Surprise, Surprise, Surprise! (With Apologies To Jim Nabors)

The conservative voters who cast their ballots for Republicans on the basis of their opposition to Presidential amnesty, Obamacare, out of control spending and the like are at this point disappointed, dare I say angry at the mainline Republicans aligning with Democrats to pass yet another massive spending bill. If this were just a short term continuing resolution too keep government functioning until the new congress is seated the reaction might not have been so visceral, but this was a 7 month funding bill and little more than a sell out to Wall Street.

None of us should be terribly surprised really.  What the politicians and the news media doesn't want the public to know is that when it comes to inside the beltway there are three political affiliations.  You have those who call themselves Republicans, those who call themselves Democrats and most importantly those who are owned, lock, stock and barrel, body and soul, by the Wall Street financial interests.  Of this latter group, this affiliation to Wall Street is binding and they merely disguise themselves as either Republicans or Democrats.

This is the result of the existence of several factors. Namely that we have allowed ourselves to become burdened with career politicians (no term limits on Congressional offices), we have stolen the sovereignty of the individual states with the passage of the 17th amendment and we have allowed Congress to abrogate its responsibilities under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution by its creation of the Federal Reserve Bank and allowing it to control the creation of the nation's currency.

Make no mistake, harbor no illusions, this bill was not some work of bi-partisanship, it was the work of the party of Wall Street and had absolutely nothing to do with so-called traditional party affiliations.  Those who opposed it were not a coalition of conservative Republicans and radical Democrats but simply a combination of those conservatives and Democrats who either lie about or are so deluded as to believe that there is a difference between the fascist statism of Wall Streets moneyed interests and the neo-socialist/communist statism of the left.

If any one has any doubts about this they need only examine the political contribution lists.  On average those Democrats (the Clinton wing, for lack of a better term) who voted for this corruption received twice as much cash from Wall Street as those who did not.  Further proof is demonstrated by the included language that allows Wall Street institutions to once again back their derivatives trades with FDIC insured instruments.  A practice that had been banned under the Frank Dodd legislation.  This puts the taxpayer directly on the hook for several hundred TRILLION dollars of dubious (i.e. worthless) commercial paper.  The potential losses in Credit Default Swaps alone dwarf the bank bailout under Bush 43 by a factor of a hundred if not several hundreds.  These derivatives are what even Warren Buffet has called "weapons of mass destruction."

With nations like Greece again facing financial ruin, (they have become so desperate for hard currency that they have once again started selling off entire Islands in the Aegean Sea.  Japan has entered a path of aggressive deliberate inflation.  The Yen having fallen from the mid 80s to the USD to over 120 to the USD. With their fractional reserve banking policies the FED and Congress have written us into an $18 Trillion hole that is becoming increasingly acknowledged can NEVER be repaid.

Our own elected and appointed officials may not be willing to state the obvious but many foreign nations can see the train wreck coming.  This is why they are slowly and inexorably moving away from the US Dollar based system.  Nations like China, Russia and India are accumulating Gold, Silver and Platinum in massive quantities.  They entering bi-lateral and tri-lateral trade agreements that bypass the US based Swift system in ever increasing numbers.  They are also selling more US Dollar based instruments (US Treasury Bonds and Notes) at a faster pace than they are buying them, unloading large, long term paper (even at a loss) and buying much shorter term paper.

Factor in falling global oil demand along with Saudi/US colluding to keep production high as a purely political instrument against both Iran and Russia and the train grows ever closer and picks up speed.

Unless and until the American public turn out in the streets in numbers and proportions not seen since the Viet Nam War things will only get worse. The career politicians have to go, on mass. Any Congress critter who has served more than 4 terms in the House and/or 2 terms in the Senate must go.  Legislation must be put in place to begin the process of repealing the 17th amendment.  Further action must be taken thoroughly audit the Federal Reserve and then to quickly put it on the path to extinction.  The "Full faith and credit" of the US dollar has run out and will only be restored to a sound asset based monetary system.

Time grows short. With the latest Supreme Court decision allowing the police to claim ignorance of the law as an excuse for violating the fourth amendment rights of citizens they have now openly admitted that there is one set of laws for the elite and their enforcers and another for the rest of us. 

The noose of naked tyranny grows ever tighter.  But as long as the average citizen remains somnambulated with empty meaningless video games, "reality" TV that is anything but,and endless sports spectaculars there is little chance of these or any real and necessary changes will come about.  I fear our liberty will die of indifference.

No Bill in New York.

Regardless of the victim's animosity toward the police (because of continued harassment) or the police's obvious animosity toward him bred of arrogance and belief of special  privilege, the root cause of this crime lies with governmental and political arrogance, and their refusal to consider the existence of unintended consequences.

In the process of building the progressive utopian disaster that is New York State and New York City they left has raised and raised and raised again the so-called sin taxes, particularly those on cigarettes.  The reaction has been that some 60% of cigarettes are bootlegged in from other states.  Rather than reducing the incentive for smuggling by lowering taxes, and thus potentially increasing derived revenues, the government chooses to increase enforcement by turning the local beat cop into a revenuer.

However absurdly high the taxes may be on a pack of cigarettes may be, criminalizing the non-commercial sale of single cigarettes is a bureaucratic obscenity.  But then I suppose if Mr. Garner had been selling single joints on the corner that would be considered far more politically correct and the cops would have turned a blind eye.

At the close of the Battle of Yorktown Cornwallis's band played a little number titled "The World Turned Upside Down."  Perhaps we should come full circle and it should become an anthem for the coming insurrection.

Getting Rich The New Fashion Way.

The favorite mime and tactic of the contemporary left is to play the zero sum game of no capitalist gets rich except at the expense of making others poor.  Never mind that this theory ignores the fact that wealth is created by the intersection of human intellect and labor in the production of real goods and services in public demand, lets apply this false logic to the obvious question of one Dr. Jonathan Gruber.

Answering question from Congress is not just
inconvenient, it's downright boring. 

If our typical capitalist is guilty of enriching themselves at the expense of the middle and lower class, then just who did Gruber make his $5.9 million at the expense of?  If this MIT genius is such a champion of the oppressed who are in such desperate need of health insurance how does he justify calling them "stupid" and lining his pockets with their tax dollars?  If he, like so many leftist neo-Marxists, think that the a 90% tax bracket would just be paying "their fair share", when are we going to see him make a big public display out of his writing a check for $5.3 million to the IRS?  When are we going to see any of his fellow leftists condemn him for his "greed" or chastise him for his reprehensible characterizations of the American voters? 

Forgive me if I don't hold my breath, after all he's not making money the old fashion way by making something people want. He's making it the new fashion way, stealing it directly from the taxpayers pockets.

Isolating Russia?

So now Uncle Vlad and his foreign minister are complaining that forward deployment of NATO aircraft in Estonia and Lithuania represent an attempt to "isolate" Russia?  I guess we are supposed to take such pronouncements seriously.  I'd also guess that we're supposed to ignore/forget all the Russian military facilities in the Kaliningrad (formerly East Prussia) and within easy striking distance of the Baltic states.

Russian fighters lined up at

Chkalovsk in Kaliningrad Oblast

I mean it's not like the Russians have used "ethnic Russian" populations as an excuse to seize territory from their neighbors before or that they have any reason to be suspect of Russian imperialism or that they spent decades as Russian occupied territory both before WWI and after WWII. Right?

Random Thoughts on Election Night.

Can I get a franchise on Newspaper editorial staffs crying in their beer?

Is the staff at MSNBC now going to "Lean Forward" and puke up all their BS from spinning the Democrat's loss at record speeds?

Now that Kay Hagan has been handed her walking papers will we actually get an honest investigation into her family connections syphoning off stimulus funds? 

Scott Walker for President???

More Unanswered Ebola Questions

We have reached the point where a significant minority if not a majority of the public no longer believes anything the government says, particularly when it comes to issues that can or do effect individuals directly.

The fact is this out break of Ebola started in December of last year and did nothing but continue to spread.  There were some virologists and pathologists who were warning early on that this out break would be different because of its proximity to dense population centers. By mid June, July the stories began to appear that this was the largest known outbreak of the disease.  Well here we are some three months later and the disease has reached into Europe and North America. All that said, the questions that need to be asked don't yet appear on the horizon.

1.  Did the CDC or NIH begin any preparations when the first warning came out about the danger posed by the proximity to urban population centers?  If yes what were they and why have they so obviously failed?  If not, why not.
2.  When it became clear that this was a large and largely out of control outbreak what steps did the agencies take then. Again why have they failed or why were they not taken.
3.  How many dead Americans will it take before the agencies and the Obama administration STOP PLAYING POLITICS and start operating in the best interest of the America people?  Namely really and truly close the borders as effectively as possible and halt all direct and indirect travel from the epicenters in Africa.
4. How many dead Americans will it take before the American people in mass stand up and demand the government take all reasonable and necessary steps to keep this menace from our shores?

Economic War On The Home Front? I Don't Know.Updated 10/11/14

I have been reading and occasionally commenting on Harvey Organ's blog for several years now.  He recently has been saying to any and all who will listen that the shit is about to hit the fan in the precious metals market.  Even going so far as to predict that the "longs" are going to unleash an assault on the COMEX and trigger a default.  Today I find that his BlogSpot page has been removed.  Coincidence???  Anyone who knows what's going on with Harvey please comment below or send an email.

Thanks.

Update 10/11/14 

The word I found is that Harvey's sight was taken down in response to a court order.  No word on what the order consisted of or what court issued it or what was the nature of the complaint or who was the complainant.

Harvey and friends have been chastising TPTB on the COMEX and the Fed for years only recently he started to predict that the Game is about up and the long awaited SHTF moment will soon be upon us in the form of a massive default in COMEX silver.  When it happens it will be spun as "We never saw it coming" or "No one could have predicted it" or the extant or repercussion of those holding massive long positions in silver demanding delivery of materials that simply no longer exist at the COMEX or any of the so-called bullion banks. Then every other holder of PM deposits of sovereign gold will demand repatriation of their deposits.  Problem being that the banks cant return what has been leased out and is no longer in their control.  So many bankers, so few lampposts!

Show trimmed content
The Chinese are desperately buying up all the gold and silver they can and doing so in heavy competition with India, Russia who like China are desperately trying to abate their own massive liquidity problems. Question is will they succeed in structuring an Eastern centered PM trading market before the Black Swan of Ebola screws up all their plans for new world order with corpses stacked in the street

Have The Protests Just Disappeared?

Did the highly volatile situation in Hong Kong just dissolve into nothingness overnight?  Or has the news media decided but they need to cooperate with the Communist Chinese covering up what is probably the greatest threat their central control since 1949?

As media access and reporting in mainland China of the hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents demanding an end of Beijing's interference with their democratic process is all but nonexistent the powers that be on the Central Committee are clearly worried that it wouldn't take much of a provocation for demands for more open democracy to spread to other urban centers.

That of course is the natural outgrowth of even state controlled economic liberalization; even with limited "trickle down" prosperity comes the desire and eventually demand for more economic and political selfdetermination.

Even more critically the spread of any such demands and unrest (which even Beijing knows has been simmering just under the surface for years) could and would threaten their reemerging power axis with the new oligarchs in Moscow.

The last the either Beijing or Moscow wants is their new potential for global hegemony interfered with by a bunch of peasants demanding human rights.

So the question becomes; will Beijing crackdown in Hong Kong like they did in Tienamin Square and face global condemnation or will they compromise and lose face and hope to contain the spread of self determination to Hong Kong?

Apparently The Time Has Come . . . . . .

With the Ebola case in Dallas and the acknowledged bungling of how the patient and his relatives were handled not to mention how contagious vomit was aerosoled with a pressure washer (potentially  exposing hundreds) the time has come to reiterate some questions I asked back in July and add a few more.  No one in government or the media want to answer them never mind admit they exist.

1. What is the incubation period?  How long between initial exposure and the first presentation of symptoms?

2.  At what point after exposure does an individual become contagious?  Does an infected individual become contagious before the onset of symptoms?

3.  How long does the virus remain viable and infectious on environmental surfaces?  Hours? Days? Weeks?

Unless and until the CDC tells us either some answers or at least admits they don't have any answers we have to conclude that the CDC and the Obama administration regard this as a public relations issue that needs to be "contained" and not a serious public health issue.  So far they seem more concerned with containing any panic than they are with containing the disease. 

Politics trumps public safety right up until the moment that it becomes the long sought excuse for declaring martial law and any semblance of civil liberties and the Bill of Rights disappear as in a bad dystopian sci-fi movie. 

But wait maybe an Islamist fanatic has figured out a way to weaponize Ebola........

Just a while ago I warned that the latest outbreak of Ebola in West Africa was going to get out of control and that there was a great danger of it becoming weaponized by Islamic fanatics.  Well the spread has gotten out of control and the concern that some Islamist crazy will get hold of it has not yet happened that we know of.  Or maybe they won't have to, because no one ever thought that it would be the Obama administration that would be responsible for importing it to our shores. 

Sending 3000 American soldiers to West Africa to do a job they most assuredly are not trained for, and should be performed by medical professionals is stupid, reprehensible and irresponsible.  Facing the terrors of combat is one thing. Being placed in harms way of a disease where a touch or a sneeze can bring a horrible and excruciating death is quite another. 

Quite simply there is no way that the military can guarantee that none of these soldiers will be exposed or infected.  Neither does it have a quarantine facility of the size necessary to properly isolate both them and all those they come in contact with while on their return trip.  Exposing our military installations to this danger in the midst of growing instability around the globe is insane.

Well I Told You So.......

An Ugly Coincidence???

At what point does someone, anyone in the public arena going to recognize and question the juxtaposition of the ugly resurgence of anti-Semitism in general and particularly surrounding Israeli ground operations in Gaza and the marked up-tick in pro-Russian, all Putin all the time propaganda coming from the exact same sources?

Another Load of Maskirovka.

In a recent piece at theimaginitiveconservative.org author Peter Strzelecki Rieth reaches back into Alexander Solzhenitsyn's works about not "abandoning" ethnic Russians in Ukraine.  He even makes a dubious analogy of the "false Dimitris" of the 1600s to justify Russian intervention in Ukraine.  He even forwards the absurd idea that Ukraine should more fear an Polish invasion than a Russian one!  What a load of horse feathers.  Even if one were to entertain such 400 year old foolishness then the Ukrainians are more than justified in reaching back to the last 200 odd years of Russian imperialist suppression of Ukrainian culture.  Starting with banning the teaching of their language in schools and progressing all the way through to the mass starvation and deportations of the Holodomor and the Great Terror of the 1930s. 

Not only did Stalin starve, slaughter and deport millions of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Jews  and other ethnic minorities, he also purged and executed those same minorities out of the NKVD and the Communist Party.  By the time the Germans invaded in June of 1941 all the bureaucracies of the Soviet Union were dominated and controlled by ethnic Russians and Stalin's own Georgians.  All while Stalin and his Russians were slaughtering these minorities he was moving ethnic Russians into the towns and villages that had been vacated by his machines of death. 

All the various constituent republics of the Soviet Empire didn't declare their independence out of some great love of for their Russian occupiers.  The list of their resentments and grievances is almost endless.    So then if Russia is allowed to prevail in carving up Ukraine as it sees fit, what does this foretell for the similarly "Sudatenized" areas of all the other former Soviet Republics?

And The Beat Of Propaganda (No To Mention Profound Ignorance) Goes On And On And On.....

The prevailing opinion among many seems to be that while Obama maybe the bumbling reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain, they refuse to even consider that Vladimir Putin maybe the reincarnate evil combination of Hitler and Stalin.  Nevermind that Putin's tactics of chewing  of pieces of neighboring states (South Ossetia, Crimea) and incarcerating or disappearing those who would dare call him what he is (Pussy Riot) is Hitleresque and his tactic of charterizing his targets as "fascists" or agents of foreign espionage operations is straight out of Stalin's NKVD play book.  Before jumping to any conclusions or judgements we should all endeavor to understand the formative history of the current situation. Timothy Snyder's "Blood lands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" is an excellent starting place.

www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471

Neither should we forget that there was never any accounting for the monstrous crimes of Soviet Russia, nor any reason that its victims should be forgiving.
I am not excusing the crimes of our current batch of politicians or their Wall Street puppet masters.  I'm just saying that their crimes and historical ignorance does not excuse or negate history.

I am not now, nor will I ever be one of those naive and or poorly educated fools who tries to cram all of history into the box of some vast Jewish conspiricy.  Whatever the ethnic origins of the masters of the Russian Revolution, as they claimed to be intellectually driven, their first and formost loyalty was to the communist party and Marxist ideology.  As Marxism rejected all religion, making the claim that they were Zionist conspiritors nearly 100 years after the fact is patently absurd.

In fact there were as nearly as many of the party leadership that were ethnic Poles as there were ethnic Jews.  This was especially true in the upper echelons of the NKVD (the predecessor of the KGB).  None of their party loyalty kept Stalin and his henchmen from executiog hundreds of thousands for the "crime" of being Poles or Jewish Poles claimed to be part of the non-existant "Polish Military Organization" during the Great Terror of the late '30s.  It was under Stalin's policy of "socialism in a single state" that the Soviet Union became "Russified" rather than internationalist as they outwardly claimed.

As I have said know the history before jumping to conclusions.  Maskirovka didn't magically dissapear with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Dawn of the Dead!

Hamas recently put on a display of "victims of Israeli aggression" releasing video "proof" of lined up corpses under burial shrouds. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfCJ23umcBI

Watch as the dead twitch in their discomfort at being laid out an a hard floor.  If Hamas's claims about the numbers of dead were even 1/10 of what they say there would be absolutely no need for such blatant fabrications.  What psychopathic murderers lie?  Who'd of thunk?

Ukraine: Obama Doing The Right Thing For The Wrong Reasons

Look I know I am in a small majority on this issue but……  trying to judge this conflict or any conflict or assign motives from within the vacuum of contemporary events is folly.  We would not judge the events in Gaza solely on the basis on what has transpired since Israel withdrew from Gaza and Hamas took control.  So why then judge the events in Ukraine on the sole basis of Obama or John Kerry’s meddling? 

The Ukrainian struggle for freedom from Russian oppression is centuries old and only finally found its fulfillment in the collapse of the Soviet Union. They now see that long sought freedom threatened but 25 years later. They are no more inclined to roll over and play dead for Putin's aggression than were the newly independent Americans in 1812.

To possibly condemn the Ukrainian peoples to the return of Russian oppression simply because the Obama administration is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons would be a disservice to reason, history, the Ukrainian people and human dignity. Think carefully and learn the history before jumping to conclusions based upon distaste for the current occupant of the White House.

As I have said before peoples that have suffered generations of murder and oppression, caught in the middle of their more powerful neighbors geo-political power games and wars don’t often develop or even have the opportunity to develop sophisticated political institutions capable of getting beyond a centuries old cultural hatred.

That does not mean they should be denied the opportunity to develop over time the political sophistication we expect of our own institutions just because our political leadership has abandoned those very qualities and we deeply resent them for it.

I very much doubt Obama and his minions either know or care that supporting Ukrainian independence and territorial integrity is the right thing to do, largely because they are doing it for the wrong reason of trying to promote, extend and maintain the FED’s and the City of London’s financial hegemony over both Ukraine and Russia.

 

 

Humanitarian Crisis or Cossack's Revenge?

So how is it that as soon as  the politically incorrect side approaches success in a military confrontation, be it in Gaza or Ukraine, the losing side and their external supporters start squealing about a humanitarian crisis?

The latest headline is that Ukrainian military forces have effectively surrounded Donetsk, the "capital" of the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic and are responding to requests for a ceasefire by essentially telling the rebels "Sure, surrender and we'll stop shelling."

After 200 some years of brutal cultural supression and having been driven from their homelands by mass starvation and mass deportations only to see ethnic Russians moved into their homes to fill the void apparently the Cossacks are in no mood to have the very lands themselves stolen as well.

The Russians and the world in general has forgotten that the Cossacks (Ukrainians) have a long history as some of the most fierce and fearsome warriors.  Or maybe Putin and company do remember and don't want to commit to a full scale military confrontation for fear of getting a very bloody nose and perhaps having troops say "no thanks" to deeper involvement as happened with the Russian's debacle in Afghanistan that ultimately brought down the Soviet Union.

Could it be that there remains a disiplinary weakness in the Russian military that Putin does not want exposed to the rest of the world?  Historically the most feared "Russian" units going back to the time of the Czars were actually Ukrainian Cossacks.  A claim that they may no longer be able to make.

Just Imagine......

....... if Hamas and the other various hate filled factions in Gaza channeled all that money, energy and logistical effort that they put into building rockets and digging tunnels, buying arms and teaching their children to hate Jews for the sake of hating Jews into say, imitating the Israelis by making the desert bloom with farms to feed their people and manufacturing something that the rest of the world would want to buy from them. Giving them jobs and hope for the future and the futures of their children.

But instead they consider their children as military assets to be used and sacrificed in endless wars and squandering the billions of dollars that the world has given them on corruption and arms and fostering hatred.  They then complain to that same world "Look we have nothing, and the Jews have everything, but only because they stole it from us!"  Meanwhile hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian sick and injured are treated in Israeli hospitals, tons of food, medical supplies and household goods flow from Israel into Gaza every week.  Thousands of Palestinians seek and are given jobs in Israeli industry, farms and construction.

As long as the so-called leaders of the Palestinians and the Arab world at large remain committed to enriching themselves and keeping the rest of their people focused on a centuries old blood feud, nothing will change and the suffering, war and death will continue.  As long as they, and I'm speaking of the Palestinian leaders here, as long as they continue to teach their children that loving death more than their enemies love life is more important than loving their children and building a prosperous future for them, they will remain little more than crude barbarians in the truest sense of the word.

T.E. Lawrence was right nearly a hundred years ago when he concluded that true progress for the Arab was all but impossible as long as they remained tribal in nature and their leaders continued to perpetuate and manipulate that social structure for their own exclusive benefit.

Of Great Concern Part 2

Just 2 weeks ago I posted a piece titled Of Little Note But Great Concern     http://theeveningchronicle.blogspot.com/2014/07/of-little-note-but-great-concern.html that discussed the growing Ebola outbreak in West Africa.  Since then the situation has grow worse and far more perilous.  Yes there has been some coverage in the MSM but that has for the most part focused on the lead Doctor treating the patients having contracted the disease himself.  There was even one Reuters story mentioning that a man from Liberia had collapsed at the Lagos Nigeria International Airport and had subsequently been diagnosed with and died from Ebola.

Known and suspected areas
of outbreak in West Africa.

In the past the most horrific form of hemorrhagic fever has been largely confined to remote jungle villages and the outbreaks contained and died out by isolation procedures.  This time however that has apparently changed as the out break has claimed over 600 victims and spread from Guinea into Liberia, Sierra Leone and now apparently Nigeria.  That this latest victim arrived there by aircraft raises some very troubling questions.  This passenger zero boarded a flight in Monrovia Liberia.  The flight then stopped in Lome, Togo before proceeding on to Lagos Nigeria. 

• How many passengers boarded the flight in Monrovia?
• How many passengers got off in Lome, Togo? 
• Were did they go from there?
• Where did all the other passengers from the flight disperse to once it arrived in Lagos?

Given that this passenger zero died approximately 72 hours after his collapse at the airport it must be considered that he was infectious and contagious when he boarded the flight in Liberia.  Depending upon the particular strain of Ebola the incubation period is believed to be to vary from 2 days up to three weeks. 

The open questions that must be considered then are:

Ebola virus.

• At what point between exposure and the presentation of symptoms does the exposed individual become contagious?
• Where and how far have passenger zero's fellow passengers traveled in the interim and up to three weeks from there possible exposure? 

Lagos Nigeria is the largest city in Africa and the forth largest in the world.  Passengers fly out of its airport quite literally to every corner of the world.  This could quickly become not an African problem but a global one.  Adding to this danger has been an emerging story, also out of Liberia, that a confirmed patient there was kidnapped from the hospital where they were being held in isolation.  Allegedly this was done by family members but no one is absolutely sure.

• Who in there right mind would do such a thing knowing the consequences?
• Was it done deliberately in order to capture a live virus patient that could be used to further spread the disease? The very question I raised in my previous story.

I'm not foreseeing a scenario out of the movie World War Z or even the current TV show The Last Ship here but I do foresee the current administration forestalling public awareness until it is possibly to late.

The Death of Reason

As I have noted before I am not unfamiliar with encountering close minded douchbags on various comment boards.  Up until now, at least in my experience, these troglodytes have been exclusively of the leftist variety.  Shocking I know!  It usually follows a familiar pattern.  I'd post a comment or respond to the post of another, generally laying out an argument or position on whatever issue is in question.  Used to be there would be those who would respectfully disagree and a conversation would ensue. and then there would be those who would immediately resort to name calling, innuendo or worse. 

I guess Voltaire is dead as well.

Not being one who is intimidated by such childish behavior I've been know to give it back, often more succinctly than it was dished out.  This of course leads those in the latter category to become enraged, sink into profanity, where the imbedded filters allow, or euphemisms for it where they don't.  Eventually One or two of these low digit IQ denizen will go crying to the board moderator, a misnomer if ever there was one, and complain.  This generally leads to the so called offending remarks being marked as deleted or disappearing all together.  A little practice I call shoving things down the memory hole. 

Not one to be deterred by such bad behavior I would continue to comment undeterred.  This of course leads to further outrage on the part of these people who I have come to refer to as "the usual suspects".  All that said I'm sure there are those who might cite similar circumstances coming from the other end of the spectrum.

As I am not exactly trusting of the MSM I often read and comment at alternative sites.  One of my favorites for quite some time has been Zerohedge.com.  For the longest time the comment section has been an anything goes, rhetorical equivalent of the wild wild west.  ZH has a reputation for both perspective one didn't find on the MSM with a definite pro-capitalist / anti-bankster bent.  There had always been  tinges of anti-Americanism present but these comments were most often countered by those who refused to except that either party or any particular politician was representative of what America really means.

Sadly all that has changed.  Over the last year or so the reporting  has become dominated by a markedly anti-Semitic, hate America, pro all things Russia and Putin attitude.  With the growing tensions in Ukraine, particularly with recent shooting down of flight MH-17, and Israel's undertaking to counter Hamas' constant rocket barrages it has reached the point any commenter who takes on a contrary position comes under vicious attack.  Attacks even more profane and hateful than anything I have encountered from the vilest of the left wing sites.

I can only imagine that this image would
make the heads of  the censors at
Zerohedge explode.

As I stated the last two days events have brought things to an ugly and naked head.  Firstly Israel's launching of ground operations brought forth a stream of anti-Semitic comments and attacks against anyone who dared support Israel or question Hamas' tactics that one would fully expect to see on an Aryan Nation or KKK website.  Then, also yesterday, a story was posted outlining and openly questioning the Ukrainian perspective on the crash.  The story ended with an editorialization that "the whole thing smells fishy".  This was followed today with a story from the Russian perspective that consisted of little more than a series of direct quotes from various Russian news feeds and government agencies (as if there is any real difference).  The story again ended with an editorialization, but this time it was a rather disingenuous remark to the effect that in the end it was going to come down to which side propaganda was most effective.   My position on the fighting in Ukraine is well know, on ZH and elsewhere and it has nothing to do with Obama or Putin but history. I posted a quick and sarcastic comment that "It's official, ZH is now an outlet for RT, (Russia Times, the Kremlins cable news and internet feed site), because we all know Russia would never lie".


Within 3 minutes, (yes that fast) not only was my comment heavily downvoted, 14 to 3 the last I could see, (only logged in users can see vote counts at ZH) but my account was blocked.  I guess I was surprised at first by this but maybe I shouldn't be.  I can only speculate that this comment, combined with other remarks questioning if the (pro-Putin) commenter was comfortable in their cubicle at Lubyanka (KGB headquarters and prison in the heart of Moscow) was striking too close to home for TPTB at ZH to take anymore. 

Apparently ZH has no sense of irony.  The donations page lists three reason to donate:

1  to liberate oppressed knowledge.
2  to provide analysis uninhibited by political constraint.
3  to facilitate information's unending quest for freedom.

I'd say shame on them, but I doubt they have the integrity to care that their actions prove my point.  The 21st century will be remembered for the death of reason, civility, rational behavior and indeed moral conscience.

Is This All Planed Chaos?

So far I cant figure out if this mess is spinning out of control or going precisely according to some sinister plan.  I guess it's just too bad for the Obama administration that when the government releases a $50 million contract it has to be made public.  Well thankfully at least the Baptist Church has a sense of shame because Obama's bureaucrats sure as hell don't.  Did they really think that signing a $50 million contract with Baptist Child and Family Services was going to go unnoticed?

The $50 million was intended for BCFS to take over an existing midlevel resort in Weslaco Texas and use it to house upwards of 600 juvenile illegal aliens.  Check it out for yourself.  Certainly not the Hilton at Miami Beach but I'd bet that there a tens of millions of American families who wish they could afford a weeks stay.     http://www.palmairehotel.com/default.aspx?pg=home 

Nice digs if you can afford it!

Seems the negative reaction from the Baptist Church's own congregations was so swift that BCFS was forced to withdraw from the contract within a matter of hours. Don't think for a moment that this will be the end of this obscene idea.  You can bet that HHS is casting about right now to find another entity to take this contract that doesn't have a constituency that will object.  Hell seeing how this administration operates they could very well just invent one!

Do these arrogant fools think people can't do the simple math that proves just how outrageous this plan is? 50,000,000 / 600 = $83,333.33 per illegal resident! Somehow I don't see this administration even considering using this kind of money to actually facilitate deporting these hoards back to from where they came.  Imagine if you will ICE chartering airliners to take them home.  Think  of it as Con-Air for illegals.  At an estimated $10,000 and 200 passengers a flight that $50 million would pay for a MILLION deportations!  


Even if the $10,000 per flight is inaccurate by half 

Rum & Cokes and cold Cerveza in the Lounge!

or more this simple calculation demonstrates the absolute absurdity of the administration $3.6 billion appropriation request.  No one, absolutely no one is giving the public anything approaching an honest assessment of what is going on with this situation, not  the administration, not the bureaucrats and most certainly not the MSM.  It doesn't take a particularly over active imagination to get the feeling that we are being despicably and deeply manipulated here.


We've already discussed the serious disease infestations that have been documented among those Central American juveniles that have been picked up. Measles, Whooping cough, Pertussis, drug resistant Tuberculosis  But up 'till now nobody is talking about those illegals that have so far avoided capture.  How widely have they become dispersed into society, whare they going and what kinds infections are they carrying and what are the incubation rates for the influenza infections and the other diseases they knowing or unknowingly carrying.

Stop! We are only here to make sure  the aliens
remain healthy enough to take your job!

At some point one ore more of these diseases will reach a break out.  My Guess that it will happen in numerous locations within a very short period.  Next thing you know the public will be out in force demanding the heads of various politicians for the years of neglect that created this mess.   The government response will be twofold.  First, use the pandemic as an excuse for declaring martial law and second send in agent provactures to insight violence against the immigrant community in order to distract attention away from government culpability and use that to ratchet down even more with militarized police tactics.

Well maybe some of those 18,000 laid off Microsoft employees can sign up for police training so they can help guard Bill Gates' compound from the rest of there fellow former employees who will be screaming for his head as he reads his latest proclamation calling for even more illegal immigration.

The Crisis Of Arrogance And Overreach Grows

I recently posted a piece speculating that the, for all intents and purposes, deliberate flooding of the southern border with underage illegals was going to be the president's metaphorical "A Bridge to Far".  Since then the backlash against the administration's massive spending and diversion of resources for illegals has only grown.

Just because the MSM isn't covering it doesn't mean it isn't there.  State governors and local mayors are openly telling ICE and Homeland Security  "Don't you dare dump them here".  Even citizens in towns in the bluest of blue states like Maryland, California and New York are coming out and blocking buss loads of aliens and forcing them to turn back.  A story just emerged that officers of the Border Patrol threatened to walk off the job if the Feds brought in Riot police to prevent protesters from blocking busses in Murrieta California.

The reasons are as obvious as the nose on you face and are just as I predicted they would be.  It has nothing to do with racial animus or lack of compassion. It has everything to do with TAXPAYERS being tired of seeing their schools flooded with illegals, tired of seeing their local hospital's emergency services flooded with freeloaders and in may cases seeing them closed down because they can't afford to provide free services to people here illegally and maintain all the other things hospitals need to do on a daily basis.



Juvenile Measles

These are compassionate people. They're compassionate about protecting their own children and communities from deadly diseases that have long been eradicated here.  California health officials just announced they are seeing a sharp upturn in whooping cough.  They may pretend  to be "perplexed" as to why but it does not take a genius to figure out where it's coming from.  Drug resistant TB has already been found, yet I have still not seen or heard of any quarantine centers being established to prevent its spread.



Horrible infestations of measles, scabies and lice have been found.  Were are the delouseing stations? Measles has an incubation period of  10 to 12 days.  Where are the quarantine wards?  Parasitic scabies takes weeks to treat.  Navy health official have confirmed they are struggling to contain out breaks of pneumonia and swine flu at a base in Southern California among illegals brought in for processing. Last time I checked it was the Navy's job to combat the enemy not combat contagious disease. Were is the Surgeon General in all this?  So far not a word from the Admiral's office has been heard.  Meanwhile our government is simply putting possibly infected and contagious people on public transportation and shipping them around the country.  No identification?  No problem! Just sign a worthless "Promise to appear" ticket and you're free to travel anywhere in the country on the taxpayers dime!   I for one know that I won't be flying anywhere anytime soon.  What rational person would want to take the risk of exposure to god knows what?

Contract Healthcare workers that have been brought in to help are now being threatened with arrest if they dare speak out and reveal the extent of the problems or the diseases they are encountering.   Just how does that serve the public interest?  How could that do anything but undermine any public confidence in government?

Unless dramatic and drastic measures are taken these diseases and lord only knows what others, will make it into the schools and general population where over crowding and poor sanitation will only speed up the spread.  If you have kids in school prepare yourself to start receiving letters that say "Your child may have been exposed to measles, or TB or whooping cough or scabies or lice or swine flu. (At this point it's take you pick).  Please consult your health care professional to make sure your vaccinations are up to date or if any such symptoms appear." 

At some point someone or their child is going to get infected and either be horribly scared or die and then there is going to be a run on pitchforks and torches at the local hardware store.  I can only pray that they get turned against the politicians responsible and it does not turn into a race riot.

Of Little Note but Great Concern.

The stories might be confined to the back pages of most media outlets but it should be noted that the latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa is one of  if not the largest on record.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/11/us-health-ebola-idUSKBN0FG0JQ20140711

We can most certainly bet that there is some sick individual somewhere trying to figure out how to plant this infection somewhere in the US.  Either among the current flood of aliens who's rapid dispersement  into the general population is currently being facilitated by our own government or into some or several urban poverty centers where its spread would be exacerbated by already poor infrastructure and general health conditions.

Left vs. Right. The False Paradigm.

It has been my experience, having spent some time posting on both left leaning and right leaning comment boards, that in terms of methodology and tactics of the two sides have more in common than in difference.

There are goodly percentages on both sides that are ideologically hidebound to both party affiliation and visceral hatred of any and all who they perceive as or have been told by leadership is the "enemy".

That said I find the leftists to be far quicker to leap to generalizations, name calling and outright viciousness when it comes to responding to any content they don't agree with..  Present them with hard facts and reference historical source materials and the reactions can grow to bordering on violence.  Whatever the reaction don't ever expect them to respond with a logicly constructed counter argument.  It happens but not very often.  Engaging in open, honest debate is the last thing they want to do.  When they can't counter an argument they resort to  distraction, accusations , name calling and vilification.

Again there are elements on both sides of the aisle that are guilty of this.  Both parties suffer from a form of atrophy..  The Democrats have not had a new movement, new idea or direction come forth since the hard left took control of the part in 1972 with the nomination of George McGovern. The Republican elites reestablished control after the Regan presidency with George H. W. Bush and has fought tooth and nail to retain it ever since.  They fear and loath the emergence of the so called "Tea Party" as much or more than the democrats do.

And no this is NOT an endorsement of the Tea Party on my part.  They are as naïvely wedded to economic free trade policy as any  capital R republican or capital D democrat establishment type. Both parties are deeply dependent upon the financial elitists and imperialists that have pushed this false notion since before the American Revolution.  These forces don't really care which party claims "control" of the government just as long as it is their agents that maintain control over economic policy.

Anyone who doubts this need only look at the pedigree of those who have held the post of Secretary of the Treasury over the last decades.  The names of Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan etc. come up over and over again regardless of that party occupying the White House or in control of Congress.  They are not there to serve the best interest of the party or the administration or the American people.  They are there to maintain policy continuity and control by the financial elites.

They happily set one side against the other, encouraging and financing the most vicious behavior for the singular purpose of keeping the general populace distracted from their continued accumulation of wealth and power.

The Tea Party may be right when calling for the return to founding principles but they will be destined to failure unless and until they also call for the destruction on the power of the financial elites and the return to sound asset based monetary policy.  Something that believe it are not, there are elements within the traditional old school Democrats, would agree with. 

Getting past the ideological horse blinders and conditioned hatred is and will remain a most difficult obstacle for both sides to overcome.  And that is just the way the financial gods of Wall Street and the City of London want it.

In spite of their long standing animosity both Jefferson and Hamilton were right when it came to the need for an open an honest American financial system.

The False Cry Of Genocide.

With the dubious cease fire in Ukraine having been abandoned (by both sides) the Ukrainian national forces are making good on their promise to either drive out the armed separatists or force them into submission.  There success in Slavyansk has the separatist screaming genocide and begging Putin to intervene.

  

Ukrainian troops in Slavyansk.

Well one man's "genocide" is another man's "collateral damage".  Russians crying about genocide in Ukraine is the stupidest irony I have heard yet.  Seems the Ukrainians have neither forgotten nor forgiven the Holdomor.  And why should they?  It should be shoved in the Russian's face every day.  If Putin wants to be the new Lenin and make Russia the new USSR let him, but let him do it in Russia and leave the rest of the world alone.   

And no my position has nothing to do with Obama's foolish international policy or international gamesmanship or Israel or anything or anyone else.  It has to do with history and that most basic of human desires to be free.  To be free to pursue life, liberty and happiness in whatever way suits their desires and talents.  Free to do so without restraining the liberty of others or having their liberty similarly restrained by others from their own nation or government or by outside forces.  

Virtually every people that live in lands bordering Russia, from the Arctic Ocean to the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and across central Asia have dreamed, fought, struggled and died to be free of the yoke of Russian imperialism, be it in the form of Czars, commissars or now Putin's neo-fascist bureaucracy and shock troops.  They just want to be free and left the hell alone.  Their attitude is if the ethnic Russians who live in their now free nations want to be Russian nationals again, let them pack their things and go to Russia.  Their being used as political cudgels against the former Russian vassal states is no different than Hitler's tactics against Czechoslovakia and Poland in the 1930's.

 

Does this mean that the Ukrainian people, their government or their military forces are free of human failures and weakness?  Of course not, war is a terrible thing and imperfect people do terrible inhuman things to each other.  But that does not raise the artillery shelling on one small city in eastern Ukraine to the level of genocide any more than the destruction of the German Army Group B in the Falaise pocket or the carpet bombing of German industrial centers in the Rhur valley were acts of genocide.

Obama's "A Bridge To Far"

In the fall of 1944 Allied military commanders in Europe had become quite impressed with themselves given the rapidity with which they had pushed the Wehrmacht back to the French frontiers and into Belgium.  This led the British commander, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, to propose a daring airborne assault into the Netherlands and across the Rhine river that would open the plains of Northern Germany to the Allied armies and possible end the war in Europe by Christmas of 1944.  This became know as "Operation Market Garden", and Hollywood later depicted it as "A Bridge To Far". 


The paratroops drop in.

The operation was a costly disaster.  British and American Airborne units found themselves dropped right into the face of marshaling German armor and mounted infantry units and were unable to long secure their objectives once the Germans counter attacked.  The follow on ground units also faced heavy and determined resistance and were unable to move forward to relieve the beleaguered airborne units.  The airborne units then had to undertake a fighting withdrawal back to allied lines and suffered heavy losses. 

The "Bridge To Far" and the city of Nijmeran are destroyed.

This terrible failure, brought about by the combination of overconfidence and hubris forced the allies to delay their plans for the push into Germany until the spring.  Except the Germans were not going to wait on the allies and used the delay to organize and launch what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge" that nearly reversed the allied gains and if it had succeeded could have pushed the allies back into France.

The Dutch citizen bury the dead Allied troops..

Such may be metaphor for the Obama administration's operations to flood the entire country with under aged and disease ridden children from Central America.  The administration has achieved what it sees as victory after victory and faced little more than token verbal resistance from the public and empty blustering from an all but spineless and impotent Congress. 

• Black Panther voter intimidation.  Bluster and words from Congress followed by no action whatsoever.  Political repercussions, zero and the media pushes it down the memory whole.
• Fast and Furious gun running operations to dangerous criminal cartels in Mexico.  Two American Border Patrol Agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens killed with those very weapons.  Bluster and words from Congress followed by no action whatsoever.  Political repercussions, zero and the media pushes it down the memory whole.
• Internet spying into the Constitutionally protected research files of the Associated Press and other news media outlets.  Bluster and words from Congress followed by no action whatsoever.  Political repercussions, zero and the media pushes it down the memory whole.
• NSA spying on virtually everything. Ditto, ditto and ditto.
• IRS political targeting of opposition groups. Ditto, ditto and ditto.

With each new event the administration cements the pattern of reaction to public and Congressional opposition as "Dude, that's so two years ago, so what difference does it really make."




Citizens standing up to the BLM.

But then we had a sea change of sorts that has forced the media to report, even if somewhat dishonestly, public reaction to government lawlessness.  First we had the Bundy Ranch events where hundreds of people turned out to oppose the BLM's use of post-facto law to try and drive Clive Bundy of land that he and his family had been using for generations.  The specter of an armed confrontation between BLM thugs and citizens standing in defense of Mr. Bundy's rights caused the government to retreat for the moment and resort to their fall back tactic of using the compliant news media as its spear point in attacking Bundy personally as a deranged individual and a racist.

It must be admitted that this is an effective tactic, especially when the weight of media and government can be focused on a single individual and/or event in a remote and isolated location.

Protestors block ICE's attempt
 to buss and dump illegals.

But now we have the debacle of the administration essentially opening our southern border to any and all comers.  There is now growing evidence that this flood of Central American children has been planned and instrumented by the administration.  The usual leftist meme of "We must protect the children." isn't working as hundreds of citizen are turning out in various locations where ICE and Home Land Security are attempting to buss in and dump hundreds of these illegals. 

This has potentially created a big problem for the administration and their media lackeys.  They don't have a single event, location or person upon which they can focus their pressure on.  Additionally it becomes harder and harder for the media to ignore hundreds of people gathering in numerous very visible and public locations especially when these protests are occurring in very "Blue" states like New York and California.  Yes the administration and the media will try to portray this reaction as a manifestation of racism and so-called "white privilege" but without any single individual or event to target this becomes a much more tenuous position. 

Portraying as racist honest soccer moms and hard working taxpayers, who are only trying to protect their own children from disease and their communities from further degradation, many of whom who probably voted for Obama once if not twice, is a dangerous tactic.  If any of these protests turn
violent especially in a Blue state, the public's alienation from and resentment of government will only grow, especially as the 2014 election approaches.  (It's interesting to note that they are not attempting to dump any of these bus loads in states with close Senatorial races.) 

Contagious disease and crowded conditions.
A recipe for death and disaster.

Making it worse for themselves Homeland security is both blocking duly elected public officials including Congressmen from viewing the facilities and conditions where these illegals are being held and they are threatening the medical personal treating them with arrest if they dare to  reveal or talk about the diseases that are running rampant and no doubt getting worse under such crowded conditions.  Measles, scabies and TB have already been documented.
 
The administration faces the further problem that if they are forced to back down in the face of mass public gatherings in protest of their actions, then the tactic will become more prevalent, frequently used and cemented in the minds of the opposition as an effective tool in fighting government tyranny.

The question then become one of when and how, and just how willing, will the fascists in DC be to turning loose their jack booted and militarized SS police thugs on an already defiant and angry public.  Just how are they going to portray the suburban house wife and her office working husband as "domestic terrorists"?

Establishing The Next Generation of Overlords

It was reported today that Chelsea Clinton "earned" and annual salary of $600,000.00 as a "journalist" at NBC.  Sorry but this inexperienced little spoiled brat didn't "earn" anything.  What she was GIVEN was a massive bribe to guarantee NBC News access to the Hildabeast during her upcoming run for the Presidency.  Corruption and cronyism writ large for all to see.  Anyone who would suggest otherwise is an idiot, a liar or an employee of the Clinton's.

Half of working Americans (those that actually work) struggle to get by on less than $37,000.00 a year.  They watch as their savings, if thy have any left, are destroyed by inflation and outright theft by the very banks that finance the Clinton's campaigns.

Meanwhile these same Democrats and media outlets preach to us about the great evils of "income inequality" and Hillary bemoans how poor she and Bill were at the end of his term.  Sadly yes, all to many Americans are just stupid enough to eat this crap sandwich and actually think it's caviar on toast points.

Yeah Hillary that place in Chappaqua is a real hovel.  Or maybe that's why all that furniture disappeared from the White House when you left.  I understand you poor church mice actually had to borrow money to buy it.  Oh the horror!  How terribly pedestrian, how plebian, to actually have to take out a mortgage like the rest of 99.99% of American home owners. What a tradagy, poor Bill was only making, what $150,000.00 a night for running his mouth for an hour or so.  Hey it's not like he didn't get the added benefit of adding any names to his bimbo list.  Just so long as he didn't bring them back to Chappaqua right?

Just a little Shotgun shack in Chappaqua NY

                                        

 

But let's look at the other benefit for your corrupt immoral dynasty.  This pretty much sets up Chelsea to "give away" a good chunk of that $600,000.00 and establish herself as a "charitable" institution and create some alleged political bonafides to be part of the next generation of sleazy corrupt political overlords.  Hey money can't buy that kind of press.  Oh wait, yes it can and it just did.

                          Look into the vapid eyes and vacant soul of your future America.

Be afraid, very afraid!

Another Telling Tale.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics makes up new and ever more fantastic lies each and every week, all the lies in the world can't cover up realities that are right in front of us.  While the administration's ever fascist EPA makes the production of cheap coal fired electricity more and more difficult and burdensome with one hand, they feed us lies about how more and more "alternative energy systems" are coming on line with the other. 

One of their favorites is off shore wind farms.  I guess placing them off shore is a good way to hide the mounds of birds slaughtered by the huge rotating blades.  But there is another problem you see.  Once these systems are erected they have to be connected to shore with buried undersea cable systems.

Well then Mr. President if this business is booming then why has Tyco Submarine Systems (one of the largest cable laying operators in the world) not just tied up to the piers in Baltimore harbor, but is in the process of mothballing their fleet for lack of work and hoping that the 2015 and 2016 seasons will have more work for these very large and very expensive to maintain and operate vessels?

Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!

And Here We Go Again . . . . .

My recent series of posts and comments as to Ukrainian desires to be free of Russian hegemony has led to various accusations of being; 1 "brainwashed". 2 "full of shit" and 3 (even more hilariously) an Obama supporter.

I guess we're not supposed to notice that these accusations are absent any conjunctive refutation or counter argument. The best we get are claims of being a Ukrainian living in the US and or that some relative had fought in WW I and WW II, as if that in and of itself lends some authority or expertise.  If so where is there some demonstration of this knowledge or authority?

The self-proclaimed "people's governor" of Donetsk, Pavlo Gubarev

I guess that outfit is just an expression of his commitment to modern democracy.  Or maybe it's his graduation robe from Putin's Imperial Clown College.

And Now They Just Make Stuff Up.

I encountered a individual last night, who claimed to be a Ukrainian American, (I grow suspicious when such claims are made right up front), who put forth the spurious notion that there was "nothing special" about the way Ukrainians were starved in the early 1930's.  After making this dubious claim (s)he quickly slipped onto what is the universal dismissal accusation, namely words to the effect that "there are fascist in Ukraine".  My response is below.

"Oh bull crap. If the death rate across the entire Soviet Union had matched the death rate in the Ukraine there wouldn't have been any Soviet Union left. Stalin and his pals committed genocide against the Ukrainians for having dared to try and break away and form their own nation during the Russian civil war. For this they came under attack by both the Reds and the Whites. During this period the concept of fascism was but a dream in Mussolini's mind. I'm not saying there weren't bad conditions all over created by forced collectivization. However it was only in the Ukraine where the 'Law of Spikelets' were put In place that made it a DEATH PENELTY OFFENCE to glean food from fields that had already been harvested. The people could also be imprisoned for 10 years or even executed for possessing food that had not been distributed by the government. These were the 'Laws of the Wheat Ears'. So go stuff you ass covering Kremlin propaganda where the sun don't shine. Were there and are there fascists in Ukraine? Yes and they were driven in to the arms of fascism by the depredations of the Holodomor. Unsophisticated and desperate people all to often fall into the trap of thinking 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' "

The Russians consider Ukraine to be an integral part of Russia and that decision is theirs and theirs alone to make.  Any Ukrainians who think differently are "enemies of the state".  No contrary argument or opinions will be tolerated. 

Just ask yourself one question; it Ukrainians didn't identify themselves as a separate nation and peoples, they why did the declare their independence from Russia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union?  Don't hold your breath waiting for an answer, at least not an honest one.

The Uglyness Continues to Grow Part 3

What we have going on in Ukraine is one criminal organization fighting another criminal organization for control. To think that Putin and his gang of thugs are any less a bunch of fascists than the Ukrainian thugs is a fallacy as well.  The Russians might be a little more sophisticated in the manifestations of their fascist behavior than the Ukrainians but it's a difference of little distinction.

Nobody dares ask the question; Just what was it that drives the Ukrainian hatered of the Russians?  Instead of asking us to understand how the Russians think, maybe we should try to understand what it does to a people to see nearly 5 million of their family members deliberately starved to death.  Maybe we should conceive that this leaves deep scars and breeds the trap of believing the "enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Victims of the Holodomor,

the Ukrainian Holocaust

The Ukrainians, like many Eastern European populations, Poles, Romanians, Slovaks, have to one degree or another frequently been used as political footballs in the geo-political games of oppression and conflict between there larger more powerful neighbors.  Not only does this not create a great deal of political sophistication but more often paranoia, and an attitude of revenge and hate.  This becomes an open door to what ever form of tyrant is willing to seize it and manipulate those feelings (whether they be justified or not) to their own advantage.

There you have the present day Ukrainians with there long simmering resentments against the Russians, the Serbs in the 1990's caught between various Muslim factions and the Western powers of NATO, the Slovaks of the late '30's turning to the Germans caught between the Poles and the Hungarians both slicing off pieces of territory (as well as ages old oppression by the Hungarians.)  The Romanians caught between a collapsing Ottoman Empire and an expansionist Russian one.  The Poles trapped in a three way tug of war between Russia, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarians.

It's a story oft repeated.  The parameters of the love/hate relationships, revenge and violence don't really change, just the name tags the participants are wearing and the date on the calendar.

The unwritten rule for Europe since the end of WW II has been that the era of changing national borders via military force is over.  That precedent has held until Putin and his neo-Tsarist ambitions came along.

Yes some 12 million Russians died in the fight against the Nazis and their various allies.  But we also need to understand that that was in part a tragedy of their own making.  Maybe if Stalin and Molotov hadn't been so damned anxious to make deals with the Germans so as to seize eastern Poland, the independent Baltic states and large swaths of Finland and Romania, it might have been a different story.

The story we often hear is that Putin and his gang think that Russia was treated "unfairly" in the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Really? Really?  What a bad distasteful joke piled on top of an outright and naked lie.

Truth is the Russian communists were scared shitless that the Western powers were going to hold them and communism itself accountable for their 70 some years of tyranny and criminality.  But it never happened, Bush 41 treated them with kid gloves. (Gorbachev's own transcripts from them Malta summit show this.)

After WW II we tried and executed the Nazis for their crimes against humanity.  But we conveniently ignore that that horrible war started with a deal between the communists and the Nazis.

Maybe someone can tell us how many communists went to the gallows for the decades of throwing their own people into the Gulag.  Just where were the individuals and communism held accountable for the slaughter of the Polish Officer Corp in the forests of Western Belorussia or the 60,000 Polish civilians who were marched into the labor camps in 1940 never to return?  So tell us who was held accountable for the slaughter in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.  How many Eastern Europeans disappeared into unmarked graves during the nearly 50 years of Russian military occupation?  Where is the justice for them?

Disposing of the dead in the

frozen lakes of Siberia

If the Russians so consider the communist period such a "black mark" on their history why do so many former KGB and party apparatchiks hold positions of power today?  Why do journalists and artists who dare question Putin and his thugs end up in jail, dead or simply disappear?  Why do statues of Lenin and Stalin still dot the landscape? Why does a military honor guard still stand at the entrance to Lenin's tomb?  Why is his tomb even still there? 

The communist period was just a different form of Russian imperialism with Tsars and Dukes replaced with Commissars and political officers.  Putin is now just trying to do the same thing with his own batch of oligarchs armed with 21st century propaganda and technology.

The Russians didn't get treated "unfairly," they got handed a "get out of jail free card".