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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

James Cook (lead image, right), the Royal Navy captain celebrated in British empire history for his 18th century voyages of discovery in the Pacific, was going mad with syphilis when he underestimated the combat skill of the Hawaiians on February 14, 1779,  and was killed in a skirmish on the beach.

He was then dismembered, cooked, partially eaten, and some of his choicest parts wrapped and delivered to his crew on board the HMS Resolution.  

Cook had navigated and mapped the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific coasts of Siberia and North America, and the Hawaiian islands, preparing them for military operations,  colonial occupation, annexation, partition, plantation, etc.   

In today’s NATO war against Russia, the British Navy has been practising cut-and-run on the Black Sea off the Crimean coast. British special forces have been spotted on operations in Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic states.  So far, they haven’t been caught or come to Cook’s sticky end.  

The most famous Russian singer of his time, Vladimir Vysotsky (left), composed a song in 1976 entitled “Why Did the Aborigines eat Cook?” In the song, Vysotsky mistook the Hawaiian islanders  for the indigenous Australians. But the moral of the song isn’t anthropological – it is a  joke, and a warning.  Introducing the song, Vysotsky said Cook’s tale is what happens to people who “grab at other people’s waists”.  

Listen to Vystosky introducing his warning and then singing his song.

Here are the lyrics.  The double meanings are obvious; they are not translated to spare the children reading this website.

But why did the aborigines eat the Cook?
For what? — it is unclear, science is silent.
It seems to me a very simple thing:
They wanted to eat – and so they ate a Cook!

There is the alternative that their leader – the Big BUK [beech tree] –
Said that there’s a very tasty cook on Cook’s ship …
The mistake came out – that’s what science is silent about:
They wanted a sea cook, but they ate the Cook.

But there is, however, another assumption,
That the Cook was eaten out of great respect —
That everyone had been led on by a cunning sorcerer and a nasty one:
“Let’s go guys, grab the Cook

Whoever will eat him without salt and without onions,
He will be strong, brave, kind – like the Cook!”
Someone got hold of  a stone under his arm —
The snake,  he threw it – and the Cook is no more!

Or else there  was no trick or trap at all —
They entered without knocking, almost without sound —
A bamboo club was put into action —
Bonk!! right on  the head  – and the Cook is no more!

We’ve been racking our brains for centuries, it’s just a torment —
Why and how did the aborigines eat the Cook?
The more delicious the Cook is – but  science is silent again.
Anyway, the Cook is no more.

But now the savages are wringing their hands,
Smashing their spears, breaking their bows,
The’ve  burned and thrown away their bamboo clubs —
They worry that they ate Cook!

Left image is a forensic  reconstruction making  Cook look fleshier than he was when he came to his end.

In the most recent history of what happened to Cook, the Anglo-American falsification of the story to promote  the US annexation of Hawaii, is explained here.    For the full text of the book by Anna Della Subin,  illustrating the reverse racism of colonisation, including Cook’s, read it here.

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