Why were humans created?

Cold War: The Khrushchev Thaw

24 September, 1959,
in Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania, a godfather who manages parking lots makes a clandestine deal with a hotel owner, and so a little boy who is interested in dignitaries slips in through the security guards. USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev moves past signs like "Khrushchev Go Visit the Moon", past the shouting crowd, and comes in through the lobby. There, squished between bodyguards and TV journalists, stands the small, thin boy with his back ramrod and arm stuck straight out.

Khrushchev's denouncement of Stalin has been playing continuously on Europe Free Radio, broadcasting 24 hours a day throughout the Eastern Bloc. He smiles and walks to the 11-year old, shakes the outstretched hand, and the pats the redheaded kid on the head kindly. The next day in the local newspaper the boy has a gigantic smile, and a picture with his small fingers splayed: "boy who bypassed heavy security!", "hands which shook with the leader of one of the world's two greatest powers!"

Today, that little boy is a sweet and loud old man who spends his days shouting history as if our lives depend on it, SENDING EMAILS WITH EVERYTHING IN CAPS, and waiting quietly in his office for someone to come visit him.

中國: 秦始皇帝

陕西的土地下,有一 個 墳墓。
Beneath the dirt flow rivers and seas of silver mercury, stand armies of thousands, lay the skeletons of servants, officials, of wives, of virgins, of the workers who constructed this grave of theirs: a necropolis which was once the largest city in the world. Above ground its dead king once created an entire nation, built out of war and terror. His legacy is a unified people which to this day would fight tooth and nail rather than be torn apart.

Nobody is inspired by 嬴政. An early stint with death made him paranoid and untrusting. Everything he did, he did out of fear, of being forgotten, of dying, out of a desire to be immortal. The expanse of his conquests, accomplishments, memorials -- that bloody wall which I climbed a quiet path up, dead people on the bottom and peach trees on the sides -- just belie an awesome depth of terror, desperation, and uncertainty. What a megalomaniac. He died 210 BCE, poisoned by the elixir which was supposed to give him everlasting life.

Satellites of the Soviet Union

I was really happy, scooping up sweet potato fries, to discover that I can practice Russian at work with both the girl from Mongolia and the new boy they hired, who's from Ukraine. And so for a day or so, I held in my hands the thought that maybe geopolitical hegemony and imperialist traditions aren't so bad. From the beginning, empire was unification was cohesion was solidarity was forced aggregation into some larger identity.Violence, domination, coercion -- even the kinship that brings us together is blood.

The next day, August 8th, Georgian troops moved into South Ossetia.

July 31, 1914

Czar Nicholas II sleeping fretfully, or maybe not at all, gets a telegram at 3am.

"...The responsibility for the disaster which is now threatening the whole civilized world will not be laid at my door. In this moment it still lies in your power to avert it. Nobody is threatening the honour or power of Russia who can well afford to await the result of my mediation. My friendship for you and your empire, transmitted to me by my grandfather on his deathbed has always been sacred to me and I have honestly often backed up Russia when she was in serious trouble especially in her last war.

The peace of Europe may still be maintained by you, if Russia will agree to stop the milit. measures which must threaten Germany and Austro-Hungary.

Willy"

In the morning in a conference, he roars at his angry military commanders that this will not do, that they must cancel the general mobilization: in his mind are not political consequences, but thoughts of the deaths of millions of Russian men. In the room he is alone in his opposition, in the countryside the order for mobilization are already being carried out. It falls quiet and an aide standing behind the Tsar whispers, or maybe speaks loudly, "Yes, Your Majesty, it is a difficult decision." Nicholas has always been seen by the nation as a weak and indecisive ruler. He has never wanted to be Tsar.

General Russian mobilization is confirmed.

Women of Afghanistan

"In Mazar stands the Tomb of Rabia Balkhi, a beautiful, tragic medieval poetess. She was the first woman of her time to write love poetry in Persian and died tragically after her brother slashed her wrists as punishment for sleeping with a slave lover. She wrote her last poem in her own blood as she lay dying. For centuries young Uzbek girls and boys treated her tomb with saint-like devotion and would pray there for success in their love affairs. After the Taliban captured Mazar, they placed her tomb out of bounds. Love, even for a medieval saint, was now out of bounds."

from the book Taliban, by Ahmed Rashid

The Early Days of Osama bin Laden

"I felt outraged that an injustice had been committed against the people of Afghanistan. It made me realise that people who take power in the world use their power under different names to subvert others and to force their opinions on them. Yes, I fought there, but my fellow Muslims did much more than I. Many of them died and I am still alive."
- Osama bin Laden

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA actively encouraged resistance -- funneling arms and capital to guerrilla insurgents through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The "Arab-Afghans" were a legion of volunteers from a dozen nations who, together with Osama bin Laden, joined in the noble quest to uphold the dignity of both the Afghan people and the Muslim world. These mujahedin were hailed by Ronald Reagan as "freedom fighters." Later, remnants of these "freedom-fighters" were to become the network of Al-Qaeda.