"Nancy's Blade" Replaces Occam's Razor Logic for Paranormal Theory

Nancy's Blade: "If there are competing
theories or hypotheses, the one which
sustains the fewest rebuttals of fact, 
should be selected."

Occam's Razor: "If there are competing
theories or hypotheses, the one with the
fewest assumptions, should be selected."

 

Unless you live under a rock, if you have been involved in any discussions of anything remotely paranormal, then you have undoubtedly heard the term "Occam's Razor" often used by skeptics to discredit any paranormal theories.  

Back in the 14th century, a fellow named William of Ockham, an English Franciscan friar and logician, developed a principal of logic which has become commonly known as "Occam's Razor."  It was supposed to help with problem-solving.  Basically, it states that if there are competing theories or hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.  It is meant as a guidepost for investigating a theory, but doesn't suggest that the theory with the fewest assumptions is actually the right answer.  It is a principle of parsimony or economical succinctness.  It is quick and dirty.
Unfortunately, skeptics have twisted the true intent of this logical format and used it to completely annihilate any investigation or scientific exploration of paranormal theories for unexplained phenomena.  Therefore, I have decided to investigate the validity of Occam's Razor and, as you will see, have replaced it with my own principle of logic that I call "Nancy's Blade."

Let's take an example.  I do many paranormal investigations.  Let's take a hypothetical case of an alleged haunting of a private residence. It is a fairly classic case of a haunting.  The residents, a young couple, claim their apartment is haunted by a ghost.  They say the television sometimes switches on by itself; the small table in the hallway shakes and bangs against the wall by itself; the apartment has acquired a strange, unpleasant pervasive odor not related to anything inside or outside; violin music is heard at 3:45 AM underneath the rocking chair in the bedroom; the husband has seen a shadow figure walk through the hallway; the couple hears disembodied footsteps walking around the apartment; and both have begun to experience strange health effects such as headaches, nausea, and tightness in the chest. 

So, the question is:  Is their apartment haunted by a ghost?  Applying Occam's Razor, since we are dealing with two competing theories (ghosts exist versus ghosts don't exist), we must select the theory with the fewest number of assumptions.  Most of us would agree that ghostly and paranormal phenomena can sometimes but not always be explained by common experience and laws of physics.  It requires more assumptions about the nature of the universe, spirituality and possible unknown laws of physics, to account for the existence of ghosts.  Therefore, skeptics argue that Occam's Razor requires us to conclude that ghosts do not exist.  End of story.

However, this is where it gets fact-sensitive and much more complicated.  So let's examine some of the number of factual assumptions necessary for both theories - not just the assumptions about the theories!

Television Set Turns on By Itself

Ghosts Don't Exist
TV may have had a surge of electricity which caused it to turn on. 

Ghosts Exist
There would have had to have been multiple surges; the TV's are plugged into surge protector outlets; this still happened when the TV's were unplugged; and this doesn't explain why all the other electrical appliances didn't suffer simultaneous electrical surge problems.

Violin Music is Heard Under a Rocking Chair at Night

 

Ghosts Don't Exist
The violin music is probably music being played by the neighbor who lives below and is likely playing a real violin or a radio late at night.

Ghosts Exist
The neighbor doesn't own a violin and is a quiet college student who says he doesn't play the radio in the middle of the night and doesn't hear the violin music heard by the couple upstairs.  The music is only heard briefly by the couple, only at a specific time at night, and only directly under the rocking chair not elsewhere beneath the floor or in other rooms.

The Small Table in the Hallway Rattles, Shakes and Bangs Against the Wall

Ghosts Don't Exist
There may have been unbalanced items on top of the table that shifted slightly causing the table to tip over; the floor may have vibrated due to an earthquake or trucks on the road; or this is a fantasy of the occupant in a semi-sleep state at night.

Ghosts Exist
There were no items on top of the table when it made the noises, and besides it was actually banging back and forth against the wall; no earthquakes have been reported; the apartment is located in the interior of a large, quiet residential housing complex located a quarter mile away from the road; both occupants were awakened by the noise suggesting it was not the fantasy of one person or the collective hallucination of two people, and the wife actually sees the table moving by itself one night when she gets out of bed.

Alright, I could keep going on and address all of the phenomena, but you get the basic idea.  Skeptics would still argue that Occam's Razor requires us to conclude that there was no ghost or haunting in this apartment.  Why?  Because it would require us to make too many outlandish assumptions about reality and the known laws of physics in order to conclude that these events were caused by a ghost.  Therefore, we must conclude these events were unrelated, fully explainable, and not caused by a ghost! 

However, the skeptics are violating the basic rules of logic and twisting them in order to make Occam's Razor seem to work in their favor. 

If you study the rules of logic, you will quickly see that this cannot be a case of logical "deduction" - which is A = B, C = B, therefore C = A.  (E.g. "All widows have a dead husband, this woman has a dead husband, therefore she must be a widow").  Nor is this a case of logical "induction" -  which is all A which has been observed is B, therefore all A is probably B.  (E.g. All swans we have observed are white, therefore we logically infer that all swans are probably white.)  Both of these types of logic lead to the conclusion that there is a single right answer (if A, then B).

However, as I have shown above, all of the necessary preconditions or facts necessary to substantiate a "logical" conclusion are missing.  Every single one of the preconditions suggested as reasons for the strange events was rebutted (e.g. the neighbor was playing the piano or radio - she didn't own a piano and wasn't playing the radio!).

This leaves us in the uncomfortable position of not being able to confirm the logical conclusion mandated by Occam's Razor.  What do we do to solve this problem of logic?  I propose we look at another, perhaps less dignified, less well-known type of logic known as "abductive reasoning."  Under this principle, the consequence "B" (the existence of a ghost) can be inferred from the preconditions "A" (strange piano music heard under the bed). 

As explained in Wikipedia, "For example, after glancing and seeing the eight ball moving towards us, we may abduce that the cue ball struck the eight ball. The strike of the cue ball would account for the movement of the eight ball. It serves as a hypothesis that explains our observation. Given the fact of infinitely many possible explanations for the movement of the eight ball, our abduction does not leave us certain that the cue ball in fact struck the eight ball, but our abduction, still useful, can serve to orient us in our surroundings. Despite infinite possible explanations for any physical process that we observe, we tend to abduce a single explanation (or a few explanations) for this process in the expectation that we can better orient ourselves in our surroundings and disregard some possibilities."

Abductive reasoning means we take the evidence and extrapolate the conclusion.  Thus, "B is likely, if A occurs."  This doesn't mean B is the only correct answer.  In fact, this type of reasoning provides for multiple correct answers, unlike deductive reasoning which only provides for one correct answer.

Therefore, I have created a new principle to replace Occam's Razor.  I call it "Nancy's Blade."   This principle states that "If there are competing theories or hypotheses, the one which sustains the fewest rebuttals of fact, should be selected."   I have eliminated the language about the fewest number of "assumptions" because that has been terribly misinterpreted as referring to the conclusion (B) and not the facts (A). 

My principle also provides for the possibility of multiple "right" answers among multiple competing theories.  Causality is multidimensional, as any student of the paranormal knows.  There can be many "causes" or "explanations" for any event because we are all interconnected and any "cause" or "effect" can be localized or remote.  All causation is relative in the Einstein sense of the word.  The fact that a tree falls over in my backyard could be caused by a failure of its root system, a local storm, shifting trade winds over the continent, or a solar electromagnetic storm over the planet - or all of the above!  All events are interrelated.  Thus, it makes more sense to have a logical principle that allows for multiple explanations for causation.

Nancy's Blade eliminates the problem of skeptics choosing preposterous, implausible - but theoretically "possible" - factual explanations to justify their "correct" conclusions.  

Mansions of the Mind

I have long recognized that when I dream of houses, I am really dreaming about my mind.   More specifically, if I dream of attics, I am dreaming about my intellect or brain.  If I am dreaming about basements, I am dreaming about my physical body, sexual parts or root chakra.  The "house" is a symbol of me.  Many times I dream about "returning" to houses I have never seen before.  Other times, I return "home" to an apartment that feels unnaturally familiar.  As though I lived there - or perhaps desired to live there - and discover them in my dream.  Very often, as someone who lived in Manhattan for nearly 25 years, I return to my "home" in New York. 

Last night I dreamt that my husband and I went apartment-hunting in Manhattan.  I don't recall what section of town, but the real estate agent brought us to an elegant, upscale apartment.  It could not have been more gorgeous.  The kitchen had marble counters, modern appliances, gourmet amenities.  The living room, fully furnished by the wealthy current owners, was sleek, modern, and filled with beautiful artwork.  As we wandered down the long winding hallways, the real estate agent brought us to a large picture window with a spectacular view of the East River.  The apartment was strangely whimsical.  The architectural contained colorful curiosities like carved wooden swirls on the doors and multi-colored ceiling beams.  My husband was sold on the apartment.  He was ready to buy it.  So was I.  Amazingly, the price was affordable.  It was only a quarter of a million dollars.  A bargain in New York City!

We all walked back to the front door and the kitchen, and my husband exited my dream.  I stood there with the broker and began to have second thoughts. 

"Wait a minute," I mused out loud. "There is only one bedroom in this apartment.  I think we might need at least one more bedroom as a guest room or study." 

"Oh, didn't you notice?" she asked.  "There are plenty of other bedrooms."

Well, no, in fact, I hadn't noticed.  I hadn't seen any other bedrooms on our little tour.  I decided to do another walk-through of the apartment, but this time I hyper-focused on all of the minute details of the apartment.  This is where it became very strange.

As we walked through the gorgeous kitchen, dining room, and living room, we made our way back to the bedroom area of the apartment.  This time, I noticed that the floors were bare planks of wood with giant cracks in between - sometimes we had to hop over large crevices in the floor.  Many of the walls were unfinished.  Closets were either non-existent or barely framed out with 2 x 4 wooden beams.  The ceilings were now two or three stories tall and had peeling paint and broken sheetrock.  What the heck?   Yes, the broker was correct in telling me this was not just a one-bedroom apartment, because now I saw there were tiny bedrooms off of every hallway!  The problem was that they were all dark, dusty, and under construction!

As I wandered on my own throughout the long hallways, the size of the apartment began to morph - Alice in Wonderland style.  The apartment was now the size of an entire building. The ceilings had expanded and were now at least 7 or 8 stories tall.  The girth of the apartment was now several acres.  The apartment had lost its luxury gloss and was now was disturbingly unfinished - it was under construction and clearly unsafe.  I spotted a half-hidden doorway leading to an unnaturally narrow staircase into the bowels of some basement.  I called to the real estate agent and asked her where this led.  I did not want to buy an apartment if it could be accessed for deliveries by other people or was unsafe.  She didn't know.  Then I looked up and saw the 80-foot tall walls and ceilings were actually a giant parking lot containing cars.  I just couldn't reconcile this with my idea of a luxury apartment.  Car oil might drip on us!  Cars might fall on us from the ceiling.  Why hadn't the previous owner taken the time to cover up all this functionality?   It wasn't pretty. How was I going to ever finish working on this apartment to make it presentable?

My dream ended because the telephone rang.

Clearly, my dream was about my feelings about my mind.  Due to all my research studies and work in the psychic field, I felt - at least initially - that I must have a super-toned and luxurious brain.  I was clearly proud of my brain.  I was ready to "buy" in to it!    The initial luxury brain had come at virtually "no cost" to me.  However, upon closer examination, I discovered my mind was only a work in progress - and not a display home.  I was disappointed because I couldn't showcase my brain, but on the other hand, I was amazed to discover that my brain is much, much larger than I ever imagined.  With enough work invested in its "construction," I can clearly build a far more amazing mind than even I ever imagined!

The moral of this story:  The real estate of the mind is always a work in progress.

The Male/Female Aspects of Remote Viewing

Paul Smith, former military remote viewer and vice president of the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA), delivering a tribute to Ingo Swann

 

 

Many years ago, when I  was just starting out my journey to explore psychic intuition, I interviewed a well known psychic.  She was associated with Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) in Virginia Beach.  I was secretly terrified of my inadequacies in the psychic realm and was concerned I wouldn't be able to understand her or that she would see through me.   

 

We sat down over a brief lunch.  She was a heavy-set woman, as many psychic women tend to be, and she had the tell-tale eyes of a psychic.  Difficult for me to explain - but in the words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous attempt to define obscenity in a 1964 case: "I know it when I see it."   I knew she had psychic eyes.  They were clear sparkling blue, heavy-lidded, dangerous, glittering like a snake's eyes, outlined, ancient Egyptian-style with black eye liner.  They weren't quite looking at me, perhaps through me, and they lacked focus on my physical body.   

 

She said, " Maybe someday people will come to respect our work in the psychic field.  I'm betting that remote viewing is going to make that happen."

 

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

 

"I think remote viewing will gain acceptance because it is primarily done by men," she said.

 

I never forgot that.  She was right. 

 

Remote viewing is, by my own personal definition, a form of "Militarized Clairvoyance."  It has traditionally fallen into the realm of men.  It was created, largely in part by my former mentor Ingo Swann, as a method to formalize ways to mind read and access psychic information.  Since the methodologies were created for the CIA, and subsequently different branches of the military and DIA.  Remote viewing was used as a tool by which to train mostly military men to spy on our enemies in other countries. 

 

The fact that remote viewing was created as a military tool was interesting.  Traditionally more women have been deemed to be clairvoyant than men.  Psychic abilities are generally more accepted among women than among men.  By structuring clairvoyance as a new kind of military intelligence tool and reformulating its essence into a series of rigid protocols, guidelines and rules, remote viewing became more acceptable to men.  Women never used their clairvoyance as a "tool" in the past.  The only "application" ever promoted by women for their psychic abilities was generally in the healing realm.  

 

And so, it was very interesting to me, as a newcomer - and guest speaker - to the International Remote Viewing Association's ("IRVA") annual conference (June 27-29, 2014) , to assess the masculine and feminine qualities of the experience.  My overall sense of the organization was heavily masculine. The military influence is palpable.  However, the new president of the organization, psychic detective Pamela Coronado, is a woman, and there are a growing number of women on the board of directors.  There were also a fair number of women in the audience. 

 

To me, this equalization of the sexes, is indicative of the growing acceptance of clairvoyance.  It reminds me, by analogy, of my early days at Princeton University when I was accepted into the fifth class of women ever to attend the university.  Life was strange for a woman because there were so few of us.  To give you an idea, the first class of women was only 25 women!  You had to walk a long distance to find a ladies' room, half  of the eating clubs were all-male, and girls were still bussed in from neighboring colleges for dates.  Today, the bathrooms are uni-sex, the eating clubs are all coed, and 49 percent of the student body is now female.  The feminine component is now fully integrated and Princeton has normalized.

 

The IRVA presentations had an obvious "male" character to them.  They focused on analysis, statistics, mathematical formulas, research study results and military games.  And so when I made my presentation - which was very different from the rest - I was a bit nervous.  My presentation, titled "The Myth of the Sixth Sense," contained colorful images, flowers, whimsical drawings and fun facts.  I had an entire section devoted to explaining the reality of women's intuition.  I secretly feared my presentation would not be respected since it was lacking in dry methodology and statistics, 

 

I was very pleased when, at the end, many men and women (military and non-military)came up to me to personally thank me for my presentation.  They said it was refreshing to have more of a woman's perspective in the field.  They said my presentation helped them understand clairvoyance, the underpinning of remote viewing, from a new vantage point, and not just as a mysterious set of strict protocols.

 

To me, this was the highlight of my trip.  I was able to inject my feminine perspective into the field created and founded by Ingo - who certainly understood the value of masculine and feminine attributes - and who managed to reformulate a type of clairvoyance that could be seen as acceptable to both men and women.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deadly Consequences of Religious Procreation

The Duggar Family stars of the TV series "19 Kids and Counting"

It has taken me a long period of time to get to this point of writing on this topic.  I do not like to offend religious beliefs.  I tend toward being overly tolerant of a wide variety of behaviors that are personally repugnant to me.  However, given the state of affairs in the world, I can no longer hold my tongue.  I feel compelled to speak out.  Right off the bat, it is uncomfortable to attack the religious beliefs and morality of people whose only "wrongdoing" has been to make babies.  I respect all religions which respect life.  I respect all children whose only "crime" was to have been born.  So, my job here is difficult from the start.

I cannot watch the hit documentary television series "19 Kids and Counting" about the ever-expanding Duggar family from Arkansas without wanting to vomit or throw the TV out the window.  I don't normally get that angry at anything.  The parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, are both "devout Independent Baptists" in their late 40's.  Their family seems sweet, well-balanced, and uber-wholesome.  They follow all kinds of traditional Baptist lifestyles based on a strict interpretation of the Bible: hard work, modest attire, chaperoned courtship and seeking permission from parents to become engaged.  In this day and age, this kind of old-fashioned behavior would normally inspire our respect and admiration in the face our daily exposure to violence, nasty sex, morality degeneration, drugs, depression and failure to take responsibility for our actions.  This lies at the heart of my reluctance to bash the Duggar family.  But someone needs to say it.

The Duggars may have achieved a kind of religious bliss and a lovely family, but this accomplishment is overshadowed by their unbelievable lack of responsibility owed to our planet - to me and to you.  They have set a good example for family behavior but a terrible example for family size.  What were they thinking?  Michelle was recently been quoted as saying: "We would love more [children]!"  Are you kidding me?  Isn't 19 enough to satisfy your appetite for a large family?  Isn't it a God-given clue that your 20th child didn't survive?  Don't you care about the rest of us here are planet earth?

It is my very strong opinion that NO ONE should be dumb enough to think that God mandated unlimited procreation.  We no longer have the luxury of this religious belief system.   Check out the Bible.  Considering the significant Catholic and Christian fundamentalist emphasis on making babies, I was sure I would find lots of Biblical authority for this proposition, but I only found one.  Genesis 1:28 - "God blessed them; and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"  Remember: God was talking to Adam and Eve!  There were no other human beings alive on earth!  We weren't struggling with global overpopulation and dwindling natural resources!

Let me be very clear:  Aside from five references in the first book of Genesis to "be fruitful and multiply" God does not order us to make babies.  God merely advises us to have sex only for the purpose of making babies and not for mere idle pleasure.  Okay, so why don't the Duggars simply abstain from having sex?  Alternatively, why don't they use birth control?  They did that for four years following their marriage! 

 The human population on this planet has more than doubled since my birth: 3 billion to 7.5 billion.  It shows no signs of stopping.  No leaders have stepped up to the plate.  The Chinese are about ready to reverse their one-child-per-family policy.  Really?  Should we just shut our eyes and block our ears and hope this problem goes away by itself?  Politics, religion and personal preferences can no longer be used as an excuse to make more babies. 

Over the millennia, certain populations have consciously tried to repopulate their own race or culture when their populations were threatened.  The Jews did this after World War II.  The French did this after their drop in population threatened economic disaster.  It is said that radical Muslim Jehadists intend to "conquer" Western civilization by breeding more babies.   Population has been treated as a political and economic issue, just as much as a religious issue.  Plenty of people love the idea of a big family.  Sorry, but those days have sadly left us.  We no longer have the luxury of a fantasy of a big family.  The time has come to treat baby-making as a global human issue. 

. 

Cookie Cutter Brains - The New Disease of Creativity

 

Just this morning, an Army specialist, under psychiatric care for post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) and anxiety, inexplicably decided to open fire and killed four people, including himself, and injured sixteen others at the military base at Fort Hood in Texas.  In 2009, a former Army major and psychiatrist also opened fire in Fort Hood killing thirteen people and injuring 30.  It was the worst mass murder on any American military base in history. 

This time, newscasters scramble to answer the questions of "Why" or "How can we prevent this in the future by better diagnosing the mental health of potential killers?" 

If you want to learn about mental health, then study the military.  Our modern classification system for mental health disorders has much of its early history rooted in trying to diagnose our military men and women.  In 1952, after a major shift in psychiatric focus to large-scale Army and Navy focus on diagnosing and treating various psychiatric disorders among military men after World War II, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published its first manual of standard classification of mental disorders.  It was called The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and since that time has been updated periodically every 15-20 years to incorporate new developments in mental health concepts.  For example, in the 1974 version finally got rid of its classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder.  By 1994, the Clinton Administration initiated the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy regarding the admission of gays and lesbians into the military.

Last year, the APA published its fifth edition - the DSM-V.  The new edition changed several codifications and requirements including removing the A2 criterion for PTSD  because its requirement for specific emotional reactions to trauma did not apply to combat veterans and first responders with PTSD.  Maybe this will help us label the most recent Fort Hood killer, an Iraq War veteran, as having suffered from PTSD - in which case, maybe special future restrictions will be set up to control all people diagnosed with PTSD.

Clearly, when you want to change public policy, it is most helpful to change classifications for mental health disorders.  In the last fifty years, the DSM has increased the number of mental illnesses from 130 to a whopping 357!  Does that mean we are becoming a sicker society or that psychiatrists are finding more ways to label us as "sick"?  Things that used to be "personality traits" are now being characterized as "disorders" and "diseases."

What if we wanted to change our society?  What if you wanted to create a society of passive citizens who agreed with whatever policy you dictated to them?  Just create a new type of mental illness!  You could create a psychiatric label for all those people who don't like authority and have their own ideas about society and justice.  Then, bingo!  No more dissention.

Not surprisingly, the new DSM-V does exactly this.  It identifies a brand new mental illness called "oppositional defiant disorder" or "ODD."  It is defined as "an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior" and its symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness and being easily annoyed.  This new "illness" defines people who suffer from ODD as being arrogant, narcissistic, cynical, having anti-social behavior and - get this! - having above-average creativity!!!

Not only does this have terrible implications for a potential fascist or Stalinist type of political repression of a nation (just lock them up in psychiatric institutions if they have "creative" or "oppositional" political ideals that conflict with yours!), but it also has terrible implications for my line of work. 

As I have noted many times in my work on psychic applications, in order to do this type of work at all, you must process your thoughts differently.  It involves "above average creativity" and may also involve a certain degree of "arrogance" or "narcissism" in order to achieve a high degree of trust in one's own very unconventional and often unverifiable perceptions and observations.  Will all psychics now be labeled as "ODD"?  Will our government at some point be able to lock up all creative thinkers, like psychics, artists and intellectuals, on the pretext that they suffer from a mental disorder? 

Whether you believe in New World Order conspiracy theory or are just a historian of fascist regimes, the APA's new DSM-V classification of creativity as a disorder is downright frightening!

The Crime of Crimea

(Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu (Mustafa Jemilev), former Presidential Representative of Crimea)

A few years ago I was invited to a party, given by an Egyptian socialite, at her apartment in New York City.  It was winter and fairly cold outside.  As I entered the apartment building and walked through the enormous lobby, I saw a tiny sober-looking man seated on a bench, flanked by two other unusual-looking men.  He wore a buttoned-up overcoat and faintly Russian-looking tall lambs wool hat.  He appeared to be watching all the people enter the lobby with an intensely sad expression on his thin, drawn greyish face. 

I had a hunch that he was going to the same party as us. And indeed he was.  He showed up a few minutes after us in the crowded apartment filled with loud, laughing, champagne-drinking actors, opera singers, business people, and lawyers.  It was a very multicultural gathering.  He seemed oddly out of place.

Mustafa Jemilev, also known as Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu, was the guest of honor at my friend's party.  He was the equivalent of the President of Crimea, although Crimea, due to its long and confusing history, doesn't technically have its own president, but because of its strange status as an independent state of the Ukraine, Crimea sends its "presidential representative" to the Ukrainian Parliament.  Mr. Jemilev, a well recognized leader of the Crimean Tatar National Movement, has fought all of his life to bring his people, a Turkic mostly Muslim ethnic group who are fierce descendants of Genghis Khan who speak Crimean Tatar, Russian or Turkish, back to their homeland in Crimea. 

Our Egyptian hostess finally clapped her hands to get our rowdy attention, and she introduced her guest, Mr. Jemilev.  He sat quietly on the sofa still flanked by the other two men. (Later I spoke with the other two men and learned they were two of the most powerful businessmen in the Ukraine). Mr. Jemilev began to speak.  His English was awful - almost incomprehensible.  But slowly I began to understand the history of a tiny strategic country sandwiched on a peninsula in the Black Sea, like a dangling uvula at the back of a gaping mouth, between Russia and Ukraine.  It also became clear why he was so physically frail and sad.

I knew nothing about the history of Crimea or its people.  Only that its naval bases were strategic to Russia.

In 1783, Russia violated its treaty and invaded Crimea.  After this annexation, the Russian czars engaged in a policy of massacring and exiling hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars.  Two-thirds of the Crimean Tatar population either perished or was forced out of the country.  During Stalin's reign, many of the remaining Crimean Tatars who were attempting to establish the first democratic republic in the Islamic world, were brutally suppressed, imprisoned or executed.  Soviet policies resulting in widespread starvation in 1921 and more than 100,000 Tatars starved to death and others fled to Turkey or Romania.  Ten years later, there was another Soviet-led mass starvation of Crimea.  The amazing reality was that between 1917 and 1933, half of the Crimean population had been either killed or deported.

Mr. Jemilev's people were again subjected to Soviet attack when, in 1944, accused of aiding Hitler's campaign,  all Crimean Tatars were deported en masse as a form of collective punishment and were permanently exiled to Uzbekistan.  Half the entire population died of disease or malnutrition.  Mr. Jemilev was only six months old when his family was deported that year along with the rest of the entire Crimean Tatar population.  He grew up in exile in Uzbekistan.  At a young age, he became active in a political group of young Crimean Tatars who sought the right to return to their homeland.  For his efforts, he was rewarded by the Soviet government, between 1966 and 1986, by being arrested six times, served time in Soviet prisons and labor camps, and lived under constant surveillance.  He went on the longest hunger strike in the history of all human rights movements.  His hunger strike lasted for 303 days - almost an entire year - but he survived due to force feeding. 

In 1989, he was elected to head the newly created Crimean Tatar National Movement and his people were finally allowed to return to Crimea.  Roughly 250,000 Tatars returned to Crimea while another roughly 100,000 still remain relocated in other countries.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1992, Crimea was granted independence and briefly elected its own president, until it was again suppressed, this time by its new "owners" - the Ukraine.  Mr. Jemilev has been reelected to the Ukrainian parliament almost continuously since 2002.

As of this writing, Russia has decided to covertly invade Crimea - again - as a reaction to the unrest and anti-Russian political upheaval in Ukraine. 

This morning I watched the television pundits speculate on what Russia will do: Reabsorb Crimea into Russia to protect its naval interests?  Use Crimea as a bargaining chip to obtain political leverage in Ukraine?  Use Crimea as the launching pad for an all-out military invasion of Ukraine?  No one seems to have a strong grip on the unfolding events. The West seems strangely conflicted - like a mother who has caught her child with his hand in the cookie jar for the third time, threatens to send him to his room, but ultimately does nothing.

I believe Russia had no other option than to invade Crimea.  It cannot afford to lose that strategic advantage and the Black Sea Fleet.  I don't believe Russian President Putin ultimately intends to invade Ukraine the way it did to the newly-reforming Republic of Czechoslovakia in 1968.  I still remember seeing the TV images of the tanks rolling into Prague and being shocked by the sheer audacity of the Russian military.  However, I don't believe the so-called "Brezhnev Doctrine," upon which the Russians have historically relied to invade any country whose political developments threaten communism, can or will be used to justify a similar invasion in the Ukraine.  After all, why bother?  The Russians have had covert governmental control over that country for decades anyway and have the support of nearly half the population. 

But Crimea is a different story.  Crimea will be Russian.  No doubt.


POST SCRIPT:  The above article was written Sunday morning.  By 5PM EST today television newscasters announced that the entire Crimean Peninsula was under the "operational control" of Russia with armed Russian troops surrounding all Ukrainian military bases in Crimea.  In other words, Crimea has fallen to Russian occupation.

The "Deli Lama": Food for Thought

The Dalai Lama enjoys a meal

I will likely humiliate my son for the rest of his life with this post, but... oh well. 

Several years ago, while William was still in elementary school, his class project was to create a drawing and description to answer the age-old question :  What do you want to be when you grow up? 

"So, William," I said, "What do you want to be?"

"I'm not sure," he said thoughtfully.  "It's a toss up."

"Between what?"

"Either I want to be President of the United States or else a member of the Mountain Lakes Country Club."  (Apparently he was deeply disturbed by the fact that we, unlike his little classmates' families, had decided not to join the local country club).

"Yeah, that is a tough choice," I agreed sympathetically.

To my great relief, he opted for the job of President of the United States.  He even took it upon himself to write and memorize several Inaugural Speeches for his inevitable victory (which he practiced by delivering them to me in the kitchen).  The theme was always environmental.  Basically, they went like this:  As President I will order you to use less paper, so we can save the trees, so that we can continue to breathe oxygen on the planet."  I always gave him a standing ovation.

This morning, roughly a decade later, he came to have a serious discussion with me about his future aspirations.  The circumstances have changed radically.  He is now 14-year-old boy struggling with insecurities, uncertainties, college worries, pimples, girls, and teenage hormones.  This time he announced with some confidence that he was beginning to narrow his future fields of interest.

"Okay, so what are you interested in doing?" I asked.

"Well, it boils down to three areas," he said earnestly.  "It would either be mathematics or science, because I'm really good at that and I know a lot about science already.  So that would be really easy.  Or, maybe music, because I just got into the Regionals with French Horn and I really like music.  But I'm also thinking maybe politics or the law."

"Well you certainly know how to argue really well," I said, reflecting upon his recent temper tantrums and insatiable desire to be right. "That's good for being a lawyer or a politician."  (I should know!).

"Yeah..." he nodded in agreement.  "So maybe I can take economics over the summer.  What is economics, anyway?"

That launched us into a discussion about local politics, finance, fiscal budgets, allocations, competing political interests, national tariffs, trade regulations, gross national product, national debt, taxes and several other related topics, including the fact that economics was the only course I nearly failed in college!

"Oh!  I almost forgot the fourth thing I might want to do when I grow up."

"What's that?"

"I would like to be the next Deli Lama!"

I started to laugh uncontrollably - which only confused him.

"What?  What's so funny, Mom?"

I decided not even to raise the issue that the "Deli" Lama has nothing to do with cold cuts or urban delicatessens.  Instead, I carefully explained the problem.

"Well, you have to be born into the position of Dalai Lama, you can't just apply for the position!  And you would have to have been a monk." 

Actually, I thought William's interest "out of the blue" in Tibet and the Dalai Lama was kind of interesting.  As a very young child, without knowing why, I always said my two favorite countries in the world were Tibet and Peru.  The Dalai Lama is the 14th Dalai Lama, and he has been quoted as saying that when he turns 90, he will consult with the religious elders of Tibet and discuss the possibility that he should be the last Dalai Lama in history. 

William looked briefly perturbed as he thought through this obstacle.

"I think I am going to be the first Deli Lama who isn't born into the position.  I'm going to move to Tibet, live there for a while, and become a yogi.  I always liked the Buddhist and Hindu faiths.  I'd be good at meditating.  I speak some Chinese.  You know, you get to live in a nice place (not like here), and not have to worry about survival or food or water.  Plus, I would do Kung Fu.  Then they would want me for their Deli Lama."

Tough to respond to this line of reasoning. 

"There's a little problem with that also," I said cautiously.  "The reason the Dalai Lama doesn't live in Tibet any more is because the Chinese invaded Tibet and reclaimed it as part of China, even though the Tibetans fought for their independence from China.  So, you couldn't go to Tibet and live there as a Dalai Lama because you would get killed.  That's why the Dalai Lama escaped, fled from Tibet and now lives in India as the leader of his exiled government."

"But I will learn Kung Fu."

Where does the Dalai Lama live now?  India?  Maybe he's really the New Delhi Lama.