Dmitry Orlov

June 2, 2026

Currently, Russia faces a bit of a problem. Western nations have taken to supplying the former Ukraine with missiles, drones and components for their manufacture. The US is also involved: the former Ukraine receives targeting information from Palantir and uses Starlink satellite communications. This by no means qualifies as an existential threat but it does pose a political problem for Russia’s leaders.

By “the former Ukraine” I mean what’s left of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, as crafted by Lenin and Stalin out of random bits of the Russian Empire, then let loose by “drunk president” Boris Yeltsin. Since then it has lost half of its population (the younger and more capable half), virtually all of its once mighty industry, and is now a shadow of its former self. It has a very high death rate and a very low birth rate and is undergoing rapid demographic collapse. Its one remaining use (for the West) is to annoy Russia. It is the one and only category in which the former Ukraine remains a success.

The West supplies the former Ukraine with drones and drone components and the Ukrainians use them to launch attacks on civilians in random locations within Russia. They have tried to launch drone attacks to damage military and industrial installations, oil refineries especially, but this has had minimal effect and these locations are at this point fairly well defended with anti-aircraft systems.

And so the Ukrainians have switched to targeting civilians. The number of people killed by Ukrainian missile and drone attacks averages 1,3 deaths per day. This is significantly lower than the 38-40 people per day who die in automobile accidents throughout Russia, but there is a big difference psychologically. In practical terms, nothing much would happen if automobile accident deaths went up to 39,3-41,3. This would, of course, be deplorable, but such a development would only be noticeable to statisticians and they would certainly not start running around with their hair on fire. But drone and missile attacks are different: they cause people to think that not enough is being done to defend them. In turn, this causes politicians and public figures in Russia to leap to action and demand that something be done.

For example, professor Sergei Karaganov has advocated the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Western nations which supply the former Ukraine with missiles and drones. Karaganov’s logic is simple: the West is not sufficiently scared of Russia; nuclear weapons are very scary indeed; therefore, using nuclear weapons against the West would fix this problem. In line with Karaganov’s thinking, the Russian Ministry of Defense has produced a target list of factories that manufacture the missiles and drones which end up in the former Ukraine and, it is reasonable to assume, stands ready to destroy these factories when so ordered. Whether it would do so using conventional or nuclear weapons is yet to be determined. Some people seem to think that Karaganov shouldn’t have proposed this and have even launched personal attacks against him. What some people seem to be missing is a fine distinction between saying that something should be done and actually doing it. Yes, this is a nuance, but it is a very important one.

Some people take issue with the fact that Russia has not yet prevailed militarily in the former Ukraine. Some of them take this to mean that Russia is weak; others claim that the Russian leadership is divided or indecisive or that Putin is overly cautious. They think that Russia should smite the Kiev regime’s forces forthwith and that Russia should triumph and claim all the territory it wants. Both sworn Russophobes and supposedly patriotic Russians are guilty of such wooly thinking.

Indeed, lots of Russians endlessly repeat the mantra that “victory will be ours.” But what does that actually mean? If Russia were to score an outright victory in the Ukraine, smashing the Kiev regime and causing its military to retreat in disarray and dissolve among the civilian population, would that be helpful to Russia? It doesn’t take too much deep thought to discover that it would not be helpful at all.

• Russia would come to control a vast, chaotic territory. It is sparsely peopled by lots of retirees, disabled veterans and war widows. There are some 100.000 fabulously corrupt functionaries, arms dealers and crooks. It is infested by Western agents and mercenaries. Thanks to relentless brainwashing, none of them are particularly well-disposed toward Russia. Incorporating this territory into the Russian Federation would require lifting it up to Russian standards, and this would require massive and unpopular federal budget outlays.

• Then there is the question of how these new, most reluctantly Russian citizens would vote: probably not quite the way Moscow would like. West of the Dniepr river, Russian patriots become rather thin on the ground. After 35 years of splendid isolation, rejoining the fold of the Russian civilization may not be possible for much of the remaining population. It would take several decades to bring these people around, and it is unclear what level of interest exists within Russia for doing so. In 1991, at the time of the collapse of the USSR, 80% to 90% of Russians perceived Ukrainians as a brotherly nation. In 2025, according to polls by the Levada Center (designated as a “foreign agent” by the Russian Ministry of Justice), the proportion of Russians who consider Ukrainians a brotherly nation is approximately 50%-52%. Given this trend, in a few more years attempts to reintegrate the former Ukrainian SSR into Russia would receive considerable pushback.

• Lastly, winning in the former Ukraine would simply prompt the West to start another proxy war against Russia. The list of animals to be sacrificed on the altar of Western Russophobia has already been drawn up and it is quite long: from north to south, there is Finland, the Baltics (too insignificant to mention by name), Poland and Moldova/Transnistria. Here, too, there is a fine difference between members of these sacrificial, notionally Western nations saying that they will fight Russia (and holding training exercises in which they pretend to fight Russia) and them actually doing so, as opposed to running off and hiding.

These are the negatives of a quick, outright Russian victory in the former Ukraine. And then there are also some positives being offered by the lack thereof.

• Perhaps most importantly, this conflict allows Russia to complete a civilizational about-face, from being wedded culturally and economically to the decadent, degenerate and hostile West to establishing amicable, mutually beneficial relationships with the increasingly prosperous, fast-growing and traditionalist countries of Southeast Asia.

• Part of that about-face is a societal transformation within Russia itself. At the beginning of the Special Military Operation in February of 2022, Russia was spontaneously relieved of quite a number of influential citizens of split loyalty who chose to leave Russia. Half of these people have since realized that they had made a mistake and have come back, but the lessons they learned, and imparted to the rest, were invaluable. The basic lesson seems to be simple: “The West has nothing to offer us.”

• Then there is the usefulness of the former Ukraine as a proving ground for new weapons and war-fighting techniques, where the use of armor and large infantry formations is a thing of the past and the line of separation is now a kill zone as wide as 50km patrolled by drones and infiltrated by infantry in groups of two or three under cover of darkness, rain and fog to launch surprise attacks and take over specific fortified locations.

• Finally, the Special Military Operation is a powerful tool of political consolidation. Returning veterans reenter the workforce and, in recognition of their achievements on the battlefield, are promoted to management. Their children receive prime consideration for free education. All of this helps ensure that Russia’s governance structures, both public and private, will remain patriotic and loyal for the next several generations.

For all of these reasons, it is far better for Russia to be winning than to win. Indeed, Russia is winning every day, just a tiny bit. Almost every day the evening news carries stories of conquest of yet another hamlet or village or deserted industrial zone in the western portions of what are now regions of the Russian Federation or the newly established buffer zones in Sumy or Kharkov regions. These tiny conquests are achieved with an absolute minimum of casualties. People have stopped attempting to calculate casualty ratios some time ago, but before that happened numbers such as 7:1 (that is, Ukrainian to Russian casualties) were commonly heard even from Putin himself while ratios of 10:1 and higher were also floated. Overall, the Russian army is growing and the Ukrainian army is shrinking while Western financial support for the Kiev regime is dwindling. This implies that this conflict can’t go on forever and will wind down perhaps as soon as the end of 2026, perhaps a bit later.

Similarly to how it is better for Russia to be winning than to win in the former Ukraine, it is better for Russia to be preparing to nuke Europe than to actually do so. That it is preparing to do so is certainly a fact: Oreshnik missile batteries, which can be nuclear-tipped, have been positioned in Belarus, allowing them to strike anywhere within the European Union within a few minutes. Training exercises have recently been held to make sure crews are ready to arm them with tactical nuclear warheads. Surely, an attempt would first be made to make an impression on EU governments using conventional weapons before resorting to tactical nuclear weapons, but the track toward escalation has already been laid and the escalation train is already rolling down that track, albeit quite slowly.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/7811018b-986f-4d46-9fea-c3e3e3e1a226

By Jeffrey Tucker May 16, 2026

The grim circumstances behind the death of George Washington (1732-1799), America’s first president and popularly known as the Father of the Country, are not wholly unknown. The details have been reported by historians for more than two centuries.

What’s strange about this dry biographical knowledge is that it is not reported with shock and alarm and hence never conveyed to popular culture with lessons for our lives. This is because Washington’s physicians were following standard protocols when they bled him to death.

The facts: Washington came down with a throat infection. Three doctors, all convinced of the settled wisdom of the healing arts deployed since the Middle Ages, participated in draining blood from his body, to the point that they took 5 pints or fully half his blood, while giving him an enema on top of it all.

They literally drained the life out of him, not from malice but simply by following the established protocols as recommended by the best physicians at the time.

To invoke a popular phrase, where is the outrage? Nineteenth-century biographies reported the details but celebrated Washington for his bravery in enduring the treatment, then called phlebotomy, which was considered the best science.

John Marshall’s (later Justice) famous early biography, published in five volumes from 1804 to 1807, simply says:

“Believing bloodletting to be necessary, he procured a bleeder who took from his arm twelve or fourteen ounces of blood, but he would not permit a messenger to be despatched for his family physician until the appearance of day. About eleven in the morning Doctor Craik arrived; and perceiving the extreme danger of the case, requested that two consulting physicians should be immediately sent for. The utmost exertions of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, he expired without a struggle.”

Necessary. Medical skill. Protocols. Best Practices. Standards of Care. Death. No one knows why: just a yielding to the forces of disorder.

That account set the tone. No one dared say that the doctors killed him – a very clear example of iatrogenic death – because no one believed that. So long as it is credentialed experts doing the killing, we are led to believe that nothing really went wrong. The system works, just that sometimes the system cannot stop the inevitable.

That consensus surrounding Phlebotomy began to change in the coming decades, even if some experts were still on board as late as 1842. By the end of the 19th century, bleeding had been thoroughly discredited. Still, the overall judgment that the doctors did the best they could with the tools and knowledge they had remained. It’s as if the literary culture simply could not grasp the fullness of the implications that it was the physicians themselves who turned a common flu into a death event by draining the former president’s blood from his body.

Another biography written for kids in 1917 by Calista McCabe Courtenay comes closer to the truth.

“Before morning of the third day, he was very ill and when the doctors came, they bled him. It was the stupid practice of those days and in a few hours Washington was so weakened as to be past hope of recovery. He died on December 14, 1799, as bravely as he had lived.”

Even on the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, the full lesson of this horrible death has not sunk in.

The most recent and most celebrated biography is by Ron Chernow. Even here, while we get more detail, the account is lacking in severe judgment against the medical professionals, much less what that implies.

Although he experienced hoarseness and chest congestion that evening [November 12, 1799], Washington’s mood was cheerful. He smarted at old political wounds from onetime allies. When he read aloud a newspaper story that James Madison had nominated James Monroe for Virginia governor, he allowed himself some acerbic comments. He spurned Lear’s advice to take medicine. “You know I never take anything for a cold,” he protested. “Let it go as it came.” Instead, he sat up late in his library before mounting the steps to his bedroom.

Martha expressed dismay that he had not come upstairs earlier, but he said that he had done so as soon as he had finished his business. In the middle of the night, he awoke with a raw, inflamed throat. When he shook Martha awake, she grew alarmed by his labored breathing and wanted to fetch a servant, but he feared she might catch a chill on this cold night. Once again relying on his body’s restorative powers, he had Martha wait until daybreak to call for help.

When a slave named Caroline kindled a fire in the early morning, Martha asked her to scout out Tobias Lear, who found Washington breathing with difficulty and scarcely able “to utter a word intelligibly.” Christopher Sheels propped up his master in a chair by the fire as Lear sent a swift slave to Alexandria for Dr. Craik, the Scottish physician who had served Washington with such fervent devotion since the French and Indian War.

Meanwhile, to soothe his flaming throat, Washington consumed a syrupy blend of molasses, vinegar, and butter… With preternatural self-control, he had an overseer named George Rawlins bleed him before Dr. Craik arrived. When Rawlins blanched, Washington gently but firmly pressed him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, and once Rawlins had sliced into the skin, making the blood run freely, he added, “The orifice is not large enough.”

Martha showed better medical judgment and pleaded for a halt to the bleeding, but Washington urged Rawlins on, saying “More, more!” until nearly a pint of blood had been drained. A piece of moist flannel was wrapped around his throat while his feet were soaked in warm water. As they awaited Dr. Craik, Martha summoned the eminent Dr. Gustavus Richard Brown of Port Tobacco.

Dr. Craik, arriving first, perpetuated the medieval treatments already in use, emptying more blood and applying to the throat cantharides, a preparation made from dried beetles, to draw the inflammation to the surface. He also had Washington inhale steam from a teapot filled with vinegar and hot water. When Washington tilted back his head to gargle sage tea mixed with vinegar, he nearly suffocated.

Alarmed, Dr. Craik summoned a third doctor, Elisha Cullen Dick, a young Mason from Alexandria, who had studied under Dr. Benjamin Rush. Upon entering, he joined Craik in siphoning off more blood, which “came very slow, was thick, and did not produce any symptoms of fainting,” wrote Lear. They also evacuated Washington’s bowels with an enema. Joined at last by Dr. Brown, they took two more pints from Washington’s depleted body.

It has been estimated that Washington surrendered five pints of blood altogether, or about half of his body’s total supply. Dr. Dick recommended a still rare and highly experimental procedure—a tracheotomy that would have punched open a hole in Washington’s trachea, easing his breathing—only to be overruled by Craik and Brown. “I shall never cease to regret that the operation was not performed,” Dick said afterward, likening the three physicians to drowning men grasping at straws.

It is highly improbable, however, that Washington would have survived such a procedure, given his already weakened state….It was December 14, 1799. Washington had died at age sixty-seven.

The implications of such an account are profound concerning the purported wisdom of medical consensus. Every generation imagines that it is way ahead of the others in the past in terms of science and medicine. Sure, what they did in the past was grim, barbaric, ignorant, cruel, not based in science but we are so much better. And yet in every age, the physicians have always believed that. Nor is it enough to say that knowledge is always improving because we know that this is simply not true.

Even now, Washington, D.C. and the psychiatry profession is in an uproar over what appears to be a sudden awareness that what is called “psychiatric medication” is not fixing or medicating a “chemical imbalance” at all but rather sedating and creating a dependency that allows for further medicating in a vicious cycle. It seems rather obvious now, thanks to decades of work by outside writers and activists, but it was not apparent until recently. Lobotomies have not been repudiated so much as chemicalized.

And only a few years ago at the height of the worst of Covid, between 10,000 and 17,000 people in New York City were likely killed by the hospital protocols that involved ventilation from which most people died. Ventilation in this case was a death sentence not that different from phlebotomy, a consensus practice that only months after so many were harmed was deeply regretted. Meanwhile, those deploying the practice were indemnified with a liability shield.

We still have no clear answers as to why off-label therapeutics for a coronavirus were taken off the shelf while doctors who distributed Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine with great results are still being persecuted. Vaccine refuseniks were demonized as prolonging the pandemic, and then the product turned out to be one of the more dangerous ever distributed.

The New York Times attacked the idea that Ivermectin could be effective against Hantavirus as disinformation; after all, a “vaccine” is on its way, no doubt one declared to be both safe and effective. Remember that vaccination was discovered around the same time that Washington was bled to death by a generation of physicians that could not think its way out of an existing paradigm. Bleeding is finally gone but it took another 75 or so years.

From that time forward, vaccination as a go-to intervention for everyone has benefited from subsidies, celebrity endorsements, patents, mandates, a philosophical overlay over utilitarianism, agency blessings, media campaigns, liability shields, suppression of data of injury and death, and the demonization of any resistors. Is it any wonder so many now have their doubts?

What’s happening in medicine right now is a massive rethinking of many conventional practices coming out of the allopathic monopoly that is a century old. In pursuit of keeping an orthodoxy in place, how many healthy practices have been left behind from other traditions such as Chinese medicine, homeopathy, chiropathy, or naturopathy, all of which are discouraged by conventional insurance and disparaged by pharma-funded media? How many practices today called the Standard of Care will in a generation or two be regarded as obviously horrible as the practice of bleeding?

George Washington’s terrible fate ought to have sounded a national alarm to ring through our long history. The lesson should be never to replace epistemic humility in medicine with institutionalized dogma. That lesson did not stick because then and now, the prevailing medical wisdom gets a pass even when it kills people. Even the Father of the Country. 

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/george-washington-father-of-the-country-killed-by-doctors/

Photo Credit: pixabay.com

Robin Westenra

[…]

“The U.S.A National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by Edward Snowden included info about the NZ surveillance program detailing spying on millions of citizens

incl:@KimDotcom& overseas officials-which was a joint effort between NZ’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) & the U.S. NSA to covertly

Photo Credit: pixabay.comtap international undersea cables for mass data collection, for the purpose of spying”

Note this article contains two videos, viewable at the SOURCE link below here…

SOURCE

NZ is allegedly the first country outside the U.S.A to deploy Palantir’s data analytics software within its government agencies, with contracts reportedly dating back to 2012

The U.S.A National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by Snowden included info about the NZ surveillance program detailing spying on millions of citizens incl:@KimDotcom& overseas officials-which was a joint effort between NZ’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) & the U.S. NSA to covertly tap international undersea cables for mass data collection, for the purpose of spying

April 2012- The plan to develop “Speargun” began under the guise of “Initiative 7418” when Cabinet asked the GCSB to develop an advanced cyber protection strategy

July 2012 -June 2013 A warrant was sought & granted for “Phase 1” of Speargun. The GCSB confirmed this warrant ensured they could undertake preliminary work as part of the business case Cabinet requested

Early 2013- Phase I of Speargun was implemented by the GCSB & the U.S. NSA

March 2013- PM Key publicly claimed he cancelled Speargun because it was “too intrusive.” A meeting was held with the GCSB over Speargun at this time, & a press release later stated: PM tells GCSB not to bring business case forward. & then Informs the GCSB “it is too broad”

April 2013- Cabinet documents show Speargun had its funding extended through to June the following year-directly contradicting Key’s claim it was dead,

A LIE

June 12 2013- In Parliament, Green Party Co-leader Russel Norman accused the government of “conspiring to establish a surveillance state,” noting Palantir had opened a Wellington office & was advertising for an “embedded analyst” requiring a government security clearance.

June 12 2013- John Key dismissed the claims, saying he had only met Palantir’s Peter Thiel a “few times,” & denied discussing intelligence matters with him.
(Key had also given Thiel citizenship in 2011 bypassing normal requirements )

June 2013- Snowden revealed that the GCSB was in fact participating in Speargun- a mass surveillance program tapping the Southern Cross cable for US intelligence agencies. Documents explicitly noted “Project Speargun underway.” The program’s goal: “sniff it all, know it all, collect it all, process it all & exploit it all” via XKEYSCORE (a Five Eyes shared database). Snowden confirmed it contained communications of “millions of New Zealanders”

July Bypassing normal requirements coordination. The document stated: “The implementation of Speargun is currently on hold pending clarification of the legislation.” Crucially, Key was informed that Speargun details were likely to become public because they could be in the trove of secrets taken by Edward Snowden

August 2013

Key publicly vowed to RESIGN if mass surveillance of New Zealanders was ever proven (The January election was just months away)

July 2013- A secret briefing from DPMC’s intelligence director told PM Key that Speargun was “on hold pending clarification of legislation,” & that Snowden might expose it. The required legislation- the GCSB Amendment Act 2013- passed on Aug 21 legalizing domestic spying for the first time. Key then halted Speargun funding on Sep 2, months after he had publicly claimed the program was dead in Mar 2013

2014- April A business case for the upgraded spyware system “Cortex” (Speargun’s replacement) was developed & approved

2014- Sep At Kim Dotcom’s “Moment of Truth” event, Snowden called PM Key a liar, stating Key’s denial of mass surveillance is “categorically false.” He claimed he personally accessed NZ’s coms via the XKEYSCORE system & asserted: “If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched”

The New Zealand corrupt Govt with “Palantir” Spying & the Connection To The Whistleblower Edward Snowden/ Part 2

Snowden & Glenn Greenwald then publicly released the documents proving the GCSB & NSA ran “Speargun” & the spying

Despite that bombshell, John Key’s National Party still won a crushing victory on Sep20 2014. His strategy: concede the existence of a test program, deny it ever collected Kiwis’ data, & attack Snowden as unreliable.

2015- March Re-elected Key formally retracted his resignation promise- with NO apology, NO inquiry, NO consequences for lying to the public, & illegally spying on citizens. The media moved on. The public largely forgot, but not all!!

2016- December Key retires on his own terms allegedly, quitting as PM, & citing family reasons

2017-Key was Knighted, becoming Sir John Key. He never faced a single charge or formal censure for lying & allowing the illegal spying of Kiwi citizens

2017- Nov The NZ Herald obtained internal GCSB documents proving:
■ Key personally approved “Speargun”
■ The program was delayed in March 2013 – not cancelled
■ Funding & spying continued until Sep 2013, months after Key claimed it was dead

Edward Snowden famously tweeted: “A Lie, a Cover‑Up, & a Stolen Election”

John Key was exposed as a liar, won re‑election anyway, never resigned, got knighted, & mass surveillance continued – proving that in politics, showing that a cover‑up often works.

The Irony: Speargun = Cortex= “Palantir”
After killing Speargun, Key announced a replacement program called “Cortex” – a supposedly “defensive” cyber tool designed to protect NZ from malware & cyber attacks
But here’s the kicker, “Cortex” was functionally identical to Speargun. Both programs involved:
■ Placing data filtering technology at the ISP level
■ Scanning mass internet traffic in real time
■ Operating under the same legal framework

The only real difference was the optics. Speargun was designed to sit on the undersea cable-the “highway” of NZ’s internet connection. Cortex was positioned as a narrower tool, protecting “those organisations that requested it”

As former National Party leader Simon Bridges later admitted, describing the difference: “Cortex is effectively up a few drives of businesses, their ISPs, looking at malware activity. What Speargun is, is actually on the highways, looking at traffic”

In other words: Speargun scanned everything at the border. Cortex scanned everything at the local ISP. Same mass data filtering, different point of insertion

Key’s own description of Speargun was that it was “all about protecting secrets, not getting secrets” a framing that applied just as easily to “Cortex” . Both programs required the same fundamental capability: intercepting & analyzing NZs’ internet traffic at massive scale, collecting & distribution of your personal data

The business case for Cortex was approved in April 2014-less than a year after Speargun’s funding was supposedly halted. The Irony? Speargun never died. It was rebranded, repackaged, & renamed “Cortex”-a distinction without a difference.

The only thing that changed was the fanciful story the public was told, to pull the wool over most people’s eyes
Since 2013 legalized domestic spying has been the norm.

April 2026-The government has confirmed that its “ongoing partnership with Palantir is led by the GCSB”. Not only are the past details partially hidden, but the GCSB also appears to be the lead agency for the current, still-opaque relationship. The fact that the data is fairly unavailable for GCSB & SIS remains a notable of they can spy on us but its difficult to see their nefarious activity.

SOURCE

Via https://envirowatchnz.com/2026/06/03/the-new-zealand-govt-with-palantir-spying-the-whistleblower-edward-snowden/

Ibn Kaldun

Episode 21 – Did Intellectual Inquiry Collapse Following the Collapse of Baghdad?

Islamic Golden Age (2017)

By Eamon Gearon

Film Review

Most of the information about the state of intellectual pursuit in the collapsed Abassid caliphate comes from Islamic historian, philosopher and father of sociology Ibn Kaldun (1332-1406 AD) – author of The Rise and Fall of Empire – and explorer/historian Ibn Battuta (1304-1368 AD – see The Islamic Marco Polo).

Ibn Battuta, who began his travels in 1325, visited and reported on all the major cities of the former Abassid caliphate. He began his journey in North Africa – visiting Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli (which were all independent kingdoms following the collapse of the Almohad empire). From there he progressed to the Ilkhanate, now under Mongol rule, consisting of the modern countries of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia and Azerbaijan. He then journeyed to the Levant, Mesopotamia and the Arabian peninsular.

In 1330, the Black Death killed the Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate and his sons, and the Mongols, Turks and Persians in the region established a host of petty states. When Ibn Batutu returned west in 1347, he was astonished at the Ilkhanate’s collapse because he believed the Mongols invincible.

According to Gearon, the high mortality rate from the plague played a much bigger role than the fall of Baghdad in the decline of intellectual inquiry.

The 13th century also saw the spread of gunpowder to the Middle East and Europe (via the Mongols and the writings of the Islamic chemist Mamluk and proto-engineer Hasan al Ranmah).

The Ottoman empire, founded in Turkey in 1299 AD, would be the first power outside China to adopt the use of gunpowder in a conquering spree.

Intellectual progress continued in regions the Mongols failed to conquer.

Examples of important post-1258 Islamic scholars include

• Ibn al-Nafis (1213-1288 AD) – born in Syria and worked in medical science in Cairo. He was the first investigator  to describe pulmonary circulation.
• Ibn bin Tuta – published Travels of Ibn bin Tuta in 1256 AD.
• Ibn al Shattir (1304-1375 AD) – astronomer and mathematician born in Syria, published The Final Question Concerning th3 Rectification of Principles correcting Ptolemy’s calculations of the distance from the Earth to the sun and moon.
• Mansur ibn Ileas – born 1350 AD in Shiraz Persia. Anatomist and physician. Author of Manur’s Anatomy, used widely in medieval European medical schools.
• Uleg Beg – Persian sultan and grandson of Tamerlane. Built observatories in the 1420s and identified 994 stars in The Sultan’s Star Chest.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5756987/5757035