By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
CHICAGO – A new "Little Ice Age" could begin in just four years, predicted Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia.
Abdussamatov was speaking yesterday at the Heartland Institute's Fourth International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago, which began Sunday and ends today.
The Little Ice Age, which occurred after an era known in scientific circles as the Medieval Warm Period, is typically defined as a period of about 200 years, beginning around 1650 and extending through 1850.
In the first of a two-part video WND recorded at the conference, Abdussamatov explained that average annual sun activity has experienced an accelerated decrease since the 1990s. In 2005-2008, he said, the earth reached the maximum of the recent observed global-warming trend.
See Part 1 of WND's video of Abdussamatov's speech
In Part 2 of the video, Abdussamatov further explained that through 2014 the earth will go through a series of unstable variations in which global temperature will oscillate around the maximum reached in the years 1998-2005.
See Part 2 of WND's video of Abdussamatov's speech
In 2003-2005, Abdussamatov predicted a reduction of sunspot activity that would reach a new minimum in 2042, resulting in a deep global temperature minimum in the years 2055-2060.
"My predictions are looking better and better with each passing year," Abdussamatov declared.
Space station to refine predictions
In his capacity of the head of the Russian-Ukrainian project "Astrometria" on the Russian segment of the International Space Station, Abdussamatov is conducting additional research to refine his prediction that a new Little Ice Age will begin in 2014.
As seen in Part 2 of the video, Abdussamatov explained to the climate conference that the Russian segment of the ISS is scheduled to collect more precise data on sun activity over the next six years.
"If the Astrometria project is developed in time," Abdussamatov said, "we will be able to develop a more precise forecast of the duration and the depth of the approaching new Little Ice Age and to understand the reasons of cyclical changes taking place in the interior of the sun and the ways they affect the Earth and various scopes of human activity."
Abdussamatov's theory is that "long-term variations in the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth are the main and principal reasons driving and defining the whole mechanism of climatic changes from the global warmings to the Little Ice Ages to the big glacial periods."
In his speech's conclusion, Abdussamatov took on advocates of the theory of man-caused warming who want to diminish human use of hydrocarbon fuels. He contended, instead, that a reasonable way to combat coming cooling trends would be "to maintain economic growth in order to adapt to the upcoming new Little Ice Age in the middle of the 21st century."
Sun activity determines temperatures
Abdussamatov's research amounts to a sharp rebuke of climate scientists who believe human-generated carbon dioxide is responsible for causing catastrophic global warming, issuing instead a news flash announcing "Sun Heats Earth!"
WND previously reported Abdussamatov published a paper in which he tracked sunspot activity going back to the 19th century to argue that total sun irradiance, or TSI, is the primary factor responsible for causing climate variations on Earth, not carbon dioxide.
Moreover, Abdussamatov's analysis of sun activity data has led him to conclude that the Earth is entering a prolonged cooling phase, because sunspot activity is currently in a phase regarded as a "minimum."
"Observations of the sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon doioxide is 'not guilty,'" Abdussamatov wrote, "and as for what lies ahead in the coming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged temperature drop."
Abdussamatov's paper is featured on page 140 of a 2009 report issued by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, documenting more than 700 scientists who disagree that global warming is an anthropogenic, or man-made, phenomenon.
As historical support for his theory, Abdussamatov cited the observations in 1893 by the English astronomer Walter Maunder, who came to the conclusion that from 1645 to 1715 sunspots had been generally absent. That period coincided with the middle and coldest part of the Little Ice Age.
Abdussamatov also observed "the most significant solar event in the 20th century was the extraordinarily high level and the prolonged (virtually over the entire century) increase in the energy radiated by the sun," resulting in the global warming that today climate alarmists believe is a man-made phenomenon.
"The intense solar energy flow radiated since the beginning of the 1990s is slowly and decreasingly and, in spite of conventional opinion, there is now an unavoidable advance toward a global decrease, a deep temperature drop comparable to the Maunder minimum," he wrote.
In his published paper, Abdussamatov warned that more precise determination of when the global temperature decrease will arrive and how deep it will be may not be available for another eight years from his space station research.
"The observed global warming of the climate of the Earth is not caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses, but by extraordinarily high solar intensity that extended over virtually the entire past century," Abdussamatov wrote. "Future decrease in global temperature will occur even if anthropogenic ejection of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere rises to record levels.
"Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop."
Abdussamatov concluded Earth is no longer threatened by the catastrophic global warming forecast by some scientists, since warming passed its peak in 1998-2005.
"The global temperature of the Earth has begun its decrease without limits on the volume of greenhouse gas emissions by industrial developed countries," he wrote. "Therefore, the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol aimed to rescue the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off at least 150 years."
In 2007, National Geographic published Abdussamatov's explanation that the global warming observed in the shrinking of the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mar's South Pole was caused by reduced solar activity.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," Abdussamatov wrote.
Some 700 policymakers, opinion leaders, elected national and state legislators, scientists, economists and media are attending the Heartland Institute conference. The come from a wide range of countries, including the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Australia and Mexico.
The Heartland Institute is a non-profit organization funded by 1,500 donors. The organization says no corporate donor provides more than 5 percent of its $7 million annual budget.
St. Elmo's Fire - Charged Particles -Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
by Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media
Fluctuating magnetic fields created by nearby electromagnetic storms, is a phenomenon sometimes known as St. Elmo's Fire. This event is often described as a hovering orb of light around the size of a beach ball and lasts for a few seconds or minutes.
Could such events begin to occur more often as the Earth's magnetic field weakens, and the flow of galactic and solar charged particles strengthens? Could such events once again affirm today's most recent scientific discoveries, mirror ancient text which tells of the time we are now experiencing?
What I am telling you is new scientific data which was released just today. When I come across research discoveries as this one, my hair stands straight up as I am filled with excitement and uneasy anxiety at the same time. For those of you, who have been following the ECM newsletter over the years, know I have put the following statement in every newsletter I send out. Now science taps me on the shoulder and says: "I guess you were right about our ancient ancestors."
Below is a paragraph most of you are certainly familiar with:
"Just as the Sun's solar [and galactic] activity affects the Earth's magnetic field which has a dramatic affect on Earth's weather i.e. earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, hurricanes; so does this wave of electrical currents affect the human body's magnetic field. Mitch also reveals a little-known development from modern medicine known as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). TMS provides empirical evidence of how magnetic fields can influence human emotions. I believe it will be the magnetic influence produced by the Sun which will usher in what is described by our ancient ancestors as "the transition" bringing us to a new state-of-being" . (Mitch Battros)
To continue with today's release: Moving charges in lightning strikes or in wire coiled around a patient's head generate magnetic fields. A fluctuating magnetic field induces an electric field that, if powerful enough, can make neurons fire in the visual cortex. Pale ovals, bubbles, lines, or patches are sometimes observed by patients who undergo transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
During an electromagnetic storm, the initial wave towards Earth is usually very short - two to three millionths of a second. A single flash generates an average of two to five return strokes. But some strikes can create more than 20 - a protracted stream of events that could produce visions lasting for multiple seconds, according to calculations by Josef Peer and Alexander Kendl, both of Innsbruck University in Austria.
"To our surprise, the results from long, repetitive pulses matched TMS fields astonishingly well," says Kendl.
FULL ARTICLE - CLICK HERE
Solar Maximum: How It Could Mess Things Up
A lot depends on the direction of the ejections, which occur regularly, even during quiet periods. The magnetic field of the Carrington Storm was directly opposed to the Earth when it was released from the sun. That storm pushed sightings of the aurora borealis as far south as Cuba, and it interrupted the nation's telegraph system. If such a storm hit today, Penn said, it would knock every satellite we have out of orbit. On the ground, it would knock out electrical and transportation systems. A report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded it would take 10 years to recover from the $1 trillion to $2 trillion in damage such a storm would cause. Frank Hill, director of the Global Oscillation Network Group solar seismology project at the National Solar Observatory, said his favorite story about the Carrington event is that it caused fires in telegraph offices by sending increased currents along telegraph lines. Hill said solar flares and mass coronal ejections will "be on the increase over the next five years." A lot is at risk on Earth and in orbit, he said. In addition to satellites and communications, "GPS systems are also sensitive to charged particles from the sun that set up disturbances in the ionosphere," Hill said.
Colossal statue of Thoth discovered at temple of Amenhotep III in Luxor
MANKIND'S FAILED ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE
By Richard H. Francis Jr.
"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." - Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)
ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH YOUR ANSWERS ??
Every single person who was ever born on planet Earth arrived here the same way. Arrived with a brain capable and ready to learn, but knowing nothing, a clean slate so to speak. Granted, some have brains more capable than others, there are high IQs and there are low IQs. There are those that have "photographic memories" and those who retain very little in the way of knowledge. There are those known as Idiot Savants defined as: "a person who exhibits an extraordinary ability in one subject (often mathematics) whilst being mentally retarded in all other fields."
It has taken thousands of years for mankind (or should I say humankind) to arrive at where we are today, whereas just a few years ago, a little over a century, man could travel only as fast as a horse could take him (about 35 or 40 miles per hour), today we have spaceships that can travel to the moon, at a speed of 6,000 miles per hour! Human knowledge has accumulated bit by bit over time; Isaac Newton (best known for his discovery of the laws of gravity and motion) said he accomplished what he did by standing on the shoulders of giants; Albert Einstein and others followed building on and leading to the scientific advances we now see all around us.
HAVE HUMANS RECEIVED HELP FROM SUPERHUMAN INTELLIGENCE?
Most rational people know human's have limits, however, there are those, thousands of years ago, that discovered they could overcome this deficiency by proclaiming they heard from a superhuman intelligence, a "God" and this "God" gave them all the answers they would ever need. Unfortunately, for humankind these "discoverers" were so successful and convincing that they spawned copy cats! That's why, today, we have hundreds and thousands of religious sects all over the planet. No one and I mean no one has ever offered one shred of evidence that any superhuman being ever communicated to anyone on Earth!
THE CONTRIBUTION OF "HOLY BOOKS"
One of the greatest men with one of the highest IQs said, "The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe," Albert Einstein. And another one, Thomas Edison, said, "We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." That being the case, why is it that an infant, knowing nothing, can grow-up and in just a few short years, say 20 or 50 or 100, can believe they know everything there is to know and be absolutely sure they have all the answers, enough to demand that everyone else on the planet listen to them and do their bidding? This is what we hear from the religious community, even though they have made no advances in thousands of years. Their holy books, "Scriptures" as they call them are basically unchanged in all this time. Yes, they come out with new translations all the time, tweaking the interpretations here and there, but the laws remain the same as they were thousands of years ago. The scientific knowledge goes unchanged; the Bible still teaches that the sun circles the earth instead of the other way around (Joshua 10:12-14) and that the universe was created in six days (Genesis 1:4-2:3), six thousand years ago (marginal notes), these words remain in the "Scriptures," no one dares to remove them; after all they teach that the "Scriptures" are the infallible "Word of God," if they removed or changed certain passages they could no longer say it's the Word of God! Many of these "perfect" laws in the Bible such as the laws regarding slavery and polygamy and the stoning to death of a person who picks up sticks on the Sabbath day and so-forth are simply ignored in today's society and by the very churches who still claim to believe in them! It is mind boggling to say the least.
Children are still arriving here everyday the same way as ever, all with clean slates, knowing nothing, but ready to learn. Sadly, instead of being encouraged and educated to learn how to learn and become productive, helpful people, they are indoctrinated into the uninformed notions of their parents who received them from their parents going back thousands of years!
CAN BILLIONS BE WRONG?
To make the situation even sadder everyone on the planet knows these notions are false! How do we know this? Simple, just ask anyone if the doctrines and teachings of their rival religions are true. Every single person will say their rivals are teaching false doctrine; theirs and theirs alone are the true teachings! There used to be a saying, "Can 40 million Frenchmen be wrong?" So, can a billion Muslims be wrong? The billions of Christians say "Yes!" Can two billion Christians be wrong? The other four billion on the planet say, "Yes!" Everyone knows the "others" are wrong, they know their rivals do not have a single shred of evidence to prove the correctness of their claims! If there was evidence for one "God" everyone on the planet would know it and be forced to believe it because, truth is truth and nothing can ever change it into a lie; a lie is a lie and nothing can ever change it into truth. Think of this: over the centuries men have conjured-up and imagined "gods" from Apollo to Zeus, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, they all had them, did they not? Ask yourself, where are all the people, today, who believe in these former "gods?" You perfectly know the answer to that question; they are nowhere to be found! Is it not a matter of time before no one will believe in Yahweh, Jesus or Allah? In your deepest, innermost human level, your reasonable common sense, honest, level you know this is true! Most people do not want to so much as think about it! It's too easy to live in a fantasy land, in a children's land of make believe.
WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?
No one has ever come forward with the evidence to prove their "God" exists, including the "God" himself or herself, therefore, why not just admit to the reality of the situation and start treating everyone you meet as a person who was born here on Earth just like yourself, instead of a "Muslim" or a "Christian" or a "Jew" or a "Hindu" or whatever -- you name it. Why not just do this temporally until the evidence comes in; you wouldn't judge a criminal case until all the evidence was in. Would you? So why judge this case without the evidence?
Here are a few more thoughts on this important subject by some of the world's best thinkers:
THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause." - George Washington (1732-1799)
"This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." - John Adams (1735-1826)
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man." - Thomas Jefferson
"The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live." - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Religions are all alike - founded on fables and mythologies." - Thomas Jefferson
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." - James Madison (1751-1836)
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." - James Madison (1751-1836)
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison (1751-1836)
"What has been the fruits of Christianity? ... Superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison (1751-1836)
"In no instances have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people." - James Madison (1751-1836)
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, `tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Works, Vol. XIII, p. 506
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." - Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"It is from the bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder, for the belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man, and the bible is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." - Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and seeks to pursue us into eternity." - Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called religion." - Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." - Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and of my own part, I disbelieve them all." - Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, `Whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are labouring to dethrone,' but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument." - Ethan Allen (1738-1789)
OTHER GREAT THINKERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY
"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.' - Anaxagorus, ca. 475 BC
"Nothing exists except for atoms and space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus (460-370 BCE)
"Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?" - Aristophanes (448 - 380 BCE)
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus (341 - 270 BCE)
"Fear is the mother of all gods. Nature does all things spontaneously by herself without their meddling." - Lucretius (99BC - 55 CD)
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason." - John Locke (1632-1704)
"The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning." - Voltaire (1694-1778)
"God's power is infinite, whatever he wills is executed, but neither man nor any other animal is happy, therefore he does not will their happiness." - David Hume (1711-1776)
"Errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy are only ridiculous." - David Hume
"There is in every village a torch – the teacher: and an extinguisher – the clergyman." - Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
"It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity." - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow-men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend."- Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Our ignorance is God; what we know is science." - Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains." - Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"The Bible has some noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies." - Mark Twain
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - Mark Twain (1835-1910), A schoolboy
"Man is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven." - Mark Twain (1835-1910), Letters from the Earth, "The Damned Human Race," 1909
[Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.] - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it." - Sir David Stevens
"I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible for the calamities the world is at present enduring." - William Archer (1856-1924)
"Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion and probably contradicts itself." - George Santayana (1863-1952)
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence. It will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit, it is also opposed to all attempts at rational thinking." - H. L. Mencken
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbably. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost or never had the capacity for clear and realistic thought." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 11, 1955.
"The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), American Mercury, March 1930
"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism." - Steve Allen (1921-2000)
"There is not the slightest question but that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous, vengeful God, inflicting not only on the sinful `pagans' but even on his Chosen People fire, lighting, hideous plagues and diseases, brimstone, and other curses." - Steve Allen
"If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for flood waters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers." - Steve Allen
"God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, then, is built upon ignorance and hope." - Steve Allen
"No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible." - Steve Allen
"I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam." - Gore Vidal (1925- ), letter to Warren Allen Smith, 1954
"Christianity is such a silly religion." - Gore Vidal (1925- ), Time Magazine, Sep. 28, 1992
"Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?" - Carl Sagan (1934-1996), The Demon-Haunted World
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." - Christopher Hitchens (1949- )
"Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong." - Christopher Hitchens (1949- )
"By telling students that the beliefs of a superstitious tribe thousands of years ago should be treated on an equal basis with the evidence collected with our most advanced equipment today is to completely undermine the entire process of scientific inquiry." - Alan Hale (1958- ), co-discoverer of the Hale-Bopp comet
Richard H. Francis Jr.
Holt , Michigan
March 6, 2010
Revised March 8, 2010
Fallen Angels, Aliens, And Giants: Truth Or Tale?
A Hidden History of Evil
The originals of most of Stroilov’s documents remain in the Kremlin archives, where, like most of the Soviet Union’s top-secret documents from the post-Stalin era, they remain classified. They include, Stroilov says, transcripts of nearly every conversation between Gorbachev and his foreign counterparts—hundreds of them, a near-complete diplomatic record of the era, available nowhere else. There are notes from the Politburo taken by Georgy Shakhnazarov, an aide of Gorbachev’s, and by Politburo member Vadim Medvedev. There is the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev—Gorbachev’s principal aide and deputy chief of the body formerly known as the Comintern—which dates from 1972 to the collapse of the regime. There are reports, dating from the 1960s, by Vadim Zagladin, deputy chief of the Central Committee’s International Department until 1987 and then Gorbachev’s advisor until 1991. Zagladin was both envoy and spy, charged with gathering secrets, spreading disinformation, and advancing Soviet influence.
When Gorbachev and his aides were ousted from the Kremlin, they took unauthorized copies of these documents with them. The documents were scanned and stored in the archives of the Gorbachev Foundation, one of the first independent think tanks in modern Russia, where a handful of friendly and vetted researchers were given limited access to them. Then, in 1999, the foundation opened a small part of the archive to independent researchers, including Stroilov. The key parts of the collection remained restricted; documents could be copied only with the written permission of the author, and Gorbachev refused to authorize any copies whatsoever. But there was a flaw in the foundation’s security, Stroilov explained to me. When things went wrong with the computers, as often they did, he was able to watch the network administrator typing the password that gave access to the foundation’s network. Slowly and secretly, Stroilov copied the archive and sent it to secure locations around the world.
When I first heard about Stroilov’s documents, I wondered if they were forgeries. But in 2006, having assessed the documents with the cooperation of prominent Soviet dissidents and Cold War spies, British judges concluded that Stroilov was credible and granted his asylum request. The Gorbachev Foundation itself has since acknowledged the documents’ authenticity.
Bukovsky’s story is similar. In 1992, President Boris Yeltsin’s government invited him to testify at the Constitutional Court of Russia in a case concerning the constitutionality of the Communist Party. The Russian State Archives granted Bukovsky access to its documents to prepare his testimony. Using a handheld scanner, he copied thousands of documents and smuggled them to the West.
The Russian state cannot sue Stroilov or Bukovsky for breach of copyright, since the material was created by the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, neither of which now exists. Had he remained in Russia, however, Stroilov believes that he could have been prosecuted for disclosure of state secrets or treason. The military historian Igor Sutyagin is now serving 15 years in a hard-labor camp for the crime of collecting newspaper clippings and other open-source materials and sending them to a British consulting firm. The danger that Stroilov and Bukovsky faced was real and grave; they both assumed, one imagines, that the world would take notice of what they had risked so much to acquire.
Stroilov claims that his documents “tell a completely new story about the end of the Cold War. The ‘commonly accepted’ version of history of that period consists of myths almost entirely. These documents are capable of ruining each of those myths.” Is this so? I couldn’t say. I don’t read Russian. Of Stroilov’s documents, I have seen only the few that have been translated into English. Certainly, they shouldn’t be taken at face value; they were, after all, written by Communists. But the possibility that Stroilov is right should surely compel keen curiosity.
For instance, the documents cast Gorbachev in a far darker light than the one in which he is generally regarded. In one document, he laughs with the Politburo about the USSR’s downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983—a crime that was not only monstrous but brought the world very near to nuclear Armageddon. These minutes from a Politburo meeting on October 4, 1989, are similarly disturbing:
Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.
Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?
And a transcript of Gorbachev’s conversation with Hans-Jochen Vogel, the leader of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shows Gorbachev defending Soviet troops’ April 9, 1989, massacre of peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.
Stroilov’s documents also contain transcripts of Gorbachev’s discussions with many Middle Eastern leaders. These suggest interesting connections between Soviet policy and contemporary trends in Russian foreign policy. Here is a fragment from a conversation reported to have taken place with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on April 28, 1990:
H. ASSAD. To put pressure on Israel, Baghdad would need to get closer to Damascus, because Iraq has no common borders with Israel. . . .
M. S. GORBACHEV. I think so, too. . . .
H. ASSAD. Israel’s approach is different, because the Judaic religion itself states: the land of Israel spreads from Nile to Euphrates and its return is a divine predestination.
M. S. GORBACHEV. But this is racism, combined with Messianism!
H. ASSAD. This is the most dangerous form of racism.
One doesn’t need to be a fantasist to wonder whether these discussions might be relevant to our understanding of contemporary Russian policy in a region of some enduring strategic significance.
There are other ways in which the story that Stroilov’s and Bukovsky’s papers tell isn’t over. They suggest, for example, that the architects of the European integration project, as well as many of today’s senior leaders in the European Union, were far too close to the USSR for comfort. This raises important questions about the nature of contemporary Europe—questions that might be asked when Americans consider Europe as a model for social policy, or when they seek European diplomatic cooperation on key issues of national security.
According to Zagladin’s reports, for example, Kenneth Coates, who from 1989 to 1998 was a British member of the European Parliament, approached Zagladin on January 9, 1990, to discuss what amounted to a gradual merger of the European Parliament and the Supreme Soviet. Coates, says Zagladin, explained that “creating an infrastructure of cooperation between the two parliament[s] would help . . . to isolate the rightists in the European Parliament (and in Europe), those who are interested in the USSR’s collapse.” Coates served as chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights from 1992 to 1994. How did it come to pass that Europe was taking advice about human rights from a man who had apparently wished to “isolate” those interested in the USSR’s collapse and sought to extend Soviet influence in Europe?
Or consider a report on Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, who led Spain’s integration into the European Community as its foreign minister. On March 3, 1989, according to these documents, he explained to Gorbachev that “the success of perestroika means only one thing—the success of the socialist revolution in contemporary conditions. And that is exactly what the reactionaries don’t accept.” Eighteen months later, Ordóñez told Gorbachev: “I feel intellectual disgust when I have to read, for example, passages in the documents of ‘G7’ where the problems of democracy, freedom of human personality and ideology of market economy are set on the same level. As a socialist, I cannot accept such an equation.” Perhaps most shockingly, the Eastern European press has reported that Stroilov’s documents suggest that François Mitterrand was maneuvering with Gorbachev to ensure that Germany would unite as a neutral, socialist entity under a Franco-Soviet condominium.
Zagladin’s records also note that the former leader of the British Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, approached Gorbachev—unauthorized, while Kinnock was leader of the opposition—through a secret envoy to discuss the possibility of halting the United Kingdom’s Trident nuclear-missile program. The minutes of the meeting between Gorbachev and the envoy, MP Stuart Holland, read as follows:
In [Holland’s] opinion, Soviet Union should be very interested in liquidation of “Tridents” because, apart from other things, the West—meaning the US, Britain and France—would have a serious advantage over the Soviet Union after the completion of START treaty. That advantage will need to be eliminated. . . . At the same time Holland noted that, of course, we can seriously think about realisation of that idea only if the Labour comes to power. He said Thatcher . . . would never agree to any reduction of nuclear armaments.
Kinnock was vice president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, and his wife, Glenys, is now Britain’s minister for Europe. Gerard Batten, a member of the UK Independence Party, has noted the significance of the episode. “If the report given to Mr. Gorbachev is true, it means that Lord Kinnock approached one of Britain’s enemies in order to seek approval regarding his party’s defense policy and, had he been elected, Britain’s defense policy,” Batten said to the European Parliament in 2009. “If this report is true, then Lord Kinnock would be guilty of treason.”
Similarly, Baroness Catherine Ashton, who is now the European Union’s foreign minister, was treasurer of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1980 to 1982. The papers offer evidence that this organization received “unidentified income” from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Stroilov’s papers suggest as well that the government of the current Spanish EU commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Joaquín Almunia, enthusiastically supported the Soviet project of gradually unifying Germany and Europe into a socialist “common European home” and strongly opposed the independence of the Baltic states and then of Ukraine.
Perhaps it doesn’t surprise you to read that prominent European politicians held these views. But why doesn’t it? It is impossible to imagine that figures who had enjoyed such close ties to the Nazi Party—or, for that matter, to the Ku Klux Klan or to South Africa’s apartheid regime—would enjoy top positions in Europe today. The rules are different, apparently, for Communist fellow travelers. “We now have the EU unelected socialist party running Europe,” Stroilov said to me. “Bet the KGB can’t believe it.”
And what of Zagladin’s description of his dealings with our own current vice president in 1979?
Unofficially, [Senator Joseph] Biden and [Senator Richard] Lugar said that, in the end of the day, they were not so much concerned with having a problem of this or that citizen solved as with showing to the American public that they do care for “human rights.” . . . In other words, the collocutors directly admitted that what is happening is a kind of a show, that they absolutely do not care for the fate of most so-called dissidents.
Remarkably, the world has shown little interest in the unread Soviet archives. That paragraph about Biden is a good example. Stroilov and Bukovsky coauthored a piece about it for the online magazine FrontPage on October 10, 2008; it passed without remark. Americans considered the episode so uninteresting that even Biden’s political opponents didn’t try to turn it into political capital. Imagine, if you can, what it must feel like to have spent the prime of your life in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, to know that Joe Biden is now vice president of the United States, and to know that no one gives a damn.
Bukovsky’s book about the story that these documents tell, Jugement à Moscou, has been published in French, Russian, and a few other Slavic languages, but not in English. Random House bought the manuscript and, in Bukovsky’s words, tried “to force me to rewrite the whole book from the liberal left political perspective.” Bukovsky replied that “due to certain peculiarities of my biography I am allergic to political censorship.” The contract was canceled, the book was never published in English, and no other publisher has shown interest in it. Neither has anyone wanted to publish EUSSR, a pamphlet by Stroilov and Bukovsky about the Soviet roots of European integration. In 2004, a very small British publisher did print an abbreviated version of the pamphlet; it, too, passed unnoticed.
Stroilov has a long list of complaints about journalists who have initially shown interest in the documents, only to tell him later that their editors have declared the story insignificant. In advance of Gorbachev’s visit to Germany for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Stroilov says, he offered the German press the documents depicting Gorbachev unflatteringly. There were no takers. In France, news about the documents showing Mitterrand’s and Gorbachev’s plans to turn Germany into a dependent socialist state prompted a few murmurs of curiosity, nothing more. Bukovsky’s vast collection about Soviet sponsorship of terrorism, Palestinian and otherwise, remains largely unpublished.
Stroilov says that he and Bukovsky approached Jonathan Brent of Yale University Press, which is leading a publishing project on the history of the Cold War. He claims that initially Brent was enthusiastic and asked him to write a book, based on the documents, about the first Gulf War. Stroilov says that he wrote the first six chapters, sent them off, and never heard from Brent again, despite sending him e-mail after e-mail. “I can only speculate what so much frightened him in that book,” Stroilov wrote to me.
I’ve also asked Brent and received no reply. This doesn’t mean anything; people are busy. I am less inclined to believe in complex attempts to suppress the truth than I am in indifference and preoccupation with other things. Stroilov sees in these events “a kind of a taboo, the vague common understanding in the Establishment that it is better to let sleeping dogs lie, not to throw stones in a house of glass, and not to mention a rope in the house of a hanged man.” I suspect it is something even more disturbing: no one much cares.
“I know the time will come,” Stroilov says, “when the world has to look at those documents very carefully. We just cannot escape this. We have no way forward until we face the truth about what happened to us in the twentieth century. Even now, no matter how hard we try to ignore history, all these questions come back to us time and again.”
The questions come back time and again, it is true, but few remember that they have been asked before, and few remember what the answer looked like. No one talks much about the victims of Communism. No one erects memorials to the throngs of people murdered by the Soviet state. (In his widely ignored book, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of perestroika under Gorbachev, puts the number at 30 to 35 million.)
Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.
We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.
Claire Berlinski, a contributing editor of City Journal, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
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