Caucasian Breakdown

So... things between Georgia (as in the Caucasian Republic of Georgia, not the U.S. State of the same name) and the Russian Federation have continued to be interesting. In theory, the Russians are acting as 'peace keepers,' and confining their efforts to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Of course, their definition of peace-keeping seems very different from that of the rest of the world. Much in the same vein as the U.S. 'private military contractors' (wink wink) in Iraq, come to think of this. Don't you love euphemisms?

So what is all this nonsense about anyway? Well, although I'm posting this rather later than I would like, I think it my duty to put out some factual information before the vapid, pop-culture psuedo-intellectuals decide adopt the issue as their latest cause célèbre en masse, without knowing or caring about the people on the ground, and proceed to flood cyber-space with bullshit telling us what we 'need to know' about this or that.

So... Russia, the 'Evil Empire' as some of you who remember the Reagan years might know it. What is their deal? Well... the long and the short of it is that Russia has not enjoyed the most cordial relations with their Caucasian neighbors to the south. I refer in this case to Chechyna, but also Dagestan, Ingushetia, and of course Georgia.

First of all, though, let me clear up something. When I say 'Caucasian,' I do not in fact mean 'white.' Well, not directly. In this context, Caucasian refers to the Caucasus region, which includes the independent states of Armenia, Gerogia and Azerbaijan, as well as portions of the Russian Federation and perhaps Iran and Turkey. The region is far from homogeneous, however. Its more of a patchwork of ethnicites, languages and religions - Apostolic Armenians, Shi'ite Azeris, Caucasian Jews in Azerbaijan, Orthodox Abkhaz and Cossacks, Sunni Laz and Adjarians, Buddhist Kalmyks, and many others. Indeed, historically Arab georgaphers knew the region as al-Jebel al-Alsun, the Mountain of Tongues.

So how does this relate to Mother Russia, you ask? Well, this goes waaaay back to the Tsarist days of Russian expansion. See, one of the greatest ambitions of Russian Imperialism was the acquisition of warm sea ports; a quest which literally took them across Russia, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Amongst the most important acquisitions were the warm, rich lands in the south.

Fast forward to today. Sure, sure, the Soviet Union has collapsed, but even so, three things have remained at the core of Russian identity - Православие (Pravoslavi, or Orthodoxy) самодержавие (Samoderzhavi, or Autocracy) and народность (Nardnost, or National Spirit). Hell, Russia can claim a direct inheritance from the ROMAN EMPIRE! Long after Rome had fallen in the West, Konstantinopolis continued to rule the East. Even after the Turks finally conquered the city in 1453, Muscovy claimed to be the 'Third Rome.' In fact, the very word Tsar (formerly transliterated as Czar) is derived from the word 'Caesar.' The Russians are a proud people, in spite of widespread poverty, depression and government corruption.

BUT... what really bothers the Russians is the loss of what they see as 'their' territory. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, not only did the Warsaw Pact countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland go their own ways, but countries like Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Lativa and Ukraine (and please bear in mind that Kiev is the birthplace of Russian culture) have broken away from Russia. This left many ethnic Russians stranded well beyond Russian borders, incidentally. Moreover, huge tracts of land in Asia, such as Sakha, Komi, Buryatia, Karelia and Tatarstan, have pretty much complete autonomy within the Russian Federation. As far as many Russians are concerned, the Russian Empire... no, the very SOUL of the Russian people, is being broken apart.

And thats really what Chehnya boils down to. It's not about oil or gas, as the Russians have plenty of resources. Nor is it about religion, as Islam is a majority in other areas where the Russians have few problems with the local populace. No, its really about territory; no matter how small a scrap of land, the Russians see it as part of THEIR Empire, and its a humiliation they will not accept.

I am reminded immediately of a poll I had once heard about that was conducted in Russia. The question was something along the lines of 'what ethnicity wouldn't you want moving next to you.' Incidentally, aside from western Europeans, the highest rated groups were the Gypsies, Caucasians and finally Jews. Asians and other (non-Russian) Slavs were mostly tolerated. No doubt this extreme bias reflected the (then) heightened tensions with Chechnya, as well as revealing some disturbingly widespread racial prejudices.

But, getting back to the Caucasus, this current spat of things with Georgia actually owes to the the geo-political situation in the Balkans, which goes back to another pillar of Russian identity, pan-Slavism. See, one of the main arguments for Russian expansion always hinged on the argument that the fellow Slavic peoples (particularly the Orthodox Slavs) were being oppressed by the Ottoman Turks and Austro-Hungarians. Mother Russia, then, stood to 'protect' these little Slavic brethren through military force. Similar sentiments were used to justify Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe. Of course, as always, nobody actually bothered to ask the people living there in the first place, but then I guess thats the point.

Today, the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia are things of the past. But the Russians still see this as 'their' backyard. So between the missile defense system in Poland and American/Western support for an independent Kosova, the Russians once again find themselves fearing that they have lost their voice on the world stage. Well, if we can back Kosovo, the Russians say to us, then they will back South Ossetia. As usual, the western media has completely forgotten about Kosova's sovereignty and moved on to the fast paced world of celebrity sex tapes and iPhones, but Russia... Russia has made good on her promise. This whole thing in South Ossetia is basically a pissing contest between Russia and the US/EU, with the Georgians caught up in between.

It doesn't help that Georgia has been seeking NATO membership, another move that I heartily support.

Now, as my old Russian teacher knows, I love the Caucasian peoples. Such a beautiful mosaic of cultures. But I don't see how South Ossetia and Abkhazia will fare any better by being annexed into the Russian Federation. Certainly their Chechnyan brethren have not fared well. But then, the geographic borders of the entire Caucasus region do not actually reflect the distribution of peoples living there, and indeed should extend well into Iran and down to the Mediterranean coast were we to draw them in any logical pattern anyway.

If I Were Musharraf...

So, woke up this morning to the loving caress of a swarm of ants. Did I say 'loving caress'? I actually meant horrific venomous bites of a swarm of angry ants. I always get those two things confused. So, after the initial phase in which I wondered whether or not I had inexplicably stepped onto the set of 'The Hive,' which contrary to it's name involved killer ants not bees, I realized that they were coming into my room via the open window over my bed. Such are the dangers of living in a Third World country I suppose, so c'est la vive.

Speaking of which, Pervez Musharraf has stepped down as the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And from Lahore to Quetta, there was much rejoicing. As usual, the Beeb has a whole thing covering it. To say that Musharraf was... IS unpopular throughout Pakistan, if not all of South Asia, would be an understatement to say the least. Indeed, one suspects that the entirety of the sales of his memoirs, In the Line of Fire, owe more to threats of 'buy it or get shot' than anything else. But in all seriousness, Musharraf stepping down was mostly a way for him to avoid pending impeachment charges more than anything else.

In fact, Musharraf is so unpopular at the moment that there were suggestions he was going to leave the country, perhaps for the Gulf or Europe. My first thought was he might settle down in Chicago, seeing as how his brother is a heart surgeon out here or something like that. At the very least, he'd be a very colorful resident for our city. I mean, it's not every day you have a successful military dictator living next door to you. But alas, such is not to be, as Condaleeza Rice has announced that under no conditions would he be allowed refuge in the U.S. The last I heard, he was apparently retiring to a golf course adjacent townhouse somewhere outside of Islamabad.

If I were Musharraf, I'd consider retiring to a life of pleasure in Lahore, what with my being partial to the all things Punjabi. Then again, considering the whole disasterous Kargil affair, Musharraf isn't exactly welcome in neighboring India (which is just across the border incidentally; a border which rather unfortunately splits the Punjab in two). Which brings me to the question of what part of the Desi world HASN'T Musharraf ticked off? No doubt he'll manage to get Sri Lanka or Bhutan mad at him before he dies!

Of course, if I WERE Musharraf, I wouldn't be retiring in the first place! Oh no, like any good dictator worth my salt, I'd be coming up with half-baked evil war machines that are far more elaborate and costly than they are practical. No, I'm not talking about nukes here. Pakistan already has them anyway. No... I'm talking about stuff like cybernetic shark monsters, tanks that can drill through the earth so I can conquer enemy capitals from underground, and hidden Tesla death-rays in my radio towers. Stuff worthy of Gaddafi!

*sigh*

A man can dream, after all...

He Seyz Itz a Bigfoot Youz Guyz

I must apologize to my loyal fans minions for not posting in my blog lately, but current events have unfortunately seen to it that my attentions are focused elsewhere at the moment. Not the least of these being Russia's bellicose neo-imperial ambitions at expansion into the Caucasus region, perhaps intent on reviving the Soviet Union at the expense of Georgia. Then again, the Russians have never gotten along well with their Caucasian neighbors in the south (witness Chechnya and Dagestan). But I shall speak more on that later. Right now, I feel like blogging about bigger things.

Well, bigger feet at any rate. No doubt those of you who know me by now were wondering why I hadn't posted about the newest bigfoot hoax making its way through our modern world's mass media machine. Well, now I am, so stop complaining.

Like so much Forteana in this Goblin Universe of ours, the story of a 'bigfoot corpse in a freezer' first came to my attention late one night while I was passing the idle hours listening to George Noorey on Coast to Coast AM. Good times those. My immediate first thought was that they were talking about the Minnesota Iceman, one of the legendary, holy grails of Cryptozoology. For those not in the know, the story has some striking similarities with this case. It began in 1968 in Minnesota, when one Frank Hansen displayed what looked for all intents and purposes to be an apeman frozen in a block of ice. Unfortunately, his contradictory claims about whether or not he owned it, that he had both a real one and a replica, and regarding its origin (either it was shot by hunters in the Midwest, smuggled out of Vietnam in a bodybag, or found by sailors in Siberia) did little for his credibility. But two legends of Cryptozoology, Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, bothed examined it and believed it to be an authentic latter-day Neanderthal from Asia.



How sad, then, that this new apeman has none of the panache of his infamous predecessor. Perhaps to make up for this, though, his current proprietors have certainly provided just as many contradictory stories as Hansen did before them. Through friends in the media, I've been able to hear the 'press conference' that these two yahoos chose to give about bigfoot. Of course, they didn't actually show us anything, nor have they allowed any actual scientists to see him, so it was more like a group of people standing around talking about something which may or may not have ever happened. In fact, thats exactly what it was. The fact that the DNA tests came back human, human and POSSUM(!) does little to bolster their case.



Of course, their photos of the alleged sasquatch (or 'wood ape') make it look more like a surprise grab bag of old Halloween costumes mixed with assorted bits of road kill, so I suppose my expectations shouldn't have been too high in the first place. Let me just say, their press conference managed to take it to a whole new level of surreal, almost from the moment that the president of the PR firm introduced them using terms like 'youz guys.' One assumes he must have been a 'businessman' *wink wink* who would break your legs (or perhaps feet in this case) in his previous line of work, if you get my drift. Sometime between that and announcing all of the .coms involved in this, the vast majority of the press (save perhaps the good folks at The Onion) got up and left. They didn't miss much, beyond the two of them talking about going out to the 'backwoods,' nudge nudge, and being surrounded by a group of bigfoots. Or something to that effect.

At this point, a lesser man would make some sort of joke about what they were doing in the backwoods, but thats beneath me.

Loren Coleman was a guest on Coast to Coast that night, but even he couldn't really add much to this. Thats why I propose that the entire thing - the story, the fake body, the press conference, all of it - is part of an elaborate conspiracy to cover up the truth, no doubt instigated by the Illuminati, the One World government, the military-industrial complex and a cabal of international bankers. The entire story is otherwise too ludicrous and surreal to be anything else. No doubt they want to make us internet bloggers look like conspiratorial lunatics rambling on about pseudo-scientific nonsense in order to discredit us.

Perhaps as part of the conspiracy, or perhaps to cash in on the current news, History Channel repeated the newest bigfoot episode of MonsterQuest, focusing in on Native American bigfoot stories. Specifically the Nations around California and the Pacific Northwest, such as the Miwok. I found it to be a very interesting episode, in no small part because so few cryptozoology shows have focused on the oral histories of indigenous peoples.



As you might have guessed, I naturally gravitated to the UFO Symposium 3 put on by the Illinois MUFON, or Mutual UFO Network, in Tinley Park this weekend. Stanton Friedman, who has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM and the Roe Conn Show this past week, was a guest lecturer, along with Donald Schmitt, Ted Phillips and Sam Maranto. Very informative.

I've also been watching the American premiere of Primeval on the Beeb. I'd heard of the show from my friends, who had seen the first two seasons already (bloody Brits). Brilliant! Thats all I can say. The newest episode, Stateside at any rate, featured Arthropleura, which was re-imagined as a sort of gigantic centipede. And an angry giant centipede at that. Almost makes me want to tear down the walls of time and space, so that I could get some sort of gigantic prehistoric horrors to step into the modern era. Just to keep them as pets, you know? Who wouldn't want a Spinosaurus, Zeuglodon, Deinonychus, Andrewsarchus, Dimetrodon or Eurypterid? Better still, I could ride a freakin' Arsionotherium to work! Now THAT would be a fitting image for your God-King, no? Even Alexander didn't do that, though one could argue his beloved mount Bucephalus was a monster in his own right (if the legends of anthrophagus horses are to be believed).

That should be enough to keep you lot entertained until next week, when I give some insight into the latest round of Russian aggression in the Caucasus. Just remember not to tick off any hairy ape men (or women, if you believe the stories about Zhanna) and you should be fine until then.

The Feasting Continues

So, Shark Week has come and gone, but the feasting continues. Picked up a copy of Rogue from Target, which incidentally features Radha Mitchell (from 'Pitch Black' and 'Silent Hill') as an Aussie tour guide. I didn't know that. Honestly, all I knew was it has a giant saltwater crocodile running amok Down Under. Who wouldn't like that? So, in continuing with this week's theme, I got to sit down and watch 'Rogue,' 'Croc,' and 'Lake Placid.' Like I said, the feasting continues.

Also of note, when I got home the other day, I had a mysterious package from 'The Venture Brothers,' which I quickly deduced was the T-shirt of the week that I had ordered I don't even know how many weeks ago. Needless to say, considering that I was beginning to fear they weren't sending it for some arcane reason, I was quite satisfied to get my grubby little paws on it. So ladies and gentlemen, behold the 'Order of the Triad' shirt:




As you can see, it's quite a spiffy looking shirt, no? Go Team Venture!

P.S. - If you look closely, you'll notice I'm wearing my lucky shark's tooth amulet around my neck

Gifts Born of the Sea

Well, I'm back. As you probably know, last week was Shark Week on Discovery Channel. It was also the premiere of Jurassic Fight Club and Evolve on History Channel, along with a new episode of MonsterQuest. And, to sweeten the deal, AMC played Jaws and Jaws II. Thats alot of good TV right there. But, as much as I love Shark Week, I do have a life, so I recorded it and have been watching it all on DVD. All in all, pretty good viewing right there.

As if in agreement with the concept of Shark Week, it seems the 'goblin universe' has seen fit to throw us a few bones which, to the eyes of any other observer might be dismissed as nothing more than a mere coincidences.

First, the so-called Montauk Monster, the strange (and as-of-yet unidentified) carcass of which allegedly washed ashore on the beaches of Montauk, New York on 12 July 2008. Shortly after photographs of this bête noir hit major news outlets on the 29th, it went digital and became an online phenomena in it's own right (spawning more than a few memes in and of itself).





As you can see, he (and it's quite obviously a 'he,' judging by that assortment of junk he's got dangling there) is quite a fascinating little bugger. Speculation as to his identity has ranged from the absurd (a sea turtle) to the mundane (a dog). Personally I'd prefer to think that he's a chupacabra, spawned into existence by an angry and cynical universe just to spite me. But... a more sober analysis would be that he's a raccoon, or maybe a dog.

It occurs to me that every time we have a 'mysterious creature,' the witnesses obviously have the time to take one (or more) blurry photos, but never have the foresight to just take the whole damned carcass, the skull, or even just a half-way decent tissue sample, all of which could easily answer the question as to it's identity. Furthermore, as with any good UFO or sea serpent photo, absolutely nothing is included in the picture that we can use as a reference in terms of the creature's size. We hardly know whether the creature should be measured in inches or feet, which only broadens the number of animals it can be.

This is, of course, assuming that the creature is in fact an actual unidentified animal, and not just a piece of photoshopped artwork, perhaps as a promotion for some recent cryptozoology themed TV show like Cryptids are Real or MonsterQuest. Then again, perhaps I should be thankful to even have a hoax like that in my lifetime. Its been quite a while since we've had, say, a Cardiff giant, Feejee mermaid or Ica stone.

Assuming that it is real, and is a previously identified animal, we can safely say the Montauk Monster is a mammal, and that it was a carnivore. That is to say, a member of the Order Carnivora... dogs, cats, weasals, bears, hyenas and the like. My second guess would be an artiodactyl (pig). The creature has prominent canine teeth, but lacks the incisors one would expect from a rodent. Whatever it is, it has been shaved and left to decay, with some bloating and tissue loss as a result. It looks like part of the face has been removed, eaten or fallen off to boot.

The end result? It is (or rather, was) either a raccoon, pig or dog, in descending order of likelihood. But then, thats just my opinion; feel free to take or leave it as you see fit. After all, I'm just some nut on the internet.

The second news item of interest, or perhaps just amusement, is another case of synchronicity with Shark Week - American Idol (or, as we call it in the Arabic World, سوبر ستار) host Ryan Seacrest was attacked by a shark! A sand shark to be exact. Considering how rare shark attacks actually are, it's always ironic to get one during Shark Week, let alone on a celebrity. I wish Mr. Seacrest no particular ill will, for the record. I just think that this is another example of the universe playing tricks and making fools of us all.

Regardless, I still have several more hours worth of shark attacks to watch. And a lucky shark's tooth amulet.