Commentary Archives - Page 511 of 521

The Bloody Boomerang of Stalinism

February 23, 2014/in Commentary, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Simona Pipko

Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, March 1919

The recent Olympic Games in Russia have opened the country to the world — As if a Pandora Box — the secrets held by the Russian regime for a long time have been discovered, revealing the reality of life in Russia. Reporting on Olympics in Sochi our media, for the first time, was using negative terms and images to depict: the unprecedented corruption, terrorism, yellow water, a disaster, and others. To grasp the reality of life in Russia, we ought to return to the discussion we had in the previous article published on January 27, 2014.

The ideological fireball unleashed by Marxism had a dramatic impact on life in Europe. Aggressive mob leaders fed on the public disorder and violence and their leadership produced the first socialist revolution in France. This was the period of the “Paris Commune.” The revolution produced enormous casualties and then failed very quickly. These events were followed by socialist revolt in Hungary and German Bavaria. Both of those revolts failed, as well. Western civilization rejected violent and destructive ideology–capitalism continued its development in those countries. I agree with Nietzsche that the envy of the poor is the main impulse to revolution. Furthermore, history shows that the leadership of any political movement plays a crucial role in shaping the outcome of revolt–Lenin is the prime example of that concept and victory of the first Socialist revolt in Russia…

There had been one earlier revolution in Russia in February 1917 (the February Revolution) that enjoyed widespread popular support. That revolution had a platform of fundamental social and constitutional reform that would move Russia toward western-style democracy. The February Revolution took place in St. Petersburg (Petrograd at the time) and led to the abdication of Russian Tsar Nicholas II on his own and his son’s behalf and the establishment of a Provisional Government in Russia.

Group picture of the delegates at the VIII Congress of the RKP. Click on the photo for a larger view.

The first successful socialist revolution took place in Russia in October 1917 (November 7 by the new calendar). Its official name in Russia was the Great October Socialist Revolution. The Bolshevik Party and its leader Vladimir Lenin seized power under the banner of Marxism—“proletariat of the world, unite!” Yet some historians today consider the Great October Socialist Revolution a meticulous and very well organized coup d’etat against a Provisional Government of Russia by the parliamentary manipulations and tricks. By the way, Ayn Rand was agreed with the concept of a coup d’etat. Lenin’s leadership in the revolt is not questionable; however we are currently talking about Soviet Socialism—that entire model of social organization has been created by Stalin and his global design later.

To grasp the perspectives Stalin envisioned for Russia and the world, we have to know the character, personality of the man and the circumstances of his life. Unlike Lenin, Stalin was not a highly educated individual, yet he was smart-street, which was more significant at the time. He was born in 1889 in the Russia’s Christian province Georgia, on the Caucasus, surrounded by the Muslim world. Proximity of the Muslim culture had a strong effect on Stalin’s personality for the rest of his life, his attitude to women testified to that. You can see it throughout his entire reign of power—no women in the government .His personal life and mysterious death of his second wife, a young and active Allelueva, telling us a tragic story…

His real name was Joseph Jugashvili, his nickname he took from Russian word steel–Stalin. If I tell you that Stalin was a bank-robber in his revolutionary career you wouldn’t believe me. Therefore let me give you an opinion of others about Stalin: “He became one of the Bolsheviks chief operatives in the Caucasus, organizing paramilitaries, inciting strikes, spreading propaganda and raising money through bank robberies, ransom, kidnappings, and extortions.” (Wikipedia). I would add: he was imprisoned five times, three of them for bank robberies—violence, lawlessness, and a Muslim Neighborhood had been his real parents…

Every word, written about Stalin’s characteristic is only a part of the real true character of the man. Today you would call such a man a thug, mobster, or con. He was a brutal, manipulative, and maniacal, deceitful intriguer; he acquired power by moving up on the corps of others. He was an extraordinary liar and hypocrite. Two other features of his character stood out: The first one is that Stalin hated the Russian Orthodox Church and the Christian religion. The second one was his vindictiveness that had no barriers.

Stalin grew up in a shoemaker’s family, his father systematically beat him. His Mother, a devoted Christian, wanted him to be a priest, so she sent him to a church school in Georgia, he learned Russian there. After church school, he was admitted to an Orthodox Seminary, which had widened his horizon: The Orthodox Church had been highly respectable authority in the Russian Empire—the Emperor Nicholas was the “Messenger of God.” The education there was the best in Europe. When Stalin protested against the imperialist and religious order, he was expelled from the Seminary, yet the knowledge obtained there had tremendously help him to manipulate the West later on…

Bolshevik Party flag.

Shortly after being expelled, he joined a revolutionary movement, became a convert to Marxism. In 1903 his Marxist group had become the Bolshevik Party, and Stalin got an assignment to begin organizing Bolshevik Party in the Caucasus Mountains area that was well known to him. It should be noted that Caucasus Mountains, a location with predominant Muslim culture and many different ethnic groups. Stalin was surrounded by the Muslim world in his entire childhood. He loved and knew the Muslim culture pretty well; his proclivity to lie perhaps came from Koran, which is allowing to lie if it benefits Islam. This rule of Koran is called Tajak (the spelling can be wrong). Stalin learned that Islam was divided on Sunnis and Shiites; he found out how to use both.

While organizing Marxists of the Caucasus, Stalin had the opportunity to go over the border. As a matter of fact, Azerbaijan was divided, one part in Russia and the other in Iran. The language was the same and Stalin could propagate Marxism in both countries. He had maintained his interest in Iran since then… In 1911, by the money obtain through bank robberies, he helped to establish Pravda, later the official daily of the Communist Party of the USSR. Living in St .Petersburg, Stalin played an important secret role in guiding the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma (Russian parliament) and in directing the Bolshevik Party press against the Provisional Government…

Stalin served the Bolshevik and then Communist Party pretty well. The sense of ambition and desire for prestige has always been a driving impulse for Stalin. His first official post in the Soviet government was the People’s Commissar on Nationalities. In 1922 he became the General Secretary of the Communist Party, the post he held to the day of his death in March of 1953. He stigmatized the rich, cultivating the hate and revenge to create an envy and resentment. Under the condition of secrecy, overwhelming fear, and intimidation Stalin had created a centralized system and his ideology that brought an enormous suffering to the people–he killed more people than all Russian Tsars combined.

Unlike Lenin, Stalin had no educational background, but persistently implemented his own vision of the country’s future in building a, so-called, Communist society. Since his childhood, violence formed his personality: and. throughout his entire life, force, violence, and ferocity had prevailed in his behavior. He began building his Communist, or Soviet Socialism, according to the personal features of his character. Only through the prism of his personality you can grasp the entire essence of the Stalinist Soviet Socialism.

The first thing he did was dispose of any and all opposition. He immediately started building his cult of personality. According to Encyclopedia Britannica Online “[a] cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.” Stalin promised “to lead the country out of poverty into a bright communist future.” Instead he dedicated his efforts solely to concentrating ever greater power in his own hands. The Stalinist cult of personality portrayed him as larger than life itself and endowed him with unrivaled wisdom. . As a result, Stalin became the best writer in the country, the best poet, the best diplomat, the best scientist, and the best military commander, friend and Father of the people.

Stalin used Lenin’s words to boost his cult of personality and to create a political machine within the Communist Party as a collective leader of the country. Lenin’s words were also used to identify the tasks and agenda of the Soviet government — The goal of Socialism is Communism, and Unions are the school of Communism. In just this way had the Soviet state been created and functioned for seventy years. The Soviet government and all the unions worked together to control and operate the country—Big Government of unprecedented size wielding unassailable power over the population. The industries were field with people loyal to Stalin and he piled them with all special privileges.

Stalin’s personal agenda included, in first order, disposal of his opponents. He started eliminating them by demonizing and smearing their reputations. As a community leader of the Caucasus Mountains knowing the history of sectarian power struggle and the leadership of all ethnic groups, Stalin started a systematic liquidation of the leaders there. Just ask the people of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Chechnya, and others how many their leaders had been shot and how many thousands of people been perished during deportation to Siberia and central Asia … Then, Stalin had begun smearing and building accusations against the country leaders.

The first victim was Leon Trotsky, a hard-line Bolshevik but a very smart man and a respected leader. He had been exiled and later assassinated by Stalin’s order in Mexico. The next target was Sergey Kirov, a beloved leader from Leningrad (St, Petersburg) who was murdered by Stalin’s henchmen. The next were the series of purges and Show Trials that Stalin used to remove all the old Bolsheviks from the Communist Party in the 1930s. He chose to replace them with an army of loyal Stalinist yes-men. By the time he completed this first phase, he had attained his goal of absolute power built on a foundation of overwhelming fear. It is helpful to grasp Stalin’s chief motivation and the agenda by knowing the fate and the life of the people there.

Unlike the politically agile Lenin, Stalin was a pedantic and loyal Marxist who believed in world revolution. His ultimate goal was one of titanic agenda: the spread of Socialism throughout the entire world and create a global government under the auspices of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s reign of power started with a global double-game in which Stalin never played by the rules and never lost sight of his global strategy. Stalin deceived and misled the entire world, talking about socialism within one country while spreading his Socialist model throughout the world. In fact, Stalin unleashed an undeclared war against capitalist western countries through insurrection against western civilization. And again, you can see the fraudulent intentions of the Communist ideology—Stalin has quadrupled it by creating a system of big lies under an Iron Fist to perpetrate a fraud further.

Stalin was dishonest with regard to ideology, because although he preached Marxism-Leninism, he practiced his own religion of Stalinism. Only through the prism of Stalin’s geo-political objectives can we comprehend the world’s predicament in the 21^st century. Stalin’s war was real and had multiple fronts and many targets. It was both a domestic war and a war abroad. Only now, after being acquainted with Stalin’s character and personality we can begin understanding of the extent of his war against Western civilization. You can ask how it was possible that one man established a model of social organization, so dangerous for the entire world, yet which survived for two centuries. There is an explanation.

Stalin’s first concern was the constant aggrandizement and preservation of his absolute power, his cult of personality, and the leadership role of the Communist Party which was his personal fiefdom. A mighty security apparatus was built on the foundation of the first Soviet security agency named the Cheka. During Stalin’s reign the name of the agency has been changed several times to cover up the crime committed. It finally appeared under the title—the KGB, three letters familiar to the people worldwide—the doer of Stalinism. A bloody boomerang of Stalinism, its dreadful ideology has the same form and shape, but different geography: yesterday it was Georgia on the Caucuses and the Middle East, today it is Venezuela and Ukraine. Who is next? To grasp the concept of the Stalin’s security apparatus and his war against humanity, please read What is happening to America? The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction, by Simona Pipko, Xlibris, 2012.

To be continued: www.simonapipko1.com

The World’s Volcanic Past and Future

February 21, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Politics/by Alan Caruba

While Americans coped with massive snowfalls in the South, Midwest and Northeast, a dramatic volcanic eruption occurred on February 13th in Indonesia when Mount Kelud in the province of East Java erupted so loudly it could be heard 120 miles away.

It is one of 130 volcanos in the world’s fourth most populous nation, located on the “ring of fire” volcanic belt around the shores of the Pacific Ocean. About 200,000 people were affected and more than 76,000 had to be evacuated according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency. The effect was dramatic, shutting down an airport in Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya, a major industrial center, along with those in five other cities as well as a major oil refinery that provides more than a third of Indonesia’s total output of refined products.

Earlier this month, the eruption of Mount Sinabung in the north of the island of Sumatra was credited with the death of eleven people. It had been spewing lava and ash for months and forced thousands to flee the area.

There are about 1,500 active volcanoes worldwide with the majority on the Pacific “ring of fire.” Some fifty of these erupt every year, An estimated 500 million people worldwide live near active volcanoes.

While environmentalists are forever blathering about carbon dioxide (C02) emissions from cars, plants that produce electricity, and all forms of manufacturing, volcanoes produce from 145 million to 255 million short tons of CO2 every year.

Large, explosive eruptions, in addition to CO2, put large amounts of water vapor, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, and ash, pulverized rock and pumice, into the stratosphere to heights of 10 to 20 miles above the Earth’s surface. Sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid condense rapidly in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols that reflect the Sun’s radiation, cooling the Earth’s lower atmosphere or troposphere while also absorbing heat radiated from the Earth. In the past century, several eruptions during the past century cooled the Earth by up to half a degree Fahrenheit for periods of one to three years.

I cite this to drive home the fundamental scientific fact that, as opposed to all the nonsense about human control or effect on the Earth’s temperatures, volcanoes by comparison render the human component infinitesimal.

Moreover, CO2 plays virtually no role in the Earth’s overall temperature. Shutting down coal-fired electrical plants and preventing the construction of new ones has no basis in science. The outcry against CO2 ignores the fact that all life on Earth depends on it to provide the “food” that all vegetation requires. More Co2, not less, is good for the Earth.

What Americans need to worry about is the eruption of a super volcano with a large caldera such as the Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park and the Valles Caldera in New Mexico. Both have been dormant for thousands of years.

The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years compared to its human component that only began to create what we call modern civilization for about five thousand years. Its volcanos, potential earthquakes, floods, blizzards, and other natural hazards pose some serious threats. Massive eruptions such as those about 250 million years ago are believed to have been the cause of the “Great Dying” that is estimated to have killed 90% of the species existing at the time.

When I read and hear about people speaking about how humans are causing major species declines or industry threatening the climate, I am reminded of how Nature, the action or inaction of the Sun, volcanoes and other natural events dwarf anything that is attributed to human activity.

Thanks to the environmentalists, we are crippling and denying the ability of this nation to construct the pipelines, expand our industrial base, and provide the housing needed for an expanding population.

Look around you. Pretend you’re a dinosaur Then remember they dominated the Earth for thousands of years until Nature eliminated them.

Is America ready for Common Law Divorce?

February 21, 2014/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Policy/by Michael Bochenski

In the course of human events we as a People need to divorce ourselves from statutes and regulations and bring justice to what has become a legal system. I have been studying Common Law and have learned that this union of States never had a legal system but a Justice system in place when it was founded. A legal system taxes you for making errors in what some legislator says is bad for society. In country known as the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, I ask you are free or brave enough to make a stand?

What is Common Law? It is the Law of the Land.

Our judicial system has you tricked in traffic court, or some planning and zoning employee telling you that your shed is too tall or has too many square feet and they file a complaint against you in Admiralty court. Did you know, you do not need to consent to Admiralty court or that you were even in Admiralty court? Did you know that by pleading you have agreed to be ruled statutes and regulations in Admiralty court? That is not the Law of the Land but you have waived your rights by not challenging the jurisdiction of the court. Judges will object to your demand to know the jurisdiction and threaten you. This is just to keep you thinking they have power over you but they do not. You may even be lead out of court in handcuffs for challenging the jurisdiction. The people with cases behind you will not attempt to do the same by seeing this; it is just a power play.

A study of Common Law, and just 2 friends in the court as observers from the gallery, can bring back the justice system to ever case and every challenge of jurisdiction for every statute and regulation violation. Statutes and regulations are not Law. You, a People in the land of the free and the home of the brave, will accomplish this by exposing the legal system hoax and its fraud upon the People. Those brave enough to help your common law friend in his case by signing an affidavit of an unconstitutional act against them by a judge a prosecutor or even a defense attorney appointed by a judge is the cure.

All IRS code, yes all 74,000 (plus) pages of it are not allowed in your Common Law Court of record, if it is your wish. You cannot defend against IRS code, because you have entered into Admiralty court. You need to file your complaint in your Common Law, court of record case and your case is a higher court then the IRS’ s court.

Imagine that no attorney has ever told you such a thing and many ask why?

It is simple that attorney can never pay for his “Law Degree” loan because he cannot represent you in a Common Law court of record. You have to stand on your own two feet and represent yourself. It is true you have a fool for an attorney if you represent yourself in Admiralty court but you are not attorney you are a People and you do not practice Law you perfect it in your court of record.

Common Law is common sense and has no written code but it allows a jury of your peers to judge it and nullify your bad complaints and remedy you good complaints. NO JUDGE RULES A CASE IN COMMON LAW. So many people today complain that judges do not give justice. That is not the job of a judge, they are in Admiralty court seeking monetary judgment for a party or denying monetary judgment to a party. Equity is all an Admiralty court does. Justice is from your action in court and your remedy sought to rectify you for your loss by a jury of your peers. Yes it is just that simple.

Corpus Delicti means with no injured party, you have no crime. When a government employee makes a complaint against you like a ticket for parking to far from the curb you must ask, who was harmed? You own the road, the curb, the car and the officer is paid out of your pocket, which makes him your subject and employee. In Common Law you cannot sue yourself but these Admiralty courts have you doing just that. It is a revenue generator that harms you and just by pleading you have an agreed to the Court’s authority. Do not plea; ask the court to see the complaint from a People, not one of your employees. Demand to see the International Contract that allows them to force you to make a plea in Admiralty court.

When a judge makes a plea for you learn to object. When judge denies your challenge to jurisdiction and has entered a plea for you as “not guilty” say the magic words “ let the record show the judge has ruled me not guilty” in Admiralty court. A judge cannot practice law, from the bench, by entering a plea for you. He can rule you not guilty. Once spoken by a judge and my objection is disregarded by the judge and the prosecutor I may even add, “further proceedings will show the prosecutor is impersonating an officer of the court” and demand his arrest. Your friend in the court as observers can verify all things that may not be recorded by the court recorder. All they need to do is file an affidavit.

The courts will resist these measures and We the People of our states need to take these actions. It is not civil disobedience it is civil obedience that our founding fathers had in mine when they wrote the US Constitution and your State had in mind when in adopted its Constitution as a republic in this union of 50 republics. Since we have been fooled for so long it is time to make these truths self evident to the people that think they are Law makers. They are only statute and regulation makers. Know the difference and make a stand for Liberty. I see no need to correct the Law I only see the need to remove the corrupt people, by ignorance or intent, to deny the People what is the Law.

These things were taught to every kid that passed the 8^th grade before 1900 and we do not even hear about Common Law unless someone is using it for a marriage agreement that was never made before a justice of the peace or clergy. We need the American People to know they can demand a Common Law Divorce from government Statutes, Regulations and Code. It does take about 100 hours of study and that is about the average amount of time people watch television in a month.

Turn off your TV, study Common Law. Never pay income tax again? This sounds like an affordable idea to most people.

LTC Robert K. Brown, USAR (Ret.) the father of “participatory journalism”

February 21, 2014/in Commentary, Must Read/by Dr. Rich Swier

Lieutenant Colonel Robert K. Brown, USAR (Ret.) has published his autobiography titled, “I Am Soldier of Fortune: Dancing with Devils“. I received a copy for review. Robert K. Brown’s (or RKB as he is known to his friends) book is more than just an autobiography, it is a monumental lesson in American and world history.

RKB’s book reads like a Tom Clancy novel, may Tom rest in peace.

A lover of good whiskey, danger and going where the action is, usually on his own dime, makes him a modern day Ernest Hemingway. Unlike Hemingway who wrote fiction based upon his adventures, RKB writes non-fiction reporting on his personal experiences.

The best time in RKB’s life was when he was Captain Brown, Special Forces Team Leader of A-334, Tong Le Chon, South Vietnam, just five kilometers from the Cambodian border from 1969 to 1970. RKB credits Special Forces LTC Michael Lanter for assigning him to the position, which he describes as the “most challenging and memorable” of his entire life.

So why is RKB the father of “participatory journalism”?

As Founding Father and President John Adams wrote, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.” RKB is more than a student of politics and war he is a practitioner of politics and war. As Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz wrote in Vom Kriege (On War), “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” RKB has lived what Adams and Clausewitz captured in their statements. RKB is by definition the father of “participatory journalism”, which means get to the war, if necessary participate in the war and then report on the war. He is also a “man among men”, a phrase which has a special meaning to RKB. More about that later.

RKB writes, “I personally led groups of seasoned SpecOps [Special Operations soldiers] or sent them independently into Afghanistan, the Sudan, El Salvador, Uganda, Rhodesia, Angola, the Congo, Lebanon, Mozambique, Burma, Laos, Chad, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Israel, Croatia, Bosnia and a good few others that I haven’t written about.”

RKB and his team of combat tested and seasoned “participatory journalists” have provided intelligence on former Soviet Union weapons and ammunition to the CIA. He has been quoted by the Associated Press and investigated by the FBI. RKB was targeted by Generalísimo Rafael Trujillo (El Jefe), the former Dominican Republic dictator, for assassination. One of his columns directly resulted in the assassination of Regino Camacho, a weapons manufacturer under Fidel Castro by Trujillo. At the time RKB had left Cuba so the hit team missed him by mere days.

RKB started as a Castro supporter and after the Cuban revolution turned into a fervent anti-communist. He founded Soldier of Fortune (SOF) magazine and remains its publisher and guiding force. SOF is credited with exposing the use of “Yellow Rain” (chemical weapons) by the Soviets and their communist allies in Vietnam and Laos during the 1980s. SOF’s column about the conflict in Rhodesia energized the global mercenary community to rush to volunteer to serve in the Replica of Rhodesian Army, with 74% of recruits saying they learned about the fight via SOF. RKB was the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone’s movies “The Expendables”.

Many are reading about Islamic mercenaries going to Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq to fight. What you do not read about are American mercenaries going to fight around the world against those who would do us harm.

“I Am Soldier of Fortune” is a must read, if you are man or woman enough.

The Tet ’68 Battle for Hue: The Road to Hell and Beyond

February 20, 2014/in Commentary, Must Read, National Security/by Dr. Rich Swier

2LT Rich Swier, Tet 1968 – Battle for Hue, South Vietnam

The year 2018 is the forty-ninth anniversary of the 1968 Tet Offensive. As a young “butter bar” forward observer attached to A Company, 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne Division it was the beginning of my travels on the road to hell and beyond. This road trip began on January 31, 1968 and ended four weeks later at the Western wall of the ancient City of Hue, in the former South Vietnam.

On January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched the Tet Offensive. Tet, the traditional Vietnamese New Year Celebration, was to be a peaceful truce. Not for the NVA who caught us with our pants down and holding our collective you know what in our hands.

This story is dedicated to the men of the 2nd Battalion, 501st Airborne Infantry (2/501) who fought in the critical Battle for Hue. According to the US Army Center of Military History, “The fight for Hue turned into a slow, grinding campaign of attrition that lasted nearly a month before the enemy was finally defeated.”

I dedicate it to men like SSG Joe Ronnie Hooper and SSG Clifford C. Sims, Delta Company, 2/501, both of who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, SSG Sims posthumously. SSG (later Captain) Hooper was second only to Audie Murphy in the number of awards and decorations with 37 compared to Murphy’s 38.

I dedicate it to the 2/501 airborne infantry Commanders: LTC Richard Tallman, Battalion Commander; Captains Reiss, Alpha Company, Nickels, Bravo Company, Denny Gillem, Charlie Company; 1^st Lieutenant Cleo Hogan, Delta Company (the Delta Raiders) and 1^st Lieutenant Buch, Recon Platoon leader. All were and still are true leaders of men.

Men like Captain Ken Crabtree, Commander, B Battery, 1^st Battalion, 321^st Field Artillery, who was my boss, mentor and personal friend. Lieutenant Colonel Crabtree would be killed on April 17, 1984 in a SWAPO guerilla bombing near the Angolan border, SW Africa. But that is another story for another time.

Elements of 101st Airborne Division, the 1st Cavalry Division and 5th Marine Regiment were the major units committed in the Battle for Hue.

Red Legs: 1LT Rich Swier (L) and 1LT Mike Watson (R), during the Tet 1968 Offensive.

The 2/501 ABN INF was attached to the 1^st Cavalry Division commanded by Major General Jack Tolson. Hue was considered vital to the NVA because of its “history of Buddhist activism and Communist sympathy.” The NVA felt that Hue was second only to the capitol city of Saigon as a political foothold in South Vietnam. The 90^th NVA Regiment was committed to its capture and defense.

The Battle for Hue lasted from January 31^st to February 26^th. During that time the men of 2/501 ABN INF suffered casualties and severe deprivations. For six days there was no resupply of food or ammo. The weather was rainy and the temperature dropped as low 48 degrees. Due to the weather air strikes were limited, thereby leveling the field of battle between my battalion and the 90^th NVA Regiment.

Many believe Vietnam is a tropical paradise, yeah right. I have never been colder in my life. The constant flow of adrenaline, lack of food, sleep and daily, at times hand-to-hand, combat took its toll on all the men of 2/501st.

Delta Company Commander LT Cleo Hogan recalls, “During the night of 24 February, more than 500 rounds of 105MM, 155MM and 8-inch artillery were fired into the vicinity of YD728206 [near Hue]. A few rounds were also fired by the Battleship USS New Jersey [a.k.a. the Black Dragon]. At 1100 hours on the 25^th, D Company joined by A company and C Company with almost 300 men on line, advancing on Hue… At 1400 hours, a small Vietnamese boy (estimated age 10 years-old) fired a few rounds at members of D Company. The boy was captured and Chicom C54 weapon was captured.”

In the rubble and along the road leading to Hue were found signs stating, “Shoot the American and South Vietnamese aggressors, for a better Vietnam, Long Live Ho Chi Minh.”

LT Hogan wrote in his memoirs, “During the night of 25 February, D Company received sporadic sniper fire from across the river but for the most part things were quiet. D Company occupied several bombed out buildings, and during the search of the area found large quantities of Vietnamese booze, individual weapons, enemy radios and other supplies.”

When Hue was liberated we found over 7,600 civilians in shallow graves. Men, women and children with their hands tied with barbed wire behind their backs with gun shots in the back of the head by their NVA occupiers. Yet another Communist atrocity in South Vietnam that the American press refused to report on was this massacre.

I vividly recall that on the morning of February 26^th a small boat pulled up to the A Company CP, located in a three story building along the Perfume River. The Perfume River (Sông Hương) is a river that crosses the city of Hue. In the autumn, flowers from orchards upriver from Hue fall into the water, giving the river a perfume-like aroma.

In the boat were a Vietnamese man and his very pregnant wife who was in labor. Our company medic was called into action and with the help of some hot water delivered a beautiful baby boy. I remember thinking that God is sending a message that life goes on even among all the carnage we had witnessed since January 31^st.

The 2/501 left Hue in unit formation counting cadence all the airborne way. We lined up by company and marched out of the city to our next mission. Along the way young children would pull on our 101^st Screaming Eagle shoulder patches, saying “Chicken die, chicken die” – so much for our liberating the Vietnamese from their NVA oppressors.

The road to hell made a turn for the 2/501 troopers to reopen QL – 1 or Highway 1, also known to the French as “the Street without Joy” and then due West into the A-Shau valley (the Valley of Death) and triple canopy jungle.

But that also is another story for another day. Airborne All The Way! Let us never forget their shedding of blood, sweat and tears.

RELATED VIDEO: Battle for Hue. On January 31,1968, the North Vietnamese Army launches the surprise “Tet Offensive, simultaneously attacking dozens of South Vietnamese cities. Among them is the ancient city of Hue. Outnumbered 10 to 1 the brave US Marines and South Vietnamese Army troops defend the city with their lives.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is of (Left to Right) 1LT Cleo Hogan, Commander A Company, 2/501 Infantry, 1LT Grimsley, Platoon Leader and 1LT Rich Swier, Forward Observer, in the A-Shau valley (the valley of death) during Tet of 1968.

Obama ‘Sub Par’ Posters: True Counter-Culture in Action

February 19, 2014/in Commentary, News, Satire/by The Peoples Cube

According to Breitbart.com, dozens of posters of President Obama with a golf club and a caption “Sub Par” have been spotted outside the PGA’s golf tournament near the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, as well as near Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica, California, all of them upscale and liberal enclaves.

A quick web search discovered a number of other locations in LA with “Sub Par” posters pasted over signal boxes, hanging from the wires and lampposts on busy intersections, glued to park benches, and even attached as small stickers to the walls of public bathrooms. This bears all the marks of an anonymous guerilla street art action by local artists.

Photos of these posters, hangers, and stickers are beginning to appear on several websites, but this one is by far the most complete collection we could find. There is also a short YouTube video of a street cop making a comment about one of the hanging posters.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Jxzrtcm69s8[/youtube]

No one is claiming responsibility for this gutsy guerilla art project, and with a very good reason: in the heart of a Democrat-run city financed by Hollywood studios, any artist engaging in such “counter-progressive” activities would do well to remain anonymous.

In spite of the self-righteous promotion of tolerance and diversity by the “progressive” elites, they themselves tend to rule with a humorless iron fist of religious zealots, intolerant of any deviation from the dogma (unless the Party dogma transmogrifies; then you’re expected to transmogrify with it). And there’s hardly a deadlier sin in their bible than mocking a “progressive” deity, one of whom unquestionably is Barack Obama.

A Stalin-like intolerance of all dissent and religious worship of “progressive” icons is most rampant in such strongholds of progressivism as news media, academia, and especially the arts. An artist who refuses to conform and rebels against the “progressive” establishment gets immediately blacklisted, subjected to a witch hunt, shunned by his colleagues, and ultimately loses any chance of further employment in the industry.

Some of my artist friends among conservative bloggers are forced to withhold their real names so they can continue to feed their families. Losing anonymity for them would mean never to be able to find work in the arts again. The latest first-hand testimony of “progressive” Hollywood blacklisting can be found in a recent excellent essay by Andrew Klavan, a conservative filmmaker who urges conservatives to invest in alternative conservative arts because, as Breitbart liked to say, politics is downstream of culture.

While Klavan’s emphasis is on the eternal nature of the art telling us the truth about our human nature, some utilitarian subsets of the arts, such as the political poster, are not to be dismissed either. The left has gained great mileage with visual agitation and propaganda, which communist countries like the USSR had developed into a standalone art genre.

In the United States, political poster artists such as Shepherd Fairey, Robbie Conal, or Banksy absurdly made careers while promoting the leftist ideology through the arts — absurdly because their allegedly “counter-culture” and “anti-establishment” message was cheered on and often sponsored by the cultural establishment itself, which today is almost entirely made of formerly rebellious “anti-establishment” leftists.

The palpable irony of today’s historical moment is that the formerly cool, underground iconoclasts of the Left are now the oppressive, stodgy establishment. The tables have been turned by the invisible hand of historical necessity, but not in a revolution that Marxists had planned.

Today’s truly rebellious, free-thinking, edgy and cool, counter-culture anti-establishment movement is entirely on the right of the political spectrum. The Left may try to obfuscate this reality, attempting to paint the Right as agents of the oppressive state, but in the end the truth always wins. It happened everywhere the Left held the power, and it will happen in America, too.

But the truth needs our help. We need to spread this notion, especially among the young people: Right is cool. Liberty is cool. Independence is cool. If your young heart desires idealism and adventure, sabotage the oppressive leftist establishment! If you want to hang out with free thinkers and non-conformists, join the Tea Party!

Contrary to the old man Marx, not everything happens by historical necessity; there’s also the matter of free will. This is where the anti-Obama activist artists come in and seize the moment.

The prospect of the art world rebelling against the leftist establishment frightens the Left more than the Republican Party campaigning ever will.

A bunch of hip, younger artists amusing themselves by blasting leftist icons may start a trend that will turn out to be more consequential than all the costly election strategies devised by well-paid GOP consultants in Washington. Because, well, politics is downstream of culture.

If my instincts are correct, we will be seeing more provocative street art like this. Conservatives will do well to support it.

Milan Zajec, Survivor of Communist Horrors in Slovenia, R.I.P.

February 18, 2014/in Commentary, National Security, News/by Dr. Mary Grabar

Milan Zajec, one of three survivors who made his way out of the pit of a thousand dead and dying fellow Slovenians at Kočevski Rog in 1945, recently died in Cleveland, I learned from Pavle Borstnik’s column in the Slovenian American Times. As in other Communist countries, Slovenian freedom-seekers were forcibly repatriated as deals were made with Stalin. The war was over, but 10,000 refugees staying in a British-controlled camp in Austria were told they were going to Italy. As they looked out the slats of the rail cars and saw Partisan soldiers, they knew that they were going to their gruesome deaths in their homeland under the rule of victor Marshall Tito. Slovenia, which gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, is the size of New Jersey, but has over 600 mass, unmarked graves of victims of the Communists.

Borstnik describes Zajec as a “simple, country boy,” from the village of Veliki Gaber, who along with his brothers wanted to lead a simple life. “Then came war and revolution and Milan soon recognized the real aims of the people claiming to be waging a ‘liberation war’ against the foreign occupier. Together with most of his brothers he chose to resist this philosophy. . . .”

Borstnik writes that Zajec retreated into “total privacy” during his last years.

Those who were killed in the pits are often accused of being Nazi collaborators, Communist propaganda repeated in the schools and media. In my most recent copy of Slovene Studies, Professor Oto Luthar of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Ljubljana calls the Partisans “liberators.”

In the United States, scholars studying Communism are exiled from universities. Communist propaganda continues to come from Russia, even as the Olympics take place.

A former political prisoner of Tito, whom I met a few years ago at a Slavic studies conference, pointed out all the “red” academics and journalists who had flown to Philadelphia from Slovenia, or who were comfortably ensconced in American universities. These academics do “gender analysis” or “semiotics” as they deny firsthand accounts of survivors—and history.

Real life doesn’t fit the neat categories of theory or ideology.

Borstnik explains that the Communists in Slovenia began their social revolution by forming a vaguely “anti-imperialist front.” Heeding Stalin, they launched an insurrection in Yugoslavia on July 4, 1941 under the pretense of fighting the Germans. One thousand out of the 300,000 population of Ljubljana were killed by the secret police.

In the countryside, the Communists terrorized farm families, demanding food. They were “armed bands, roaming the country, executing the known or suspected ‘enemies of the revolution’ and pillaging their property.” The Slovenians were then accused by the Italians of supporting Communists and sent to concentration camps.

So the men decided to form independent Village Guard units for self-defense. After Italy went to the Allies, the Germans came in. Under German occupation, Village Guards became the Home Guards to protect Slovenians from the Partisans.

When Tito’s forces became victorious at the end of the war, the British shifted their support to him from Draza Mihailovich, the military commander of King Peter, in exile in Britain. The 20,000 Home Guards (Domobranci) who had fled to Austria were disarmed by the British and repatriated until Canadian Major Paul Barre confronted the British commanders, thus saving 10,000 from the same fate.

In order to advance their pro-Communist theories, the professors overlook the complicated stories of life under Nazi occupation, as Communists terrorized the people. Borstnik expresses contempt for the Nazis who treated Slovenians like slaves, as they did all Slavs.

Metod Milac who was born in 1924 in Slovenia and wrote a first-hand account in Resistance, Imprisonment & Forced Labor: A Slovene Student in World War II, also describes how most Slovenians felt about the Nazis. Only a teenager, Milac was captured by the Italian fascists, then the Communist Partisans, and then again by the Italians. He resumed his studies briefly after recovering from near starvation in the Rad concentration camp.

Milac describes the day in 1944 when the Germans forced the Home Guard (which his older brother, Ciril, had joined) to take an oath of allegiance: “I felt pain and despair that day, knowing that many of my friends, acquaintances, and schoolmates who participated had no intention of pledging any alliance to the Third Reich nor did the majority of those taking part.” He expresses relief that his brother’s unit was not selected to take part in the oath-taking.

Milac had decided to join the pro-Anglo-American underground group, “Slovene National Clandestine Resistance Force,” diverting from his brother’s choice. He was captured by the Gestapo and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where he survived the labor camp. One of the 200,000 displaced persons, he immigrated to New York, then Cleveland, and finally Syracuse. He earned advanced degrees in music and then in library science and becamea librarian at Syracuse University. He tells this story in his book, A Land Bright with Promise.

Milac knew Milan Zajec and another one of the three survivors of Kočevski Rog, France Dejak. It was through Dejak’s account that Milac learned about the fate of his brother, who was with Dejak’s group imprisoned at the school, Bishop’s Gymnasium, which the brothers had attended. Milac writes, “Having spent four years as a student in the Bishop’s Gymnasium only a few years before, he must have suffered even more at being a prisoner in the chapel where he attended daily mass as a student. Dejak did not know much more, except that he last saw Ciril, wired to another man, when they were loaded on the trucks to the place of execution. Thus, I can assume that his murder took place on Saturday, 9 June 1945. He was 22 years old.”

Zajec, as Borstnik writes in his most recent column, was “chosen to survive.” Fortunately, he recorded his memories. This is Zajec’s description of being transported with other prisoners (quoted in Slovenia 1945 by John Corsellus and Marcus Ferrar):

We were all between 18 and 24 years old. The wire cut into our flesh. We were beaten by the Partisans at the corners of the truck. I started to sob. If I moved, everybody was hurt and we all fell on top of each other. . . We started to pray aloud and get ready for death. We had been preparing for death ever since the Partisans got hold of us . . . I was afraid I would be sick and I could not get off the truck at Kočevski Rog. The sun was strong and I was thirsty.

They approached “the killing site in a valley”:

We heard shooting and screaming of domobranci being killed. Nobody cried yet. We were just waiting. I could not feel my legs any more. They cut my shoe-straps and removed my shoes. The knife went into my flesh and it bled. I saw an 18-year-old boy with his eyes gouged out and his skull smashed. He was still conscious, sitting quietly, not moaning, just sighing . . . We were forced to sit down and stand up, still tied together with wire that cut into our flesh. We had to walk several metres and then back again. It seemed to take about an hour. We were made to sing Communist songs. Some had their heads cut by the knives and were dragged along unconscious behind.

Speaking Slovenian and wearing British uniforms, Partisans tore gold teeth out of the jaws of living Domobranci. The prisoners were forced into a pit with bloody corpses. The dying moaned beneath Zajec, new victims fell over him, and blood flowed into his mouth. He wrote, “I wanted to die, but death would not come.”

Zajec attributed his survival to his Holy Mary of Carmel medallion. The dying prayed for their atheistic Communist enemies, and a priest chanted in Latin. The Partisans fired shots and grenades into the pit.

Zajec survived five days. Eventually pulling themselves out of the pit by a tree that had fallen in from blasting that was intended to cover the bodies, the survivors got out and walked 35 kilometers to safety.

Milac expresses his disbelief that all this happened without any trials, in violation of international rules. It was evidence that the goal of the Communist Party was “a Soviet-style dictatorship under Tito.”

With the sadness that overtakes him when he talks about the war, Milac writes, “It is also hard to believe that in the small Slovene nation one would find so many people who would be able, willing, and possess so a complete disregard for another human being to execute acts of such unbelievable sadism.” His book is filled with accounts of kindness and cruelty on all sides.

My own parents escaped Yugoslavia (specifically Slovenia) in the late 1950s with me as a toddler. I knew only bits and pieces about the war from overheard conversations among the adults. They told about being forced by the occupiers to learn the Hungarian language and about soldiers demanding food from villagers. There were secret signals among women to avoid rape. There were stories of survival in forests. There was the story of the young man in the village, whose name I don’t recall, who was shot just as he looked over his shoulder. There was the uncle recruited to fight, with a gun pointed at him, more than once. But we did not learn this history in school.

In his epilogue to Resistance, Imprisonment, & Forced Labor, Milac writes that the enforced repatriations that killed his brother and several friends are “among the deepest wounds that are still bleeding.” Efforts to cover them up, he writes, will last forever.

Borstnik continues to write about the political situation in Slovenia. He calls Milan Zajec’s story “the final testimonial to the banality and criminality of the red ‘philosophy’ which, unfortunately, to this very day, continues to claim for itself the right to rule and judge the life of our unhappy homeland.”

Obama Wants to Waste a Billion on “Climate Change”

February 18, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Alan Caruba

Barack Obama will be remembered for many things during his two terms in office, but high on the list, right after lying to everyone about everything, will be his determination to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on every Green scheme from solar and wind energy to electric cars, and now on “climate change.”

He is calling for a billion-dollar climate change fund in his forthcoming budget, due out next month. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the fund “would be spent on researching the projected effects of climate change and helping Americans prepare for them, including with new technology and infrastructure, according to the White House.

We don’t need any research and we don’t need any new technology. The National Weather Service has hugely expensive computers that enable it to predict what the weather will be anywhere in the U.S. with some measure of accuracy for up to three or four days. After that, it gets fuzzy. What will the weather be next week? Well, maybe a bit warmer or a bit colder.

As for the effects of weather events, we have centuries of knowledge regarding this. We know what happens after a blizzard or a hurricane, a drought or a flood.

When a huge storm like Sandy hit the East Coast, we had FEMA that was supposed to come in and help the victims. The federal government also came up with a couple of million for the States most affected, but it is still a problem that local first responders and utilities have to address most directly.

Obama was out in California to show his concern for the drought-stricken farmers and the administration is speeding delivery of $100 million of aid to livestock farmers, $15 million for areas hit hardest, and $60 million for California food banks to help the poor. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) pointed out that the drought has been “exacerbated by federal and state regulations” including an environmental rule that placed “the well-being of fish…ahead of the well-being” of communities.

Like Rep. McCarthy, those on the scene point out that the drought is in part the result of the failure to restore the water flow from California’s water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. House Bill 3964 does that, but only if the Senate will stop holding it up. Rep. McCarthy is joined by Rep. Devin Nunes explaining that California’s system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years.

As Investors.com pointed out, “Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of three million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.”

Obama made no mention of that, but it is an example of how, in the name of climate change billions are wasted or lost, such as when the outcry over Spotted Owls caused a vast portion of the Northwest’s timber industry was decimated by the false claim that they were “endangered.”

All this traces back to the founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program. The IPCC was given a formal blessing by the UN General Assembly through Resolution 43/53.

And what has the IPCC done? It has championed the utterly false claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for warming the Earth and that all the industries and other human activities that create CO2 emissions had to reduce them in order to save the Earth. In 2007 the IPCC and Al Gore would share a Nobel Peace Prize. As an organization and as an individual these two have proved to be the among the greatest liars on planet Earth.

Dr. Craig D. Idso, PhD, is the founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. He is an advisor to The Heartland Institute and, with Dr. Robert M. Carter and Dr. S. Fred Singer, authored the 2011 study, “Climate Change Reconsidered”, for the entertainingly named NIPCC—Not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Published by The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank that has led the effort to expose the IPCC since 2009, sponsoring eight international conferences, the report was updated in 2013 and a new update is due in March.

Writing in The Hill on January 30, Dr. Idso said “the President’s concerns for the planet are based upon flawed and speculative science; and his policy prescription is a recipe for failure” noting that “literally thousands of scientific studies have produced findings that run counter to his view of future climate.”

“As just one example, and a damning one at that, all of the computer models upon which his vision is based failed to predict the current plateau (the cooling cycle) in global temperature that has continued for the past 16 years. That the Earth has not warmed significantly during this period, despite an 8 percent increase in atmospheric CO2, is a major indictment of the model’s credibility in predicting future climate, as well as the President’s assertion that debate on this topic is ‘settled’.”

“The taxation or regulation of CO2 emissions is an unnecessary and detrimental policy option that should be shunned,” said Dr. Idso. Unfortunately for Americans, that is precisely the policy being driven by Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Department of the Interior and other elements of the government.

So the trip to California with its promise of more million spent when, in fact, the Green policies of that State have caused the loss of the Central lands that produce a major portion of the nation’s food stocks, reveals how utterly corrupt Obama’s climate-related policies have been since he took office in 2009.

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered by the crony capitalism that is the driving force behind the IPCC’s and U.S. demands for the reduction of CO2 emissions.

There is climate change and it has been going on for 4.5 billion years on planet Earth. It has everything to do with the Sun, the oceans, volcanic activity and other natural factors. It has nothing to do with the planet’s human population.

What is profoundly disturbing is the deliberate political agenda behind the President’s lies and Secretary of State John Kerry’s irrational belief that climate change is the world’s “most fearsome” weapon of mass destruction.

RELATED VIDEO: Charles Krauthammer on Climate Change, “All of this is driven by this ideology, which in and of itself is a matter of almost theology.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/g6Zswes9TsY[/youtube]

Apostle Barack. Are you kidding me?

February 18, 2014/in Commentary, News, Politics/by Allen West

If I’m not mistaken, the first commandment goes something like this, “I am the Lord your God, thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It’s worked pretty well for the last few thousand years, but apparently a certain college professor at Florida A&M University (doggone, why is it always Florida?) has elevated President Barack Hussein Obama to a place that is indeed above his pay grade.

According the Independent Journal Review, if you’re looking for an amusing read, you might want pick up The Gospel According to Apostle Barack: In Search of a More Perfect Political Union as Heaven Here on Earth. Heck, for just $3.03, you can get a Kindle version of the book by Barbara A. Thompson, a “highly esteemed” professor at Florida A & M University, which explores the author’s “miraculous” dream about President Barack Obama.

Here’s how Professor Thompson describes being touched:

When I began to contemplate ways to assist Barack in his 2012 re-election bid something miraculous happened. I felt God’s (His) Spirit beckoning me in my dreams at night. Listening, cautiously, I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society, Martin (Luther King) walked the earth to create a more justified society, but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor.

Apostle Barack, the next young leader with a new cause, had been taken to the mountaintop and allowed to see over the other side. He had the answers to unlock the kingdom of “heaven here on earth” for his followers. The answers were repeated – over and over – in speeches Barack had made from his presidential announcement to his inaugural address. Those speeches or his teachings contained the answers to the middle class and working poor people living in a “heaven here on earth.” For when the answers were unlocked and enacted, Apostle Barack’s vision of America would be realized.

Excuse me. I need to get that bucket handy. In the meantime, you might enjoy this commentary from ET Williams, the ”Doctor Of Common Sense.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Nn6XSPw2Ogs[/youtube]

The book reviewer says, “I must caution that the book comes poorly recommended, with an average 1.3 out of 5 stars from 51 customer reviews.” Well thank goodness for that!

I doubt Professor Thompson had a dream — more like a nightmare — and she certainly did not feel God’s Holy Spirit. Maybe she heard the same voices Salman Rushdie described in his 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses” — oh, and in case you missed it, those peaceful Iranian mullahs just reissued their death fatwa against Rushdie. And we trust them with nuclear negotiations? But I digress…

But getting back to Professor Thompson, would you want your child attending her lectures? Maybe this explains why homeschooling and online/for profit colleges and universities are on the rise.

To Professor Thompson I say, the first amendment is your right and a beautiful thing. However, I would also recommend, since you are seemingly quite the Biblical scholar, to heed the words of the wisest man who ever walked the earth, (and that damn sure ain’t Barack Obama) in King Solomon, Book of Proverbs 17:28 “Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. Featured image courtesy of Independent Journal Review.

Liberal Media in Free Fall

February 17, 2014/in Commentary, News/by Alan Caruba

An enduring memory of my late Father is of him sitting in his chair by the fireplace reading The New York Times. As far as he was concerned, he was receiving the most accurate news of the nation and the world. Despite the many Pulitzer Prizes it has received over the years, he wasn’t.

One of them went to Walter Duranty in 1932, a reporter who was an apologist for the Soviet Union’s Stalinist regime. History revealed that he failed to accurately report on the 1932-1933 famine that killed countless thousands in the Ukraine where collective farming had been imposed. In November 2003 the Pulitzer Board, decided not to revoke the prize. In its review of the 13 articles, the Board “concluded that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deceptions, the relevant standard in this case.” The Board extended its sympathy to Ukrainians.

Ukraine is the site of major protests as a new generation seeks to align the nation with Europe and not the Russian Republic that replaced the failed Soviet Union. The nation is sharply divided.

A Breitbart news story about The New York Times reported that on Thursday of last week it had announced that “profits had fallen nearly 50% in the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to the same period a year before.” Total revenues were down 5.2% and advertising revenues were down 6.3%. A rise in the number of digital readers has not resulted in digital advertising revenues. “Ultimately, the question is whether readers still want the content the Times is providing.”

On Feb 7, The Times published an article by Porter Fox claiming that “The planet has warmed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1800s and as a result snow is melting. On the same day more than two thirds of the nation was covered in snow. A few days later, every State but Florida had some snow.

Newspapers across the nation are encountering similar revenue losses, but I am inclined to believe that the Times is also incurring losses as its blatant liberalism has become better understood by the current generation. When the Times sold the Boston Globe, once valued at $1.1 billion, the new owner purchased it for $73 million. Boston-based talk show host, Howie Carr, often called the paper “the All Gay Boston Globe” because it was so blatantly biased in favor of same-sex marriage.

Newsweek was sold for one dollar. In 2013 The Daily Beast was projected to lose $12 million.

MSNBC has no right to call itself a news channel and its lack of viewers suggests that, except for those so wedded to liberalism, its multitudinous failures to meet any standard of journalism are testimony to the awareness of its appalling broadcasting. The Current Channel, owned by Al Gore, fared so poorly that it was sold to Al Jazeera.

By contrast, The Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily are thriving.

What this suggests to me is that liberalism may be waning and those who no longer read, listen or view liberal media are beginning to include the millions of Americans who woke up to the horrors of Obamacare and concluded that this outrageous power grab of one sixth of the nation’s economy had nothing to do with providing healthcare coverage.

Barack Obama’s performance in office, complete with lavish, costly vacations and plenty of golfing, is conveying a message to many Americans that he is not focused on the stagnant economy and, thanks to failed stimulus and bailout programs, has not achieved any progress. His failure of leadership and his incompetence cannot hide behind a torrent of media spin.

Even the most blatant liberal coverage has been unable to hide the tide of scandals. This is not deterring the Federal Communications Commission from pressuring radio and television stations to moderate or change their coverage of the scandals and other news the Obama administration would prefer not be aired. The FCC has come up with a bogus program to “research” how they make their editorial decisions. It’s none of their business and reeks of its former “Fairness Doctrine.”

Americans should be concerned about the way the mainstream media reports the actions of the Obama administration. Ironically, it has been subjected to wiretaps and other efforts to exert pressure on journalists. The press advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, just announced its 2014 World Press Freedom Index. Under the Obama administration the U.S. fell 13 slots from 32nd to 46th among 180 nations measured in terms of official abuse, media independence, and infrastructure to determine how free journalists are free to report.

The administration’s biggest problem is Obama’s pathological lying which becomes more evident with every passing day. In a visit to California this past week, he still claimed that the Earth was warming despite new records being set for cold weather.

Put these factors together and the decline of liberal media becomes more than just the changes the digital revolution has produced. The New York Times is tanking financially but The Wall Street Journal is not. Fox News has more viewers than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined. It is likely you could add CNN’s and MSNBC’s viewers to the total and Fox would still be ahead.

Why? Because all the White House lies and stonewalling, combined with all the media spin of the news, cannot hide the truth and the truth favors conservative concerns about the economy, about the moral life of the nation, about scandals, and about a President who is not acting as the Constitution says he must.

I don’t expect The New York Times to go out of business tomorrow, but I do expect it to shrink greatly from that august podium it has occupied for decades. Its internal rot is tangible.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image titled “Luke Anthony Freefall” is courtesy of FlukeFilm and is a still from a 2013 photo shoot. The image has been edited, click here to view the original image file. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

Obama’s Eligibility – The Final Word

February 16, 2014/in Commentary, News, Politics/by Paul R. Hollrah

In recent days I have been drawn into yet another debate over presidential eligibility, as specified in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution. Given that Barack Obama has occupied the Oval Office illegally for more than five years, without so much as a whimper of protest from most American voters or the mainstream media, some may feel that any further discussion of this matter may be akin to “beating a dead horse.” Nevertheless, if we insist on referring to ourselves as a constitutional republic, and if we continue to insist that we honor constitutional principles and the rule of law, then we have no choice but to understand precisely what the Founders intended when they drafted our governing document in 1787.

What generated my recent exchange on the subject of presidential eligibility was an article in the January 31, 2014 edition of pegAlert, the newsletter of the Pennsylvania Business Council. The article in question was titled, “SANTORUM PREPPING FOR ANOTHER RUN IN 2016.”

In response, I asked the question, “Who keeps propping up Santorum’s ambitions … other than Rick Santorum? Unless I’m wrong, his father was still an Italian citizen when he was born. That makes him ineligible for the presidency.” To which a representative of the Business Council replied, “That might be so, but Santorum was born in the USA so that makes him a citizen.”

To that nonsensical assertion I replied, “… If Santorum was born in the US, which I assume he was, that does make him a ‘citizen.’ But that’s not what is at issue. What is at issue is his status as a ‘natural born’ citizen, which he must be if he wants to run for president. In order for him to be a ‘natural born’ citizen, both of his parents must have been US citizens. If Santorum’s father was still an Italian citizen when he was born, then he is not a ‘natural born’ citizen…”

The final response from the Pennsylvania Business Council brought us straight to the nub of the issue. The reply read, “Under (that) definition, none of our initial 6 or 7 presidents, would have qualified.” Bingo!! Without even trying, he inadvertently proved my point.

Once again I found myself confronted face-to-face with the harebrained notion that the terms “citizen” and “natural born Citizen” are synonymous… that to be a “citizen” equates to being a “natural born” citizen. That simply is not true. One would think that simple intellectual curiosity would lead those who share that mistaken belief to question why the Founders found it necessary to modify the phrase, “No person except a natural born Citizen,” with the phrase, “… or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution…”

Even the most unthinking and uneducated among us must agree that the use of the word “or” requires an implicit understanding that those who would seek the presidency had to be either “natural born citizens,” or “citizens of the United States” on the day that the Constitution became the law of the land.

On the day that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, every citizen of the thirteen original colonies became citizens of a new nation, the United States of America. And the very first child born to newly-minted US citizens on July 4, 1776, before the ink was dry on John Hancock’s signature, became the nation’s very first “natural born” citizen.

The Constitution required that, in addition to being a resident of the United States for at least fourteen years, those who would seek the presidency must be at least thirty-five years of age. There were a great many men who met those two criteria, but the country needed a president and the only “natural born” citizens available on June 21, 1788, the day the Constitution was ratified, were children under twelve years of age. To solve that problem, the Framers added a grandfather clause, making it possible for newly-minted US citizens, none of them “natural born,” to serve as president. This was necessary until such time as a body of individuals, born to US citizen parents after the Declaration of Independence, reached age thirty-five.

George Washington, our first president, was born at Wakefield, Virginia on February 22, 1732, forty-four years before the Declaration of Independence. He was a “citizen,” but not a “natural born” citizen because both of his parents were British subjects at the time of his birth.

John Adams, our second president, was born at Braintree, Massachusetts on October 30, 1735, forty-one years before the Declaration of Independence. He was a “citizen” because he was born in Massachusetts, but he was not a “natural born” citizen because both of his parents were British subjects at the time of his birth and owed their allegiance to the British crown.

Thomas Jefferson, our third president, was born at Shadwell, Virginia on April 13, 1743, thirty-three years before the Declaration of Independence. He was a “citizen” because he was born in Virginia, but he was not a “natural born” citizen because both of his parents were British subjects at the time of his birth.

James Madison, our fourth president, born in Virginia on March 16, 1751, twenty-five years before the Declaration of Independence; James Monroe, our fifth president, born in Virginia on April 28, 1758, eighteen years before the Declaration of Independence; John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, born in Massachusetts on July 11, 1767, nine years before the Declaration of Independence; and Andrew Jackson, our seventh president, born in South Carolina on March 15, 1767, nine years before the Declaration of Independence; were all “citizens” because they were born in what came to be the United States of America, but they were not “natural born” citizens because their parents were not US citizens at the time of their birth.

However, Martin Van Buren, our eighth president, was born at Kinderhook, New York on December 5, 1782, six years and five months after the Declaration of Independence. Unlike his seven predecessors, he was not just a “citizen,” he was a “natural born” citizen… the first president, at least thirty-five years of age, who was born to US citizen parents after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

What a great many patriotic, but ill-informed, Americans refuse to accept is the fact that, while the Founders intended that only “natural born” citizens should ever serve as president, there were no 35-year-old “natural born” citizens available during the first 35 years of our nation’s history. Accordingly, it became necessary to provide an exemption of limited duration covering those citizens born prior to July 4, 1776. All were “grandfathered” and made eligible under the phrase, “or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution…”

Every U.S. president since Van Buren… with the exception of Chester A. Arthur, whose Irish father was a British subject at the time of his birth, and Barack Obama, whose Kenyan father was also a British subject at the time of his birth… has been a “natural born” U.S. citizen, as required by Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

Barack Obama was born with dual US-British citizenship “by descent” from his Kenyan father and his American mother. However, under Chapter VI, Sec. 97(1) of the Kenyan Constitution of December 12, 1963, Kenyan Independence Day, Obama lost his British citizenship on August 4, 1984, his twenty-third birthday. However, his eligibility status is now complicated by the fact that, under Chapter 3, Section 14 of a revised Kenyan Constitution, adopted on August 4, 2010, he became a citizen of Kenya “by birth” and is required to obey the laws of Kenya, should he ever set foot in that country during or after his stay in the White House.

The Framers found it inconceivable that a president of the United States, commander in chief of the Army and the Navy, should ever be required to obey the laws of a foreign nation. Barack Obama provides, if nothing else, a definitive example of why the Founders insisted that the president must be a “natural born” citizen, untainted by any hint of foreign allegiances.

Although Democrats have successfully defended Obama’s illegal presidency, based largely on the fact that he is a black man, insulated from the rule of law by the color of his skin, we must insist that constitutional mandates apply equally to presidents of both parties, Democrats and Republicans. This means, of course, that conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Gov. Nicki Haley (R-SC), Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)… all born to one or more non-US citizen parents… are not natural born citizens and must be eliminated from consideration for the 2016 GOP nomination.

In the days of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, a man of Barack Obama’s background and qualifications would have received zero consideration for the presidency. Without question, he would have been declared ineligible. Yet, in spite of the fact that the Constitutional criteria for the presidency have not changed one iota since 1787, millions of Americans today insist that he is eligible for the office. By what tortured reasoning, what conceivable standard, they won’t say.

Liberals and Democrats being what they are, we can always count on them to expect to have things both ways. But conservatives and Republicans believe in constitutional principles and the rule of law and we simply cannot allow the bandwagon-riders in our party to circumvent the Constitution. So, sorry, Ted, Nicki, Bobby, Marco, and Rick… we love you all and you’re a great credit to our country, but you just can’t play in our presidential sandbox.

JUSTIN BIEBER : Spincer of the Month, January 2014

February 16, 2014/in Commentary, Culture War, News/by Marshall Frank

This month was an easy pick.

Young folks who find great fame and success are often seen wallowing in self love and depravity, thinking they are somehow more important and better than the average person. The selection for January of 2014 showed what a true fool he really is by anointing himself above the law in a Miami Beach residential neighborhood, embarking on a drag race (60 mph in a 30 zone) in his ostentatious Lamborghini. When stopped by the cops, he was less than polite, delivering a barrage of expletives to the officers before being hauled in for DUI. He was also allegedly under the influence of marijuana and prescription drugs while driving with an expired license. He was also charged with Resisting Arrest. Bieber was arrested with R&B singer, Khalil Amir Sharieff.

Other reports have come in claiming he had raced his car earlier in Miami at speeds up to 130 mph.

Well, why not. He’s Justin Bieber, rich and famous. How did he get rich? He sings.

Bieber is also under investigation for egging his neighbors house in California last month to the tune of $20,000 in damages, a felony.

Bieber is also being charged with assaulting a Limo driver in Toronto, Canada, in December 2013.

Then there’s this:

A couple weeks after the arrest in Miami, Bieber chartered a private plane to go to NYC to attend Super Bowl parties. According to news reports, the pilots and flight attendant claimed that Bieber and his entourage were abusive during the flight, puffing freely on joints and filling the aircraft with so much smoke that the pilots had to wear oxygen masks to avoid a contact high and jeopardize their licenses over failing a drug test. According to the report, “The captain of the flight stated that he warned the passengers, including Bieber, on several occasions to stop smoking marijuana,” read a report obtained by NBC News. The captain also needed to request that the passengers stop their harassing behavior toward the flight attendant. Justin’s father, Jeremy Bieber, was on the flight with the singer.

And what do Bieber’s parents have to say about their darling child? Basically, they defend him saying he has so many good qualities. She was recently quoted, “If Justin is struggling, don’t kick him when he’s down, or condemn him…pray for him.”

I have some comments for Justin Bieber’s parents:

Pattie Mallette and Jeremy Bieber, I know how tough it is to have a wayward son, I have had one of my own. But he won’t be corrected by making excuses for him. If you were truly caring parents, you’d make a public statement that would piss him off, but in the long run it would be the best thing you ever did. Tough love’s not easy, but it can be effective. Here’s what you say: “Justin, we are ashamed of you. We are good and decent people, and you are growing into a miserable punk kid. The only people who respect you are dopers and sleazebags. Straighten out, stop embarrassing your mother and father, get help now, you can afford it. You are not invulnerable. Keep this up and you will one day end up lying on a bathroom floor just like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, only he will be remembered as a good and loving man. You won’t. Stop being a complete and total Sphincter.”

Will his parents be upfront and honest?

Doubtful. Not as long as the cash cow keeps pumping.

Click here: Times Bulletin: Justin Bieber s arrest latest sign of trouble

Click here: Justin Bieber May Face Felony Charges Over Egging Incident | Music News | Rolling Stone

Click here: Justin Bieber Speeding — New Report Claims He Went 130 MPH In Miami – Hollywood Life

Click here: Justin Bieber Was Clocking 136 MPH Before Miami Beach Arrest: Report | Billboard

Click here: Justin Bieber’s Alleged ‘Pot’ Plane: Police Report Details Crew’s Turbulent Flight

Has God changed from when He asked men, like Noah, to do strange things?

February 15, 2014/in Commentary, Culture War, News/by Dr. Richard Ruhling, MD

“As in the days of Noah,” God asked him to become the laughing stock of the world. But on Father’s Day, we might recall Noah was a better Dad than most other great men–he saved his whole family!

Abraham is another person who was willing to do strange things for God. He left home and all that he knew because he heard a voice? Later he accepted circumcision as a token of his faith, that even if amputated, he would still have children. His name meant “father of many.” And he insisted his servants be circumcised too–before the days of anesthesia! Embarrassing, but he was willing to be a fool for God.

Moses also heard voices, and life became harder for the Israelites—they had to make bricks without straw. Maybe they hated Moses with the frogs and lice, and then he asked them to kill a lamb and put its blood on their doorposts. Bizarre?

All of the above must have seemed weird. Looking back, we understand the reasons, but could God want us to do something strange?

Israel celebrated the Passover, the greatest event of Old Testament history, by eating the lamb and staying awake all night. We no longer need to kill lambs, but Christ asked His disciples to “watch and pray.” Those words are repeated throughout the New Testament and if we did them on the eve of Passover, it would commemorate the greatest events in Scripture.

Maybe Ellen White had that in mind when she wrote, “As [Christ] ate the Passover with His disciples, He instituted in its place the service that was to be the memorial of His great sacrifice.”1

We know it as “the Lord’s Supper” and we celebrate it as communion, but we haven’t done so “in its place.” on Passover. And because we don’t, we could be missing an important part that’s still enjoined, ”Watch and pray.” We spiritualize the word watch and think it means to be aware.

The Greek word for watch is gregorio, and it means to be awake. Paul wrote, “let us not sleep…let us watch.”2 and the context has several clues suggesting Passover.

Verses 1,2 imply a time we [should] “know perfectly.” Perhaps we’ve misunderstood something. Paul referred to the holidays like Passover as “shadows of things to come.”3
Writing of those times that we “know perfectly, the day of the Lord” comes as a thief. “The day of the Lord” is the Old Testament apocalyptic term and it’s linked to Passover as “the day of the Lord’s sacrifice” in Zephaniah 1:7,8 where God will punish “the king’s children clothed in strange apparel.” No wedding garment? Each wedding parable has Passover imagery, like the midnight cry in Matthew 25:6 and also in Exodus 12:29-30.
That cry was also the cry of childbirth. At Passover, God brought forth “my son…my firstborn.”4 “The day of the Lord comes” as travail on a woman with child and we are to know “perfectly.”

Paul kept Passover with Greek believers in Philippi and Corinth and he said, Follow me as I follow Christ. 5

Ellen White cited Christ’s death at Passover and said, “In like manner [at Passover?] the types which relate to the second advent must be fulfilled at the time pointed out in the symbolic service.”6

Perhaps we should see Passover also as when God said, “I will execute judgment.”7 Seventh-day Adventists believe in a pre-Advent judgment, but it may have three components:

1. “the time of the dead that they should be judged”8

2. “the nations were angry” (the rider on the red horse takes peace from the earth—a time of judgment for the living when they face life and death situations as in Daniel 1-6. “Daniel” means “God is my Judge.” But the book of Judges shows judges as deliverers, and God may deliver us as the three Hebrews who also said, “But if not…we will not worship…the image”9

3. “thy wrath is come” on those who worship the beast or his image.10

The point is, just as Adventists believe #1, the judgment of the dead, began on the Day of Atonement, perhaps we should consider that when judgment is executed, it could begin on Passover, as in the type.

If God isn’t going to do anything without revealing it,11 shouldn’t we consider it revealed and try to understand when?

Christ’s disciples were probably thinking of Passover as a time of judgment for those events in Matthew 24,25 when He said, You don’t know the day or hour.

We overlook the meaning of the Greek word, oida—be aware, consider, understand. Christ was saying, You don’t understand, and each time He said it, He gave an example that fit a provision in their law for Passover a month later, “as in the days of Noah.” But how much “as”? Could it include timing?

The Flood came with Passover timing. Noah entered the ark on the 10th day, the same day that the sacrifice was selected in Exodus 12:3, but it was the 2nd spring month because Noah had to bury Methuselah who died as a sign of the Flood. His name meant, at his death, the sending forth of waters.12 That delay of one month is specified in Numbers 9:10,11 as a reason to observe Passover later.

Again, after five women missed the wedding, Christ said, Watch (a word linked to being awake at Passover), for the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country.”13 Israelites didn’t travel in winter, but if they took a long journey in spring and couldn’t get back for Passover, they were to keep it in the 2nd month as specified in Numbers 9.

Could it be significant that Christ punctuated His two parables in Matthew 25 with instruction to watch and a qualification of when to watch, if we understood their law better. And didn’t Christ say, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law”?14

Could we be the “goodman” who doesn’t know when to watch [be awake] so that our house is broken by the thief? The King James has only one reference to goodman in the Old Testament. A harlot says, “The goodman…is gone a long journey…and will come home at the yom kece [full moon]. Passover comes on a full moon, but “long journey” means 2nd Passover.

Christ said, “If you shall not watch, I will come on you as a thief.” But there’s Good News as well…

“Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He comes shall find watching [another link to Passover] Verily I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself and make them sit down to meat and come forth and serve them.” Girding Himself and serving us is also Passover imagery—the Last Supper.
If we are “so doing” when He comes and “knocks…He will make [us] ruler over all that He has.” So much to gain and so little to lose!
Why we should do so this year is beyond the scope of this article, but this year, 2nd Passover (“as in the days of Noah,” falls on Wednesday evening, May 14. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our churches were filled with members seeking communion on the authentic time for Christ’s return from “a long journey”?

Our favorite author said those seeking the Lord’s return should be found in prayer meeting. Why not on May 14? We have many reasons for all night prayer vigils. “It would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ. We should take it point by point, and let the imagination grasp each scene, especially the closing ones…If we would be saved at last, we must learn the lesson of penitence and humiliation at the foot of the cross.” Why not share this article with your pastor and ask if we could do something crazy?

References:

1 The Desire of Ages, p 652

2 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6

3 Colossians 2:16,17

4 Exodus 4:22

5 Acts 20:6; 1 Corinthians 5:8; 11:1

6 The Great Controversy, p 399.9

7 Exodus 12:12

8 Revelation 11:18

9 Daniel 3:18

10 Revelation 14:9,10

11 Amos 3:7

12 Genesis 5:21, King James, margin

13 Matthew 25:13,14

14 Matthew 5:18

[1] Proverbs 7:19,20

[1] Revelation 3:3

[1] Luke 12:36,37

[1] Luke 12:43-48

[1] The Desire of Ages, p 83

Valentine’s Day Guide to Dating Dictators

February 14, 2014/in Commentary, Satire/by The Peoples Cube

Dating a dictator can be a scary and dangerous endeavor. But it also offers an opportunity to meet the authoritarian oppressor of your dreams, provided that the proper precautions are taken. Whether you are a young starry-eyed Utopian or have been around the eastern bloc for a while, everyone can benefit from these tips and guidelines for safe dictator-dating procedures.

Do not jeopardize your livelihood for a night out having fun. By observing the following tips, you can still have a great time and live.

Pay your own way. Ignore the traditional rule of the tyrant feeding his subjects. Most dictators tend to think that just because they bought you a meal with other people’s money, you owe them something at the end of the night.

Define the degree of your compliance with his authority. Let him know if you find his dictatorial methods unacceptable; if this angers him, mark this as a red flag.

Do not rely on the tyrant for transportation – you may wind up in a boxcar or in an armored vehicle, being interrogated by a dictator you don’t really know that well.

Don’t get high. In all reported violent revolutions, drugs and alcohol were a major factor. So for the first couple of dates, discuss the greater good of subjugating the individual to the state authority in a non-alcoholic setting. In addition, leaving your drink unattended around a dictator may lead to a speedy confiscation and redistribution of your property.

Don’t let your guard down. It doesn’t matter if the dictator seems nice – keep an eye on your belongings. Watch your purse, wallet, tax records, and bank accounts. Being overly trusting may signal an easy target to a dictator with dictatorial intentions.

Withhold personal information. Don’t divulge your ethnicity, political leanings, or if you have wealthy bourgeois relatives. Only after you have collected some compromising info on him is the dictator worthy of your trust.

Keep a thorough, detailed record of your date – in writing, or with concealed audio or video recording equipment. Having incriminating evidence hidden in a safe place will help to ensure a lasting, fulfilling relationship.

Clues For Spotting Maniacal Dictators On Dating Websites

The internet can be a rewarding place to meet great people, but there’s also the chance of meeting some who aren’t so great – who signed up with a status of “benevolent ruler of all people” when in real life they are power-grabbing sociopaths only one mass murder away from a documentary on the History Channel.

To avoid falling into the hands of a megalomaniac tyrant, watch for the following signs:

Clue #1: His profile is littered with oil portraits of him wearing a uniform with plenty of medals, holding weapons, or riding a horse. The majority of narcissistic tyrants pose for pictures with an upturned head, staring dreamily above eye level into the distance. (A dictator who allows himself to be photographed as a mere human is just asking for a coup d’état).

Clue #2: He will tell you not to call him. In most cases, autocrats are the ones to initiate contact. A lot of dictators tend to look for someone who seems submissive, trusting, naïve, and easily manipulated. They will seek out such vulnerabilities by sending you frequent emails with requests for donations and links to their web pages, where you must fill out forms and answer various questions so they can determine just how easy a target you are.

Clue #3: Even if you have his number but wind up leaving a message or speaking to his underlings, this can be a sign of trouble. When he finally calls you back, there is always some bizarre story about one or another urgent show trial or a botched assassination attempt. Of course, there is a chance that he really is busy – instigating wars, running guns, or executing enemies of the state – but you don’t deserve that kind of unpredictability. There is always another, kinder, gentler, more predictable dictator just waiting to oppress you.

The People’s Cube is committed to safe dictator-dating and actively promotes it by being a go-to guide for all those in the totalitarian dating community.

Credit for the above image goes to Nolan Beck, who, in the spirit of V-Day, brought different socialist dictators together in one Valentine package. We just edited it a bit to fit our format.

For a larger view click on the poster.

And don’t forget our other Valentine classics:

Get in Shape for Valentine With The People’s Weight-Loss Log

Pelosi’s Valentine Day Sign

Progressive Valentine for Gender Specific Females

Progressive Valentine for Gender Specific Males

Valentine’s Day for Non-Gender-Specific Comrades

2014: Too Much Snow and Ice

February 14, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy/by Alan Caruba

From 1955 until I graduated in 1959, I was a student at the University of Miami. Those were halcyon years for me, enhanced by Florida’s famed bounty of sunshine and warmth. Born and raised in New Jersey, it was a respite from the Garden State’s winters, shoveling snow, and enduring the chill.

The last time I was in Florida was in 2004 to visit my older brother in Boynton Beach and when the wall of heat hit me as I exited the West Palm Beach airport, I knew I would remain in Jersey.

I am no fan of winter. I don’t ski or ice skate. When it’s cold I stay inside where it’s warm. I venture outside once a day to turn over the car engine while picking up a lottery ticket in hopes of winning enough money to live somewhere warm during the winters here.

I don’t know how many blizzards or just big snowstorms I have lived through at this point in my life. In my experience, most people tend to forget them when springtime arrives. Winter, which often seems to have no end, is still only four months, a quarter of the year.

After decades of “global warming” lies from Al Gore, environmental organizations, and government agencies, I knew well that, while the northern hemisphere had begun to warm around 1850 after a long cold cycle and the amount of warmth was sufficient to provide comfort, it was too small for anyone to effectively measure.

One of my favorite quotes is from Dr. Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

I am pretty sure that those who lived through earlier blizzards and snowstorms did not consider them as anything other than normal. Some, though, made history. History.com even has a list of major U.S. blizzards. Perhaps the most famed was the Great Blizzard of 1888. It dumped 40 to 50 inches of snow in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. More than 400 people died; the worst toll of a winter storm. A year later in 1889, a blizzard started in Florida and then moved up the coast dumping 20 inches of snow on Washington, D.C. and 34 inches on New Jersey.

The Great Blizzard of 1888 led legislatures in Boston and New York to break ground on the country’s first underground subway systems.

Those of us on the East Coast would wait a century until 1993 for a combination blizzard and cyclone “wreaked havoc from Cuba to Canada” killing 310 people in its wake. In February 2010, snowstorms were raging from northern California to North Carolina, but typically it was the Mid-Atlantic and New England States that were hardest hit.

In January, record freezing temperatures gripped the entire nation. Energy consumption set some new records as well. Icy conditions in storms since then have left some areas without any energy and yet the environmental organizations keep fighting the development of any new sources of coal, oil and natural gas to provide needed energy. The White House has done everything in its power to accommodate this idiocy.

On February 7, The New York Times published an article by Porter Fox, the features editor at Powder Magazine—as in snow powder—and author of “Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow.” Fox may know about skiing, but his knowledge of snow consists of his belief that, all over the world, “snow is melting.” This is straight out of the global warming belief that the small amount of warming since the mid-1880s was a threat to the planet. “The planet is getting hotter.” As Dr. Lindzen points out, a few tenths of a degree is meaningless.

A few years ago, The New York Times shut down its environmental reporting unit, laying off some and reassigning others. Now, apparently, it is content to publish utter nonsense about how all the snow is melting everywhere.

In recent weeks and days there has been heavy snow in Tokyo, Japan, that took some lives. Heavy snow has fallen in Austria and Italy, as well as northern Iran. People around the world are looking out their window and seeing snow.

Blizzards are a seasonal reminder that humans do not control the Earth’s climate. The Sun does that along with the oceans, volcanic activity and other natural factors. They only thing humans can and must do is endure them.

RELATED COLUMN: SNOW IN 49 STATES…