Neanderpundit

Like most Russian authors, is a long winded bastard. It’s like they don’t have the word “Pithy” in Russian.

Therefore, I have read his masterwork “Gulag Archipelago” so you don’t have to.

Actually, I read it years ago, and one statement stuck out to me like a wedding dick; it should to you too, and if you read the book for yourself this will probably be the most important part to you, too. And it’s a footnote, an afterthought, not even part of the book proper. Bolding mine.

5. And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur—what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If . . . if . . . We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more—we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! (Arthur Ransome describes a workers’ meeting in Yaroslavl in 1921. Delegates were sent to the workers from the Central Committee in Moscow to confer on the substance of the argument about trade unions. The representative of the opposition, Y. Larin, explained to the workers that their trade union must be their defense against the administration, that they possessed rights which they had won and upon which no one else had any right to infringe. The workers, however, were completely indifferent, simply not comprehending whom they still needed to be defended against and why they still needed any rights. When the spokesman for the Party line rebuked them for their laziness and for getting out of hand, and demanded sacrifices from them—overtime work without pay, reductions in food, military discipline in the factory administration—this aroused great elation and applause.) We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

Lenin controlled all sources of information from the beginning. The same is almost completely true, now, of our media, who Pascal refers to as the “Agency of lies”, in my mind an appropriate label and one I choose to use henceforth.

who was always on my “Must read” list left some time ago, and Mr B alerted me yesterday to the fact that his old blog had apparently been hacked. I still had Mr James’ address so I mailed him, and he appreciated the info. But then he did something better, he started another blog.

He even says himself it may not be around for long, so get the free ice cream when you can. While I like to see anyone get paid for writing, the blog is less formal and more personal, and that’s how I like my Frank James.

and new fuel lines, and new spark plug, the chainsaw doesn’t start. It has plenty spark, it has plenty fuel. A compression test indicates that it is lacking in suck and squeeze. So I yank the engine expecting to discover that when I had loaned it to a friend some time back he’d run it without mix and toasted it.

To my surprise, the cylinder is still smooth and scratch free, and there is one scratch on the skirt of the piston, where a piece of ring broke off.

The piece of ring bounced around in the cylinder a few times making some tiny marks in the piston which I have deburred, and I hope to have a new ring on friday. Three bucks for the ring and nine for shipping! Sheesh. Still, if it works it will be better than a new saw. I have been looking at the new offerings by Stihl and Husqvarna, and the “Consumer” quality stuff is just not very impressive; my cheap Craftsman (Poulan) saw has run for a long time with no appreciable trouble until now, ten some years later.

Looking at the Poulan and Stihl and Husky websites, I came to the conclusion that very little separates the ‘Consumer” model Stihl and husky machines with the Poulan, these days. Seems they still both make excellent high end stuff which I cannot afford.

A friend has a Dolmar, which is an amazing saw, when it runs. It’s a prick to get started, but it will idle nicely all bloody day- we once spent a day wandering around cutting wood and never turned the saw off, it would idle in the back of the truck for as much as ten minutes between us running into some deadwood to cut, and it never even acted like it wanted to die, and it was smooth as silk to use. They sell them at a local place that I trust, and there doesn’t seem to be a separation between the ‘Pro” and “Consumer” models. The 18″ bar one is $350. I hope that the Craftsman has a good year left in it after I replace the broken ring.