A Canal Story
The election fever is up on us again, here in US, and the "socialist" hydra is rearing its many ugly heads, more then ever, I'd say with unusual pride this time. The usual suspects, all "democrats" some old, some new, but no new ideas - the same old bankrupt ideology, decorated with more hypocritical rethoric, and pushed to an extreme, just to rally the troops and create a head-space for negotiating later, to make themselves look "centrists" when they later abandon their extreme positions. Regardless of when and where these morons acquired this dogma, they're just petty would-be tyrants and people controllers, à la Cuban tool Maduro, and they are fully prepared, if, God-forbid, should they be elected to any position of power, to shove it down our throats - do not disregard them as "nuts" they are dangerous! And, one more thing, the proponents of this monstrosity are now calling themselves "democrat-socialists" in an attempt to make the ugly doctrine more acceptable by flavoring it with a whiff of "democracy". Like saying "pine-flavored crap". But there's no compatibility between socialism and democracy, as socialism is a "system" that's against the human nature! Please note and understand that there is only one kind of socialism, the bad kind, AKA communism, or Marxism, all names of one and the same aberation, that, regardless of how it comes to power, by ballots or bullets, it results in terrible hardship, crowned by murdering its own people in the end! Coincidentally, today this canal story came to my attention, not that I didn't know it, save the details, and it illustrates perfectly the best answer to a question a young student asked me years ago in a Berkeley café, when I pointed out to her that the "democrat" policies look more and more like socialism. After several attempts at denying it, she finally admitted the obvious, but asked me in return: "So, what's wrong with socialism anyway?" The sad and disturbing, ugly history of the Danube - Black Sea Canal is but one example of an answer, surely not the world's worst example of socialist crimes, but one that's bad enough.  The Map of the Danube - Black Sea Canal (in red) The idea of a Danube to Black Sea canal was not new. It was first proposed in the 19-th century, effectively adding a fourth arm and mouth to the Danube, adding to the three existing ones of the Danube delta. But it wasn't possible then, due to Romania's lack of technology and ressources. After the war, and after the socialists were instaled to power in Romania at the point of Soviet-Russian bayonets in 1947, reportedly at Stalin's directive, the Romanian "workers party" opened the incredibly difficult and enormous project in 1949. Stalin, the instigator, was a big lover of such works, mostly executed with prisoniers, political and otherwise, giving him the posibility not only to build great things, but also to grind into the ground a great number of the "enemies of the Soviet state". A true socialist win-win proposition! But the "works" on the canal had to be stopped in 1953 - the socialist planned "economy" of Romania was finally producing its logical results, meaning that there was a shortage of everything, including construction materials. Later on, under the "leadership" of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania's worst socialist tyrant, the works were re-started, and the tragedy continued until the canal's inauguration in 1984, complete with appropriatedly incompetent and messed-up pump and circumstance, but, whatever, it was ready, locks and all. On the apparent good side, the canal saves for the vessels passing from the Danube into the Black sea and vice versa some 400 Km (250 Miles) of river navigation per trip, which is a good stretch - lots of time and fuel. And it doesn't look too bad either... if it wouldn't be for its ugly history. Will get to it later, after we see how humongous this canal is, both as a construction, and as an economic boondoggle.  The Canal Now - For the passing ships it looks like a normal water-way, yet...
This was a huge
project. With an added 31 Km branch on the North side, its total
length is 96 Km (60 Miles). It displaced a quantity of
381,000,000
cubic meters of
dirt and rock, 25 million cubic meters more than the Suez canal, and
140 millions more than the Pamana canal! To have an idea of what
381 million cubic meters would look like, if stacked one on top of the
other, the stack will almost reach the Moon (the Earth - Moon Distance is 384,402,000 meters!)The canal "project" required, in spite of the free forced labor, a monetary investment of 2 Billion (1984) Dollars, and was supposed to amortize this expense in 50 years. But that was the calculation using the "socialist" statistics and estimates, AKA wishful thinking. In reality, at today's usage, the expense would be recovered in... 600 (six hundred) years! But that's not the sad and disturbing, ugly story of this socialist "project". That being the human sacrifice it extracted from the people of Romania. To get free labor for the canal, a complex of 11 prison camps were established all along the projected digs, and filled with tens of thousands of prisoners, primarily political "enemies of the people" or of the "state" but also people arrested for even the pettiest of crimes - the "Canal" needed a workforce, and new, draconian laws were drafted to see that the requirement was satisfied! From the tens of thousands of prisoners sent there, many thousands never returned. Men, women, young and old, nobody will ever know how many thousands, because after a while the murderers stopped keeping count! The quote below is translated from a 2015 page of the Romanian newspaper Adevărul (The Truth) that did some research on the subject. Memory of the Victims
"...the real number of all the canal's victims is unknown. There is no memorial cemetery for them. During the first phase of the construction, from 1949 till 1953, only the deaths of 656 persons were officially recorded. And so that their very existence be erased for eternity, the dead were buried in the banks of the canal, later to be covered by millions of tons of dirt, rocks and water. ... For Romania, the significance of the Danube - Black Sea canal is that of the bloodiest dream of the communist regime" - Adevărul Thus the "canal" construction is a huge, collective tomb, that holds, inside and below, the bodies of many tousands of dead Romanians, unnamed victims of the leftist murderers that planned and engineered this cruel end for them. May they forever rest in peace, and may it be that their murderers, most of them remaining unpunished, forever rot in Hell! Here is, translated, a verse from a poem written about this dreadful place by Andrei Ciurunga a pen-name of Robert Eisenbraun (1920 Cahul - 2004 Bucharest) a canal "alumnus" and martyr of the communist prisons himself: The history, now going in reverse, Will sure remember, flowing over mud, The monstruos Danube river that deverse Through three mouths water, and through the fourth, blood.  Poster for "A Pre-Planned Cemetery" - a commemorating exhibit "So,
what's wrong with Socialism anyway?" she asked? Now you know, at least a small part of it.
__oOo__ Information and photos from the Internet,
Text © Copyright - The Blind
Stork, 2019
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