© Sputnik / Ramil SitdikovVanya Fokin and his mom after being released from a Moscow hospital.
The Fokins family must have a most qualified guardian angel looking after their baby boy. On New Year's Eve their home folded in on itself after a blast, and the toddler spent over 30 hours in freezing cold under rubble.
Little Vanya will be celebrating his first birthday in a new home come Saturday. He and his mom Olga were finally released from a Moscow hospital this week, after doctors confirmed that the ordeal he went through left him almost without a scratch. Many call it nothing short of a miracle.
Cradle turned into death trapThe Fokins, a family of four, lived in an apartment building in Magnitogorsk, a large city in the Russian southern Urals famous for its metal industry. On the morning of December 31, it was rocked by a powerful blast, which the authorities say was caused by a gas leak. Two 10-storey stacks of apartments came down, killing 39 people and injuring 17 others.
Vanya, his mother and three-year-old brother were sleeping in their apartment, which was located on the fourth floor over an arch. The father, Yevgeny, was working the night shift. When their entire home suddenly fell to the ground level, a dazzled Olga carried her elder son away, but the baby remained behind, trapped in his cradle.
Comment: People like Barr and the twitter commentariat don't seem to realize how books work, or intellectual history for that matter. They just reveal themselves as the totalitarians they are. Do they realize how many countless books have been written over the centuries with which they would undoubtedly disagree? Obviously not, or they would realize how ridiculous their position is. But that's how book-burnings start.
No worry, though, because Amazon is actually no better. They regularly ban books for political reasons, e.g., Alex Krainer's Grand Deception.