Monday, May 27, 2013

Where is it going?

I mean our world. Actually, it's my question of last three days.

It all started from international news in French. It started from the Hezbollah stories of Lebanon:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/26/world/meast/lebanon-violence/index.html?hpt=wo_c1
Where people started killing each other not even because of the strifes in their own country (which actually existed before but wasn't that critical) but because of  the consolidation with the Syrian Sunni and the Syrian Alawis. I mean, it's not something new or unexpected - we hear such news almost every day since the beginnig of the world. Though usually it seems to be far from you and you don't feel it for real. You don't meet these people, you don't talk to them, you get used to those horrible pictures of destructions and deaths on your TV. They exist for you only on the SCREEN. Like in a cinema. You are in a comfortable chair on the other side. And as soon as the movie will be over you can go home and have you delicious dinner. And who cares? It's just on the screen.

But then once you meet real people FROM THERE. It was in April, in JFK aeroport where I talked to three Lebanese guys who were going to Minneapolis as well. They were very nice and polite, they even cheered me up (I was tired after long flight from Moscow and frustrated about plane delay for Minneapolis). And now I'm imagining them coming back from their business trip and living with their families in a place where people are shooting, where schools are closed, where houses are being destroyed... And I can't put these two pictures together: nice and cheerful men and the hell of the war.

And right after it was the story about an officer killed in Britain. What hit me wasnt' the murdery itself but the video where the killer is explaining his actions. It just sounds absurd - a British citizen was just killed and a killer is having an interview right on the spot. There are people around just passing by, mothers with strollers, cars on the road - everyone is going for his own business and nobody stops. The killer seems to be reasonable and logical, he isn't crying, he is EXPLAINING! So you can kill a person and then become a "star", to give the interview and you aren't even confused. I respect a lot this brave woman but the situation is
incredible. And scary. It's not the murder that horrifies but the reaction. *You definitely should make a video of that "exotic" scene - where else you would interview a killer just after a murder?*

Today was just an apogee of the world's nonsense. My friend has a birthday today and we finally accomplish our wish to visit a famous and  misterious museum - the one and only extant underground Bunker-42 situated at 65 meters underground in the center of Moscow. Absolutely astonishing place to visit -  one of the most secured "cold war" objects in the USSR. Projecting of the object began in 40s of last centuryto the order of I.V. Stalin. Then existed bunker (called "The Bunker of Stalin" nowadays) was not qualified as anti-nuclear so it was decided to build the proper one. In 1956 the object with the general square of more than 7000 m2 was taken over by the state commission.  In 60s Bunker-42 was completely equipped with all requires in case of nuclear attack. The store of food, fuel, air regeneration and vent filter systems, a water supply system could provide the staff to be in ready alert during several months. 

Block #2 which is pretty often used by different movie directors as the decorations for movies about spies or the end of the world.

At this moment our guide suddenly closed the back door behind us and turned on an alarm informing us that our country was attacked by foreign ballistic missiles.





18 floors under the ground.

That was increadibly interesting tour, though... The thing that struck me during the tour was this inevitable and permant thought everywhere - "we are the best", "we will show these Americans who is the boss", "we are the strongest" etc. The "cold war" and the Caribbean crisis is far behind but the 13 years old kids when asked where they want to sent an intercontinental ballistic missile say all at once "to America". Actually this answer was preparing during the whole tour. Now imagine this horrible scene - the guide asks one of the kids to sit at the special machine that controls the missils (a real model) and offers him to "push the button". And the kid did it. And in the beginnig on the huge screen you see peaceful cities, people on the streets and in a few moments it's a panic, a wave destroying everything on its way, the mortal whirlwind. How would you feel knowing that you are obliterating the whole country even for a game?! The kids were applauding. No comments. Me and my friend were shocked. We thought that the idea of the whole tour was to feel in reality how dangerous is this "powers war", how mortal and merciless it is, how close we are to the "end of the world" if the governments of our countries will stupidly show off and pit their skills against each other. I'm not sure that kids got it. Unfortunately, it reminded me the same situation that I saw in the States in most of the museums - trying to show that "we are the best", that USSR was "the devil" who was to be stopped, that "we are the strongest". Why should only one  be "the best" and "the strongest"? For how long else our governments will convince us that we are ennemies when we are not? And what will our children play with? Assembling and dissassembling a hydrogen bomb? 

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