Currumbin Swell Sculpture Festival 2014

Another year, another Swell in Currumbin beach front. These are the pieces I found most interesting.

A giant green octopus?

AK-47 made of car parts.
[Daniel Clemmett]

AK-47 detail.

Manta rays made of plastic bags.
[Lauren Grey]

Detail of the manta ray.

Make your own postcard.

A cold tree.
[Vanessa Anseline]

An awesome wolf made of chicken wire.
[Ivan Lovatt]

The eye of the awesome wolf.

A funny creature from Mad Max?
[Christopher Trotter]

The real driver.

Stone pods of soft eggs. A pleasure to look at and very touchable.
[Glenn  Manning and Kathy Daly]

Savage Continent by Keith Lowe

Keith Lowe looks at Europe as a whole in the aftermath of WWII. He describes what happened and provides well researched statistics and context.

Keith's aims in writing the book were: "to break away from the narrow Western view that tends to dominate most writing on the period" and "to clear a path through the labyrinth of myths":

"Many of the 'massacres' I have investigated turn out, on closer inspection, to be far less dramatic than they are usually portrayed. Equally, some quite astonishing atrocities have been hushed up, or simply lost in the sweep of other historical events".

"Statistics really do matter, because they are often employed for political purposes. Some nations routinely exaggerate the crimes of their neighbours, either to distract attention from their own crimes or to further own national causes."

For many eastern Europeans the war truly ended only in the 1990s with the retreat of the Soviet Union armies and regaining of independence.

I learned many things from this book. For example, I learned:

• that Lithuanian partisans were fighting the Soviet Union well into the 1950s - the last partisan group in Lithuania was destroyed in 1956,
• that Jewish population in Bulgaria increased during the war,
• how the Greek communists lost the civil war, despite large popular support,
• how Stalin gradually took control of Romania and other central European countries.

Central and Eastern Europe lost freedom after WWII for 50 years.

The 20th century European history is fascinating, because it shows how low people can go, but also it gives us hope: shows that forgiving and living together in peace is possible.

Ukraine, 2 September 2014 - Hitler and Putin

There are lots of parallels between Hitler in 1938/1939 and Putin in 2014. Both started with foreign territories that were culturally close: Hitler with Austria and Sudetenland, Putin with Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Both were talking about peace while grabbing more and more foreign territory, both had support of the majority of their people, both were able to convince some portion of foreign leaders and regular people that they were the good guys, both suppressed free media in their countries, both used propaganda shamelessly, both made people who opposed them disappear or get beaten.

"On Friday night, a local lawmaker left his home in the north Russian city of Pskov and was attacked from behind by three men. He was beaten unconscious, only to wake up, bloodied, in a hospital hours later. The lawmaker, Lev Shlosberg, had been leading an investigation into the mysterious burials of several members of the Pskov-based 76th Airborne Division who were rumored to have died fighting in Ukraine. Journalists who attempted to reach the cemetery days earlier were also attacked." Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamelder/vladimir-putin-isnt-going-to-stop#48gn400

The big difference is that Putin has nuclear weapons and was not afraid to threaten Ukraine with them if they don't stop resisting.

"Kiev has received threats of nuclear retaliation from Russia through unofficial channels if it continues to fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, Valeriy Heletey, announced on his Facebook page on Monday." Source: http://www.newsweek.com/russia-has-threatened-nuclear-attack-says-ukraine-defence-minister-267842

A few days ago there was an incident with the plane of the Russian Defence Minister who did not file the correct flight documents to fly over Poland from Slovakia and was subsequently temporarily denied entry into Polish airspace. Well, we did not need to wait long. This is a video made by one of the Russians fighting in Ukraine - Arsen Pavlov aka "Motorola". He says "If you don't want to let Russian Federation defence minister through Poland, Motorola will come to you"... watch till the end to see what he means: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4zTM8FvJR4

This is not a joke. Russians lived under Soviet propaganda since 1917 to 1989, then had about 10 years of relative freedom under Gorbachev and Yeltsin and started falling into tyranny again under Putin since 1999. Russians, contrary to Germans, never acknowledged that they were the bad guys during World War II: they attacked Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland, but they still have monuments to Stalin and proudly display the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union.

Propaganda works like advertisements, you may think that you are immune, but you are not. If you listen to it often enough, it soaks in. What propaganda can do to people? Let me give you an example from a book I am reading now: "Savage Continent" by Keith Lowe. On page 29, he describes the fate of displaced persons in Germany after the war:
"[...] as Poles, [they] were even blamed for starting the war and bringing this whole misfortune upon Germany". This is exactly what Russia is doing now: blaming Ukraine for civilian deaths in Ukraine where Russian-sponsored and Russian forces are fighting Ukrainian forces. There would be no civilian deaths if Putin did not want parts of Ukraine for himself.

Update 6/2/2016:
ABC take on the similarities in Hitler's and Putin's actions:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-25/hillary-clinton-putin-hitler-comparison-checks-out/5325608

Euromaidan's comparison of Hitler's Danzig and Putin's Crimea speeches:
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/03/16/plagiarism-scandal-in-russia-hitlers-speech-copied-for-crimea-annexation/