Daniel Kalder was born in Fife, Scotland in 1974. After gaining a degree in English Literature from Edinburgh University he worked briefly in the British government’s Mad Cow Crisis unit before escaping to Moscow in 1997 in pursuit of radical experiences and psychic disorientation. For ten years he lived and worked in Russia and the former Soviet Union, applying himself to several trades, although he never sold arms or human organs.
Styling himself as an anti-tourist, Kalder takes pleasure in visiting all the places people in their right minds usually avoid — ranging from a city dedicated to chess in Kalmykia, Russia, to a Siberian mountain village where the inhabitants worship a former soviet traffic cop turned Messiah named Vissarion Christ. Coming from the middle of nowhere himself, he is dedicated to uncovering the secret beauty and hidden strangeness of wastelands and voids. So far his travels have resulted in two highly unusual, critically acclaimed books Lost Cosmonaut and Strange Telescopes.
In 2006 Kalder decided it was time for a change and relocated from Moscow to Texas. Since then he has drunk deep of the local culture and Texans now recognize him as a ‘true Texan’ in spite of his foreign roots and accent. He regards this as a compliment.
Visit him online at http://www.danielkalder.com.
Daniel Kalder
Reasons to be Cheerful in America Today
by Daniel Kalder
A few days ago I was thinking that I would like to post something uplifting on Big Government. After all, there is plenty going on right now which is wrong or ludicrous, but perhaps that makes it especially important to focus on what we have to be grateful for in America. Sadly, the best way I can think of to do that is to tell you a few stories about what is wrong and ludicrous in my country, Britain- home of the Magna Carta and the Mother of Parliaments. So here are some stories of common, everyday British madness which I hope will make you feel more optimistic about the USA.
1) From Surrey Today:
A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.
Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.
The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.
In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.
“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”
The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.
In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.
“I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.
“At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.”
Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.
Reader, try to fathom what kind of country punishes a man for doing his civic duty, what kind of idiots sit on a jury that takes twenty minutes to sentence him, what kinds of imbeciles framed this law.
Do you feel better about America yet?
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The Truth About Fort Hood
by Daniel KalderLike everybody else, when I first heard about the shootings at Fort Hood I immediately rushed to judgment, assuming that anybody opening fire on soldiers on an army base in Texas expected to die. Thus the shooter was either 1) a soldier who had cracked or 2) a priapic jihadist aroused by the thought of all those virgins in paradise. Reasoning that an armed Islamist would struggle to penetrate Fort Hood’s security, I concluded that the shooter was probably an unfortunate soldier gone berserk. A few hours later however I discovered secret option 3) that the “alleged” shooter Nidal Hasan was both a soldier and a jihadi nutbag- an entirely new hybrid, in other words.
Of course, this just goes to show the wisdom of suspending judgment until all the facts are in. Alas, this lesson was lost on the media, who from the minute news of the shooting broke managed to get almost every detail of the story wrong. At first they told us that the killer was dead; then that there might have been more than one shooter. Soon we knew the suspect’s name, and learned that he was a Muslim convert. Then we learned that he had been Muslim since birth. Then we were told that he might have cracked as a result of exposure to combat, only he had never seen combat. Or maybe it was a response to racism he had experienced, or because as a devout Muslim he was unhappy about being deployed to Afghanistan. (And yet curiously, such a degree of sympathetic understanding was never extended to the likes of Timothy McVeigh or Seung-Hui Cho who also vented their rage by killing strangers.)
Indeed, even Mr. Obama lost his cool, by rushing to the judgment that we were all rushing to judgment, and asking us not to do it. After all Americans do love their pitchforks, don’t they? And when it got out that the suspect was not dead, and that he had shouted Allahu Akbar before opening fire, well- it became all the more important not to rush to judgment, and especially not to assume that the massacre had anything to do with terrorism or Islamic extremism.
Tired of listening to all the non-judgmental judgments, on Saturday I visited Fort Hood for myself.
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Requiem for a Russian Mobster
by Daniel KalderIs it just me, or has 2009 been exceptionally rich in the deaths of legendary figures? In August Ted Kennedy was finally reunited in heaven with Mary Jo Kopechne. In July a much more interesting man, Harry Patch, the last veteran of World War I, died aged 111.
Only a few days after Kennedy expired, Sergei Mikhalkov, the Stalin-loving author of the lyrics to three versions of the Soviet and Russian national anthem also shuffled off this mortal coil. And what about Walter Cronkite, Ed McMahon etc? All of these deaths were recognized as significant breaks with the past, symbolic passings that marked the end of an era, even if the era in question had actually come to a close decades earlier. On October 12th yet another such mega-death was marked in Russia, as Vyacheslav Ivankov- AKA Yaponchik- was buried in Moscow’s Vagankovskoye cemetery. Although his name is less well known than Ted Kennedy’s, Yaponchik’s life and career are highly significant nevertheless, for as the most notorious Russian mobster of the 1990s he was a living (until recently, anyway) symbol of an era of near-total societal collapse, the repercussions of which are still felt globally today.
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SATAN RULES! The Shocking True Story Behind Obama’s Nobel Win
by Daniel KalderLike any halfway sentient member of the human race I reacted to the news of Obama’s Nobel win last week with disbelief, soon giving way to scorn and ridicule, before experiencing a nasty sinking feeling.
Just a week after the naughty boys and girls at the IOC had delivered a blow to the president’s majestic ego, some idiots in Norway had decided to puff that balloon right back up again. And lo, there was Mr. Obama on TV, floating about in front of a podium, chin held aloft, doing the old mock humility routine as he wittered on about his daughter and his dog: just a regular guy, doing my best to save the world. Aw, shucks.
Since that moment of world-historical absurdity a great deal of commentary has been produced. As even Mr. Obama admits he does not deserve to stand in the company of earlier laureates such as Mandela or Mother Theresa, the focus has thus been on the ulterior motives of the Nobel Committee. Was this a late snub to Bush? Condescending encouragement to America for electing someone all right-thinking Norwegians approve of? Victor Davis Hanson offered this elegant piece, anatomizing social democratic Norway and its pathologies. However the one factor which nobody has discussed, and yet which I think is central is-
SATAN.
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Obama’s America- the Gordon Brown years?
by Daniel KalderThe 2008 election campaign filled me with an eerie sense of déjà vu, as I suspect it did many British people living in America. The hysterical reception accorded Barack Obama was strongly reminiscent of the frothing enthusiasm for Tony Blair in 1997.
Obama had a more inspiring biography than Tony Blair of course and did sincerity better; nevertheless there were many parallels. Both were relatively young, charismatic men who insistently repeated stirring but vague mantras about change and a coming new era to an exhausted electorate craving a break with the recent past. Both surrounded themselves with pop stars and other glamorous types, in an attempt to identify with everything that was young and progressive and hip. Of course, this being America, Obama operated on a much grander, messianic scale: Blair never implied that his victory might lower the earth’s water levels for example, and nor did anybody ever faint at his rallies as if he were a faith healer. However when Blair won the election the sympathetic Guardian newspaper did get rather overheated: I recall an article in which the atmosphere in the UK was compared to the relief felt at the end of World War II, thus equating the hapless John Major with Adolph Hitler. That total absence of proportion will sound familiar to anyone who has flicked through the People’s Temple style newsletter that is Newsweek or spent a few minutes watching the risible MSNBC. (In the Guardian’s defence however, none of its writers were ever so feeble-minded as to compare Blair to God.)
Anyway, during the election campaign I would say to those who asked for my thoughts on the Obama phenomenon that perhaps it wasn’t wise for so many people to allow themselves to be so carried away. Obama was only a man; worse still a politician; and even worse- not a very experienced one. I would then suggest that many Americans were setting themselves up for a massive disappointment: that the impossible expectations that Obama and his devotees had aroused would ultimately lead to profound disillusionment, leaving people even more cynical and embittered than if they had never been thus misled. Tony Blair’s career in Britain offered a shining example of this process in action. My listeners would then change the subject and never mention Obama to me again. I understood: they wanted to believe, they were protecting their faith.
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No More Nukes: The Fantastical Dream of Barack Obama, Aged 48 and 1/6
by Daniel KalderWhen President Obama first announced his desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons, I laughed out loud. After all, what’s not to chuckle at?
Would he next offer future generations the gift of flight, like Britain’s Natural Law Party, or promise to abolish death like would-be Russian presidential candidate Grigory Grabovoi, shortly before he was jailed for accepting money to reincarnate a non-existent victim of the Beslan Tragedy?
Of course not, I thought. It’s just the usual political waffle, nothing to waste time thinking about. The president was striking a pose, attempting to sound statesmanlike, that sort of thing. All politicians indulge in this type of empty, grandstanding rhetoric and Obama’s personal weakness for it is well established. Meanwhile he had presented Russia with an opportunity to get rid of a lot of old weapons they didn’t really want any more, without losing face. Perhaps that was the plan: a conciliatory gesture to the Bear in the hope that it would help in other areas. Good luck with that, by the way.
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