AMERIGO VESPUCCI by: Frederick A. Ober
Last week on my iPhone I read my first e-book. I thought it will not be the experience as when reading a regular hard cover books. How was I wrong 
Maybe it had something to do with the book it self. The Biography of Amerigo Vespucci by Frederick A. Ober is an astonishing book.
What gives it its fluctuality is the fine interwining between the authors narrative and the transcriptions of Amerigo Vespucci himself – it so nicely done, that if not the different font styles between the two, I probably wouldn’t even notice it, because I fell into the book that much.
As it is convenintly shown by the title of it, the books speaks about the life of Amerigo Vespucci, specially the part of his life, when he undertook four voyages into the Terra Nuova-The New World, which was later named by him America.
It is interresting how a small note in a book not widely spread in the times of great discoveries sealed the naming of the New World. It was writen that TERRA NUOVA should be named by its discoverer – Amerigo Vespucci – and the person who described the land and its people. This later becam controversial because the supporters of Chrisopher Columbus claimed that the newly discovered land should bare his name and subsequently accused Vespucci of stealing the name from Columbus.
This of course was not true. When it was written that TERRA NUOVA should bare the name of Amerigo, it was ment only the land that Vespucci discovered and has written about it. And this was the South America, namely Brazil. The problem evolved later, after the deaths of Vespucci and Columbus, when the name of Amerigo-America has spread from its original meaning (today Brazil) to the whole western hemisphere.
The book guides us firstly through his early years, where it describes his childhood and hist schooling and how he baceme fascinated by the stars and navigation. Later it leads us to Spain where Amerigo spent a few years of his life before going to Lisbon, Portugal.
The years that he spent in these two countreis vere the most advetorus years of his life. Here he joined in on four voyages that lead him to the southwestern hemisphere, consequently discovering South America. These are also the parts of the biography where the most of Amerigos transcriptions are included.
My favourite is the one when they decide to go ashore somewhere in the Amazonian rainforest. First he describes the oddly looking natives who were all naked and show no shamfulness as the Europeans do. He describes their way of life, how they are expert hunters, bow handlers and especially swimmers. Then he writes how the group of 20 men decided to go on a short exploration trip into the bowls of the Amazon. He says that when they were a couple of miles inland they came across a 24 foot long monster. The sight of which sent the shivers down their spines and that they all swiftly left the back for the shore, frightened as never before.
Now imagine an european soldier of the late 15 and early 16th century, who has never seen a really big snake, because in Europe there are no large snakes like Anacondas or Pythons I can just imagine the looks on their faces when they gazed apuon a giant anaconda:)
Now after reading it I only wish that i could get my hands on The FOUR voyages by Amerigo Vespuci in which he writes about the voyages them selves and also about the nativ people, the land and its flora and favna.
If you want to read this biography, you can find it here:
Or KINDLE VERSION:
Filed under Book, Medieval by on Aug 19th, 2010. 4 Comments. 
While on holidays I got my hands on a magazine in which there was an article about how Switzerland, during the rise of Adolf Hitler and second world war, was “collaborating” with Germany.
This “collaboration” of course did not take the shape like the ones of Italy or Japan or even Slovakia and Hungary. No, it was a more subtle cooperation.
Germany being isolated by the allies, was unable to get its hands on the foreign currency, which it needed for her trading operations with other countries. This was necessary because Germany it self didn’t have all the resources it needed for the long and exhausting war.
These resources were oil, aluminum, etc., which they could get in the countries willing to do trade with it ( aluminum in Sweden, oil in Romania…), but to be able to do all this trading they needed foreign currency, because the Deutsche mark was of no value to other countries.
This is where Switzerland came into the pictures, with its laws of banking privacy. Their policy was and it still is that all the transactions done via their banks are confidential and that the details will not be disclosed to anyone. This policy want in hand with Germanys need of foreign currency.
The main problem was not providing Germany with foreign currency, but taking in gold of suspicious origins – almost all the gold that the NAZIs brought to Switzerland was stolen mostly from the Jewish people and the conquered countries.
Before the war some of the countries could predict the progression of Germanys power, so they shipped their gold from European to American vaults where it would be safe. But some of the European countries were not so prudent and when they were conquered their gold reserves were also taken from them – and the numbers of the seized gold reserves from occupied countries went in thousands of kilos.
All this gold had markings on it – like the ones on the picture above – this meant that they had to remelt all of it and stamp it with German signatures. The international community knew approximately how much gold a country has. So when the torrents of gold, that were going from Germany to Switzerland in exchange for foreign currency, skyrocketed from 86 kilos in 1940 to a staggering 2,1 tons in 1941, it was clear to everybody that this gold could not be legitimately German.
I already answered where a portion of the gold came from – from seized national gold reserves. But this was not nearly enough for all the transactions that were made in the years 1938-1945. So you might be asking your self where did all the rest of the god came from. The answer is simple – it came from Jewish people.
Before the war started in 1938, the Jewish people were forced to give over all of their foreign currency and also the valuables they had – from precious metals, to valuable stones and gems.
The Jews cooperated hoping that it would stop at that. But unfortunately for them it didn’t. Not only the were robbed also of their silverware and other precious household objects – like shown on the picture on the left.
Like Rudolf Hoess confessed in the Nürnberg trials, they did not just rob the Jews from the gold they had in their households, but when they were taken to concentration camps, they also pulled out their gold teeth etc.
Now the question remains – If you are reading this, i hope you are asking yourself the same question – how were Swiss bankers able to accept all the gold coming from Germany, although they knew (of course they were and are still claiming that they didn’t) that there was no chance that the gold was legally German.
But if you think about it, Germany really needed the gold to be changed into foreign currency, and the Swiss banks were the only ones who could and wanted to do business with them, then they were able to dictate the exchange rates, and we all know the saying when money talk, bullshit walks.
So you see, they didn’t ask the questions they should, though they probably knew the answer and by doing so they made fortunes. Today we still don’t know how many suspicious gold actually went through Swiss banks and how many of it is still in their vaults, perhaps remelted again and with other markings.
And because of the Swiss laws and banking policy we will probably never know.
Filed under Modern by on Jul 25th, 2010. 8 Comments.
CNN: Cold War; 5 of 24; Korea
The current events that are going on in the Korean peninsula between North and south Korea, take me 60 years back, to the the years after WWII, when the Cold War became hot.
In the years after WWII the frictions between North and South Korea lead once one nation to a war, that soon escalated into power play between the two “supper powers” which were then joined by China, who at that time just got out of its own civil war.
The USA and USSR decided to use the previous division of Koreas with the 38th North parallel. That division still stands today.
In the late 1940s both powers spread influence in their “own” part of Korea. The North was under the influence of USSR and South under USA.
In the south the USA appointed Syngman Rhee for the new president of South Korea. In the North, Stalin gave his blessing to Kim Il Sung, and so began the power struggle which in 1950 escalated into war, when North Korea crossed the 38 parallel and invaded the South Korea. Well that at least is the official western teaching, while the communist historians opposed this and argued that South Korea was first to attack and that North Korea merely retaliated in defense.
What really happened on June 25th 1950 we probably will never know, but that is also why this era of Korean – and because it was a part of Cold War – also world history, carries such a charge of feelings and controversy.
In my opinion the Koreas should be left alone, to decide their own fate, not to become the playground of the powers.
The powers usually get into conflict on some smaller matters that have nothing to do with them, but as history has taught us, that then brings to a bigger conflict, which in the era of Cold War a couple of times almost escalated into nuclear/world war.
In the case of Koreas was at first just a show of muscles, but when thing really got hot, especially after the USSR also acquired their own nuclear weapons, we were already then, ten years before the Cuban missile crisis, on the verge of nuclear war, because general McArthur wanted to end things quickly and throw some nukes on the commies. Luckily president Truman was sane enough to relieve McArthur of his command in the far east.
The second boiling point in the Korean war was in the late 1951, when combined South Korean and UN troops broke through the Northern lines and were able to conquer vast territories and by doing so the came dangerously close to the Chinese border. Even though the UN leaders assured the Chinese that they will stop with their push when they reach the border, China invaded North Korea under the pretension of self defense. They said that they will only occupy the border line, but that soon turned into a full frontal assault on the UN forces.
We clearly see, how power struggle and showing your nose where it doesn’t belong usually caries severe consequences for all involved parties.
I just hope that the present leaders will not want to see who has the biggest, but will want to solve the occurring situation peacefully.
The old proverb comes to my mind while I’m finishing this post: History repeats its self. Hope that this time, we will prove it wrong.
Filed under Documentary, Modern by on Jun 11th, 2010. 4 Comments.
Dan Brown: The Lost Symbol
I finally got my hands on the latest creation by Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code
It is another thrilling adventure through the secret, mystic and intriguing world of Freemasonry. Only this time the novel is not taking place in any of the historical cities of Europe like Paris or Rome, this time the setting is in the USA. To be exact in Washington D.C.
It is the third book in which the protagonist is Robert Langdon. The previous two I already mentioned above. Again, against his will and to help a friend, Langdon is pulled into a game of life and death – a vortex of riddles, labyrinths, symbols, history and modern science.
The book is like all others by Dan Brown written as a fast paced thriller that takes you on an adventure, that in this case takes only 12 hours from start to finish.
If you are really into books like this you will need approximately the same time to read it, at least I did. Started reading it at 11 pm and couldn’t close the book until 4:30 am, when my eyes were to sore continue reading. I continued reading it the moment I woke up, and took me another 3 till I got to the end-hope.
Why I’m telling you this? Because some might say, well if it is like the Da Vinci Code, only set in Washington, why even bother reading. Well I you liked the Code, you will not be able to stop reading this one, because it is another master piece.
I can tell you who are the ones who will most enjoy this book – the ones that love a good conspiracy theory. I like them too, though I know they are fairy tales and I don’t believe in them, but they are fun to read.
In the center of the book are Freemasons, all their secrets and buildings. The thesis is that the United States of America was not founded as a Christian country but it became Christian later. This derives from the know facts that the founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson… were all known freemasons.
For all of you who have read and liked the Lost Symbol I would recommend: The Temple and the Lodge
If you have any thoughts or ideas, feel free to make a comment.
Filed under Book, Novel by on Apr 11th, 2010. 2 Comments.
CNN: Cold War; 4 of 24; Berlin
In the previous part we have come to the Marshall plan, with which the USA helped Europe to rebuild it self. In this plan was also included west Germany and that was on of the reasons why the Soviets established a blockade of west Berlin.
Problems began because the two blocks had different visions of the future of the German people.
The west wanted to rebuild west Germany as soon as possible because they believed that the only way for Europe to get back on its feet is with strong Germany.
The other factor was that if Germany would become strong again, it would serve as a shield against the USSR, if it ever decided to invade Europe.
On the other side, the Soviets wanted a weak Germany, because they feared, that if Germany were ever to become powerful, it would again threaten the existence of the Soviet people.
The situation began to escalate in 1948 when the western powers on June 20th carried out the reform of Germanys currency. This resulted in creation of the new Deutsche Mark-DM, that was valid in West Germany and in west Berlin.
The new DM was far more valuable than the currency that the Soviets issued. The usual exchange rate was 7:1 in favor of DM. That is why lots of westerns went into eastern Berlin to buy the necessary supplies.
This enraged the Soviets and hey began to think what should they do. They decided not to use the military, because they felt that it is better to resolve this matter in diplomatic way.
So they decided to cut off the supply routes to western Berlin. They closed factories, power plants… This meant that the western Berlin was left without its necessary 2000 tons of daily supplies.
The western powers then decided to supply Berlin by air through three air corridors they were given by the soviets. So the plan was to daily air lift 2000 tons of supplies. This was the minimum the people needed to survive.
They thought it was going to last only 2-3 weeks or there was going to be war. But that did not happen. The air lift lasted until May 12th 1949 when the blockade was raised.
This happened because the western powers enforced a counter blockade on eastern Berlin and with it they did a lot of damage to eastern Berlin. The Soviets now realized that the western Berlin could be indefinitely supplied by air but they cannot supply their part. So they started the talks with the USA and decided to lift the blockade.
In the next, fifth part, of these series we will move from Europe to Asia and take a look at the next focus of the cold war – the Korea.
Filed under Documentary, Modern by on Mar 28th, 2010. 6 Comments.
The whole world is talking about it, so I’m going to join in. Yesterday I watched the first episode of HBO’s new mini series Pacific. It was a long awaited day for me and I’m sure it was for you too.
It starts as a documentary, with archival footage, testimonials and a narrator. The voice is so familiar, but I can’t figure out who it belongs to. Do you have any ideas?
The documentary part ends with the beginning of the intro, which has an amazing piece of music in it. Listening to it sent shivers down my spine, all the way from my neck to my feet. It is one of the most powerful main title theme songs.
What I liked the most about this part is, that it wasn’t packed with action, battles, events, killings… but it centered on the people. The people-volunteers who wanted to their bid and went to hell, one ocean away, where they would fight the Japanese to preserve their freedom and their way of life.
It starts with the gathering of marines at their base and of course with the typical American speech from one of their senior officers about American superiority and how they are the ones who will prevail at the end.
After the marines go home to say farewell to their families we get to see a few different scenarios how people coped with their sons going to war. We got a big Italian family farewell dinner for their boy who are leaving to fight for their country. Then we have a father-son farewell which shows us how hard it is for men to express their feelings and say goodbye. The last is a boy who wants to join his friend but is not allowed by his father under the pretense of a weak heart.
It is continued by the landing at Guadalcanal, exploring the island and coming to their first battle at Alligator’s creek where they won a small battle against the Japanese forces.
Here we are shown what can war does to a human mind, when their commanding officer froze with fear in the middle of the battle and how others proved themselves worthy of the marine uniform.
When the battle is over the soldiers go to check for survivals and supplies when on of them stumbles upon a bag of a Japanese soldier. He starts to go through it and find a book with a picture of that soldiers family. He also finds a small doll that probably belong to his daughter. At that moment we can see in his eyes that he realized that in spite all that they were told, the Japanese are humans as much as they are.
The first part then ends a few day later when the company heads into the jungle to fight another day.
What did you think about the series? Was it as good for you as it was for me?
I can’t wait for the next part.
Filed under Documentary, Modern by on Mar 16th, 2010. 2 Comments.
CNN: Cold War; 3 of 24; Marshall Plan
Belgian economic historian Herman Van der Wee concludes the Marshall Plan was a "great success":
"It gave a new impetus to reconstruction in Western Europe and made a decisive contribution to the renewal of the transport system, the modernization of industrial and agricultural equipment, the resumption of normal production, the raising of productivity, and the facilitating of intra-European trade."
The third part of this Cold War series talks about the Marshall Plan, which was named after its creator General of the Army George Catlett Marshall.
The Marshall plan was America’s response to the state of matter in Europe after the end of World War II.
Europe lay in ruins and it was industrially and economically destroyed. This was the best basis for spawning communism in countries that were previously immune to its doctrine. Such were France, Italy, Greece.
The decision to help Europe was made, when Britain in 1947 announced that because its economy is destroy, it can not anymore afford to support Greece and Turkey. This was the reason for alarm in USA. If this two countries get left without help it would be a great way for USSR to come as a saviour and spread its influence further to the west.
President Truman appointed General Marshall to devise a plan to help rebuild Europe and to prevent it to fall under the influence of USSR.
This documentary shows what all did the USA do to help Europe, what were their conditions for help. USA gave at the time astonishing 13,5 billion dollars for Marshall Plan.
At the beginning the invited USSR to join in with the Plan, but Stalin declined and also forbade all his satellite countries to even participate at the talks. The best example of this was Czechoslovakia. They wanted to join the Plan, but before they did, their prime minister was summoned to Moscow, where he was ordered not to join the Plan. When he got back to Czechoslovakia he made a famous statement “I went to Moscow as a minister of a free state and I returned as Stalin’s slave”. This shows the tensions between the two block at the time.
We also get to see how did the USA prevent the communists to gain power in Italy in 1948. A few monts before the elections because of famine and unemployment lots of people wanted to vote for the communists. USA decided that they can not allow this to happen. They urged Italian-Americans to write letters home and ask their relatives not to vote for communist party. They also sent the newly formed CIA to try and help the Christian party to win elections. As if this was not enough, pope Pius XII also called upon his followers not to vote for communists.
When elections came all this anti communist propaganda caused a landslide win for the Christian party.
We can see that the real USA agenda was not to help Europe but to stop the westward advance of communism. Europe can be glad that the only way to stop communism was to rebuild it. Because if Europe was left to decay, USSR would come and claim it for itself. So in the end that meant that would cost USA less to rebuild Europe than to let it fall under the influence of USSR and than “reclaim” it.
Filed under Documentary, Modern by on Mar 6th, 2010. 2 Comments.
CNN: Cold War; 2 of 24; Iron Curtain
Winston Churchill’s “Sinews of Peace” address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe:
“ From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
In this, the second part of Cold War series, we will be guided through the first two years after the end of WWII. We are shown why and how the relations between the two super powers escalated to such extent, that former allies could soon be in a war.
The first such sign was the above quoted Churchill’s speech, which Stalin marked as a “call to arms”.
This was all an outcome of Soviet expansion in the middle and southeast Europe, best seen in the ethnic cleansing of around 12 million Germans, who were expelled from the lands on which they lived for centuries.
First big disagreement the two “blocks” had was the decision on whether Germany should pay all the reparations for its crimes. Russia all the way to Moscow was completely destroyed by war. So naturally the Soviets wanted the Germans to pay for their crimes. They started to take from Germany whatever they could get their hand on: resources, industry, machinery, scientists, workers…
But the western powers had different plans. They wanted to rebuild west Germany as soon as possible, to make it again economically strong. The main idea was to build a barrier between the west and the Soviet states. Because at that moment in Germany, both “blocks” were neighbours and that could very easily lead to armed conflict.
This part of the series ends with the “official declaration of cold war” when in 1947 Truman sent aid to Greece and Turkey to keep out the Soviets. When he assigned them the help, he held a speech in which he declared that the USA will from now on contain the advance of communism anywhere in the world. Later this speech became known as the Truman Doctrine.
Filed under Documentary, Modern by on Feb 28th, 2010. 2 Comments.
CNN: Cold War; 1 of 24; Comrades 1917-1945
The documentary talks about the two super powers, that will be driving cold war for 40 years. The two have, before the outbreak of it, twice been allies against a common, German, enemy.
That happened in WWI, in years 1917-18, until they defeated the Germans. After the end of war, with Bolsheviks on the rise, their relations were broken for 16 years. Then in 1935, in the coming of another war, F.D.R. re-opened their diplomatic relations. This lead to another alliance between 1941-45, which fell apart soon after the end of WWII.
The documentary shows the events that will lead the world to the Cold war. They are shown with archival footage and testimonials from survivors of WWII and 
those that were a part of the making of the new world – like George Elsey (in the picture).
The emphasis is given to the “Big Three” and the conferences they attended. Those were: Teheran in 1943, Yalta in February 1945. In Potsdam in July 1945 only Stalin was left of the Big Three. Roosevelt, who died in April, was replaced by Truman and Churchill ,who lost the election to Atlee.
| You might wonder why the emphasis is on these three conferences and the answer is very simple. Because at them, they were deciding the fate of post war Europe for the next 40 years.
Comrades 1917-1945 is just the firs of 24 parts of this great documentary series. I will watch and write about the whole series as I go through them. Part 2: Iron Curtain is coming soon. For those of you that can not wait, you can get the whole series here. Unfortunately it is available only on VHS. |
Filed under Documentary, Modern by on Feb 19th, 2010. 3 Comments.
DVD: Auschwitz; The Nazis & the ‘Final Solution’
This year on the 20. may will be 70 years since the biggest concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was opened. Behind its doors 1,1 million lives perished, of which 90% were Jews. To give you a comparison – that is more than the combined casualties of British and American forces in WWII.
BBC again managed to film another worth seeing documentary in which they have shown the decisions that led to the building of this concentration camp. This decisions are shown in the first of six chapters: Surprising Beginnings. The other chapters are: Orders & Initiative, Factories of Death, Corruption, Murder & Intrigue, Liberation & Revenge.
The camp was first built for polish political prisoner.Jews weren’t brought here until 1941, after the attack on the USSR. At first it held around 10.000 prisoners. After Himmler’s plan in 1941 to build a new German city Auschwitz the number rose to 30.000, because they needed more slave labour. But even this plan was not on the scale of Hitler’s plan of destroying the Jews.
Auschwitz was sited next to water and close to one of the richest coal and lime mines in Europe. This was a matter of interest for a chemical factory IG Farben, which sought ways of making synthetic fuel. And main ingredients were coal, lime and water. So decision was made to use slave labour from the camp to facilitate the factory’s needs for work force.
We are guided through the film by testimonials of Auschwitz survivors and a couple of German soldiers who were stationed at Auschwitz. Interesting is that these two Germans who 
were sharing their memories acknowledge that the horrors they caused to the Jews were wrong, but both of them, still after 65 years (the documenatry was made in 2005) still don’t feel sorry for what they did.
The survivors of Auschwitz talk about what all was necessary to survive the holocaust and how they managed to do it. They all say that it took a lot of ingenuity, but acknowledge that luck played a big role in their survival.
This documentary also shows us the techniques how they managed to kill prisoners on a massive scale. The techniques were not the same throughout the course of the war. They changed according to the needs of the Germans.
At the beginning they mainly used firing squads but soon realized that they were not killing the prisoners fast enough. The main reason why they looked for other means of killing was, that al this close range killing of children and women took toll on German soldiers. This is all very well described in a book The Holocaust
So the next way that they tried was killing with carbon monoxide. It is an effective but to expensive killer to be used on a mass scale. They tried to fix that by using the carbon monoxide from exhaust of their trucks and cars – this still was not effective enough.
Than one of the officers came to the idea that they could use the gas, that was cheap and could be mass produced, which they were using to disinfect clothes the Jews were wearing. They thought if the gas kills lice and bacteria, it could probably do the same with humans. This gas was ZYCLON B.
To effectively take advantage of this gas they needed to build new gas chambers.
They choose to do this in another sub camp of Auschwitz called Birkenau. All in all Auschwitz had 45 sub camps. Birkenau was the biggest and a place where killings happened on the massivest scale of them all.
The Nazis also did medical experiments on the prisoners, specially on children. The chief was dr. Josef Mengele. He was specially interested in genetics, so he did a lot of studies on young twins. One of the surviving twins also speaks in this documentary.
| This documentary is on of many on the subject. I have seen a lot of documentaries about Auschwitz and other concentration camps in WWII and I have to say that this is one of the better ones.
If any of you, who will be reading this, has or had a parent/grandparent who suffered this atrocities please leave a comment and describe their experience, because we must not let it be forgotten. |
Filed under Documentary, Modern by on Feb 14th, 2010. 2 Comments.
