесанными, фальшивыми геополитическими аналитиками, которые извергают чушь на телеканалах, радиопрограммах и в сети, ситуация ничуть не изменилась. Слово «Хаваридж», написанное на греческом языке, дает очень мало результатов при онлайн-поиске, и, конечно, его нет даже в греческой Википедии, несмотря на то, что соответствующие записи такие длинные (Hâricîler/Хариджиты/ 哈里吉派/خوارج), какими они должны быть.
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Austere and sober in style are prerequisites for an orderly decoration of a place where people are required to demonstrate the proper conduct.
Rüstem Paşa Camii
Silver inlaid brass candlestick holder, Iran, 13th-14th century
from The British Museum
Michael Pasiakos (1959-2023): an Obituary
Ο Καλός μου Φίλος Μιχάλης Πασιάκος (1959-2023), οι Αχανείς Αναζητήσεις του, και η πάντοτε Άφθαστη για μένα Σαγιάδα
Краткое содержание на русском языке в конце / Deutsche Zusammenfassung am Ende / Résumé en français à la fin / English Summary at the end
Η γνωριμία μου με τον Μιχάλη άρχισε με μία ολότελα απρόσμενη πρόσκληση! Αυτή προερχόταν από μία χώρα από την οποία δεν είχα περάσει ούτε καν για μία φορά τα προηγούμενα δεκα οκτώ (18) χρόνια: την Ελλάδα. Από τον Ιούλιο του 2001, οπότε είχα φύγει, ούτε είχα σκεφθεί να επισκεφθώ κάποια περιοχή της χώρας, ούτε είχα επικοινωνήσει με κανένα, ούτε και μου είχε κάποιος γράψει.
Περιεχόμενα
Ι. Ο Πεπερασμένος Κόσμος μου από το Μαρόκο μέχρι την Κίνα και ο Απέραντος Κόσμος του Μιχάλη στην Σαγιάδα
ΙΙ. Περιστατικά της εξ αποστάσεως γνωριμίας μας
ΙΙΙ. Όταν η ανταλλαγή μηνυμάτων μετατράπηκε σε επικοινωνία με emails
ΙV. Όταν ο Μιχάλης αυτο-προσδιορίστηκε: Άθεος, Αναρχικός κι Αγρότης!
V. Οι τελευταίες επικοινωνίες μας
VΙ. Una furtiva lagrima ή ξηροῖς ἀκλαύτοις ὄμμασιν;
Επίμετρο
Краткое содержание / Zusammenfassung / Résumé / Summary
Ήταν Νοέμβριος του 2019 και, ως συνήθως, βρισκόμουν σε πολλά ταξείδια. Όλα άρχισαν με ένα μήνυμα που δέχθηκα στον λογαριασμό μου στο μεγάλο πόρταλ academia dot edu. Είχε αποσταλεί από τον Μιχάλη και ήδη με την πρώτη ανταλλαγή μηνυμάτων με προσκαλούσε να δώσω μία διάλεξη στους Φιλιάτες, μία μικρή πόλη της ΒΔ Θεσπρωτίας την οποία είχα πολύ παλιά επισκεφθεί για μόνον μισή ώρα, ένα απόγευμα του 1964, όταν πήγαινα ταξείδι με τους γονείς μου και ένα ζευγάρι θείων μου στην Κέρκυρα.
Ποτέ δεν ξέχασα εκείνη την βανίλια-υποβρύχιο που είχα απολαύσει σε ένα καφενείο της πλατείας απέναντι στην εκκλησία της κωμόπολης. Όπως και ποτέ δεν ξέχασα την αποτυχία μου να πείσω τον θείο μου να μας οδηγήσει από την Ηγουμενίτσα, όπου εφθάσαμε αργότερα και εβγάλαμε αρκετά νωρίς τα εισιτήρια για το φέρρυ μπωτ, στην κοντινή Σαγιάδα, εφόσον η απόσταση ήταν κοντινή και ούτως ή άλλως, θα περιμέναμε ακόμη για 45 λεπτά μέχρι τον απόπλου για την Κέρκυρα.
Όλα αυτά είχαν για πολλές δεκαετίες παραμείνει βαθειά στις χαράδρες της μνήμης μου αλλά αυτόματα ανασύρθηκαν στην επιφάνεια χάρη στο μήνυμα-πρόσκληση του μακαρίτη πλέον σήμερα Μιχάλη. Ωστόσο, μου είχε φανεί παράξενο να προσκληθώ να μιλήσω σε μία πόλη, την οποία εγνώριζα τόσο λίγο, για θέματα της ειδίκευσής μου, τα οποία τόσο ελάχιστα θα ενδιέφεραν το εν Φιλιάταις φιλομαθές κοινό. Με άλλα λόγια, τα τόσο αντιφατικά στοιχεία μιας τέτοιας πρόσκλησης ντε φάκτο με έκαναν να ενδιαφερθώ για τον μυστηριώδη αποστολέα.
Ι. Ο Πεπερασμένος Κόσμος μου από το Μαρόκο μέχρι την Κίνα και ο Απέραντος Κόσμος του Μιχάλη στην Σαγιάδα
Έτσι και εγώ, πριν απαντήσω, ανακάλυψα .... the United States of Σαγιάδα, ή για να είμαι πιο ακριβής, τον Μιχάλη ... dans tous ses états! Δηλαδή μυήθηκα στα ατελείωτα μυστικά και στα άγνωστα σε μένα πιο πριν αλλά ιδιαίτερα σημαντικά τοπία και μνημεία, περιστατικά και γεγονότα της περί την Σαγιάδα Θεσπρωτίας που τόσο θαυμάσια και τόσο πλουσιοπάροχα εκείνος αναπαριστούσε στο μπλογκ του.
Και σ' αυτή την τόσο απίθανη και τόσο ξεχωριστή ικανότητα του Μιχάλη οφείλονται οι παραπάνω όροι τους οποίους εδημιούργησα κάθε τόσο επισκεπτόμενος το -εξαιρετικό και βαθύπλουτο σε γνώσεις, στοιχεία, αναλύσεις, περιγραφές, τεκμήρια και ιστορικές φωτογραφίες- μπλογκ του, La Bastia (https://labastia.blogspot.com/), όπου εκείνος, με αναφορά στην παλαιότερη, ιταλική ονομάσία της Σαγιάδας, με πρωτοφανή συνέπεια, με ανεξάντλητη επινοητικότητα, και με υπερβατική αγάπη επέμενε να παρουσιάζει ακόμη και την τελευταία πέτρα της Θεσπρωτίας σε όλες της τις διαστάσεις.
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More on the remarkable art in the caves of Dunhuang, China:
As a border town, Dunhuang, China was the site of conflict between China and its neighbors, and these events are commemorated in some of the caves. Here, for example, is a depiction of a Chinese army taking Dunhuang back from the Tibetan kingdom in the middle of the 800s CE.
{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}
History of Achaemenid Iran 1A, Course I - Achaemenid beginnings 1A
Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
Tuesday, 27 December 2022
Outline
Introduction; Iranian Achaemenid historiography; Problems of historiography continuity; Iranian posterior historiography; foreign historiography; Western Orientalist historiography; early sources of Iranian History; Prehistory in the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia
1- Introduction
Welcome to the 40-hour seminar on Achaemenid Iran!
It is my intention to deliver a rather unconventional academic presentation of the topic, mostly implementing a correct and impartial conceptual approach to the earliest stage of Iranian History. Every subject, in and by itself, offers to every researcher the correct means of the pertinent approach to it; due to this fact, the personal background, viewpoints and thoughts or eventually the misperceptions and the preconceived ideas of an explorer should not be allowed to affect his judgment.
If before 200 years, the early Iranologists had the possible excuse of studying a topic on the basis of external and posterior historical sources, this was simply due to the fact that the Old Achaemenid cuneiform writing had not yet been deciphered. Still, even those explorers failed to avoid a very serious mistake, namely that of taking the external and posterior historical sources at face value. We cannot afford to blindly accept a secondary historical source without first examining intentions, motives, scopes and aims of it.
As the seminar covers only the History of the Achaemenid dynasty, I don't intend to add an introductory course about the History of the Iranian Studies and the re-discovery of Iran by Western explorers of the colonial powers. However, I will provide a brief outline of the topic; this is essential because mainstream Orientalists have reached their limits and cannot provide us with a real insight, eliminating the numerous and enduring myths, fallacies, and deliberately naïve approaches to Achaemenid Iran.
In fact, most of the specialists of Ancient Iran never went beyond the limitations set by the delusional Ancient 'Greek' (in reality: Ionian and Attic) literature about the Medes and the Persians (i.e. the Iranians), because they never offered themselves the task to explain the reasons for the aberration that the Ancient Ionian and Attic authors created in their minds and wrote in their texts about Iran. This was utterly puerile and ludicrous.
And this brings us to the other major innovation that I intend to offer during this seminar, namely the proper, comprehensive contextualization of the research topic, i.e. the History of Achaemenid Iran. To give some examples in this regard, I would mention
a - the tremendous, multilayered and multifaceted impact of the Mesopotamian World, Civilization and Heritage on the formation of the Achaemenid Empire of Iran, and more specifically, the determinant role played by the Sargonid Empire of Assyria on the emergence of the first Empire on the Iranian plateau;
b - the ferocious opposition of the Mithraic Magi to the Zoroastrian Achaemenid court;
c - the involvement of the Anatolian Magi in the misperception of Iran by the Ancient Greeks; and
d- the utilization of the Ancient Greek cities by the Anti-Iranian side of the Egyptian priesthoods, princes and administrators.
To therefore introduce the proper contextualization, I will expand on the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the Sargonid times, not only to state the first mentions of the Medes and the Persians in History, but also to show the importance attributed by the Neo-Assyrian Emperors to the Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau, as well as the numerous peoples, settled or nomadic, who inhabited that region.
There is an enormous lacuna in the Orientalist disciplines; there are no interdisciplinary studies in Assyriology and Iranology. This plays a key role in the misperception of the ancient oriental civilizations and in the mistaken evaluation (or rather under-estimation) of the momentous impact that they had on the formation of the World History. There are no isolated cultures and independent civilizations as dogmatic and ignorant Western archaeologists pretend.
Only if one studies and evaluates correctly the colossal impact of the Ancient Mesopotamian world on Iran, can one truly understand the Achaemenid Empire in its real dimensions.
2- Iranian Achaemenid historiography
A. Achaemenid imperial inscriptions produced on solemn occasions
Usually multilingual texts written by the imperial scribes of the emperors Cyrus the Great, Darius I the Great, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, Darius II, Artaxerxes II, and Artaxerxes III, as well as of the ancestral rulers Ariaramnes and Arsames.
Languages and writing systems:
- Old Achaemenid Iranian (cuneiform-alphabetic; the official imperial language)
- Babylonian (cuneiform-syllabic; to offer a testimony of historical continuity and legitimacy, following the Conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great, who presented himself as king of Babylon)
- Elamite (cuneiform-logo-syllabic; to portray the Persians in particular as the heirs of the ancient land of Anshan and Sushan that the Assyrians and the Babylonians named 'Elam' and the indigenous population called 'Haltamti' / The first Achaemenid to present himself as 'king of Anshan' is Cyrus the Great and the reference is found in his Cylinder unearthed in Babylon.)
and
- Egyptian Hieroglyphic (if the inscription or the monument was produced in Egypt, since the Achaemenids were also pharaohs of Egypt, starting with Kabujiya/Cambyses)
Imperial inscriptions are found in: Babylon (Cyrus Cylinder), Pasargad, Behistun, Hamadan, Ganj-e Nameh, Persepolis, Naqsh-e Rustam, Susa, Suez (Egypt), Gherla (Romania), Van (Turkey), and on various items
B. Persepolis Administrative Archives
This consists in an enormous documentation that has not yet been fully studied; it is not written in Old Achaemenid as one could expect but mainly in Elamite cuneiform. It consists of two groups, namely
- the Persepolis Fortification Archive, and
- the Persepolis Treasury Archive.
The Persepolis Fortification Archive was unearthed in the fortification area, i.e. the northeastern confines of the enormous platform of the Achaemenid capital Parsa (Persepolis), in the 1930s. It comprises of more than 30000 tablets (fragmentary or entire) that were written in the period 509-494 BCE (at the time of Darius I). The tablets were written in Susa and other parts of Fars and the territory of the ancient kingdom of Elam that vanished in the middle of the 7th c. (more than 130 years before these texts were written). Around 50 texts had Aramaic glosses. More than 2000 tablets have been published and translated. These texts are records of transactions, distribution of food, provisioning of workers, transportation of commodities, etc.; few tablets were written in other languages, namely Old Iranian (1), Babylonian (1), Phrygian (1) and Greek (1).
The Persepolis Treasury Archive was found in the northeastern room of the Treasury of Xerxes. It contains more than 750 tablets and fragments (in Elamite) and more than 100 have been published. They all date back in period 492-458 BCE. These tablets are either letters or memoranda dispatched by imperial officials to the head of the Treasury; they concern the payment of workmen, the issue of silver, and other administrative procedures. Only one tablet was written in Babylonian.
The entire documentation offers valuable information as regards the function of various imperial services, namely the couriers, the satraps, the imperial messengers, the imperial storehouse, etc. The archives shed light on the origin of the imperial administrators, as ca. 1900 personal names have been recorded: 10% were Elamites (who had apparently survived for long far from their country after the destruction of Susa by Assurbanipal (640 BCE), fewer were Babylonians, and the outright majority consisted of Iranians (Persians, Medes, Bactrians, Sakas, Arians, etc.).
C. Imperial Aramaic
The diffusion of the use of Aramaic started already in the Neo-Assyrian times and during the 7th c. BCE; the creation of the 'Royal Road', the systematization of the transportation, the improvement of communications, and the formation of the network of land-, sea- and desert routes that we now call 'Silk-, Spice- and Perfume- Road' during the Achaemenid times helped further expand the use of Aramaic. The linguistic assimilation of the Babylonians, the Jews and the Phoenicians with the Aramaeans only strengthened the diffusion of the Aramaic, which became the second international language ('lingua franca') in the History of the Mankind (after the Akkadian / Assyrian-Babylonian). Gradually, Aramaic became an official Achaemenid language after the Old Achaemenid Iranian.
Except the Aramaic texts attested in the Persepolis Administrative Archives, thousands of Aramaic texts of the Achaemenid times shed light onto the society, the economy, the administration, the military organization, the trade, the religions, the cults, the culture and the spirituality attested in various provinces of the Iranian Empire. At this point, only indicatively, I mention few significant groups of texts:
- the Elephantine papyri and ostraca (except Aramaic, they were written in Hieratic and Demotic Egyptian, Coptic, Alexandrian Koine, and Latin) – 5th and 4th c. BCE,
- the Hermopolis Aramaic papyri,
- the Padua Aramaic papyri, and
- the Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents from Bactria (48 texts written on leather, papyrus, stone or clay, dating from the period 353-324 BCE, and mainly from the reign of Artaxerxes III whereas the most recent dates from the reign of Alexander the Great).
Here I have to add that the widespread use of Imperial Aramaic and its use as a second official language for Achaemenid Iran brought an end to the use of the Elamite (in the middle of the 5th c.) and, after the end of the Achaemenid dynasty and the split of the state of Alexander the Great, contributed to the formation of two writing systems, namely Parthian and Pahlavi which were in use during the Arsacid and the Sassanid times. Imperial Aramaic helped establish many other writing systems, but this goes beyond the limits of the present seminar.
3- Problems of historiography continuity
There are no historical references to the Achaemenid dynasty made at the time of the Arsacids (Ashkanian: 250 BCE-224 CE) and the Sassanids 224-651 CE); this situation is due to many factors:
- the prevalence of another Iranian nation of probably Turanian origin, namely the Parthians and the Arsacid dynasty,
- the rise of the anti-Achaemenid, anti-Zoroastrian Magi who tried to impose Mithraism throughout Iran during the Arsacid times,
- the formation of an oral epic tradition and the establishment of a legendary historiography about the pre-Arsacid past during the Sassanid times, and
- the scarcity of written sources and the terrible destructions that occurred in Iran during the Late Antiquity, the Islamic era, and the Modern times (early Islamic conquests, divisions of the Abbasid times, Mongol invasions, Safavid-Ottoman wars, Western colonial looting, etc.).
This situation raised Western academic questions of Iranian identity, continuity, and historicity. But this attempt is futile. Iranian historiography of Islamic times shows that these questions were fully misplaced.
4- Iranian posterior historiography (Iranian historiography of Islamic times)
With Tabari (839-923) and his voluminous History of Prophets and Kings we realize that there were, in spite of the destructions caused because of the Islamic conquests, historical documents on which he was based to expand about the Sassanid dynasty; actually one out of the 40 volumes of the most recent translation of Tabari to English (published by the State University of New York Press from 1985 through 2007) is dedicated to the History of Sassanid Iran (vol. 5). And the previous volume (vol. 4) covers the History of Achaemenid and Arsacid Iran, Alexander the Great, Nabonid Babylonia, Assyria and Ancient Israel and Judah.
Other important Iranian historians of the Islamic times, like Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi (995-1077), Rashid al-Din Hamadani (1247-1318) who wrote the truly first World History, Alaeddin Aṭa Malik Juvaynī (1226-1283), and Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi (ca. 1370-1454), did not expand much on pre-Islamic periods as the focus of their writing was on contemporaneous developments.
However, the aforementioned historians and all the authors, who are classified in this category, represent only one dimension of Iranian historiography of Islamic times. A totally different approach and literature have been illustrated by Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings). Abu 'l Qasem Ferdowsi (940-1025) was not the first to compose an epic in order to standardize in mythical terms and legendary concepts the pre-Islamic Iranian past; but he was the most successful and the most illustrious. That is why many other epic poets followed his example, notably the Azeri Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209) and the Turkic Indian Amir Khusraw (1253-1325).
Within the context of this poetical historiography, historical emperors of pre-Islamic Iran appear as legendary figures only to be then viewed as materialization of divine patterns. The origin of this transcendental historiography seems to be retraced in the Sassanid times, but all the major themes are clearly of Zoroastrian identity and can therefore be attributed to the Achaemenid world perception and world conceptualization.
It is essential at this point to state that, until the imposition of modern Western colonial academic and educational standards in Iran, Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and the corpus of Iranian legendary historiography was the backbone of the Iranian cultural, intellectual and educational identity.
It is a matter of academic debate whether an original text named Khwaday-Namag, written during the Sassanid times, and now lost, is at the very origin of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and of the Iranian legendary historiography. The 19th c. German Orientalist Theodor Nöldeke is credited with this theory that has not yet been proved.
All the same, the spiritual standards of this approach are detected in the Achaemenid times.
5- Foreign historiography
Ancient Greek (in reality, Ionian and Attic), Ancient Hebrew and Latin sources of Achaemenid History exist, but first they are external, second they appear to be posterior in their largest part, and third they often bear witness to astounding inaccuracies, fables, untrustworthy data, misplaced focus, excessive verbosity without real substance, and -above all- an enormous and irreconcilable misunderstanding of the Iranian Achaemenid reality, values, world view, mindset, and behavior.
The Ancient Hebrew sources shed light on issues that were apparently critical to the tiny and unimportant, Jewish minority of the Achaemenid Empire; however, these Biblical narratives concern facts that were absolutely insignificant to the imperial authorities of Parsa. One critical issue is concealed by modern scholars though; although all the nations of the Empire were regularly mentioned in the Achaemenid inscriptions and depicted on bas reliefs, the Jews were not. This undeniable fact irrevocably conditions the supposed 'importance' of Biblical texts like Ezra, Esther, Nehemiah, etc. All the same, these foreign historical sources are important for the Jews.
The Ionian and Attic accounts of events that were composed by the Carian renegade Herodotus, the Dorian Ctesias, and the Athenian Xenophon present an even more serious problem. They happened to be for many centuries (16th – 19th c.) the bulk of the historical documentation that Western European academics had access to as regards Achaemenid Iran. This situation produced grave biases among Western academics, because they took all these sources at face value since they had no access to original documentation. The grave trouble persisted even after the decipherment of the Old Achaemenid cuneiform writing and the archaeological excavations that brought to daylight original Iranian imperial documentation.
Only recently, at the end of the 20th c., leading Iranologists like Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg started criticizing the absolutely delusional History of Achaemenid Iran that modern Western scholars were producing without even understanding it by foolishly accepting Ancient Ionian myths, lies and propaganda against the Iranian Empire at face value. This grave problem had also two other parameters:
- first, there was an enormous gap of civilization and a tremendous cultural difference between the Iranian imperial world view, the spiritual valorization of the human being, and the Zoroastrian monotheism from one side and the chaotic, disorderly and profane elements of the western periphery of the Empire. The so-called Greek tribes in Western Anatolia and in the South Balkans were not only multi-divided and plunged in permanent conflict; they were also extremely verbose on common issues, they desecrated the divine world with their nonsensical myths and puerile narratives, and they defiled human spirituality with their love stories about their pseudo-gods. But, very arbitrarily and quite disastrously, the so-called Ancient Greek civilization had been erroneously taken as 'classics' by modern Europeans at a time they had no access to Ancient Oriental sources.
- second, the vertical differentiation between Imperial Iran as the blessed land of divine mission and the disunited and peripheral lands of conflict, discord and strife that were inhabited by the Greek tribes was reflected on the respective, impressively different types of historiography; to the Iranians, few words written by anonymous scribes were enough to describe the groundbreaking deeds of divinely appointed rulers. But for the Greeks, the useless rumors, the capricious hearsay, the intentional lie, the nefarious expression of their complex of inferiority, the vicious slander, and the deliberate ignominy 'had' to be recorded and written down.
The fact that Herodotus' and Xenophon's long narratives have long been taken as the basic source of information about Achaemenid Iran demonstrates how disoriented and misplaced modern Western scholarship is. But by preferring to rely mainly on the Ancient Greek lengthy and false narratives, and not on the succinct, true and chaste Old Achaemenid Iranian inscriptions, they totally misrepresent Ancient Iranian History, preposterously extrapolating later and corrupt standards to earlier and superior civilizations.
And whereas Ancient Roman authors, who wrote in Latin (Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Younger, etc.), and Jewish or Christian historians, who wrote in Alexandrine Koine, like Flavius Josephus and Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima, reproduced the style of lengthy narratives that turns History to mere gossip, the great Babylonian scholar Berossus was very reluctant to add personal comments to his original sources or to allow subjective considerations and thoughts to contaminate his text.
In any case, the vast issue of the multilayered damages caused by the untrustworthy Ancient Greek historiography to modern Western academics' perception and interpretation of Achaemenid Iran is a topic that deserves an entirely independent seminar.
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To watch the video (with more than 110 pictures and maps), click the links below:
HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN - Achaemenid beginnings 1Α
By Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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To listen to the audio, clink the links below:
HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN - Achaemenid beginnings 1 (a+b)
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Download the text in PDF:
Archaic Greek painting with the Assyrian eyes makes me rabid… The lines of the calves the lines in the hair? I know what you are
How the international community treated the Islamic Republic of Iran
Η διεθνής αντιμετώπιση της ισλαμικής Περσίας, του Κοσμά Μεγαλομμάτη: Εποπτεία 119, Ιανουάριος 1987, σελ. 38-48
How the international community treated the Islamic Republic of Iran, by Cosmas Megalommatis: Epopteia (‘Overview’) 119, January 1987, p. 38-48
Как международное сообщество относилось к Исламской Республике Иран, (автор:) Кузьма Мегаломматис: Эпоптея («Обзор») 119, январь 1987 г., стр. 38-48
================
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