vttoth — August 9th, 2010
Sixty-five years ago Nagasaki was destroyed by nuclear flame. The beginning of the nuclear era, we sometimes say. But perhaps there is a more hopeful way of looking at it: whereas Hiroshima was the first time a nuclear weapon was exploded in anger, Nagasaki was the last. So perhaps Teller was right after all, and nuclear weapons remain the ultimate peacemaker. Here’s to hoping.
In the meantime, here’s a rather relevant clip from YouTube, showing all nuclear explosions to date on a map:
Categories: History |
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vttoth — July 17th, 2010
Some think that this video is in bad taste:
I disagree. If it were done by anyone other than a Holocaust survivor, it would be in bad taste. But a Holocaust survivor has EVERY right to dance in Auschwitz and be happy with his family. This is his best (and only) revenge. (Sadly, lawyers seem to be having their revenge, too, as this video was apparently taken down previously by YouTube for alleged copyright violation. Yet another painful demonstration of just how badly broken our system of copyright really is.)
Categories: History |
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vttoth — May 6th, 2010
Here’s an idea that only Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller, or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union could come up with: nuke that oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, it has been done before, and only one out of five attempts was unsuccessful. So how about that, folks? What’s a bit of radioactivity when you have an 80% success rate?
Categories: Environment, History, Physics |
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vttoth — April 11th, 2010
I’m watching a six-part CBC documentary miniseries titled Love, Hate and Propaganda, which looks, from a perspective of 70 years, at the role of propaganda during WW2. While the series is enjoyable (though shallow, like most historical documentaries are), I am coming to the conclusion that after 70 years, propaganda is still alive and well.
Take these sentences, for instance, explaining the beginning of The Blitz:
In the beginning, Germans attack military and industrial installations, but as time goes by, bombs get closer and closer to the big cities.
September 7th. They hit London. The Blitz begins.
So how does it compare to a more neutral, factual description of the same from Wikipedia? Let’s see:
In late August 1940 [...] the Luftwaffe attacked industrial targets in Birmingham and Liverpool. This was part of an increase in night bombing brought about by the high casualty rates inflicted on German bombers in daylight.
During a raid on Thames Haven, on 24 August, some German aircraft [...] strayed over London and dropped bombs in the east and northeast parts of the city, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Islington, Tottenham and Finchley. This prompted the British to mount a retaliatory raid on Berlin the next night with bombs falling in Kreuzberg and Wedding, causing 10 deaths. Hitler was said to be furious, and on 5 September, at the urging of the Luftwaffe high command, he issued a directive “for disruptive attacks on the population and air defences of major British cities, including London, by day and night”. The Luftwaffe began day and night attacks on British cities, concentrating on London. This relieved the pressure on the RAF’s airfields.
In the CBC’s version of events, there is no doubt that the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets was the invention of the evil Nazi state. Wikipedia’s facts are more nuanced: it appears that the first intentional bombing of civilian targets may have actually been conducted by the RAF! This remains true regardless of the evil nature of the Nazi empire or the fact that it was them, not Britain, who started the most devastating war in history.
So, it seems, Love, Hate and Propaganda is guilty of the very thing that it purports to expose: by skewing the facts, it becomes a work of propaganda.
Categories: History, Television |
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vttoth — April 9th, 2010
The CBC titled its broadcast “End of an Era”; its live coverage of the special ceremony remembering Vimy Ridge, on account of the fact that Canada’s last WWI veteran died just a short while ago.
My thought? If only all countries remembered war the way Canada does: not the glory, but the loss and the sacrifice. Perhaps the world would be a better place.
Categories: History |
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vttoth — March 11th, 2010
25 years ago today, Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I don’t think I noticed… indeed, other than new slogans like “glasnost” and “perestroika”, which were mostly just words, the system seemed just as crumbling as before. Perhaps even crumbling a bit more… Gorbachev’s rise to power occurred, after all, a mere two months after the Comecon’s worst energy crisis, marked by shortages in natural gas and a massive collapse of the electrical grid. And then, a year later, it was Chernobyl’s turn. Did anyone need more proof that Communism was, even under the best of circumstances, a social system incapable of providing a sustainable, safe, secure, prosperous life to its citizens?
Nonetheless, I had no reason to suspect that Communism would vanish anytime soon. Indeed, I don’t think there was anyone in Hungary in 1986 who would not have considered it a safe bet that the Soviet empire, along with its one-party vassal states in Eastern Europe, would be around for at least another 25 years. These views played a major role in my decision to leave Hungary in 1986. A decision I never regretted, but still… who would have thought that just three short years later, the Berlin Wall would come down and not long after that, the flag of the USSR would no longer fly over the Kremlin?
Categories: History, Politics |
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vttoth — February 27th, 2010
Apparently, the earthquake in Chile was the 5th largest on record in the whole world since 1990. I guess I know three out of the other four: Chile in 1960, Alaska in 1964, and Indonesia in 2004. Ah, there’s the fourth (thanks, Wikipedia): Kamchatka in 1952.
Chile is supposedly well prepared. But how can you be well prepared when the earthquake destroys basic infrastructure?
Categories: History, Physics |
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vttoth — February 17th, 2010
I’ve been reading about a 60-year old show trial, the so-called Standard case (link in Hungarian), held in Communist Hungary, and decided to search for contemporary English-language articles. In the process, I came across something delightful: A 1953 issue of the Ottawa Evening Citizen. Its front-page headline: An incredible “Red offer” to free an imprisoned British businessman in exchange for a female Communist terrorist awaiting the gallows in Malaya.
The British businessman was eventually released a year later. I have no idea what happened to the Malayan woman. As to the other accused in the Standard case, several were executed, others received heavy prison terms… after the 1956 revolution, they were all released, but not rehabilitated until 1990, when Hungary’s Supreme Court declared the convictions null and void, as “no crime was committed”.
Meanwhile, I learned for instance, that in 1953 Ottawa, the daily newspaper listed two television stations: one in Montreal, one in Syracuse, N.Y., both of them broadcasting only in the afternoon and evening hours.
Categories: History, Local Ottawa |
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vttoth — February 16th, 2010
According to a Radio Free Europe journalist, even today, many of Afghanistan’s small intellectual elite still speak Russian, a legacy of one of the few good things brought to Afghanistan by the Soviet invasion, the education of many Afghans in Soviet institutes of higher learning. What will our legacy be in Afghanistan 20 years into the future, I wonder?
Categories: History, Politics |
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vttoth — December 23rd, 2009
In case anyone was under the impression that cultural vandalism, such as the blowing up of historical monuments that happen to stand in the way of someone’s ideology, is the monopoly of Islamic fanatics, think again. The other day, Georgia’s (the country’s, not the US state’s) democratically elected president ordered the destruction of a Soviet-era monument, ostensibly to make room for a new parliament building. Unfortunately for him (not that I care) and for two innocent spectators (that I do care about) the demolition was botched, and flying concrete killed these two people, a mother and her 8-year old daughter. As to the memorial… I may not have too many fond thoughts about the Soviet Union and the Red Army, but few things are less controversial than a memorial dedicated to a victory over fascism and the glory of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War… in which, incidentally, some 300,000 Georgians also happened to have lost their lives.
Categories: Culture, History, Politics |
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