A map of various Gulag prison-camps between 1923 and 1961, based on data from Memorial, a human-rights group. Of the 18 million who were sent to the Gulag from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million perished there or as a result of their detention.
AMAZON
Image: Women of the Gulag film poster. Fair use.
During the course of three decades, Joseph Stalin’s Gulag, a vast network of forced labor camps and settlements, held many millions of prisoners. People in every corner of the Soviet Union lived in daily terror of imprisonment and execution. In researching the surviving threads of memoirs and oral reminiscences of five women victimized by the Gulag, author Paul R. Gregory has stitched together a collection of stories from the female perspective, a view in short supply. Capturing the fear, paranoia, and unbearable hardship that were hallmarks of Stalin’s Great Terror, Gregory relates the stories of five women from different social strata and regions in vivid prose, from their pre-Gulag lives, through their struggles to survive in the repressive atmosphere of the late 1930s and early 1940s, to the difficulties facing the four who survived as they adjusted to life after the Gulag. These firsthand accounts illustrate how even the wrong word could become a crime against the state. The book begins with a synopsis of Stalin’s rise to power, the roots of the Gulag, and the scheming and plotting that led to and persisted in one of the bloodiest, most egregious dictatorships of the 20th century.- Amazon Marianna Yarovskaya, filmmaker, in re: Women of the Gulag. Six elderly women who were teenagers when the disastrous events occurred. On Oct 18 and Oct 22, the film will be screened at the Hong Kong Film Festival. VisibleRecord.com The film was shown at the Moscow Intl Film Festival, and brought one survivor, who was able to walk. Two more remain, blind, one paralyzed. The attendee got five minutes of standing ovation. Then it was shown on Rossiya ___ TV, and Aeroflot will show the longer version starting in November. In the gulags, women were worked as hard as the men, were brutalized. In a timber camp, one woman said that if she didn’t haul back a tree she got no dinner. “Women in the camps were slaves of slaves.” No family is unaffected. Not on YouTube, but we’re selling DVDs to universities and schools. Will screen it in London next year. In the US, it’ll show at the UN Intl Festival at Stanford on October 22, several days hence. Screenings in Croatia and elsewhere. I attended a festival in South Korea – North Korean camps are carbon copies of what Stalin camps were [and note that until extremely recently, North Koreans were sold en masse by the Kim family to slave-labor timbering camps in Siberia —ed.]; in South Korea we got an audience award. Marianna Yarovskaya is an award-winning Russian-American documentary filmmaker who is the director and producer of the 2018 Academy Award short-listed documentary film, Women of the Gulag based on the book, Women of the Gulag: Stories of Five Remarkable Lives, by Paul Roderick Gregory. womenofthegulag.com WIKIPEDIA- Gulag
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 James Smithson, the scientist who started the SmithsonianIn History & Culture, Science & Nature / 19 November 2015 This portrait of Smithson painted by Henri Johns in 1816, is one of the rare images of the philanthropist scientist. “The Smithsonian Institution”―When most people hear the name, museums, scientific research, even Dorothy’s ruby slippers and the Wright brothers’ plane come to mind. But many don’t know how, or for that matter, who created the Smithsonian. The Institution is now 169 years old, but its true beginning happened 250 years ago with the birth of a seemingly ill-fated boy named James Smithson. Smithson (c. 1765–1829), the founding donor of the Smithsonian, was an English chemist and mineralogist. He was the illegitimate son of Hugh Smithson, the first Duke of Northumberland, and the wealthy widow Elizabeth Hungerford Keate Macie. His exact birthday remains a mystery because he was born secretly in Paris, where his mother had gone to hide her pregnancy. He was born James Lewis Macie, but in 1801, after his parents died, he took his father’s last name of Smithson. Smithson was known as a hard-working and diligent student. He studied at Pembroke College, Oxford and received a Master’s in science in 1786. (Image: James Roberts) Smithson never married; he had no children; and he lived somewhat as a gentleman nomad, traveling widely in Europe during a time of great turbulence and political upheaval. He was in Paris during the French Revolution, and was later imprisoned in the early 19th century during the Napoleonic Wars. Friends with many of the great scientific minds of the time, he believed that the pursuit of science and knowledge was the key to happiness and prosperity for all of society. He saw scientists as benefactors of all mankind, and thought they should be considered “citizens of the world.” “Science wasn’t just an interest of Smithson’s, he was a dedicated and hard-working student of the topic too,” said Pamela Henson, the Smithsonian’s historian. “He studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, and received a master’s degree in science. He was considered a “swot” – someone, who unlike most other gentlemen, stayed on campus all semester and worked incredibly hard. He was inducted into the Royal Society in 1787 after graduation, the youngest member at that time.” Smithson was interested in almost everything and studied a wide range of natural phenomena: the venom of snakes, the chemistry of volcanoes, the fundamental nature of electricity and even the composition of a lady’s tear. The mineral smithsonite was named in 1832 in honor of English chemist and mineralogist James Smithson, who first identified the mineral in 1802. He published 27 papers in his lifetime, ranging from an improved method of making coffee, to an analysis of the mineral calamine―critical in the manufacture of brass, which led to the mineral being named smithsonite in his honor. In one of his last papers, he laid out his philosophy most clearly: “It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness. . . . No ignorance is probably without loss to him.” Smithson was keenly aware and disapproving of England’s class differences; and although he never visited the United States, Smithson approved of what the young democracy represented: freedom and opportunity for all. Toward the end of his life, under a clause in his will, he left his fortune to the United States. It was to be used to found “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge…” in Washington, D.C. and it was to be named the Smithsonian Institution. The final resting place of the Smithsonian Institution’s benefactor, James Smithson (1765-1829), is a small chapel-like room located at the north entrance to the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. 829, and was interred nearby. It took nearly a decade for his bequest of more than $500,000 to arrive in America in the form of eleven boxes of gold coins; and with this gift, the building of the Smithsonian Institution began. Today, Smithson’s bequest and wish that it support an educational institution has grown enormously into the world’s largest museum and research complex with 19 museums and galleries, nine research facilities, the National Zoological Park, 137 million items in its collection and research conducted in more than 100 countries around the world. And James Smithson finally did visit America, albeit posthumously. In 1904, Alexander Graham Bell, a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, brought Smithson’s remains to the United States to rest at the Institution his gift created. His tomb rests just inside the entrance of the Smithsonian Castle, so that it is the first thing many visitors see as they begin their visit―a fitting start to exploring the Smithsonian. Although Smithson’s papers and his vast mineral collection were all destroyed by fire in 1865, the story of his life and work has been largely recovered in the recent biography, The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian, by Heather Ewing. This article draws heavily upon this book. Related Posts:Collecting Archival Treasures From America’s Top Latino Visual Artists Rolled-Up Mystery Mineral may cause Craving for Piroulines “Off the Beaten Track”: A road trip through the Archives of American Art Following in the footsteps of James Smithson Tags: rocks & minerals, Smithsonian Institution Archives 
"I am sure you have been told that this is the best time of your life. It may be. But if it's true that this is the best time of your life, then you have my condolences. Because you'll want to remain here, stuck in these so called best years, never maturing, wanting only to look, to feel and be the adolescent that whole industries are devoted to forcing you to remain. One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic designed to maintain hunger for stasis. While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being eroticized into eternal juvenilia. . . There is nothing more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. . . The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of."
Wellesley, Massachusetts 2004 
 The primary sources underwriting the next American boom are primarily fiscal, not monetary. But we don't need to wait for tax reform, because transformative new hybrid technologies are already upon us. Tax reform would help scale these products to unimaginable levels, nevertheless, the American enterprise is white hot with new technologies. Let's take a look.
1. Nano-culture: We should expect nothing less than the imploding of 'the Standard Model' that animates contemporary physics. Why? Because the laws of physics are going to be challenged through biological applications. What's already in the pipeline? How about genetic research like entirely new synthetic materials like graphene, molecular electronics & extreme miniaturization. Super small sensors from quantum computing. The range of both new biological applications as well as advances in new paradigms of traditional branches of science suggests that we're at a turning point for biologically integrated nano circuitry. 2. The Cloud: Get ready for a customized world where vast new and old traditional products are designed and marketed for mass personalization from big data storage transforming the management of data into a distinct applicable commodity. 3. 3D Printing: This complete collapse of supply chains throughout entire regions of American commerce will usher in new fiscal balance sheets providing liquidity for new cottage industries procuring regionally allied hybrid product lines. Fredrick Hayek wrote of this in the 1970's when he wrote of denationalizing money back to the States effectively incentivizing regional economies. Get ready for the atomization of the U.S. citizen! We're going to work, think, create and live in a decentralized civilization. Say farewell to a center-margin based civilization. Joseph Goebbel's Private Secretary Dead at 106: Brunhilde Pomsel & the Sorrows of Misplaced Faith10/8/2019   JOSEPH GOEBBELS PRIVATE RESIDENCE AND BUNKER TODAY 
Before Putin: Allah's Angels: Chechen Women in War by Paul J. Murphy.
“In this comprehensive portrait of the women of Chechnya in modern war, Paul Murphy challenges conventional thinking on why they fight and are willing to kill themselves in the name of Allah. His book covers the two wars with Russia in 1994 and 1999 and the present conflict with Islamic Jihadists. It argues that these wars forced Chechen women to venture far beyond their traditional roles and advance their human rights but that the current movement championing traditional Islam is taking those rights away. Drawing on personal interviews, insider resources, and other materials, Murphy presents powerful portrayals of women who fight in the Chechen Jihad, including snipers, suicide bombers and the mysterious “Black Widows,” as well as women who collect intelligence, hide arms, and perform other non-combatant roles.” http://www.amazon.com/Allahs-Angels-Chechen-Women-War/dp/1591145422/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461459442&sr=1-2&keywords=paul+murphy+chechen |
A note from the Author
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. Archives
January 2021
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