CHRISTMAS SHOPPING IDEA
RECOUNTING LEADS TO DEMOCRAT THIEVERY
GRETCHEN HITLER MOVES TO STEAL HOME HEALTHCARE WORKERS’ MONEY
PENTAGON FAILS YET ANOTHER AUDIT
RUSSIAN ROCKET SHOULD PUT NATO ON NOTICE
ISRAELITE DEEP STATE BLUNDERS LED TO MANY DEATHS AND RAPES
SHOULD DONALD TRUMP DO A MINIMALIST INAUGURATION?
EXTRA CREDIT: HOW TO CHECK STORIES TO GET THINGS STRAIGHT
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING IDEA
My Christmas present came early. Notre Dame’s football team ruptured Southern Cal’s Trojans Saturday. It was an ugly game, where Notre Dame’s defense was on the verge of giving up a two-touchdown lead. The play that put the game away for the Irish was cornerback Christian Gray intercepting a pass and returning it 99 yards for a touchdown. On the next series, Notre Dame cornerback Xavier Watts intercepted a pass in the Notre Dame endzone and ran it back more than 100 yards for another pick six. What made these scores possible is that Notre Dame’s defensive coach called two blitzes, and the pressure made the Southern Cal QB throw the interceptions. He had done a very good job avoiding pressure up until those plays. It also helped that the Notre Dame defenders quickly formed cordons of blockers to keep the interceptors from getting tackled. And it helped that the offense scored five touchdowns. It takes every man doing his best to make a team succeed.
Now for the search for one of 99’s Christmas presents.
99, my faithful and cunning wife, wants a good-quality purse for Christmas. Since I never buy 99 clothes or jewelry or other personal items without her being there to try them on and approve them, I took her to various stores to try out purses the day before Thanksgiving. She didn’t like any of them.
Then it occurred to me where to shop. I called a gun store in the area and asked them if they had concealed carry purses. They said they did, so 99 and I Jeeped out to their location pronto.
99 found a big sturdy black leather purse that has plenty of room and looks good as an accessory, especially when paired with her black boots. It has a cross-body strap for ease of carrying and protection from purse snatchers. One of the salesmen offered 99 a small holster for the pistol carrying portion of the purse to replace the larger holster that comes with the purse. I said 99 packs a .38 so she wouldn’t need the popgun holster. 99 started laughing. She had instant cred with the gun store guys.
Just a helpful thought for you guys out there looking for a good gift for your ladies, and you ladies out there who want something with more guts, utility, and charisma than the typical Christmas gift.
ELECTION 2024 THIEVERY PROBES?
Election 2024. Counting and recounting has about wrapped up in California and other states with a high proportion of Democrats.
In the last post, I detailed the suspicious-looking loss of Mike Garcia (GOP) to George Whitesides (D), a Bushie-looking prep school carpetbagger from New England, in California’s 27th Congressional District in northern Los Angeles County. Garcia, the incumbent, was ahead by several thousand votes, but the prolonged counting caused the drool-in of votes for Whitesides, enough to shift it to him many days after the election.
Ditto for Michelle Steel, the GOP incumbent in the 45th Congressional District in heavily Asian area of Orange County, between L.A. and San Diego. Ms. Steel, a native of Korea, was ahead of Derek Tran for weeks after the election. Prolonged counting and vote manufacturing, IMHO, led to the eventual flip of the results to the Democrat by a few hundred votes. Tran’s last name is probably due to his parents being from Vietnam, not from any sex change. But in Southern California, such open perviness wouldn’t hurt him.
UPDATE: This just in — Democrat Adam Gray has been installed over incumbent GOP congressman John Duarte in California’s 13th District. He was behind for weeks as the votes trickled in, IMHO many being manufactured. Then Gray took the lead with 187 votes and the election was called Dem. Gray supposedly wants more water rights for farmers, which allegedly got him a lot of farmer support that the average Democrat doesn’t get. (Fox News 12/3/2024)
As the election was being stolen for, errr, awarded to Gray, Politico’s Camille van Kaenel 12/3/2024 reported this:
“California water officials estimated Monday they would be able to provide water agencies with only 5 percent of their requested supplies in 2025, half the initial forecast last year. The estimate is the first of the new water year, which began Oct. 1, and could still increase depending on this winter’s precipitation. It is based on reservoir levels and conservative seasonal forecasts of rain and snow.”
So any farmer who thought voting for Gray was like a rain dance just got hosed. With porta-potty refuse, as the water allocations are way down.
Instead of building a train to nowhere and inviting millions of illegals in to steal social welfare benefits and commit crimes, California officials could have repaired reservoir dams in the state so they wouldn’t fail during good snow and rain seasons like some have failed recently. They could have built desalinization plants along their very long ocean coast. Or they could have prevailed upon the Biden administration to negotiate water pipeline shipments from the waterlogged far north of Canada. It would provide water for the West and jobs and revenue for the Canadians. But since they hate Californians who work for a living, they did none of the above. Maybe President Trump can take a look at the water situation and work something out with Socks Trudeau or his replacement. Shania Twain or Dudley Do-Right?
[COMMENT: IMHO, the installations of Whitesides, Tran, and Gray are probably the results of illegally cast or manufactured ballots that kept showing up in dribs and drabs until the Dems had the counts they wanted. The Trump election integrity task force needs to look at all of these races. They smell stolen. And culturally appropriative. Hispanic Republicans Duarte and Garcia “lost” majority Hispanic districts to white bread-white Democrats.]
In Pennsylvania, Democrats in charge of several counties’ election boards tried to count unsigned mail-in ballots. Illegally. And against the express ruling of the Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
One of the corruptocrats, a Bucks County (suburban Philly) voter official named Diane Ellis-Marseglia, when she thought she could get away with it, said this, per the Bucks County Courier Times, 11/20/2024:
“We all know precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” Ellis-Marseglia said at the elections meeting. “If I violate this law, it’s because I want the court to pay attention. There is nothing more important than counting votes.”
She also said at that meeting “People violate laws any time they want,” according to the viral video.
President Trump’s people sent a message to the cheaters they would all be prosecuted. Perhaps Diane fouled her Knix beyond their liquid and solid carrying capacity. She definitely tried to take back her statement of corrupt intent. Residents of Bucks County are now calling for her ouster. The ACLU has signaled their support for Diane and fellow Democrat election cheater, err, Bucks County election official Bob Harvie, a clear sign IMHO they are both guilty as sin.
I believe the Trump team’s election integrity people should also look at Wayne County, Michigan and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. I believe the local Dems slow-walked the vote count there to see how many illegal ballots their candidates for senator needed to weasel by the Republicans who were leading all Election Night but suddenly fell short. Ditto for Clark County, Nevada, and Pima and Maricopa Counties in Arizona due to the two Dem Senate candidates they weaseled thru in suspicious lengthy vote counts.
The election integrity people need to lock down the Democrat fascists in Colorado. Dem Secretary of State Jena Griswold tried to keep Donald Trump off the ballot. Then a judge sentenced Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (GOP) to 9 years in prison in early October 2024 for trying to audit questionable Dominion voting machines in her county by unconventional means using a third-party expert.
Then in late October 2024 it came out that Ms. Griswold allowed the login passwords for Colorado voting machines to be posted on line for several months. Per USA Today 11/5/2024, this:
“Colorado elections workers crisscrossed the state over the past week to update voting-machine logins after their secret passwords were accidentally posted online for several months.
State officials said they were confident no one tampered with the machines after discovering the password breach and that votes would be safe. But they still scrambled to fix the leak, identified Oct. 24.
“Colorado’s elections are safe and Coloradans will have their voices heard on Election Day,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a Monday statement. “I am regretful for this error. I am dedicated to making sure we address this matter fully and that mistakes of this nature never happen again.”
Since Jena is a Dem, she can leak confidential info and say it was a mistake. When caught, Democrats blame their illegal behavior on their stupidity or someone else’s stupidity. Understanding leftists and cowed establishment Republicans do not try to punish them. Since Jena is a Dem, Jena will not have to undergo any body cavity searches unless she is seeking that sort of attention.
Update: Gateway Pundit is reporting that a number of public officials in on the prosecution of Tina Peters have been on the payroll of Dominion, whose “controllable” (and many say tamperable) voting machines seem to have caused quite a few problems in elections in 2020 and 2022. This, per an article by Erin Clements in the 12/2/2024 Gateway Pundit.
President Trump should have the local and federal prosecutors, Ms. Griswold, the compromised local officials, and the judge investigated, tried, and imprisoned if is proven they wrongfully prosecuted Ms. Peters, suborned perjury, suppressed evidence, and acted in a selective prosecution way in ignoring Ms. Griswold’s election cheating, errr, negligent broadcasting of passwords needed to breach the security of election machines across the state.
GRETCHEN HITLER MOVES TO STEAL HOME HEALTHCARE WORKERS’ MONEY
Meanwhile in Michigan, run by Democrat Gretchen Hitler, errr, Whitmer and a coven of scumbag female state officials and equally questionable male Dems, there is a government drive to steal caretakers’ wages. Per Eric Revell of Fox Business, 11/21/2024, this:
“The state of Michigan is on track to allow for the unionization of home health care workers, including caregivers aiding ill and infirm family members, starting next year in a move that critics say would hurt caregivers.
The Democrat-controlled Michigan Legislature passed legislation that was signed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to grant collective bargaining rights to home health care workers. The law, which takes effect at the end of March 2025, would allow the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) to skim dues from funding provided to caregivers under the state’s Home Help program.
Under the law, the roughly 35,000 caregivers in the state of Michigan would be required to attend a training session that would involve the union pitching them on membership. Though the caregivers aren’t required to join the union, they may not be informed of their right to opt out in the course of that training session, which is required as a condition of receiving funds from the Home Help program.”
Democrats see working people as marks they can steal from. The Longshoreman’s Union had a vile history of demanding wage kickbacks for daily work assignments. It was such a scam that the classic movie “On the Waterfront” covered it extensively. Ray Lane, a boss in the Hotel and Restaurant Workers and Bartenders Union, got himself and the union sued (successfully) for trying to force union waitresses to work as hookers, and to engage in sex with other women and large dogs.
(Source: Karin Seritis and Terri DeLoache, Plaintiffs and Respondents v. Hthatotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union, Local 28, Defendant and Appellant)
Since Michigan AG Dana Nessel (who also got passed-out drunk at a Michigan college football game) is an out lesbian, and Gretchen Whitmer is an authoritarian liar with a history of subservience to Michigan State University officials who covered for serial girl molester Larry Nassar, I wouldn’t expect either one of them to demur if union bosses in Michigan try to force rank and file females to engage in such acts. They apparently are too busy laundering campaign money and trying to jail political opponents. Their buddy Jocelyn Benson, the Dem Secretary of State, was okay with having more than 500,000 more registered voters than eligible voters on state voter rolls, which is an excellent recipe for Democrat vote fraud, as Elon Musk pointed out.
(Sources: Fox News, Detroit, 11/11/2021, and Katie Rosendale of Yahoo News’ 10/22/2024 article)
SPEAKING OF UNION –
From Breitbart, 11/18/2024, this:
“The union representing Democratic National Committee (DNC) employees is very upset about staffing cuts that typically occur upon an election loss.
The layoff of union workers is the latest instance of the Democrat party assailing the working class while protecting the donor class.
The committee’s leadership is trying to save face with big Democrat donors after it claimed Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidential election.
Following the fallout, the DNC gave temporary employees and some permanent employees only one day’s notice with no severance, according to the DNC Staff Union.”
A person familiar with the DNC’s thinking countered: “The reality is: this is what happens when you lose. We have a generation of people who haven’t had to go through a really brutal loss. We aren’t trying to hatchet people.”
[COMMENT: True enough. They appear to be using the guillotine instead. Sarc.]
A current DNC staffer told Axios: “This scale of the layoffs is shocking people who have been here for a decade. People are blindsided by this…I’ve completely lost faith in the Democratic Party and I’m still working for them.”
The DNC believes the layoffs are a “tough reality” that workers must accept.”
Why the cuts?
“The election loss left the Harris campaign in $20 million of debt. DNC leadership is reportedly concerned and anxious it will inherit the bill.”
The Dems raised close to a billion dollars more than the Trump campaign. They got free advertising and opposition programming from the major networks, and from the ankle biter networks like CNN and MSNBC. And Trump still beat them. A free market lesson for Dems: If you are selling untreated human excrement, most people won’t buy it.
PENTAGON FAILS YET ANOTHER AUDIT
Elsewhere, in the category “Sun Comes Up in the East” stories, the Defense Department failed their seventh straight audit. The brass hats and civilian pissants of the Pentagon have a trillion-dollar budget and for the past several years have been unable to account for billions of dollars spent each year.
Per Kristina Wong, Breitbart, 11/18/2024, this:
“The Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row, failing to account for its more than $824 billion budget in 2024, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DOD IOG) announced on Friday.
The DOD OIG said auditors “could not obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence to support an opinion.”
“In a statement, the Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch said there has been little progress since 2005 — almost 20 years ago.” …
“The Pentagon Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord addressed the audit in an off-camera briefing with reporters on Friday afternoon, calling it “not a surprise.” …
“McCord argued that not passing an audit was different from not knowing what assets the department has and that the DOD has been able to send equipment to Ukraine without problems.” …
[COMMENT: What about gear that works and housing that isn’t rotting for our service members and their families, McCord?]
“McCord said it would be “unfair” to say the Pentagon failed the audit.
“I do not say we failed. As I said, we have about half clean opinions,” he said.
“If someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure. We have a lot of work to do and but — I think we’re making progress as I said,” he argued.”
[COMMENT: Jason McCord, the protagonist of the old TV show “Branded,” was unjustly court-martialed for cowardice. Others ripped his emblems of rank off of his uniform coat, and broke his sword before kicking him out of a Western post. This Michael McCord guy deserves a public trial, an orange jumpsuit, and a bed in a federal pen for at the very least criminally negligent dereliction of duty. IMHO, this McCord is likely guilty of a lot worse. A thorough examination of his assets, the assets of people close to him, and all contracts let under his leadership should discover most of the truth. Likewise, a survey of the escort services in the DC area might turn up how often Pentagon officials are customers.]
RUSSIAN ROCKET SHOULD PUT NATO GOOFS ON NOTICE
Russian officials used a multiple-warhead rocket to obliterate a Ukrainian weapons making facility several days ago.
Per Alisa Orlova’s article in the 11/21/2024 Kyiv Post, an English language Ukrainian media outlet, this:
“The Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed the attack, which also included various other missile types targeting critical infrastructure.
“Between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. on Nov. 21, Russian troops attacked the city of Dnipro, hitting enterprises and critical infrastructure,” the Air Force stated.
“The assault included an ICBM launched from Russia’s Astrakhan region, a Kh-47M2 Kinzhal aeroballistic missile fired from a MiG-31K jet in the Tambov region, and seven Kh-101 cruise missiles launched by Tu-95MS bombers near the Volgograd region.”
The Russian missile barrage on the industrial city that left two people wounded is the latest escalation since Ukraine fired Western-supplied ATACMS long-range missiles on Russia.” …
Per the 11/22/2024 The Guardian, a British media outlet that is openly anti-Trump, this:
“US and UK sources indicated that they believed the missile fired on Dnipro was an experimental nuclear-capable, intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), which has a theoretical range of below 3,420 miles (5,500km). That is enough to reach Europe from where it was fired in south-western Russia, but not the US.
Ukraine’s air force initially said the missile was an ICBM. While launching an IRBM sent a less threatening signal, the incident could still set off alarms and Moscow notified Washington briefly ahead of the launch, according to US officials.”
For your reference, Paris and London are each less than 1600 miles as the missile flies from Moskva (Moscow). Volgograd (the former Stalingrad) is on the Volga River, 600 miles southeast of Moskva and 600 miles east of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv (Kiev). Astrakhan is about 2200 miles from London and about 2100 miles from Paris. Astrakhan is in the Volga Delta region, about 60 miles north of the Caspian Sea and about 800 miles southeast of Moskva. Moskva is fewer than 500 miles from Kyiv, a distance similar to the distance between Chicago and Memphis, and shorter than the distance between New York City and Charlotte.
The globalists want war with Russia. Ironically, when the leaders of the Soviet Union did threaten the conquest of Western Europe, the globalists argued for “détente” and called Ronald Reagan a crazed warmonger.
Bottom line: No sane leader should want war with any other country if it can be avoided. As President Trump said in the debates, it is not a good idea to start a war with a country that has nuclear weapons.
The Russians are not amused the Western Euros and the Biden Administration are sending more potent weapons to Ukraine for use against Russia.
Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, knows President Trump is about to change America’s policy to one of nonsupport of the globalist puppet regime in Ukraine. He is merely letting the saber-rattling putzes in Western Europe (Britain, France, Germany, the Low Countries, Scandinavia) know he can have their countries set on fire as needed.
European and Deep State America talk that Russia is about to overwhelm the nations between its western borders and Germany is false.
You read that right. This is coming from me, an anti-Communist so hard-core that when I was an officer candidate in the 1970s era of détente I wrote a paper explaining why Joe McCarthy was right and the Army brass were wrong when he detailed Communist infiltration of the federal government. The release of the Venona papers by the FBI almost two decades after I wrote my paper validated my analysis and showed a lousy low-ranking cadet (me) knew more about the topic than the colonel and majors who attacked my thoroughly documented analysis paper. (At the time, we didn’t have the Internet. The gold standards were the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature and the Congressional Record.) Also, as an officer candidate, I had to watch as one of our colonels escorted a Soviet delegation thru our facility. I covered my hand from the left so the American officers in that direction couldn’t see it, then when the Russians looked my way I smiled and flipped them the bird and their facial expressions turned to disgust.
I wasn’t discriminatory against Russians. I also had run-ins with British, German, and Jap officers as a cadet and as a young Army officer. I’m an American nationalist. My ancestors fought the Brits, Krauts, and Japs.
Russia is not bent on world domination or even European domination. They are a commercial competitor in energy sales and in grain sales, not a military opponent.
What the media and the politicians have not explained to us is the nature of the conflict between the governments of Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine has only been independent for the last 30 or so years. The people of Ukraine had their own kingdom until the 1200s, when Mongolian Empire hordes captured the land and raped and murdered wherever they went. The Golden Horde (a collection of Turkic and East Asian people) later ruled Ukraine. Then leaders of the Ottoman Empire expanded and controlled much of Ukraine. Meanwhile the leaders of the Muscovites (a Russian state centered around Moskva in the heart of Russia that eventually grew to become the Russian Empire) and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth pushed southward to fight the Ottoman Turks.
The Poles and Russians made arrangements with peasants and landless town people to give them land in exchange for their service as soldiers and militia people on the southern frontiers of the Russian Empire and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Cossacks were mostly Russian but also Ukrainian and Polish people who were willing to take land and serve as fighting people and frontiersmen. The Polish surname “Kozak” is Polish for “Cossack.”
[NOTE: The areas of Croatia along its border with Bosnia is called “the Krajina” because many Croatians had a similar deal with the Hapsburg emperors that the Cossacks had with the Russian and Polish leaders. The words “Krainia” (for Ukraine) and “Krajina” are very similar because they are both Slavic language words for “boundary” or “frontier.”]
Most Russian people and most of the people who live inside the pre-war borders of Ukraine are Slavs and Orthodox Christians. The people who live in the northwest portion of Ukraine near Poland are Catholics. For centuries the kings of Poland ruled the area. Western and central Ukraine’s people mostly consider themselves Ukrainians. The people who live in the eastern part of Ukraine are mostly ethnic Russians; most of them wish to live under the Russian flag, and at the very least not get attacked by Ukrainian government forces.
The Russians do not want Ukraine, which is very close by air to the heart of Russia, to be the site of NATO aircraft and missiles. The message the Russians sent with the multi-warhead missile (evidently fired when the missile plant was virtually empty to minimize deaths and injuries) is that their missiles could easily reach any spot in Europe and harm it with conventional explosives.
EVEN THOUGH THE RUSSIANS HAVE BETTER TANKS, ARTILLERY, INFANTRYMEN, AND MISSILES THAN THE EUROS, THEY ARE NOT LOOKING TO INVADE EUROPE WEST OF THEIR BORDERS. HERE ARE THE GEOPOLITICAL FACTS AND FIGURES THAT SHOULD EXPLAIN WHY:
Russia has fewer than 150 million people. Russian ally and defacto province Belarus has about 9 million people. Since Belarus, between Poland and the heart of Russia, provides the best access to Moskva from Europe (Hitler’s troops and Napoleon and his men went thru Belarus), it is absolutely in Russia’s interest to hold Belarus as a province or have it close as an ally.
Ukraine (south of the heart of Russia and Belarus) has almost 40 million people. We have already gone over how close they are to major Russian cities. Most Ukrainians in central and western Ukraine want independence from Russia, but the eastern part of Ukraine is majority Russian, and the troubles there now stem from the Zelensky puppet government oppressing the Russian ethnics in eastern Ukraine. Also, the Crimean Peninsula has been Russia’s naval base area on the Black Sea for centuries. The people of Crimea are overwhelmingly Russian and pro-Russian.
(What the map doesn’t show is that the Russians have retaken the Crimean Peninsula during Obama’s presidency. During Biden’s presidency they have retaken the Donbas region, which stretches from Crimea thru and west of Donetsk and up to the Russian border below Voronezh. These lands are Russian in population and sympathy.)
Russia has many more people than Ukraine, but fewer men committed to the war in Ukraine than there are Ukrainian soldiers in the war. Russia, remember, has a long border with China, and the Chinese have 1.4 billion people, 10 times as many people as Russia. Relations with China are correct but not friendly, as China from time to time claims large swaths of Siberia as their own. Russia cultivates a professional friendship with India, which also has 1.4 billion people, and a history of border clashes against the Chinese in the Himalayan Mountains.
Germany has about 85 million people, Britain and British-controlled Ulster have about 70 million people, France has about 65 million people, the Netherlands have about 18 million people, Belgium has about 12 million people, Sweden has about 11 million people, and Denmark, Norway, and Finland each have about 6 million people. This is a total of about 280 million western and northern European people whose leaders are openly hostile to Russia. In other words, they have twice as many people as Russia. Unlike the men and women of Ukraine, however, the people of these countries are not as tough as the men and women of Russia. They are not united, either. The Russians are mostly Orthodox Christians. Ukrainians are mostly Orthodox Christians, with some Catholics in the portions closest to Poland and Slovakia. The other nations in the anti-Russian camp have many secularists and atheists today … and these sorts control the governments of most of the countries of Europe. Back in the day, the French and Belgians and Bavarians of southern Germany were mostly Catholics, and almost all the people of the other lands (most of Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia) were Protestants.
The secularist leaders of Western Europe allow their Moslem “guests” to murder, rape, and attack their natives who are not enlightened enough to submit to rape or robbery or Islam. The leaders of Russia tolerate Moslems but they have harshly punished and will harshly punish Islamist domestic terrorists.
The peoples of Western Europe and Scandinavia have a bad history against Russia.
The Germans murdered about 20 million civilians in the Soviet Union in World War Two, and killed or enslaved a couple of million people in the Russian Empire during World War One. The British and French, while nominal allies of the Russians during World War One, constantly opposed the Russians in the late 1800s and parasited off of the people of Russia in World War One and beyond. Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. Even the Swedes attacked the Russians before Russia was strong.
In southern Europe, the nations’ leaders are not hostile to Russia today. Italy has about 60 million people. Spain has almost 50 million people. Portugal has about 10 million people. This is a total of about 120 million people. (During World War Two, Mussolini sent about 60,000 soldiers to the Russian Front. Franco cycled 45,000 anti-Communist Spanish volunteers (the Blue Division) to the Russian Front in World War Two in retaliation for Stalin’s military support for his enemies in the Spanish Civil War. Franco ordered the volunteers home in late 1943, at the urging of the Vatican, and under American pressure. The combat-tested Spaniards were the best troops of the non-German opponents of the Red Army.)
In the lands of Europe between Russia and Belarus and Ukraine on the east, and Germany in the west, Poland has almost 40 million people, Lithuania has about 3 million people, and Latvia and Estonia together have about 3 million people. Tsarist Russia fought and oppressed the Poles, after the Poles invaded and held Russian land. Communist Russia fought the Poles after World War One and lost. Stalin had Russian soldiers occupy the parts of eastern Poland that were majority Ukrainian and Belarusan people when Hitler invaded Poland to start World War Two in Europe. Stalin let the Germans kill off the Warsaw Uprising to have anti-Communist Poles purged before the Red Army moved against the Germans in 1944. (Stalin did something similar on the outskirts of Prague in early 1945, but Russian and Ukrainian POWs re-armed by Hitler (the Vlasovites) turned on the Nazis and forced them out of Prague. The Vlasovites fled to the American lines, which did them no good, because General Eisenhower had them turned over to the Red Army. Lithuania is historically close to Poland, and is also a Catholic country. The Poles suffered even worse at the hands of the Germans than they did at the hands of the Russians. From the late 1700s thru the early 1900s, the Prussians and other Germans occupied much of Poland. Hitler and his Nazi demons murdered 3 million Polish Jews and 3 million Polish Catholics.
(Poland was more to the east on the Europen map before World War Two than it is today. After the war, the Poles got half of East Prussia and all German land up to the Oder and Neisse rivers in the west to make up for their losses in Ukraine and Belarus. The western land area is smaller, but more developed, and less swampy. The Germans fled as refugees.)
The other Baltic countries (Latvia and Estonia) are traditionally Lutheran, have been under the rule of Sweden and Russia, and have large Russian minorities. Russia also owns half of the former East Prussia between Poland and Lithuania; its major city is Kaliningrad (which used to be called Koenigsburg). The Polish people, in spite of their leaders, are not interested in war with Russia. Most Poles resent the flood of Ukrainians into their country to compete for jobs and receive government aid they have to pay for.
In the other lands between Western Europe and Italy and Russia, most people are either Catholic or Orthodox Christians. The leaders of these lands (with the exception of the current leader of Czechia) are not opponents of Russia. (Hitler forced the Romanians and Hungarians to fight the Russians during World War Two. Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria are traditionally friendly to Russia. So are the Czechs and Slovaks. Even though the Bulgars were on opposite sides of WWI and WWII to the Russians, the leaders of Bulgaria refused to send soldiers to war against Russia.) Romania has about 19 million people. Czechia has about 11 million people. Hungary has about 10 million people. Bulgaria and Serbia each have about 7 million people. Slovakia has about 6 million people. Croatia has about 4 million people. Moldova has about 3 million people. Melania Trump’s homeland Slovenia has about 2 million people. Montenegro has fewer than a million people. Kosovo and North Macedonia each have almost 2 million people. Greece has about 10 million people, and its people are fearful of Turkish attacks on their islands in the Aegean Sea. Combined with the peoples of Poland and the Baltics, the lands between Russia and Italy and Germany contain about 120 million people, almost as many as the entire population of Russia.
In the Balkans, Moslem majority Bosnia has about 3 million people. Moslem majority Albania has about 3 million people. Both countries have taken part in the sex trafficking of captive Christian Slavic girls and young women. Besides their subservience to the Turks, the sex trafficking is a key reason the Serbs and Croatians and Slovenes and Greeks and the Slavic people of Kosovo and North Macedonia hate them.
Elsewhere in Europe, neutral Ireland has about 5 million people. Neutral Switzerland has about 9 million people. Neutral Austria has about 9 million people. Effectively neutral Luxembourg has fewer than a million people.
Turkey has almost 90 million people. The Turks have fought a dozen wars against the peoples of Russia, almost all as the aggressor. The Turks have enslaved and sex-trafficked millions of Slavic girls and young women. As previously mentioned, they pose a threat to the Greeks. They have also severely looted and slaughtered in the little Christian lands of the Balkans, especially Bulgaria and Serbia. The Turks held some or all of the Balkan Peninsula from the 1400s till the early 1900s.
On Russia’s southern flank are China, Mongolia, and several almost entirely Moslem lands that at one time were in the Soviet Union. Uzbekistan of Silk Road fame exports cotton and electricity and has more than 35 million people. Oil-rich and grain-farming Kazakhstan has about 20 million people. Oil-rich Azerbaijan has about 10 million people. Tajikistan has about 10 million people. Natural gas-rich Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan each have about 7 million people. They are “correct” but not necessarily friendly with Russia.
The Christian lands of Georgia and Armenia, whose people at one time sought protection in the Soviet Union from the Turks and Iranians, together have not quite 7 million people. Iran, to the southeast of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and south of Turkmenistan, has about 90 million people. Russia has “correct” relations with Iran, which stem from both lands’ enmities with the Turks. There are advantages for Russia to be on good terms with the leaders of Iran, regardless of whether a king or a bunch of crazed ayatollahs are in charge. A big reason is Iran is a good trade corridor to India for the Russians. Iran was a secular Moslem country when the Shah ruled … this meant young women could show their faces and (gasp) their legs! Many Iranians despise the ayatollahs but have not been able to overthrow their rule. Persian women are not quite up to Circassian standards, but they are likely the prettiest women of all the Moslem peoples.
Again, China, whose leaders covet Siberia, has ten times as many people as Russia. Russian relations with China are “correct” as a matter of necessity. And, again, Russia’s leaders have cultivated good relations with India ever since India’s independence in 1947, largely as insurance in case China’s leaders decide to attack Siberia.
The Russians, in short, don’t have the desire or the means to conquer and occupy Europe. The Russians can bomb much of Western Europe flat, but they have no incentive to do so. Western Europeans are Russia’s best customers for oil, natural gas, and grain. Remember, China’s Manchuria has a long border with Russia’s southeastern Siberia, and Mongolia is at best a thinly-populated buffer state between China and central Siberia.
Those who say Russia is looking to conquer Europe are not telling you the truth.
As an aside, please resist the temptation to call the Deep State and the leftist bastards who hate We the People “Communists.” These coprophiles lack the self-discipline and sense of sacrifice it took to be a dedicated Communist in the literal sense of the word. In the interests of accuracy, just call them Deep State or leftists or greedy vermin or scum.
ISRAELITE DEEP STATE BLUNDERS LED TO MANY DEATHS AND RAPES
This week, many globalist media outlets are trumpeting a civilian commission’s findings that Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame for the security meltdown that led to the Palestinian sneak attack of October 7, 2023. They reluctantly add the Israeli Defense Force generals and colonels, Mossad (Israel’s CIA), and Shin Bet (kind of like Israel’s Homeland Security Dept.) share blame.
Some of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents in the Israeli defense establishment are being accused of wanting to embarrass him by allowing a Palestinian attack on Israel in October 2023.
What is true?
It is true that Israeli military leaders repeatedly ignored intel provided by Israeli Defense Force field observers, who are female Israeli soldiers.
Women notice details better than men. Using women as intel observers freed up men to be combat soldiers. Sadly, the leaders of the IDF did not allow the female field observers to be armed so they could defend themselves. This would cost a number of young female observers their lives and would lead to the capture and repeated rapes of several other female observers.
Jewish journalist Maayan Hoffman wrote the following article for the June 28, 2024 issue of Hadassah Magazine, titled “The Tragic Fate of Israel’s Female Observer Soldiers:”
On October 7, approximately 700 soldiers were stationed along the border with Gaza when the attack began. The assault resulted in the deaths of 331 IDF soldiers and local security team members, along with 61 police officers. At Nahal Oz, in addition to the 15 female soldiers from the 414th observation unit who were massacred, 45 more soldiers lost their lives at the outpost. Additionally, nearly 20 fighters from the Nahal Oz reconnaissance unit were killed in action.
The majority of the women observers were burned to death while hiding in their command center. Seven observers were kidnapped; the IDF later rescued one, Ori Megidish, and (recovered) the body of another, Noa Marciano, who was killed in captivity. Hamas is still holding hostage the other five. Only four female observers escaped the carnage. ….
[NOTE: “Hadassah” is the proper Hebrew name of the woman known to history as Queen Esther. “Esther” is from the Persian word for “star.”]
The Maariv daily reported that the women were already speaking up about strange activity on the border as early as May 2023, when they witnessed part of a large-scale, all-day Hamas drill that likely served as preparation for the October 7 attack. Throughout that summer, Hamas operatives were observed gathering less than half a mile from the border.
In an interview with KAN public broadcasting, two surviving Nahal Oz observer soldiers, Yael Rotenberg and Maya Desiatnik, shared their experiences leading up to that fateful day. Rotenberg recalled seeing many Palestinians dressed in civilian clothing approach the border fence with maps, examining the area and digging holes. Despite reporting these activities, she was told by her superiors they were farmers and not to worry.
Desiatnik described how, in the months leading up to the attack, Hamas terrorists trained at the border fence, increasing their frequency from once a week to nearly nonstop. She documented their training, which included driving tanks and even crossing the border into Israel. As border activity intensified, she sensed that an attack was imminent, but no one listened, she said.
“We saw what was happening, we told them about it, and we were the ones who were murdered,” Desiatnik told KAN. …
(Retired general Noam)Tibon (who personally shot his way into the complex to save relatives) said examples like the failure to listen to the observers’ warnings was the reason that Aharon Haliva [former director of the Military Intelligence Directorate] resigned. “At the end of the day, they were the eyes of the IDF in this region, and they saw, they saw—and arrogant and vain commanders in the Israeli intelligence shut them down. This is unforgivable.”
Raphael Cohen, director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND’s Project AIR FORCE, a nonprofit research organization, said that placing unarmed soldiers so close to one of Israel’s most volatile borders “strikes me as a truly criminal level of complacency”—even though the Golani soldiers stationed with them were armed.
(One of the few surviving young women said,) “We were 18- and 19-year-old girls,” she said. “Even though we know the whole area perfectly and could tell you about it in our sleep, we were not considered high enough ranked, so they did not listen. They liked to belittle us. It did not surprise me.”
[Comment: General Ed Wheeler, whose son and I served in the same unit, told me when he was conducting a staff meeting, he would let the youngest officers have their say first. Why? So they could speak freely without getting pre-empted or intimidated by a higher-ranking officer. I cheerfully told General Ed I never had problems speaking my mind to the brass. General Ed laughed. I told him as a junior officer I lost a month of pay for disrespect to a general officer for telling a general he was out of touch and laughing at him. But I’m not the norm for young officers.]
What parallels do the Israeli security meltdown, either out of criminal negligence or criminal design, have for us?
The FBI and the CIA are full of people who either hate We the People, or are so ambitious or so cowardly, that they have put We the People at risk again and again.
The CIA is evidently conducting biological warfare “research” in Ukraine. They are also evidently training people for war against the Russians in Ukraine. They are making provocations that can lead to unwanted war. That doesn’t count all their other crimes and policy failures over the last three generations, like complicity in the murder of JFK.
The FBI were too busy spying on Trump and his people, spying on Catholic priests and lay people, and spying on PTA opponents to perv teachers and perv school boards to stop a high number of mass murderers they knew about. That doesn’t count all their other crimes and policy failures over the last three generations, like complicity in the murder of JFK and Martin Luther King.
Both agencies and other Deep State officials lied about President Trump and the Russians, covered for Hillary, and denied the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop. They have also allowed the Chinese access to port facilities, and access to real estate near military bases.
Who took down Al Capone? Not the FBI. President Herbert Hoover considered the J. Edgar Hoover FBI incompetent and corrupt. He assigned the job to the real men at the Treasury Department. Eliot Ness and his people seized Capone distilleries and alcohol. Mysterious Mike Malone infiltrated the Capone inner circle. And forensic accountant Frank Wilson proved the tax evasion case that sent Capone to the federal pen.
The FBI and the CIA should be disbanded. It appears they commit more crimes than they stop. They do far more harm than good.
SHOULD DONALD TRUMP DO A MINIMALIST INAUGURATION?
My colleague Tad Kosciuszko sent me the following idea ….
“Make Inauguration Day low-key and businesslike. Show President Trump getting down to business. Like Lincoln’s two inaugurals.”
I sent Kosciuszko’s advice to the Trump team and added this:
Honest Abe had to sneak into DC in 1861 because of multiple attempts on his life.
He had a secession to deal with, and a looming civil war.
In 1865, Lincoln gave the “Malice toward None, Charity toward All” speech.
Celebrations were restrained in 1865, even though Grant and Sherman were only a month or so away from forcing Rebel surrender.
Perhaps President Trump could invite Gold Star families, Angel families, and other victims of the government as an honor.
Do the minimum for official DC.
Let the country know he is getting down to business.
Maybe a visit. to East Palestine, OH with VP Vance, to western NC for the Helene victims, and the border for the suffering there in the weeks after the inauguration.
President Trump’s real fans are the people, not the Beltway.
As part of sharing the victory, arrange for events in the first few months in places around the country to reward the people.”
George Washington got inaugurated for his first term April 30, 1789. Congress then decided to go with March 4 as Inauguration Day.
President Zachary Taylor, one of my favorites, decided on taking the oath March 5, 1849, because March 4 was a Sunday and he believed people ought to be praying for the country that day. He wasn’t that eager to grab power.
Zach, a non-Democrat, succeeded Democrat Little Jimmy Polk. Polk was so pissed off Taylor won that he took the federal job book back to Tennessee with him when he left DC in March 1849. Taylor had to fill government jobs from scratch, because he lacked easy written records seeing who was on the federal payroll.
In those days, when a new President took office, he effectively fired most government workers from the other party and substituted his own people. (He left out the military in his hirings and firings.) Andrew Jackson started this practice, and he justified it by saying most government jobs were not too hard for men of average ability to do … and those jobs that required some knowledge still had more applicants than openings, so no one had an innate right to a government job. This practice worked until Dwight Eisenhower became president in 1953. Dems had held government offices for the past 20 years, and they convinced Ike to let them stay on due to their “experience” and “knowledge” of the jobs. Ike foolishly listened to them, and it would bite him in the hindquarters when they obstructed him. Bureaucrats got rules put into place that make it extremely hard to fire them and take their undeserved fat pensions.
Due to improvements in travel and the desire of FDR and his minions to exercise power more quickly, the feds and the states the 20th Amendment changed Inauguration Day to January 20 (or January 21 if the 20th would be a Sunday).
The craziest inauguration? Andrew Jackson’s first, by a mile. in 1829 America, Andrew Jackson, the son of an impoverished hillbilly widow, became president of the United States. He made his fortune in Tennessee, the first state where poverty did not keep a man from voting. And about 100,000 mountaineers, rednecks, and other proud Americans of less than genteel upbringing descended upon Washington (which had only about 20,000 residents at the time) and cheerfully trashed the White House while drunkenly celebrating Jackson’s inauguration day. Why? Because one of theirs had become president, he was taking up residence in their house, and the whisky was free. Jackson, who survived battle and capture and a face-slashing by the Brits as a teen, a duel where he damn near died, numerous tavern brawls, battles against the American Indians, and victorious battle over the Brits at New Orleans, said his own inauguration was the day that scared him the most.
[NOTE: There are multiple reports Trump nominees are suffering death threats and assassination plots. Where the eff are the Eff Bee Eye? Still spying on Catholics and pissed-off PTA mothers?]
Of course, VPs who succeeded presidents who died in office took the oath when they could.
Here’s what I wrote in “Ellis Island Scrapbook” about how Teddy Roosevelt took office:
“Leo Czolgosz was the anarchist who shot President William McKinley in the gut while he was shaking hands at a fair in Buffalo on September 6, 1901. Cabinet members came to Buffalo to be with their chief; Roosevelt – who was vice-president at the time — rushed from a camping trip to visit McKinley.
When Roosevelt visited his wounded chief, McKinley was in good spirits and appeared on the road to recovery. Roosevelt returned to his vacation in upstate New York because he and the other Cabinet members thought McKinley would pull through. He figured this act of going back on vacation might calm the public.
However, McKinley took a turn for the worse late September 12 and early September 13. McKinley’s people sent for Teddy Roosevelt. That afternoon, an outdoors guide located the vice-president coming down from hiking up a mountain to tell him his boss was dying. Roosevelt hiked back to the lodge several miles away, then he and a driver hitched horses to a wagon and rode more than 40 miles through the mountains in a thunderstorm in the darkness (and they drove so hard they had to change for fresh horses two times on the way) to get to the nearest train station. They got there, mud-covered, as dawn was breaking on September 14, 1901. A telegraph was waiting for Roosevelt, telling him McKinley had died in the wee hours of the morning and he was now the President. Roosevelt took the train to Buffalo, met with the other Cabinet members and aides there, and took the oath of office in a private home that afternoon.”
Back when real men ran things.
SHERLOCK RESEARCH.
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
EXTRA CREDIT: HOW TO CHECK STORIES TO GET THINGS STRAIGHT
This segment is the result of a disagreement I had some years ago with a colleague. He is a proud American citizen and like me he is glad President Trump is coming back as President. However, he was born and raised in Russia, and is willing to speak up to defend his homeland. Not everyone shares the schoolhouse American outlook on history.
I have a bias against Communists. Communists hassled my family in Czechia and 99’s family in Slovakia. I am also friendly with a number of Ukrainian-American people whose ancestors come from the area around Lviv. The people of northwestern Ukraine are mostly Catholics of the Byzantine Rite. (The Poles ruled the area for centuries and called the city Lwow. When Austria-Hungary held the area from the late 1700s thru the end of World War One, the city was called Lemberg. Then the Poles held it between the wars and called it Lwow again. The Red Army occupied the city and countryside around it in 1939 due to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the unsuccessful fight of Poland against the Germans and Soviet Union, and renamed it Lvov. They lost the area to the Germans for awhile in World War Two, then regained it in 1944. Since the separation of Ukraine from Russia, the city is now called Lviv.)
My colleague, who is known as Aleksei, is from the heart of Russia. He grew up in an era in the Soviet Union where the Communist leaders were willing to criticize Stalin but still attacked America and noncommunist Europe. What he heard in school was different from what I heard in Catholic school. In the 1950s and 1960s, Catholic nuns and lay teachers in my parish school were highly anti-Communist. Even the leftist public high school I attended for awhile had a couple of teachers who were European refugees from Communism, so there was a little balance in history classes. I had one of these teachers, a middle-aged woman from Czechia who reminded me of Eva Gabor with some mileage on her.
I mentioned Stalin’s policies that led to what Ukrainians call the “Holodomor” – “Death by Hunger.” Over the winter of 1932-1933, several million people in Ukraine died due to the famine that was essentially man-made.
Stalin exported grain from the Soviet Union at a time the people of Ukraine, who traditionally produced a lot of grain, had a bad harvest. Since by now the state ran most of the agricultural production thru the collectivization of the large estates and the smaller farms, they rationed grain. Many of those who farmed outside of the collectives who had bad harvests starved. Stalin and the Reds had been targeting the independent farmers anyway, so the deaths of these millions of independent people looked to be willful homicide on his part.
I mentioned this and my colleague, who we shall call Aleksei Brusilov, became angry. He said sharply that people died across the Soviet Union, not just in Ukraine, due to poor harvests for a number of years in the early 1930s. He said Stalin tried to pay for imported goods and contracts with Russian-mined gold, but the governments in Europe and America demanded wheat instead. He said Stalin was backed in a corner, so he decided to pay in wheat. The bad harvest and the exported grain led to the starvations, he argued.
I told Aleksei the United States had nothing to do with any such plot. During the early 1930s, there was a glut of grain in America during the early parts of the Depression that was so severe that farmers were losing money selling grain. Grain elevator operators were charging farmers more to store their grain than what they could sell the grain for. This is or should be common knowledge to any American who stayed awake in high school history or had to read “The Grapes of Wrath” in English class instead of “Gender Queer” or “Heather Has Two Mommies.”
Aleksei remained pissed. But he was no young punk. Aleksei is a measured and serious adult with a very high IQ and a large helping of common sense, initiative, and courage.
To assess any situation, you have to account for the caliber of the person you are dealing with. Aleksei is an incredibly able engineer who is a friend of America and a proud citizen.
It occurred to me he would not have gotten angry if there wasn’t at least some truth to what he was saying. In other words, when someone acts counter to form, especially in a bad way, there is something irritating him or her that could be legit.
Picture, if you will, the old Star Trek TV show and an argument between Mr. Spock (Aleksei) and Bones McCoy (me).
So, what was the truth?
I decided to do some digging.
I didn’t have to do too much, because I already knew Aleksei was basically right about European leaders being vermin.
As an officer candidate, I studied military and political history. Here are some hard facts in a nutshell that most Americans don’t know that I did.
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia spent millions of Russian soldiers’ lives in World War One bailing out the ungrateful French and British. The Russians prematurely attacked in eastern Prussia in late August 1914, before they were properly mobilized, armed, and supplied, to relieve the pressure of the German march toward Paris. They saved the French (and the fleeing British troops) at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers’ lives in the Battle of Tannenberg and other struggles against the Germans in that part of Europe. This doesn’t count the wounded or crippled or blinded.
In 1916, the Russians ordered the Brusilov offensive and other attacks against Germany and Austria-Hungary to relieve German pressure on the French (who were hard-put at Verdun) and the British (who were hard-put at the Somme). The Russian offensive saved French and British men again. The Russians suffered hundreds of thousands more men lost during their offensives of 1916. This doesn’t count the wounded or crippled or blinded.
The British, French, and Italian leaders deserved much of the blame for the misery of Russians also. The French and British were ungrateful for the Russian help, and throughout the war they treated the Russians like they were colonials or bubaks. They hectored the Russian leaders into launching offensives whenever the Germans or the men of Austria-Hungary had them or the Italians down. Actually, the Germans had to put almost as many troops in the field against the Russians alone as against the French and British together. Many Austro-Hungarian units were fighting the Russians also. The Russians had to fight the Turks in the Caucasus region as well. So the Russians were pulling probably half of the load against Germany and their allies as it was.
Millions of Russians were near starvation because many of the peasants who normally raised the nation’s food were in the army or were already dead at the hands of the Germans and the men of Austria-Hungary. Even before the war America and Canada sent lots of food to Britain and France, but little to Russia. The Germans made it hard with submarine warfare in the Baltic Sea and in the Arctic Ocean. The British made it hard by confiscating two battleships they were building for the Turks on the outbreak of World War One without compensating the Turks. As a result, the Turks became allies of Germany, and cut off access to the Black Sea to Russia. The Americans and Canadians did not transport much food to Vladivostok. The Trans Siberian Railroad was in action but couldn’t carry that much freight. Nominal ally Japan might well have intercepted food shipments to Russia because they had fought the Russians only a decade earlier. And President Woodrow Wilson might have allowed it.
Why? Woodrow Wilson, the Anglophile submissive, allowed the Brits to stop our ships and seize the cargos if they were bound for neutral ports in Europe.
The Russian people, overwhelmed by their sacrifices in the war, revolted in early 1917 and overthrew Tsar Nicholas II. Russia was bankrupt and in disarray in 1917, and its people wanted out of the war. The British, French, and American president Woodrow Wilson told new leader Socialist Aleksander Kerensky they would stop loaning the Russians money unless Russia continued in the war. The Russians made one last attempt at an offensive in the summer of 1917, and the Germans beat it down. After three years of bleeding under incompetent leaders for ungrateful allies, the Russian soldiers threw in the towel and marched home. Lenin and his Red criminals took advantage of the weakness of the democratic government Wilson and the ungrateful British and French had undermined.
German leaders allowed Lenin, who was in exile in Switzerland, to cross Germany on his way to Russia. The Germans hoped he could trigger a revolution that would take Russia out of the war. Lenin did. His Communists overthrew the fledgling democratic government of Russia in November 1917. Kerensky, the ousted leader of the short-lived democratic experiment, had to flee the country for his life. The Reds were not gentle with the soldiers of the Women’s Battalion of Death, the last troops to fight for Kerensky. The women soldiers who were captured were raped and strangled to death or hanged.
Tsar Nicholas and his family would be murdered on the orders of Lenin the next summer.
After the Communists overthrew the Kerensky government, they repudiated the debts the Russian governments before them had to the British and French and other governments. They also made public the shameful terms the Allies had agreed to on carving up Europe and the Middle East after the war.
I bet very few Americans are aware of what I just wrote in the few paragraphs above.
Basic humanity would have given the Communists a reasonable argument. The underequipped Russians fought half of the Central Powers’ troops during World War One, and their sacrifices saved France and the British Expeditionary Force from defeat and capture. Surely debt mercy from the British and French would have been in order, since they were busily freeloading from our ancestors in America by now. Canceling a money debt due to the Russian payments to the Allies in blood was the least they could do. But British and French greed was unbounded.
In my 2010 book “When America Did Immigration Right, I noted the following:
One of the almost unknown outrages of the European treaties after World War One were the “Liberation Payments.” The British, French, Italians and American president Woodrow Wilson (who went senile in office like Joe Biden) charged the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania roughly 300 million dollars in gold coins collectively for the privilege of being “liberated” by the Allies. Since the Czech lands were not the scene of any fighting, while the war ravaged Poland, Romania, and Serbia, and since the Czech lands held most of Austria-Hungary’s factories, the people of the new Czechoslovakia were ordered to pay about half of the total amount. (1)
The leaders of Britain, France and Italy had suckered the goofs who ran Romania into coming into the war, and then had reneged on promises to help Romania. It was largely the fault of the Allies that the Germans and their allies had conquered and occupied Romania. The Allies had sold out the people of Yugoslavia – they sold out the Serbs by trying to make them give up territory to Bulgaria (in a failed attempt to get the Bulgars to join the Allies), and they sold out the Croatians and Slovenes (then under Austria-Hungary control) by promising much of their land to the Italians for entry into the war. As for Poland, an Allied power – Russia – had oppressed almost as many Poles than the Austrians and Germans combined. Allied soldiers did not come to Poland’s aid. Nor did Allied soldiers come to the aid of the Czechs or Slovaks. The reverse was true … many Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks served in Allied ranks.
Certainly the peoples of these countries benefited from an Allied victory in tandem with a defeat of Tsarist Russia, but the armies of France and Italy and Britain together had fought not many more German divisions than the Russian army had done. Likewise, as Russia was dropping out of the war, the British would not have survived the submarine war without American naval and merchant marine help, the French would not have held out against the Germans without American help, and the Italians would have quit without the help of their allies. The greed of the French, British, and Italians in collecting “Liberation Payments” was akin to crooked local prosecutors demanding money from kidnap victims who Eliot Ness’ T-men and Melvin Purvis’ FBI men rescued.
In addition, Woodrow Wilson and the greedy swine who ran Britain, France, and Italy demanded the people of these countries – who had been subject peoples – to assume shares of the national debt of Austria-Hungary. They called these acts of extortion “Liquidation Payments.” Herbert Hoover, who had criticized the postwar treaties as hateful, harmful to Europe as a whole, and damaging to the interests of the United States, finally put an end to these money grabs when he was president during the Great Depression. (2)
- Information sources for the piratical “Liberation Payments” include Leslie Tihany’s book A History of Middle Europe (page 211), C.E. Black’s and E.C. Helmreich’s book Twentieth Century Europe (page 339), and a U.S. Commerce Department memo of Herbert Hoover’s dated 5/22/24).
- Information sources for the despicable “Liquidation Payments” include Twentieth Century Europe (page 339) and the book History of Yugoslavia (pages 516-519, which Vladimir Dedijer wrote).
Vladimir Dedijer, who would rise to prominence, then fall from it in Tito’s Yugoslavia, noted tersely, “The country’s (Yugoslavia’s) position in this respect was extremely difficult as it had inherited the public debts of Serbia and Montenegro, and some of the debts of the Ottoman Empire in proportion to the territory allocated to Serbia and Montenegro.” In other words, the international financiers, backed by the governments of Britain, France, and Italy, were squeezing Yugoslavia for money supposedly owed by the Turks. The Serbs and Montenegrins had liberated land their people lived on from the Turks in the First Balkan War of 1912-1913; the men of finance and government in Britain, France, and Italy felt a sense of entitlement to rob the Slavs. Although Dedijer didn’t mention the situations of the Greeks, Bulgars, and Albanians, it is safe to assume the men of finance and government in Britain, France, and Italy committed similar acts of extortion against them after World War One because their peoples had made similar gains at the expense of the Turks in the First Balkan War. Dedijer, a Communist fighter in Tito’s camp during World War Two, would, after his fall from Tito’s approval, teach at Harvard for awhile. His scholarship in writing History of Yugoslavia was professional, and his reach, including his meeting with the children of Franz Ferdinand and Archduchess Sophie to discuss the role of their father in Austria-Hungary and the murder of their parents at Sarajevo, was breathtaking. His personal courage was also impressive, during the war, and during his trials as a demoted official in a Communist regime. His wives (first wife Olga was killed during the war and second wife Vera also served in the war) had similar physical and moral courage.
Just because the Communists had repudiated their debts from World War One didn’t mean non-Russian companies would not do business with them. As long as they got Russian gold or other collateral, the capitalists were more than happy to do business in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. But as the decade wore on, the British and French governments put pressure on private companies and other countries not to accept Russian gold as payment. The British and French had their greedy eyes on that gold because they wanted Tsarist and Kerensky government debts repaid in gold.
The British and French move to coerce third parties to not accept Soviet payments in gold was something I was unaware of until I researched the issue. Aleksei was right.
After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin outmaneuvered Trotsky to take control of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Union. Stalin, faced with European refusal to take gold, had to pay Russian bills in Europe with grain.
Stalin failed as a leader in putting the Euros over the good of his own people.
But Stalin had British, French, Italian, and German “help” in starving his own people.
The charming British sold American Indians into slavery in Moslem North Africa, and those they couldn’t capture they tried to kill by giving them smallpox germ-infected blankets. They committed similar atrocities against people in Africa and India.
The British seized crops in Ireland all during the famine in the Emerald Isle during the late 1840s. More than a million Irish died of the effects of starvation as a result, even though there were small surpluses of food to commandeer. The British also cut off humanitarian aid to German-occupied Belgium during World War One. They would cut off humanitarian aid to German-occupied Greece during World War Two. These acts would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
After World War One, British, French, and American troops invaded Russia in an all-show little-work attempt to fight the Reds. They accomplished nothing. The Japs, meanwhile, meant business. They sent about 80,000 soldiers and about 50,000 “settlers” into eastern Siberia to seize the region. The Russians had to fight off the Japs.
After World War Two, Stalin tried to alienate the Americans from the British and French. Stalin correctly observed the Western Euros wrongfully controlled the lives of hundreds of millions of people as colonialist powers. America reluctantly had take the Philippines as a colony after the Spanish-American War to prevent the Brits and the Japanese from colonizing them. The Americans trained the Philippines for self-government and granted them full independence a year after the end of World War Two, in 1946. Most Americans were not thrilled the Brits and French had all their colonies and thought we should help them keep these people under their heels. In the generation after World War Two, the British, French, Dutch, and Belgians granted almost all their colonies independence because it was more costly to fight colonial wars to keep them than it was to cut their losses.
Americans did not try to starve the people of the Soviet Union after Woodrow Wilson left office in early 1921 and Republican Warren Harding became president. In fact, Herbert Hoover, a wealthy mining engineer and entrepreneur with business interests around the world, led private relief efforts in the Soviet Union starting in 1921 that fed more than 10 million people per day. Although Hoover the future president was a Republican and a hard-core anti-Communist, he was a Christian too.
Many sources note during the famines in the Soviet Union that lasted from 1930 thru 1933, several million other peasants died in similar fashion to the victims of the Ukrainian Holodomor in European Russia, the Caucasus region, and Kazakhstan. The Communists had decided to punish independent farmers across the Soviet Union, not just in Ukraine.
Again, Stalin failed as a leader in putting the Euros over the good of his own people. However, the British, French, Italian, and German governments were complicit in putting starvation pressure on the Soviet Union.
Was Stalin right in trading the lives of millions of his people for short-term international credit and time? Or should he have rejected the horrible bargain, and perhaps opened the Soviet Union’s peoples to other economic assaults? Were Stalin’s actions mass murder or “merely” negligent homicide? Or something he couldn’t avoid, due to the greed of the Western Europeans?
You, from the comfort of 2024 America, be the judge.
I explained to Aleksei what I had found in terms of European refusal to take Soviet gold as payment for their bills. This was something I was not aware of. He expressed satisfaction I was willing to hear him out. I guarantee you hardly any American knows this about British and French opposition to Russian gold being used in trade. I sure as Hell didn’t.
Since then Aleksei and I have had a number of interesting conversations on what life was like in Russia when he lived there. He also explained the old Russian Empire and Soviet Union did offer protection to smaller nationalities willing to be part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
If you understand history, you will know in most of the history of Europe and Asia, a small nationality has no chance at independent existence. At worst the people of the nationality are exterminated. A lesser evil fate is to be captives of the dominant entity. At best, they have to join in mutual protection with other small nationality groups in a union (like Austria-Hungary), or come under the protection of a larger more powerful entity (like the rulers of the Russian Empire).
Feudalism was not imposed by bad rulers on a lark – it was the rational solution of many responsible Christian warlords to form a mutual military aid society under a king or emperor to counter the threats posed by Vikings, Asian hordes, and Moslem jihadists who attacked Europe in the aftermath of the fall of the western Roman Empire, and of the constant beleaguering of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. In Christian societies before the Protestant Reformation, there was the check on the power of kings and nobles by the bishops and the Pope in Catholic realms or the national bishop in Orthodox realms.
Ukraine was a Slavic land that for a long time was under Moslem control. The beautiful young women of the area were all too often taken as sex slaves. The Russian emperors, and kings of Poland like John Sobieski fought the Turks and eventually drove them out. They did so with the help of the Cossacks, whose origin I explained earlier in this column. In the late 1700s, the Russian Empire, Prussian Empire, and Austria-Hungary partitioned Poland, and the Russians consolidated their control over Ukraine.
Aleksei is totally right about the peoples of Russia being appalled at the sexual perversion and the hatred of religion in the leftist West. We have far more in common with the Russians than we do with the English or the French or the Germans when it comes to love of God and love of country.
There has been a revival in Russian national patriotism and religious fervor. Russians and other ethnic groups in Russia have more liberties now, and they are putting them to good use.
The point of this story?
Because I had some situational awareness, I was willing and able to get to the root of the situation. After getting feedback from a man who was logical and who opposed the conclusions I made, I was willing to find the truth. We were both right in some things, wrong in others.
A few months later, Aleksei asked me, with a smile: “When did you start to realize officials in the government were lying to you?”
I laughed, and said, “About the time George Bush and Bill Clinton were in office.”
Aleksei is a productive and good man, the kind of immigrant America should want. He and I are friends.
We are all people with hearts, souls, and minds.
The truth has no agenda. It merely is what it is.
