The Jade Steps
Chapter Thirty: The Glory of Otumba

They set off as dawn broke to stumble into Tlacopan where the chiefs of the city met them with fear in their eyes.

"Malinche!" they addressed him.  "We warned you to stay here where you would be safe, and not to go to Tenochtitlan.  Now you have been destroyed, and we with you, for the Aztecs will soon follow to kill you and us."

Cortez stood arrow-straight and calmly spoke to Malinali.  "Doña Marina, inform these gentlemen that we greatly value their friendship and shall see they not suffer for it."

The chiefs remained worried.  "You must not stay here, Malinche, for the Aztecs are sure to attack.  Not far from here is the temple of Otoncalpulco with a large courtyard surrounded by a wooden wall.  There you will be safer.  I will order our people to carry your wounded on litters and help in which ways we may."

Cortez thanked them profusely and the chiefs issued their orders.  One of them turned to Malinali.  "Malinche must know that we are Tepanecs, not Aztecs.  Our kingdom was the first to be enslaved by them. It was our hope that Malinche was the answer to our prayers to be free of their rule."  He looked pleadingly into Malinali's eyes.  "Is there any hope left?"

Malinali returned his gaze.  "As long as Malinche is alive, there shall always be hope."

Despite a generation in which radical anti-crime policies such as enforcing the law and locking up criminals slashed murder rates, there's still plenty of debate over whether anti-crime policies work.

But no one can argue over whether pro-crime policies work.

108 people were shot in New York, Baltimore and Chicago over this past weekend. Many of the casualties were thus saved from that terrible "school-to-prison pipeline" that bedevils promising young crack dealers and instead went straight to the morgue.

Baltimore has just racked up its deadliest month since 1999. The fascist pigs no longer go down to the ghetto to hassle misunderstood youth who are just protesting police brutality by shooting each other.

When they do, they're confronted by angry mobs brandishing ObamaPhones set to record outrageous police misconduct such as arresting career criminals and drug dealers like Freddie Gray.

The Baltimore cops got Obama's message loud and clear. So did the gangs.

Stockholm, Sweden. Last week, there were reports in the Swedish and Finnish press about what was presumed to be a Russia submarine probing the harbors in both Stockholm and Helsinki.

This was not viewed as a serious Russian threat but merely an extension of the general and low-level harassment the Russians have displayed against their European Union neighbors, particularly the Baltic nations.

The European Union is not the first free-trade and defense bloc to arise in Europe. Six hundred years ago, the Hanseatic League held both economic and military sway in an area that at its farthest extent went from Novgorod in northern Russia to trade zones near London.

The league was centered in the German city of Lubeck on the Baltic. Members of the league included towns and cities in modern-day Germany, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium. The Hanseatic League established free trade among its members, who agreed to a basic charter.

It also established its own navy and defense force to protect its cargos, and it succeeded in largely eliminating pirates from the Baltic.  The EU had better morph NATO into a modern version of the League to protect itself from Putin's Pirates today.

This week I want to go into more depth about emotions. If you can master them, you will more fully own your own life. The quality of personality that this grows is conscientiousness, and it happens to be one of the most important qualities for your overall health and longevity.

Sometimes our emotions make life worth living: love, joy, ecstasy, delight, curiosity... Our emotions bring us these experiences and fill us with the meaning and motivation of life.

Sometimes our emotions can throw us into the worst that humanity can endure: pain, sadness, horror, grief, anger, fear, terror, depression... When this is what we feel, life can become overwhelming and, conversely, when life feels overwhelming, sometimes these are the feelings that come to dominate.

There are tools that can help us master our emotions, even when times are very, very hard.  Here are some of those tools.

Istanbul.  There was a full moon last night that turned the Bosphorus - the strait that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean upon which Istanbul resides - into a sheet of moonlight. 

It is a memorable sight, and I had time for a glimpse of it on my way to Central Asia.  So I only have a moment to provide a glimpse of what is happening here in Turkey.  For the history of what is now called Turkey, see Asia Minor (Part One) and Asia Minor (Part Two) from May 2007.

Turkey is now run by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recip Tayyip Erdogan (air-do-wan).  This is a very dangerous man.  He is a radical Islamist clothed in "Islamic moderation."  He is purging the Turkish military of officers devoted to the secularism of modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Attaturk, and replacing them with Islamists.  His goal is to recreate the Ottoman Caliphate, where the ruler of Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) was recognized as the Caliph or ruler of all Moslems.