Laika the Space Dog

Tsar Bomba!

2006-04-16T21:30:00.001+10:00

Test: No. 130
Time: 11:32 AM 30 October 1961 (Moscow Time)
Location: Mityushikha Bay test range, Novaya Zemlya Island (located above the arctic circle in the Arctic Sea)
Test Height and Type: Parachute retarded airburst, 4000 m altitude
Yield: 50 Megatons

The Russians have always loved building the biggest, despite the very scale of their accomplishments often rendering them useless.

The Tsar Kolokol is the world's largest bell, but has never rung a note. Still on display in the Moscow Kremlin it weighs 222 tons, is over 20 feet high and boasts a diameter of 21 and a half feet. A fire in 1737 cracked a huge slab of metal, weighing 11.5 tonnes, from the bell when it was still in its casting pit and that was that.

The world's largest cannon Tsar Pushka (Царь-пушка - "king of cannons") was founded in 1586 by Andrey Chokhov with the intention of defending the Kremlin. It weighs 86,668 pounds, is 17 feet 6 inches long and has a theoretical calibre of 35 inches. Vast as this howitzer is, the cannon balls, cast in 1835, displayed alongside it are still too big to fit down its maw. It was actually designed to fire grapeshot, and has never fired a shot in anger, though its ornamentation suggests it was always intended for display.

The ludicrous Tsar Tank was designed as a genuine weapon of war. Also known as the Netopyr (Нетопырь - Pipistrellus bat) or Lebedenko Tank it was a Russian answer to the ground breaking british tanks of the Great War. The vehicle received its nickname because its model, when carried by the back wheel, resembled a bat hanging asleep. Thankfully for the safety of the soliders it might have carried into battle, it was scrapped after tests proved it was utterly unwieldy and desperately vulnerable to artillery fire.

Eschewing the use of caterpillar tracks, the tank rather brilliantly chose an enormous tricycle design. The front spoked wheels were 27 feet in diameter; the back one was smaller, 5 feet high. The upper cannon turret was 26 feet off the ground, while the hull was nearly 40 feet across, with two more cannon in the sponsons. Quite how enemy fire was supposed to miss it remains a mystery.

The huge wheels were supposed to allow it to cross any obstacle on the battlefield, in reality its bulk of over 40 metric tons left the back wheel stuck in soft ground and ditches and the front wheels, powered by one 250 hp motor each, were insufficient to pull it out. This led to a fiasco of tests before the high commission in August 1915, it was cancelled in 1916 and the last of the two examples built was dismateled for scrap in 1923.

Tsar Bomba!
The Tsar bomb shows the Soviets hadn't abandoned every tradition of the Tsarist age, although its western (and now russian) nickname would never have been used by the Soviet authorities of the time. During its development it was, of course, called Ivan while Sakharov calls it simply 'Big Bomb' in his Memoirs.

It was simply the largest nuclear weapon ever constructed or detonated. This 8 metre, three stage weapon, weighing about 27 tons, was designed to yield 100 megatons, that is an explosion equivilent to 100 million metric tons of TNT. No Soviet test prior to the 1961 resumption had yielded more than 3 megatons. Tsar Bomba was limited to 50 megatons for its test, with the uranium fusion stage replaced by lead in the tertiary, and possibly secondary, stage. This eliminated 97% of its fall out. At full yield it would have increased the world's total fission fallout since the invention of the atomic bomb by 25%.

It was developed in an incredibly short time. On July 10, 1961 Nikita Khrushchev told Andrei Sakharov, the senior weapon designer who would become the USSR's most famous dissident, to develop a 100 megaton bomb by September to create the maximum political impact. It was designed to intimidate the west, rather than for any practical use in warfare. The Berlin Wall was about to be built in August, short range missiles were to be deployed to Cuba, prompting the missile crisis and the Soviets wanted to forstall any intervention by the west. 'Ivan' was tested only 16 weeks after its inception.

Sakharov recounts that the mathematical analysis normally conducted for a new thermonuclear design was skipped, with estimates and approximations substitued at every turn and design and construction occuring simultaneously. It was built at Arzamas-16, now called Sarov, one of ten 'secret' Soviet cities dedicated to the production of nuclear weapons. These cities were closed to all foriegners and most Russians themselves did not know of their existence or true purpose. Over 20 cities and military areas remain closed to foriegners and most Russian citizens even today.

A de facto nuclear test moratorium had existed between the US, USSR and UK since the conclusion of the last US and Soviet test series in 1958, and two years of discussion had been conducted regarding formal limitations on nuclear testing. But the Cold War continued at high pitch, and the Khrushchev decided to resume its programme with a "testing spectacular" to 'show the imperialists what we could do' coincide with the Twenty Second Congress of the Communist Party.

Khrushchev announced the new superbomb on the day the Soviet tests resumed on 1st September 1961, putting pressure on the scientists to produce a workable bomb. Alluding to this, Sakharov said: "If we don't make this thing, we'll be sent to railroad construction." [Adamsky and Smirnov 1998]. This was however a marked improvement over the days of Stalin when nuclear weapon designers ruminated over the prospect of being shot!

Far too large for any ICBM it was dropped from a specially modified Tu-95 "Bear A" strategic bomber piloted by mission commander Major Andrei E. Durnovtsev. Weighing 2 and half times the planes normal bomb load it was carried externally, too large for the bomb bay.

The Tu-95 and an accompanying TU-16 'airbourne laboratory' were covered with a special white reflective paint to protect them from the thermal radiation of the fireball - the 50 Mt test was capable of inflicting third degree burns 100 km away. At full capacity the bomb would have burnt everyone within a radius of 170 km - only slightly less than the width of West Germany. Turning immediately, and powering away at maximum speed, the bomber had at most a minute to get clear.

Even its retarding 800 kg parachute was on a vast scale, its fabrication disrupting the less than developed Soviet nylon hosiery industry. Even special ground handling equipment had had to be developed to lift the bomb to the aircraft. Built on a raiway flatcar, it was delivered by rail and loaded directly onto the bomber.

The Explosion

The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 a.m., located approximately at 73.85° N 54.50° E, over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea. The bomb was dropped from an altitude of 10,500 metres, and designed to detonate at a height of 4,000 m over the land surface (4,200 m over sea level) by barometric sensors.

Since 50 Mt is 2.1×1017 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was a power of about 5.3×1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This is equivalent to approximately 1% of the energy output of the Sun during the same fraction of a second. By contrast, the largest weapon ever produced by the United States, the now-decommissioned B41, had a predicted maximum yield of 25 Mt, and the largest nuclear device ever tested by the USA (Castle Bravo) yielded 15 Mt.

Despite exploding at 4,000 m (13,000 ft) the vast fireball engulfed the ground below it, and swelled upward to nearly the height of the release plane. The blast pressure below the burst point was 300 PSI, six times the peak pressure at Hiroshima. Despite overcast skies, the flash was seen 1,000 kilometers away. One observer recalls feeling the heat flash 270 km away.

One cameraman recalled: "The clouds beneath the aircraft and in the distance were lit up by the powerful flash. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became transparent. At that moment, our aircraft emerged from between two cloud layers and down below in the gap a huge bright orange ball was emerging. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. Slowly and silently it crept upwards.... Having broken through the thick layer of clouds it kept growing. It seemed to suck the whole earth into it. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural."

Another observer, farther away, described what he witnessed as: "... a powerful white flash over the horizon and after a long period of time he heard a remote, indistinct and heavy blow, as if the earth has been killed!"

In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero, wooden houses were destroyed, and stone ones lost their roofs, windows and doors; and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. A gigantic mushroom cloud rose as high as 64 kilometers (210,000 ft). The seismic shock was measurable even on its third passage around the world.

Some time after the explosion, photographs were taken of ground zero. "The ground surface of the island has been levelled, swept and licked so that it looks like a skating rink," a witness reported. "The same goes for rocks. The snow has melted and their sides and edges are shiny. There is not a trace of unevenness in the ground.... Everything in this area has been swept clean, scoured, melted and blown away."
[Adamsky and Smirnov 1998]

The radius of complete destruction extended to 25 km, and ordinary houses would have been severely damaged out to 35 km. Atmospheric focusing would have generated localised regions of destructive blast pressure over 1000 km away. Had it been used in western Europe the fall out would have blown into the Soviet Union, while the chances of the slow, prop driven Tu-95 evading American fighters for 8 hours to drop the bomb on New York, Chicago or L.A. were remote.

Although Tsar Bomba was never deployed as a weapon, it exemplified Soviet strategic thinking in its day. Hydrogen bombs were still too clumbersome to be carried by ICBMs at the time and the Soviets believed that few of their bombers would penetrate US defences, and so wished to maximise the destruction wreaked by every one. Prior to satellite intelligence, each side lacked precise knowledge of the location of the other side's military and industrial facilities and a bomb dropped without benefit of Global positioning systems could easily miss its intended target by 5 km or more. Parachute retardation would only worsen this inaccuracy.

The Soviet philosophy was to ensure a bomb would wipe out an entire large city even if dropped 5-10 km from its center. This objective meant that yield and effectiveness were linked up to a point. The advent of ICBMs accurate to 500 m and especially of GPS made such a design philosphy obsolete. Subsequent nuclear weapon design, in the 1960s and 1970s, focused primarily on increased accuracy, miniaturization, and safety. The standard practice for a number of years has been to employ multiple smaller warheads (e.g., MIRVs) to "carpet" an area. This is believed to result in greater ground damage.

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly about the test, Khrushchev used the Russian idiom "show somebody Kuzka's mother", which means "to punish". Because of this, sometimes the weapon is referred to as "Kuzka's mother" (Кузькина мать) in Russian sources. On 16 January 1963 Khrushchev made an explicit claim that the Soviet Union was in possession of a 100 megaton bomb, claiming that it was located in East Germany.

'We will bury you.'

Indeed.

Sources - Wikipedia, Atomic Central, Nuclear Weapon Archive, Andrei Sakharov.

Soviet Sea Monsters!

2006-04-16T21:12:00.002+10:00

Scotland boasts Nessie and Morag, lurid tales of lake monsters raise their heads throughout Canada, the USA and Scandinavia, so it's surprising that Russia, with thousands of lakes, has so few mythical creatures to populate them. This 'monster gap' is all the more inexplicable given the Russian's love for wildly improbable stories and their predeliction for believing that everything from cheese to TV was invented in the motherland.

Lake Ladoga in Northern Russia is the largest lake in Europe covering 6,830 square miles. Lake Oenga, second on the list, is fed by 58 rivers and boasts 1,369 islands. Lake Baikal in southeastern Siberia (pictured right) is by far the largest and oldest body of fresh water on the planet, for up to 30 million years it's held a fifth of the world's fresh water. An incredible 395 miles long, with an average width of 30 miles, its 5,315 feet at its deepest and covers 12,200 square miles. Its where Nessie would go for her holidays but despite its vast size, and the vaguest of rumours of 'strange animals' in the past, not a cryptozoological sausage.

Lake Khaiyr

A story is told of a monster in lonely Lake Khaiyr, in the Yanski area of Yakutsk. A soviet scientist searching for mineral deposits, Gladkika came across a huge, jet black animal with a long neck and small head feeding on grass by the side of the sake. It says everything about Soviet Scientists that, like the astronauts in 'Solaris' dealing with a sentient planet by dropping nuclear weapons on it, he ran for his gun.

He ran to find the rest of his party but, predictably the monster had disappeared on their return. Suspicions that he'd seen the apparition through the bottom of a vodka bottle were dispelled when the animal reappeared a couple of days later, this time rearing up in the middle of the lake. The party noticed that, uniquely, it sported a dorsal fin. The animal has not been seen again, the Lake's tourist industry being nonexistent, and it's unlikely this hybrid of icthyosaur, plesiosaur and fresian cow will be spotted again.

Koskolteras Rhombopterix

'Nature' carried a small story in 1977, just after Sir Peter Scott had claimed to have photographed 'Nessie' that 'Koskolteras Rhombopterix' might have been seen in Lake Kos Kol in Kazakhstan. This monster was 15 metres long with a large, 2m x 1m head. It quoted an unnamed commentator on Moscow radio observing that since several "extinct" species had been recently rediscovered to be still surviving, it was possible that "unknown creatures of the kind reported in both these lakes" might, indeed, exist.

'Brosnya'

Lake Brosno, 50 miles north of Moscow near the city of Tver, is Russia's last hope of a decent monster panic. Far from one isolated sighting, it has a long history of mystery and intrigue from legends of giant snakes and dragons living in the water to underwater volcanoes.

A local caravan magazine, Karavan + Ya (caravan and me), boosted its sales in 1987 by reporting stories of a 'dinosaur' in the lake. Journalists from around Russia and the wider world descended on the place and, as elsewhere in the former USSR, a little hard currency can buy any story you wish to hear. The magazine stills runs small expeditions to seach for the beast. Witnesses report the classic mock-plesiosaur small head on a long neck perching out of the water, a long tail and, unusually, reptilian scales. The monster is reputed to be around 5 metres long.

Members of the 'Kosmopoisk Research Association' carried out echo sounding in the lake in conjunction with the caravan magazine in 2002. On finding a 'huge jelly like mass the size of a railway car about five metres from the bottom' they did what any self respecting Russian naturalist would do and dropped a grenade on it, Vadim Chernobrov, the Kosmopoisk coordinator told Moscow based Argumenty i Facty (Arguments and Facts). The mass moved, but no monster was seen.

The lake, like Loch Ness, is too small at just six miles long to hold a breeding population of a large predator.

Legends of the lake Brosno monster supposedly date from the 8th (or 13th) century, when the creature saved a Russian city from the mongol horde. A Tatar-Mongol army, heading for Novgorod, stopped to water its horses by the lake when a huge beast reared up from its depths, terrifying man and steed alike, and began to devour everything in its path. The Batukhan troops promptly turned tail and fled back to the steppes. Other legends tell of an 'enormous mouth' devouring unwary fishermen and of 'sand mountains' that emerged from time to time. One chronicle relates how a group of Swedish mercenaries (Varangians) planned on hiding stolen treasures in the lake but when they approached the small island they had chosen, a dragon came to the surface and swallowed the small island up.

'Brosnya' was seen again in the 18th and 19th centuries, appearing on the surface during the evening only to disappear when approached. It is even said to have swallowed a German plane during World War II. Locals still say it turns boats upside-down and is involved in the disappearances of people.

As at Loch Ness, the lake is too small and barren to support a breeding population of large carnivores, so theories abound that the creature is actually a freakishly large pike or beaver, or a misidentified deer swimming through the waters. Others favour geological explanations, surmising that the venting of volcanic gases creates disturbances on the surface from time to time.

Lyudmila Bolshakova, an expert at Moscow's Institute of Paleontology, dismissed ideas of a Brosno 'dragon', saying "It sounds like a country fairy tale, the kind of story told over the years in the countryside" but trips to the lake to search for the monster are increasingly popular among young Muscovites, so though Russia may lack a 'Nessie' a similar tourist trap industry might be just around the corner in these enterprising times.

True sea monsters

Unlikely as these tall tales may be, there were some real sea monsters in the Soviet Union, as incredible and unique as 'Brosnya' herself. For decades the Soviets laboured to produce bizarre aircraft/ship hybrids, analogous to western hovercraft. These wing-in-ground effect (WIG) craft, known in Russia as ekranoplan, resembled turboprop airliners flying a few metres over the water on truncated wings. The Orlyonok was the only ekranoplan to see squadron service, while the missile-armed Loon had trials with the military and the awesome 'Caspian Sea Monster' won fame in the west.

Ekranoplans 'fly' over the surface of the lake (or ice) taking advantage of additional lift provided by the layer of dense air trapped under the wings. This reduces drag and offers great range, fuel efficiency and lifting capacity - in theory. The Soviet military saw them as useful for anti-submarine warfare (ASW), search and rescue, sealift, amphibious assault and coastal defense while fast, efficient ferry services were promised by their civilian counterparts.

It didn't work of course. One major problem lay in simply taking off, just as with old fashioned flying boats. The relatively high take-off speed creates enormous hydrodynamic (ie water) loads on the structure. Every normal plane struggles to overcome its inertia but the energy required to displace water, instead of just air, is immense. The craft create a bow wave as they accelerate, increasing the drag, and so the planes had to carry huge engines merely to get under way. Once flying they are extremely efficient, but the physics of take off proved an almost insuperable problem.

Various solutions were tried to decrease hump drag - stepped hulls on flying boats, the Orlyonok's pneumatically damped hydro-skis, hydrofoils - and in the most modern designs, Power Augmentation of Ram wings (PAR), where the craft's engine is used to blow air under the wings. What couldn't be engineered out were the WIG planes inability to take off or land in rough waters, or negotiate oceans with large waves.

The Caspian Sea Monster

Designed in 1963-64, in 1966 the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau under Rostislav Alekseev produced the gargantuan KM (experimental plane) combining the smooth hull of a ship with stub wings, a large vertical fin and horizontal tail. It boasted no less than ten engines: eight mounted in two clusters of four directly behind the cockpit to provide augmented lift, and two on the vertical fin to provide cruise power. It was designed to lift 540 tons and cruise at over 300 mph at an altitude of over 10 feet. KM first flew on the 18th of October, 1966. It must have been a handful for its pilots, as it had manual controls.

The Soviets love of gigantism found pure expression in the beast. Over the next 15 years it was endlessly tested on the Caspian Sea, much to the bemused amusement of the Americans who gave it its famous nickname. Failing to find a role as either a troop transport or cruise missile platform, the single test plane went through 8 distinct variations, with new wing designs, jet engines, and mission profiles. A crash in 1969 was ascribed to pilot error and failed to halt the development but another disastrous crash in 1980, after the pilot tried to take off without maximum power, saw the Kremlin end the programme without producing a single aircraft for service. An attempt was made to salvage the plane but it broke it two during lifting operations.

Orlyonok

The Orlyonok's history is typical. The military planned to buy 120 Orlyonok A90.125 troop transport and assault craft, carrying up to 28 tonnes of payload at 400 km/h for up to 2000 km, but only 4 were constructed, one of these a static test rig only, and none remain in service. The first Orlyonok (faun or young deer) was launched in the Volga river in Autumn 1973. It weighed 140 tons and was amphibious, able to taxi up out of water onto land. With a length of 58 metres, a wingspan of 31.5 metres and a height of 16 metres, it was 80% the length of a Boeing 747.

Though it flew just 2 metres above the surface the Soviets did their best to keep it secret, pretending it was "the floating stand for improvement of new engines of high-speed boats". This first Orlyonok crashed during a VIP demonstration in 1974, though was subsequently rebuilt, and the 3 examples entered Soviet Naval service in October 1979. One was destroyed in a crash in 1992, killing the entire crew and the last flight of the Orlyonok took place in October 1993.
The remaining Orlyonoks are rusting into wrecks at Kaspiisk Naval Air Base. The plant responsible for building the Orlyonoks has been privatised and, as the Volga Shipyard, claims to be developing the Orlyonok as a commercial search and rescue craft.

The Lun

Alekseev developed a smaller military WIG, the 400 ton Lun ("Dove"), armed with six large antishipping cruise (Sunburn or Mosquito) missiles perched unaerodynamically on its back. The sole example built entered Naval service in 1989, just in time to help lose the cold war.

The plane required enormas surges of power to get airbourne and proved worrying unstable, even uncontrollable, once in the air. It had a massive turning circle, required a 'noisy' radar to track the surface of the water and was slow to accelerate. Its chances of surviving long enough to launch any missiles against NATO shipping were slim indeed.

In 1989, after the tragic accident on the nuclear submarine "Komsomolets" which killed 42 seamen, the second "Lun" was refitted as a search-and-rescue maritime ekranoplane called "Spasatel". This sported 6 engines, rather than 8, but was scrapped after the breakup of the USSR.

The Monsters Rise Again!

Amazingly, the problem with the KM Ekranoplan was that it was too small for the ground effect to really work. After the failure of the Soviets to make it work, Boeing are now developing a vast WIG plane called the Pelican, a turboprop military transport with a 500 ft wingspan designed to carry 1300 tons of cargo over a distance of up to 10,000 nautical miles. The Caspian Sea Monster may not have died in vain.

The face of the enemy

2006-04-15T12:39:00.005+10:00

Zacarias Moussaoui's booking photo

Eagle Jet International, INC Application for Admission for Mohamed Atta

From an Aug. 6, 2002, Moussaoui letter to Judge Brinkema, entitled "DEATH TO UNITED SATAN DEMONCRACY" (sic)

'I have no right but the obligation, the duty to harm the United Satan by any mean possible and imaginable.

As ALLAH order me.
'KILL THE DISBELIEVER WHEREVER YOU FIND THEM AND BESIEGE THEM AND LIE IN WAIT FOR THEM IN EACH AND EVERY AMBUSH.
ALLAH order me, 'Urge the believer to fight"

So I, Zacarias Moussaoui urge, incite, encourage, solicite Muslim to kill American, civilian or military, anywhere around the world until all our children will get revenge and that all American troops and civilian leave Muslim land. KILL AMERICAIN, ANYWHERE ANYHOW, ANYTIME UNTILL THEY GET THE POINT OUT OF THE HOLY LAND.

IN THE NAME OF ALLAH

As ALLAH says (in english translation)

"THEN FIGHT IN THE CAUSE OF ALLAH, YOU ARE NOT HELD RESPONSIBLE EXCEPT FOR YOURSELF AND INCITE THE BELIEVER (TO FIGHT ALONG WITH YOU. IT MAY BE THAT ALLAH WILL RESTIRAIN THE EVIL MIGHT OF THE DISBELIEVERS. AND ALLAH IS STRONGER IN MIGHT AN STRONGER IN PUNISHING

Slave of ALLAH

Original trial documents, photos and voice recordings from the trial of Moussaoui, the self confessed '20th hijacker'.

Although not everyone agrees Al Queda were responsible. Not least that well known geo-political commentator Charlie Sheen

Wild conspiracy theories are still rife on Iranian and Arab TV

Despite this thorough debunking of 16(!) of the main conspiracy theories, excitable 'radicals' still seek to blame everyone but the true culprits. Some people even want to be the next Michael Moore, anyone remember him?

Naturally Noam Chomsky blames it all on the evil American imperialists.

Let's be clear about this, the left isn't anti war, it's on the other side. Their only desire is to see western liberal democracy fall and capitalism crushed. Having spectacularly failed to bring down 'the system' from within, indeed having been humiliated in their attempts, they now ally themselves with our enemies from outside. Anyone who opposes 'the west' in general or American in particular is their friend, regardless of the fact that our foes despise everything the left professes to stand for.

It's not that they would rather see Iran destroy Israel in a future nuclear strike than for the US to destroy Iran's nuclear programme now - it's that they WANT to see Israel destroyed. They see Iran now, as they saw Saddam and Al Queda in the past, as their champions. When 'Bush is the number one terrorist' then anyone who opposes him is a hero. Being entirely impotent themselves, they abase themselves at the feet of any murdering thug who they think can get the job done, just as they did with Stalin and the grey butchery of the USSR.

The embrace of uncritical deep green environmentalism is simply another stick with which to beat the capitalism which provides all the wealth and leisure they're so happy to self richeously bitch about but seem unwilling to personally relinquish. Their assault on the language itself, through hand wringing political correctness and post modern 'history' may provide amusement, but their blatent support for those who would destroy us is worthy only of contempt.

How long before this man becomes their hero? Well, Zacarias Moussaoui longs to become a martyr for his cause. Thanks to the UNITED SATAN DEMONCRACY, let's hope his wish is granted soon.

"The further we move away from 9/11 without another domestic attack, the more tempting it is to believe that awful day was an aberration, to think that we can return to normalcy if we merely leave Iraq and the other Middle Eastern regimes to their own purposes. But the forces of radical Islam aren’t going to leave us alone merely because we decide that resisting them is too hard. The men and women on that plane weren’t soldiers overseas; they were traveling to work, or on vacation, or to their homes within the United States.

The main political difference in the U.S. today is between those who appreciate that Islamic terrorists represent an existential threat to American life and liberty and are prepared to do what it takes to defeat them, and those who think the threat is overstated and can be ameliorated or appeased. Only yesterday, al Qaeda kingpin Ayman al-Zawahiri exulted in a videotape posted on the Internet that “the enemy has begun to falter.” He’s wrong, but the transcript of Flight 93 is a reminder of our fate if we do."

April 14, 2006, 'The Meaning of Moussaoui' - Wall Street Journal Editorial .

UFOSKI!

2006-04-13T13:30:00.000+10:00

One of the more interesting things about 'paranormal' phenomona is how they swing in and out of fashion. No-one pretends to see ectoplasm spewing from spiritualist's mouths anymore, sightings of ghosts have dwindled in recent years and the once massive American 'alien abduction' industry was fatally skewered by that first South Park episode. Angels had a brief flare of publicity in the late eighties, but where are the fairies of yesteryear? What will be the big flap of tomorrow?

Raised in a society where critical reasoning was not only discouraged but downright dangerous, Russians are still prey to whatever lunacy happens along. Pravda (the Truth) has morphed from leaden propaganda mouthpiece into a ludicrous dimestore rag several parsecs behind the National Enquirer in journalistic integrity and conspiracy theories are even more rife in the wider Russian media than in the USA, which is saying something.

Tales of Soviet UFOs ("NLOs" in Russian) have enjoyed periodic brief waves of popularity both home and abroad, with the most famous incident, the 1967 flap, even prompting brief official sanction. This is the Soviet 'Roswell', but while the American incident was nothing more than a fallen Mogul spy balloon, searching for Soviet nuclear tests, the Soviet wave of sightings was altogether more sinister.

The '67 Flap

On the evenings of July 17, September 19, and October 18 1967 thousands of people across the Ukraine, Black Sea, Volga Valley and Caucasus reported a "crescent-shaped" object moving east. Waves of UFOs seemed to be invading southern Russia. Cossacks on horseback saw them high in the evening sky. Pilots aboard commercial airliners and military interceptors chased and dodged them. Astronomers at observatories in the Caucasus Mountains noted their crescent shape and their fiery companions.

The reports have excited western UFOlogists for years, thousands of reports, rather than one isolated sighting, surely this at last was the real thing, not mere saucepan lid fraud or hysterical misidentification?

An exciting, meticulously detailed, account by astronomers near Kislovodsk appeared in the magazine "Soviet Life" in February 1968.

"It was shaped like an asymmetrical crescent, with its convex side turned in the direction of its movement. Narrow, faintly luminous ribbons resembling the condensation trail of a jet plane followed behind the horns of the crescent. Its diameter was two-thirds that of the moon, and it was not as bright. It was yellow with a reddish tinge. The object was flying horizontally in the northern part of the sky, from west to east, at about 20 degrees above the horizon. A bright star of the first magnitude was moving at a constant distance ahead of the crescent. As it moved away from the observers, the crescent dwindled, turned into a small disk, and then suddenly vanished.

These cases appeared in Western UFO books of that period, too. The Caucasus apparitions, for example, were described as flying saucers hundreds of yards in diameter.

"Suddenly a huge flying object appeared, moving swiftly across the sky. As it passed the observatory its orange glow made it easily visible in the dusk. It was an amazing sight - an enormous crescent-shaped craft at least eight times larger than any known airplane. The horns of the crescent were pointed backward, emitting jetlike exhausts...Confirmation of the giant spaceship's existence soon came from other astronomers. The diameter of the flying crescents were between 500 and 600 meters...Several times, Soviet astronomers had reported that the huge spaceships were preceded or flanked by smaller UFOs which kept precise formations, matching the crescents' terrific speeds."

So what was this 'huge horned craft'?

The re-entry of Cosmos 169.

The Soviet Life UFO?

The shock wave caused by the re-entry of Cosmos-171.

FOBS fobbed off as UFOs

Misidentification of aircraft, satellites, rocket tests or even innocent lenticular clouds is nothing new, what makes these accounts significant is that these UFOs really were spacecraft and they really could have heralded the end of the world.

They were tests of a thermonuclear warhead space-to-ground delivery system, diving into the upper atmosphere on their way to a touchdown point east of Kapustin Yar. The programme was called FOBS (Fractional Orbit Bombardment System) by the Pentagon and entirely denied by the Soviet authorities who claimed the flights were Cosmos "scientific satellites".

For example, the September 19th event included sightings from Svatovsk (7:20 p.m.) Zimnik (7:20 p.m.), Volzhskiy (7:30 p.m.), Novooskolsk 7:40 p.m.), Severodonetsk (about 7 p.m.), Donetsk (8:20 p.m.), Zhdanov (8:20 p.m.), Mariinskiy (about 8 p.m.), and Roy (8 p.m.). Meanwhile, the Cosmos-178 spacecraft had blasted off from Tyuratam in Kazakhstan shortly before 6 p.m., circled the planet, and was flaming its way across the southern Soviet skies at 7:30. Cosmos 160 (May 17), 169 (July 17), 170 (July 31), 171 (Aug 8), 178 (Sept 19), 179 (Sept 22), 183 (Oct 18) and 187 (Oct 28) produced a spate of 'sightings' which are still cited to this day as proof of an alien assault.

FOBS had made a public appearance during the 1965 October Revolution (Nov 7) parade. A TASS announcer boasted that "the column of rocket troops ended with orbital [sic!] rockets with atomic warheads, which are capable of hitting any aggressor unexpectedly, after making one or more orbits around the earth." The missiles shown here SS-10 "Scrag", though the FOBS flights were actually on SS-9 'Scarp' missiles. by Western military analysts - and may have been a ruse, since when FOBS test flights began they were atop SS-9 (R -36) "Scarp" missiles. The "Scarp" itself was unveiled late in 1967 with the threat that they could "deliver to target nuclear warheads of tremendous power. Not a single army in the world has such warheads. These rockets can be used for intercontinental and orbital launchings."

A typical FOBS flight involved launch from the Tyuratam test range east of the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia. The two-stage missile placed a two-ton payload into a low but stable orbit 100 miles above Earth's surface. An hour and a half later, near the cnd of its first orbit around the globe, the payload turned tail forward and fired a powerful braking engine which deflected it out of orbit and toward the ground. In the 6 minutes before impact onto a target zone east of the Volga River, the gradually descending warhead crossed over Athens, Istanbul, and the northeast coast of the Black Sea - where thousands of unsuspecting citizens were suddenly treated to a spectacular light show in the evening sky.

The Soviet authorities at first encouraged the UFO theory. Despite the earlier bombastic slips in the propaganda machine the official line was that the peaceloving USSR would never test such illegal orbital system. FOBS was patently a first strike weapon, explicitly designed to carrying out a devastating sneak attack on the USA. As a sub-orbital weapon it had no range limit and its orbital flight path would not reveal the target location. This would allow it to attack the USA from over the South Pole, evading NORAD's early warning systems which are built to detect attacks from over the North Pole.

Secrecy was paramount because the "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies" had been signed in Washington, London and Moscow on January 27, 1967 and came into force on October 10, 1967. Article IV stated that "...Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction."

Though the Outer Space Treaty banned nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in earth orbit it did not ban systems capable of placing weapons in orbit, and the Soviets avoided violating the wording, if not the spirit, of the treaty by conducting its tests without live warheads. Exposure of the FOBS tests in the very year Moscow had signed the treaty would, however, have greatly embarrased such a 'peaceloving' regime. Any use of FOBS in wartime would, of course, of broken the treaty, but that would have been the least of the worries of the world.

The brief rise and long fall of Soviet UFOlogy

The Soviets had dismissed every spate of western UFO reports as a product of 'capitalist war hysteria' and 'money grubbing yellow journalism' but with thousands of their own citizens reporting undeniably spectacular lightshows the authorities tried to turn it to their advantage. They had every interest in deflecting western media attention from tests of a frightening first strike weapon system.

A group of Moscow UFO enthusiasts, led by Feliks Zigel, astronomy professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, formed a committee to study the events, chaired by a retired general, Porfiny Stolyarov. They were allowed to hold well attended public meetings and were invited to appear on National Television on November 10 and invite observers nationwide to send in UFO sightings for scientific analysis.

So by late 1967 the Soviet government was faced with the uncomfortable prospect of its citizens scanning the skies and reporting all strange lights they saw - and all with official approval. As these lights were often clandestine activities Moscow was striving to keep top secret, what started as an ill-considered but apparently harmless pandering to public curiosity was getting out of control.

The 1967 wave ended with the first tranche of 8 FOBS test flights. After October 28, there were no new flights until the following April (a rare pre-dawn test), an evening flight in Qctober, one a year later in September 1969, and finally two more in 1970.

If the dusk/dawn FOBS re-entry times were designed to allow optical tracking of the warhead descent trajectories it's remarkable, but telling, that no consideration was given to the consequence that hundreds of thousands of people would also see the fireballs.

It wasn't just the FOBS spaceshots that needed coverups. The top secret new military satellite center at Plesetsk north of Moscow had opened the year before for polar-orbit spy satellites. Sooner or later, one was bound to be launched in twilight when its sunlit rocket exhaust plumes would standout like a torch in the sky. With the sanctioned UFO mania sweeping the USSR, such reports were bound to be published widely, betraying strong hints about the hitherto concealed existence of the military space center.

That is exactly what happened, three weeks after the televised UFO appeal, on December 3rd, 1967. The Cosmos-194 Vostok-class spy satellite blasted off from Plesetsk at 3 p.m. local time, shortly before sunset. As it rocketed northeastwards along the Arctic coastline, its contrails were visible to eyewitnesses in the wintry night below. It became, and remains, the famous "Kamennyy UFO" since it was spotted from an aircraft on route from "Mys Kamennyy" (Cape Stoney) in the New Siberian Islands to Moscow.

The last straw came in February 1968 when Zigel published a UFO article containing a precise technical description of the officially nonexistent FOBS warhead re-entry masquerading as a flying saucer and so, a few weeks later, a new Soviet UFO policy was abruptly unveiled. There would be no more published reports of UFOs since it was all "nonsense." The Stolyarov Committee was disbanded and Zigel was told to drop the topic of UFOs. The lid was clamped down and the FOBS/UFO connection went unrecognized in the public literature for 15 years.

The U.S. Defense Support Program produced early warning satellites which enabled the US to detect a FOBS launch, the 1979 SALT II treaty prohibited the deployment of FOBS
("Each Party undertakes not to develop, test, or deploy:...(c) systems for placing into Earth orbit nuclear weapons or any other kind of weapons of mass destruction, including fractional orbital missiles") and the missile was eventually phased out in January 1983.

The 1977 'Giant Jellyfish' UFO.

In 1977 Tass carried a dispatch from the northwestern port of Petrozavodsk entitled "Strange Natural Phenomenon over Karelia." Nikolay Milov reported that "On September 20 at about 0400 a huge star suddenly flared up in the dark sky, impulsively sending shafts of light to the earth. This star moved slowly toward Petrozavodsk and, spreading out over it in the form of a jellyfish, hung there, showering the city with a multitude of very fine rays which created an image of pouring rain."

The "visitation" unleashed a torrent of rumors. People later reported being awakened from deep sleep by telepathic messages. Tiny holes were reportedly seen in windows and paving stones. Cars were said to have stalled and computers to have crashed, and witnesses smelled ozone.

Soviet UFO enthusiasts rushed to embrace the case. "As far as I am concerned," claimed science-fiction author Aleksandr Kazantsev, "it was a spaceship from outer space, carrying out reconnaissance." According to Dr. Vladimir Azhazha, "what was seen over Petrozavodsk was either a UFO, a carrier of high intelligence with crew and passengers, or it was a field of energy created by such a UFO." Zigel, the dean of Soviet UFOlogists, agreed it was a true UFO: "Without a doubt--it had all the features."

This mass sighting did spark high-level official interest in UFOs. Two studies, one civilian, one within the military, were set up, the civilian team continuing formal investigations until 1996.

Platov and Sokolov Report

After the collapse of the USSR, Dr. Yuliy Platov of the Academy of Sciences and Colonel Boris Sokolov of the Ministry of Defense, summarized the results of the Soviet Union's official 13-year study of UFO reports for an issue of the Academy of Sciences journal, published in Moscow. They explained that from the start, the teams "assumed a high probability of a military-technical origin of the observed strange effects."

"Many people are the eyewitnesses of strange things, which cannot always be precisely identified with natural or man-made effects. However, this amount is very insignificant, and from this there does not follow even a 'hint' of the probable interference of extraterrestrial forces into our lives."

The infamous "Petrozavodsk Jellyfish UFO" of September 20, 1977 was actually the pre -dawn launching of the space spy satellite Cosmos-955 from the secret Plesetsk space center. The multiengined booster's contrails, backlit by the dawn sun, were split in the imaginations of excited witnesses into multiple glowing tentacles.

It was the start of a series of twilight satellite launchings from Plesetsk which were widely observed in Moscow and surrounding densely-populated regions of central Russia - and were misperceived as giant flying saucers. Other similar events occurred on June 14, 1980 and May 15, 1981.

In 1981, a midnight rocket launch from Plesetsk lit up the skies of Moscow itself and sent the capital city's residents into a blitz of unconstrained creativity. UFO expert Sergey Bozhich's notebooks contain reports of numerous "independent" UFO encounters during this ordinary launching. "Pilots of six civil aircraft reported either a UFO in flight or a UFO [attacking] their aircraft," he wrote. "At 1:30 a UFO attacked a truck along the Ryazan Avenue in Moscow." One witness even reported waking from a deep sleep to see a "scout ship" with a glass cupola and small alien pilot cruising down his street.

Kamchatka

A much earlier incident, still reported in Western UFO books, took place at Kamchatka on July 25, 1957 when, supposedly, anti aircraft guns opened fire on a fleet of fast-moving UFOs.

The summer of 1957 was also marked by the first flight tests of Russian SS-6 ICBM from the Tyuratam rocket center east of the dusty remains of the Aral Sea. The 4,100 mile flight path crossed the Kamchatka peninsula, with the warhead splashing down in the Pacific just offshore. Such tests were undertaken in strict secrecy and ordinary Soviet soldiers had no more idea about their existence than anyone else. The keen gunners were trying to shoot down Soviet test warheads and rocket fragments.

UFOs nearly spark war

Another oft related story tells of how UFOs nearly triggered nuclear war on October 5, 1982, at a missile base near Khmelitskiy in the Ukraine.

This story famously appeared on ABC 'Prime Time Live' in October, 1994 when host Diane Sawyer and correspondent David Ensor presented uncritical interviews with former Russian military personnel who described a 900-foot-wide UFO hovering over their missile base while their command consoles switched themselves to "prepare to launch" for 15 seconds before returning to normal. The location was given as Byelokoroviche, but it's the same incident.

Sokolov, who took part in the investigation which began the very next day, presents a very different version.

The eyewitness reports from more than 50 people, as documented within hours of the sighting, described bright flashing objects on the northern horizon, in the form of "a balloon." Within hours the investigation team had located records of parachute flares and night-bombing exercises occurring at another military base in precisely that direction at precisely that time.

"It should be added," Platov and Sokolov continue, "that the fault of the operation of the command post equipment had nothing to do with the observed phenomena, it just completely accidentally coincided in time." The fault merely involved an indicator light, and there was no evidence the missiles themselves were affected in any way. Nevertheless, the missile base commander, while genuinely alarmed, evidently found it more convenient to blame extraterrestrials rather than his own maintenance troops for the scare.

Siberian UFO sightings

Platov and Migulin describe events on June 3, 1982, near Chita in southern Siberia, and on September 13, 1982, on the far-eastern Chukhotskiy Penninsula when Air defense units scrambled interceptors to attack supposed UFOs. In both cases, balloon launches were recorded, remarkable only because the balloons reached a higher than normal altitude than usual before bursting.

"The described episodes show that even experienced pilots are not immune against errors in the evaluation of the size of observed objects, the distances to them, and their identification with particular phenomena," the report observes.

Won't get fooled again

However credulous western UFOlogists continue to be, western military intelligence wasn't so easily fooled at the time. An NSA document, written the year after the soviet 'flap, was obtained by eager UFO researchers via the Freedom of Information Act and discusses the UFO 'problem' and hypotheses of explaination.

"Many responsible military officers have developed a mental 'blind spot' to objects which appear to have the characteristics of UFOs," the paper warned - precisely the 'blind spot' the Soviets hoped to exploit by allowing their launches to be seen as UFOs. One of five explanations for UFOs was "secret Earth projects," and so "Undoubtedly, all UFOs should be carefully scrutinized to ferret out such enemy projects."

UFOSKI flies again

Russia may be one of the few places where belief in UFOs lingers on, as this UPI report from 2001 bears testimony.

MOSCOW, Jan. 29 2001 (UPI) - An unidentified flying object hovering above the runway of an airport in Barnaul, in eastern Siberia, forced the airport's closure for almost two hours, Russian news agencies reported Monday. During the incident, which occurred on Friday night, the crew of an Ilyushin 76 cargo jet refused to take off after spotting the glowing object hovering above the end of the runway. Another freighter preparing to land at Barnaul airport also spotted the object and the pilot diverted his jet to an alternative airfield. The object flew off and vanished some 90 minutes after it was first spotted, the reports say.

Quite how much vodka had been drunk that day isn't recorded.

Video of a Russian UFO
UFOs in the Urals
This month in UFO history

Sources:
The excellent work of UFO debunker James Oberg
Entirely contradictory 1994 report from Flying Saucer Review

13 films which cost nothing

2006-04-11T13:16:00.000+10:00

As Orson Welles might admit, a writer/director's first feature is often his best work - apart from those hundreds of directors like Martin Scorsese and John Ford for whom it obviously isn't. For a certain kind of one trick pony though, it holds. The tricks are new, the energy is real and a zero budget tames the ego which often fatally bloats later, more 'serious' work.

Zero budget films are also insanely commercial. Why don't the big studios realise this? When it hits, a film made for nothing, hits big - making back its costs a hundred times in the cinemas and a thousand times on DVD. It's the $80 million, focus grouped to death, rewritten till all the jokes are gone, romantic comedy that disappears down the pan.

A zero budget film cannot rely on tedious computer effects or lazy star power, but must concentrate on plot, dialogue and above all provide a fresh vision - the very thing this space dog loves movies for. A great definition of a true poetic image is that those few words change how you see, say a tree, forever. All these films increase the possibilities of movie making, no matter how many times they've been done before.

Modern technology produces bloated worthless behemoths but equally it allows anyone with a pocketful of ideas and a Prosumer digital video camera to conquor the world. All the films here could have been made for Meg Ryan's weekly botox bill.

They're best watched late, when all the fish are sleeping, on DVD of course. Forget the multiplex, DVD is the future of cinema, all that begging at the Oscars to 'embrace the movie experience' was such a pathetic give away. Who wouldn't rather watch a flick in the comfort of their own home, in the company of their own kettle, toilet and reasonably priced array of custom snacks? No chinese girl yacking into her mobile phone. No gangster yoofs talking all the way through. No boots on the seat or popcorn on the floor. And no stupid adverts for something you've already paid for! Frankly, when road testing a new prospective mate there's nothing better than sitting them down before one of these films and gauging their reaction. If they don't like it, you won't like them, cut your losses before she asks you what sign you are and introduces you to her aunties. Here's a brief run down of some canine couch favourites.

Clerks

As something of a 'happy, scrappy, hero pup' myself Kevin Smith's homespun debut tops my list of dirt cheap recommendations. Made at night in the convenience store he worked in and financed by credit cards and the plundering of his comic book collection, Clerks is as fast and true as every other film he's made has been ponderous and dire. Imagine Woody Allen as a skateboard punk, only funny. This is literally Dante's journey through the nine stages of hell as filmed by a security camera.

Playing like Noel Coward with tourette's syndrome, there's only one clunky line in the whole movie - "I'm making a generalization about broads". Clerks remains vital while a dozen other GenerationX products languish in the bargain bin, yes I'm looking at you Douglas Coupland. Its ethos can be summed up with the fact that non smoker Kevin Smith begins the film with an anti smoking rant and ended the shoot as a two pack a day man. It's hell, but we all wish we were there with them.

Not the least of its merits is its refreshingly anti-slacker libertarian message, delievered by Randall as bluntly as he phrases everything else. How often do our oh so activist hollywood stars challenge their audience in this way? I'm obviously alone in thinking the original, brutal ending was better, if only because 'life is a series of down endings' but Clerks, in a word, is berserker!

Repo Man

Shrimp? Plate of Shrimp? You knew I was going to say that. It's often claimed that Americans don't understand irony. This is nonsense, as any fan of "Larry Sanders" knows, what Americans can't do is punk. Yes, I'm looking at you Green Day. This is as near as they got, thanks to immaculately British Alex Cox, who understands it perfectly. The more times you watch this, the fresher it gets. It creates its own perfectly logical world of complete madness in exactly the same way that Dune doesn't. Intensely weird (but then a repo man's always intense) it's everything a boy wants in a film, wacky chases, diamond dialogue and a sci-fi maguffin lifted straight from "Kiss Me Deadly", itself the darkest, and therefore best, noir film ever made. This was ranked #7 on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time", you can't get any better than that.

The Last Broadcast

This was the first desktop computer feature film, photographed, edited, and screened entirely digitally. One day it'll be as famous as the Jazz Singer in that respect. Unfairly seen as a 'Blair Witch' clone, it's actually the film that 'Blair Witch' shamelessly ripped off. Once again a small party of young film makers disappear into the woods to search for a mysterious monster - this time the famed 'Jersey Devil'. This time one of them survives. The documentary style, making full use of its 'footage' as a major plot point, again anticipates Blair Witch and it shows something of the vaguaries of fate that this film sank without trace in the mass market while 'Witch' became an international phenomonen. Perhaps it's because 'Broadcast' is let down by its ending, while Blair Witch ended in unforgettable style. The budget for this one? $900.

Blair Witch Project

So it's not Citizen Kane. No-one ever said it was. It's a smart little horror film that scared people. Cinema is pretty simple really. A comedy should make people laugh, a weepie should make people cry and a horror film should make people throw up in alleys and then pay to see it again. After 36 Friday the 13th films had disemboweled the genre and Scream had danced over its bones along came this and everything seemed possible again. Made for absolutely nothing it's strength was the nth rediscovery of the fact that terror is best transmitted by showing terrified faces, rather than 'scary' monsters or CGI cartoons. Using nothing but sticks and stones, a few scufflings in the undergrowth and some shaky camera work this is a film which, love it or loathe it, rips a hole in your heart. The climax is the scariest thing I've ever seen. It's like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, it's got nothing, but somehow it always wins.

Cat People

Cat People is a haunting, wartime horror noir employing supernatural suggestion and smoldering sexuality to wonderfull effect. It's spoilt only by the studio's insistence of showing the 'monster' towards the end and the memory of a quite dreadful remake with Natassia Kinski. Sex kitten Simone Simon is a young bride menaced by fears of the unknown, as unbeknownst to her, her repressed emotions may transform her, werewolf like, into a feline killing machine. Its brooding atmosphere of suspense and dread works its way into the watcher's imaginations while the stark photography is a treat for the eye.

It was shot in less than a month on a shoestring budget and borrowed sets but spawned not only sequels but a whole subgenre of film. It's delight in dated phsycological clue dropping may seem naive but it stands up on all four slinky legs far better than such leaden clunkers as the 'Exorcist' today. Anyone tempted to watch Alien 4 again, just to see if it really was THAT bad, should rent this instead.

LA Takedown

Remade as the arthritic, elderly 'Heat' Michael Mann's original TV pilot heist is fresh, fast and exciting. The director's lush style tends to the pretentious and self regarding on the big screen but the small budget forces concentration on the story, which rattles along. Riding the last ripples of the designer detective wave of the eighties 'LA Takedown' failed completely in its day but is far more watchable because of its lack of preening star quality. The lack of great actors acting ac each other is its strength rather than flaw. Good as 'Ali' is, Mann's best film remains the peerless 'Manhunter', which frankly eats the liver out of the ever more woeful trilogy with extra gay Anthony Hopkins as the laughable Lecter.

Fucking Amal

It's a film about young swedish lesbians with 'fucking' in the title, of course it's going to be good. Far from a sleazy sex show, Lukas Moodysson's first film is an acute and funny film about the sweet agonies of first love, and did I mention it has young swedish lebsians in it? As big as Titanic in its home country, this film cost a millionth of the amount though, to be fair, it is only a hundred times better. There's a tiresome new american teen flick to ignore every day, but this affair, both drab and tender, captures the essential boredom of youth. The dreary town is lit with the tentative bravado of the young girls in love, and though the dogme style is an aquired taste for some, there's a cup of chocolate all round for this one.

I've heard the mermaids singing

Patricia Rozema's debut feature is another sweet comedy of manners, featuring a misfit's hopeless love for an unattainable ideal, soon revealed to be a fraud. It's funny, original and full of ideas and was the first time I heard that bit of lorelei opera that gets played all the time now and no-one knows the name of. If you've ever ordered raw octopus in a fancy japanese restaurant by mistake you know just what 'organisationally impaired' Polly's going through. I can't believe this is twenty years old. Like any other great work of art, from Vermeer's paintings to 'Blonde on blonde' it hasn't aged a day. It's a very sexy film too, far more erotic than any naked screen portrayal could be.

Primer

You've heard of garage bands, this is a garage feature film - Shane Carruth made this movie for $7000, yet it's slicker than 'A.I.' in a bucket of eels. Its cool isolation and ever tightening paranoia evoke the spirit of HG Wells' 'The Invisible Man' rather than 'The Time Machine' as two garage inventors stumble across a bizarre scientific effect and, in trying to get rich, unpick the fabric of reality. As an exercise in off hand style the dense techno-babble finds perfect counterpoint in the crisp white shirts of our heroes and the clinical interiors they inhabit. In demanding intelligence and concentration from its audience, Primer is a rare gem in an era when effects driven blockbusters are giving science fiction, the most thought provoking literature of the 20th century, a bad name. Just as the experimenters seek to gain through endlessly repeating the process, the film itself rewards repeated viewing, the puzzle unravelling like onion skins. The question is, what collapses when you create an unsolvable paradox, the universe - or you? As their doubles begin using the machine, it becomes hard to tell who the 'primers' are but I'm sure Harrison Ford might want to use it to go back twenty years to when he was a star.

Down by Law

It's not where you start, it's where you start again. Ain't that the truth? A mismatched trio of Leningrad cowboys find themselves in the swamps of Louisiana in a film whose monochrome is as luscious as the humour is deadpan. Italian clown Roberto Beninni steals the show but don't miss Tom Waits' finest film performance as a lugubrious DJ. He described it as a "Russian neo-fugitive episode of The Honeymooners" and Mr Waits is never wrong, except about the liberation of Iraq. A down at heel fairy tale, it features the most economical, and therefore best, prison escape scene in the movies. It's a sad and beautiful world all right. Best avoided by the more avid rabbit lovers.

The Descent

After the long, turgid decline of Hammer Horror into camp, British horror films fell into an abyss. Brilliant films like the Wicker Man, and good ones like The Devil Rides Out were all we had until recently. "Shaun of the dead" was a genuinely funny zombie parody and 'The Descent' is genuinely scary. An all female cast cunningly evade the single greatest problem in all film plotting in these days of ubiquitous mobile phones - why don't they just call the police? - by descending deep into the bowels of the earth. Claustrophobia, supernatural stalkers and dark secrets within make a potent mix. These girls are english teachers, not fucking tomb raider, and it's all the better for that.

Last Night

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999? Remember when that seemed futuristic? If you're old enough to remember that Prince was once a star then you're mature enough to appreciate the best film about the end of the world since 'the day the earth stood still'. There have been a lot of big budget apocolyptic films recently but none are as real, as engaging, as moving as this. Begging the inevitable question (how could they tell?) hanging over any such film set in Toronto, it explores human reactions to the last six hours of the world on December 1999. Making up in irony, style and human sentiment what it lacks in huge cartoon monsters and wimpy heroics (i'm looking at you tom cruise) it's been criticised for romanticism, yet isn't the world more likely to end with a man ringing everyone in the world thanking them for using the gas company? Dead pan, rather than hysterical, romantic rather than bombastic, it has the appeal of a Norah Jones C.D. It's adult, it's intelligent and above all, compared with the ceaseless clamour of today, it's quiet enough to make you think. This is what everyone else does in the world while Bruce Willis is running around in a sweaty vest machine gunning people. It's a rare thing, a film about people which is actually humane.

Dark Star

John Carter went on to a long, undistinguished horror career while Dan O'Bannon wrote the original story which became 'Alien'. This low budget sci-fi stoner romp may be the best thing either of them ever did. Crammed with ideas, including super intelligent bombs discovering self consciousness and conversations with the dead, the hippy californian surfer dudes have been slowly going mad on the eponymous ship for twenty years, clearing 'unstable' planets in a way Douglas Adams obviously found amusing. The beachball alien is rather less threatening than O'Bannon's 'star beast', the ending is stolen pretty much intact from Ray Bradbury's 'Kaleidoscope' and Sergeant Pinback's video diary is on an 8-track tape but Dark Star retains a twisted manic energy even today. The down at heel squalor of the ship anticipates 'Alien' even as the sleek intelligent bombs remember HAL and it's all light years better than 'Star Wars'.

About time

2006-04-11T10:32:00.002+10:00

A mere 15 years after the collapse of communism the Bolshoi theatre is at last going to be stripped of its Soviet trappings.

Visitors to Moscow are still surprised by the numbers of guady red stars adorning the Kremlin, the thuggish Soviet emblems pockmarking public buildings and the hordes of lumpen statues of Lenin which still besmirch every other corner in the city. While the newly liberated countries of eastern europe rushed to destroy the propaganda in stone imposed upon them, Russia has been conspicuously slow to free itself of remnants of the glorious Soviet epoch.

Sometimes ascribed to laziness, lack of money or a respect for the sacrifices of the past these displays were hardly likely to inspire confidence in freedom and democracy from visitors to the motherland. You'll have to look long and hard to find any new memorials to the victims of the gulag put up in their place.

At last things seem to be changing, and one of the most iconic symbols of Russian culture, the Bolshoi theatre, is being stripped of its hammer and sickle in a refurbishment plan. The velvet curtain, adorned with hundreds of cute little soviet symbols is to be disappeared to a small museum in the theatre and the big hammer and sickle ostentatiously reigning over what used to be the tsar's personal box is to go, replaced by Russia's double-headed eagle. The theatre dates not from 1917 but 1776.

Mikhail Shvydkoi, an official in the ministry of culture, said: "The decision to change the emblem strikes me as being historically fair and natural. It symbolises that we don't live in the Soviet Union but in Russia, a new, democratic and free country which respects its traditions."

About time too.

'Lenin is more alive than the living', that's what the Soviet state used to say.

"A lie told often enough becomes truth" - VI Lenin.
Tartu, Estonia. 101 uses for a dead Lenin anyone?

"It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be rationed" - VI Lenin.
Pärnu, Estonia.

"Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever" - VI Lenin.
The last Lenin in Estonia, just 50m from the Russian border.

"One man with a gun can control one hundred without one" - VI Lenin.

"We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory" - VI Lenin.

It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

- Anna Akhmatova - Prelude to 'Requiem'

Quelle surprise !

2006-04-11T08:34:00.001+10:00

The French surrender!

Labour reforms designed to cut France's 25% youth unemployment rate have been heroically scrapped by the French government after days of mass protests by students and trades unions. And in late news - water still wet.

I'm sure prospective employers, (je suis désolé - mal, bébé mangeant des capitalistes dans de grands chapeaux supérieurs), have enjoyed watching the merry antics of the car burning, police attacking, shop smashing protesters no end. Who could dream of sacking any of these fine young people for not being up to the job? How long before youth unemployment reaches 100%?

I'm sure they'll riot about that too. A riot against social change, a riot against dynamism, a riot for mediocrity

The future is bright for our cheese eating friends when radical French youth riot in pursuit of cushy civil service jobs with early retirement on a huge pension. If the rest of the world is laughing at them as they turn their back on growth and the free market then the rest of the world is wrong. It's all about 'gallic genius' apparently. What was that about American arrogance again?

With a 35 hour working week, huge numbers of disaffected, car burning, hostile young muslims ringing their major cities and a government crumbling like, well, the French Armed Forces, when faced with labour reforms the hated anglo saxons successfully implemented twenty years ago France is clearly a country going places - en bas de la toilette.

Enjoy your daily dose of France's decline into international irrelevence here

Soon French plumbers will be begging for work in Poland. Somehow I don't think the future will speak French.

The BBC applauds, of course.

So Jacques Chirac lacks the boules of Mrs Thatcher. I think this says it best. As Laika said, quelle surprise.

The downing of KAL 007

2006-04-10T21:01:00.001+10:00

KAL007 took off from New York-JFK on August 31, 1983, bound for Kimpo Airport in Seoul, South Korea. After making a stop at Anchorage, the Boeing 747 continued on its scheduled route across the Aleutian Islands. There were passengers from 16 countries, including 23 children under 12 years of age. There were 75 Koreans, 61 Americans, 23 Taiwanese, 28 Japanese, 15 Finns, 12 Chinese from Hong Kong, 10 Canadians, and six Thais. There were 12 passengers in first class and 6 additional Korean Airlines employees, crew members returning to Seoul. There was also a family of four, a porter for Alaska International Airlines, his wife and two children, who were taking advantage of the discounted tickets offered to airline employees and were flying back to Alaska after visiting his parents in New Jersey.

One passenger got caught in a traffic jam on his way to the airport from his New York office and missed the flight.

Some were flying to Korea or on to Japan, Hong Kong, or another country on business. Some were going to visit friends or relatives. Some were going to the funerals of loved ones and some were returning home after vacationing in the United States. There were undergraduates and graduate students going to teach or study. And there were tourists looking forward to seeing the sights. Among the passengers was U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald from Georgia. . He had missed the previous flight after missing his connection due to a delay for bad weather. He was part of a deputation in Seoul to mark the 30th anniversary of the treaty between the United States and South Korea.

The plane followed the wrong course however, and as it drifted into Soviet airspace, six MiG-23 fighter jets were scrambled to shoot it down. Before the fighters could make the intercept, KAL007 passed over the Sea of Okhotsk and out of Soviet airspace and the MiGs disengaged - possibly due to a lack of range for reasons discussed below. It was now nearly 100 miles north of its normal route, and headed for Sakhalin island, north of Japan. As it approached Soviet airspace again, now almost 200 miles off course, two Su-15 interceptors were scrambled from Sokol Airport on Sakhalin to destroy it.

Soviet defense command ordered the fighters to engage at 3:22 AM local time, and KAL007 was struck by two missiles fired by one fighter at 3:26 AM while cruising, unaware of any danger, at 35,000 feet. No attempt was made to contact the pilots by either the Soviet fighters or Soviet ground control.

Flight Data Recording.

F/D = Flight Deck
PA = Public Announcement
HF = High Frequency (radio)
CAM-1 = First Officer
CAM-2 = 3rd crewmember and PA
CAM-3 = Cockpit Area Mike
CAM-4 = Captain

26.18 18.20:28 TOKYO HF CAM-1,2,3,4 TOKYO ROGER.
27.38 18.21:48 F/D CAM-3 [ Sound: altitude alert ]
28.45 18.22:55 F/D CAM-4 [ Keyed microphone ]
28.46 18.22:56 007 HF 1 CAM-1,2,3,4 TOKYO RADIO KOREAN AIR ZERO ZERO SEVEN REACHING LEVEL THREE FIVE ZERO.
28.50 18.23:00 TOKYO HF CAM-1,2,3,4 KOREAN AIR ZERO ZERO SEVEN TOKYO ROGER.
31.45 18.25:55 DYNASTY 312 HF CAM-4 TOKYO RADIO, DYNASTY THREE ONE TWO ON FIVE SIX.
31.50 18.26:00 TOKYO HF CAM-4 DYNASTY THREE ONE TWO TOKYO.
31.52 18.26:02 CAM-3 [ Sound of explosion?]
31.53 18.26:03 DYNASTY 312 HF CAM-4 Dynasty three one two position Payon one eight two five level three three zero estimate Shemya one nine three five remainder ... remaining one two six decimal zero minus five zero ... one zero diagonal four zero go ahead.
31.56 18.26:06 F/D CAM-3 What's happened?
31.58 18.26:08 F/D CAM-3 What?
32.00 18.26:10 F/D CAM-3 Retard throttles.
32.01 18.26:11 F/D CAM-3 Engines normal.
32.04 18.26:14 F/D CAM-3 Landing gear.
32.05 18.26:15 F/D CAM-3 [ Sound: cabin altitude warning ]
32.07 18.26:17 F/D CAM-3 Landing gear [ Noise of possible selection ]
32.08 18.26:18 F/D CAM-3 [ Sound: altitude deviation warning ]
32.11 18.26:21 F/D CAM-3 [ Sound: autopilot disconnect warning ]
32.12 18.26:22 F/D CAM-3 Altitude is going up.
32.13 18.26:23 F/D CAM-3 [ Sound: cabin call ]
32.14 18.26:24 F/D CAM-3 Altitude is going up.
32.15 18.26:25 F/D CAM-3 Speed brake is coming out.
32.16 18.26:26 F/D CAM-3 What? What?
32.17 18.26:27 F/D CAM-4 (unreadable)
32.19 18.26:29 F/D CAM-3 CHECK it out.
32.20 18.26:30 F/D CAM-2,3 [ Sound: PA chime for automatic cabin announcement ]
32.20 18.26:30 TOKYO HF CAM-4 DYNASTY THREE ONE TWO ... CONTACT ANCHORAGE.
32.23 18.26:33 F/D CAM-3 [Sound: cabin call]
32.23 18.26:33 F/D CAM-3 I am not able to drop altitude now unable.
32.24 18.26:34 PA CAM-2 Attention emergency descent.
32.25 18.26:35 DYNASTY 312 HF CAM-4 THANK YOU OUT
32.28 18.26:38 PA CAM-2 Attention emergency descent.
32.28 18.26:38 F/D CAM-3 Altitude is going up.
32.30 18.26:40 F/D CAM-3 This is not working. This is not working.
32.31 18.26:41 F/D CAM-3 Manually.
32.32 18.26:42 F/D CAM-3 Cannot do MANUALLY.
32.32 18.26:42 PA CAM-2 Attention emergency descent. {in Japanese}
32.33 18.26:43 F/D CAM-3 [ Sound: Autopilot disconnect warning ] Not working manually also.
32.35 18.26:45 F/D CAM-3 ENGINES are normal Sir.
32.36 18.26:46 PA CAM-2 Put out your cigarette. This is an emergency descent.
32.38 18.26:48 F/D CAM-3 ... (unreadable)
32.39 18.26:49 PA CAM-2 PUT OUT YOUR CIGARETTE. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY DESCENT
32.40 18.26:50 F/D CAM-3 Is it POWER COMPRESSION?
32.41 18.26:51 F/D CAM-3 Is that right?
32.42 18.26:52 PA CAM-2,3 Put out your cigarette. This is an emergency descent. {in Japanese}
32.42 18.26:52 F/D CAM-3 ... all of both ... *
32.44 18.26:54 F/D C CAM-3 Is that right?
32.45 18.26:55 PA CAM-2 Put the mask over your nose and mouth and adjust the headband.
32.47 18.26:57 007 HF 1 F/D CAM-1,3,4 TOKYO RADIO KOREAN AIR ZERO ZERO SEVEN.
32.51 18.27:01 PA CAM-2 PUT THE MASK OVER YOUR NOSE AND MOUTH AND ADJUST THE HEADBAND.
32.52 18.27:02 TOKYO HF CAM-1,3,4 TOKYO RADIO KOREAN AIR ZERO ZERO SEVEN.
32.54 18.27:04 007 HF 1 FO CAM-1,3,4 ROGER KOREAN AIR ZERO ZERO SEVEN ... (unreadable) AH WE (ARE EXPERIENCING) ...
32.58 18.27:08 PA CAM-2 Put the mask over your nose and mouth and adjust the headband. {in Japanese}
32.59 18.27:09 F/D C CAM-3 ALL COMPRESSION.
33.00 18.27:10 007 HF 1 FO CAM-1 RAPID DECOMPRESSION DESCEND TO ONE ZERO THOUSAND.
33.05 18.27:15 PA CAM-2 Attention emergency descend.
33.09 18.27:19 PA CAM-2 ATTENTION EMERGENCY DESCEND.
33.10 18.27:20 F/D CAM-3 Now ... * ... we have to set this.
33.11 18.27:21 TOKYO HF CAM-1,3,4 KOREAN AIR ZERO ZERO SEVEN unreadable unreadable RADIO CHECK ON ONE ZERO ZERO FOUR EIGHT.
33.13 18.27:23 PA CAM-2 Attention emergency descent {in Japanese}.
33.13 18.27:23 F/D CAM-3 Speed.
33.16 18.27:26 CAM-3 Stand by Stand by Stand by Stand by set.
33.17 18.27:27 PA CAM-2 Put out your cigarette. This is an emergency descent.
33.20 18.27:30 PA F/D CAM-2 PUT OUT YOUR CIGARETTE. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY DESCENT.
33.23 18.27:33 PA CAM-2 Put out your cigarette. This is an emergency descent. {in Japanese}
33.28 18.27:38 PA CAM-2 Put the mask over your nose and mouth and adjust the headband.
33.33 18.27:43 PA CAM-2 Put the mask over your nose and mouth and adjust ...
33.36 18.27:46 - END OF RECORDING

The missile strike did not cause the plane to explode or break up, as is usually assumed. All four engines were still running but the control systems were shattered. What is left out of the stewardesses safety briefing at the start of every flight is that no four engined heavy has ever successfully ditched at sea, and none is ever likely to do so.

Japanese fishermen watched the stricken airliner fall through the sky, its lights dead and aviation fuel spraying wildly from tanks in its severed wing. It made two circles around the island Moneron and then hit the water at approximately the speed of sound. If the plane had hit land then the impacting part of the fuselage would have absorbed the shock, much as a crumple zone does in a car, but hitting the water meant the plane was ripped apart, with few pieces over a metre or two surviving. This lack of large pieces of wreckage was to fuel the wilder conspiracy theories to come.

The main wreckage lay in international waters 17 nautical miles north of Moneron Island, at a depth of about 200 meters. The plane was torn apart, even the heavy pre 9/11 cutlery had been bent by the force of impact. Its occupants had been shredded, the bodies soon eaten by the local cuttlefish. Soviet divers searching for the data recorders spotted only scattered remains, "a severed arm, a woman's scalp, a glove with a hand still inside."

From US and Japanese intercepts of Soviet communications, including those of Soviet ground control talking the fighters to their target, the White House learned of the shootdown within hours and, with Secretary Shultz taking the lead, denounced the Soviet act as deliberate mass murder. It made headline news around the world. President Reagan called it "an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations."

A TASS report, published in all Soviet newspapers on the 2nd of September 1983 stated:

"On the night of 31 August - 1 September, an aircraft of undetermined nationality overflew the Kamchatka peninsula from the direction of the Pacific Ocean; then, it violated USSR airspace again over Sakhalin Island. The aircraft was flying without any navigational lights, did not answer our queries, and did not respond to air traffic control.

Air Defense fighters, which intercepted the trespasser, tried to lead it to the nearest airfield. However the aircraft did not respond to the fighters' signals and warnings and continued flying toward the Sea of Japan."

This first Soviet report was, in fact, proved to be wrong in every major point. The report ended with the 'undetermined' aircraft 'flying towards the sea of Japan'. No mention was made of its destruction, or the loss of life. Moscow did not even acknowledge the incident until September 6, and delayed an official explanation for three more days.

On 9 September, Marshal Ogarkov held a live press conference that ran for two hours. There was no apology. No hint of contrition. He claimed the Soviets had believed the plane to be an American RC-135 spyplane and that, regardless of whether it was an RC-135 or a 747, the plane was unquestionably on a US or joint US-Japanese intelligence mission, and the local air defense commander had made the correct decision. The real blame for the tragedy, he insisted, lay with the United States, not the USSR.

A classified memorandum submitted to the Politburo by the Defense Ministry and the KGB, released in 1992, concluded:

"We are dealing with a major, dual-purpose political provocation carefully organized by the US special services. The first purpose was to use the incursion of the intruder aircraft into Soviet airspace to create a favorable situation for the gathering of defense data on our air defense system in the Far East, involving the most diverse systems including the Ferret satellite. Second, they envisaged, if this flight were terminated by us, [the US would use] that fact to mount a global anti-Soviet campaign to discredit the Soviet Union."

Andropov pursued that line in his reaction to events, rounding on the USA for 'provoking' such acts. It says much for Soviet morality that they could have assumed that a civilian airliner might really have been consciously sacrificed in this way for political advantage. With leftist sympathisers in the west keen to invent any sad or crazed conspiracy theorythey could to excuse the Soviet action and blame the United States for the tragedy, Andropov went on the offensive.

"The sophisticated provocation, organized by the US special services and using a South Korean airplane, is an example of extreme adventurism in policy. We have given the factual aspect of this action a detailed and authentic elucidation. The guilt of its organizers--no matter how they twist and turn or how many false stories they put out--have been proved.

The Soviet leadership has expressed regret in connection with the loss of human lives that was the result of this unprecedented act of criminal sabotage. It is on the conscience of those who would like to arrogate to themselves the right to disregard the sovereignty of states and the inviolability of their borders, who conceived of and carried out this provocation, who literally the next day hurried to push through Congress colossal military appropriations and now are rubbing their hands in satisfaction.

The Soviet leadership deems it necessary to inform the Soviet people, other peoples, and all who are responsible for determining the policy of states, of its assessment of the course pursued in international affairs by the current US administration. In brief, it is a militarist course that represents a serious threat to peace.... If anyone had any illusion about the possibility of an evolution for the better in the policy of the present American administration, recent events have dispelled them completely."

- Yuri Andropov, Soviet Premier, as reported in Pravda and Izvestiya, 29 September 1983.

Like the captain of the USS Vincennes, which mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner in 1988, the local Soviet air defense commander made a dreadful but honest mistake. His forces had been on high alert since U.S. Pacific fleet exercises in the spring of that year when the Soviets believed US planes had taken advantage of local fogs to penetrate up to 20 miles into Soviet airspace. The Soviet air defense command had been put on hair trigger alert and senior officers were transferred, reprimanded, or dismissed after this failure. A US Air Force RC-135 reconaissance plane was making a flight east of Kamchatka at the same time as KAL007 strayed off course. The destruction of KAL 007 was criminally negligent manslaughter, not premeditated murder, though misidentification is still hard to credit as the airliner's navigation lights were on for the duration of its flight, and American spy planes flew in 'figures of eight' crossing the border to force the Soviets to turn their radars on then slipping away before the interceptors could arrive, while the Jumbo flew in a simple straight line.

Ronald Reagan used the downing of KAL 007 to press forward his bid to increase defence spending, and particularly get the MX missile programme through congress, while diplomatic and commercial sanctions against the USSR were urged at the U.N.

In the first few years after the crash conspiracy theorists and yellow journalists played posed theories that it was actually a CIA platform in disguise or Ronald Reagan's way of testing Soviet air defenses. Though without any basis in reality these found fertile ground in anti-American circles. As late as 1996, Michel Brun published an entertainly absurd book which saw KAL007 as the centerpiece of a U.S.-Soviet air battle in which ten American aircraft were downed. Alternative theories thought the passengers might have survived and were being held prisoner in the USSR.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin was more than willing to turn over the Soviet papers on the crash to the International Civil Aviation Organization. They showed that Flight 007 was at 46¡ 46' 27" North and 141¡ 32' 48" East, almost 16 miles past the coast of Sakhalin when it was shot down. This put it outside Soviet airspace, making the shootdown a clear violation of international law. The debriefing of one of the Su-15 pilots confirmed that neither pilot thought the aircraft was an RC-135, but were under orders to shoot the plane down regardless, lest 'sensitive' information leave the Soviet Union. KAL007 was shot down less because it had entered Soviet airspace but because it had just left it, 30 seconds before.

One overlooked factor was the nature of the Su-15 interceptor itself. Codenamed Flagon by NATO, it was formidable in terms of maximum speed and performance but its raw power came at the expense of range, endurance and avionics. Its onboard radar lacked range, so it relied on ground control to find its target and, with a frighteningly high fuel consumption, the plane had little time to track a target compared with its western counterparts which routinely shadowed Soviet spyflights near NATO territory without shooting them down. The pilot of the plane, in an interview reproduced below, notes that he had only 10 minutes of fuel left when he fired his missiles and only just managed to return to base in time.

After the defection of Victor Belenko to Japan in a Mig 25, it is rumoured that the Soviets limited the fuel in their interceptors, making any repeat of the feat impossible. The Mig 25, like the SU 15, had a very limited range at high speed and even with a full fuel load had only just made it to Japan. It's possible that the SU 15s were also even more limited than usual in their range and were already near the 'point of no return' when they attacked. The word 'Mig' in Russian means 'twinkling' and a Russian joke of the time made a pun on the phrase 'in a twinkling to Japan'.

In 1991, Andrej Illesh interviewed Lt Col Gennadij Nikolaevich Osipovich, the pilot of the SU15 which shot down KAL 007. He was no longer in the airforce, but had retired and grew strawberries on a small plot of land.

"There was a constant war of nerves. During my 10 years of service in the Far East, I took off on thousands of intercepts. We knew the tail numbers of the intruders. And they ours. One of the officers in my regiment, after returning from leave, took off on an intercept flight. When suddenly he heard, "Hello, Nikolaev. Where did you go on your vacation?..."

Then, in April 1983, something happened. By taking advantage of the "vynos" - that's when the fog rolls in from the sea, then later is burnt off by the sun - the Americans violated our air space and circled over the island of Zelenyj for 15 minutes.

After this, a commission arrived and chewed us out. They poured it on! After the commission left, the regimental commander summed everything up and told us, if there should be any air combat over the Kuriles, you won't be able to make it home. Therefore, we will direct you to the nearest dry land so you can make a parachute landing.

Of course stress increased after this. For several weeks, we loaded our weapons racks and waited. It was June before the tension began to ease. The regimental doctor began insisting that I take leave. The load was beginning to have an effect on me. Every day I either flew an intercept mission or directed other flight, since I was the Deputy Commander of the regiment.

On 16 August, I returned from leave to Sakhalin to the village of Sokol, where our unit was deployed.

"At that time", continues Osipovich, "the regiment was switching over to the MiG-23 and the MiG-31. The pilots were being retrained. One squadron had left (for training). And there were not many people left in the regiment. I had several days leave remaining, but the commander asked me to return early.

After four shifts, I was back in the swing of things and requested night duty. It was better for me to work nights. The more so, since I had received an invitation for 1 September to the school, where my son was in his first year and my daughter was in her eighth. I was supposed to give a speech on peace.

On the 31st of August, I went on duty as usual. I was the senior person and assigned myself to readiness three. (Readiness) one is when the pilot must sit in the plane. Two - he must be dressed in flight uniform. But three - you do not have to be dressed, just able to get into your plane within 10 minutes in case anything happens.

I assumed my post and reported to my superiors. Then I had supper. I was watching the television and dozed off. About 4:30, I woke up to check the guard. I had just gotten dressed, when the phone rang. Lt Astakhov answered the phone, listened to the other end, then mumbled something or other to me. Finally I understood. He was saying, "You are to go to readiness one."

I set off for the plane, and while walking, wondered, "Why was I assigned readiness one? They know that a junior pilot is already at readiness one."

Nevertheless I quickly climbed into the cockpit and reported in.

They confirmed my orders - be prepared.

I waited, but there were no new orders. Suddenly I see that they are uncovering another plane. What is going on? The Americans don't usually begin stirring until after 11:00. This is too early for them...

At 6:00 (local time) they finally gave me a command, "Take off." I started my engine, switched on the lights since the runway was not lit up yet and began taxing out.

They gave me a course toward the sea. I quickly climbed to my assigned altitude of 8,500 meters and then it hit me. For some reason, I was convinced that they had sent up a practice target to check our procedures. This was a training mission. And I was selected as the most experienced.

Eight minutes flight time passed. Suddenly the ground controller transmits, "The target is in front of you! An aircraft intruder in violation of flight rules. You are on a head on course."

However he did not vector me to a frontal intercept. Soon they gave me a new command:

"We will vector you toward a rear hemisphere intercept."

There was nothing else to do. I turned onto a reverse course. And, after receiving corrections, went after the intruder. The weather was normal. Soon I caught sight of the intruder through the scattered clouds. What do I mean by 'caught sight of?' I could make out a speck flying in the distance about 2 or 3 centimeters long. Its lights were turned on.

What were you thinking at that moment?

I wasn't thinking about anything. I was excited. Later no matter how many times they asked me to reconstruct the events that occurred second by second, I could not remember the details.

What is a fighter pilot? He is something like a sheep dog, that they train to chase intruders. I was seeing directly ahead of me exactly that - an intruder. I am not a traffic cop, who can stop a traffic violator and demand his papers! I was behind that plane on an intercept mission. First I had to force him to land. And if he does not comply, then render him harmless at any cost. I simply could not afford to entertain thoughts of anything else. Everything else, that I heard later, was just a words. Nothing else.

So I closed in and locked on to him with my radar. The missile lock on lights came on.

The foreign aircraft was flying at about 1,000 kilometer per hour. I was going faster. I had to match speeds. At about 13 kilometers from him, I reported, "Locked onto the target. Maintaining course. What next?"

Then the aircraft controller suddenly began asking for the course and altitude of the target... It should have been the other way around! Later it was explained that we had a entered dead zone that we had not known about.

"For a period of time, we couldn't see either you or him", the controller explained later on the ground.

Finally, we reached Sakhalin. And then the controller gave the order, "The target has violated the state border. Destroy the target..."

"I turned on the afterburner", relates the retired Colonel, "then the missile warhead lights began blinking. I reported to the ground - locked on to target. Then, suddenly I heard in my earphones:"

"Stop the attack. Climb to the target's altitude and force it to land."

"I was already approaching the intruder from below. After matching speed, I began flashing my lights, but he did not respond"

"Fire warning shots", came the command from the ground.

"I fired four bursts, more than 200 rounds. For all the good it did. After all, I was loaded with armour piercing shells, not incendiary shells. It's doubtful whether anyone could see them..."

"But, it was reported in our newspapers, quoting official sources, that you fired warning shots, namely incendiary, luminescent, tracer shells."

"That was wrong. I simply did not have any. So I fired armour piercing shells."

"However, in that case, (and this is exactly what the foreign experts maintained) the pilot of the unknown aircraft really could not see you."

"I have no doubt that they saw me. They noticed my blinking lights. The pilot's reaction left no doubt. They quickly lowered their speed. They were then flying at about 400 kilometers per hour. My speed was more than 400. I was simply unable to fly slower. In my opinion, the intruder's intentions were plain. If I did not want to go into a stall, I would be forced to overshoot them. That's exactly what happened. We had already flown over the island. It is narrow at that point. The target was about to get away. The the ground gave the command:"

"Destroy the target...!"

"That was easy to say. But how? With shells?! I had already expended 243 rounds. Ram it? I had always thought of that as rather poor taste. Ramming is the last resort. Just in case, I had already completed my turn and was coming down on top of him. Then, I had an idea. I dropped below him about 2,000 meters... afterburners. Switched on the missiles and brought the nose up sharply. Success! I have a lock on."

"The first missile was launched", continues the intercept pilot, "when the distance between us was about 5 kilometers. Only then could I really see the intruder. It was bigger that an IL-76, but its outline reminded me of a Tu-16. The trouble is that Soviet pilots do not study civilian aircraft of foreign companies. I knew all the military aircraft, all the reconnaissance... But that one did not look like any of them..."

"Did you have any doubts at that moment that you might have done something wrong?"

"I never thought for a minute that I would be shooting down a passenger aircraft. Anything but that! Could I admit to pursuing a "Boeing?"... At that time, I was seeing before me a large aircraft with flashing lights..."

"...The first missile hit him below the tail. There was a flash of yellow flame. The second carried away half the left wing. The flashing lights went out.

"At that point, the air was filled with an unimaginable din. I remember, that behind me, bringing up the rear, was a MiG-23. He was carrying external fuel tanks and couldn't fly fast. The pilot was constantly screeching:"

"I see the air battle! What battle was he seeing? I couldn't understand what he was talking about. (Could it be, that this very phrase, recorded on tape by Japanese specialists, was what threw off many investigators? This can't be proven yet. Author). After this, as soon as all the lights on the intruder went out, I turned to the right and heard them giving directions to the Mig for some reason."

Controller:

The target is going down.

He shouted, "I don't see him."

Again the controller:

The target is going down. Target altitude 5,000 meters.

I don't see it.

Then suddenly

The target has disappeared from the screen.

"I was still thinking that the plane I had shot was still flying. Later thay told me that it was just a fluke that the "Boeing" was destroyed by two missiles. It should have taken at least seven of the missile type I had on the Su-15 to bring it down.

On the way back, I looked at my instruments. The "cigarette butt" was already burning - the fuel emergency light. There was only enough fuel for ten minutes flight time. I had another 150 kilometers to go before I reached base. I finally made it back to the base, but as luck would have it, the airfield was covered by the "vynos" - the fog from the sea. But somehow I managed to land...

How were you greeted?

Like a hero. The whole regiment turned out. The youngsters were looking at me with envy. The older guys grabbed my by the lapels and said, "Lets have a bottle!"..." I remember, the regimental engineer embraced me, shook my hand and shouted, "Everything went well my find fellow!" In a word, there was a celebration. After all, it's not every day that we bring down an intruder. It's true that back on the ground I started getting a strange sense about the whole thing. When the division commander, Col Kornukhov called, I asked, "Is there any chance that it was one of ours?

"No.", he answered, "It was a foreigner, so make a hole in your shoulder boards for a new star."

This all took place on the morning of September the 1st.

"Then the unthinkable started. A commission arrived. Everyone started looking about me like I was some S.O.B. Except the boys in the regiment of course."

They asked me, "Did you know, that there were 260 passengers on board the aircraft?"

Afterwards, I was to hear this question many times. Much later, I went over and over what happened in my mind. I can honestly say, that I had no idea, that it was a passenger aircraft in front of me. I saw ahead of me a border violator that I had to destroy. During my time in the service, I had taken off on many intercept missions and dreamed of such a situation. I knew that if an intruder appeared, I would not let him get away. I even had a dream a few years earlier, which was very similar to what actually happened. To make sure no intruder escapes - that, if you like, is what a fighter pilot is all about."

"I repeat, all the talk about a civilian aircraft came later. At the time, it was an intruder in the sky. I remember my radio transmissions by heart. And you just showed me part of them. Take a look. There is not even a hint in them that there might have been passengers on that aircraft."

"But you still had problems..."

We have plenty of overly cautious people in our country. The army is no exception. And this was such a messy affair. I even heard that when one of our pilots shot down an American RB-47, he was at first locked up. He was released only after the investigation. And here we sat waiting for the government to make a decision. I was ready for anything. But soon Minister of Defense Ustinov phoned and everyone, as if on command, began smiling again. Reporters from Central Television arrived immediately. They were as angry as hell. They were supposed to be flying to Cuba, but here I was with my "Boeing...."

The higher ups sent me a "libretto", which I was supposed to spout in front of the camera. I started to read it, but the TV guy, Aleksandr Tikhomirov, made a face. It wouldn't do. He wanted to improvise.

I requested a break. Went back with the technicians. Drank a glass of vodka. And began speaking - about peace, about the atomic bomb... I could never speak so well now.

Later, they suggested I transfer to a new base. I requested the place, where I first began flying, where I was married. Everyone knew me there and I knew them. The Commander in Chief of the Air Forces gave me his plane. And I, like a white man, flew across the whole country to my new assignment.

I arrived. There was a stir. People were interested in talking with me. Everything is quiet now. But then... There were even poems, "From the east came a bro, He struck a terrible blow."

In general, the "Boeing" incident made things easier. They found an apartment for me and everything else. Once I went to the chief in charge of telephones. I submitted a request for a telephone in my apartment. He said, "Where are you from, commander, the moon? We have a five year waiting list." Then later, he suddenly recognized me, "Wait a minute. Who are you? Are you that guy? Bring your money tomorrow. You will get your telephone."

It's sad to recall that now..."

The Isvestia reporter notes that 'according to experts, from the height at which the Boeing-747 was flying, it took at least 10 minutes for the aircraft to fall to the sea. All passengers were fully conscious during those terrible minutes. The missile from our fighter destroyed the engine and the wing, but not the fuselage.'

It's thought that KAL007 drifted off course because its pilots mistakenly set the autopilot in "heading mode," which steers the aircraft based on compass readings and would have been inaccurate on a long Great Circle route. Preventing similar accidents was one of many arguments made in favor of the Global Positioning System under which all heavy commercial aircraft now fly.

This is the memorial to the victims of KAL 007 in Hokkaido, Japan. 11 body parts from the victims washed ashore here, though none could be identified. No belongings were ever returned from the Soviet Union to the passengers' families. The Soviet Union always denied finding any remains, when in truth a massive effort was made to find and retrieve the wreckage.

3 divers in the salvage effort, Grigorij Matveenko, Vladimir K., and Vadim Kondrabayev, were interviewed for the Isvestia report.

"No, no one asked us to recover any remains, only equipment, tapes, documents, and the black box. True, they did not show us a black box, but the described how it should look. So we brought up various boxes which met the description... We brought up some Boeing parts, the skin of the aircraft. There was a piece of aircraft skin with a symbol on it - a circle and two commas. You probably know such two commas, which fit together in the circle. (the emblem of the Korean airline company KAL). They brought up a life raft. There was a good knife. On the whole there was little time for sorting through stuff on the bottom. In some places metal scrap was a meter and a half deep, a real junk pile! The bottom would look flat and empty, then all of a sudden there would be the landing gear or a bra, and then nothing. Then once again a large piece. Again a pile, like on a rubbish pile... Exactly like a junk pile. Pieces of metal, rags, wires. You begin to dig and there are things, more things... Children's things too. I remember once finding a pouch, you know, the kind they carry babies in, like a rucksack and feeling a shock like a jolt of electricity. And of course adult items too. A lot of women's underwear, some documents, suitcases. Equipment such as tape recorders, cassette decks. But they were crushed as if by a sledge hammer"

The Soviet Union found and held onto the planes 2 'black boxes' in secret for ten years. It refused to co-operate in the official investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which took 12 years to complete. The Russian Government still ignores requests for information on the fate of bodies and belongings, although the International Air Crash Victims Family Group reports that citizens on Sakhalin Island have offered visiting Japanese families objects from KAL 007 in return for payment - in U.S. dollars.

There were several instances of 'friendly fire' in which Soviet interceptors shot down other Soviet aircraft in error and at least two well documented cases in which Su-15s attacked foriegn commercial planes. Another Korean Air plane, Flight 902, had been attacked over Murmansk by a PVO Su-15 just five years before in 1978. Again the civilian aircraft survived the missile hit, again it subsequently crashed, killing two passengers. In 1981 a Baku, Azerbaijan-based Su-15 rammed an Iranian Canadair CL-44, apparently as a deliberate attack.

Although a great deal of newsprint was wasted on airing baseless conspiracy theories blaming the USA for the tragedy, few newspapers bothered to report the truth when the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed it to be aired. This piece by James Oberg from the American Spectator in 1993 is one of the few articles which set the record straight.

Other information is from this 1997 CIA report about the '83 'war scare'. Isvestia published this account by Andrej Illesh, in 1991. This features a frank interview with Lt Col Gennadij Nikolaevich Osipovich, the pilot who shot down the airliner, but again has been largely ignored in the west.

War of the Worlds

2006-04-10T17:41:00.000+10:00

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem ... those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars!"

Two men, who shared both a name and the touch of genius, sent panicking Americans pouring out into the streets in 1938, desperate to fight or flee an alien invasion. The story of the play's impact has obscured the fact that Orson Welles' version of H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' remains one of the greatest and most innovative radio dramas ever made.

Welles did not write the screenplay, the script was the work of Howard Koch who was paid all of $75. It was his choice to place the martian attack in New Jersey. He dropped a pencil on a road map to find his landing site - a hamlet called Grovers Mill. Koch's script can be read here.

Everyone is familiar with the effect it had, but far fewer have heard it for themselves. Hear the show in full here. It is brilliant, standing up far better than the lamentable recent film version. Spielburg's film cost upwards of $135 million, Welles drama was written in a week and broadcast live.

Half the listeners tuned in 10 minutes late, missing the introduction and prologue which clearly identified it as a work of fiction, because they'd been listening to the extremely popular 'Charlie McCarthy Show'. The wooden dummy had been destroying the Mercury Theatre in the ratings and Orson Welles needed a big halloween hit to strike back. The dial surfing listeners were plunged straight into a faux live news broadcast of an alien invasion. It is chilling, exciting and deserves to be remembered, along with Citizen Kane, as one of Orson Welles' crowning achievements. He was just 23 at the time. It wasn't the first radio broadcast to experiment with a realistic approach, but it has remained a seminal influence on the endless radio and TV shows which copied its approach.

"I was crying," recalled Maisy Curtis. "I was frantic for my fiancee and I was hearing all about these strange invaders destroying everything. My father disappeared into the bedroom and came back with some rosary beads. We just knelt and prayed."

In her church in Plainsboro, Lolly Dey was praying too. "I had been learning in high school about Hitler and his plans to take over the world," she said. "And it just made sense that maybe these Martians were Hitler's allies."

Paranoia over gas attacks was high, with war gathering in Europe and terrified New Yorkers sought to ward off the Martian 'black smoke' attack with damp towels over their tenement windows. A woman in Pittsburgh tried to swallow poison and was stopped by her husband. "I'd rather die this way!" she screamed.

Welles conducted the performance with manic intensity, masterminding a complex barrage of effects and eerily truncated reports even as the police, swamped by calls from frantic listeners, banged on the studio's door. CBS executive Taylor Davidson tried to make him break into the show to reassure his trembling audience.

"They're scared?" Welles shot back. "Good! They're supposed to be scared!"

Welles and his crew slipped out of the studio's backdoor to avoid the sudden media scrum. The next day he played the straightest of bats in apologising for the fuss the play had caused. The storm of publicity gave Welles the clout he needed to make his debut movie, "Citizen Kane" — one of the greatest films ever made. Its only real competition at the top of every movie buff's list was written by the same Howard Koch, Casablanca.

When a version was broadcast in Quito, the capital of Equador in 1948, rioting listeners burnt down the radio station!

All the news that's fit to sing

2006-04-10T15:37:00.002+10:00

Track 1 - Bush was right!

The right was right! Interviews at MySpace

Check out The Right Brothers - They've even added a special collection just for liberals - the Liberal Bonfire Kit - complete with 11 CDs and an autographed photo to use as a firestarter.

And while we're going video happy here, here's the trailer for Clerks 2. My hopes aren't high but my paws are crossed. Clerks remains the funniest film script in history.

And going completely off topic Do not press this link!

After Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homsick Blues, the first and best pop video, and the Electric Six's immortal portrayal of 'Gay Bay' as performed by a family of Abraham Lincolns or a stunt squadron of Flying Viking Kittens, this is Laika the Space Dogs favourite music video - ignore the brief advert, like we do all the others.

Track 2 - Gangof4ever!

Now, i've been accused of being a little down on communism.

Fair enough.

You try being stuck in a tin can for 50 years (50 years!) with no walkies.

But, just for the sake of political impartiality, if there's if there's one good thing dialectical materialism ever produced it's this.

The best band in the world

Ever.

Break out the cheap wine

They're back (again!)

Bloc Party? Franz Ferdinand? Fuck off.

History's not made by great men

But this is.

Return the Gift

Die Hot Chilli Peppers

Edge, hang your head in shame

Like I said when they blasted me up here -

This heaven gives me migraine.

Track 3 - Love with tear us apart

When routine bites hard
And ambitions are low.
And resentment rides high
But emotions won't grow.
And we're changing our ways
Taking different roads.

Then love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.

Though they released just two albums, Joy Division influenced almost every British band for two decades.

Recorded two months before Ian Curtis hanged himself and released a month after his death, this driving, doom laden love song defined a mournful generation.

No-one's been able to cover this iconic dance of death -

Why is the bedroom so cold
Turned away on your side?
Is my timing that flawed
Every feeling run so dry?
Yet there's still this appeal
that we've kept through our lives.

Then love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.

- until now. Well, 2004 anyway.

Ian Curtis' epitaph becomes -

Girly french new wave bossa nova!

In a very cute, ingenue kind of way, tres joli!

Do you cry out in your sleep,
All my failings expose?
Gets a taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold.
Why is it something so good
Just can't function no more?

And Love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again...

100 lists of 100 things

2006-04-10T10:57:00.000+10:00

Самый короткий анекдот: коммунизм.

2006-04-09T22:37:00.000+10:00

The shortest joke of all: communism.

In prison:
'What are you in for?'
'I told a joke.'
'And you?'
'Listened to a joke.'
'And you?'
'For laziness! I was at a party. One person there told a joke. I went home wondering whether to inform right then or tomorrow morning? "All right," I thought," tomorrow morning will be fine." And I was taken away during the night!'

В тюремной камере:
- За что сидишь?
- Рассказал анекдот.
- А ты?
- Слушал анекдот.
- А ты?
- За лень! был на вечеринке. Один рассказал анекдот. Иду
домой и думаю: сейчас, что ли, донести или завтра утром? Ладно, думаю, завтра утром успеется. Ночью забрали!

Yahoo News ran a story from the AFP on Thursday, 6th of April about a 'traditional joke evening' held at the Occupation Museum in Riga, where scores of Latvians swapped the old jokes which could have landed them in jail in the Soviet days.

"Did you hear about the speech Leonid Brezhnev gave at the Moscow Olympics in 1980?" one jokester said.
"Oh, oh, oh," Brezhnev said.
"Comrade Brezhnev," his assistant whispered quietly in his ear. "Those are the Olympic rings. The speech starts a bit lower down."

"In the whole Soviet Union, at least 20,000 people -- and some say 100,000 -- were imprisoned for telling political jokes. At least several hundred of them were from Latvia," Zanda Duma, a representative of the Occupation Museum told AFP.

"It was especially strict in the early occupation years, the 1950s, under the regime of Joseph Stalin. Latvian poet Knuts Skujenieks was among the 'anekdotchiki', or anecdote tellers, sent to a Soviet labour camp for telling political jokes," she said.

One of the joke-tellers on Thursday said a friend of hers was punished for telling this joke:

"What fights like a lion, hangs like a monkey and ends up like a fried chicken? A proud Soviet citizen in public transportation!"

During the Soviet occupation, some 100,000 people out of a population of 2.3 million, were deported to Siberia and equal numbers of Russians were shipped into Latvia as Moscow tried to "Russify" the Baltic state.

But a dash of humour from time to time helped Latvians to weather the storm and oppressive Soviet rule, and the country is now a proud member of the EU and NATO.

"Making jokes can help a nation get through the darkest of times," Rihards Kalvans, one of the most active joke tellers on Thursday, told AFP.'

Communism might have struggled with the concept of administrative efficiency, handy desktop calculators or tea shops with actual tea but the Soviet Union did lead the world in the production of political humour. The Mig 23, the glorious triumphs of the cold war hat race with the yankee imperialists and this stunning example of the automotive art might all have been consigned to history, but thanks to books such as 'Laughing under the Covers' Soviet anekdoty live on.

A socialist, a capitalist and a communist agreed to meet. The socialist was late. 'Excuse me for being late, I was standing in a queue for sausages.'
'And what is a queue?' the capitalist asked.
'And what is a sausage?' asked the communist.

Социалист, капиталист и коммунист договорились встретиться. Социалист опоздал.
- Извините за опоздание, стоял в очереди за колбасой.
- А что такое очередь? - спросил капиталист.
- А что такое колбаса? - спросил коммунист.

One man to another: 'Because of communism I will have a plane!'
'What do you need a plane for?'
'Well what if suddenly, say, flour is being given out in Kalug. I can fly for half an hour - and I'm there!'

Один еврей другому:
- При коммунизме у меня будет свой самолет!
- Зачем тебе самолет?
- А вдруг, скажем, в Калуге муку дают. Полчаса лету - и я там!

'Is it true that because of communism products can be ordered by phone?'
'It's true. But they will be given out by TV.'

- Правда ли, что при коммунизме продукты можно будет заказывать по телефону?
- Правда. Но выдавать их будут по телевизору.

Communism has come!
'Hello, Manka, turn on your color TV! Red caviar is being shown.'

Наступил коммунизм.
- Алло, Манька, включай скорей свой цветной телевизор -
красную икру показывают.

Will there be KGB in communism?
No, by then people will have learned to arrest themselves.

- Будет ли КГБ при коммунизме?
- Нет, к тому времени люди научатся самоарестовываться.

'Is communism a science?'
'No. If it were a science, it would have been tested on dogs first.'

- Является ли коммунизм наукой?
- Нет. Если бы он был наукой, его бы сначала попробовали на собаках.

Lenin showed us how to govern. Stalin showed us how not to govern. Khrushchev showed us that any fool can govern. And Brezhnev showed us that not every fool can govern.

Ленин показал, как можно управлять. Сталин показал, как нельзя управлять. Хрущев показал, что всякий дурак может управлять. Брежнев показал, что не всякий дурак может управлять.

What is the difference between Pravda and Isvestia?
In "The Truth" there is no news, and in the "The News" there is no truth.

- Какая разница между "Правдой" и "Известиями"?
- В "Правде" нет известий, а в "Известиях" нет правды.

Why is the Soviet Sun so joyful in the morning ?
Because it knows that by evening it will be in the West.

- Почему советское солнце с утра такое радостное?
- Потому что оно знает, что к вечеру будет на западе.

'Lena, I have ordered that the border be opened,' said Brezhnev.
'What! Have you lost your mind?! Everyone will get away, only the two of us will remain!'
'Hmmm, and who's the second?'

- Леня, я приказал открыть границу, - говорит Косыгин Брежневу.
- Ты что, с ума сошел?! Все удерут, вдвоем останемся!
- А кто второй?

Why doesn't the USSR start sending people to the Moon?
Because they're afraid they'll defect.

- Почему СССР не запускает людей на Луну?
- Боятся, что они станут невозвращенцами.

Why did the Supreme Soviet decided to invade Afghanistan?
They decided to begin alphabetically.

- Почему Советы ввели войска именно в Афганистан?
- Они решили начать по алфавиту.

'Who's your father?' the teacher asked Vovo.
'Comrade Stalin!'
'And who's your mother?'
'The Soviet native land!'
'And what do you want to become?'
'An orphan!'

- Кто твой отец? - спрашивает учительница Вовочку.
- Товарищ Сталин!
- А кто твоя мать?
- Советская родина!
- А кем ты хочешь стать?
- Сиротой!

Stalin informed Beria that his phone was missing. The next day
Stalin told Beria that the phone was found.
'But I've already arrested 25 people regarding this matter, and they all
admitted to the crime!' said Beria.

Сталин сообщил Берии, что у него пропала трубка. Назавтра
Сталин сказал Берии, что трубка нашлась.
- А я уже арестовал 25 человек по этому делу, и все
признались! - сказал Берия.

In a prison:
'How many years did you get?
'Twenty-five.'
'For what?'
'For nothing.'
'You're lying! For nothing they give ten.'

В тюремной камере:
- Какой у тебя срок?
- Двадцать пять.
- За что?
- Ни за что.
- Врешь! Ни за что десять дают.

'Comrade,' asks the secretary of the Party Bureau, 'Do you have an opinion on this question?'
'I have an opinion yes, but I don't agree with it!'

- Товарищ Рабинович, - говорит секретарь на заседании
партбюро, - у вас есть мнение по этому вопросу?
- У меня есть мнение, но я с ним не согласен!

An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian once shared their opinions on what was happiness.
'I test happiness,' said the Englishman, 'when in the winter, after good hunting I come back home and with a glass of good brandy, I settle down in an armchair opposite a roaring fire.'
'For me happiness,' said the Frenchman, 'is when I'm in a good restaurant eating good food and drinking good wine in the company of a fine woman, and then - a night of passion.'
'How you understand happiness!' exclaims the Russian. 'For me happiness is when, after a wearisome workday, I come into my room in my communal home, where I live together with my wife, my two children and the mother-in-law, and during the night there is a loud knock at the door, and I open it, and on the threshold are two threatening looking creatures standing there and ask me "Are you citizen Paramonov?" and I answer them: "He's not here, Paramonov lives a floor above!" Now there is true happiness!'

Англичанин, француз и русский делятся своими взглядами на счастье в жизни.
- Я испытываю счастье, - говорит англичанин, - когда зимой,
после хорошей охоты возвращаюсь домой и со стаканом хорошего бренди располагаюсь в кресле напротив горящего камина.
- Для меня счастье, - говорит француз, - когда я в хорошем
ресторане вкушаю хорошую пищу и пью хорошее вино в компании прекрасной женщины, а потом - ночь страсти.
- Что вы понимаете в счастье! - говорит русский. - Когда я
после изнурительной работы прихожу в свою комнату в коммуналке, где вместе со мной живут жена, двое детей и теща, и когда среди ночи меня будит громкий стук в дверь, я открываю, и на пороге стоят двое, грозно спрашивая меня: "Вы гражданин Парамонов?", а я им отвечаю: "Нет, Парамонов живет этажом выше!" - вот это и есть настоящее счастье!

What is Russian business?
Stealing a box of vodka and selling it so as to have money to spend on drink.

Что такое русский бизнес?
- Украсть ящик водки, водку продать, деньги пропить.

One East German policeman asks another:
'What do you think of our regime?'
'The same as you.'
'Then it's my duty to arrest you!'

Один восточногерманский полицейский спрашивает другого:
- Что ты думаешь о нашем режиме?
- То же, что и ты.
- Тогда мой долг - арестовать тебя!

A Soviet tourist examines the home of a foreign worker: a bedroom, a dining room, a children's room, a living room, a kitchen...
'We have all this too, only without partitions!'

Советский турист осматривает жилье иностранного рабочего - спальня, столовая, детская, гостиная, кухня...
- Да и у нас это все есть, только без перегородок!

Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon observed the army parade in Red Square, as honorable visitors.
'If I had Soviet tanks,' Alexander said, 'I would have been invincible!'
'If I had Soviet planes,' Caesar speaks, 'I could have conquered the whole world!'
'And if I had had the newspaper "The Truth",' Napoleon said, 'the world, even now, would not have found out about Waterloo!'

Александр Македонский, Цезарь и Наполеон в качестве почетных гостей наблюдают парад войск на Красной площади.
- Если бы у меня были советские танки, - говорит Александр,
- я был бы непобедим!
- Если бы у меня были советские самолеты, - говорит Цезарь,
- я завоевал бы весь мир!
- А если бы у меня была газета "Правда", - сказал Наполеон, -
мир до сих пор не узнал бы о Ватерлоо!

In a madhouse there was a propagandist highly praising the Soviet Authority. When he finished everyone applauded except for one man standing off to one side.
'And why aren't you clapping?' asked the propagandist.
'I'm not a lunatic, I'm the hospital attendant!'

В сумасшедшем доме выступает агитатор и расхваливает советскую действительность. Аплодируют все, кроме одного, стоящего в стороне.
- А вы почему не хлопаете? - интересуется агитатор.
- А я не сумасшедший, я санитар!

What nationality were Adam and Eve?
Most certainly Russian! Only Russians can run about barefooted and bare assed, without a roof over their heads, where there is only one apple for two and nevertheless cry out that they are in paradise!

- Кто были по национальности Адам и Ева?
- Конечно, русскими! Только они могут бегать босыми и
голозадыми, не иметь крыши над головой, есть одно яблоко на двоих и при этом кричать, что они в раю!

A patient asks the chemist to write down in the registry for him to see the eye-ear doctor. But instead he's told there's an ear-throat-foot doctor and an eye doctor but no ear-eye doctor.
'But I need an ear-eye doctor!' the patient insists.
'And what are you complaining of?'
'I hear one thing, and see another!'

Больной просит в регистратуре поликлинники записать его к врачу уха-глаза. Ему объясняют, что есть врач уха-горла-носа и есть глазной врач.
- Но мне нужен врач уха-глаза! - настаивает больной.
- А на что вы жалуетесь?
- Я слышу одно, а вижу другое!

A lawyer, a surgeon, a builder and a communist were having an argument about whose trade was older.
'When God condemned Adam and Eve and exiled them from paradise,' said the lawyer, 'that was a legal act! So my profession is the oldest.'
'But please,' the surgeon said, 'before that God created Eve from Adam's rib. And that was a surgical operation! So my profession is older.'
'Forgive me,' said the builder, 'but a little bit earlier than that God created the world, he constructed it. So my profession is the oldest. Because as is known, there was only chaos before that.'
'And who created chaos?' the communist exclaimed triumphantly. 'Certainly, we communists!'

Юрист, хирург, строитель и коммунист поспорили, чья профессия древнее.
- Когда бог осудил Адама и Еву на изгнание из рая, - сказал юрист, - то это был юридический акт!
- Позвольте, - сказал хирург, - перед этим бог создал Еву из ребра Адама. Это была хирургическая операция!
- Простите, - сказал строитель, - несколько раньше бог создал мир, он построил его. Как известно, до этого был только хаос!
- А кто создал хаос? - торжествующе воскликнул коммунист. -
Конечно, мы - коммунисты!

Brezhnev called together a group of cosmonauts. 'Comrades! The Americans have landed on the Moon. We here have consulted and have decided that you will go to the Sun!'
'But we will burn up, Leonid Iljich!'
'Be not afraid, comrades, the Party has thought of everything. You
will leave at night.'

Брежнев вызвал группу космонавтов.
- Товарищи! Американцы высадились на Луне. Мы тут посоветовались и решили, что вы полетите на Солнце!
- Так сгорим ведь, Леонид Ильич!
- Не бойтесь, товарищи, Партия подумала обо всем. Вы полетите ночью.

What will the harvest be like this year?
Average: worse, than last year, but better than next year.

- Какой урожай будет в этом году?
- Средний: хуже, чем в прошлом году, но лучше, чем в будущем.

Вопрос, на который армянское радио не смогло ответить:
- Если все страны станут социалистическими, то где мы будем покупать зерно?

What's the real ratio between the Pound, the Rouble and the Dollar?
A pound of Roubles is worth a Dollar.

- Какое реальное соотношение между фунтом, рублем и долларом?
- Фунт рублей стоит доллар.

Brezhnev and Nixon took a trip by helicopter to inspect workers in the suburbs of Moscow. Nixon noticed workers' barracks with television aerials and exclaimed, 'You have surpassed us! We still don't have TVs in our pigsties!'

Брежнев и Никсон совершают прогулку на вертолете над рабочими пригородами Москвы. Никсон видит бараки с телевизионными антеннами и говорит:
- Вы нас перегнали! У нас в свинарниках еще нет телевизоров!

Is it true that America comes in first place in the world for the number of cars?
It's truth. But the Soviet Union comes in first for the number of places to park.

- Правда ли, что Америка на первом месте в мире по числу автомобилей?
- Правда. Но зато Советский Союз на первом месте по числу мест для стоянки.

An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian are praising their wives.
'When my wife goes for a ride,' the Englishman says, 'her legs drag on the ground. Not because the horse is small, but because my wife has long beautiful legs!'
'I embrace my wife around the waist with only two fingers,' says the Frenchman, 'not because I have a big hand, but because my wife has a slim waist!'
'Before leaving for work,' says the Russian, 'I slap my wife's behind. And when I come back from work, her behind is still shaking. It's not because my wife has a big flabby ass, but because in the USSR we have the shortest working day in the world!'

Англичанин, француз и русский хвалятся своими женами.
- Когда моя жена катается верхом, - говорит англичанин, - ее ноги достают до земли. Не потому, что лошадь низкорослая, а потому, что у моей жены длинные ноги!
- Я свою жену обнимаю за талию двумя пальцами одной руки, -говорит француз, - не потому, что у меня большая рука, а потому, что у моей жены узкая талия!
- Перед уходом на работу, - говорит русский, - я хлопаю свою
жену по заднице. А когда возвращаюсь с работы, она у нее еще трясется. Не потому, что у моей жены задница дряблая, а потому, что у нас в СССР самый короткий в мире рабочий день!

A customer asks at a shop, 'What's this, you don't have any meat again?'
'That's not true! There's no meat in the shop opposite. We don't have fish.'

Покупатель в гастрономе:
- Опять у вас мяса нет?
- Это неправда! Мяса нет в магазине напротив. У нас нет рыбы.

A person is walking along the street in one boot.
'Have you lost a boot?' a passer-by asks.
'On the contrary - I've found one!'

Человек идет по улице в одном сапоге.
- Сапог потеряли? - спрашивает его прохожий.
- Наоборот - нашел!

A passerby asks a man with a roll of toilet paper, 'Tell me please, where did you get that toilet paper?'
'I've just come from the dry-cleaners.'

Прохожий:
- Скажите, пожалуйста, где это вы туалетную бумагу достали?
- Из химчистки несу.

'It will get even worse!' cries the pessimist.
'It can't get any worse,' the optimist answers.
- Будет еще хуже! - говорит пессимист.
- Хуже уже не будет, - отвечает оптимист.

When did the first Soviet elections take place?
When God put Eve before Adam and said: 'Choose yourself a wife!'

- Когда состоялись первые советские выборы?
- Когда бог поставил перед Адамом Еву и сказал: "Выбирай
себе жену!"

When Nixon visited the USSR, Brezhnev showed him a Soviet phone of the latest technology in which it was possible to call Hell. Nixon called the Devil. The conversation cost only 27 Kopecks.
Upon returning to America, Nixon told everyone about the Soviet marvel. But as it turned out such a phone had been invented in America a long time ago. Nixon again called Hell, but this time the conversation cost 12 thousand dollars!
Nixon, understandedly upset, cried, 'But in the USSR a phone call to Hell costs only 27 kopecks!'
'Yes sir, but there it was a local call.'

Когда Никсон посетил СССР, Брежнев продемонстрировал ему советский телефон последней конструкции, по которому можно разговаривать с адом. Никсона соединили с дьяволом. Разговор стоил 27 копеек.
Вернувшись в Америку, Никсон рассказал о советской диковинке. Но оказалось, что в Америке такой телефон изобретен давно. Никсон снова поговорил с адом, но разговор стоил на этот раз 12 тысяч долларов!
- Как же так, - сокрушается Никсон. - Там это стоило 27
копеек!
- Дело в том, - объяснили ему, - что там это был местный
разговор.

During a meeting with a psychiatrist:
'Doctor, I have different personalities: I think one thing, I speak another, and I do a third.'
'So? That only proves you are quite normal!'

На приеме у психиатра:
- Доктор, у меня растроение личности - я думаю одно, говорю другое, а делаю третье.
- Это доказывает лишь то, что вы вполне нормальны!

The seven miracles of the Soviet Authority:
1. There is no unemployment, yet nobody works.
2. Nobody works, yet the Grand Scheme is carried out.
3. The Grand Scheme is carried out, yet there is nothing to buy.
4. There is nothing to buy, yet there are lineups everywhere.
5. There are lineups everywhere, yet everyone has everything.
6. Everyone has everything yet everyone is dissatisfied.
7. Everyone is dissatisfied, yet everyone votes 'Yes'.

Семь чудес Советской власти:
1.Безработицы нет, но никто не работает.
2.Никто не работает, но план выполняется.
3.План выполняется, но купить нечего.
4.Купить нечего, но всюду очереди.
5.Всюду очереди, но у всех все есть.
6.У всех все есть, но все недовольны.
7.Все недовольны, но голосуют "за".

Coming soon - Armenian Radio!

Cheburashka!

2006-04-08T17:53:00.000+10:00

Cheburashka is the most famous Soviet cartoon character and probably the cutest thing in the history of mankind. Cheburashka, a pun on the archaic word cheburahnulsya (tumbling) in Russian, is found in a banana box and is named by the surprised shopkeeper when, numbed by his inadvertent journey from the tropics, he tumbles out of the box.

Our ragamuffin hero, destitute on the streets of Moscow, is befriended by Crocodile Geina, a lonely, friendly crocodile who works as a crocodile in the local zoo. Forget Tolstoy, this is the single greatest idea in literature. Naturally enough, Geina plays the accordian. His favourite song is the wonderfully entitled "Blue train car".

The unlikely pair have many adventures against a dour soviet background, the infinitely wise old Geina and his impish friend often harrassed but never beaten by Starukha Shapoklyak. She's all but a witch, carrying her familiar, a rat called Lariska, in her handbag but is never as bad as she seems. Her catchphrase? "One won't ever get famous for good deeds".

Though only four short films were made, Gena the Crocodile and His Friends (Крокодил Гена и его друзья), Birthday (День рождения), Old Witch Shapoklyak (Шапокляк) and
Cheburashka Goes to School (Чебурашка идет в школу) the gang became tremendously popular in days when there was little else to warm the heart. Cheburashka enjoyed a recent burst of popularity in Japan, his/her films packing cinemas and sparking a merchandising boom - and several law suits over copywrite. Cheburashka was invented by cartoonist Eduard Uspensky in 1966 and made his/her film debut in 1971 in "Geina the Crocodile" directed by Roman Kachanov.

The Antonov 72 was immediately nicknamed 'Cheburashka' for two very obvious reasons.

Cheburashka was the official mascot of the Russian Olympic team in Athens in 2004, though any suggestion he/she had bulked up with steroids with the rest of the squad would be firmly denied by the Russians.

White winter Cheburashkas were adopted by the Russian team in the winter Olympics in Turin and quickly became the christmas toy craze in Russia. Cheburashka's creator, Eduard Uspensky tipped the fluffy toy to replace the double headed eagle as Russia's national emblem. It's only a matter of time.

Nedelin

2006-04-08T15:33:00.000+10:00

The loss of 14 astronauts in the Challenger and Columbia disasters, played out in the full glare of modern global television, is seared on our collective memory. A calamity which caused far greater loss of life remains almost unkown, the victims almost forgotten, the explosion at Tyuratam (The Nedelin disaster) in the USSR in 1960.

The early space programmes of both superpowers were inseperable from the cold war scramble to develop ICBMs. Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin were put into orbit by modified ballistic missiles, as were Explorer 1 and John Glenn for the USA.

The Soviet's workhorse booster of the day was the R 7, a modified version of which is still used today. It was originally developed as an ICBM by Sergei Korolev, the Soviet's Werner Von Braun, but its cryogenic oxygen needed complex storing and fueling systems impractical for fast military response. It found its niche as a satellite launcher and has a success rate of 97% in 1,600 launches between 1957 and 2000.

A new, more powerful launcher - the R-16 - was the brainchild of Korolev's former assistant Mikhail Yangel (left). It was built to deliver a 10 megaton warhead to New York, Boston and Washington D.C.

The R 16 would use a new, more convenient fueling system and was given top priority, overseen by Marshal of Artillery Mitrofan Nedelin (right), the commander of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. The design team were pressured to produce the first R-16 as quickly as possible. Despite any number of unsolved flight control problems, Yangel reluctantly agreed to deliver the first missile to the test range at what is now the Baikonur Cosmodrome in September 1960. Both Nedelin and Yangel hoped to please Khrushchev by launching its maiden flight by the November 7 anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The test rocket, designated LD1-3T, was moved from it's assembly building to the 'left' launch pad at 'Site 41' on October 21, where fueling began with its highly toxic and corrosive propellants. Proper safety protocols insist that all non-essential personnel evacuate the area during fueling operations but work on the rocket continued regardless of the risks.

As fueling was completed, on Saturday, the 22nd of October, the launch crew found a propellent leak of 142-145 drops per minute. Remarkably the technical management thought this acceptable as long as it was contained by the chemical unit assigned.

Once the rocket was fuelled the R-16 launch team reached the point of no return. Incredibly there was no procedure allowing the draining of propellant from the vehicle and LD1-3T could not be used for another launch attempt if the highly-corrosive propellants were drained. One eyewitness recalled Nedelin yelling that in the nuclear war there would be no chance for such things. The launch would press ahead regardless.

The propellant pumps failed on Sunday, October 23. Nedelin ordered the men to work on the rocket while the propellants were still aboard. Design and production flaws in the control panel meant an electrical signal destroyed the membranes which prevented the fuel reaching the stage 1 engines. A series of electrical faults occurred in quick succession. The rocket could last no more than two days on the launch pad now.

Black Monday

Repairs dragged on into the 24th, the scheduled launch day, prompting Nedelin and his subordinates to visit the pad "to figure out what's going on." Yangel and a number of visiting dignitaries were also present to personally direct the pre-launch operations. The presence of so many powerful figures put great stress on the workers, already under pressure to launch as soon as possible. Too many tests and other operations were conducted simultaneously, and safety procedures were neglected to save time. Neither Major General Konstantin Gerchik, Chief of the NIIP-5 test range nor Chief Grigoryants of the 2nd Test Directorate, responsible for R-16 testing, found themselves capable of enforcing the safety rules in the presence of their boss.

The most serious mistake concerned the 'Programming Current Distributor' which activated electrical systems on the rocket. Following a test, the PTR was accidentally set to the wrong position, activating the rocket's batteries and propellant lines. In his memoirs, Sergei Khrushchev quotes a witness in the command bunker overhearing someone ask: "So should I move PTR to zero?" to which someone else shouted "Go ahead." Only a single valve now prevented the self igniting propellent entering the engines and spontaneously exploding.

When the commission members arrived to the launch pad, Konstantin Gerchik was ordered to bring a chair for Nedelin, who then sat within 20 meters of the rocket, ostentatiously taking commad. His defenders praise his dedication to duty but missile programme veterans said his attitude did nothing but distract the crew and imperil safety.

As the scheduled lift off approached, members of the State Commission in charge of the project gathered on a wooden viewing terrace at IP-1B ground control station at Site 43, 800 meters from launch pad 41.

The Explosion

At 18:45, 30 minutes before the scheduled launch, as perhaps 250 people still bustled around the rocket, the second stage engine erupted without warning into life. The roaring flame burst through the stage 1 fuel tank directly below in an instant, initiating an enormous explosion of the fully-fueled rocket. A giant fireball, up to 120 meters across, engulfed the launch pad in seconds.

The lucky ones were incinerated instantly, while many died in the ensuing seconds of a living hell. Eyewitnesses described horrifying scenes of burning people running from the rocket or hanging on their safety harnesses from the access pads. Ground workers trying desperately to flee found themselves running through molten tar, unable to climb the fence which surrounded the launch pad. Others jumped into the wells dug around the launch complex, only to suffocate from the noxious propellant fumes released by the inferno.

Massive explosions rocked the launch pad for 20 seconds, the blasts heard over 20 miles away. Huge fires roared on for two hours or more.

"At the moment of the explosion I was about 30 meters from the base of the rocket. A thick stream of fire unexpectedly burst forth, covering everyone around. Part of the military contingent and testers instinctively tried to flee from the danger zone, people ran to the side of the other pad, toward the bunker...but on this route was a strip of new-laid tar, which immediately melted. Many got stuck in the hot sticky mass and became victims of the fire...The most terrible fate befell those located on the upper levels of the gantry: the people were wrapped in fire and burst into flame like candles blazing in mid-air. The temperature at the center of the fire was about 3,000 degrees. Those who had run away tried while moving to tear off their burning clothing, their coats and overalls. Alas, many did not succeed in doing this."

"...automatic cameras had been triggered along with the engines, and they recorded the scene. The men on the scaffolding dashed about in the fire and smoke; many jumped off and vanished into the flames. One man momentarily escaped from the fire but got tangled up in the barbed wire surrounding the launch pad. The next moment he too was engulfed in flames."

"Above the pad erupted a column of fire. In a daze we watched the flames burst forth again and again until all was silent...(After the fires had been extinguished,) all the bodies were in unique poses, all were without clothes or hair. It was impossible to recognize anybody. Under the light of the moon they seemed the color of ivory."

The lives of Yangel and a few other high ranking officials were spared as they had stepped into a bunker to take a break mere minutes before the explosion, but a host of top ranking officials were killed.

The huge flares were easily visible from Site 10, the main residential area, where the families of the engineers were watching and waiting for the launch. Their worst nightmare was unravelling before their eyes.

An ad hoc team of 30 soldiers battled to rescue the savagely burnt and poisoned survivors. Buses rushed the horribly maimed men to the local hospital where accompanying officials refused to divulge what kind of "secret" chemical had poisoned the patients. Only after several demands by the doctors did the military gave out the information needed to threat the victims.

Yengel had had to be restrained from rushing to the pad from the control room as his rocket ignited. That same night a message with his signature arrived at Kremlin via the special communication channel.

"during final preparations for the launch a fire took place which caused the destruction of the tanks with components of the propellant. As a result of the accident, there are casualties numbered up to 100 or more people, including fatalities -- several dozen people. Chief Marshall of Artillery Nedelin was present at the test site. Now, the search for him is going on."

The Aftermath

Krushchev ordered an investigation headed by Leonid Brezhnev, the future premier, who
arrived by plane the next morning. Brezhnev and his team found the stricken missile splayed on the pad, its ripped first and second stages still attached to each other. The bodies of victims, most burned beyond recognition, were taken to a special shelter for identification. The body of Konoplev, chief of OKB-692, was identified by its height.

Among a host of top officials lost, Lev Grishin, Deputy Chairman of State Committee for Defense Technology, who reportedly was going to catch up with Yangel for a cigarette break, died in hospital 11 days after the disaster.

Speaking to the staff at Tyuratam, Brezhnev said the commission had no intention of punishing anybody. "All guilty had been punished already,"

On a cold damp day in October, the investigation commission witnessed the funeral of the military personnel at Site 10. 84 soldiers and officers were buried in a mass grave in what is now 'Soldier's Park'. Other bodies, including civilian engineers, were shipped back to their home towns for individual burials. As the incident was shrouded in the deepest secrecy, the relatives were told to say their loved ones had died in a plane crash. Even in Tyuratam, a site closed to outsiders, a memorial at the grave would not be built for three years.

The report blamed the massive death toll on those who ignored proper safety procedures, overconfident that the untested R-16 would perform safely in extreme conditions. It set the official death toll at 90, including 74 who perished in the initial explosion, 57 of them military personnel and another 17 civilians. A further 49 were injured, and 16 dying later of their wounds. Two suffocated soldiers were found after the report was completed, raising the official toll to 92.

This undoubtably underestimates the toll, though it's uncertain by how many. Current research suggests a true total of 122 fatalities with no less than 48 victims dying in agony over subsequent weeks from burns or exposure to toxic chemicals. 84 were military officers or enlisted technicians while 38 were civilian engineers.

Though the commission recommended more testing of the control system and a re-evaluation of the pre-launch sequence, it recommended repairing the launch pad within two weeks and resuming the test program as soon as that November. The lives of Soviet engineers were not to stand in the way of an ICBM which could destroy America.

The next launch attempt, in February 1961, failed when the rocket crashed in flight. Not until June 1963 was the missile finally accepted for military service. The R-16 and improved R-16U remained in use until 1974 when it was eliminated under the terms of SALT-1.

The launch was a complete disaster but the Soviet Union had long excelled in suppressing bad news. The death of World War II hero Nedelin was officially explained as an air crash. Inevitably rumours found their way to the west but there was no publication in the official Soviet press for almost 30 years until, in 1989, Ogonyok magazine ran "Sorok Pervaya Ploshadka," (Site 41). It finally revealed that Nedelin had died in the explosion of a ballistic missile in Tyuratam along with numerous other nameless victims.

Site 41 is an empty and abandoned lot at the edge of the Baikonur Cosmodrome today. The site is marked only by a small monument containing the names of those who perished and a map illustrating the layout of the old launch complex. Elsewhere on the base is a single coffin containing the remains of those who could not be identified. A coffin bearing the remains of an unidentified victim was buried in Leninsk Park. It's now covered by a small grassy mound. It's fenced in.

Books which discuss the disaster include

Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon

Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge by Asif Siddiqi.

Photographs and information from Aerospaceweb and Russian Space Web

The future that never was (3)

2006-04-07T10:32:00.000+10:00

Britain could have broken the sound barrier

Persistant WWII rumours that allied fighters broke the sound barrier in dog fight dives are almost certainly mistaken, it's extremely unlikely even the ground breaking German Me 262 jet fighter managed the feat. In November 1945, an RAF Gloster Meteor raised the official airspeed record to 606.25 mph.

Two years later, as every American schoolboy knows, Chuck Yeager was the first man to break the sound barrier in level flight, on 14 October 1947, in the Bell X-1 after being dropped by a B-29 bomber at 20,000 feet.

The first British aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound was the stylish DH 108 Swallow on 9 September 1948.

The future could have been different. In 1942 the British Air Ministry offered the small firm of Miles Aircraft a top-secret contract (E.24/43) for a turbojet research plane to attain supersonic speeds. Dropped from a bomber, the Miles M.52 would aim to reach 1000mph at 36,000 feet in 90 seconds.

With no warplane in mass production Miles Aircraft were free to indulge in 'blue skies' thinking.

The M 52 sported wafter thin wings to minimise drag, wings "clipped" to clear the 'V' shock wave produced by the aircraft's nose at supersonic speeds. A vital innovation was its 'all-moving tail', the key to early supersonic flight control, superceding traditional two piece stabilizer/elevator designs. Supersonic heating was little understood, so the M.52 was built of stainless steel instead of duraluminum.

The lone pilot sat in cone shaped nose, separate from the fuselage. In extremis explosive bolts would blast this pressurised pod clear with the pilot, somewhat improbably, parachuting to safety. The shock cone in the nose, designed to slow incoming air to the subsonic speeds required by the engine, would became common on later aircraft.

Frank Whittle, father of the British jet engine, produced the powerplant, the afterburning W2/700, which became the successful Rolls Royce Derwent. A ducted fan increased power by boosting airflow through the system.

At the close of World War II, with 90% of the design work done, the first of three M.52's was more than half complete and test flights were only a few months away. However in February 1946 the new Labour government, with typical visionary flair, slashed the military and science budget and the Director of Scientific Research, Sir Ben Lockspeiser, canceled the project.
"......in view of the unknown hazards near the speed of sound ....... considered unwise to proceed with the full scale experiments."

Late in 1944 the Air Ministry had signed an agreement with the United States to exchange high-speed research and information. The Bell Aircraft company was given all of the drawings and research on the M.52, but the US reneged on the exchange and no data was forthcoming in return. Without informing Miles, Bell had begun construction of their own rocket powered supersonic design but were battling the problem of control. The Miles all-moving tail proved the perfect solution. The Rolls Royce Derwent engine appeared in the USA as the General Electric Type 1. And so, in the future that happened, the sound barrier was broken in a clone of the M.52, the XS-1.

Seeking to deflect widespread criticism of their cancellation of the M.52, the Government began a small new programme involving "no danger to test pilots and economy in purpose." - expendable, pilotless, rocket-propelled missiles. The Royal Aircraft Establishment developed the rocket motor and the great Barnes Wallis - of the "bouncing bomb" - worked on the design. The rockets were essentially 3/10 scale replicas of the M.52 and the first launch took place on 8th October 1947.

A light bomber took off from RAF St. Eval in Cornwall with a rocket strapped to its belly but the motor exploded shortly after launch. In October 1948 a second, and final, rocket was launched, reaching Mach 1.5 before gloriously ignoring radio commands to ditch into the ocean and flying out, undaunted, across the Atlantic.

Engine: 1 W.2/700 Jet with augmentor and afterburner
Wing Span: 27 ft
Length: 28 ft
Weight: 7,710 lb
Maximum Speed: 1,000 mph at 36,000 ft

Naturally, some communist sources claimed the Soviet Union had broken the sound barrier in 1946 using a captured German experimental rocket plane. No evidence was ever produced and files which have emerged since the collapse of the USSR exposed them as groundless.

Soccorski!

2006-04-07T09:30:00.000+10:00

The Bradford fire, the Hysel riot and the tragedy at Hillsborough in Sheffield when 95 English soccer fans were crushed against the crowd control fences at an FA Cup semi final, are not the worst soccer tragedies in recent history. The suppressed truth of the worst disaster in European sport only leaked out in the Soviet press in July, 1989, seven years after it happened. Previously the true scale of the tragedy had only been hinted at, and its real cause entirely suppressed.

As many as 340 fans were crushed to death on October 20th, 1982 when Spartak Moscow played dutch club Haarlem.

Earlier official accounts placed blame for the incident on hooliganism, then the target of a concerted campaign. But the detailed report in Sovietsky Sport blamed the police at the Luzhniki stadium, who had hustled departing fans down a single, narrow, icy corridor. Hundreds of fans were crushed to death on the only open staircase when a last-minute Russian goal sent spectators surging back toward the field, the newspaper said. Fans had slipped on the ice and been overwhelmed in a "human mincer."

Sovietsky Sport said the authorities had staged a cover-up, cordoning off the stadium and withholding bodies for almost two weeks. Moscow officials disputed the claims made in the publication of the Soviet Sports Committee, clinging to the official story that only 61 died and police had not pushed the fans.

Anthrax!

2006-04-07T09:24:00.000+10:00

The Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak of 1979

"The wind blew the anthrax spores, as I understand it, away from Sverdlovsk. If the wind had been blowing the other way back into the city of Sverdlovsk what could the death rate have been?"

"Dozens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands."*

Anthrax is an acute infection caused by 'Bacillus anthracis.' Extremely rare in developed countries it affects herbivores such as goats, sheep and cattle but can be caught by, and prove lethal to, humans. Anthrax spores can stay dormant in the soil for decades. The disease leapt into the news in America after September 11 when Anthrax laden letters were posted to congress in the USA.

It can be transmitted from infected animals through cuts in the skin, inhalation of spores and gastrointestinally through eating infected meat. Inhalation, the rarest form of transmission, causes severe breathing problems and shock, and is usually fatal.

Anthrax swept through Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg), 850 miles east of Moscow, in the spring of 1979. 94 people fell ill, at least 64 dying, the first victim after four days, the last six weeks later. No news was released in the Soviet Union, the first word leaking out in a Frankfurt newspaper close to the emigre Russian community in October, 1979.

U.S. intelligence studied satellite imagery and signals intercepts and found signs of a serious accident at the time, including roadblocks and decontamination trucks around Compound 19, a high security military installation in the south of the city.

The victims worked or lived in a narrow zone extending south from Compound 19. Further south, beyond the city, large numbers of livestock died or were destroyed. The wind had been from the north before the outbreak.

The USA accused the Soviet Union of violating the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention while the Soviets issued angry claims that the outbreak was caused by eating tainted meat. A "A Germ of Lying," published by TASS on March 24,1980, argued that anthrax was naturally endemic to the area and condemned the US for "spurring up the arms race and..intensifying tensions in the relations between states."

'Glasnost' allowed calls for the truth to be raised, if not heard. In 1990 "Military Secret: Reasons for the Tragedy in Sverdlovsk Must be Investigated," by Natalya Zenova in 'Literaturnaya Gazeta', and "The Secret of the 'Sarcophagus'," by Sergey Parfenov in 'Rodina' increased public pressure for Moscow to reveal what really happened.

Excellent Washington Post article with first hand accounts of the epidemic

"We are still deceiving you, Mr. Bush."

In 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted the military had, after all, been to blame. Yeltsin had been Communist Party chief in the region at the time of the outbreak and believed the KGB and military had lied to him about the truth.

At a summit in February 1992, Yeltsin told President Bush that the Soviets had violated the 1972 biological weapons convention and that the Sverdlovsk incident had been caused by an bio-weapons disaster. In a press intervew on May 27th, Yeltsin revealed what he'd told Bush in private:

"We are still deceiving you, Mr. Bush. We promised to eliminate bacteriological weapons. But some of our experts did everything possible to prevent me from learning the truth. It was not easy, but I outfoxed them. I caught them red-handed. I found two test sites. They are inoculating tracts of land with anthrax, allowing wild animals to go there and observing them..."

In a subsequent interview, Yeltsin expanded on the extent of the deception.

"When I learned these developments were under way, I visited [the KGB chairman Yuriy] Andropov. . . . When there was an anthrax outbreak, the official conclusion stated it was carried by some dog, though later the KGB admitted that our military development was the cause. Andropov phoned [Minister of Defense Dimitriy] Ustinov and ordered these production facilities to be completely scrapped. I believed that this had been done. It turned out that the laboratories were simply moved to another oblast and development of the weapons continued. And I told Bush, [British prime minister John] Major, and [French president Francois] Mitterand this, that the program was under way. . . . I signed a decree setting up a special committee and banning the program. It was only after this that experts flew out specially and stopped the work."

One of the laboratories President Yelsin referred to was the biological warfare R&D facility, in the isolated city of Stepnogorsk in Kazakhstan, established by Moscow after the Sverdlovsk debacle. It developed a new type of anthrax, three times as virulent as the Sverdlovsk strain, called Alibekov anthrax. Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov was the first deputy chief for Biopreparat, the civilian front of the Soviet biological weapons program, who developed it.

The staggering scale of the Stepnogorsk operation remained hidden until Kazakhstan won its independence after the collapse of the USSR and a U.S. team of scientists and officials visit the facility in 1995. When the order came to be given, it was capable of producing 330 tonnes of Anthrax spores in 220 days.

Yeltsin promised pensions to the families bereaved in the outbreak. A week later, on April 11th 1992, another decree pledged Russia's compliance to the 1972 bio-weapons convention. An American team was finally allowed to investigate in Sverdlovsk itself in June 1992. X rays of the victims' lungs showed classic signs of anthrax inhalation. 1950s studies had proved that inhaled anthrax could take weeks to become symptomatic. The wind patterns and patient clusters south of Compound 19 all pointed to its guilt.

"Some deaths occurred outside the hospital, at home, or even in the street or in a field. Medical personnel accompanying the emergency transport vehicles often made an initial diagnosis of pneumonia. The chest pain, which was severe enough to suggest an initial diagnosis of myocardial infarction, undoubtedly resulted from the hemorrhagic thoracic lymphadentisis and mediastinitis."

"We have now circumscribed the time of common exposure to anthrax. The number of red dots we can plot on our spot map places nearly all of the victims within a narrow plume that stretches southeast from Compound 19 to the neighborhood past the ceramics factory. . . . we have clarified the relation of the timing of animal and human deaths and believe the exposure for both was nearly simultaneous. All the data – from interviews, documents, lists, autopsies, and wind reports – now fit, like pieces of a puzzle. What we know proves a lethal plume of anthrax came from Compound 19."

Though Yeltsin promised to "clean up" the poisonous legacy of the clandestine bio-warfare program the Sverdlovsk survivors are still waiting for their increased pensions and, incredibly, in a 1998 newspaper interview, Lieutenant General Valentin Yevstigneyev, deputy director of the Russian defense ministry’s directorate for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, flatly denied the military's involvement.

*PBS Interview with Dr. Alibekov

After his defection to the west Dr. Alibekov (now known as Ken Alibek) confirmed that Compound 19 had been responsible for the "industrial" production of anthrax. The following interview was appeared on "Frontline" on PBS in the USA.

What's the truth about Sverdlovsk? What actually happened?

Now people know that there was a special military settlement in Sverdlovsk. For a little period of time that settlement was involved in research and development, and manufacturing of biological weapons. One of the main purposes of that facility was to manufacture biological weapons on a basis of anthrax and they had a lot of weapons stockpiled--hundreds of tons. They manufactured anthrax on a permanent basis. That Friday night, because of the personnel's negligence, they removed a filter from an exhaust system and didn't put it back. When a new shift came they started the technological process and ... this material went out.

On Monday morning, the new filter wasn't on?

It's very difficult to say when, but I don't believe that the installation was without a filter for such a long time. Probably they found that there was no filter in a short period of time.

But not short enough to stop anthrax spores being released?

Yes, maybe minutes, maybe an hour or hour and a half, no more.

The wind blew the anthrax spores, as I understand it, away from Sverdlovsk. If the wind had been blowing the other way back into the city of Sverdlovsk what could the death rate have been?

Dozens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands.

When the accident happened, the Soviet Union simply lied about it. Why were the Soviets so worried about that accident?

Because, first of all, the Soviet Union ... [had] signed a treaty not to conduct any type of this work. Second, if the Soviet Union admitted that it was a case of infecting people by a biological weapon, it's very difficult to imagine what kind of consequences we could expect, because even when people didn't know the real cause of that accident, people were scared. But if they knew that it was a case of people's negligence and that a military facility infected and diseased people, it's very difficult to imagine what kind of consequences [there would have been].

When you look at Sverdlovsk, when you look at some of the intelligence that was being floated even back as early as the late 70s, why do you think the U.S. did not catch on sooner that there was a huge offensive program going on?

As far as I know, the intelligence community here in the United States and in Great Britain was 100% convinced that the Soviet Union had such a program. The problem was [that] there were some scientists, some consultants who believed that the Soviet Union didn't have this program, and that the Soviet Union observed the treaty on banning biological weapons.

So the inability of certain scientists in the United States to believe the intelligence reports, in the long run, prolonged the length of the program?

When we discuss such sensitive things, we cannot rely just on the opinion of a couple of scientists or even a group of scientists. This type of analysis should be conducted openly, using watch panels, very respected scientists and representatives of the intelligence community.....The intelligence community was absolutely right when it insisted that [the U.S.] had such a problem.

Was the anthrax leak in Sverdlovsk a point where you or others in the Soviet Union thought that the program would be uncovered?

For me as a physician, I thought this type of epidemic would be very, very suspicious, because I don't remember any epidemic of anthrax with such severity ... anthrax is a disease, it doesn't cause huge epidemics. And the amount of people infected simultaneously usually is not very high: five people, ten people, maybe twenty people. Some of them would have cutaneous form or skin form of anthrax. But when we saw dozens of cases of inhalation anthrax, this situation is very suspicious and could be caused by an anthrax aerosol. It was in my opinion, a clear explanation what was the real cause of that epidemic.

If the United States had caught on at that point and made a big fuss back in 1979, what do you imagine the effect would have been?

I believe, if in 1979 this country had started pressuring the Soviet Union severely [like it did] in 1990, by the middle of 80s, this program would have been dismantled in the Soviet Union.

In this quite shocking interview Dr Alibekov revealed the extent of the Soviet Bio-Weapons programme.

During the process of production in the Soviet Union's program, how many tons of biological warfare agents were storehoused?

The Soviet Union has two main directorates responsible for developing and manufacturing biological weapons. Biological weapons were stored at the Minister of Defense facilities. For example, [the] Kirov facility was responsible for storing Plague, about 20 tons of Plague. The Zagorsk facility (now it's Sergiev Posad) was responsible for storing smallpox biological weapons, about 20 tons as well. And the Ekaterinburg facility (at that time Sverdlovsk) was responsible for continuous manufacturing [of] anthrax biological weapons. The amount of this weapon produced was hundreds of tons.'

What were the total amount of biological weapons agents storehoused?

Nobody calculated these weapons in such a way. The problem was that some weapons were stockpiled and some weapons were just prepared for stockpiling. The amount of weapons stored was dozens or even hundreds of tons. There were several facilities there that were considered mobilization capacities. They could manufacture biological weapons in case of getting a special order.

If you have the production facilities, the technology and the knowledge, do you need to storehouse biological weaponry? How does it differ from nuclear or chemical weapons?

[It] depend[s] on what kind of offensive biological concept one or another country has. If a given country wants to use biological weapons immediately in any war or military conflict, it would store biological weapons. Some countries can develop production techniques, can have mobilization capacities, and they can start manufacturing biological weapons in case of getting orders.

But in Russia, with production facilities still existing, would they have to stockpile weapons? If at some point in the future they wanted to use agents, how quickly could they produce the agents for use?

First of all, I don't believe that Russia has biological weapons stockpiled. These weapons were destroyed somewhere at the end of 80s. But if Russia does have a desire to start manufacturing biological weapons, it would take no more than two to three months to start this activity again.

Why would it be so short a period of time?

Russia has at least four military facilities that could be used for manufacturing biological weapons. These facilities have not been opened for any visits. These facilities could be considered top secret offensive facilities and they have the capability to manufacture biological weapons. In addition to these facilities, Russia continues [running] several facilities, so-called Biopreparat facilities. They were considered mobilization capacities. And we know that Russia stores all production documentation for manufacturing biological weapons. It wouldn't be a big problem to start this production activity if there is desire or if there is an order.

Which U.S. cities were targeted, as far as you know, back in the days when the Soviets had these weapons stockpiled?

Biological weapons were considered strategic weapons. The targets ... in the United States, [would be] large cities, large military bases--these type of facilities ... we can assume New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago--these type of cities.

What kind of agents were thought of as useful in this situation?

According to the Soviet Union's philosophy ... smallpox, plague and anthrax were considered strategic operational biological weapons. In future wars, if Marburg was finished, Marburg was to be used as a strategic weapon. But what was complete and ready for application were the smallpox biological weapons, plague biological weapons and anthrax biological weapons.

If, for instance, New York City had become a target, what would have been the expected mortality rates with the use of biological weaponry?

In this case, it's very easy to calculate. This work was done many years ago by an American scientist. According to this calculation, about 50 kilos of anthrax biological weapon that covers a territory with the population of about 500,000 people, would cause 100,000 deaths. I calculated, with the data we had in Sverdlovsk when the accident occurred and the amount of people dead was about 100 people, between 65-100 people. But the amount of anthrax agent released in the city of Sverdlovsk was no more than 100 grams. In this case, [with] the efficiency of these weapons, if a sufficient amount of this weapon was used, mortality rate would be hundred of thousands of people.

In New York City, with millions of people, what would one expect to see?

Depending on the type of weapons, depending on the mode of applying, but if we use the worst case scenario, probably half the population. If the entire territory of New York City was covered with sufficient amount of this weapon, the amount of people dead would be millions.

What biological agents were worked on at the time that you were involved with the program?

The completely finished and accomplished biological weapons were as follows: smallpox biological weapon, then plague biological weapon, anthrax biological weapon, Venezuelan equine encephalitis biological weapon, tularemia biological weapon, brucellosis biological weapon, and some others. In the 70s and beginning of 80s the Soviet Union started developing new biological weapons--Marburg infection biological weapon, Ebola infection biological weapon, Machupo infection, [or] Bolivian hemorrhagic biological weapon, and some others.

Why smallpox? How important was that considered to be as a biological weapon?

Yes, it's a good question, because smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980. And just immediately after, the Soviet Union government realized that nobody would have defense in the future against this agent, because it was declared [that] there was no necessity to vaccinate people any more. This weapon became one of the most important weapons, because the entire population of the Earth became absolutely vulnerable to this agent and to this weapon ... smallpox is very contagious. A relatively high mortality rate: 35-40%. And if the entire population of the Earth doesn't have immunity against this agent, possible consequences after applying these weapons would be horrible.

How could that even be considered as a weapon, with the reality of the epidemics that could occur and could get back to harm your own people?

First of all, when we are talking about strategic weapons, strategic weapons would never be used close to the territory of the country that is going to apply these weapons. Second, smallpox is very contagious. It's transmittable from person to person. Of course, the first effect would be from so-called primary aerosols, immediately after aerosolization. Then people who have been infected would start infecting other people. We know that smallpox is a very transmittable, contagious disease and it can cause epidemics or even pandemics. Smallpox is very efficient weapon because it could cause a lot of infected and dead people.

Was it assumed that before the weapon would be used, the Russian people would be vaccinated to protect them against blowback from people who traveled with it?

In my opinion, nobody cared what would happen to the Russians, because this weapon would be used just in case of, according to the Soviet Union's concept, a total war. And when we're talking about total war, of course, nobody would considered the several hundred thousands of dead Russians.

Why was the smallpox transferred from the Ivanovsky Institute in Moscow down to Vector in Koltsovo?

There was, according to the World Health Organization's decision, just two repositories: one of them in the city of Atlanta, CDC [Center for Disease Control], and another one in the city of Moscow, Ivanovsky Institute. But in the late 80s, the Soviet Union had a desire to relocate these stocks from Ivanovsky to Vector, to cover offensive biological works, because even at that time, officially Vector couldn't conduct any work with smallpox. But in reality, [they] did. At least, for that period of time, transferring smallpox stocks from Ivanovsky Institute to Vector could cover some of these works.

The main reason that it was transferred was so that it could be used in further research on biological weaponry?

At least at that time. In the beginning of 90s, when I was the first deputy chief of Biopreparat, I had several visits to the minister of health, just asking to relocate the stocks from Ivanovsky Institute to the Vector. The main reason was to develop a cover story for conducting [official] biological work at the Vector facility.

Why was research done to genetically alter smallpox?

Why was it necessary to develop a 100-megaton bomb, when the United States and the Soviet Union had 10-, 20-, 50-megaton bombs? This was just a logic of developing weapons. You know? If you've got a weapon, your next step [is] to develop a more sophisticated weapon.

Smallpox is a fine weapon. But it could be more fine, just by adding some foreign genes. In this case ... I am asking the scientific community here in the United States, in the world, just watch such works very carefully, because in many cases, these works are conducted in ... I call them dark zones. We cannot say when we look at one another's work, what is the real purpose of this work. This could be used for developing new agents, for developing new weapons. This is a very sensitive area and situation. We need to be very careful and cautious.

What are dark zones?

I call the area [a dark zone] when the result obtained could be used for defensive purposes and could be used for offensive purposes. Let's analyze this situation: the genetic alteration of vaccinia [cowpox] virus. In many cases, you would never find any publication about genetic alteration of smallpox virus, because when we conduct the work with smallpox virus, it's very dangerous and you need to explain why you are genetically altering such virus. ... [however] smallpox virus (variola major) and vaccinia virus are very close genetically. When you conduct genetic engineering work with a vaccinia virus, the result of such a work would be applied to variola major. When we conduct this work, we cannot say what could be the real purpose or real result of this work. But some results obtained when you conduct work with vaccinia virus, could be applied for smallpox virus.

Was there ever a fear, during the time that you were there, that the U.S. was going to discover the program and therefore bring pressure against the Soviet government?

Somewhere in 1986-1987, we started feeling some pressure. We could understand what was the primary source for this pressure. We were asked by the government of the Soviet Union to analyze whether or not it would be possible to open some facilities [without] revealing the real purposes of these facilities. We conducted this work for several years. And a lot of scientists, a lot of leaders didn't believe it would be possible to open, because these facilities were clearly offensive facilities. But in 1989, we started feeling severe pressure from the United States and Great Britain. We were forced to open our facilities because in 1989, the United States and Great Britain realized that the Soviet Union had a very sophisticated and powerful offensive program. When these countries started pressuring the Soviet Union very hard, it was a kind of starting point for the destruction, for the dismantling of this program.

What do you think the ramifications are of the long-term program that did exist--the amount of material and the amount of knowledge that was created?

The problem now is [that] practically all the countries in the world understand that biological weapons are a very serious threat ... a lot of countries are trying to develop biological weapons, and for these countries, the Soviet Union was some kind of role model for developing these weapons, because the Soviet Union was able to develop one of the most powerful and sophisticated programs in the world. A lot of countries are following the Soviet Union's program. I strongly believe that some Asian countries, Arabic countries ... are trying to develop their own offensive program. In my opinion, for them, this country (I mean the Soviet Union) was some kind of example, some kind of role model for these programs' development.

Besides being a role model, what about the issue of actual information and/or samples from the stockpiles that existed? Should we also fear the transfer of knowledge and/or actual agents?

I'm very doubtful that the Russian government would sell any equipment (I mean sophisticated equipment), technologies, or strains to any other country. Thousands of scientists who were involved in developing biological weapons are now under-employed and unemployed, and this is the biggest threat. If you are under-employed and unemployed, in some cases, you will try to sell your knowledge, your expertise to people or to countries that are interested in such weapons.

In 1991, what were your impressions when you came and toured the U.S. facilities of what had once been an offensive program?

First of all, before I came, I strongly believed that this country [U.S.] had such a program. But when I came and I saw the abandoned facilities, and I knew that Soviet Union intelligence services didn't have any information regarding any other facilities but these ones. When I saw that everything was abandoned, of course, for me it was great that this country didn't have such a program any more.

When you went back to the Soviet Union, is that what you reported?

When I came back, and when I was asked to prepare my personal report about this program's existence, I said, "No" because I didn't believe that this country had such a program... within two weeks I resigned commission and because I was a colonel of [Russian] army, in January of 1992, I resigned from the Russian army. And in February, I left all my scientific and administrative positions and quit.

You were asked to lie about what you saw?

I'll give you this example. General Yevstigneyev, who was in charge of this 15th Directorate, and a part of our visiting group formed by the 15th Directorate, said directly to his subordinates, "If you don't find any evidence that could be considered this country offensive program existence, you'll be fired."

Where is he today?

He was a major general. Now he's lieutenant general. He has received a promotion, and now he's in charge of first deputy chief of the Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Directorate of the Minister of Defense. All of the people who were responsible for research and developing and manufacturing such weapons, are now in that place. Former colonels became generals and they continue managing these facilities and enterprises.

The fact that the general, who told you to lie or else you would lose your job, is now in charge of the entire program in the Soviet Union--is that not somewhat worrisome?

That's what I say all the time. Just take a look at Russia ... the country itself and this program. The people who were in charge of this program continue working in this area. All the colonels who were in charge of these facilities became generals. All the documentation is stored at some places to manufacture biological weapons. All these facilities are still top secret facilities. And in my opinion, until Russia opens these facilities and reveals everything regarding this program, we cannot believe this country.

Original Documents here

Recently published book by Jeanne Guillemin

PDF report by Jeanne Guillemin

Biohazard by Ken Alibek (Dr. Alibekov) As the cover says 'The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it'.

"A hundred kilograms of anthrax spores would, in optimal atmospheric conditions, kill up to three million people in any of the densely populated metropolitan areas of the United States...A single SS-18 [missile] could wipe out the population of a city as large as New York."

Gulag

2006-04-06T20:48:00.001+10:00

To the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of
the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)

We appeal to you, asking you to pay a minimum of attention
to our request.

We are prisoners who are returning from the Solovetsky
concentration camp because of our poor health. We went there
full of energy and good health, and now we are returning as
invalids, broken and crippled emotionally and physically. We are
asking you to draw your attention to the arbitrary use of power
and the violence that reign at the Solovetsky concentration camp
in Kemi and in all sections of the concentration camp. It is
difficult for a human being even to imagine such terror, tyranny,
violence, and lawlessness. When we went there, we could not
conceive of such a horror, and now we, crippled ourselves,
together with several thousands who are still there, appeal to
the ruling center of the Soviet state to curb the terror that
reigns there. As though it weren't enough that the Unified State
Political Directorate [OGPU] without oversight and due process
sends workers and peasants there who are by and large innocent
(we are not talking about criminals who deserve to be punished),
the former tsarist penal servitude system in comparison to
Solovky had 99% more humanity, fairness, and legality. [...]

People die like flies, i.e., they die a slow and painful
death; we repeat that all this torment and suffering is placed
only on the shoulders of the proletariat without money, i.e., on
workers who, we repeat, were unfortunate to find themselves in
the period of hunger and destruction accompanying the events of
the October Revolution, and who committed crimes only to save
themselves and their families from death by starvation; they have
already borne the punishment for these crimes, and the vast
majority of them subsequently chose the path of honest labor.
Now because of their past, for whose crime they have already
paid, they are fired from their jobs. Yet, the main thing is
that the entire weight of this scandalous abuse of power, brute
violence, and lawlessness that reign at Solovky and other
sections of the OGPU concentration camp is placed on the
shoulders of workers and peasants; others, such as
counterrevolutionaries, profiteers and so on, have full wallets
and have set themselves up and live in clover in the Soviet
State, while next to them, in the literal meaning of the word,
the penniless proletariat dies from hunger, cold, and back-
breaking 14-16 hour days under the tyranny and lawlessness of
inmates who are the agents and collaborators of the State
Political Directorate [GPU].

If you complain or write anything ("Heaven forbid"), they
will frame you for an attempted escape or for something else, and
they will shoot you like a dog. They line us up naked and
barefoot at 22 degrees below zero and keep us outside for up to
an hour. It is difficult to describe all the chaos and terror
that is going on in Kemi, Solovky, and the other sections of the
concentrations camp. All annual inspections uncover a lot of
abuses. But what they discover in comparison to what actually
exists is only a part of the horror and abuse of power, which the
inspection accidently uncovers. (One example is the following
fact, one of a thousand, which is registered in GPU and for which
the guilty have been punished: THEY FORCED THE INMATES TO EAT
THEIR OWN FECES. "Comrades," if we dare to use this phrase,
verify that this is a fact from reality, about which, we repeat,
OGPU has the official evidence, and judge for yourself the full
extent of effrontery and humiliation in the supervision by those
who want to make a career for themselves. [...]

We are sure and we hope that in the All-Union Communist
Party there are people, as we have been told, who are humane and
sympathetic; it is possible, that you might think that it is our
imagination, but we swear to you all, by everything that is
sacred to us, that this is only one small part of the nightmarish
truth, because it makes no sense to make this up. We repeat, and
will repeat 100 times, that yes, indeed there are some guilty
people, but the majority suffer innocently, as is described
above. The word law, according to the law of the GPU
concentration camps, does not exist; what does exist is only the
autocratic power of petty tyrants, i.e., collaborators, serving
time, who have power over life and death. Everything described
above is the truth and we, ourselves, who are close to the grave
after 3 years in Solovky and Kemi and other sections, are asking
you to improve the pathetic, tortured existence of those who are
there who languish under the yoke of the OGPU's tyranny,
violence, and complete lawlessness....

To this we subscribe: G. Zheleznov, Vinogradov, F. Belinskii.

Dec. 14, 1926

Document from the Library of Congress

Kulaks

2006-04-06T20:32:00.000+10:00

Hanging Order

11-8-18 (11th August 1918)

Send to Penza
To Comrades Kuraev,
Bosh, Minkin and
other Penza
communists

Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost's must be suppressed
without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this,
because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the
kulaks." We need to set an example.

1) You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public
sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.
2) Publish their names.
3) Take away all of their grain.
4) Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's
telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for
hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out:
let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.

Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.

Yours, Lenin

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.

..................................

TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTS: This is an order from Lenin to communists in Penza, August 11, 1918. Lenin uses the derogative term kulach'e in reference to the class of prosperous peasants. A volost' was a territorial/administrative unit consisting of a few villages and surrounding land.

Document from the Library of Congress

Churchill Speaks

2006-04-05T18:37:00.000+10:00

"We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival"

"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

"Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong."

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

"I never worry about action, but only inaction."

"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required."

"We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire...Give us the tools and we will finish the job."

"The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it."

"The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is."

"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last."

"This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure."

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism."

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law."

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherrent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."

"These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived."

"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all others."

Daedalus - The future that never was (2)

2006-04-05T13:45:00.000+10:00

Who can forget the highly successful British manned space programme of the early seventies, just before that rash of creepy alien invasions?

Many wonderful spacecraft have been launched since then but a project to send a large ship to another star is still fires the imagination. It seems an impossible dream, yet just such a ship was seriously proposed on a cold night in London, over 30 years ago.

Project Daedalus, named for the mythical greek inventor who built is own wings, was the starship planned by the British Interplanetary Society in 1973, one of the first serious projects in designing a craft to reach the stars.

The B.I.S. had first studied possible space ship designs in the 1930s, 20 years before they became a reality. They invisioned that a mission like Daedalus could fly by the late 1990s.

Alan Bond argued that, not only did we have the ability to detect radio emmissions from alien civilisations, but we had (in 1973!) the capability to build an unmanned probe to reach a nearby star with existing technology, or logical extensions of it.

A public meeting in London on January 10, 1973 discussed the proposal, in the days when the question was 'how do we do it' not 'why bother at all?'

For the sake of simplicity the simplest mission, a stellar fly by, was chosen. The target was Barnard's star, 6 light years away, which could be reached in 30-40 years, allowing the engineers who had launched it to see it through.

Daedalus would be boosted to 15% of the speed of light and then coast to its destination, where it would have about 70 hours to study the system as it flashed through it. Slowing the craft to orbit Barnards star was not a possibility.

Various propulsion systems were discussed, including laser powered sails, fusion power and a version of the NERVA project already abandoned by the USA. The choice came down to the promising, but currently impractical interstellar ramjet, scooping up the tenuous hydrogen between the stars for fuel and nuclear pulse or internal confinement fusion. This, the favoured option, works by exploding 250 pellets of deuterium and helium-3 a second in a combustion chamber over an acceleration phase of four years. A magnetic field would stream the plasma behind the ship to propell it forward. The pellets would be ignited by high-power lasers or electron beams. Doubtless Greenpeace would have been picketing Pluto as it sped by.

The problems of interstellar radiation and transmitting the information back to Earth were discussed and committees set up to take the design further, work a dozen scientists continued up to 1978.

Daedalus first stage
The 3,500 ton Daedalus would be constructed in orbit, carrying 50,000 tons of fuel and 500 more of scientific payload. The first stage would fire for two years, taking the spacecraft to 7.1% of light speed, before being jettisoned. The second stage would fire for 1.8 years before being shut down to begin the 46-year cruise to Barnard's Star. Daedalus would carry 18 autonomous probes, equipped with artificial intelligence, to investigate the star and its planets. The 40-meter diameter engine of the second stage would double as a communications dish. On top of the second stage would be a payload bay containing the probes, two 5-meter optical telescopes, and two 20-meter radio telescopes. A 50-ton disk of beryllium, 7 millimeters thick, would protect the payload bay from collisions with dust and meteoroids on the interstellar phase during the flight, while an artificially-generated cloud of particles some 200 km ahead of the vehicle would help disperse larger particles as the probe plunged into the planetary system of the target star. En route, Daedalus would make measurements of the interstellar medium.

Daedalus Warden
Some 25 years after launch, its onboard telescopes would begin examining the area around Barnard's Star to learn more about any accompanying planets. The information would be fed to the probes' computers, which would be deployed between 7.2 and 1.8 years before the main craft entered the target system. Powered by nuclear-ion drives and carrying cameras, spectrometers, and other sensory equipment, the probes would fly past the planets looking for life or conditions favorable for biology.

It never happened of course, and 30 years later we're no closer to building such a probe. New techniquesNew have detected host of planets orbiting nearby stars and a rash of newly launched and proposed satellites could allow us to detect earth sized planets in the next few years. If we can find oxygen in a planets atmosphere, by analysing the light which passed through it, then we have found life.

Some of these projects (like the French COROT telescope) are late, whille the problems of the shuttle fleet and the much delayed, hugely expensive ISS have led to NASA slashing its funding of deep space scientific research.

Proposed for 2004, COROT is still to fly

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a telescope already fully installed in a Boeing 747, has been cancelled, as has the Terrestrial Planet Finder, would have studied the formation of planets beyond our solar system. The mission to Europa, the most likely site of alternative life in our solar system, has gone, while the DAWN mission to explore the asteroid belt, after initial cancellation was revied after a public outcry. After already spending $257 million on it, it would have cost $14 million dollars to cancel. It cost just $73 million to revive.

The Kepler space telescope, delayed several times for fiscal reasons, will search for earth type planets around distant stars. NASA plans to delay the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope nearly two years, to 2013. The SIM planet finder has now been delayed to 2015, will it ever fly at all?

Mythical Greek inventor Daedalus (Daidalo - "cunningly wrought") built the the Labyrinth of Crete for Minos but, falling out of favour with his patron, was imprisoned in a high tower. Seeking to escape to his native Sicily he made wings of swan feathers, for himself and his son Icarus. They leapt from the tower and flew towards freedom but his impetuous son, defying his father's orders, flew too close to the sun. The wax holding his feathers melted away, his wings frayed and fell apart and Icarus tumbled to his death while his distraut father flew safely home.

How many of these brave ventures will get off the ground? How many will become nothing more than footnotes in history? Yet another project Icarus? How many of them will become the future that could have been? Let's get on with it!

Painting by Alan Reed

Daedalus specs from Bond, A., Martin, A. R., Buckland, R. A., Grant, T. J., Lawton, A. T., et al. "Project Daedalus." Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 31 (Supplement, 1978).

Tihs psot is a Dgos dnnier

2006-04-05T11:38:00.001+10:00

Wlel, I konw tihs pekry llitte mmee has been bizznug auornd the irnnteet snice frveeor but I'm a mtut lsot in scape so sue me for miisnsg taht puiraactlr minteeg. It deosn't mttaer if the ogrniail stduy was an urabn mtyh, the penonmhea wkors and it ficsaetnas eevn dgos.

The lneogr and mroe uifanimalr the wrods the mroe dcfuiflit tehy bcemoe to flutlney usbalnmrce, aeibssintriasatslinmnhiteadm for epamxle, but so mnay wdors in Eglinsh are trhee lrteets or lses and aollw the scneente to folw. I gsues the cxneott aowlls the biran to culcaatle if a pcuarilatr wrod is, for epmalxe, slat or salt.

Lggaanue is an aizmang thnig, aobut the one tnhig me and uberwanker fuckwit Naom Choskmy aegre on. Smoe tuogens, lkie Herbew and Airabc, don't acllatuy wirte the vweols and waht's gnoig on wtih Manirdan Csinhee? We msut be hrawrdeid for lunaagge, eevry ntiaon and tibre, and tehy can be petrty mcuh ainthyng. I siltl tinhk pnhicos, sllpeing out a wrod by its sundos, is the bset way to tceah a cilhd but obouslivy we sikm wolhe wdors ocne sillked. I've neevr plalirutacry bevelied in dxseyila - flmrroey kwonn as spuitd mlddie cslas cdlehrin wtih phsuy pnearts - but if we can raed wdros cptmeolely seabrcmld whree deos taht laeve wrod bdinsenls?

As was netod on the Riusasn 'Avva' stie, it dosen't qitue wrok Riuassn bausece the lsat leettr is ualsuly prat of an inoftilcen, olny the fsirt has a fxeid meninag form the root. It is slitl qtuie psbsoile tguohh.

Aawnyy, Dog laugnage funod the sooltuin mnay mnoos ago. Woof!

The Kronstadt Spring

2006-04-04T18:04:00.000+10:00

Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin is, with good reason, regularly voted the greatest film ever made. There were no Soviet films made to lionise the Kronstadt Uprising, to relive the early spring of 1921 when this fortified Baltic port, guarding the approaches to Petrograd (St. Petersburg), erupted in rebellion against the new Bolshevik dictatorship.

The Kronstadt sailors had been the vanguard of the revolutions in 1905 and 1917 when they sailed the commandered cruiser Aurora up the River Neva and fired on the Czar's Winter Palace, the first shots of the October Revolution. Trotsky called them the "pride and glory of the Russian Revolution". Four years later it was Trotsky who commanded the Red Army to crush them.

The Civil War had ended in Western Russia in November 1920 with the defeat of General Wrangel in the Crimea, but popular protests were erupting in the countryside against 'War Communism' and forced grain requisitioning. In urban areas, a wave of spontaneous strikes occurred and in late February a near general strike broke out in Petrograd.

On February 26th 1921, the crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency meeting and sent a delegation to Petrograd to report back on the ongoing strike movement.

On their turn two days later, the delegates informed their fellow sailors of the strikes, their sympathy with them and the government repression of the workers. At a meeting on the Petropavlovsk a resolution was passed, raising 15 demands including free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press, assembly and organisation to workers, peasants, anarchists and left-socialists. Like the Petrograd workers, the Kronstadt sailors also demanded the equalisation of wages and the end of roadblock detachments restricting travel and the ability of workers to bring food into the city.

A mass meeting of sixteen thousand people was held in Anchor Square on March 1st and the 'Petropavlovsk resolution' was passed after the Petrograd delegation had made its report. Kronstadt repudiated the ‘Communist’ government and revived the original slogan of the 1917 revolution "All Power to the Soviets" - adding "and not to parties." This revolt, they hoped, was the "Third Revolution", after February and October of 1917 and would herald a true workers republic of freely elected, self-managed, soviets.

Resolution passed by the crew of the Petropavlovsk on 8th February, 1921.

(1) Immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and the peasants. The new elections should be by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.

(2) Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and the Left Socialist parties.

(3) The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organizations.

(4) The organization, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.

(5) The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and for all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to workers and peasant organizations.

(6) The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.

(7) The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces. No political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In the place of the political sections, various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.

(8) The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.

(9) The equalization of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.

(10) The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups. The abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.

(11) The granting of the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.

(12) We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.

Only two Bolshevik officials voted against it. A delegation of 30 was sent to Petrograd to explain the resolution to the Bolshevik government and suffered immediate arrest. A committee was formed to organise the defence of Kronstadt.

The Communists responded with an ultimatum on March 2nd. They claimed the revolt had been organised by French spies and ex-Tsarist officers led by ex-General Kozlovsky - the man Trotsky had appointed to the fortress as a military specialist.

"Just like other White Guard insurrections, the mutiny of General Kozlovsky and the crew of the battleship Petropavlovsk has been organised by Entente spies."
- Moscow Radio Broadcast, 3rd March, 1921.

"Comrade workers, red soldiers and sailors. We stand for the power of the Soviets and not that of the parties. We are for free representation of all who toil. Comrades, you are being misled. At Kronstadt all power is in the hands of the revolutionary sailors, of red soldiers and of workers. It is not in the hands of White Guards, allegedly headed by a General Kozlovsky, as Moscow Radio tells you."
- Kronstadt Provisionary Revolutionary Committee, 4th March, 1921.

Kronstadt reinvented itself in its fleeting days of freedom. Trade union committees were re-elected and a council of trade unions formed. Rank and file Communists left the party in droves, expressing support for the revolt and its aim of "all power to the soviets and not to parties." About 300 Communists were arrested but treated humanely in prison. Up to one-third of the delegates elected to Kronstadt's rebel conference of March 2nd were Communists. The sailors even brought out their own newspaper, the Kronstadt Izvestia.

Lenin and Zinoviev isolated the island, ordered a press blackout, and organised special shipments of clothing, shoes, and meat into Petrograd to pacify its rebellious citizens. Petrograd was under martial law and could take little action to support Kronstadt.

On March 5th, two days before the bombardment of Kronstadt had begun, anarchists led by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman offered themselves as intermediates to facilitate negotiations between the rebels and the government. This was ignored by the Bolsheviks.

"[e]ven when the fighting had started, it would have been easy to avoid the worst: it was only necessary to accept the mediation offered by the anarchists (notably Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman) who had contact with the insurgents. For reasons of prestige and through an excess of authoritarianism, the Central Committee refused this course."
- Bolshevik eye-witness Victor Serge.

The Bolsheviks threatened to shoot the rebels "like partridges" and took sailors' families hostage in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). The decision to attack Kronstadt had already been made.

"5 March, if not earlier, the Soviet leaders had decided to crush Kronstadt. Thus, in a cable to . . . [a] member of the Council of Labour and Defence, on that day, Trotsky insisted that 'only the seizure of Kronstadt will put an end to the political crisis in Petrograd."
- Historian Israel Getzler based on documents from the Soviet Archives.

The Communist government would "make no concessions to the proletariat, while at the same time they were offering to compromise with the capitalists of Europe and America."
- Anarchist eye witness Alexander Berkman.

Lev Trotsky had been despached to Petrograd to crush the rebellion. He assembled as many loyal troops as he could under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevskii and, on March 7, began the bombardment of the island by the great guns of Petrograd. Though the rebels stood alone, without hope of relief or assistance, the first Communist assault was an abject failure.

"After the Gulf had swallowed its first victims, some of the Red soldiers… began to defect to the insurgents. Others refused to advance, in spite of threats from the machine gunners at the rear who had orders to shoot any wavers. The commissar of the northern group reported that his troops wanted to send a delegation to Kronstadt to find out the insurgents' demands."
- Anarchist historian Paul Avrich.

"At the beginning of the operation the second battalion had refused to march. With much difficulty and thanks to the presence of communists, it was persuaded to venture on the ice. As soon as it reached the first south battery, a company of the 2nd battalion surrendered. The officers had to return alone."
- Millitary Report on the 561 Infantry Regiment used against the Kronstadt sailors March, 1921.

7th March, 1921: Distant rumbling reaches my ears as I cross the Nevsky. It sounds again, stronger and nearer, as if rolling toward me. All at once I realize the artillery is being fired. It is 6 p.m. Kronstadt has been attacked! My heart is numb with despair; something has died within me.
- Eyewitness Alexander Berkman, diary entry.

Over the next ten days three bloody assaults were launched against the fortress. Troops marching across the ice were slaughtered, but they gradually depleted the strength and supplies of the rebels. Towards the end of the revolt Trotsky sanctioned the use of chemical warfare against the rebels and if they had not been crushed, a gas attack would have been carried out. Though the government forces lost hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded, they numbered about 45,000 troops by March 16, when the final assault was launched. Clad in white snow capes, and bolstered by hundreds of volunteer delegates from the Tenth Party Congress then proceeding in Moscow, the troops attacked by night from three directions and forced their way into the city.

The Bolsheviks "arrested over 100 so-called instigators, 74 of whom he had publicly shot." The crews of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol fought to the bitter end, as did the cadets of the mechanics school, the torpedo detachment and the communications unit. In all, despite being massively outnumbered and outgunned, the rebels killed upwards of 10,000 Bolshevik troops before being overwhelmed. Once the Bolshevik forces finally entered the city of Kronstadt "the attacking troops took revenge for their fallen comrades in an orgy of bloodletting." The next day, as an irony of history, the Bolsheviks celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Paris Commune.*

"..fort to fort and street to street; they stood and were shot crying, "Long live the world revolution! Hundreds of prisoners were taken away to Petrograd and handed to the Cheka; months later they were still being shot in small batches, a senseless and criminal agony. Those defeated sailors belonged body and soul to the Revolution; they had voiced the suffering and the will of the Russian people."
- Victor Serge, who along with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, had attempted to mediate between the Kronstadt sailors and the Soviet government in
"Memoirs of a Revolutionary."

17th March, 1921: Kronstadt has fallen today. Thousands of sailors and workers lie dead in its streets. Summary execution of prisoners and hostages continues.
- Alexander Berkman, diary entry.

30th September, 1921: One by one the embers of hope have died out. Terror and despotism have crushed the life born in October. Dictatorship is trampling the masses under the foot. The revolution is dead; its spirit cries in the wilderness. The Bolshevik myth must be destroyed. I have decided to leave Russia.
- Alexander Berkman, diary entry.

"[h]undreds of prisoners were taken away to Petrograd; months later they were still being shot in small batches, a senseless and criminal agony".
- Victor Serge.

4,836 Kronstadt sailors were arrested and deported to the Crimea and Caucasus immediately after the defeat of the revolt. On Lenin's orders they were then despatched to forced labour camps in Archangelsk, Vologda and Murmansk. Eight thousand sailors, soldiers and civilians escaped over the ice to find freedom in Finland. A statistical communiqué stated that 6,528 rebels had been arrested in all, of whom 2,168 had been shot (33%), 1,955 had been sentenced to forced labour (of whom 1,486 received a five year sentence), and 1,272 were released. A statistical review of the revolt made in 1935-6 listed the number arrested as 10,026 and stated that it had "not been possible to establish accurately the number of the repressed." The families of the rebels were deported, with Siberia considered as "undoubtedly the only suitable region" for them.

Kronstadt's newspaper was renamed as the victors eliminated all traces of the revolt. Anchor Square became "Revolutionary Square" and the rebel battleships 'Petropavlovsk' and 'Sevastopol' were renamed the 'Marat' and 'Paris Commune'.

Trotsky later denied any involvement in the massacre, a claim dismantled in a famous pamphlet by American anarchist and witness to the events Emma Goldman.

"In point of truth I see no marked difference between the two protagonists of the benevolent system of the dictatorship except that Leon Trotsky is no longer in power to enforce its blessings, and Josef Stalin is...Stalin did not come down as a gift from heaven to the hapless Russian people. He is merely continuing the Bolshevik traditions, even if in a more relentless manner."
- Emma Goldman in 'Trotsky protests too much" published by the Anarchist Communist Federation in Glasgow, 1938.

"Some people in America have come to think of the Bolsheviks as a small clique of very bad men who are tyrannizing over a vast number of highly intellectual people who would form an admirable Government among themselves the moment the Bolshevik regime was overthrown. This is a mistake, for there is nobody to take our place save butcher Generals and helpless bureaucrats who have already displayed their total incapacity for rule."
- V. I. Lenin interviewed by a correspondent of The New York Herald
Published in English on March 15, 1921 in The New York Herald Tribune No. 197
Published in Russian on March 26, 1921 in Petrogradskaya Pravda No. 67

"Kronstadt fell. But it fell victorious in its idealism and moral purity, its generosity and higher humanity. Kronstadt was superb. It justly prided itself on not having shed the blood of its enemies, the Communists within its midst. It had no executions. The untutored, unpolished sailors, rough in manner and speech, were too noble to follow the Bolshevik example of vengeance: they would not shoot even the hated Commissars. Kronstadt personified the generous, all for-giving spirit of the Slavic soul and the century-old emancipation movement of Russia.

Kronstadt was the first popular and entirely independent attempt at liberation from the yoke of State Socialism -- an attempt made directly by the people, by the workers, soldiers and sailors themselves. It was the first step toward the third Revolution which is inevitable and which, let us hope, may bring to long-suffering Russia lasting freedom and peace."
- from 'Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist' by Alexander Berkman.

Ida Mett's history of the 'The Kronstadt Uprising'', first published as 'La Commune de Cronstadt' in Paris in 1938, remains one of the best accounts of this final crushing of the Russian people's hopes of a genuine revolution against tyranny.

Read Scott Parker's thesis here.

Original Documents from Spartacus.

Alexander Berkman's full account can be read here

Maggots and Men'' - An American independent film about the uprising.

The '80s Essex Punk Band!

Wikipedia

* account from 17 moments in Soviet History''.

The future that never was (1)

2006-04-04T15:16:00.000+10:00

We live in a time, we're always told, of unprecedented change, a roller coaster ride of fast accelerating technology which thrills us space travelling canines and terrifys the whining euro-weenie left.

Except those of us who were pups in previous decades sometimes feel just a little bit cheated. Nearly 40 years after Neil and Buzz landed on the moon we're still messing about on the ISS in low earth orbit. There is no-one further from earth right now than I got in 1959. Really, was I despatched up there in vain? Where are the moon stations? It was Space 1999 for heaven's sake! Where is our mission to Mars? There were collectable cards in packets of English tea in the early seventies which specifically promised these things!

THE MANNED FLIGHT TO MARS
"America's plan for a manned expedition to Mars involves two nuclear-powered spaceships, each carrying six astronauts, launched (according to one plan), on Nov. 12, 1981. Reaching Mars on Aug. 9, 1982, each vehicle would orbit the planet for 80 days while unmanned probes, followed by three men from each ship, would descend to carry out scientific research and collect samples. During the return to Earth (landing on Aug. 141 1983) the expedition would fly past Venus to observe the planet and use its gravity to reduce speed."

As Seinfeld asked, where are the undersea cities? Why don't you all autogyro to work? When did we decide we didn't want huge cart wheeling space stations and were quite happy with IPods instead. 2001 was supposed to be a mission to meet aliens around Jupiter, not a mythical millenium bug! When exactly did the future become virtual?

Millitary technology has moved on apace in many ways, precision JDAM munitions and fifth generation fighters like the F-22 Raptor are incredible works of engineering.

And yet. The best air superiority fighter in the USAF in 1976 was the F-15 Eagle, a great fighter indeed, but 30 years later it's still the mainstay in the air. The hulking B-52 bomber remains a front line aircraft more than 50 years on from its first flight on May 15, 1952!. The C-130 Hercules has found a new lease of life as a formidable gunship whille Vietnam era Chinooks still provide most of our heavy lift helicopters, fine aircraft one and all but come on!

Britain went from spit and brown paper biplanes in 1937 to jet fighters in 8 years flat. Yes, there was a world war, yes there was the cold war, yes wars act as tremendous spurs to innovation and development.

And yet. There was a future which never happened.

Take a look at this.

It was cancelled not because it was a failure, but because its mission was replaced by ICBMs. Yes, it was vulnerable to Soviet SAMs, because it couldn't manovere or fly low level missions but I don't care. It should have flown like Concorde, as a work of art alone. It's the most beautiful plane there never was. This is part of the future which never happened.

Straight out of a thunderbirds episode. This is the incredible B-70 Valkyrie Mach 3 bomber which was designed to replace the B-52 in a programme which began in 1955. That's over 50 years ago. This is an aircraft which would seem incredibly futuristic if it was flashing over our heads today.

The British equivilent was the stunning TSR2.

A British heavy strike aircraft which, had it not been cancelled by a myopic, penny pinching labour government more determined to destroy the British aircraft industry than fight the Soviets, would have been by far the best aircraft of its type in the world in its day. Hell, it'd still be flying today. Labour bruiser Denis Healy, in cancelling the plane in 1965, said the far inferior American F-111 would be a cheaper option.

In the end the RAF didn't even get that. The British Government bought the inferior American F-4 Phantom instead. But, as a sop to local industry, they were Rolls Royce Spey engines. These were more powerful, but required more fuel, which cut the plane's range, which meant drop fuel tanks had to be fitted, which left the plane slower and less manouverable than it had been with the American engines. I know a dog's dinner when I see one - The Phantoms were extremely expensive, couldn't hold a candle to the TSR2 and, as air superiority fighters, were comprehensively outflown by the wonderfully purist BAC Lightning until its retirement in 1988. The 3 nation MRCA Tornado, which formed the mainstay of the RAF for 20 years, was a slightly inferior TSR2 produced 15 years late. Why are we pouring money into welfare, sapping the moral fibre of our youth, instead of investing in wonder weapons just for the sheer beauty of it all? What are we? French?

Forget Retropolis. Let's get on with it!

Painting by Christian Kesler

We'll keep the white flag flying here.

2006-04-04T10:09:00.000+10:00

"Can't you show me nothing but surrender?" Patti Smith - Horses.

"After the war the conventional wisdom that dominated the Cold War period was that communism was a military threat, which was thought more likely to influence the public mind than an ideological threat to capitalism, which
was what governments really feared. I came to realise that the USSR never planned to overrun Western Europe."

- Tony Benn in his book 'Dare to be a Daniel' Published in Paperback 2005

"In the first massive nuclear strike by the troops of the Missile Forces of the Czechoslovak Front, the front aviation and long-range aviation added to the front must destroy the main group of troops of the first operations echelon of the 7th US Army, its means of nuclear attack, and the centers of command and control of the aviation.

Plan of Actions of the Czechoslovak People’s Army for War Period 1963

"Labour's commitment is to establish a non-nuclear defence policy for this country. This means the rejection of any fresh nuclear bases or weapons on British soil or in British waters, and the removal of all existing nuclear bases and weapons, thus enabling us to make a direct contribution to an eventually much wider nuclear-free zone in Europe."

- Labour Party Manifesto 1983

"During the development of the operation, the troops of the Missile Forces and aviation must destroy the approaching deep operative reserves, the newly discovered means of nuclear attack, and the enemy aviation.

Altogether the operation will require the use of 131 nuclear missiles and nuclear bombs; specifically 96 missiles and 35 nuclear bombs. The first nuclear strike will use 41 missiles and nuclear bombs. The immediate task will require using 29 missiles and nuclear bombs. The subsequent task could use 49 missiles and nuclear bombs. 12 missiles and nuclear bombs should remain in the reserve of the Front."

Plan of Actions of the Czechoslovak People’s Army for War Period 1963

"If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life""

- George Galloway in a 2002 Guardian interview.

"Building on the results of the first nuclear strike, the troops of the Front, in coordination with units of the 1st Western Front must destroy the main group of troops of the 7th US Army and the 1st French Army in cooperation with airborne assault troops, force the rivers Neckar and Rhine in crossing, and defeat the advancing deep strategic reserves of the enemy in advancing battle, and by D7-8 take control of the areas of Langres, Besançon, and Epinal."

"Upon completion of the tasks of the operation the troops must be ready to develop further advances in the direction of Lyon.

The main strike should be concentrated in the direction of Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Epinal, Dijon; part of the forces should be used on the direction of Straubing and Munich."

Plan of Actions of the Czechoslovak People’s Army for War Period 1963

"On a long and reluctant journey to Damascus, as I researched the diaries and memoirs of the key figures involved, it dawned on me that my orthodox view of the cold war as a struggle to the death between Good (Britain and America) and Evil (the Soviet Union) was seriously mistaken. In fact, as history will almost certainly judge, it was one of the most unnecessary conflicts of all time, and certainly the most perilous."

- Andrew Alexander, The Guardian. Friday April 19, 2002.

So a few clapped out old lefty politicians couldn't have been more wrong about the intentions and millitary threat posed by the Warsaw Pact. A self caricature of a newspaper wants to surrender eleven years after the enemy collapsed. So what? That's old news. Today the challengers are different, and so are the brave dissenting voices who'll save us from ourselves!

Though maybe all the stars don't shine so bright.

What do you get if you put Barbara Streisand, Cher, Martin Sheen, Jessica Lange, Alec Baldwin, Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Michael Moore, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston, Mike Farrell and my former heart throb (really) Janeane Garofalo together?

Instant peace in the middle east? A bright and shining happy future for all? As noted intellectual trail blazer Sheryl Crow said "The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies."

The combined higher educational attainment of Hollywood's best and brightest is one college degree less than President McChimpyHitlerburton himself - who has a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale (and an MBA from Harvard).

Not one of these Hollywood illuminati has a college degree. Doesn't mean they're stupid of course. It's intellectually demanding work mouthing other people's words for millions and slagging off the dumbass, unelected, warmongering President on talk show TV.

To be fair Susan Sarandon, does have a genuine degree. She seems to know everything that's wrong with the world (America) and how to put it right (surrender). So what did she study? Economics? History? Political theory? No. She's an actess. Her degree is in drama.

Bless.

Mind you, I might be half Beagle, so what do I know?

Dumb Actor Source

Sylvia Plath

2006-04-04T08:20:00.003+10:00

Die young, stay pretty.

Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Artur Rimbaud, Shelley, Keats, Byron. Who wouldn't rather be James Dean than Marlon Brando?

There are many theories as to why Sylvia Plath killed herself, Ted Hughes' adultery, the pressures of caring for two young children as a single mother in the coldest winter in a strange, dreary city, a million victim mongering feminist fantasies.

She was always in love with death. Death drips from the poems. The Bell Jar is one long love letter to suicide.

But Sylvia Plath wanted only one thing. She wanted to be a poet. She wanted to write the perfect poem. She'd found little commercial or critical success in her life, all that came later, in her beatification, but what she wanted was the words.

And then, in that last fevered burst of creativity, writing 'Arial', the poems that made her name, she wrote this.

The perfect poem.

Sheep in Fog

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells -
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

She'd done it. She'd written the perfect poem. Her aching heart's desire. There was nowhere else to go. Nothing else to do. At last she could let go.

Sheep in Fog. The poem that made her. The poem that killed her.

She killed herself because she knew

she was immortal already.

Brothers of the Forest

2006-04-03T08:33:00.000+10:00

There's a bombastic monument to the 'Great Patriotic War' of 1941 - 1945 on every street corner in Russia. You don't hear much of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact though or its secret appendix in which Hitler and Stalin carved up eastern europe between them. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and, later Lithuania fell in the Soviet shadow with Poland to be ripped apart between them come its "political rearrangement".

This Soviet 'free hand' was soon the iron fist in the face of the Baltic states, three nations who had finally won their independence from the Czarist empire in the bloody civil war which followed the Bolshevik coup.

The Nazis attacked Poland on September 1st 1939, the Soviets heroically invaded eastern Poland 16 days later, another fact curiously ommitted from the memorials. The rampant Soviets pressured Finland and the Baltics to take Red Army troops, blockaded the Baltics and invaded Finland in the 'Winter War' of 1940. On October 11, 1939 the NKVD issued the infamous Order 001223, mandating the deportation of 'anti-Soviet elements' from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Russia. And so the fist tightened.

While the world watched Paris fall to the Germans on 14th of June 1940, the Soviets moved against the Baltic states. Several hundred thousand Red Army troops swarmed over the borders from the 14th to the 17th of June, resistance was useless.

Lithuanian President Smetona managed to flee through Germany and Switzerland to the USA where he died in 1944. On July 17, 1940, the acting president, Antanas Merkys, was imprisoned and deported to Saratov in the Soviet Union where he died in 1955. On July 22, the president of Latvia, Kārlis Ulmanis was arrested and deported, dieing in prison in Krasnovodsk on September 20, 1942. Estonian President Konstantin Päts was imprisoned by NKVD and died in the mental hospital of Kalinin on January 18, 1956.

Parliamentary "elections" were rigged by local communists loyal to the Soviet occupiers with non-communist candidates barred or brutalised. In August these puppet parliaments unanimously "appealed" to join the Soviet Union and the three republics were formally annexed. Over the next year, in a spirit of socialist fraternity, 50,000 people were imprisoned or executed in a programme of 'pacification'.

The republics were invaded again in late 1941 by the Nazis. Stalin's savage purges of the millitary and unquestioning belief in Hitler's good faith had left the Red Army helpless in the face of Barbarossa. Ask any Russian citizen, this was the start of the war. They were 'liberated' once more by the Soviets towards the end of 1944 and became Soviet socialist republics, completely subordinated to Moscow and the communist party. The first sweep of arrests of 'undesirables' began at once.

Soviet power was resisted by the people of the Baltic states, even in the failure to re-establish independence after the German defeat. The Balts believed the Western powers would make good their promise to free eastern europe from tyranny, oppose its de facto annexation by the Soviets, and come to their aid.

Around 100,000 Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians escaped the Soviets into the vast wooded hinterlands by the end of 1944. Joined by young men evading conscription into the Red Army and members of Estonia's Self Defence Union, they made up the core of the post-war baltic armed resistance movement - The Forest Brothers.

At first the partisans clung to the belief that a new war would break out between the western powers and the Soviet Union over its contemptuous breach of the pledge at Yalta to hold free elections in the countries they occupied. The brothers armed and hid themselves, waiting for the call. The west chose a policy of appeasement however, and the Soviets tightened their grip, installing puppet communist governments in what were to become the countries of the Warsaw Pact. As the Iron curtain came down the Soviets moved against the forest brothers' families and supporters in the villages and towns. The agent network of the notorious NKVD secret police expanded and raids in forests and on farms became ever more frequent. Passive resistance was not sufficient any more to survive.

In 1945 the Forest Brothers began their counter attack. Smaller Red Army and and security units were ambushed and, in forest courts, they judged party activists, tax collectors and other active collaborators of the hostile power. Food, clothes and other supplies were 'requisitioned' from co-operative stores and state dairies. The NKDV registered 340 attacks by the "manifestations of banditism" including 126 "terror acts" and 7 "diversions".

The brothers lived and worked in groups of six to ten, acting independently. There was no central command to be broken by the waves of Soviet arrests, torture and executions. In Lithuania, where resistance was best organized, armed guerrillas effectively controlled whole regions of the countryside until 1949.

The Soviets counter offensive was the 'March deportations' of 1949. After a brief "second wave" of new recruits the brutal liquidation of farm households, deportation and collectivization by force deprived the forest brothers of their support infrastructure. By 1953 the Soviet authorities had suppressed the active armed resistance, although a few brave men hunkered down in the forests for decades. During this heroic fight for freedom about 2000 forest brothers were killed in Estonia, thousands were arrested and sent to Siberian prison camps. In all the Soviet Union's bloody post WWII suppression of Baltic independence cost another 50,000 lives.

War in the Woods

The history of the Forest Brothers' resistance was suppressed in the Soviet Union and ignored by western academics all too often sympathetic to Moscow. In the late 1980s, as the grip of the arthritic Soviet bear began to weaken, a young historian named Mart Laar had the courage to investigate the topic, despite vigorous opposition by Soviet authorities. Travelling from village to village, Laar and his colleagues collected the stories of survivors of Soviet atrocities and veterans and supporters of the resistance movement. Mark Laar become the first Prime Minister of a newly independent Estonia in 1992.

"A Soviet army officer, decided to take a shortcut home while on leave and march through Oobikuorg, a popular village festival site. To his delight, he found a festival in full swing. A band played, some people danced, others dipped moonshine into their mugs from a vat by the edge of the clearing.

"The officer made himself comfortable among the village folk, filled his mug, and enjoyed himself immensely. Suddenly, the words being sung to a traditional melody struck him as unfamiliar: 'I want to be home when Estonia is free, when Laidoner [Johan, Commander-in-Chief of the Estonian military, deported by the Soviets in 1940 - ed] commands the forces, when I hold the Estonian kroon in my hand.' The officer took a closer look around the festival site. In the distance, he now noticed a neatly constructed pyramid of side arms and light machine guns with a guard standing alongside. Suddenly, it dawned on him that he had stumbled into a Forest Brothers celebration. Apparently, the revelers had anticipated this moment of realization, because at that instant, a pair of armed men stepped up to him and politely asked him to surrender his weapons and identity papers. The officer had no choice. After complying with the request, he was handed another mug of moonshine and the merrymaking continued.

"When the officer reported the incident to the security office the following day, he was harshly reprimanded and finally stripped of his rank, because the officials failed to understand why he hadn't arrested all those Forest Brothers."

Alfred Eerick

"They were saying World War II was over, for us, though, a new war was just beginning."

Escaping conscription into the Army of his nation's occupiers, Eerik spent the next eight years in the forbidding forest in a primitive bunker fashioned of cold mud and stone. His sole luxury was a portable shortwave radio, tuned to Voice of America's Estonian service.

"Being in the forest was clearly an act of civil disobedience. On one hand, we were saving ourselves. But on the other hand, we were also trying to save our country."

"Nobody believed that Estonia would, for decades and decades, be left in the hands of the Soviets," said Laar. "That wasn't even a possibility. It's only a question of time, everybody thought. But after decades went by, the idea about the West coming to their aid disappeared. The fight in the forest became a personal thing. These people fought because they simply wanted to die as free men."

And die they did. By the early 1950s a forest brother might stay alive a year. For Eerik, the end came in 1953. By then, his wife, fearing deportation herself, had joined him in the forest. One fateful winter's day, their bunker in southern Estonia was suddenly surrounded. Reluctantly, Eerik urged his wife to surrender to the KGB troops outside, reasoning that at least her life would be spared. As he slipped out a side entrance and fled for his life on cross-country skis, he heard the rattle of gunfire behind him. Fleeing into the forest, the ski patrols soon captured him for interrogation where he learned that the shots had he heard were the troops spraying his wife with machine gun fire.

"The interrogators beat me so hard," sighed Eerik, shaking his head. "At that point, I wished I was dead."

After languishing without trial in an Estonian prison Eerik was given a 15-year jail term as an 'enemy of the people'. When he finally stepped from behind the bars of his Siberian prison cell, it was 1968, the year of the Soviet invasion of Prague.

"These people fought a war without a battleground, and they went through water and fire to do it," he said. "I would say we were heroes because we always kept our backs straight—we kept our dignity."

Dignity cost Eerik his beloved wife and 23 years of his life, from the time he went to the forest to the time of his release. At 86 years of age Eerik harbored no bitterness about his long ordeal or the cold blooded murder of his wife, nor does he crave revenge. He does, however, have one wish. If he could, he'd like to rouse one of his KGBinterrogators from his grave—the one who so confidently proclaimed that Estonia would never again be free.

"I'd want to give him a message," said Eerik, his blue eyes gleaming. "I'd tell him, 'Look, look around you, the time of independence did come back, and I am—once again—a free man.'"*

Unbowed by 40 years of deportations, oppression, propaganda and crude 'russification' the Balts rode the 1989 wave of anti-communist protests throughout occupied eastern europe and rose in mass, peaceful civil disobedience against the occupiers. Between a third and a half of the entire population joined hands along the borders in one such display of defiance.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia finally regained their freedom in 1991, after the failure of the communist hardliner's coup and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The impossible dream of the 'Brothers of the Forest' had finally been realised. The Baltic states were free and joined the E.U. and NATO in 2004.

Even today, even in their homelands, the story of the Forest Brothers is almost forgotten and the band of surviving brothers grows fewer every year. A film by Jonas Vaitkusÿs, Vienui Vieni, came out in 2004. The title - 'Utterly Alone' - is as poignant as the story is stark, following the brutal struggle of the partisansÿ cause. This thesis does far more justice to the Forest Brothers than a mere dog can do here while the links here covers the gamut of Soviet crimes. It's a long list.

Sources - Wikipedia, Tartu City Museum, War in the Woods by Mark Larr, Photos from Estonian Arms and free sources. *The extended Alfred Eerik interview is from the Baltic City Paper Magazine.

August Sabe was among the last of the Estonian Forest Brothers to survive. After years of living off the land he was found, at the age of 56, in 1978 by two KGB agents posing as fishermen. Refusing to the last to submit to capture he jumped into the lake, hooked himself to a submerged log and ended his own life a free man. Oskar Lillenurm, the last known Forest Brother, was found dead in Läänemaa county in the spring of 1980. On June 26, 1999 the ashes of Estonian freedom fighter Alfons Rebane were returned to his homeland for reburial with full millitary honours. He fought against the Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1941 in the Estonian army, served as a leader of the Estonian Legion fighting the Soviets during the German occupation and, after the annexation of 1944, became a leader of "Operation Jungle" in the British Secret Service (SIS) supporting the Baltic resistance.

The Photograph shows Forest Brother Arnold Linderman.

"Whatever the merits, or demerits, of the many years thereafter during which Communism was in power in Moscow, it is a plain and indisputable fact that the very existence of the USSR encouraged working people everywhere to throw of the shackles of colonial rule." - English Labour Party Politician Tony Benn writing in 1992.

They're after me too!

2006-04-03T00:12:00.000+10:00

Allah's Apostle ordered that the dogs should be killed - From Bukhari Vol. 4, #540 - Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar:

"Allah's Apostle said, "Whoever keeps a dog, one Qirat of the reward of his good deeds is deducted daily, unless the dog is used for guarding a farm or cattle." -
From Bukhari Vol. 3, #515 - Narrated Abu Huraira:

"Allah's Apostle regarded illegal the price of a dog, the earnings of a prostitute, and the charges taken by a soothsayer." - From Bukhari Vol. 3, #482 - Narrated Abu Mas'ud Al-Ansari:

Abd Allah B. Mughaffal reported the apostle of Allah as saying: Were dogs not a species of creature I should command that they all be killed; but kill every pure black one - From the Hadith of Abu Dawud - #2839

The Hadith's note for #2839 says, "The prophet did not order the killing of all the dogs, for some are to be retained for hunting and watching. He ordered to kill the jet black ones. They might be more mischievous among them.

The black ones? Isn't that racist?

Abu Zubair heard Jabir Abdullah saying: Allah's messenger ordered us to kill dogs and we carried out this order so much so that we also killed the dog roaming with a women from the desert. Then Allah's apostle forbade their killing. He said: "It is your duty to kill the jet-black (dog) having two spots (on the eyes) for it is a devil - From Sahih Muslim #3813.

Narrated 'Aisha: "The things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me. They said, "Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman (if they pass in front of the praying people)." I said, "You have made us (i.e. women) dogs. I saw the Prophet praying while I used to lie in my bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I would slip away, for I disliked to face him." -
From Bukhari Vol. 1, #490"

"I heard Allah's Apostle saying; "Angels (of Mercy) do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or a picture of a living creature (a human being or an animal)." - From Bukhari Vol. 4, #448 - Narrated Abu Talha:

"Once Gabriel promised to visit the Prophet but he delayed and the Prophet got worried about that. At last he came out and found Gabriel and complained to him of his grief (for his delay). Gabriel said to him, "We do not enter a place in which there is a picture or a dog." - From Bukhari Vol. 7, #843 - Narrated Salim's father:

From Sahih Muslim, volume 3, #5276: Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger as saying: Angels do not accompany the travelers who have with them a dog and a bell.

A bell? Oh, and Aisha was his nine year old wife.

Doesn't look like I'd be too safe landing in England in the future either. The Queen loves her corgis but the next defender of the faith looks like he'll be after me with a big stick in one hand and his trusty koran firmly clasped in the other.

"I start from the belief that Islamic civilization at its best... has an important message for the West in the way it has retained an integrated and integral view of the sanctity of the world around us. I feel that we in the West could be helped to rediscover the roots of our own understanding by an appreciation of the Islamic tradition's deep respect for the timeless traditions of the natural order."

- From a speech by HRH The Prince of Wales titled 'A Sense of the Sacred: Building Bridges Between Islam and the West', The Wilton Park Seminar, Wilton Park, West Sussex, 13th December, 1996

Seeds of the Revolution

2006-04-02T15:27:00.000+10:00

There weren't many ways to get out of the Soviet Union in 1959, and getting shot up into space wasn't the most dangerous of the options.

At least I had four hours of freedom, which is more than most people back then.

Of course some very clever people thought differently. H.G. Wells, Jean Paul Sartre, Eric Hobsbawm, so what do I know?

After all, I'm just a dog. It's not like I can read or anything.

Gorgeous George Galloway said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst day of his life. Mind you, probably not as bad as these happy communist campers just had.

Hey, let's make another film about McCarthyism!

Really, what's the worst that's going to happen in your life? Lose your IPod? Think of someone born in 1900 in Russia. Some guys have it even worse than me and frankly, where I came from, it was a dog's life.

The stories of those caught up in the turmoil of the Bolshevik coup, the Russian Civil war, Stalin's brutal Ukrainian famine, the purges, World War II, POW camps and the Gulag and finally escaped east only to find bloody Mao Tse Tung starting the madness all over again are a little known footnote of history. Endless documentaries about the Nazis but never anything about them.

Check out this documentary about emigres who lived through and survived all that. Three men who lived incredible lives before finding freedom 'down under'. Just three and a half percent of this Russian generation lived to the age of 50. Let them speak for the ninety six and a half percent who didn't make it.

Seeds of the Revolution

It's split into 4 parts, with an additional interview, for your aural pleasure.

Woof!

2006-03-30T22:25:00.000+11:00

An old Soviet joke.

What does the Sputnik consist of?

German rocket.
Asian propellants.
Czech electronics
Russian dog.

Well, the joke's on them. My name's Laika the Space Dog. I'm back!

This is by far the best Laika tribute site on the web. I should know, I was there.

Let's be honest, Russian isn't the most beautiful language in the world though every tongue has it's good and bad points - as anyone who's ever heard French rap would agree. My name, Laika, which is pretty cute, means 'barker' in English so say what you like about the murdering commie horde, I got lucky there. I was a stray, did you know that? Rounded up from the backstreets of Moscow. OK, so I was blasted up into orbit to certain death but can you name anyone on the International Space Station right now? Hmm? Maybe some Brazillian guy? Exactly.

Read about me here

Of course, you and I know better, I didn't die at all. I'm immortal. Laika the Space Dog. I'm looking down on you now.

How do you like this early publicity shot by the way? It's caught my best side, kind of like my Natalie Wood 'Rebel without a Cause' early colour phase.