04 December 2010

Information is More Dangerous Than a Firearm

With a firearm, it is possible to kill one, two, maybe even thirty people at a time. Information can bring down governments.

In the Soviet Union, it was a crime to own an unregistered firearm. It was also a crime to own an unregistered duplicating or copying machine. Owning the copying machine was punished more severely than owning a Kalashnikov.

Americans once found that to be amusing.

I suspect that a number of Americans, including those in their government, no longer find it funny.

31 October 2010

Is America a Land of Crazy People?

One has to wonder if the United States has become a nation of lunatics.

First, there is a leading American senator who has publicly avowed that his sole legislative goal is to destroy the career of the current president. America has many problems facing her, but to say to the world that "none of that matters as long as we can destroy the President" would seem to be a textbook definition of sedition.

Second, a group of students printed tee-shirts in order to raise money for research into fighting breast cancer. The reaction of the school was to forbid the students from wearing the shirts.

Third, an American airport was partially shut down because a passenger had a snow globe in a carry-on article of luggage.

There is more, of course, much, much more. America was formerly a leader in modern culture, science and invention. In the former nations of the Warsaw Pact, millions of people listened to the nightly Music USA jazz broadcast by Willis Conover over the Voice of America. America was a nation to be admired, even if it had problems such as lynchings and poverty. America was a nation where anything was thought to be possible.

Now America seems to be a nation largely composed of embittered lunatics. The world is poorer for this.

22 June 2010

The Fatal Step

22 June 1941. In the hours before dawn, Germany attacked the Soviet Union with almost three million soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from German allied nations, such as Hungary, Italy and Finland, joined in the attack.

Germany had, in a comparatively low-cost campaign, rolled up the nations of Western Europe in less than two months. The Fascists were not so fortunate this time around. The Soviet Union was a far larger nation with a population to match.

Three million Soviet soldiers were captured or killed in the first months of the war. The German advance was more costly than the Germans planned on and the Russian weather did not cooperate. The Soviet Union, in men and material, was far stronger than Germany anticipated. Germany was virtually bled out in campaigning over vast distances to conquer what was largely empty steppes.

And when the Germans made the second major mistake of declaring war on the Americans following the Japanese air raid upon the Pearl Harbor Naval Base (an incomprehensible act by Germany as Japan had not declared war on the Soviet Union), that opened the floodgates of supplies from the factories and farms of the United States.

By the summer of 1943, the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad, where an entire German army group had laid down their weapons. The Fascists were then defeated at the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle ever fought. The German Wehrmacht, arguably man-for-man the finest armed force of the first half of the 20th Century, was ground into powder by the Red Army. When the Red Army began to roll them back, by then the Germans had the Western Allies coming at them from the other end of their little empire.

Historians may debate when the tide turned for Germany. It is my view, however, that Hitler sealed his fate when he unleashed his armies upon the Soviet Union.

04 June 2010

Turning Points

The Battle of Midway took place on 4 June 1942. In this battle, a vastly outnumbered American Navy formation defeated a far larger armada of Imperial Japan. The American pilots sank four Japanese aircraft carriers for the loss of one of their own aircraft carriers.

This battle has become regarded as the turning point in the Pacific aspect of the Second World War. The Japanese only lost territory after the conclusion of the Battle of Midway.

Turning points in a war are for the determination of historians.

26 March 2010

50th

Lisa wrote a series of blog posts about attending her parents' 50th anniversary celebration. My parents had theirs over a decade ago. It was a nice celebration, just of immediate family, though.

There were reasons for that. Chief among them is that one of my cousins, an exceptional child to the eyes of her mother, had been consuming large amounts of drugs for decades and had, by past self-absorbed conduct, made a circus of other family celebrations. As the story was told, one of my other cousins went to my father, who was by then the family patriarch, and said something like: "I am going to shoot her the next time that I see her, so you might want to consider not inviting either her or me to the next family function."

It was a nice celebration. Papa was tired, more than usual. He said that he and my brother were starting a new enterprise and that he was tired from that. We purchased his favorite brand of vodka for him, as the resort was nominally a "dry" one, and he was pleased by that. His obvious exhaustion, though was very noticeable to those of us who had not seen him in some time.

Less than two months following the celebration, Father finally went to see a doctor. The diagnosis was cancer, most likely from the smoking of cigarettes that he had begun in the Army during the War and then for many years after that. There was chemical therapy and radiation therapy, all of which only served to delay the inevitable. He and Mother did mark their 51st anniversary, but by then he was deteriorating rapidly and he did not last for very much longer.

If there is a point to this tale, it is this: Enjoy the presence of your beloved family members when the opportunity is presented. You may not have a chance again.

04 March 2010

Eating Bert and Ernie

Although my parents were city folk, my father always dreamed of having a farm. When he retired from his first job, my parents began searching for a farm to buy. They eventually found one and, after fencing off a couple of pastures, bought a small herd of sheep.

They also bought two steers. The idea was to grow the steers over the spring and summer and then send them off to be butchered. They bought two steers so that nobody would know which steer was providing the meat for dinner any particular night. Mother named them Bert and Ernie, although which one was which didn't seem to matter.

Bert and Ernie resided in a pasture that was several acres in size, which was surrounded by a fence that had a couple of shock-wires to keep them in and dogs out. The pasture had a small pond that was fed by an underground source. Every day at four in the afternoon, they were given a bucket of grain. If whoever had the duty of feeding the steers grain was running late, the two steers would stand by the fence where they go their grain and bellow until they were fed.

One day, for a reason I've forgotten, Bert and Ernie escaped their pasture. As we fixed the fence, I wondered aloud where they had gone (I had returned home after military service). Papa told me not to worry, they'd come back. He was right, for a little bit before 4 PM, the two steers walked up the road to the farm and stood by the gate to their pasture. He let them in, they went over to where they were fed and Father gave them their grain. Other than that one escape, they were not any trouble.

Grain was their undoing, for it was a bucket of grain that lured them into the livestock trailer that took them to the slaughterhouse. A few days later, the deep freezer was nearly full of beef wrapped in white paper.

As it turned out, Bert and Ernie were ahead of their time. Grass-fed beef wasn't the rage and most everyone who dined on their meat thought it was too lean. Two steers provided far too much meat for my parents (I had moved out). Bert and Ernie ended up doing community service by appearing on the menu at the local shelter and in the food bank.

They were the only beef my parents ever raised. Raising lambs turned out to be far more manageable, at least in the size of the consumption units.