22. lipnja 1941

 22. lipnja 1941 počela je "Operacija Barbarossa", invazija Hitlerove Njemačke na Sovjetski Savez.

Moj mi je otac, član KPH od 1935, pričao s kakvom je euforijom taj napad bio dočekan. Euforijom, čudite se? Da, naši su naivni ljevičari vjerovali da će Staljin pomesti Hitlera za tili čas. Sad, za tili čas nije bilo, ali metenje se na koncu dogodilo. Baš kao i kod nas.

Da vas ne zamaram poviješću, činjenica da smo svoje metenje obavili sami pomogla nam je da se izvučemo iz "bratskog" medvjeđeg zagrljaja Staljinovog Sovjetskog Saveza. Tome je, izmađu ostalog, doprinijela grupa domoljuba sisačkog kraja čije okupljanje danas slavimo.

Ali malo je poznato da oni nisu bili jedini:

ZABORAVLJENI ODRED: I u Vrgorcu je 22. lipnja 1941. godine osnovana prva partizanska grupa

Dobrim je dijelom moja krivica što pažljivo dokumentirana kronika tih dana, na kojoj je moj otac radio posljednjih godina života, nikad nije vidjela svjetlo dana. Tekst na kojeg linkam jest temeljen na materijalnoj građi, ali dobrim dijelom i na sjećanjima, na "memoarskoj građi", manje nego savršeno pouzdanoj nakon svih ovih godina.

Nadam se da ću bar ja, na kraju svog produktivnog života, uspjeti izvući na svjetlo dana nešto od onog što je moja stara komunjara od oca (čega sam ponosni nasljednik) prikupila. 

(Da odgovorim prije nego što pitate: da, ta građe uključuje i dokumentaciju o zlodjelima (bar iz današnje perspektive, ali nemojmo ih relativizirati) počinjenim tokom dva "napada na Vrgorac", kako su te akcije zvali; treća je bilo oslobođenje.)

"Compromise"

For once, I agree with Slavoj Žižek completely. His opinion piece in The guardian on reactions to war in Ukraine:

Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine

Prijevod na hrvatski u jutarnjem listu:

Take a look at other Žižek's opinions on the topic, e.g.:

We must stop letting Russia define the terms of the Ukraine crisis

Why Zaporizhzhia?

 As you doubtlessly know, Russian invaders recently shelled the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine. The images of burning plant (more precisely, burning building housing offices and training facility) swept the world in no time at all.

Tonči Tadić, a physicist I had a pleasure of working with and knowing for ages, also for a brief time an outspoken conservative member of Sabor (Croatian parliament), commented on this on our public TV, denouncing the move as "idiotic" because, in the unlikely event of the reactor meltdown and containment failure (the plant's reactors are of relatively modern pressurized light water design) the cloud of radioactive fallout would mostly move over Russia.

Sorry, Tonči, but this time your inner physicist won over your (former) inner politician. I will explain, but first a bit of background:

Oil and especially gas make up about 50% of Russian exports, and about 30% of its GDP. Russia has become a classical "petrol state" (and not Norway type of petrol state; more Nicaragua type.) Ukraine was trying to squeeze as much money from Russia for "hosting" gas pipelines as possible; Russia built other pipelines in response, including two "Northern stream" ones leading under the Baltic sea into Germany - the second of which is still not operational, despite being physically finished. Then Ukraine discovered large gas deposits under the Black sea, and started to develop them in joint efforts with Western companies. The annexation of Crimea was Russian response.

Germany invested heavily into wind power all over the country, but especially in Baltic North, and in residential solar, the latter being pretty much fool's errand, at their latitude and with their climate.They reacted to Fukushima incident (which should have served as a testament to safety of nuclear energy, because despite cutting corners in construction of plants, almost unprecedented earthquake and botched response, released radiation killed nobody!) by closing down immediately or in a year or two of all their nuclear power plants, relying heavily on "peakers" burning Russian gas and even reactivating some lignite mines! So much for fulfilling their Paris Accord pledges.

German reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, along with freezing or outright seizing various Russian assets, was pledging to raise its defense expenditure to above 2% of its GDP permanently, to set aside 100bn EUR for that immediately, to allow its military to participate in NATO operations outside of Germany, and to build up a strategic reserve of oil, gas and coal. COAL! No mention of keeping the nuclear power plants running to their design age, let alone building any new ones.

I think it should be clear now what was the purpose of burning an inconsequential auxiliary building at Zaporizhzhia power plant site: to fan again the irrational fears of nuclear energy among European population and make sure we stay dependent on their gas. And European, German in particular, "greens" are accomplices. 

A side note on new crop of Small Modular Reactors: they are manufactured industrially, rather than built, and therefore much cheaper; they are installed close to the places of high demand, diminishing the need for expensive and vulnerable long distance, high voltage transmission lines; they are housed in underground water pools providing passive emergency cooling and making them invulnerable to terrorist or other kinds of attack. More and more countries are considering SMRs as a source of their baseline electricity supply, Something had to be done about it; Putin did, and Germany reacted obediently (as I am afraid others, except perhaps France, will.) 

Putin's "special war"

 In the case it slipped your mind, Putin directly financed or more covertly helped and/or influenced, among others:

• Donald Trump, a.k.a. Agent Orange (I do like this pun of mine). No, Mueller Report did not "fully exonerate President Trump"; quite to the contrary, it found that "Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion, but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts."
  Go see the Wikipedia page and make sure to follow the sources linked from it, instead of crying that Wikipedia is unreliable.
• Nigel Farage (who still cries that "Europe and the West have caused this crisis") and other Brexiteers.
• Various European populist nationalists, xenophobes, neo-Nazis, and other kinds of "EU skeptics", From Orban to Le Pen to Wilders to whatever the newest Mussolini wannabes are called.

In the case of the US, the goal was to divide the country even more deeply and bitterly and to make its government barely functional (and what function was left was only thanks to lower-ranking professionals.) In the case of Europe, it was weakening the Union in any possible way. So, Putin merely followed the ancient "divide et impera!" - that one never gets old.

Now, the next item is more of my little conspiracy theory, based on very simple analysis of "who gains and who loses": German "Greens". For that, see the next post. 

Why did we react so strongly NOW ?

 At least two people I know complained about the "sudden" strong reaction to Russian invasion of Ukraine. The main complaint was "we don't react when Americans do something similar!"

Well, for one, I did react, from Viet Nam (as you might know, I am that old) to second invasion of Iraq. Then, "we" didn't react to a number of similarly unsavory Soviet/Russian escapades, from Afghanistan to Syria. We did react on previous instances of "friendly assistance" in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

So, what's the difference? Well, Afghanistan and Syria are "there", Ukraine is "here", in our backyard. It has nothing to do with "spheres of interest" - Ukraine is Europe, our continent.  It's that simple. This time, we feel threatened ourselves. For those "others", our "deep concern" was mere words, our empathy - meh...

Sad.

Targeting

 Not a year has passed since my last post, and here I am again, dear 0 readers!

Anyway:

I must be living under the rock, because I just today learned about Google's plans for a more privacy-preserving replacement for cookies. (If you share my cluelessness, here is a brief article in New Scientist I learned about it from.)

I am of a kind of two minds about this whole privacy thing. Naturally, I would like for strangers to know about me only what I choose to share (like here). OTOH, now that most content worth one's time (and all that isn't) is ad-supported, I would prefer being shown relevant ads, perhaps even remotely useful.

But let's take a look at the current state of "they know everything about you" affairs:

• Google knows where I have been, which stores, restaurants and cafes I frequent, and whatnot, because I have many of their apps on my phone, use Google maps and Waze regularly, and have allowed collection of my position data. I even often comment on, say, a restaurant I visited when Google prompts me to.
  My choice. Now, if I disabled this tracking, I have no way to know would Google actually cease data collection, or just hide it. Ah, well...
• I usually use Chrome (a choice I am reconsidering, because it has become a real resource hog; then again, it might have something to do with the fact that a kitchen sink is the only extension I failed to install.
  I do use Edge now and then, though. It shows, by default, a "home page" with, umm, let's call them generously "news". Of course, articles are intermixed with ads. However, almost all "infomercials" are about mortgage and other loan refinancing and various "spectacular" credit cards, all, of course, American. How "deep demographic information" is needed to figure out that, as a European, I have zero interest in those and will very positively never click on them?!?
  Or adds worded like "<Product XYZ> is taking Croatia (or Zagreb, or some village near Zagreb that geolocation service mistook for my address) by a storm!". If it is for something I find mildly interesting, like a small drone, I might actually click, only to find out that the product is not available here. How difficult is it to compare the location you insert into your ad with the list of territories you have actual presence ?!?
• When I visit some webshop for the first time and actually buy something, I am bombarded for the next week or so with ads for that same store! People, I have just been there; I formed my opinion, favorable or not, and probably, if the experience was good, have even bookmarked you. You will not drive further sales by bugging me; your ad money is wasted this way.
  I can recall exactly one occasion where I got targeted with ads for some other store selling similar goods, which does make sense.

So, in conclusion, either the data collected on us is far less comprehensive than popular press and privacy advocates would have us believe, or, more probably, the users of that information, at least visible ones, are totally clueless. 

The question remains what are other possible users, those that keep low profile, doing with all they know about us.

Caveat Emptor

Today I got an alert in email to several deeply discounted books by Dean Koontz. I never read anything by him, but was kind of curious about the guy. With so many #1 spots on this bestseller list or that, he can't be entirely bad, can he, his hyperproduction notwithstanding? (BTW, do be suspicious when a popular author increases their publishing cadence substantially. For example, Tom Clancy's techno-thriller/military/spy novels were quite good while they were still been written by Clancy; when his "workshop" took over, they got something in the range of total garbage to on the low side of mediocre.)

What additionally piqued my curiosity was that the book was advertised as containing "Kindle in Motion" features - I never saw those before. Moreover, the Audible version was also deeply discounted - I never used those, either.

To make a long story short, I succumbed. I still don't know is the novel any good (the first few pages seem a bit pretentious in tone, but it is too early to tell; the book got back to the end of the reading queue to be read by some future incarnation of myself.) Audiobook version, though, is pretty terrible. It sounds as if it was read by a very competent text to speech program, rather than an actor. The whole sentence intonation, speech cadence, stresses, all is based only on punctuation, not on the meaning of what is being read. Every comma brings a pause, each one the same, for example. Perhaps Koontz overuses commas, but the reader should have compensated for that.

So, that's the actual topic of this post: there is a "download sample" feature on Amazon for narrated versions of the books, too. Use it!

And, BTW, that "Kindle in motion" "feature" announced garishly on the novel's product page is totally useless in this book: it consists of slightly distorting cover and animated author's signature. Oh, miracle!