The Jade Steps:
Chapter Seventeen:  Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat

When they arrived at the city of Tlaxcala[1], there was an enormous welcoming party to greet the Spaniards. Different clans of Tlaxcalans dressed in differing colors, their maguey or henniquen cloaks all painted and embroidered. A contingent of priests with their burning copal performed fumigations, wearing long white hooded robes, their hair long and blood-encrusted, blood oozing from their ears, and with fingernails several inches long. The streets and rooftops were thronging with smiling Indians who showered the Spaniards with roses of varying hues.

When they reached the central plaza, King Xicotencatl took Cortez by the hand and led him to a palace, explaining, “This shall be your home in Tlaxcala for as long as you wish.” He assured Cortez that all his men, all the Totonacs and Xocotlans, and even the Mesheeka nobles, would be well housed. Upon his signal, hundreds of servants began streaming into the plaza bearing cooked turkeys, maize cakes, fruits and vegetables for all. The soldiers all agreed it was the best they had eaten since leaving Cuba.

With everyone so joyously happy, Cortez and Malinali retired to their quarters. They had not had any time together since Zautla – so they did not waste any time now, making love fiercely and quickly. Afterwards, noticing Malinali was staring into space, Cortez asked her what she was thinking about.

Which country has the biggest interest in stopping the expansion of the oil and gas industry in Europe and North America? Answer: the Russian Federation is highly dependent -- to the tune of several hundred billion dollars -- on the export of these commodities, particularly to Europe.

It is rational, then, for the Russians to spend upward of a few hundred million dollars to influence politicians to stop gas and oil projects in those countries, with the goal of limiting supply, and thus protecting the Russian revenue stream.

Researchers at the Environmental Policy Alliance, however, have just produced a very solid, well-documented report, which shows how tens of millions of dollars from Russian interests apparently flowed from a dark company in Bermuda through opaque environmental bundlers, such as the Sea Change Foundation, into major environmental lobbying organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the League of Conservation Voters.

There have been a number of press stories during the past week on Russian support of American environmental groups, including a very detailed description of the money flows, by Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon.  In truth, these reports just scratch the surface of the Kremlin bribery operation paying off not just enviro groups but White House people as well.

Entropy is a term from physics that describes the tendency for matter to move from order into disorder. Life can be seen as deliberately working against entropy.

With our minds, we train our own brains to hold the structure of our lives. The habits that we practice daily, weekly, monthly; they are all based on neural pathways that we have established in our brain that make it easy and natural for us to follow these routines. These habits – if they are good ones - help us to resist entropy and have a sense of meaning, purpose and direction.

When you have a plan, and you are persistent with that plan, your habits become your allies. They work for you to reach your goals, so that you don’t have to work against your habits. What you create through your own fight against entropy is the masterpiece of your life.