The Kingdom of Heaven

The Forbidden Tree

For all intents and purposes, the chicken probably crossed the road to get to the other side. But then, perhaps we should look at the deeper significance of this action ….

• Plato: For the greater good.
• Captain James T Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.
• Richard Nixon: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did NOT cross the road.
• Jerry Seinfeld: Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn’t anyone ever think to ask, What the heck was this chicken doing walking around all over the place, anyway?
• Sigmund Freud: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying insecurity.
• Bill Gates: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, balance your checkbook and eat your neighbour.
• Charles Darwin: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads.
• Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
• Hillary Clinton: That’s what I’d like to know. Why DID the chicken cross the road?! But this administration is operating in secrecy, witholding important information from the American people, about how many chickens crossed the road and why they crossed it.
• Martin Luther King, Jr: I have a dream! I have a dream of a day, when ALL chickens can cross ALL roads without having their motives called into question!
• Ernest Hemingway: To die. Alone. In the rain.
• Official Chicken Representative: Because he wanted to. Do you not think that maybe chickens have rights too? Ifyou crossed the road no one would question you.
• To see her flat mate. No, hang on - that was the toad.
• Colonel Sanders: I missed one?

Almost exactly a year ago, in the nights of 7 to 8 August 2008, the western-aligned Democratic Republic of Georgia commenced a large-scale military invasion against the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Republic of South Ossetia, which has declared its independence from Georgia in 1991, thus marking the beginning of the 2008 South Ossetia War.

On the following day, the Russian Federation deployed military combat groups into South Ossetia and launched bombing raids into Georgian territory. Soon, the Republic ofAbkhazia, another breakaway region of Georgian territory, joined the war, pitting the combined forces of South Ossetia, Russia, and Abkhazia against Georgia. An EU-brokered ceasefire took effect days later, on 12 August 2008.

Unfortunately, the conflict did not end there. A number of armed incidents and tensions continue the crisis for almost a year now. The crisis recently worryingly escalated in August 2009, with Georgia and South Ossetia accused each other of opening fire and starting military buildups along the borders, just days before the 2008 South Ossetia War’s anniversary.

The conflict again raised question for many people, or at least for me, about how the Cold War was never really ended. Sure, the Soviet Union collapsed —but not its heart, Russia— in 1991, most of its federal subjects became independent, but remnants of the war are still intact. I’m talking about NATO, nuclear weapons, proxy tensions, political blocs, the Koreans, the list continues, and take a look of what happened to Georgia today and compare it with what happened to Germany during the Cold War.

Germany was divided into two with the United States maintained control over the western half while the USSR controlled the other half. Now we have Georgia, a heavily western-aligned country, against the Russian-backed, breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Although it’s not exactly in the same condition, it’s actually a very similar situation, and if you add “modern imperialism” somewhere along the argument, it fits perfectly.

Georgia’s ongoing integration to NATO and Russia’s heavy opposition to the process, further convince me that to a small extent, Cold War is still ongoing. Even worse, the fact that Georgian government officials have acknowledged that they started the South Ossetia War after a green light from the United States’ government, and with Russia subsequently invaded Georgia on the third day of the war obviously strained U.S.-Russia relations massively.

Outside United States’ support for Georgia during the South Ossetia War, some other factors also contribute to the argument.

United States’ decision in 2007 to install an anti-ballistic missile defense installation in Poland along with a radar station in Czech Republic prompted Russia to test the RS-24, its new intercontinental ballistic missile which was described by Russian officials as a weapon system capable of defeating any defense system. In 2008 Russia issued a statement that if any of U.S. anti-missile systems deployed near Russian borders, it will react militarily.

In 2008, U.S. anti-missile systems were eventually agreed to be installed along Polish borders, and Russia responded that it foresee harm in bilateral relations with the United States. Later the same year, elements of the Russian Navy arrived in Venezuela, a country considered to be a part of the United States’ sphere of influence, to conduct joint training exercises. The U.S. perceived Russia’s action as an obvious provocation and direct retaliation of the Eastern Europe missile plan and United States’ support to Georgia during the South Ossetia War.

A year later, in July 2009, a poll was released by the University of Maryland, showing that 75% of the Russian population considers the United States as a threat to the Russian Federation and that the U.S. is abusing its powers. Further, only 2% of the population believes that President Barrack Obama’s presidency would be a good change to U.S. foreign policy and that he will do better than his predecessors.

At this point the Russian media heavily criticized the United States for pursuing a missile plan in Eastern Europe, favoring NATO expansion towards the former eastern bloc countries, and for supporting Georgia during the South Ossetia War.

Not all hope is gone, though; United States and Russia do have some economic ties such as the establishment of General Motors manufacturing plant in St. Petersburg, $20 billion mutual trade income, and military ties such as joint anti-terrorist trainings in Germany and Russia’s support for United States’ War on Terror in Afghanistan.

However, as history has proven to us, love is often not capable of compensating hate, and if any of those U.S.-Russia ties is a good sign that a new Cold War would never happen, take a look 60 years back when how the United States and its allies fought together with the Soviet Union during World War II before they started to hate each other, began the Cold War, and many times put the world at risk of a nuclear holocaust.

All this combined with the new post-war tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia, and even worse if it is escalated further in the future, makes it really difficult for me to not think that the world is in the brink of a new Cold War.

The international community, the United Nations, really needs to realize that a new Cold War era and its deadly proxy wars –even worse, nuclear wars— will actually begin if it is not putting enough pressure eliminate current Georgia-South Ossetia hostilities, preventing it from escalation to an open war, and to prevent further any clashes between western-backed and Russian-backed entities or interests.

Capitalism. Presidents rule you. Priests fool you. Soldiers shoot at you. Nobles eat for you. You? Work and die for them all.

There may be no other concept that captures the imagination more than the idea of time travel — the ability to travel to any point in the past or future. What could be cooler? Nothing. It’s a major dope of awesomeness!

You could jump into your time machine to go back and see major events in history and talk to the people who were there! Who would you travel back to see? Julius Caesar? Leonardo da Vinci? Your Great Great Grandfather? 

You could go back and meet yourself at an earlier age, go forward and see how you look in the future… It’s these possibilities that have made time travel the subject of so many science fiction books and movies.

­It turns out that, in some sense, we are all time travelers.

As you sit at your desk, doing nothing more than clicking your mouse, watching porns,gossiping people, time is traveling around you.

The future is constantly being transformed into the past with the present only lasting for a fleeting moment. Everything that you are doing right now is quickly moving into the past, which means we continue to move through time.

Ideas of time travel have existed for centuries, but when Albert Einstein released his theory of special relativity, he laid the foundation for the theoretical possibility of time travel. He literally did, but unfortunately unable to complete it into a concrete branch of science before he passed away..

We never know though, probably in school textbooks 100 years (hopefully earlier) from now, children will read ;

“The 19th century marks the beginning of time travelling theory which is now a technology you, your mommy and daddy, and your cute dog Skip use to meet grandpa!”

As we all know,no one has successfully demonstrated time travel, but no one has been able to rule it out either!