Another Pretty Snow Picture -- With a Sting!

This blog has recently featured pretty snow pictures, mentions of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, and Bush's drive to democratize vast regions of the globe. Here's a picture that sorta ties them all together and reminds us of what is ultimately at stake. This is the Kolyma Highway that runs from Magadan to Yakutsk in Siberia. It has been called the "Road of Bones." David Carr of Samizdata explains why:

It was built by political prisoners and slaves, countless numbers of whom were worked, frozen and starved to death in the process. Because the perma-frost makes the ground too hard to effect any burials, the bones of the cadavers were broken up and used as ballast upon which to build the road.

We will never know for sure how many lives were sacrificed to this 'glorious people's project', but by repute, every metre of the road cost one human life. The road is 2000 kilometres long.

Let us never forget. This is the Russian past and this is why it is important that Putin not be allowed to slide back into the habits of the past.