A quote from one of the more formative books of my teenage reading….
At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). … For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the stormy applause, rising to an ovation, continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. … However, who would dare to be the first to stop? … After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who would quit first! And in the obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! … They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! …
The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!
… That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
I had to quote that just to provided context for this short clip. Apparently, Stalin was kind enough to solve the problem.
Could North Korea Annihilate Seoul with Its Artillery?. This article is all very true from a factual perspective. But from a modern day political perspective, 20 dead civilians and 100 million dollars of property damage is enough to topple a government. And I don’t think even the optimistic people think the damage/deaths will be that low.
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un Risk Nuclear War. This article has a lot of bogus statements. For example, the claim that Kim is predictable and Trump is not could only be made by people who don’t remember Kim killing the uncle that everyone thought was his biggest supporter with an anti-aircraft cannon. But buried in the article is the reason even China is getting concerned. If the powers that be really think that North Korea will soon have hundreds of working nukes, they have to be thinking that North Korea will sell them to every one who has money.
How Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya Is Winning America’s Culture War. Maybe I should not put this in the bogus category. I don’t dislike the guy and I don’t know that any of the facts in the article are wrong. But I know it that politics and hating brown skin are not the whole story about people who don’t like this guy. Bottom line: You look up the definition of hagiographical portrait of someone and there is a link to this article.
That said, it is true that nobody else was likely to get that factory in upstate New York up and running again. But I think it is clear that he is not fool enough to do that again (and I don’t mean that as a criticism of him so much as a criticism of New York State.
Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria. Should be in the news because most people don’t realize how messed up our copyright laws are. Don’t get me wrong, I think the purposed class action settlement was seriously flawed. But the root of the problem is the changes in copyright law brought about by Disney.
