The Unburied King: Ferdinand of Bulgaria between the laurels of independence and national catastrophes

On September 22, 1908, Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg-Gotha accepted the title of king, and our country embarked on an independent path of development, rejecting the vassal status of the Ottoman Empire. Today in Bulgaria it is celebrated as the Independence Day of the country.

This independent path was not smooth and only within a decade led to a national catastrophe, and the main blame was borne by the king, who abdicated in 1918. The disappointment was great and the ousted monarch was not allowed to return to Bulgaria.

To this day, the prevailing assessments of him inevitably contain the definition of a “controversial person.” But from a distance, historians offer a new perspective on the events of a century ago and on the personality of Ferdinand himself.

Ferdinand, the first king of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom and the longest reigning, was born into a family with deep dynastic traditions. Fate takes him east, in the middle of the rebellious Balkan Peninsula.

Prince Ferdinand is a throne descendant in three lines of the most famous monarch, the most flourishing expression of absolutism – the French monarch in the person of Louis XIV.

“Bulgaria has never had such a brilliant and 100 percent representative of its European identity.”

“In a very special way, he is French in spirit. He was conceived differently. From an early age he was somehow the pearl in the non-existent, rather unrealized crown of his mother Clementine of Orleans, the king’s daughter. Hence the huge and unbreakable bond between this mother and this son, not with the other children, but with the youngest. That child, which in the Bulgarian Revival families is called a jerk and is a favorite of the whole family. “

What do we not know about Ferdinand? Do we know enough about his personality? For example, what kind of parent he was:

“From the point of view of the more liberal idea of ​​the Balkans, in our case, knowing how we look after our children and grandchildren, the last thing we can say is that he was severely, affectionately emotionally connected to them. This does not diminish the extent to which he has prepared these people for their future public activities. Until the end, what the children felt for him was respect, admiration and horror.

The ruler’s relationship with his two wives was also complicated.

But all this was preceded by the great rivalry – between the expectations of the Bulgarians after the Liberation, the diplomatic skills of the native rulers, the geostrategic interests of Russia and the terror of the candidates to lead a country in an undeclared civil war.

Prince Ferdinand was greeted with enthusiasm. Suddenly, against the background of this true oriental pastoral, a man appears who shines in a different way and is demonstratively different from this environment.

“And even his later political opponents exclaim – Ashkolsun, this is a king! These are the words of Dragan Tsankov. “

Life in Sofia is extremely simple, boring, without any opportunities for social events and entertainment, continues Petar Stojanovic. He describes the new monarch as an egocentric, selfish man, filled with great self-confidence, to a large extent justified.

Still, this “marriage at the expense” proved successful, at least until the first of the Balkan wars, because “it became an incarnation, a transformation of Bulgaria from an Ottoman province into a European state.”

“I would not like to say that Tsar Ferdinand built the European houses of Sofia with two hands, brick by brick, or built the railways, but Bulgaria has had the locomotive in his face for these 25 years.”

According to the data at the time, Bulgaria was far ahead of its Balkan neighbors and competed with established European countries.

Ferdinand also has a scientific contribution to our history. His interest in botany and ornithology began in childhood. “As a Bulgarian ruler, he turned both Bulgaria and Sofia into one of the European centers of science and practice – both in his palaces, primarily Vrana and Euxinograd, but also for the general public, turning, say, the Sofia zoological park in one of the most attractive places in Europe. In his person, Bulgaria gives the world its most famous scientist, a naturalist who has ever existed. “

Ferdinand’s most indisputable merit is the country’s declared independence. his personal ambition to be equal among European and world rulers and to cease to be a vassal of the Turkish sultan should not be underestimated.

The fact is the two great national defeats after 1913 and 1918, for which he took the blame and abdicated.

“It is not possible to blame for the participation in a world conflict, in a financial affair, etc. to be loaded only on one person. This is absurd. There must come a time when we, the historians, will calmly and objectively sift the grain from the chaff and reward the Caesar and the God of God according to the biblical Caesar”, tells the doctor of historical sciences, professor at the University of Shumen “Konstantin Preslavski”, journalist and former Bulgarian Minister of Culture Petar Stojanovic.

Ferdinand’s fate is severe, in no small part and tragic, he admits.

“Imagine surviving the murder of your two sons, surviving the occupation and erasure of your second homeland, and dying in poverty far from it, unburied yet. This, even as people, leave as historians and politicians, should excite us.

Ferdinand’s last will was to be buried in Bulgaria. Therefore, his coffin was temporarily – from 1948 until today, placed in the crypt of the Catholic Church of St. Augustine in Coburg – the German city that sheltered him, after his cousin – the Austrian Emperor Charles I, did not allow him to his estates in Today’s last attempt to return King Ferdinand’s remains was made 10 years ago.

Former NMSS MP Mincho Spasov is one of the members of the Initiative Committee dedicated to this cause. According to him, the royal family has set conditions that have not yet been met. “The condition to transfer the remains is to reach a consensus in Bulgarian society. A formal expression of such consent would be, for example, the signing of a memorandum between the President, the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the National Assembly, the three greats in the country. “

Illustration: Portrait of Tsar Ferdinand, 1914 and his children Boris, Kiril, Evdokia and Nadezhda (artist Nikola Mihailov, 1878–1960).

Artificial intelligence risks to privacy demand urgent action – Bachelet

GENEVA (15 September 2021) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Wednesday stressed the urgent need  for a moratorium on the sale and use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems that pose a serious risk to human rights until adequate safeguards are put in place. She also called for AI applications that cannot be used in compliance with international human rights law to be banned.

“Artificial intelligence can be a force for good, helping societies overcome some of the great challenges of our times. But AI technologies can have negative, even catastrophic, effects if they are used without sufficient regard to how they affect people’s human rights,” Bachelet said.

As part of its work* on technology and human rights, the UN Human Rights Office has today published a report that analyses how AI – including profiling, automated decision-making and other machine-learning technologies – affects people’s right to privacy and other rights, including the rights to health, education, freedom of movement, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of expression.

“Artificial intelligence now reaches into almost every corner of our physical and mental lives and even emotional states. AI systems are used to determine who gets public services, decide who has a chance to be recruited for a job, and of course they affect what information people see and can share online,” the High Commissioner said.

The report looks at how States and businesses alike have often rushed to incorporate AI applications, failing to carry out due diligence. There have already been numerous cases of people being treated unjustly because of AI, such as being denied social security benefits because of faulty AI tools or arrested because of flawed facial recognition.

The report details how AI systems rely on large data sets, with information about individuals collected, shared, merged and analysed in multiple and often opaque ways. The data used to inform and guide AI systems can be faulty, discriminatory, out of date or irrelevant. Long-term storage of data also poses particular risks, as data could in the future be exploited in as yet unknown ways. 

“Given the rapid and continuous growth of AI, filling the immense accountability gap in how data is collected, stored, shared and used is one of the most urgent human rights questions we face” .

Michelle Bachelet, un high commissioner on human rights

The inferences, predictions and monitoring performed by AI tools, including seeking insights into patterns of human behaviour, also raise serious questions. The biased datasets relied on by AI systems can lead to discriminatory decisions, and these risks are most acute for already marginalized groups. 

“The risk of discrimination linked to AI-driven decisions – decisions that can change, define or damage human lives – is all too real. This is why there needs to be systematic assessment and monitoring of the effects of AI systems to identify and mitigate human rights risks,” Bachelet said.

There also needs to be much greater transparency by companies and States in how they are developing and using AI.

“The complexity of the data environment, algorithms and models underlying the development and operation of AI systems, as well as intentional secrecy of government and private actors are factors undermining meaningful ways for the public to understand the effects of AI systems on human rights and society,” the report says.

“We cannot afford to continue playing catch-up regarding AI – allowing its use with limited or no boundaries or oversight, and dealing with the almost inevitable human rights consequences after the fact. The power of AI to serve people is undeniable, but so is AI’s ability to feed human rights violations at an enormous scale with virtually no visibility. Action is needed now to put human rights guardrails on the use of AI, for the good of all of us,” Bachelet stressed.

Source: UN

Photo credit: UN News/Daniel JohnsonUN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. (file)

What Cossacks wrote to the Turkish Sultan

The admirers of Russian culture remember this painting by Ilya Repin “The Cossacks”. Or, as it is popularly called, “Cossacks are writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan”.

But what did they really write? Judging by the expressions on their faces, they are clearly not writing an analytical and economic treatise. It became interesting to me and I decided to understand this story. To begin with, I will clarify that the letter itself has not been found – there are only copies of it. Therefore, whether the reply letter was itself or not is not conclusively proven. But that doesn’t matter. Even as a legend, this story conveys the atmosphere of those times and the spirit of the free Zaporozhye Cossacks.

So, history itself took place in the 17th century. Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV subdued the right-bank Ukraine and sent a letter to the Zaporozhye Sich. The requirement was simple – to obey the Sultan and become his vassals. Half of the Sultan’s letter was dedicated to his great statuses – the ruler of the world, the invincible warrior, the viceroy of God on Earth, etc.

Interestingly, the writing style hints at the fact that Mehmed wanted to have the Cossacks as his kind vassals. Usually he promised terrible punishment in case of insubordination. He tried not to provoke the Cossacks into aggression. But he provoked them into humor with his boasting.

Perhaps, if the Sultan wrote in a practical language, the Cossacks would have agreed with his demands. There was nothing wrong with becoming a vassal in the feudal era. You received patronage and military assistance from the most powerful empire at that time. Earlier, the hetman of right-bank Ukraine Petro Doroshenko took over the power of the Sultan.

But the Cossacks are freedom-loving by nature, and the excessive pathos of the Sultan simply made them laugh. And they wrote a response letter. This moment is captured in the famous picture.

What did the Cossacks write to the Turkish Sultan? Unfortunately, the original letter has not survived, there are only later versions of the letter text. There are several of them, but they are all written quite in the spirit of the Zaporozhye Cossacks.

Let us be guided by the text from the magazine “Russian Starina” for 1872, which is based on the documents of the historian Nikolai Kostomarov.

In a response letter, the Cossacks addressed the Sultan as “the Turkish Shaitan and the secretary of Lucifer himself.”

The Cossacks expressed doubt that the Sultan was an invincible knight. For, according to the Cossacks, the sultan could not have resisted an ordinary hedgehog with a naked sirloin.

Further, the Cossacks changed all the royal titles in their own way.

“You are a Babylonian cook, a Macedonian charioteer, a Jerusalem brewer, a swineherd of Great and Lesser Egypt, an Armenian thief.” Well, you get the structure. The authors simply took each region where the sultan ruled, and instead of the word “lord” they added one of the curses. “You are not fit to feed Christian pigs,” summarize the Zaporozhian people.

The letter was signed by Ataman Ivan Sirko. By the way, this is the legendary chieftain – he participated in the uprising of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, was an ardent defender of Orthodoxy. The Turks were very afraid of him and called him “Russian shaitan”.

What happened next? In 1672-1681 there was a Russian-Turkish war. On the side of the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, vassal to him, also came out. Russia lost the war, but did not suffer a crushing defeat and managed to save the left-bank Ukraine.

Well, Ilya Repin approached the question like a real professional. He painted the picture for 10 years. For this he went to Zaporozhye, talked with people. Studied in detail the history and costumes of that era and found several typical types, which he wrote from nature.

How Stalin’s USSR conquered Afghanistan three times (1)

Twenty years ago, on September 11, 2001, there was a terrorist attack on the United States, which in response declared war on al-Qaeda

“and the Taliban and began an invasion of Afghanistan. 20 years later, this story ended with the withdrawal of the Western coalition and the actual victory of the Islamists. The fact that Afghanistan, despite poverty, is a tough nut to crack, including because it lies in the sphere of interests of different powers and regimes, the experience of Stalin shows. He prepared three times to conquer this country, but he could not carry out his plans.

In Soviet schools, students were told that agrarian and pastoralist Afghanistan was the first country in the world to recognize Soviet Russia, but they preferred not to go into the details of this story. The fact is that diplomatic relations with the Lenin government on March 27, 1919 were established by Amanullah Khan because the Bolsheviks themselves became the first to recognize him as the master of Kabul – a month earlier, at the end of February. The previous emir, Habibullah Khan, ruled the country for 18 years, but was killed on February 20, 1919, then his brother Nasrullah ascended the throne for only one week and was sent to prison on charges of fratricide by his nephew, Amanullah Khan, the third son of Habibullah. … A year later, Nasrullah was killed in custody.

The Bolsheviks saw Afghanistan as a possible road along which the world revolution would go to India.

The Bolsheviks supported the new emir, Amanullah, not so much for the sake of getting out of international isolation as against the British Empire. Until 1919, Afghanistan was actually a protectorate of Britain, which, under the treaty, paid a kind of subsidies to the Afghan budget for Kabul’s abandonment of its own foreign policy. But Amanullah declared the complete independence of his country and even started a symbolic war with yesterday’s patrons, having achieved de facto recognition from the British in August 1919. On February 21, 1921, a friendship treaty was concluded between the RSFSR and Afghanistan, under which Moscow paid Kabul a millionth subsidy annually.

The Bolsheviks viewed the distant mountainous country as a possible road along which the world revolution would go to India, and immediately after the diplomats shook hands, the special services began work. One of the Soviet agents was the Turk Dzhemal Pasha – an accomplice in the extermination of Armenians and atrocities against the Arabs during the First World War. On November 1, 1921, he met with Stalin, then the head of the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities, and said that he was ready to organize financing and supply of weapons to potential rebels in the northwest of then British India. Dzhugashvili approved the initiative, about which he wrote to Trotsky: “… In the face of the Muslim tribes, which constitute the majority in the Indus Valley and in the Punjab region, among which Dzhemal enjoys great influence, we have a certain base from which to seriously damage England if the latter strikes in the spring or in the summer of 1922. In addition, if we give Jemal the opportunity to have in Afghanistan at least a brigade (well-cobbled together) with our and Turkish instructors (formally subordinate to Amanullah Khan), thus, we will create a real base for anti-British influence in Afghanistan, which is also very important for us and without which the second task (direct impact on the insurgency in India) is impossible. ” instructors, and soon Dzhemal Pasha in Tbilisi was killed by an Armenian avenger.

In 1923, Amunullah Khan granted his subjects a constitution. Those, however, did not appreciate this step. The introduction of duties on imported goods from British India hit the pockets of the peasants, especially in the border zone – consumer prices rose. In addition, Amanullah raised taxes and began to centralize their collection, which displeased the local nobility. Farmers were also irritated by the introduction of military service.

In the early spring of 1924, an uprising began in southern Afghanistan. For help in the fight against his own people, the constitutional monarch turned to a large northern neighbor, and in the fall, planes and 11 red aviators arrived in Kabul, and then began not only aerial reconnaissance, but also bombing the positions of the Pashtun rebels. Soviet specialists also began to create their own Afghan Air Force. In addition, the USSR generously supplied small arms at a lower cost, ammunition and radio stations.

The chief of the Kabul police, for a monthly fee of 600 rupees, pledged to arrest all British secret agents

The military intelligence and the Comintern sharply stepped up their activities. According to the testimony of Georgy Agabekov, who since April 1924 served in Kabul in the USSR plenipotentiary mission, the conditions for the operations of the special services have become hothouse: “I worked hard on my own recruiting people to work under the GPU. After the arrest of Abdul-Majid Khan (a gendarme colonel who was sent to jail for not wanting to fight the rebels. – A. G.) I contacted his cousin, who served in the Kabul police , and received through him all the information obtained by the Afghan police agents.Raja Protap (an Indian emigrant close to the emir. – AG) introduced me to Mustofi (head of the tax department) of the Kabul province, through whom I received government information. From him, I received information about Muslim India, with whose leaders he, on behalf of Amanullah Khan, maintained close contact.

… I got to know the chief of the Kabul police … For a monthly fee of 600 rupees, he pledged, according to my instructions, to arrest all British secret agents. Naturally, I used this condition in full. Anyone we suspected of British espionage was arrested by us through this chief of police. “

In 1925, the USSR increased the supply of weapons and ammunition. On top of the contracts, 4.5 thousand rifles, 50 machine guns, cartridges for them, as well as a radio station were transferred free of charge. The uprising was defeated. Then twenty Afghans were sent to study in Soviet flight schools, and Soviet specialists – 36 people – became the backbone of the Afghan Air Force.

After the suppression of the rebellion, Amanullah Khan changed the title of emir to a more majestic one – padish (in the West, and in Russia, they began to call him more simply – the king of Afghanistan). The fighters for the happiness of workers and peasants were little embarrassed by this, and, supplying the monarch with weapons and ammunition, they received him with pomp in May 1928 in Moscow, Leningrad and Minsk.

Fifty fighters and two hundred camels scattered to the sides of the fetid cloud

The Soviet side was accumulating experience in the fight against Muslim resistance, because in the territory of Central Asia all the 1920s there was a struggle against the Mujahideen, whom the Bolsheviks called Basmachi (raiders). Irkutsk researcher Sergei Panin revealed a document of the OGPU, which says that in the operation against the detachment of the field commander Dzhunaid on the night of June 1, 1928, the red aviation struck mustard bombs (RGASPI. F. 62. Op. 2. D. 1367. L. 104 ).

Fifty fighters and two hundred camels scattered away from the fetid cloud, and then gathered again and left for Persia. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, as noted by researcher Yuri Tikhonov, the embezzlement of courtiers, officers and officials reached unprecedented proportions even by local standards, and in the fall of 1928, desperate subjects took up arms again. It erupted simultaneously both in the east, among the Pashtuns, and in the north, in the places of residence of the Tajiks. At the borders of the USSR, the uprising against Amanullah was led by a non-commissioned officer, a commoner Khabibulla Kalakani (aka Khabibulla Bachai-i Sakao – “Khabibullah Son of Vodonos”), a supporter of conservative Islam.

Soviet aviators in the Afghan service in November again dropped bombs on the villages of the Pashtun partisans, but this time it backfired, and the uprising grew, although at the request of Padishah Amanullah, the Soviet side in December increased the supply of high-explosive and fragmentation bombs. Through the buildup of military aid, things went towards the establishment of a Soviet protectorate in Afghanistan. On November 27, Amanullah asked the Soviet representative to urgently deliver chemical bombs …

Sell ​​1,000 rifles, 20 machine guns, 1,000 chemical artillery shells to the Afghan government

The minutes of the Politburo meeting of December 13, 1928 (Special No. 53) contains the only known decree in the history of this body on the export of weapons of mass destruction (WMD): “7. About Afghanistan (Comrade Voroshilov): Allow the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs to sell to the Afghan government in accordance with the established procedure 1,000 rifles with an appropriate number of cartridges, 20 machine guns, 1,000 chemical artillery shells and one radio station so that, in view of the constrained position of the Afghan government, it is possible to make it easier to accept wool, cotton as payment for these weapons, karakul, etc. “.

On reflection, weapons of mass destruction were still not sent, Amanullah’s position became more and more critical, and he, soberly assessing the mood of his country, abdicated the throne in favor of his brother on the night of January 13-14, 1929 and left for Kandahar. But this did not save the throne of the royal family. A day later, Kabul was occupied by the detachments of the Tajik Bachai-i Sakao, who declared himself Emir Khabibullah, although the rebels of Pashtunistan, not recognizing him, began a fight with him, and Amanullah did not lay down his arms.

For the first time, Stalin firmly decided to conquer Afghanistan, by military force returning the padishah to the throne, because, as the Barnaul researcher Vladimir Boyko notes, in this case he had to become more than dependent on the bayonets of the Red Army soldiers and advisers from the OGPU. On March 20, the Politburo issued a decree on organizing the invasion. The general management of the operation was carried out by Stalin’s friend, Klim Voroshilov, and on the spot the command was entrusted to the former military attaché in Kabul Vitaly Primakov, who received the pseudonym Ragib-bey and completed his training by April 14.

According to Agabekov’s recollections, the attack began in the early morning without a declaration of war: “As eyewitnesses reported, Soviet airplanes rose from the border town of Termez early in the morning and, having flown over Amu Darya, began circling over the Afghan border point of Patta-Gissar. to gaze at the airplanes, but machine-gun fire from airplanes all the soldiers of the post were shot. ” The bombardment turned the border checkpoint into smoking ruins and made it possible for the invaders on boats and barges to cross the Amu Darya without hindrance.

The interventionist forces consisted of a cavalry detachment – over a thousand Red Army soldiers and Afghan emigrants dressed in Afghan uniforms or local clothes. The latter were nominally headed by the Ambassador of Afghanistan, about whose activities in the border regions of the USSR one of the Soviet intelligence officers Nikolai Frigut in his report spoke unflatteringly: who did not observe any rules of conspiracy. ” The unit, equipped with radio communications, was also armed with machine guns and guns.

With skirmishes, Primakov’s detachment reached the main city of the northern part of the country – Mazar-i-Sharif in a week. Agabekov testified that at that time he was there: “It was beginning to dawn. Suddenly the silence of the night was announced by an artillery salvo and then a machine-gun rattle began … they heard a loud “hurray.” … Our guns pushed their guns point-blank to the city gates and smashed them to smithereens in one volley … The city was occupied by a detachment. “

However, as researcher Pavel Aptekar notes, success almost became a trap. Primakov reported: “The operation was conceived as the actions of a small cavalry detachment, which in the process of combat work will acquire formations, but from the first days it had to face the hostility of the population.” A day later, the city was besieged by the troops of Khabibulla, the squadron sent to help from Tajikistan with losses was driven back to the USSR, and airplanes began to transfer weapons and ammunition to Mazar-i-Sharif. The new government was strengthened by demonstrative executions: on May 1, International Workers Day, six of Amanullah’s most active opponents were publicly shot in the city. Primakov asked to send chemical weapons and – to quote his report – “a squadron of cutthroats.” Gas grenades were not sent to him, but the red aircraft began to bomb the besiegers, and another four hundred Red Army soldiers armed with guns and machine guns came out to help from the USSR. This part managed to unite with the besieged and lift the blockade. The combined detachment headed south towards the capital.

People fell as if they were mowed down. Out of 3000, no more than a thousand were saved … Nobody removed the corpses.

Agabekov recalled that a reconnaissance specialist in Mazar-i-Sharif, who appeared under the name “Matveyev,” in a conversation with him described the further advance of the red cavalry: “Especially terrible pictures were observed after the capture of Mazar-i-Sharif, when the detachment moved to Tash-Kurgan and beyond … From Mazar we set out on the morning after his capture and two days later occupied Tash-Kurgan without any fight. Thanks to this tactic, our offensive in Kabul became known only on the seventh day after the capture of Mazar-i-Sharif. From there, a 3,000 detachment headed by the Minister of War Seyid-Huseyn was urgently sent against us. We met them already behind Tash-Kurgan, not far from Geybak. Letting the Afghans go to the distance of machine-gun fire, we immediately opened a hurricane of fire … People fell as if they were mowed down. Half an hour later, the detachment of Seid-Husein rushed back and ran into a mountain gorge. Then we began to crush them with artillery fire. Out of 3000, no more than a thousand were saved … Nobody removed the corpses of those killed. When we returned by the same road ten days later, the corpses were still lying half-decayed. … Our guys know how to shoot, and we would have reached Kabul a week if Amanullah held out in Kandahar … “But the padishah, after his troops were defeated, fled abroad on May 23, so the” restorers of constitutional order “at the end May – early June returned to the USSR, where three hundred of them received the Order of the Red Banner, and the rest – valuable gifts. The losses amounted to 120 people killed and wounded, operational reports from the Soviet side report the deaths of thousands of Afghans. A year later, the Soviet cavalry brigade again invaded Afghanistan – albeit in the border area – with the aim of destroying the mujahideen emigrants who had fought in the USSR before, and refugees from collectivization. The operational report testifies to the success: “The villages of Ak-Tepe were burnt and destroyed, Ali-Abad was completely destroyed with the exception of the part of the village inhabited by Afghans, all the villages and wagons in the valley of the Kunduz-Darya river were destroyed for 35 km … Up to 17 thousand cartridges were blown up, up to 40 rifles were taken, all emigre bread was burned, cattle were partially stolen and destroyed … Our losses – one Red Army soldier drowned while crossing and one platoon commander and one Red Army soldier were wounded. ” commander of the Central Asian Military District, and in 1937 he was sent to the Gulag in the Kolyma for 15 years.

Excavations in France - archaeologists have found fragments of ancient Roman frescoes from the 1st century BC

Archaeologists have been looking for frescoes for four years in order to put them together later.

In the Provençal city of Arles, France, a team of archaeologists in one of the houses discovered historically valuable wall paintings from the 1st century BC, The Guardian reports.

Since the beginning of excavations, 800 boxes with fragments of wall paintings have been collected there.

This city has the House of the Harper, which was built between 70 and 50 BC by Italian craftsmen. It was built around a central atrium with a large pool to collect rainwater for the household. The building is considered an outstanding monument of ancient architecture and interior decoration.

There, ancient experts opened their workshop to showcase their skills and craftsmanship. They tried to piece together a huge mosaic of magnificent frescoes.

In total, since the beginning of excavations in April 2021, archaeologists have already collected 800 boxes with fragments of wall paintings, some of which were recovered from the excavated walls of the building, and the other part was found in ruins.

According to experts, to collect all the frescoes, which occupy more than 220 square meters, will have to work until at least 2023.

The most interesting thing is that fragments of a mosaic were found there, the size of which was no more than the length of the nail.

However, scientists also collected them, washed them and placed them in boxes, so that later they could see how they fit into the overall picture of the mosaic. In total, the specialists spent 1800 hours to sort out the parts, and this is not the end.

In addition, according to archaeologists, the House of Harpers was deliberately destroyed 20 years after its construction. A new building was built in its place, which has preserved a work of art. After that, three more houses were erected on the same site.

To begin excavating the site of this house, the team used a special camera to explore the basements. This is how they discovered the Harper’s House under the existing building.

The walls of one of the rooms in the villa appear to have been covered with a gallery of large figures, including a harpist and pedestals, and stood out against a bright red background.

Experts say that the decoration and large-scale depictions of figures, called intaglio, were discovered in Italy but are unknown in France.

The variety and exceptional quality of the decor give a unique insight into late Roman decorative styles, especially the wall paintings of the late Pompeii period.

In 2013, the first excavations took place, and more than a meter under the existing building, the Harper’s House was discovered.

For four years, archaeologists have been looking for frescoes and collecting fragments.

Now experts are putting the pieces together to show them in the museum.

Bidding for two bracelets of Marie Antoinette

The Christie’s auction house estimates that they could reach 3.7 million euros

A new challenge for connoisseurs of jewelry with opportunities – two diamond bracelets by Maria-Antoinette are sold at auction, organized by the auction house “Christie’s”, BTA reported.

The bidding is organized for November 9 in Geneva.

The preliminary estimate of the products is from 1.8 million to 3.7 million Euros.

“This price is determined not only by the value of the diamonds, but also by the ability to wear jewelry ordered personally by Queen Marie Antoinette,” said Marie-Cecil Sizamolo of Christie’s.

Each of the bracelets is inlaid with three rows of diamonds. The two can be combined in one necklace. The gems are between one and four carats. According to the auction house, the total diamonds of the two pieces of jewelry are between 140 and 150 carats. The bracelets will be sold in one lot. Of course, Christie’s expects the price of the jewelry to be exceeded many times over.

In 2018, a diamond pendant for a necklace by Marie Antoinette was put up for auction for 1.8 million euros, but reached 31.8 million euros.

The wife of King Louis XVI of France ordered the bracelets from the jeweler Charles Auguste Bomer in 1776 in Paris. Their price is 250 thousand pounds, which at that time was an extremely high amount.

More persons than ever locked up in psychiatry in Denmark

Locked up, why? She had been deprived of her liberty simply because she was somewhat confused and had played loud music late in the evening. A neighbour had called the police, who found her home messy and requested her to be examined. She was not psychotic, and did not believe she needed professional assistance. She knew well what could happen, she had been locked up in a psychiatric ward some years ago. She was nevertheless taken to the local psychiatric hospital where she was locked up an hour later.

She had not committed any crime, wasn’t suicidal nor dangerous to anyone. The 45-year-old woman was known to her friends as a peaceful Christian and active in her community. But sometimes her life got a little too rattled and this was the case here. She knew she needed a chill out and so was going on holiday, and was playing music while packing for her trip the following day. Her mind was a bit somewhere else when the police rang the bell for the second time that evening. She couldn’t explain it away and ended up in the closed psychiatric ward.

The above story may not be unusual in Denmark, as more and more people are being locked up in psychiatric wards. And it is not only happening to dangerous insane criminals, it happens to a wide number of persons. Despite a restrictive law, explicit safeguarding protocols, and a clear policy of reducing the use of coercive measures in psychiatry, last year saw the highest number of persons being deprived of their liberty in psychiatry. And it has been steadily increasing for years.

The Psychiatry Act

There are several ways a person can be deprived of his or her liberty in psychiatry in Denmark. The circumstances, criteria and safeguards against abuses are laid out in the special law, the Psychiatry Act. Deprivation of liberty and the use of coercion or force may be applied when it is not possible to obtain the person’s voluntary cooperation and the intervention is considered to be in accordance with the minimum means principle [less intrusive intervention].

The law require that a person can and must be detained if he or she is in need of treatment, will not voluntarily accept an offer of admission and the following conditions are met:

1. the person is insane or in a state corresponding to insanity and
2. It is unreasonable not to detain the person in order to provide treatment because: (a) The prospect of recovery or of a significant and decisive improvement in the illness would otherwise be substantially impaired; or (b) The person poses an imminent and substantial danger to himself or others.

No court hearing is to be held for the deprivation of liberty to be legal. It can be executed the moment a psychiatrist has confirmed that according to his opinion the treatment that he believes he can provide is necessary. The subjected person can complain, but this does not prevent the execution of the deprivation of liberty.

This has led to an ever-increasing use of this means effectively detaining thousands of persons every year.

3 stats on involuntary commitments

Eugenics

The possibility to target such a wide range of persons with the serious intervention – deprivation of liberty – has its roots in the 1920s and 1930s, when eugenics became a prerequisite and an integral part of the social development model in Denmark. At that time more and more authors expressed the wish that even non-dangerous “deviants” could be forcibly admitted to a mental facility.

The driving force behind this idea was not a concern for the individual, but a concern for society or the family. An idea of a society where the “deviant” and “troublesome” elements had no place.

According to then renown Danish Public Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Otto Schlegel, in an article of the Danish Weekly Journal of the Judiciary, all the authors, except one, thought that “the possibility of compulsory hospitalisation should also be open to some extent to persons who are probably not dangerous but who cannot act in the outside world, the troublesome insane whose behaviour threatens to destroy or scandalize their relatives. Curative considerations have also been thought to justify compulsory hospitalisation in certain cases.”

Thus, the Danish Insanity Act of 1938 introduced the possibility of detaining non-dangerous insane persons. The driving idea behind the idea of depriving the concerned of his or her liberty, and thereby removing those who could not function adequately in society – the so-called troublesome and deviant insane who was not dangerous – was not a concern for the individual, but a concern for society. It was not a compassionate concern or an idea of helping people in need that led to the introduction of this possibility in the legislation, but an idea of a society in which the deviant and “troublesome” elements had no place. After all, their behaviour could threaten to destroy or scandalize their relatives.

The deprivation of liberty of the insane was historically based on a principle of emergency law. Up to 1938, the legal basis for depriving the insane of their liberty was still to be found in Danish Law 1-19-7 of 1683 and in later legislation. The rules on the deprivation of liberty of the insane covered only insane persons who might be considered dangerous to the general safety or to themselves or their surroundings.

With the eugenics influenced Insanity Act of 1938 this changed, and the possibility to detain non-dangerous persons who are being pointed out as a societal trouble case has been maintained since in the newer Psychiatry Act.

Retainments

Deprivations of liberty in to psychiatry in addition to picking people up in their homes or from the street can also be done to persons who voluntarily hospitalize themselves.

If a person who admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital request to be discharged, the senior physician must decide whether the patient can be discharged or must be forcibly retained. The person’s wish to be discharged may be explicit (he or she demands to be discharged), but it may also be a behaviour of the person which must be equated with a wish to be discharged.

According to the law a voluntarily admitted patient can and must be detained if the person requests discharge at a time when the he or she meets the conditions for compulsory admission under the Psychiatric Act.

Prior to this, the patient’s consent to continued voluntary admission shall be sought in accordance with the principle of minimum means.

For more than 25 years there has been a very pronounced political and governmental will to decrease the use of coercion in psychiatry in Denmark. Yet, this intention is not reflected in the daily life and practice in the psychiatric wards. Thus, one also notes a significant increase of involuntary retainments.

In addition to the regular involuntary commitments and retainments, there is yet another less obvious procedure that is used to enforce commitments in to psychiatric wards without it appearing as an involuntary commitment, despite it is against the consent of the person concerned. This is court ordered convictions to psychiatric treatment according to the Criminal law. Thousands of persons today thus live in society but can be picked up at any time they would not follow treatment instructions and locked up in a psychiatric ward. When this is done, it is not considered an involuntary commitment.

Law causing coercion

The deprivation of liberty in to psychiatry is increasing year by year over the last decades and is far in excess of the psychiatric inpatient increase or population growth.

With the efforts of shifting Danish governments and the unanimous political intention to decrease the use of coercive measures in psychiatry, the allocation of resources and central administrative efforts to effectuate this one can only see the mere fact of the existence of the legal possibility to use or require the use of coercion as the reason for the sliding practice, with increasing deprivations of liberty in psychiatry.

The Turkish strategy in Afghanistan pays off. Erdogan’s role in NATO solidifies

NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the extremely rapid occupation of the capital, Kabul, by the Taliban, followed by the collapse of the withdrawal of Western troops and personnel, is a game changer in relations between Turkey and the Alliance.

After the failed coup against Erdogan in 2016, Turkey’s position has changed systematically. Turkey’s president approached Russia by acquiring S-400 missile systems, reheated the frozen Mediterranean conflict with Greece and France, and signed a security protocol with Hamas in Israel’s detriment. All these geopolitical games have shown that Turkey considers itself a regional power and behaves as such, even if it affects the interests of some NATO allies.

Not infrequently, political, and military analysts have spoken of Turkey’s withdrawal from NATO or the relocation of the US nuclear arsenal from the Incirlik base.

Turkey profits from the Afghan crisis

At this time, the United States is feeling the full withdrawal from Afghanistan and the US image in the international arena is visibly affected. Biden cannot take on a conflict, even a diplomatic one, with Turkey, because it has to deal with multiple internal issues, plus China’s expansion and Russia’s geopolitical games.

The European Union is preparing to receive a massive wave of migrants and elections are approaching in Germany and France, so a diplomatic conflict with Turkey is out of the question.

Erdogan feels the international situation is complicated and sees an opportunity he cannot miss. Turkey assumes an active role in front of NATO in Afghanistan and in front of the EU by  agreeing to stop, or at least block for a while the inevitable wave of migrants. Thus, the leader from Ankara positions Turkey as a very important player in the Middle East (diplomatically supported and with NATO information) and also benefits from European money to stop migration. It’s a new form of win-win, where the winner, on all fronts, is Turkey, while the rest of the pack seems happy enough to have some mild form of containment over a situation without solution.

The Islamabad-Kabul-Ankara Axis

Ankara holds a special position in Afghanistan, primarily due to the Muslim religion, but also due to geography, the two states having a common border. Turkey has participated in NATO missions in Afghanistan from the beginning, since 2002, but Turkish military troops have never participated in combat operations, limiting themselves to guarding and training.

Analyzing the current situation, we can see that Turkey has prepared its strategy for Afghanistan in advance. For 10 years, the Turkish military ran a hospital in Kabul that served Afghans in a neighborhood inhabited mainly by the Pashtun community, the same community from which most Taliban come.

Turkey withdrew about 1,000 Turkish citizens from Afghanistan, but more than 4,000 preferred to remain in Afghanistan. In other words, under the leadership of the Taliban, the Turks will continue to produce, do business and work in Afghanistan.

In addition to these benefits, it should be noted that Turkey has a very good relationship with Pakistan, the state that has strongly supported the Taliban movement. Turkey is the second largest arms supplier to Pakistan and the relationship between the two states is old and very strong. Greek media sources say that the Pakistani army participated in the 1974 invasion of Cyprus and that the Pakistani Navy is actively involved in the “Mediterranean Shield” operation launched by Turkey in the Mediterranean.

The current situation dictates that Turkey and Pakistan are the states with the most important levers on the new establishment in Kabul, but the situation may change, especially after the active involvement of Russia, China and Iran.

Ankara’s medium and short term strategy

Turkey is militarily and logistically involved in several areas (military in Syria, Libya and Iraq and logistically in Ukraine and the Caucasus). This type of involvement brings benefits in the medium and long term, but costs enormously. The Turkish economy is on a downward slope. Under these conditions, Turkey is expected to implement a political rather than military strategy in Afghanistan and to request financial support for ground missions from NATO, from the EU for anti-migration policy or from Qatar, a state that supports various Erdogan projects.

We must not forget that Turkey is ruled authoritatively by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and state policy, whether internal or external, is subordinated to its needs. Thus, the sultan needs a clearing of the image for the 2023 elections and may want the role of regional leader who has successfully managed the situation in Afghanistan.

The crisis triggered by the withdrawal of allies from Afghanistan and Erdogan’s clever moves reposition Turkey in relation to the US and the EU. Ankara is currently the best connected NATO state in the Middle East and this gives Erdogan an interesting set of cards that he will play in order to assert leadership and to project power.

Photo Credits: – ahvalnews.com

European Academy of Religion 2021: One of the first sessions was on Scientology and Gnosticism

On Monday August 30, at the University of Munster, the European Academy of Religion – a research initiative on religion launched under the high patronage of the European Parliament, offering an exchange platform to scholars, universities, centers, research infrastructures, scientific journals and publishers coming from Europe and the surrounding regions – launched its annual meeting of 2021, in a hybrid format, with on-site and online sessions.

University of Munster, Germany, screenshot

The President of the Academy, Prof. Hans Peter Grosshans (WWU Münster) in an official statement on their website said: “The Münster conference of the European Academy of Religion will discuss these and many more questions which are raised when studying the relation of religion and change.” 

One of the first sessions was called “Gnosticism and New Religions: The Case of L. Ron Hubbard” and tackled the topic of Scientology as a modern gnosis. The session was moderated by Rosita Soryte, board member of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief. Three panelists approached the topic from different angles.

Aldo Natale Terrin, a Roman Catholic priest teaching at the Santa Giustina Institute in Padova, had already written a comprehensive book on the similarities between Scientology and gnosis as well as with other religions, including eastern religions. In his presentation, he developed the fact that the comparison between Scientology and Gnosticism is evident, based primarily on several principles, including its explanations relating to the fall of the spirit, the conception of the world as matter, and the need to recover the knowledge of the hidden “divine spark” that lies in human spirits in order to return to the divine.  He added that there are other manifestations of Scientology that can be compared to Gnosticism giving a number of other examples of this. He concluded by quoting the Italian Humanist Agostino in his Prisca theologia (Ancient theology), an expression which means “that there is a ‘eternal core’ of shared wisdom in all religions, synthesized as a Transcendental doctrine”, saying that “surely Gnosticism and Scientology belong to this Great Tradition”.

Then Massimo Introvigne, managing director of the CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) and editor-in-chief of the daily magazine Bitter Winter, furthered the discussion by reviewing how in the 60s and 70s, some antagonists to Scientology attempted to take advantage of the relationship of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, with several Gnostic traditions and movements before he founded Scientology, in order to depict him as being associated with black magic. Introvigne reviewed different angles that attempted to discredit Hubbard at that time, and debunked the idea that he would have been so motivated. While Hubbard had indeed expressed interest in magic and found it praiseworthy in its attempt to overcome materialism, he also considered that magic was likely to fail as it depended too heavily on rituals and beliefs. He concluded by stating that Hubbard’s assessment of magic (and of Aleister Crowley, the famous British magus who leaded the Ordo Templi Orientis) was in fact surprisingly modern and close to that of more modern academics.

Finally, Eric Roux, chair of the European Interreligious Freedom for Religious Freedom and also a European religious leader of the Church of Scientology, made a presentation based on some of the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, where the Scientology Founder acknowledged that Scientologists are in fact Gnostics, in the sense that “they know that they know”. Scientology, Roux said, is “a quest for liberating knowledge, a desire to transcend the consequences of a ‘spiritual fall’ which has made the spirit prisoner of its own traps, and this can only remind one of ancient Gnostics themes”. He made comparisons between the aspirations of those ancient Gnostics and some of the “gradient scales” and axioms that exist in Scientology demonstrating that the purposes were similar. “Of course,” Roux said, “Scientology is a religion of the 20th century and its quest for knowledge therefore necessarily involves other tools than those that existed in ancient Greece or in the early days of the Christian era. Nevertheless, the result is that Scientology is Knowingness, awareness, and personal freedom for the individual, and this Gnosis,” he concluded.