Category Archives: Current Events

Bosnian Serbs Erect Statue for Assassin Who Started WWI

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Recent commemorations of the beginning of World War I led me to reflect on the difficulties or impossibilities of overcoming centuries of ethnic hatred. One news report described how “Artists and diplomats declared a new century of peace and unity in Europe …in the city where the first two shots of World War I were fired…” Not everyone saw it that way. Another report described Bosnian Serbs unveiling a statute of Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb teenager who killed Crown Prince Ferdinand after Ferdinand had travelled to Sarajevo to inspect his occupying troops.

A hundred years of time have not resolved the divisions. Austrian President Heinz Fischer said “Europeans have learned that no problem can be solved by war. Milorad Dodik, president of the Bosnian Serb half of the country called Princip “…a freedom fighter and the Austro Hungarian empire was an occupier here.”  He added that the people are still divided in “…this country which is being held together by international violence.” An actor portraying Princip posed in front of his statue with a pistol as people shouted “shoot at NATO” and “shoot at the EU.” Continue reading →

Russians, The People Behind the Power

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Russians I found Gregory Feifer’s book depressing. “The vast majority of Russians will continue to endure the grinding bureaucracy… [G]overnment repression, waste, shoddiness and corruption remain prominent.” Between the oligarchs and the vast majority there is a “jarring contrast between extravagance and the heart-wrenching shabbiness of the great unwashed.” Westerners who try to do business through the visible government structure are disappointed because the real power is hidden in traditional cronyism, corruption, and bribery.
Feifer says he is pessimistic that Russia will “Westernize”. He asks: “Have they learned nothing from their painful past?” They don’t seem to; Russia has a “political culture that has shaped the country’s history for centuries.”
Feifer covers tsarist, Soviet, and recent history, including the history of St. Petersburg and Moscow. (Being a Russian peasant has always been a misery.) World War II is still prominent in Russian thinking: while seventy years of Soviet rule killed as many as 20 million people directly through execution and imprisonment, or through state-orchestrated famines; WWII killed 30 million in a few years, including 40% of men aged twenty to forty-nine. Continue reading →

Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

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Future of the MindAuthor Michio Kaku is well known for his books and television popularizing science. He has recently tackled brain research.  His current book, The Future of the Mind, includes popular touches such as references to movies and TV and stories from his own life (wow, he was tough competition in high school science fairs!). The book has been on the New York Times best-seller list, and I thought it was a readable, well-prepared effort; I have watched some of Kaku’s TV shows and in places in the book I can hear his voice in my head as I read.  But somehow this book didn’t completely grab me.  I skimmed through some of the sections, but since the chapters can stand-alone, that worked well for me.

future Michio_Kaku_in_2012

Dr. Kaku

Kaku mentions Phineas Gage, whose accident in 1848 marked “the origins of modern neuroscience.”  When dynamite powder he was tamping down exploded, a metal rod rocketed completely through his head leaving behind massive brain damage, but Gage survived.  Kaku mentions the standard story that Gage’s personality was changed much for the worse by his accident. By coincidence, I found an article in Slate.com that says this standard story may be wrong, that the tale of his changed personality comes from a single, vague report immediately after the accident, and his subsequent life demonstrates he recovered to a remarkable extent.  But whatever the truth abut Gage, Kaku’s point remains: “it would alter the course of science.”  Continue reading →

Social Security Debt Collection

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There was a recent media dust-up over the Social Security Administration seizing tax refunds to recoup over-payments that happened more than a decade ago. However, Stephen Ohlemacher of the Associated Press explained that the program would be halted at least temporarily in his article titled “Social Security halts effort to collect old over-payments.” A 2008 law allows use of a “…Treasury program to seize federal payments to recoup debts that are more than 10 years old. Previously, there was a 10-year limit on using the program.”  “The Social Security Administration says it has identified about 400,000 people with old debts. They owe a total of $714 million.” Some of the disputed benefits were paid to surviving parents or guardians of children eligible for survivor benefits or the benefits paid to a disabled child. The agency says it has already collected $55 million, and at least some of it was collected from children and grandchildren of those who were overpaid. Continue reading →

Ukraine’s Nuclear Weapons and Russia

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The recent aggression of the Russians against Ukraine made me wonder whether the Ukranians regretted sending their nuclear weapons back to Russia after declaring their independence from the Soviet Union. I realized I needed a history review to better understand the situation. According to the Office of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State, the collapse of the Soviet Union arguably could be traced to Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to “…loosen the yoke of Soviet control over Eastern Europe.” That led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the overthrow of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe. The Soviet destabilization continued until the attempted coup by hard-line Communists against Gorbachev in August 1991. That failed coup led Ukraine and Belarus to declare their independence.  Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan had nuclear weapons at that time.

The Ukrainian Week states, “Ukraine had to give up its nuclear weapons to become a sovereign state and have its independence recognized by the entire world.” The people of Ukraine were dominantly anti-nuclear as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.  Also, the nuclear weapons had been produced by the Soviet Union, and retaining them would have tied Ukraine to the Soviet (later Russian) military industrial complex.  Ukraine also judged that the criteria announced by the U.S. required that they disarm themselves of nuclear weapons to gain recognition. They remembered the sad experience of the 1920s when the West did not recognize Ukraine and it became a target of Bolshevik aggression. Recent events do not bode well for them trying a different approach to assuring their national sovereignty. Continue reading →

Paradox of Iran

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Ayatollah Begs to DifferThe Ayatollah Begs to Differ
By Hooman Majd

On this blog, we have been making an effort to understand the Islamic world.  Majd says “my hope is that this book, through a combination of stories, history, and personal reflection, will provide the reader a glimpse of Iran and Iranians” and reveal paradoxes of the Iranian character that baffle Americans.  He succeeds.

Majd is the son of an Iranian diplomat raised in the West, and seems well situated to bridge the gap between the two peoples.

Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, and are 90% Shia, not Sunni, Muslim.  Shia believe in the twelfth Imam, who is not dead but hidden, and who will return as the Messiah in a way that reminds me of Christians’ faith in the return of Jesus Christ.  I’m not sure if this similarity will make the two peoples more or less sympathetic to each other, since discussing religion is dangerous outside of trusting relationships.

“Persia” had been “Iran” to Iranians since 226 CE; “Persia” came from the French.  In 1935 a Shah who embraced the Third Reich and fascism decreed that the nation should be called “Iran” which means “land of the Aryans”.  I found it alarming that today Farsi translations of Hitler’s Mein Kampf are prominent in book stores, though some Americans may appreciate that Marx and Communist are loathed by the theocracy.

Many Iranians (especially expats) view the word “Persian” as connoting their glorious past and they are annoyed that Westerners are ignorant of Iran’s history.  Iran was the equal of ancient Egypt, Rome, or Athens.  Westerners admire Alexander the Great, while Iranians view him as a barbarian for burning magnificent Iranian libraries.

“The Shia sense of the world [is] a dark and oppressive place” of “estrangement and woe”, “under a perpetual dark cloud” where “death and martyrdom are pillars of Shia Islam.”  The nation’s recent history reinforces this gloomy outlook: Muslims have suffered “five hundred years of Western hegemony,” and “for two or three hundred years Iran had been [under] Western powers – specifically Britain and then the United States when it took over the mantle of empire after World War II.” Continue reading →