Today, April 12th is most likely to be notable as the day most procrastinators get around to starting their taxes. But this day also has a significant place in history. For in the early hours of two different April 12th mornings, 150 and 50 years ago today, the opening volleys of two different wars were launched. The Civil War was an attempt to hold onto a lifestyle of the past. The space race was an effort to control the world of the future. On April 12, 1861, the opening shots of the American Civil War were fired by Confederate soldiers on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina. Exactly 100 years later, the first human shot in the Cosmic Cold War conflict known as the space race was fired by the Soviet Union as it launched Cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin into space. The weaponry and goals were different, of course. Cannons versus rocket engines — which represents a staggering advancement in technology in just 100 years, in and of itself. But in many ways, the Civil War was an attempt by the Confederacy to hold onto a lifestyle and world of the past. The space race was an effort to control the world of the future. The Civil War was more bloody, of course. But make no mistake about it — the huge amounts of money and effort that both the Soviet Union and the United States poured into their space programs would not have been invested there if control of space weren’t seen as a critical military goal for both countries. On the other hand, it’s possible to see the firing of a rocket carrying the first human into space as an example of some of the better things we can do with technology, rather than simply using it to fire bullets and cannonballs at each other. The best and the worst that humans can rise or sink to … all connected to an object fired in the early morning hours, and commemorated on the same calendar day, 100 years apart.

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From Fort Sumter to the Moon

What if the Soviet Union had beaten the US to the Moon?

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Space race

The economy here, still loaded with Soviet paraphernalia, is sick and getting sicker. A hard currency crisis that began in March has brought parts of the private sector to a standstill, and a systemwide financial collapse looms if the government can’t hit upon a solution.

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In Belarus, currency crisis pushes economy from troubled to dire

A documentary, “My Perestroika,” burrows into the lives of people who came of age at the close of the Soviet Union.

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Muscovite Lives, Entangled in History

“Sunder” is a collection of photographs by Bruce Haley documenting the former Soviet republics. Mathew R. Warren describes its origins.

Link:
Lens: Lives in Former Soviet Lands

Barack Obama is to say the challenges facing the US are a “Sputnik moment” in a State of the Union speech referring to the 1950s Soviet satellite launch that sparked a wave of US innovation.

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Obama will hail ‘Sputnik moment’

An extraordinary Iraqi archive kept classified until this week reveals how Saddam Hussein attempted to win Soviet support before the first United States war with Iraq.

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In ’91, Hussein Sought Soviet Help to Head Off U.S.

Something strange happened in the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s. During a period when both countries were focused intently on space, nuclear weapons, and post–war development, two environmental issues made national headlines. Even stranger, the places that attracted attention were thousands of miles from either of the political centers in Moscow or Washington, D.C., in some of the most isolated parts of each country. read more

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Restraint and Hope: Lessons from Lake Baikal and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

In discussing the fate of Soviet Jews, Kissinger dismissed the power of their emigration movement.

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What Kissinger missed about Jewish emigration

Christopher Hitchens, among others, has been waiting to hear the thoughts of the Anti-Defamation League on the matter of Henry Kissinger’s craven and obscene comments to his President, the craven and obscene Richard Nixon. This is what Kissinger had to say about the crisis provoked by the suppression of Jews by the Soviet Union: “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy, And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” Hitchens : It’s hard to know how to classify this observation in the taxonomy of obscenity. Should it be counted as tactical Holocaust pre-denial? That would be too mild. It’s actually a bit more like advance permission for another Holocaust. Which is why I wonder how long the official spokesmen of American Jewry are going to keep so quiet. Nothing remotely as revolting as this was ever uttered by Jesse Jackson or even Mel Gibson, to name only two famous targets of the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League. Where is the outrage? Is Kissinger–normally beseeched for comments on subjects about which he knows little or nothing–going to be able to sit out requests from the media that he clarify this statement? Does he get to keep his op-ed perch in reputable newspapers with nothing said? Will the publishers of his mendacious and purloined memoirs continue to give him expensive lunches as if nothing has happened?” Here now, recently over the transom, a press release from the Anti-Defamation League: ADL: KISSINGER REMARKS ON NIXON TAPES REVEAL “DISTURBING FLAWS,” BUT DO NOT CHANGE HIS LEGACY   New York, NY, December 13, 2010 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said a 1973 discussion between President Richard M. Nixon and his top foreign policy advisor at the time, Henry Kissinger, released as part of the Nixon Tapes, “shows a disturbing and even callous insensitivity” toward Soviet Jews, “but should not change history’s verdict on the important contributions and ultimate legacy” of Kissinger. The press release goes on to quote Abe Foxman, the ADL director, as saying, “Dr. Kissinger’s contributions to the safety and security of the U.S. and Israel have solidly established his legacy as a champion of democracy and as a committed advocate for preserving the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel.  The Nixon Tapes should not change history’s verdict on the important contributions and ultimate legacy of Henry Kissinger.” Foxman’s reaction to Kissinger’s words — among the most vile ever spoken by a Jew about his own people — is surpassingly sad to me. He is a better man than his reaction suggests.  

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ADL: Kissinger’s Vile Words Means Nothing

I stood with hundreds of thousands of rebellious Czechoslovakians in 1989 on a cold winter night in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as the singer Marta Kubišov

On November 25, 2010, the occupation of Afghanistan by United States and NATO forces had already lasted nine years and 50 days. This date is a significant milestone, Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com points out, because nine years and 50 days is also how long the Soviet occupation of that country lasted. “That is how long the Soviet Union tried, and failed, to successfully occupy Afghanistan and install a pro-Soviet regime,” notes Ditz. read more

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Participate in a Real "December Review" of the War in Afghanistan

Russia’s foreign intelligence agency has unveiled a plaque to UK double agent Kim Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

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Russia honours UK spy Kim Philby

Sir Christopher Meyer says Soviet security agents “gnashed their teeth with frustration as I rejected both homo- and heterosexual temptation”

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Diplomat’s guide to ‘honeytrap’ perils

Russia’s lower house of parliament condemns Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin for ordering the mass killing of Poles at Katyn.

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Duma condemns Stalin over Katyn