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August 13, 2018
GET YOUR Space Force T-Shirt Right Here.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Social Justice Warriors Drive Lesbian Actress set to Play Lesbian Batwoman on the CW Off Twitter For Not Being Lesbian Enough and/or For Being an Inauthentically “Hot” Lesbian.
These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them, to coin an Insta-phrase.
DEMOCRACIES DIES IN BIKER BARS: Trump Posed With ‘Sexist’ Motorcyclist Patch Wearing Biker, and the Washington Post is on it.
The Washington Post published an article on Monday complaining that President Trump posed next to a biker wearing a “sexist” patch on his vest.
Trump met with supporters in the “Bikers For Trump” group over the weekend and posed for photos with some of the group’s members at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.
The bikers typically wear vests with dozens of various patches on them, and the Washington Post zoomed in on the photos of the bikers with the president to see what the patches said.
One of the patches seemed to ruffle the feathers of one reporter, who called it “sexist.” The patch in question features an image of a topless woman with guns covering her breasts and the caption, “I [heart] guns and t***ies.”
Clay Travis, call your office.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: The media’s blatant hypocrisy — even about media-bashing.
Welcome to the age of self-congratulatory media. “Democracy dies in darkness” goes the ridiculous tagline on The Washington Post’s front page. Reporters openly call themselves heroes and firefighters.
Yet when it doesn’t fit the standard left-wing narrative, our Guardians of the Galaxy are MIA.
On Sunday, the Unite the Right II rally of white supremacists fizzled out. Antifa demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., who gathered to mark the anniversary of the first Unite the Right rally, threw eggs at Secret Service, were arrested for assaulting a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat, launched fireworks and smoke bombs at police and assaulted NBC reporter Cal Perry. Perry had his camera knocked out of his hands while the protester screamed profanities at him.
The story appears on various media sites, and several reporters tweeted about the attack, but the outrage was muted. Instead, nearly every outlet went out of their way to gently describe the Antifa mob. The headlines at CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post made sure to call the group “anti-hate protesters.”
After two years of constant self-applause, and furrowed-brow concern about President Trump sowing mistrust in the media as well as possibly instigating violence against its members, where is the outrage when a reporter is physically assaulted?
Had it been an alt-right member doing the attacking, is there any doubt the story would lead all news shows and make the front page of all the major newspapers?
Also on Sunday, Mayor de Blasio sat down with Brian Stelter at CNN to continue his crybaby “News Corp is mean to me so I wish they’d disappear” tour.
Stelter had been pummeled on Twitter for glossing over the mayor’s comments when he originally made them the prior week. When de Blasio commented, “If you could remove News Corp from the last 25 years of American history, we would be in an entirely different place” some people reported it as an attack on the “press.” Stelter made sure to clarify that this was merely an attack on Rupert Murdoch and his properties. Doesn’t count!
On Sunday, Stelter let de Blasio’s ludicrous claims about The Post stirring up racial animosity by, for example, opposing David Dinkins, go unchecked. He mostly nodded along as the mayor ranted about what a better world it’d be if everyone just agreed with him.
Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with time slots and you won’t go far wrong.
INTERESTING: Glaucoma May Be An Autoimmune Disorder.
TEST DRIVE: 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Driven: Longer, Lighter, More Fuel Efficient, and Extremely Refined. My sister is looking to buy a brand-new truck — they’ve always bought heavily used ones — and is astounded at how nice they’ve gotten.
I mean, these are the big complaints in the review: “Interior materials don’t rise to luxury level, transmissions fall short of perfection.”
NBC OPINION: IT’S ‘LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE, BY DEFINITION, TO BE RACIST AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE.’
Wait until NBC discovers that it employs a gentleman named Al Sharpton.
KURT SCHLICHTER: They Are Not Never-Trump, They Are Never-You.
The recent utterly unsurprising utter capitulation by the Fredocons to the SJW/tech/media campaign to deplatform and silence any right-wing voice who is not trying to sell you a cruise cabin is a symptom of a bigger problem. It’s not a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome, though Trump has utterly deranged these pointy-headed geeks. It is a symptom of Conservative, Inc.’s contempt for you.
As usual, Kurt pulls no punches.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Antifa Is Just Plain Fa.
I don’t know of anybody, Nazi or anti-Nazi or otherwise, whose mind has ever been changed by a punch in the face. It’s never shown a guy like Ken Parker the error of his ways. That’s because violent rhetoric like this is just virtue signaling. It’s a way for liberals and leftists to remind all the other members of their chosen group that they still belong. “Hey guys, we’re just like the heroes on Normandy Beach. Yay!”
Speaking of which, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has deleted his tweet from last August comparing Antifa to the allies storming the beaches of Normandy. I wonder what changed his mind?
GOOD QUESTION: Why Does It Cost So Much to Educate a Child in America?
BREAKING NEWS FROM 1913: Democrats Now the Socialist Party.
Speaking of 1913, don’t miss the tweet regarding Woodrow Wilson at the end of Steve Hayward’s post.
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: HuffPo Reporter Urges Media Not To Cover Antifa Violence.
Andrew Breitbart’s eeeeevil plan for the Huffington Post continues to bear fruit.
21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: Where Are All The Hydrogen Cars?
DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: Don’t Say ‘Hey Guys!’ in The Workplace Anymore, advises CNN Money.
You can’t just clock in and focus on your job anymore, identity politics now dictates how you introduce yourself to a room of colleagues.
Julia Carpenter, CNN Money writer specializing in gender in the workplace, listed ways to avoid accidentally misgendering a coworker.
People who “identity as non-binary, gender non-conforming or genderqueer prefer “they/them” pronouns to reflect their identity and gender expression” but “for many workplaces, making space for non-binary people is tricky, because some people may prefer certain pronouns but present themselves in a more masculine or more feminine way.” This confusion can make coworkers, “misidentify them without even realizing their mistake.”
As Thomas Sowell wrote over 20 years ago in The Vision of the Anointed, on the left’s sustained attack on “The Generic ‘He:’”
Trivial as such crusades may seem, they have been very successful in changing the way people talk in the media, in academia, and in government. Not only is the generic “he” taboo in many quarters, the speech controllers have pressed on to new conquests, attacking such words as “layman,” “craftsman,” “actress,” or “matron,” which violate their unisex view of the world, and also proscribe such phrases as “to master a language” because it uses a sex-specific word. These examples are from an official guidebook put out by the Australian government, which shows how far such crusades have spread. An American guidebook, distributed internationally, declares that there is “a perfectly scientific, completely foolproof, and highly theoretical model for avoiding sexism on the job.” As so often happens, pretensions of “science” are the last refuge of those who offer neither the evidence nor the logic that are integral to science.
The net effect of all this is that young women, especially in educational institutions where they are bombarded with radical feminist propaganda, are led to believe that every use of the generic “he” in books of the past is proof of disdain or hostility toward women, when in fact such usage simply avoided cluttering up the language or forcing writers into strained constructions and awkward phrases. In short, the anointed are helped to make yet another group feel like victims and to regard the anointed as their rescuers.
Time-Warner-CNN-HBO is rapidly going full Airstrip One. In addition to articles advising on the newest advancements in woke pronouns and gender theory, Lena Dunham is happy to play Central Scrutinizer* and dox the daylights out of any employees she overhears speaking doubleplus ungood crimethink.
Exit question: Is “Hey You Guys!” still acceptable, or is Rita Moreno the next person on the CNN dox list?
* Sorry to cross the streams between Orwell and Zappa.
ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS THE NARRATIVE: New York Times Savages Republican Candidate By Omitting the Most Important Data.
“I like beer” used to be one of the few things a vast majority of Americans could agree on without it getting political. But as Ed likes to say, you might not be interested in the Gleichschaltung, but the Gleichschaltung is interested in you.
REVIEW: Kel-Tec RDB-S Survival Carbine. The review is by Oleg Volk, which is cool.
CHANGE: Mattis ‘in Favor of Warfighting Capability Organized Along the Lines’ of a Space Force. “Department will organize proposal ‘for efficiency and make sure it’s fit for purpose,’ then wait for Congress to act on things DoD can’t do.”
Can we please call it Starfleet?
AT LEAST THEY WEREN’T TIRED WHEN THEY WENT: Laziness led to extinction of Homo erectus.
INFLATION IS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE A MONETARY PHENOMENON: Prof. Steve Hanke has a suggestion (probably behind a paywall) for how Erdogan can save the Turkish Lira – institute a currency board. I’m not holding my breath.
PROCUREMENT BLUES: Army’s XM25 program officially goes kaput.
The ill-fated weapon, known as the XM25 and nicknamed “The Punisher,” was once hailed as a game-changer for ground troops who would be able to use it to target enemies hiding behind cover. But it came under closer scrutiny several years ago after schedule slippage, cost overruns and aborted operational testing in Afghanistan.
In 2016, the Pentagon inspector general recommended that the Army consider ending the program and instead invest its nearly $1 billion in funding elsewhere. The program remained in limbo since early last year, when the Army canceled its contract with main contractor Orbital ATK Inc., but an Army official overseeing the effort could not clarify its overall status.
The shoulder-fired, semi-automatic weapon was designed to fire 25 mm high-explosive grenades that burst in mid-air over enemy troops taking cover behind walls or inside bunkers or trenches where they’re difficult to hit.
It’s a shame they couldn’t make the thing work.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Most People Who Think They Have a Penicillin Allergy Are Wrong.
ROGER L. SIMON IS SKEPTICAL of Ed Morrissey’s defense of Keith Ellison.
BRACE FOR RESISTANCE MELTDOWN: FBI fires anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok.
RASMUSSEN: TSA Is On the Up-And-Up With Americans. “The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) now says that reports of possible cuts to screenings at smaller airports were merely part of a budget exercise to study cost-saving options.”
I’m not buying it.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Spike Lee Is Wrong About Racism in 2018.
FROM TYLER O’NEIL — WHO WAS THE PJ MEDIA REPORTER: Antifa Protester Yells at Police, Friend Knocks PJ Media Reporter’s Phone Out of His Hand.
YOU DON’T SAY: Nancy Pelosi Is Damaging Democrats’ Takeover Chances.
CLAIM: Russia’s Next Fighter Might Have a New Way to Shoot Down F-22s and F-35s.
I’ve noticed that the fighters Russia hasn’t built are always superior to the ones we have.
SHE’S ALSO A DEMOCRAT, THOUGH THEY DON’T GET AROUND TO TELLING YOU THAT UNTIL THE END OF THE STORY: She ran on responsible gun regulation, now she’s accused of killing her campaign treasurer.
EDITORIAL: Trump’s Anti-Press Talk Makes Us Feel Bad.
THE KIDS AREN’T ALL RIGHT: Sean Malone of FEE looks at the conflict between what we know about motivation from neuroscience and what today’s trendy philosophies tell kids. As Shawn says,
I contend that a lot of these ideas ultimately serve to destabilize young people’s sense of their own individuality and wreck their ability to deal with reality in ways that are most likely to leave them depressed and despondent.
Sounds right to me.
SICK MAN OF EUROPE: Turkey is failing primarily because strongman Erdogan doesn’t understand basic economics.
WHEELS TURNING, SLOWLY: Peter Strzok Fired From The FBI.
IN THE MAIL: From Barbara Oakley, Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens.
DON’T BE EVIL OR WHATEVS: Google Knows Where You Are, Even If You Disable Tracking.
ANALYSIS: Don’t expect Beijing’s South China Sea ‘breakthrough’ to weaken US ties with Asean nations. “While Chinese state media hailed a new code of a conduct in the disputed waters as a ‘rebuke for foreign meddling’, Southeast Asian states are likely to be keen to maintain long-standing ties to Washington.”
Indeed. China’s naked aggression in the region seems more likely to strengthen American ties to smaller nations in the region than anything else.
I WOULD CALL THIS PEAK TRUMP DERANGEMENT BUT I’M SURE WE’RE NOT THERE YET: Donald Trump broke the presidency. It’s time to get rid of the job altogether.
WAPO HEADLINE: “White-supremacist rally near White House dwarfed by thousands of anti-hate protesters.”
“Anti-hate” seems like a strange word to describe protestors who chanted hate against borders, police, and their own country.
#HIMTOO? Democratic Representative Keith Ellison Accused of Domestic Violence.
Ed Morrissey advises you to question the timing.
I FIRST MET GINA ELISE OF PINUPS FOR VETS OVER A DECADE AGO. She’s still at it, raising money and spirits for veterans around the country, along with a whole posse of other volunteers. Now there’s this pinup for vets, by a vet.
You can see her site, and buy her calendar, here.
YOU CAN’T TRUST SILICON VALLEY: Report: Google tracks users even with location history turned off.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Antifa, Omarosa and Much, Much More. “You can get a sense of the counter-protestors agenda by their chants like ‘cops and Klan go hand in hand’ and ‘No borders, no walls, no USA at all.’ Politico reports that ‘Some counterprotesters shot fireworks in the direction of police officers around the time that Unite the Right participants were escorted away. Some protesters also threw eggs at police officers’.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Don Surber: Newspapers have failed the First Amendment.
WALL OF WATER IN THE PACIFIC: Courtesy of U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing 2.
POLICE UNIONS ARE GOING TO BECOME RELIABLE GOP VOTES, AREN’T THEY? Police, Sessions slam Elizabeth Warren for calling criminal justice system ‘racist.’
LET’S GET FRACKING: $90 Oil Is A Very Real Possibility.
BELIEVE THE WOMEN: Domestic Abuse Allegations Surface Against Congressman Keith Ellison.
Related: A roundup at Power Line.
SO A HELPFUL READER BROUGHT THIS TO MY ATTENTION ON FACEBOOK YESTERDAY:
If you see it pop up on your feed, just send them an education link about that other holocaust, Holodomor.
Update: Holodomor.org seems to be having issues this morning, directing readers to a WordPress installation page. Hopefully they’ll get it sorted out quickly.
CHANGE: It’s America First in Markets as S&P Thrives in Trump Trade Haze: S&P 500 adds 6% in 2018, the rest of the world declines 5.8%. “With stress breaking out from Turkey to Russia, equities in China bouncing around to the tune of $100 billion a day and talk of contagion everywhere, U.S. shares are turning into the safest bet. The S&P 500 is up 6 percent in 2018 and the rest of the world is down 5.8 percent, the biggest split in four years. Credit the impregnable U.S. earnings fortress if you want, but it’s hard to ignore the fingerprints of another American institution: the president, whose campaign over trade has torpedoed progress that last year sent emerging market stocks soaring the most in almost a decade. The fruits of a coordinated global economic recovery may still be out there, but right now it’s mainly investors in the U.S. who are enjoying them.”
MEGALOMANIACAL NEW YORK-BORN POLITICIAN LETS HIS SECURITY HAUL AWAY REPORTER SIMPLY FOR ASKING A QUESTION. Of course, in this case, it’s Bill de Blasio having a New York Post reporter removed by his security guards for having the temerity to ask de Blasio about its “City for Sale” cover story regarding his administration’s many meetings with real estate lobbyists, so expect crickets from the media:
Earlier Sunday, de Blasio appeared on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” to discuss an interview last week with the Guardian, a liberal British newspaper, in which he criticized The Post’s parent company, News Corp, and its founder and Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch.
At one point, host Brian Stelter pressed de Blasio about his criticism of The Post, which the mayor has called a “right-wing rag.”
But in June, de Blasio had previously blasted the increasingly far left New York Daily News for their own coverage of the de Blasio administration’s many lobbyist meetings. Control-F and “Daily News” on CNN’s writeup of de Blasio’s appearance with Stelter returns zero results.
WELL, GOOD: U.S. Navy Boosts Submarine Plans As Tensions With Russia And China Worsen.
The Navy needs more attack subs. They are literally the only warships that can perform many of the missions they are assigned. During the Obama years, the rock-bottom number the Navy considered acceptable was 48, a number it will dip below midway through the next decade. But that goal was driven by a national security strategy that drastically under-estimated the threat likely to be posed by Russia and China — not to mention Iran and North Korea — in the years ahead. The strategy resulted in naval shipbuilding budgets being under-funded.
Today, things have changed. The Trump national defense strategy frankly acknowledges that Russia, China, and several lesser nations are “revisionist” powers bent on challenging U.S. interests. It also acknowledges that while America has been distracted fighting terrorists in Southwest Asia, those countries have made big strides in improving their military capabilities and fielding new warfighting technologies. President Trump’s big increase in defense spending last year was a recognition that threat levels demand more resources.
The Navy now has a new goal for its attack sub fleet. It wants 66 boats, a 38% increase over the plan inherited from the Obama years.
The brilliant strategic thinkers of the previous Administration seemed to have based their plans on the assumption that China and Russia were getting nicer, and that the oceans were getting smaller.
Plus, Lightning Deal, LINKYO Electric Knife Sharpener, Kitchen Knives Sharpening System.
I KEEP SEEING PEOPLE CIRCULATING THIS DUMB STUDY ON FACEBOOK, BUT WHEN WAS THE MINIMUM WAGE EVER ADVERTISED AS LETTING ONE PERSON RENT A TWO-BEDROOM APARTMENT? Minimum wage doesn’t cover the rent anywhere in the U.S.
BECAUSE SOCIALISM. NEXT QUESTION? Venezuela has dirt-cheap fuel, so why is driving nearly impossible?
Under the late Hugo Chávez, who ushered in Venezuela’s socialist revolution in 1999, a new constitution and numerous elections placed nearly all government institutions under the control of the ruling Socialist party.
This concentration of power was aided by a feuding opposition which carried out ineffectual campaigns and electoral boycotts. After Chávez died of cancer in 2013, he was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro who is even less tolerant of dissent.
Growing political authoritarianism has coincided with greater state dominance over the economy. But expropriations, price controls and mismanagement have led to a 40% contraction of the economy in the past five years.
Oil accounts for 96% of Venezuela’s export income but many foreign companies have been driven out and production has dropped to a 30-year low.
The resulting fiscal crisis has prompted the government to print more money, which has led to hyperinflation and a collapse of the currency.
It also means that the government can’t import enough food and medicine to meet demand.
Maduro has rejected economic reforms out of loyalty to socialism and because many government officials are allegedly getting rich off the economic distortions – through exchange rate scams and by selling scarce food on the black market.
Hand it to The Guardian’s Joe Parkin Daniels and Mariana Zúñiga for some refreshingly straight reporting.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: CNN calls marchers chanting ‘f*ck the police’ and throwing eggs ‘anti-hate groups.’
As a pioneering socialist once said, no enemies to the left.
HEY, IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’RE A TEA PARTY GROUP OR SOMETHING: IRS Grants Tax-Exempt Status To Lesbian ‘Pussy Church Of Modern Witchcraft’ That Excudes Men, Transgender People.
UNSUSTAINABILITY: US Spending On Interest Hits All Time High As Budget Deficit Soars To $684 Billion.
While out of control government spending is clearly a concern, an even bigger problem is what happens to not only the US debt, which recently hit $21.3 trillion, but to the interest on that debt, in a time of rising interest rates.
US government Interest Payments are already rising rapidly, and just hit an all time high of $538 billion in Q2 2018.
Interest costs are increasing due to three factors: an increase in the amount of outstanding debt, higher interest rates and higher inflation. Needless to say, all three are increasing; furthermore, a rise in the inflation rate boosts the upward adjustment to the principal of TIPS, increasing the amount of debt on which the Treasury pays interest, turbocharging the amount of interest expense.
Think about that: Just paying the interest on the debt isn’t much less than this year’s deficit.
BLUE WAVE: Democrats Shoveling Loads of Cash into Longshot Races. “Do the Democrats know something the rest of us don’t?”
You know the drill: Less time on the internet, more time volunteering or donating to a vulnerable candidate.
RICHLY DESERVED: The SPLC’s terrible year just got worse.
August 12, 2018
SARAH HOYT: We are the counterculture!
JOURNALISM: Media Ignores Fact That Cops And NBC Reporter Were Attacked At Charlottesville.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the silence makes perfect sense.
ROGER KIMBALL ON JOURNALISM: “Words are wonderful things — it’s sad to see how the Gray Lady twists them.”
THIS IS WHY WE NEED A WARP DRIVE: Interstellar Travel Requires a Long-Term Approach (and Humans Are Too Impatient).
JOURNALISM: CNN calls marchers chanting ‘f*ck the police’ and throwing eggs ‘anti-hate groups.’ Calling them “commies” would be more accurate, but wouldn’t support the narrative.
MICHAEL WALSH ON OMAROSA MANIGUALT, INTERNATIONAL WOMAN OF MYSTERY:
The president has nobody to blame but himself for this latest mess. Manigault had no business being in the administration in the first place (one suspect she was merely window dressing), and certainly evinced no sense of the seriousness with which she should have taken her job. But who needs honor when self-aggrandizement pays better? It’s taken Trump nearly two years to even begin to rid himself of his fondness for some of his old media chums, and to understand that in the Borgian shark tank of politics the only thing that matters to most “public servants” is money, power, and career advancement — by, as the Left constantly reminds us, “any means necessary.”
Read the whole thing.
JOHN HINDERAKER: The Latest on Keith Ellison’s Domestic Abuse Story [Updated].
21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: ‘Snapchat dysmorphia’ is a worrying new trend causing people to want to look like filtered selfies.
Related: Social Media as Social Disease.
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I THINK THEY SHOULD STOP PLAYING THEMSELVES IN A MOVIE THAT’S RUNNING IN THEIR HEADS WHILE THEY’RE DOING THEIR ACTUAL JOBS: Journalists need to stop playing themselves in movies.
MSM NARRATIVE FAIL: ‘Unite the Right’ Rally: White Nationalists March in D.C.
It’s not until the fifteenth paragraph that the New York Times bothers informing its readers of a crucial detail: “The Unite the Right group planned to have up to 400 people at the rally … though the group was considerably smaller.” So all this media hoopla for a few dozen losers, because it feeds into the media’s preferred narrative that Trump has brought us to the verge of racist-fascist takeover of the U.S.?
UPDATE: Even then, the Times isn’t being completely forthright. “Considerably smaller” apparently means around thirty people. My friend has more people than that playing role-playing games in his basement this weekend, but the MSM doesn’t seem interested in that.
MORE: The Times has now completely rewritten the story, now emphasizing the “low attendance” of around “two dozen.” Some of my local friends were literally scared for their safety because of the way the media all last week suggested that thousands of violent neo-Nazis were about to descend on D.C. Someone should be held accountable, but won’t.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON THE FILTERING OF SOCIAL MEDIA: “The best way to avoid being blindsided is to retain a robust broadband capability. But with the elites increasingly unwilling to entrust the deplorables with that responsibility and the rise of political correctness, the West can gradually lose the ability to listen to unfiltered signals, including ambient noise — and be fed nothing but pasteurized, fact checked and filtered narrowband output. While prior censorship will provide the public with the illusion that it is well-informed in reality the opposite will be true. They will be surrounded on every side by artificially created black holes in the water. We will eventually find out the monsters have been beside us all along, but too late.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The hypermasculinity of homeless men is extremely problematic, and Erin Dej, a criminologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario is on it.
NEVER TRUST A “MALE FEMINIST:” “A prominent male feminist deferred a sociology award last week over what he called ‘rumors’ about his professional conduct, but now a former student of his is putting a name — and details — to the claims.”
THEY OMITTED THIS FROM MY CPR CLASS: Two Doctors Figured Out How To Treat A Centaur Having a Heart Attack.
DON’T GET COCKY: It’s Been A Bad Week For Liberals.
‘WE ARE NOT CATTLE, WE’RE PEOPLE:’ EVERYDAY HELL IN STALIN’S LABOR CAMPS.
The book starts with an arduous journey through a country Grinkeviciute and her fellow deportees don’t see as theirs (the USSR annexed Lithuania in 1940, and mass deportations began shortly before the German invasion the following year). They are brought to Siberia and left on an island with no vegetation, where they have to build a fish processing factory — but first, a place for themselves to live. Starvation, hard labour and diseases are such that many don’t make it through the winter, and those who do are reduced to a pitiable state, constantly looking for anything that can be burned or eaten. ‘We are not cattle, we’re people,’ Grinkeviciute repeats as she records it all. ‘Nor must we ever forget it.’
Reading the book, it is hard to decide what’s more horrific: to go through this everyday hell when you are ‘14 going on 20’, or to relive it when you are 20 and waiting for the nightmare to start again. Is the author a survivor trying to deal with her trauma, or a writer capable of saying things that cannot be imagined?
Flash-forward to the 21st century, and totalitarian socialist regimes continue to be totalitarian socialist regimes: “Gay McDougall, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited estimates that 2 million Uighurs and Muslim minorities were forced into ‘political camps for indoctrination’ in [China’s] western Xinjiang autonomous region.”
