Category: Off-topic

The Soviet collectivization of farms by Stalin and the Ukraine terror famine led to the most horrendous events of the 20th century. Below are some first hand accounts from the book, “The Harvest of Sorrow”.

Up to 15 and even 20%, especially young children, are reported dying in transit, as was to be the case again in the 1940’s with the mass deportations of minority nationalities. Of course, the deportees were in every sort of physical condition, some of the women pregnant. A Cossack mother gave birth on a deportation train. The baby, as was usual, died. Two soldiers threw the body out while the train was on the move.

As people from the village began to flood Kiev looking for food, the Soviets made it illegal to feed them. Anyone caught helping them risked their lives and put their family in jeopardy. The result was the following:

In the morning horses pulled flattop carts through the city [Kiev], and the corpses of those who had died in the night were collected. I saw one such flattop cart with children lying on it. They were just as I have described them, thin, elongated faces, like those of dead birds, with sharp beaks. These tiny birders had flown into Kiev and what good had it done them? Some of them were still muttering, and their heads still turning. I asked a driver about them, and he just waved his hands and said: “By the time they get where they are being taken they will be silent too.”

Some people went insane.

There were people who cut up and cooked corpses, who killed their own children and ate them. I saw one. She had been brought to the district centre under convoy. Her face was human, but her eyes were those of a wolf. These are cannibals, they said, and must be shot. But they themselves, who drove the mother to the madness of eating her own children, are evidently not guilty at all!… Just go and ask, and they will all tell you that they did it for the sake of virtue, for everybody’s good. That’s what drove the mothers to cannibalism.

Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, thought Stalin was misinformed about what was taking place in Ukraine. But Stalin knew. He got reports from the OGPU on the millions that were dying. When she told him what was happening he dismissed it as ‘Trotskyite gossip’. Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide in the winter of 1932.
The record of western reporters was not good. Walter Duranty damned the truthful reporting of Gareth Jones. Walter Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize. Gareth Jones was murdered. The Pulitzer Prize board refused to revoke the Pulitzer Prize. Today, we have a massive decentralization of information thanks to the internet. The ‘gatekeepers’ of information at the New York Times have become a joke. This movie looks like a good one to catch.

Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear- the earth remains, slightly modified…Man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.
-Edward Abbey

The environmentalist movement has a complex and long history. Thomas Malthus wrote a book in 1798 called ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’. 170 years later, Paul Ehrlich would echo Malthus thesis in his book “The Population Bomb”. The book predicted “certain” world starvation by 1975 unless world’s population growth was halted. Ehrich’s first statement in the book reads “The battle to feed all of humanity is over”. Over the next few decades similar warnings were given by so called experts:
The earth was running out of oil, natural gas, base metals, etc.
The O-zone is being depleted.
We heard about global cooling, global warming, climate change, etc.
Senator George Mitchell wrote the book “World on Fire” in 1991.
Lowell Ponte wrote the book “The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun?” in 1976.
Since the internet, there has been a decentralization of information on a scale never before seen in the history of mankind. This allows an individual to make a video like the one below for $0.

30 years ago no one knew about the internet. We can forgive Severn Cullis-Suzuki and her parents. She had no way of knowing she would be a laughing stock three decades later. Greta Thunberg and her parents should know better. This video will be on Youtube forever. Just like Paul Ehrlich and Thomas Malthus, I suspect these two will only be remembered for how wrong they got it.
Vladimir Putin had a level headed response to Greta Thunberg:

I may disappoint you but I don’t share the common excitement about the speech by Greta Thunberg. No one has explained to Greta that the modern world is complex and different and … people in Africa or in many Asian countries want to live at the same wealth level as in Sweden. But when someone is using children and teenagers in personal interests, it only deserves to be condemned. I’m sure that Greta is a kind and very sincere girl. But adults must do everything not to bring teenagers and children into some extreme situations.

Climate change is a very complex subject. I know how hard it is to know something. Therefore, when I hear people speak about climate change, I am amazed they do not even realize that they have not done their homework to comment on the subject. Greta Thunberg does not even know the difference between temperature and heat, but she is given a platform to speak at the UN.
The amazing thing is this. No one believes in the disastrous effects of global warming. How do I know this?  If the world was ending in 12 years or governments were going to face financial ruin from climate change than 30 year bond markets would get no bid.
The price of real estate along the coast would be collapsing. Instead we see prices getting more expensive as you get closer to the coast. People would not be moving there, banks would not give 30 year loans and insurance companies would not insure these properties.
This is why I take survey polls about global warming with a grain of salt. Watch what people do, not what they say.

From the “Gulag Archipelago Volume II”:

There is a famous camp anecdote about a sentenced woman who for a long time could not get through her head why the prosecutor and judge at her trial had kept calling her “konny militsioner” (a mounted policeman), which was what she understood of “kontr-revolyutsioner” (a counterrevolutionary)! As one who has served time in camps and looked about, I can see this anecdote as fact.
A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn’t get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of Kaganovich. A customer observed this: Article 58, ten years (terrorism).
A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years.
A tractor driver of the Znamenka Machinery and Tractor Station lined his thin shoes for warmth with a pamphlet about the candidate for elections to the Supreme Soviet, but a charwoman noticed it was missing (she was responsible for the leaflets) and found out who had it. KRA-Counter-Revolutionary Agitation-ten years.
The village club manager went with his watchman to buy a bust of Comrade Stalin, They bought it. The bust was big and heavy. They ought to have carried it in a hand barrow, both of them together, but the manager’s status did not allow him to. “All right, you’ll manage it if you take it slowly.” And he went off ahead. The old watchman couldn’t work out how to do it for a long time. If he tried to carry it at his side; he couldn’t get his arm around it. If he tried to carry it in front of him, his back hurt and he was thrown off balance backward. Finally he figured out how to do it. He took off his belt made a noose for Comrade Stalin, put it around his neck, and in this way carried it over his shoulder through the village. Well, there was nothing here to argue about. It was an open-and-shut case. Article 58-8, terrorism, ten years.
A sailor sold an Englishman a ”Katyusha” cigarette lighter-a wick in a piece of pipe with a striking wheel-as a souvenir for one pound sterling. Subversion of the Motherland’s dignity-58, ten years.
A shepherd in a fit of anger swore at a cow for not obeying: “You collective farm wh–!” And he got 58, and a term.
Ellochka Svirskaya sang a ditty at an amateur concert which just barely touched on something sensitive. And this was open rebellion! 58, ten years.
A deaf and dumb carpenter got a term for counterrevolutionary agitation! How? He was laying floors in a club. Everything had been removed from a big hall, and there was no nail or hook anywhere. While he was working, he hung his jacket and his service cap on a bust of Lenin. Someone came in and saw it. 58, ten years.

 

 

Some interesting videos have been released when the police raided the Las Vegas shooter hotel room.

Naturally, there is still a lot of controversy and conspiracy theories around. I go back to Occam’s Razor for the Las Vegas shooting.
He had a sick fantasy about shooting into an open crowd.
He decided to go through with this sick fantasy.
He set up shop at a Las Vegas hotel and began to shoot into the crowd.
He ran out of targets, which is why he began to fire at the airport fuel tanks. This was the obvious reason he stopped shooting: No more targets. He had lots of bullets, just did not have anything to shoot at.
He already scratched his sick mental itch that he had to fire into a crowd.
He ended his life which was his plan all along.