In early November a former official at the International Atomic Energy Agency died at age 96. He was a unique case, for he was the only one ever to be appointed to it as a punishment.
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Stalin's most faithful henchman, was probably involved in his masters murder of millions, including the 7 to 10 million Ukranians deliberately starved to death in 1932-33. A co-architect of the Nazi-Soviet pact, he fell from grace in the power struggles following Stalin's death, and the wily Khrushchev first banished him to the humiliating post of Ambassador to Outer Mongolia, then appointed him deputy head of the Soviet delegation to the IAEA. Former IAEA Director Bertrand Goldschmidt reports in his remarkable book The Atomic Complex that the head of the Soviet delegation was under strict instructions from Khrushchev never to be absent from any session, so that his deputy, who had negotiated with world leaders and decided the fates of nations, would never occupy the Soviet delegates seat, but would sit behind him as an aide
¾at a secondary international body with no powers.As a disciplined Communist, Molotov did not bat an eyelash when his wife was innocently arrested and imprisoned for many years. De mortuis nil nisi bene
¾freely translated: he was a singular brute.My next obituary is devoted to Marc Kranz, a health food nut in Leipzig, East Germany, who died of starvation at age 29. He successively eliminated foods from his diet when he found that they were given chemical additives, finally subsisting only on fruits and vegetables, but giving those up, too, when he realized that growers were spraying them with chemicals. He thus proved that the only way to make sure ones diet includes nothing unwholesome is to starve to death.
No such wisdom will be bequeathed to his fellow men by 56-year old astrophysicist Charles Hyder, who at this writing is still among the living, but expects to die shortly after Christmas. He is starving himself to death in front of the White House, and nothing will stop him unless the government agrees to dismantle all nuclear warheads by 2000. "With a holocaust you can't fix it up afterwards," he says, "so you have to offer up bodies in advance."
That is inexorable logic, though it fails to explain why he does not offer up his body by the Kremlin Wall. Nor does he seem to appreciate being in a country where he has a free choice of living or dying: in some others, that issue is decided by such as Vyacheslav Molotov.
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Vol. 14, No. 5
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 14, No. 5 Date: November 30, 2004 08:35 AM Title: Wimps
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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