… in 1957, the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit, thereby triggering the alarm in the Eisenhower Administration that led to the setting-up of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which funded the development of the Arpanet, which led to the Internet… Read all about it here. (Warning: shameless plug.)

From a column by Timothy Garton-Ash.

A textbook example of what democracies should not do was provided last year by a joint venture between Siemens and Nokia, called Nokia Siemens Networks. It sold the Iranian regime a sophisticated system with which they can monitor the internet, including emails, internet phone calls and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, much used by Iranian protesters. In today’s politics of people power, that is the equivalent of selling a dictator tanks or poison gas.

So, to be clear: a German company, Siemens, which used slave labour during the Third Reich, sold a Holocaust-denying president the instruments with which he can persecute young Iranians risking their lives for freedom. Think of that every time you buy something made by Siemens.

Indeed. Last time I looked, the BBC had outsourced all of its IT systems to Siemens. We didn’t hear anything about that during the post-election demonstrations.

… in 1924, two United States Army planes landed in Seattle, Washington, having completed the first round-the-world flight in 175 days.

Phineas Fogg would not have been impressed.

A petrol bomb was thrown at the Irish Ministry of Finance last night, causing a small amount of damage. It reminds one of the incident in which the RBS culprit, ‘Sir’ Fred Goodwin, had all the windows in his elegant mansion broken. Are these incidents just cases of mindless vandalism, I wonder, or attempts to vent fury at the way the country’s corrupt and incompetent banks have been bailed out by the taxpayer? The disconnect political elites in Western democracies and their electorates seems particularly acute in relation to the way the banks have been rescued. Everywhere I go I see and hear evidence of simmering fury and resentment. I cannot believe that it won’t find expression eventually. The hope is that it finds expression via the ballot box. The fear is that it will also find more violent outlets.

From last week’s Private Eye. Many thanks to Douglas McArthur for spotting it.

Nice to see that my perspicacity has finally been recognised. Now for the 15.30 at Wolverhampton…

I can’t figure out which is more nauseating: the pathetic British obsession with the supposed “special relationship”; or the way the UN General Assembly provides despots with a platform for grandstanding. Witness Gadafi’s demented rant yesterday and Iran’s I’m-a-dinner-jacket today. Regarding the latter, there was a good piece by Simon Schama in the FT. Sample:

Not the least repellent aspect of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad’s reiteration, on the eve of the Rosh Hashanah Jewish holiday, that the Holocaust was a lie, was the muffled response to it by western media and governments. Statements were duly forthcoming in Berlin deploring the Iranian president’s speech, while in Washington it was left to Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, to do the official tut-tutting.

But it was as though the moral atrocity of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s speech was barely worthy of comment being, in the first place, nothing new, and in the second place, incidental to the practical dilemma of how to “engage” with him during his visit to the United Nations this week. Well, one way would be to send Mr Ahmadi-Nejad copies of the 2005 General Assembly resolution repudiating Holocaust deniers and instituting a day of remembrance on January 26 encouraging all member nations to educate their people in the genocide so that future acts of comparable barbarity might not recur.

But then the mere facts of the matter are unlikely to make much impression on a man and a regime lost in paranoid derangement. The pressing issue is how to contain the consequences of anti-Semitic fantasy and recover the moral credentials of a General Assembly that will have listened to someone in such flagrant contradiction of its own resolution…

… in 1952, Tricky Dick bet the ranch on this ludicrous TV broadcast. And got away with it.