Summer Vacation Thoughts

For anyone who's been reading this blog, and wondered where I'd gotten to: I'm on vacation. Other people do something interesting. Me, I sit on the couch and re-read books I haven't touched in ten years. Then I read other people's blogs.

Yesterday, hardnose and I drove down to San Simeon. He drove, I looked at scenery and thought. We talked a little, and I gave several mini-lectures. As I finished each one, I realized That would make a good blog post. Hmmm. None of them are completely researched and formulated yet, but I thought I'd throw them out to see which, if any, garnered any interest from readers.

In lecture order, the topics discussed were:

The Whiskey Rebellion. When Alexander Hamilton proposed a tax on whiskey, his motives were more than revenue. Compare and contrast Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion. There would be lots of references cited, some of which might not be on-line.
The Roman Republic. Although some of the forms remained right up to the fall of the Empire, the Republic was already dead before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Why? Because the Republic was based on lots of property owners; before Caesar arrived on the scene, Rome had become the domain of a few owners of large estates, mostly run by slaves. This topic is so large and unwieldy that it will require lots of attention on the part of the reader. But it does relate to the present era.
The Fall and Rise and Fall of the Democratic Party. Some time ago, I repeated a professor's remark that the Democrats used to be an alliance of the Communists and the Ku Klux Klan. Hardnose (predictably!) liked that, and wanted me to write about it. I feel a dull, dolorous certainty that this essay would produce the sort of attention that I, as a squishy person who doesn't much like fighting and insults, shun. On the other hand, if a reader or two - besides Hardnose! - express an interest, I will undertake this mission.

What does any reader think?

Bueller? Anyone?

06/29/2005 07:46 PM -0700

A Meditation on Manners

Back in 2000, the shootings at Columbine High School left me sick and angry. I wrote a short story about fighting back, which I read at a summer solstice gathering in San Francisco. The story was well-received.

Later, a man cornered me in the kitchen and asked, smiling, “So tell me, have you ever killed anyone with your bare hands?”

I bit my tongue before Not yet could escape, and finally responded, “I’m not going to answer that.” I found him presumptuous and rude. Dignifying that question with any answer would reward bad behavior.

My interrogator, however, seemed to believe he had extracted an admission from me, and spent the next fifteen minutes smirking triumphantly and continuing to probe. Finally, quoting Georgette Heyer, I said, “Since you will have it, then I take leave to tell you your manners belong in a tap-room.” Then I left.

The question, “Have you ever killed anyone?” should only be asked between intimates, and face to face.

This ought to be basic manners.

One good rule about manners comes from Robert E. Lee (not usually one of my favorite people), who said, “A gentleman never gives offense unintentionally.” This rule seems to have been forgotten. Another rule about manners: when you have done wrong, apologize promptly and fully. You may explain why you did or said something wrong, but you may not attempt to weasel out of the admission of wrongdoing. Otherwise, you have not apologized. You have compounded the insult.

Ace already expressed his dissatisfaction, Charles in his usual understated way has summed up my disgust, and many others have weighed in on the subject from both left and right. Fine, this is an important matter and ought to be discussed and debated. Here, though, let us consider Senator Richard Durbin’s so-called apology, issued today on the Senate floor in the light of the standards articulated above, shall we?

"I am sorry if anything I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy.

"I am also sorry if anything I said cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military ... I never ever intended any disrespect for them. Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line to them I extend my heartfelt apology," Durbin said, choking on his words.

This is the heart of this “apology”. The words look fine, at first glance. But look deeper.

Durbin says, “I am sorry if anything I said caused any offense and pain.” Not, “I am sorry that I offended and hurt you.” One apologizes because one caused offense and pain. The word “if” throws blame for the offense back on the listener – it’s your fault, because you are irrationally sensitive. Durbin continues, and compounds the offense, with, “Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy.”

Really, sir? Then why didn’t you say, “I made a comparison that demeaned the tragedy of the Holocaust, and I wish to take back my words.” The prepared sentence he spoke implies that his comparison did not demean or diminish the horror of the Nazis’ death camps.

The next paragraph is worse. Let us review his original statement:

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings," Durbin said last week.

I wrote an essay around this speech by Durbin, and explained that there is no equivalence. The e-mail from August of 2004 does not evoke a lovely summer evening; it pales in comparison to the regimes he cites. This statement is so divorced from the realities of the situations as to invite my contempt.

This statement spits on the honor of the armed forces, present and former.

This statement sneers at the horrors of the 20^th Century, and its innumerable victims.

Now, to atone for these words would require an eloquence not seen in this country since the death of Lincoln, and a depth of contrition no modern politician seems capable of feeling. We cannot hold Durbin to the standard of Lincoln. We can hold him to the standards of a proper apology.

He fails this minimal standard.

As in the first paragraph of his apology, he uses the weasel word “if.” “I am also sorry if anything I said cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military ...” No, Senator. The only acceptable phrasing is, I am also sorry that I cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military. His remarks were not off-the-cuff, but prepared in advance, and no rational person can read the Senator’s speech and not believe his words were taken exactly as they were intended.

“Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line to them I extend my heartfelt apology.”

Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line?

Senator Durbin, that’s not an apology. It’s an additional insult. There was a time when that sentence alone would have made men and women with a proper sense of decency demand the Senator’s retirement from public life.

True apologies are sincere, do not incorporate weasel words, do not blame the offended party for being offended, and do no attempt to dismiss the pain and offense. One may explain; one may not excuse.

In other words, one does not begin the explanation with the word but.

So when Durbin adds that he felt that he raised legitimate concerns about the treatment of detainees at Camp X-ray, we hear the “but” loud and clear. When coupled with his remarks on Thursday and Friday, that the public (including me and you) didn’t understand his historical analogies, it is clear to me that Durbin harbors a deep contempt for the American people. The Senator proffered a deliberate insult to the armed forces, then heaped onto it an insult to the intelligence and perception of those Americans who took umbrage. I am well acquainted with the practices of the gulag, of the concentration camps, and of the killing fields. I understood Durbin’s historical analogies very well. I utterly reject those comparisons; I take all parts of the insult as my own.

I count myself one of the injured parties.

Part of good manners is to accept expressions of remorse in the spirit they are offered. This means that we must exercise our judgment, and decide when the apology is sincere. Usually, one does not parse an apology. I would really like to believe in Durbin’s contrition, that he is heartily sorry, and has a firm purpose of amendment. Unfortunately, I cannot.

This so-called apology, Senator Durbin, compounds the original insult.

Apology not accepted, Senator Durbin.

06/29/2005 07:46:08 PM -0700

Update on the "Memo"

I performed a cursory search for the memo Senator Durbin used in his speech last Tuesday, and did not find it. Fortunately for me, and anyone else confused about the context of the "memo", some people are better at such searches than I.

LGF reader tbrosit found the document - not a memo but an e-mail - among the documents released to the ACLU. The text is mostly what Durbin read. The date is from August of 2004; the e-mail does not detail when the FBI agent observed these actions.

There is very little as important as accuracy. Durbin's failure to inform us of the details of the e-mail is annoying.

For those of you with Acrobat, the link is here. It's from the huge dump of material given to the ACLU.

06/29/2005 07:46 PM -0700

In Search of Perspective

Here’s a Definition of "perspective" so we do not have to argue about what words mean. In today’s essay, we are using definition 3b – that is: Subjective evaluation of relative significance; a point of view. Everyone has a point of view; with every decision, we apply a subjective evaluation of relative significance. Do not pretend otherwise: one could not possibly make a choice among spaghetti sauces at the supermarket without considering the relative significance of say, portabella mushrooms or basil and garlic vis-à-vis spinach fettuccine.

In political matters, to create a coherent basis for actions, one must have perspective and articulate it effectively. Today brought a fine example of applying perspective to my attention: America has always been evil! The trouble being, as Dorothy Dunnett pointed out, “You can stretch perspective so far that it doesn’t apply to the human condition any more.”

And how!

Leaving aside quibbles with his arguments, to say nothing of my personal, wholesale rejection of his perspective, if we adopt Howard Zinn’s view of American history and behavior, we arrive at moral paralysis; the burden of cruelty would crush us, leaving no room for action. Worse, Zinn’s view, which lades the shoulders of present individuals with the yoke of historical guilt is a moral abdication. I have no idea what my ancestors back to the fall of man were up to. I am dead certain, given human nature, a few of them were villains of at least minor proportions. Had I all their sins and peccadilloes constantly before me, and did I believe I bore responsibility for those crimes and misdemeanors, I would be unable to do more than cower under the covers, whimpering.

To accept Howard Zinn’s perspective is to embrace national suicide.

This is not to say we ought to pretend there are not ugly parts of history, or not teach them, or ignore them. However, history and its lessons do not mean we in the here-and-now carry the mark of Cain and all his guilt. Justice requires that we are responsible only for ourselves, not our ancestors. President Bush is responsible for how he chooses to use American power, with the advice and consent of Congress and the people they represent. Bush is not responsible for all American history, or even for his immediate predecessor and his administration.

More, Zinn’s essay is implicitly conspiratorial. He does not come right out and posit a secret group, controlling all of American history and causing all these evil actions he cites. Howard Zinn would, I am sure, react to this accusation with puzzled indignation. But his insistence that, from 1630 to the present day, Americans have been imbued with a notion of “exceptionalism” that has justified violent expansion and frequent massacres lacks only some secret faction dictating those actions to be a conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy theory is a perspective, though is not a useful one; conspiracy theory removes all necessity for action on the part of its believers, because it excuses inaction by saying, “You’re just a helpless cog, poor dear. Nothing you do will make any difference.” Again, this point of view is a moral abdication. Again, this subjective evaluation leads to helpless moral equivalence: rewards and carefully metered punishments are identical to beatings; psychological pressure is identical to torture; America is on the exact same moral plane as totalitarians and monsters.

Once you have arrived at this point, you might as well drink the kool-aid. It will certainly be a quicker and less dreadful way to leave the world than the others coming to a city street near you. Not to mention, it will spare you the agony of moral choices and moral action.

This unhealthy and repugnant mind-set has been on florid display this week among Democrats in the United States Senate and Congress. Consider Dana Milbanks’ incredulous, mocking account of House Democrats conducting a pseudo-hearing. Consider Senator Richard Durbin, and his much discussed, never to be sufficiently condemned, speech about Guantanamo Bay.

My partner Hardnose is also indignant. In point of fact, comparing our levels of outrage is a little like comparing the explosive power of a firecracker to Krakatoa. Both of us, however, want immediate, emphatic condemnation of Durbin’s speech from all our congress-critters, in the House as well as the Senate. He has a suggestion: if, by, let’s say, Tuesday, your senators and congressional representative have not repudiated and condemned Durbin, send each one a white feather.

Hey, it’s inexpensive, easily done, and properly symbolic. Think of it as a start in combating the pervasive moral cowardice of the Democratic party.

Moral Equivalence?

After (with my gratitude) reading my blog’s initial couple of entries, LGF reader Beagle remarked that he was worried by my Manichean tendencies. This has been bothering me since I read his comment; Beagle didn’t mean it unkindly, and I do respect him, as he actually knows what he means when he uses the word Manichean.

However, I am not a Manichean.

On its simplest level, and it is a gross over-simplification, to be a Manichean is to posit an exact equivalence between good and evil, dark and light. Dark started the conflict by invading the light. I do not believe any such thing; I am no believer, as I’ve said before. However, it is, in my not-so-humble view, literally insane to posit the notion that God (or Goddess, I am not apt to argue for a male Supreme Being) would create his equal and opposite.

Further, it unnecessarily complicates theology and the cosmos to posit a Creator who creates equal and opposite delegates of his authority, then withdraws to watch it all play out. Think about that too long, and you will arrive at a point where you think rather badly of God.

C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to The Screwtape Letters reminds us, rather tartly, that the Adversary’s proper equivalent in the heavenly hierarchy is the Archangel Michael, not God. Anyone with a proper grasp of theology knows that the Devil cannot act, he can only persuade; Satan is not referred to as the Great Deceiver for nothing. (Incidentally, and I won’t go into this unless I’m specifically asked, this was a terrible complication for those prosecuting the imaginary crime of witchcraft.) As beings with free will, we always have a choice between good and evil.

Humans are not inherently evil; theologically speaking, that’s a nonsense statement. Human beings are, indeed, fallen, because we know the difference between good and evil, and sometimes, regrettably, choose evil. By the age of seven, children know the difference between right and wrong (as mediated by their parent culture), provided their parents have bothered to have a consistent system of rewards and punishments. Cultures can and have changed and evolved over time, and (gasp!) some are better than others. (That is a subject for another time, when I’m feeling extremely brave and ready to discuss the huge, unwieldy subject of civilization. Not tonight, though.)

Since we know the difference, and can – should we choose to exercise our brains for half a second – distinguish degrees of good and evil, there is no excusing the current fashion for moral equivalence. A morning meal may be a physical requirement for people; various foods may be dictated by culture; but there is a distinct difference between your omelet and casually scarfing down the meat of a human being. No matter how some people will try to pretend otherwise, the difference is perfectly clear.

On Tuesday, June 14, 2005, Senator Durbin of Illinois rose and, according to the Congressional Record, read in one paragraph from an FBI report on the treatment of illegal combatants under interrogation. This one paragraph, lifted without context or clear reference, read:

On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ..... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Since Senator Durbin failed to supply a proper reference, and an admittedly cursory search for the document from which this paragraph was taken has not revealed it, I am unclear on when this was written, and under what circumstances. This paragraph is not pleasant reading – but just as at Abu Ghraib, one cannot help but wonder if the abuses depicted have not already been addressed, and the perpetrator or perpetrators punished. Furthermore, without condoning the actions, I am not inclined to feel all that much sympathy, for these “detainees” were captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

All right, so the treatment is not – as someone put it (and please don’t hesitate to take credit, as I can’t find the source) – a four-star suite at the Bellagio. But Durbin went on to say:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Take a breath. Count to ten. Now do it again. Try to calm down, because the rest of the discussion isn’t going to work if we don’t keep our heads.

First of all, unlike the poor rabbits described in Gulag Archipelago, no one has been arrested for nothing at all, no one is being forced to confess to an imaginary crime, and no one is going to receive a bullet in the back of the neck at the end of their interrogation. There is no “conveyor”, there is no order to “beat and beat again”, the detainees will not be subjected to a sham trial, sent to a forced labor camp, or taken down to a basement and shot. Their bodies will not be dumped into secret, unmarked graves, their wives and friends will not follow them down the same road, and their children will not be shipped to “homes” where they will be treated as wild animals.

Unlike Osip Mandelstam, not one of the men detained is being held for having written a satirical poem about George Bush. Or, for a more recent example, no detainee will be falsely imprisoned, force-fed and locked in solitary confinement as was Irina Ratushinskaya.

Look at Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, or Harvest of Sorrow. Read, if you have the stomach and the heart, The Gulag Archipelago, and the many narratives of Soviet and other totalitarian victims and prisoners. Consult The Black Book of Communism. Then read the initial paragraph Senator Durbin read into the Congressional Record; you will search in vain for anything even vaguely resembling the wholesale, deliberate destruction of innocent human beings.

The interrogators, American service people, have a chain of command and a code of conduct. If they behaved unacceptably, they will be prosecuted and punished for their actions. They will not evade proper accountability. In all likelihood, they have already been punished. If, as I think, this report is from 2002 or 2003, the relevance of Durbin’s outburst is even more suspect. When the whole story is dispassionately investigated – and that’s not what Senator Durbin intended with this speech – you will find neatly docketed consequences for any infractions of proper conduct.

Bad behavior by American interrogators is not morally equivalent to the behavior of the Nazis, the Soviets, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein.

Since Senator Durbin can make such a comparison, he does not belong in the United States Senate.

Welcome

Does the world need another blog?

The answer to this question is no.

Examine the blogroll of your favorite opinionated soul, and you will see at least a dozen, and that’s anyone who isn’t just link-besotted. The blogosphere is crowded, and just about every possible shade of interest is represented. Many blogs die of non-posting. The writer thought he had something to say, and then found he didn’t. That could be my fate.

Why do I think I you should read me?

This is a roundabout way of answering the question, by the bye, and typical of my way of writing. If it annoys you beyond bearing, stop now, thanks for dropping by, and I’ll hope you didn’t leave mad. I think, though, that I do have something to say.

So the format for this will be mostly essays, probably not posted more than once a week. If this works out, you get to read it in progress.

This blog is not about current events, though there will be some comments. But mostly, this is going to be about what I’m reading and how it relates to other things I’ve read or have been thinking about.

“Baboons are scared of us.”

So what’s up with that?

All you need to know about humanity is summed up in that one statement.

Before you dismiss my view as unnecessarily harsh, remember that I’m the “squishy” conservative in my household. I think we are fallen, not inherently evil. We have in us the Old Adam, and he’s not nice. We can be redeemed, or redeem ourselves. I am not a believer, though many of the terms I use have theological implications. However, C. S. Lewis had a definite point in Mere Christianity – “Love thy neighbor as thyself” simply means cutting others exactly the same slack that you – in all your self-love and self-indulgence – cut yourself. Therefore, I’m squishy. I cut you my slack. Say thank you.

This does not, however, change my basic view of human psychology or nature, or whatever you want to call it.

Heinlein pointed out in Starship Troopers that, if a child discovers that he can with pleasure and profit bully and abuse other people, he will never stop doing so. Human beings are the product of what gives us pleasure and profit. At no point (pace PETA) has it given (the surviving) humans pleasure or profit to allow any other animal to replace us at the top of the food chain. Baboons give us a run for the money in terms of team-work, planning and execution of heinous acts. But they’re scared of us, and they should be, because we’re better at it than any other creature Earth has spawned.

Our only true competitor and predator is…we ourselves.

Article 1

Propagandized

Initially, this post was intended to begin with a chosen snippet, written by some poor writer for the Main Stream Media (MSM) who provided a particular example of the mind in thrall to propaganda. After scanning Little Green Footballs today, I realized the examples were far, far too numerous – a positive embarrassment of riches. I am also forced to admit that no one example is egregious enough to compare with the book I’m going to use to make my point.

For an example of A Propagandized Mind (the link will take you to Amazon’s page), try this book.

Special Tasks

Pavel and Anatoli Sudaplatov with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schechter

1994 – 1995 Little, Brown and Company, Inc. (527 pgs.)

Pavel Sudaplatov refers to himself as an “inconvenient witness” and he is that, though not as he means us to take it. He is an unapologetic monster.

To play absolutely fair, Sudaplatov began his career as a Chekist (a particularly nasty variety of secret policeman, for those of you not steeped in Soviet lore) at twelve years old, following a loved and admired older brother out of the Ukraine and into the Russian civil war. By the time he was fourteen, in 1921-22, Sudaplatov was helping run a safe house where “Ukrainian gangsters” (or Nationalists, take your pick) held negotiations with the Red Army.

Before turning thirty, Sudaplatov undertook to first infiltrate the Ukrainian nationalists in Germany, and then to murder their leader, Konovalets. (Sudaplatov accomplished this with a bomb concealed in a box of chocolates.) He supervised the agents who murdered Trotsky in 1940. These were “special tasks”, and Sudaplatov suffers no crises of conscience for having carried them out. The murders of “Trotskyists” in Spain; the murders of Russian émigrés; the entrapment, kidnapping and murder of former ideological opponents; the infiltration and disruption of external and internal discussion groups; every one of these actions he undertook, ordered and/or supervised without the slightest qualm.

Why?

At one point, Sudaplatov writes (p. 69), “The order to eliminate Trotsky did not surprise us, because for more than ten years the OGPU and NKVD had been engaged in a war with Trotsky and his organization. For us, enemies of the state were personal enemies.”

The real tragedy of these special tasks is this: they were not necessary.

Consult Isaac Deutscher’s hagiographic three-volume biography of Trotsy to clarify this issue. From his unceremonious expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1927 to his murder in 1940, Lev Davidovich lacked influence. His remaining acolytes split as often and acrimoniously as Protestant sects in the 17^th century. They are still at it.

Were there actual Trotskyists in Spain? Refer to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia; some faction was labeled “Trotskyite”, and most of them died, bewildered, at the hands of their allies and fellow communists. To most people, in or out of the communist forces in Spain, the difference was irrelevant, the worst sort of hair-splitting.

Some of the Ukrainians had joined the Nazis and even attended party school. But generally speaking, this was a minority, and there was little left of Ukraine’s nationalists. There was talk about mounting terrorist acts, but very little action. These groups were dying. They had no money, and less support with each passing year. During the Second World War, a few bands of native Ukrainian partisans did take up arms against the Soviets. After the terror famine and the terrible purges of the ‘30’s, this is not too surprising; some did identify themselves as Banderists (Bandera being the nominal head of the Ukrainian national movement in exile). More often, however, this title was imposed by their Soviet oppressors.

As to the émigrés: if ever there existed harmless people, the Russian émigrés of the 20’s and 30’s were they. They hated the Bolsheviks, with cause. They would do the Soviet government a bad turn if they could. But they were not skilled in the arts of conspiracy; they spent most of their time earning a poor living in Western Europe, and talking. They talked a lot. They hatched grandiose schemes, published some newspapers, wrote books, and debated every possible issue endlessly. They did absolutely nothing.

All of this is a matter of record. A casual reading of readily accessible authors (Robert Conquest, Adam Ulam) will make the sheer inanity of many of Sudaplatov’s pre-war “special tasks” crystal clear. Since Sudaplatov lived in the West while infiltrating Konovalet’s organization, he could, had he chosen to open his eyes, have seen it as well. Or, in retrospect, he might have noticed his tasks were irrelevant.

To read his memoirs is to encounter a mind so steeped in Stalinist propaganda that even in the 1990’s, Sudaplatov relates his story with cheerful presumption. Granted that he missed the worst of the purges, he still fails to acknowledge that he served a monstrous and criminal regime.

So how does this relate to our present era, and our cultural dilemmas?

Consider the current uproar over Guantanamo Bay, and general hyperventilation by people who ought to know better. The press breathlessly emphasizes allegations of Koran abuse (including a pure accident), harsh interrogation techniques (with screams of “torture!” floating everywhere), and never stop to say, Excuse me, this is ridiculous. The writers have been so thoroughly propagandized that they are in danger of fainting dead away at the thought of treatment being meted out to terrorists that wouldn’t have fazed them coming from, in James Lileks’ immortal phrasing, a high school gym teacher.

Sometimes it seems that every story leads with negative information about the United States government or military. Every story emphasizes the actions of the “insurgents”, and excuses or palliates the behavior or words of terrorist sympathizers.

This is not malice, though I sometimes find myself attributing such to the writers and editors of the MSM. This is the product of people who have been propagandized within an inch of their lives.

Reporters and editors have had it drummed into them that, in the past, the press assisted in the “dehumanization” of the foes of the United States. Reporters have been taught that this is the ultimate sin – worse than inaccuracy, worse than serving as a propaganda arm for an enemy that would destroy them without thought. These writers have been so propagandized that like the poor fool Bukharin, they can imagine no life outside of their “party”, and rush to aid those who will – if merciful – put a .22 bullet into the backs of their necks.

Sudaplatov was born in 1907; his memoirs were published in 1994-1995. After almost seventy years, looking back, he sees nothing to be ashamed of.

When our propagandized opinion makers look back, I fear that they will not be ashamed either.

I am very sorry for the monster that was Sudaplatov. I am filled with sorrow and compassion for the prisoners of modern propaganda who write for the MSM. I understand them.

Summer Vacation Thoughts

A Meditation on Manners

Update on the "Memo"

In Search of Perspective

Welcome

Article 1

Article 2

May 10, 2005

UPDATE