“I am freer than you”. These were the defiant words of St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko as she was sentenced for five tiny pieces of paper, providing details about Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
She used the five pieces of paper in question to replace price tags in a grocery store.
Among other things, she said in court, that [emphasis mine]
[…] I am unable to understand why we need military operations. Why are we doing this? Military actions shorten life. Military actions mean death. You can call it anything you want. You can say I was mistaken, misled, or brainwashed. But I always stick to my opinion, my truth. I don’t know anyone other than the state prosecutor who wants to put me in prison. In fact, I think that deep down even the state prosecutor doesn’t want this. I think he became a prosecutor to imprison real criminals and miscreants — murderers, rapists, pedophiles.
[…] You are worried about your career […] to give your children or your future children a head start. But what will you tell them? Will you tell them how you sent to prison an ailing woman because of five tiny pieces of paper?
[…] Even though I am behind bars,I am freer than you. […] I am not afraid that I won’t have a dazzling career or of appearing funny, vulnerable, or strange. I’m not afraid of seeming different from other people. Maybe that is why the state fears me and others like me so much and keeps me in a cage like a dangerous animal.
What an incredibly brave woman. What a morally bankrupt state it is that imprisons someone for this “crime”.
The fate of animals in wars was often tragic. They served their human masters (and all too often, died with their human masters) faithfully.
One of the most touching war memorials I ever came across was the Animals in War memorial in Hyde Park, London, that I stumbled upon completely by accident, unaware of its existence. Not that the animals themselves care, but it’s nice that they are remembered. And as of 2012, Ottawa has its very own Animals in War memorial, in Confederation Park.
Neither of these memorials specifically mention cats, though, despite the fact that cats played no small a role in making the otherwise unbearable conditions a teeny bit more tolerable. Many were killed. Occasionally, they even helped save their masters’ lives.
Long story short, last night I asked Midjourney to depict a gentlecat, thinking about his lost comrades.
First, a second-rate power suffers a terrorist attack as part of a festering political crisis that has been going on for many years. This attack is the proverbial last drop in the bucket: they feel they must respond, and launch a punitive military expedition that may not be well planned and might even fail, despite their apparent superiority.
A rival second-rate power who supported the rebels that committed the terrorist act feels that it must intervene. Its voice has been ignored for far too long, and it has vital interests in the region.
A Great Power, in support of the first second-rate power as part of a long-standing alliance, steps in, reluctantly because they do not want to get embroiled in someone else’s war, but convinced that their actions are unavoidable.
Another Great Power, in reaction, steps in as well because it feels that it is necessary essential to do so in order to maintain the existing world order and their position therein.
What did I just describe? The October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas? The increasingly hostile response by Iran? A possible intervention by the United States assisting Israel, leading to direct conflict with Russia who are already active in the region and embroiled in conflict elsewhere?
Nope. I was describing something that happened 109 years ago, when Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip murdered Austria-Hungary’s heir to the throne. Austria-Hungary’s punitive expedition against Serbia was launched in response. This led to Russia’s decision to enter the war, followed by the German Empire and ultimately, Britain.
Yet, though the analogy is far from perfect, the parallels are unmistakable. And to be honest, frightening.
This is why I don’t think of 10/7 as Israel’s 9/11. Nope. It’s our era’s Sarajevo.
We have been living in a golden era that has no precedent in human history. Pax Americana, which began in 1945 and was characterized by measures like the Marshall Plan that, instead of punishing Western Europe, helped the continent back onto its feet, has been keeping our world safe and prosperous for almost eight decades. No, not perfect, far from it. Millions still died in conflict. But it was millions, not billions, and the promised great conflict, a thermonuclear WW3, has not happened yet. Meanwhile, billions live in relative security, safety, and prosperity, enjoying decent lives, on a scale that truly has no historical parallel (though the period between 1849 and 1914 comes close.)
But ultimately, all good things must come to an end, they say. And this world order is coming apart at the seams. Alliances weaken. A rules-based world is no longer in vogue. Liberal democracies are losing their middle class, even as the same middle class votes for lower taxes and less government, forgetting that it was higher taxes and more government (reminding my good American friends of the late 1940s, 1950s, with the GI bill, the Interstate highway system or public education, all financed by taxing high incomes at rates not seen before or since) that built that prosperous, strong middle class in the first place. Other Western nations follow similar paths as the middle class shrinks and trust in the institutions of liberal democracy erodes.
“The lamps are going out all over Europe,” declared Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s Foreign Minister at the time, on August 3, 1914 as his country was about to declare war on Germany. I fear that we are just a hair’s breadth away from our lamps-are-going-out moment. And just like Sir Edward Grey, responsible leaders of our times appear to feel increasingly helpless.
It was 82 years ago, back in 1941, that the country of my birth, Hungary, switched to driving on the right [link in Hungarian].
Streetcar with a large sign reminding the public to drive on the right
The decision has a sad history. It was prompted by the experience earlier that year when Hungary allowed the transit of Wehrmacht troops on their way to occupy Yugoslavia.
This was yet another step towards Hungary fully committing itself to the German effort, giving up any semblance of neutrality.
For Hungary’s prime minister at the time, Pal Teleki, this was the last drop [link in Hungarian] in the proverbial bucket. Early in the morning on April 3, 1941, he shot himself. His farewell letter to Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s leader at the time, simply stated, “I did not hold you back. I am guilty. Pal Teleki, April 3, 1941.”
Hungary went on to fight with the Germans against the USSR. When it became clear that the Germans cannot win, Horthy made a half-hearted attempt to extricate the country out of the war. Instead, he was removed from power by the rabid national socialist Arrow Cross, with support from occupying German troops, who in the remaining few months of the war assisted the Germans in the deportation and wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungary’s Jews. In the end, the country was liberated but at a tremendous cost: Much of Budapest lay in ruins, devastated by a brutal Soviet siege, with all the city’s magnificent bridges across the Danube destroyed by the retreating Germans. Eventually, Horthy’s worst nightmare became reality: The “Bolsheviks” took over and stayed in power for more than 40 years, which included the a bloody intervention by the Soviets in 1956 to crush an anti-communist revolution.
Meanwhile, Budapest’s “millennial” subway, the continent’s first all-electric urban underground railway, continued to drive on the left all the way up to 1973, when the line was rebuilt, new rolling stock were introduced, and these trains, too, were switched to right-hand drive.
By way of explanation, the gentleman on the left is Admiral Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s leader at the time. The gentleman on the right with the famous moustache needs no introduction.
The second image is from today, October 17, 2023:
The somewhat overweight gentleman on the left is Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. The gentleman on the right is well known I suppose.
I don’t think I need to comment on why I opted to post these two pictures together. All I have to say is that this second image will come to haunt Hungarians in the future much the same way as the first.
As I watch the lamps of the post-WW2 world order go out, one tiny, flickering light at a time, I am compelled to remember something that happened more than a century ago: When Sir Edward Grey, Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the time, remarked that “the lamps are going out all over Europe”.
We are not quite there yet. There is hope that sanity will prevail.
Yet I feel that that hope is fading, that time is running out.
In 1914, the point of no return, the trigger was Germany’s decision to attack neutral Belgium. It compelled Britain to declare war, and ultimately widened that war into the world’s first (or maybe second — I think the Napoleonic wars might qualify as World War 0) global conflict.
What the trigger will be this time, I do not know. I am reacting in part to the announcement that the West warned Hezbollah to stay out of Israel’s conflict with Hamas. But chances are it will be something else.
But it is coming, of that I am near certain, even as I dearly hope that I am dead wrong, that my pessimism is unwarranted, my concerns grossly misplaced.
The world is not heading in the right direction. Not by a long shot. The golden era that began in 1945 and saw an unprecedented number of people around the world find relative peace, prosperity, and security for nearly eight decades, may be coming to an unpleasant end. There is a Hungarian saying (“kutya is jódolgában megy a jégre”) that may have a loose equivalent in English in the form of the proverb, “you never miss the water till the well runs dry”.
Here are a few things that concern me, in no particular order:
Worsening wars: Russia-Ukraine, the (brand new) Hamas-Israeli war, hotspots elsewhere, China-Taiwan tension
The shrinking middle class, rising inequality and homelessness
Erosion of democratic values, faith in democratic/constitutional institutions
Rise of populism, ideological demagoguery and intolerance, political polarization, even violence
Rising economic instability, lack of economic and environmental sustainability
There are probably a few more that I have not mentioned, including petty domestic Canadian issues, such as the gloriously incompetent bills C-11/C-18 by which Canada tries to control online media.
Individually, each of these issues would be considered serious, but certainly not insurmountable. When they come all at the same time… The last time the world faced something similar was in the late 1920s, early 1930s. We know how well that turned out. Tens of millions of deaths, the rise of two of the worst totalitarian ideologies in history, a world war and the deployment of two nuclear weapons later…
Those nuclear weapons proved to be genuine peacemakers: Few can argue that they had a major role convincing all participants to play kind of nice, making sure that certain lines in the sand remain firmly uncrossed. But the inhibitions against their use are becoming weaker over time.
Am I being an alarmist? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the people who woke up today to the sound of air raid sirens in Israel, or found themselves at the end of the day in Hamas custody as human shield hostages do not think so either.
Earlier today, I was looking at amazing pictures of an abandoned Siberian town, Kadykchan. Built at the cost of the lives of countless gulag prisoners, the town lost its population after the breakup of the USSR, and now serves as little more than a sad reminder of entire chapters of 20th century history. I think one of the images of that town that I saw might serve well as a cautionary tale.
How about coming to our senses before it’s too late, before we turn much of the world into a similar post-apocalyptic wasteland?
PS: My AI friend Claude suggested toning down this post a little, to make it less alarmist. I don’t want to. I am alarmed.
So this has been in the news lately, too: a discovery of remnants of a wooden structure that is almost half a million years old.
It is truly incredible. These tools, these worked pieces of now petrified wood, predate the emergence of homo sapiens by several hundred thousand years.
Not for the first time I am left wondering just how much of the past will remain forever hidden from us. The earliest human whose name is known to us lived roughly 5000 years ago. Let that sink in for a moment. Modern human behavior began roughly 100,000 years ago, give or take. Presumably, this behavior involved language, social structures and, well, names. These were our ancestors, millions and millions of them, who inhabited the Earth for countless generations. And we don’t even know their names.
And now this, some 476,000 year old logs along with simple stone tools that were used to shape them. That suggests some form of permanence. Which implies a structured society. Skills, transferred from one generation to the next. Language. Culture. About which we know nothing.
Half a million years. That is, 100 times what counts as recorded history. An eyeblink in geologic terms, to be sure, but for us humans? The word that pops into my mind is… humbling.
In his “1984”, Eric Arthur Blair, better known under the pen name George Orwell, at one point has the protagonists reading a book about the history of oligarchical collectivism, the dominant ideology of the totalitarian “IngSoc” regime of Oceania. They read,
Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low […] The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. […] For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High.
So here is the thing: Liberal democracy is an aberration. An outlier. A period in history with no real “High”. We have no emperors, Kaisers, Caesars or Sultans. Monarchs, maybe, but mere figureheads in constitutional monarchies, not tyrants. In places like Canada, the United States, Western Europe and many other parts of the world, only the Middle and the Low exist. To be sure, the Middle can still be pretty darn powerful: political dynasties, tycoons and captains of industry, even public figures like media personalities wield substantial power. But their might is constrained by the system of institutions that we call liberal democracy: rule of law, freedom of enterprise, freedom of conscience, civil liberties or the separation of powers among them.
But this is not good enough, just not good enough for many among the elites of the Middle. They want more. Always more. And they fight. Throughout much of history, their enemy was the High. But in a liberal democracy, it is now the system of institutions that they fight against. Yet the tactics are the same. They enlist the Low. Don’t trust the system, they tell the Low. Elections are fake. Judges are corrupt or biased. Government lies to you. The rule of law is “weaponized”, they assert. Whatever it takes… but the real objective is to abolish the very constraints that prevent the Middle from becoming the new High.
And they are succeeding. Just look at the range of countries that are now on lists characterizing their retreat from democracy. Look at all the populists who are systematically undermining key pillars of liberal democracy, such as freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, even the electoral process. Will they succeed? I’d argue that they already succeeded in a number of countries and they are well on their way to success in many other places.
Liberal democracy, after all, is not a normal state of affairs for humanity. It’s an exception. It is no accident that some of the greatest 20th century writers of science-fiction, such as Isaac Asimov or Frank Herbert, did not envision a democratic future. Asimov’s future in Foundation was a monolithic Galactic Empire that persisted for well over 10,000 years. Herbert’s Dune similarly envisioned a feudal society.
And if history is any guide, when the would-be tyrants succeed, they all too often will continue to maintain a semblance of democracy. After all, for centuries following the demise of the Roman Republic, emperors continued to issue decrees and coins bearing the acronym SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus, falsely suggesting that Rome is still governed by a Senate that answers to the people, not by an all-powerful emperor. But this is just a cheap conjurer’s trick to assure the masses, the Low: All that is being done is done for them, and in their name.
Here’s My Brightest Diamond, singing about High Low Middle. Not sure if they were inspired by Orwell, but it’s strangely appropriate.
Here’s a Hungarian-language letter, an official note from 120 years ago that has been making the rounds on the Hungarian Interwebs for many years already. As far as I know, the letter is real, penned by a well-known Hungarian scholar, also known for his poetry. Below is my translation: watch it, the language is more than a little, hmmm, rough.
506/1903
To the esteemed Public Works Office
in the town of Pecs
Concerning your official transcript 1090/1903 that arrived with yesterday’s mail, in which you ask what needs to be done with the old spurs that were found in the outskirts of the village Magyarbeki? With official respect, my answer is that you gentlemen should fuck your spurs, because in this heat of 35° Reaumur, we cannot deal with such shit.
Aug 18, 1903, Budapest.
With all due respect,
Horsedick up your ass
Dr. Laszlo Rethy
Deputy Director, Hungarian National Museum, Department of Coins and Antiquities
To the Hungarian Royal Public Works Office of District XIV, Pecs
Ahem. For what it’s worth, 35°R is 44°C or about 111°F.
Howard Hughes was a great example. A captain of industry, a tycoon, whose life ended in mysery, ruined by mental illness no doubt, but wealth and success must have played their part, along with nearly limitless hubris.
There are others, both real-life folks and characters in fiction who fell into this trap. The tycoon Andrew Ryan of the Bioshock computer game franchise. Elon Musk with his increasingly erratic decisions that led, among other things, to the on-going corporate value destruction at Twitter.
We all know the expression, tragedy of the commons. But what to call it when wealth and power destroys a person, one who gave so much real value to the world, one who started off as a visionary, a revolutionary “captain of industry”? I asked our AI friend Claude and Claude offered a perfect answer: call it the tragedy of the tycoons.
I even have the perfect illustration, courtesy of our other AI friend, Midjourney.
I am looking at images of nearly 4000 year old clay tablets.
Clay tablets like Si.427, depicting a survey of land. And incidentally, also demonstrating the use of the theorem of Pythagoras well over a thousand years before Pythagoras was born.
If only I had a time machine… To witness how these people lived. How they laughed, how they cried. They studied, the learned, they applied what they knew. They built a magnificent civilization. They loved and they hated, they offered sacrifices and committed betrayals. They had fun, they enjoyed a good meal, they entertained. They lived.
And we know so little about them. What did they do for fun? What were they talking about at the dinner table? What were their hopes for their children? What did they know about the world? What were their trades? How did they pass on their knowledge to others? Did they travel? Did they enjoy a day of rest at the beach?
All gone. An entire civilization, that was routinely using artifacts with precision diagrams like this tablet. All gone and almost completely forgotten, other than these bits and pieces, these fragments.
Here is a bit of history of which I was not aware: The window tax.
Back in the 18th, 19th century in many jurisdictions around the world, buildings, especially rental properties, were taxed by the number of windows that they sported.
The advantage of this tax was that it was easy to assess: the assessor just had to walk around the building and count.
The unfortunate reality, namely that the tax most disproportionately affected the poorest of the poor? Well, eventually these taxes were repealed but I wonder how many generations grew up in windowless rooms.
Do people still pay attention to the Doomsday Clock, published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists?
Perhaps they should. Perhaps the fact that they don’t is a big part of the problem.
For here we are, in 2023, and the Doomsday Clock was just set to an unprecedented 90 seconds before midnight. Never before were we this close.
Ukraine, of course, is part of it, along with the recklessly irresponsible nuclear threats of Putin and his cronies. The use of nuclear power stations like Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia as bargaining chips also represent a red line that should never have been crossed.
A year ago today, the (almost) unthinkable happened: Russia launched a full-scale war of conquest against its neighbor Ukraine.
A residential building in Kyiv. From The New Yorker.
I say “almost” because, well, let’s face it, similar things did kind of happen in the past. Russia did, after all, launch a major war against Hungary’s revolutionary government in 1956, in a successful bid to crush the anti-Stalinist revolution and ensure that the country remains firmly in the East Bloc. A similar, albeit smaller-scale invasion took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
But still… what is happening in Ukraine is the worst Europe has seen since the end of WW2. And it is naked aggression, more reminiscent of Hitler’s attack on Poland than the USSR maintaining control of the East Bloc during the Cold War.
And it is evil. Let’s not mince words. The excuses are laughable. The aggression is inexcusable. And the war crimes and human rights violations are revolting.
Yet Ukraine stands. Against all odds.
Where this war leads, I have no idea. Frankly, I am surprised that a year later, it remains confined within Ukraine’s borders. Will it remain that way? Or is Ukraine the opening salvo in WW3?
I worry because way too many people now speak of WW3 as something that can be “won”. To be sure, I have no doubt that if WW3 comes, the West will win. But at what price? How many hundreds of millions will die?
Peace would be nice. But we must not confuse peace with appeasement. The world made that mistake in Munich in 1938 and paid dearly for it. Putin must not be rewarded for his aggression. Sometimes, strength is the best guarantee of peace, and signs of weakness invite conflict.
In her famous 1984 song, German singer-songwriter Nena sang about 99 balloons that trigger World War III.
Here is the ending of the song, along with my less-than-perfect translation:
Neunundneunzig Jahre Krieg
Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger
Kriegsminister gibt’s nicht mehr
Und auch keine DüsenfliegerHeute zieh’ ich meine Runden
Seh die Welt in Trümmern liegen
Hab ‘n Luftballon gefunden
Denk’ an Dich und lass’ ihn fliegen
Ninety-nine years of war
Left no room for a victor
There are no more war ministers
Also no more fighter bombersToday as I took a stroll
Saw a world, ruined by war
There, I just found a balloon
Thinking of you, I let it fly soon
What can I say? A few more Chinese balloons over North America, a few more large-scale exchanges in Ukraine, and perhaps we’ll no longer need any war ministers anymore.
This is our cat Rufus, doing his darnedest best to look like Italy’s former fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, aka. Il Duce:
Mind you, unlike Mussolini, Rufus has not established himself as the leader of a totalitarian tyranny. (He couldn’t. Our other cat Freddy would also have a say in the matter and I don’t think he would approve.)
On the other hand, Rufus occasionally craps in places where he shouldn’t, and that was not a habit that Il Duce was known for.
So this is 2023. And suddenly I am reminded of the year 1973. A different world, 50 years ago, and not necessarily a happy one.
It was the year the Vietnam War officially ended for the United States. It was the year marking the beginning of the OPEC crisis.
The Apollo program was canceled but the United States launched Skylab, America’s short-lived space station.
Iconic buildings, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Sydney Opera House, were completed.
A tumultuous year in politics, 1973 saw the US Supreme Court decide in Roe vs. Wade, a decision that was overturned 49 years later by a conservative court majority. The year also marks the beginning of Watergate. Meanwhile, vice president Spiro Agnew resigns and Gerald Ford takes his place, paving his way to become America’s first, and to date only, unelected president.
NASA launches Pioneer 11; and before the year is out, Pioneer 10 (launched earlier, in 1972) reaches Jupiter.
But what makes this year especially memorable for me was that in the summer, my Mom and I traveled to Ferihegy Airport in Budapest and boarded a Swissair DC-8 taking us to Zurich, where we switched planes, boarding another Swissair flight, a DC-10, taking us to Montreal. We were visiting my aunt, here in Ottawa.
That visit was beyond incredible. Canada! Of course as a child, I was most impressed by superficial things, such as the number of channels even my aunt’s old black-and-white television set was able to pick up through a rooftop antenna. (Saturday morning cartoons!) Still, superficial or not, what I saw I suppose thoroughly inoculated me against communist propaganda. And, needless to say, this experience played a major role in my decision to leave Hungary 13 years later, eventually settling right here in Ottawa, a beautiful city that — thanks in no small part to that childhood visit — feels like my true hometown.
One of the many images from an extraordinary album by “Busman Extraordinaire” Paul A. Bateson on Flickr, showing Confederation Square as it appeared in the summer of 1973, when my Mom and I were visiting. I remember these sightseeing buses, imported from the UK, complete with right-hand drive.
