My blog's one year anniversary

Its official, my blog has been around for exactly a year last month. It's amazing. Although I have rarely posted these days, but it was always was a good way for me to share my interests and view. Thanks for all the support that my readers gave me.

Article about Religions

Here are some interesting sister articles about the age of various world religions. They are a bit interesting.
1.http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/religion101/2012/10/how-old-are-the-religions.html
2.http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/religion101/?p=1038

Battle of Grunwald 1410 Brief Synopsis

Kossack's Battle of Grunwald, 1921

The Battle of Tannenberg (or Grunwald) was a battle between the Germanic Religious Military order the Teutonic Knights and their allies and a large coalition of their enemies (including Russians, Tartars, Poles, Lithuanians and among others). The background was that the Catholic Teutonic Knights were a military order that was campaigning in Eastern Europe against Orthodox Christians and the local Pagan tribes. The Knights were successful enough to carve out a state in the modern day Baltic region (link to maximum extent of Teutonic control). Naturally, the aggressive nature of the Teutonic Knights created many enemies among the local populations and kingdoms. The Smogations, one of the Pagan tribes that the Knights manged to conqueror successfully revolt against the Knights. Inspired by the Smogation uprising, the Polish and the Lithuanians along with other enemies of the Teutonic Knights formed an alliance. Estimates for the forces involved in the battle (like all medieval and ancient battles) are impossible to estimate, but most likely about 11,000-27,000 men for the Teutonic Knights and 28,000 for the coalition forces. After a brutal battle, the Teutonic Knights were routed. About 8,000 men killed and an additional 14,000 men were captured from the side of the Teutonic Knights. However the surviving Teutonic forces fled to their fortress Marienburg and withstood the siege by the coalition forces. Soon the Knights were losing the war, and the Peace of Thorn of 1411 was signed. Despite the defeat suffered by the Knights, they lost relatively few territory. This was partially due to fears by the coalition forces that the uneasy alliance between the coalition would be shattered by the balance of power issues of the new land captured from the Knights. Although the Knights lost relatively little territory, the Battle of Tannerburg marked the decline of the once mighty Teutonic Order. After internal conflicts, economic instability, and embarrassing defeats in external wars, the Knights soon declined into nothing more then an obscure entirely religious order with no military capabilities whatsoever. The shell of the former Teutonic Knights still exist to this day.

Cool Videos of the Liberian Civil War

U-28 Monster

Diventart user's concept of the U-28 monster

During a typical U-Boat mission in WW1, the German U-boat U-28 torpedoed the British frigate Iberian, the U-boat crew saw an unbelievable sight. During the explosion, the crew (including the Captain) described a 65 foot crocodile like creature fly 80 feet in the air. Allegedly before the crew could take a photo of the beast, it quickly sank back into the depths. Although sightings of such a creature is very rarely reported, U-Boat captains have been known to be reliable in their accounts. Tragically, most of the crew that sighted the creature have been killed in the war. Most cryptozoologists suggest that the creature could have been a Mosasaur or a Pliosaur...both classes of marine predators that resemble crocodiles that have been apparently extinct since the time of the dinosaurs. Sadly, the truth about the creature may be forever lost to man in the depths of the ocean.

APRD rebels

The People's Army for the Restoration of Democracy (APRD) was one of the many rebel groups operating in the Central African Republic (CAR). They originated as the presidential guards, and was one of the last rebel groups to sign a peace treaty with the Bozize regime. However they appear to not have joined the factions of other rebel groups like Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP), Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR), the Patriotic Convention for Saving the Country (CPSK), along with other rebel groups in the Seleka (Sango word meaning "alliance, covered in on of my previous posts) coalition after the peace talks in 2011 failed. Here is a gallery of APRD fighters bellow.

These fighters are so poorly equipped that I at 1st thought that they were Anti Balaka militias.

A better equipped fighter, possibly one of the officers. As mentioned, the officers tend to be better equipped then their men. He might have captured his military fatigues from a dead government solider or from government armories.

Interesting homemade rifles. I have read on a Human Rights Watch report that most of the fighters are armed with homemade rifles, while the officers are armed with assault rifles (80% of the APRD are armed with homemade rifles). The report says that it is believed that the group lacks foreign backing. Makes sense because if a group is mostly armed with homemade rifles, they are obliviously fending for themselves. A foreign backer should have armed the groups better then homemade firearms. 

Chad Government Troops Gallery

Intervening in Genocide

Intervening in Genocide, as terrible as it sounds is actually a really bad idea.

1.You would have to take down the genocide perpetrators by force. The perpetrators are obviously not going to stop the killings no matter what international pressure says

2.When you do intervene militarily, civilians are guaranteed to be killed in the crossfire, defeating the entire purpose of a humanitarian intervention.

3.You would have to ally with the enemies of the perpetrators. Often times, the enemies of the perpetrators are just as brutal as the perpetrators themselves. Also, that is totally defeating your purpose of the intervention. For example in the Liberian Civil War, literally every single faction (INPFL, NPFL, LPC, ULIMO-J, ULIMO-K) practiced cannibalism, rape, and used child soldiers. So if you wanted to intervene against the brutal NPFL, you would have to ally with a bunch of cannibalistic child soldiers. Not something that would go very well with public opinion

4.Since in most wars, all sides commit atrocities. To make matters more complicated, there's almost always an oppressive dictatorship warring against dozens (sometimes thousands) of vicious marauding rebel groups. If you want to have a purely humanitarian intervention, you would literally have to battle hundreds of rebel groups, along with the government forces.  For example in the Congo, various rebel groups like RCD splinters (RCD-Goma, RCD-K, RCD-K-ML, RCD-Original, UPC, RCD-ML, RCD-North, PUSIC, RCD-National), foreign rebel groups (FDLR, ADF, LRA, UNRF 2, WNBF, CNDD), indigenous tribal militias called mayi mayi, the Kabila regime, foreign governments like Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi all commit horrific atrocities against the civilian population. If you want to stop atrocities, you would have to battle more than 25 armed groups and 8 national armies. Waging such a multi front war would really drain your military resources.   

5.Once you topple the genocidal government, you would have to make sure that the roles of victim and perpetrators don’t get reversed. You would get the former victims angry because you are depriving them of their revenge, and you would be fighting the former victims as well. Like in the Rwandan Genocide, once you toppled the Hutu government, you would have to make sure that the Tutsi groups don’t start killing the Hutus. It might make the Tutsi groups angry at you if you try to prevent them from getting their revenge against their former oppressors. So you might be fighting the very people that you tried to protect.

6.Because of both remnants of the former genocidal government and other groups taking the void of the former government would be still waging guerilla warfare against your occupying forces, you might be stuck in that country for several decades before the situation is finally solved. If you try to leave right away, a new group would immediately take power. For example when the US Coalition left Iraq, the Iraqi government was still corrupt and weak. It didn’t have the military power to crush the insurgent groups like ISIS, other Sunni militant groups, along with the Baathists that were normally contained by the Coalition forces. 

Anti Balaka Gallery

Georgian-Abkhaz Conflicts Gallery