Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Left Wing Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (3396)	1/23/2001 11:22:34 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 6089

Joan, the book itself is anything but sensationalistic, at least stylistically, and the Yeti part is almost a throwaway near the end. Downing explains his role in the forward to the book. Part of what makes it compelling reading is the matter of fact tone it's written in, compared to the horrible background of Stalin's gulag that is, I assume, somewhat more commonplace knowledge now than it was in 1956. Or maybe not, I just looked up Koestler's "Darkness at Noon", a best seller in '43 it says. But Koestler was apparently working for British intelligence at the time. On the other hand, "The Long Walk" was apparently never that well known, which makes it improbable as a propaganda effort. The main credibility problem with "The Long Walk" is the shear physical rigor involved. Depending on how much you googled, you may have noticed that there's a lot of skepticism in the trekking crowd. Crossing the Gobi in the summer, without any water containers, followed by crossing the Himalayas in the winter, shod in handmade moccasins, was thought to be a bit extreme by many. I recommend the book highly for reading pleasure alone, regardless of the credibility issues. The murky background of the whole thing makes it interesting at another level. Cheers, Dan.

To: jbe who wrote (3396)	1/30/2001 2:21:49 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 6089

Meanwhile, a couple articles came up today on your old haunts. First, on on a situation I hadn't really heard much on before: A Grisly Mystery in Ukraine Leads to a Government Crisis nytimes.com The political crisis that has seized Ukraine started with the disappearance last September of Georgy Gongadze, a lanky Georgian-born journalist with a penchant for asking blunt questions about President Leonid D. Kuchma. It worsened with the discovery in November of a headless body — believed to be that of Mr. Gongadze — and, later that month, the release of secret recordings made under the president's couch by a security man in which Mr. Kuchma appears to order the journalist's abduction or worse. The security agent, who is now hiding in Europe, has beamed his accusations into Ukraine over short-wave radio. Elsewhere, from Newsweek: Inside the Refugee Camps msnbc.com They’re crowded, cold and often hungry. Now the displaced of Chechnya are running out of hope too That article is actually fairly mundane, just about what you'd expect in a grim and forgotten civil war. No matter how ugly our domestic politics gets, one only has to look at the ex-Soviet Union to realize how very much worse it could be. Cheers, Dan, blackly.