Russia's Gas and Oil Pipelines

Each country is a "prisoner of its own geography," and that geography dictates what kind of resources it has. Whatever resources countries have, they are the most powerful weapons.

Russia's most powerful weapons right now are gas and oil, with nuclear missiles coming in second.

Why are gas and oil powerful weapons?

Because 25 percent of Europe's gas and oil supplies come from Russia. Latvia, Slovakia, Finland, and Estonia are 100 percent dependent on Russian gas; the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Lithuania are 80 percent dependent; Greece, Austria, and Hungary 60 percent. Half of Germany's gas supply comes from Russia.

Major pipelines run east to west out of Russia, some oil, some gas.

Via the Baltic Sea in the North there is the Nord Stream route (which the Ukrainians blew up this year) which connects with Germany.

Below that, cutting through Belarus, is the Yamal pipeline which connects to Poland and Germany.

In the South is the Blue Stream which takes gas to Turkey via the Black Sea.

There was a planned South Stream to go into Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Italy but it was scuttled because EU countries put pressure on these countries and Bulgaria pulled the plug by saying that the pipelines could not come across its territory.

Putin reached out to Turkey with a new proposal, the Turk Stream. The Turk Stream proposal would have circumvented Ukraine.

To prevent Kremlin from turning the gas off, Americans strategized and came up with a plan to liquefy natural gas (the gas that Americans will be banned from using in gas stoves and heating) and ship it to European coastlines where the LNG (liquefied natural gas) will be turned back into gas.

Europe has to build more LNG terminals; Poland and Lithuania are already building terminals and the Czech Republic is building pipelines connecting to those terminals.

The problem is that piped gas is cheaper than LNG gas.

Russia is responding by planning pipelines going southeast to China in hopes of selling gas to them.

In the case of oil, for each one dollar drop in the price of crude per barrel, Russia loses $2 billion in revenue and its economy can take a hit.

Another terrible issue Russia faces is demographics, population decline. Losing men in battle does not help the situation.

The average life expectancy for a Russian male is 65 and, excluding Crimea, there are now 144 million Russians even though its territory is so vast, stretching over 11 time zones. Of the 193 U.N. member states, Russia is in the bottom half in terms of average life span.

Most western states are experiencing a population decline as well.

(data from Prisoner of Geography by Tim Marshall, 2015)

My Rant

Romania is practically in the backyard of both Ukraine and Russia. As such, the Romanian people had to accept Ukrainian refugees and to live in fear of an eventual Russian occupation. Strangely though, non-western sources reported that more Ukrainian refugees have sought refuge in Russia than anywhere else in Europe.

Lately, Romanians are up in arms because, as part of EU, they must tighten their belts too and reduce electricity consumption in order to satisfy the EU-regime's demands that they all punish Putin and place economic sanctions on purchases from Gazprom gas.

I am not sure that the EU elites have consulted their citizens in making such a decision. After all, the elites are not going to suffer during any harsh winter when the temperatures will drop – they will be cozy in their well-heated mansions.

The German grocery chains in Romania, to be in lockstep with the directives from the EU-mother ship, are reducing their daily operating hours in order to consume less electricity and natural gas.

Romanians who had lived and suffered under the communist regime’s draconian shortages of electricity, water, natural gas, and hot water, are in fear of finding themselves again in the dark and cold like they were under the brutal and inept communist control of Ceausescu and his Bolshevik cronies.

The younger population fears nothing – they were not alive during such horrible times. Generation Z and others, tethered to TikTok and social media via smart devices, are enchanted by the fact that there are some NATO troops, especially American, on Romanian soil at the air base in Kogalniceanu.

They are sure that the NATO troops, especially the Americans, would defend the country against an onslaught from Russia, should the crazy Putin decide to invade. Older generations are too lulled into a false sense of security under the banner that used to be true during WWII period, "the Americans are coming, and they will save us."

Russia’s Veto Saved the Fossil Fuels for Now

In the 1980s, the environmentalists believed that using paper grocery bags harms the environment by excessive deforestation, so they moved in the direction of replacing the paper grocery bags with plastic ones. It made sense, plastic bags made from petroleum by-products were certainly cheaper and more plentiful.

Fast forward to 2021, environmentalist governments in counties like Fairfax, Virginia, moved to replace the plastic bags with paper bags by charging a tax of 5 cents per plastic bag previously given free (included in the price because nothing is free). Furthermore, a fine of $500 will be levied on anyone who dares to leave grass and other yard clippings on curbside in plastic bags other than heavy paper bags.

Fossil fuels have become environmentally and politically such a Democrat hot potato that they have been labeled public enemy number one, including plastics.

What is Fairfax County and other like-minded counties around the nation doing with the 5 cents tax per bag, or 8 cents in other places? Will they fund the bloated Democrat government or their guaranteed basic income schemes? And how is this tax going to solve the manufactured global warming which gave rise to a very lucrative climate change industry and a huge money-maker?

When Amazon and other online retailers run out of places to buy cheap shipping boxes, I wonder which forests are they going to cut down, and can excessive demand for paper and carboard boxes keep up with supply and with tree growth?

The U.N. Security Council moved to vote on December 13, 2021, on a resolution on climate change co-authored by Ireland and Niger, under the guise that adverse climate change can “lead to … social tensions …, exacerbating, prolonging, or contributing to the risk of future conflicts and instability and posing a key risk to global peace, security, and stability.” The concern is that climate change affects more negatively “women, children, ethnic minorities, and the most vulnerable.” Climate Change and Security: Vote on a Resolution*: What's In Blue : Security Council Report

According to the New York Times, “the resolution, which enjoyed wide-ranging support, would have significantly expanded the criteria used by the most powerful U.N. agency to justify intervening in armed conflicts around the world.” Russia Blocks U.N. Move to Treat Climate as Security Threat - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

It is claimed that the U.N. resolution was supported by 100 countries. Twelve of the fifteen Security Council countries signed on, but Russia’s veto blocked its passage. China abstained, and India, with its invited temporary membership status, also declared against the resolution. It is obvious that all three countries have similar interests, the survival of fossil fuels.

The U.S. government has been busy replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar power, doing severe damage to its economy and weakening its position in the world as a superpower. Biden closed the Keystone pipeline on day one and interrupted supply. “Nearly 40% of America’s electricity is produced from natural gas. When gas goes up, so does your electric bill.” Varney on the 'price' of Biden eliminating fossil fuels | Fox Business

The regime stopped giving new drilling permits on federal land and interrupted off-shore drilling. U.S. became again dependent on oil imports.  During President Trump’s administration, America became an oil exporter.

If the U.N. Security Council vote would have been unanimous in favor of the resolution, then members who would fail to take “drastic” measures recommended by “experts” to green their economies immediately, then they would have been considered aggressors against the global governance.

What might have been the expectations to green a country’s economy urgently? To close coal mines, oil derricks, refineries, oil and gas pipelines, and to give up fossil fuels immediately, with huge economic costs and disastrous economic results for that country.

If a country would have refused to comply, then the most intimidating measures against it would have been justifiable, imposing a global dictatorship of the U.N. to save the planet from climate change Armageddon.

So, Russia, China, and India, with one fifth of the world’s land surface and almost half of its population, saved fossil fuels for now. They viewed the manufactured global warming as a political fantasy and the preservation of their economies and of their economic development as most important for their peoples.

The West wants electric cars (they did not do so well recently in one foot of snow stuck for 24 hours on I-95 in Virginia), electric bikes, electric buses, ships, home and business heat and light from solar panels and wind turbines (when the wind blows and the sun shines, otherwise it is cold and dark). China wants coal burning power plants and builds them at high rates. Russia depends on natural gas and pipelines. And India is adding more coal mines.

Biden’s Green New Deal is neither new, nor green, nor a deal, it is a political plan aimed at killing fossil fuels and destroying the American economy that depends on the fossil fuels’ reliability and consistency.

So, the global warming/climate change scheme to enact global governance has been defeated so far. But the grand plan of one world government might still be realized. To achieve it now, the globalists are bringing out the pandemic green passports of Covid vaccination and the social scoring system which is already underway in China and in America.

Restricting movement of the population can be achieved in more ways than just taking away their fossil fuels; the government can cause severe inflation, double gasoline and natural gas prices, make their currency worth less, obstruct the supply chain of necessary goods and food, restrict access to clinics and hospitals, and restrict domestic and international travel. Under draconian Covid-19 lockdown rules, two years after the declared pandemic, Australians cannot travel more than 29 km from home. How Sydney residents can travel more than 5km from home for exercise (msn.com)

Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. has already enacted draconian rules that a person must show I.D. and a vaccine card to enter any business in D.C. It is racist to be asked to show I.D. to vote but it is necessary to enter a business.

If you have a green passport, you are not just vaccinated and boostered, but it is proof that you are now a compliant global citizen, and you can be given (by the global government) the privilege to enter buildings, to fly, to travel, to board a ship, to ride a bus, a train, you can use a bank, you can buy or rent a home, you can move from on town to another, and you can attend school. The social scoring system works wonders with population compliance and obedience under the Chinese communist dictatorship.

For now, Russia, China, and India have saved fossil fuels. I am not sure who or what is going to save a weakened America from its Marxist regime in control in Washington. They are busy printing money for trillion-dollar pet social programs and to finance national debt v. GDP which has reached astronomic proportions (127.61% federal and 141.24% total) at the time of this writing. The military is busy hunting down fictional, Democrat-invented systemic racism. U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time (usdebtclock.org)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Communism Never Died, It Was Cleverly Repackaged for the Historically Impaired and Useful Idiots

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”   Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn



Eugene Lyons
Photo: Wikipedia

In 1950 Congress passed the Internal Security Act and, four years later, the Communist Control Act. It condemned communism and the Communist Party of the United States. Today a sizeable portion of Congress actually belongs to the Communist Party U.S.A. or is sympathetic to it. In a recent poll, 40 percent of Americans prefer communism to capitalism.

In 1954 Congress delineated penalties for anyone belonging to a party or a group calling for the violent overthrow of the United States. Just being a member, however, was not enough reason for arrest or penalty.  Today members of Congress, public citizens, and illegals call for the overthrow of our government without any penalties.

The Internal Security Act of 1950 is known as the Subversive Activities Control Act or the McCarran Act, after its principal sponsor, Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nevada).  Congress enacted this federal law over President Harry Truman’s veto who was concerned about the fact that it curtailed the freedom of speech, press, and of assembly.

This act required communist organizations to register with a subversive activities control board; investigations were made of suspected persons who promoted a “totalitarian dictatorship,” either fascist or communist.  If persons were members of such groups, they could not become citizens or enter/leave the U.S.

If found in violation of the McCarran Act, a person could lose his/her citizenship for five years. There was an emergency statute that gave the President the power to “apprehend and detain each person as to whom there is a reasonable ground to believe that such person probably will engage in, or probably will conspire with others to engage in, acts of espionage or sabotage.”

The McCarran Act strengthened “alien exclusion and deportation laws” and, in times of war, allowed for the detention of dangerous, disloyal, or subversive persons. Picketing a federal courthouse was a felony if the intention was to obstruct the court system or influence jurors or other trial participants.

The House overrode Truman’s veto without debate by a vote of 286–48 the same day. The Senate overrode his veto the next day after "a twenty-two hour continuous battle" by a vote of 57–10. Thirty-one Republicans and 26 Democrats voted in favor, while five members of each party opposed it. (Trussel, C.P. September 24, 1950. Red Bill Veto Beaten, 57-10, By Senators.” New York Times)

Hollywood and the press dubbed this period of time the Red Scare and McCarthyism even though Sen. McCarthy, a war hero, was vindicated recently through the release of the Venona papers - there were people in Hollywood and other fields who were communist spies and sympathizers.

The Communist Party U.S.A. continues to exist today despite the claims from the left that the Red Scare had run its course. Communist-leaning organizations like the ACLU, labor unions, and NAACP are now an important part of the American political milieu. According to the left, “a more liberal Supreme Court began to chip away at the immense tangle of anticommunist legislation that had been passed during the 1940s and 1950s. Today, the Communist Party of the United States continues to exist and regularly runs candidates for local, state, and national elections.”

Today’s large percentage of the American public who think that it would be a great idea to live under communism as opposed to capitalism, are not unlike Eugene Lyons who wrote “Assignment in Utopia” in 1937, describing his communist activism and journalism in America and his journey to Russia where the reality and harshness of Bolshevism hit him squarely in the face.

Lyons was shocked to meet hundreds of Bolsheviks barking orders to ordinary Russians "in whom suffering seemed to have burned out all emotion." Only the charred husks of their character remained.” (p. 56)

In a mood of romantic anticipation, Lyons arrived in the “land of proletarian dictatorship,” expecting a country of milk and honey with beds of roses. What he found was a forlorn-looking station; “nor cold nor darkness could douse our high mood of expectation.”  It was a thrill to find his private, misguided, and misconstrued esoteric symbols of what he perceived to be Utopia on earth.

Negotiating a permit, a propusk, Lyons realized that the word loomed “gigantic on Russia’s horizon.” Russians needed a permit for everything. “It allowed me to enter the musty old building, to follow my secretary through a maze of dark corridors, and finally to meet the censors. As a correspondent dubbed “sympathetic” and “friendly,” Lyons was shocked that he could not see President Kalinin. Comrade Rothstein, his handler, raised his eyebrows at this American’s temerity. 

“Would a foreign correspondent arriving in Washington, have the nerve to ask to see President Coolidge," Rothstein asked.  Lyons realized that communism operated under a “barbed-wire of inaccessibility.” No press conferences twice a week, no press secretary, no questions taken from the media like in America. The Russian communist president was king, no consultations with his cabinet members or his Secretary of State.

Even an idealist like Lyons eventually realized that the Bolsheviks, “the newly powerful, like the newly rich, are on the alert against any slight to their dignity” and this dignity was boundless.

Lyons found the Soviet’s capital intensely cold, with frequent blizzards and snowstorms, and “the night that comes so soon after noon make it an aloof and forbidding place.”  Russians called Moscow “the largest village in their land.”

Prior to Bolsheviks taking power, “until food stringency and growing political fears put a damper on such things, Moscow was a city of endless parties.” The cobbled streets and broken side-walks were quite dangerous under tightly packed snow. “A few well stocked shop windows seemed ill at ease in their embarrassing prosperity among the dusty windows filled with debris and emptiness.” Such was the grim and dingy life of Russian communism. (p. 58)

In his ardent idealism and longing for the communist utopia, Eugene Lyons illogically gave the Russian revolution credit for everything cultural, art, opera, theater, parties, fun, which the country had actually inherited from the tsarist era.  Idealist rebels like Lyons did not notice the misery and shortcomings surrounding him or glossed over them.

Living in the Lux Hotel, an overcrowded tenement of cabbage odors of all nations, colors, and tongues,  Lyons described the tenants as “the international communist type – if not the same features, at  least the same negligent dress, unkempt hair, and the same expression of anxious devotion.”

Lyons said, “Never before had I witnessed so much naked, unashamed sycophancy and career-building concentrated under one roof.” And Uncle Kremlin was protecting them with police, was shadowing them with Russian spies, made sure they stayed in their communist graces. One wrong move or sentence and they were out.  Uncle Kremlin was “suspicious of his foreign nephews and nieces” who “might forget themselves and play with those horrid Trotsky brats.”

After six years of living in Moscow post Russian Revolution, Lyons realized that equality of communism was just an illusion. He was infected by the disease of economic change, from capitalism to communism. He said, “I was ready to liquidate classes, purge millions, sacrifice freedoms and elementary decencies, arm self-appointed dictators with a flaming sword – all for the cause. It was a species of revenge rationalized as social engineering. Then I saw these things in full swing and discovered that the revenge was being wreaked on the very masses that were to be saved by that cause.”

To say that today’s youth have learned nothing from history is an understatement. It is obvious in the Bolshevik and Stalinist cultural purge the BLM, a racist organization, and ANTIFA, a fascist organization, engage in largely undisturbed. No historical monument or statue seems to stand in their way of violence and destruction.

The New York Times published a sympathetic piece about communism, “When Communism Inspired Americans.”  At the time, it was a misguided fringe of deluded proletarian activists perhaps who worshiped at the foot of Soviet Bolshevism.

Vivian Gornick wrote, “I was 20 years old in February 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev addressed the 20^th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and revealed to the world the incalculable horror of Stalin’s rule. Night after night the people at my father’s kitchen table raged or wept or sat staring into space. I was beside myself with youthful rage. ‘Lies! I screamed at them. Lies and treachery and murder. And all in the name of socialism! In the name of socialism!’  Confused and heartbroken, they pleaded with me to wait and see, this couldn’t be the whole truth, it simply couldn’t be. But it was.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/opinion/sunday/when-communism-inspired-americans.html

It seems that a whole lot of Americans today, influenced daily by the main stream media and Hollywood, are “inspired” by Venezuela’s bankrupt and starving socialism, Castro’s murderous socialist regime, Che Guevara’s revolutionary and chic hat, North Korea’s “rocket” mad man who is starving his own people, and Mao’s Chinese Marxist model.

Useful idiots in America, fat and happy on capitalist food and goods, are deaf and ignorant of the words of Heinrich Heine who said, “Communism possesses a language which every people can understand – its elements are hunger, envy, and death.”

We don’t see any wannabe communists, actors, professors, and journalists rushing to turn in their American passports to move to those dictatorial countries although they threaten us plenty that they will leave America because they irrationally loathe the capitalism that gave them a good life, success, and wealth, and  President Trump, a supporter of freedom, sovereignty, and economic prosperity.

 

Butler on Business, February 21, 2014

Liberty Express Radio - my seven minutes on Ukraine with Alan Butler. I come on at the 2.5 minute mark.
http://host1.cyberears.com//24711.mp3

Shameless Communist Propaganda from the Left

Photo credit: Ileana Johnson, 2013

Lately I see  a lot of Marxist propaganda in our country, particularly in the MSM and in education. I know all the slogans because I lived the lies of the communist propaganda for 20 years.

I will start with equal pay, social justice, and equality across the board by government fiat. The commie social justice was equality of misery, hunger, poor, cold, and cramped living conditions, scarcity of food, basic needs, electricity, water, and everything else  spoiled brats in America take for granted that is produced by a free market model. The Sochi hotel accommodations are a case in point. To deal with the misery, the workers (the proletariat), which was all of us (except the ruling regime), joked that the “communists pretended to pay us, and we pretended to work.”  I choose capitalist inequality any day.

“Collectivism, community, and the common good” meant that the elites in power stole for their own good and used everything that the community worked hard to produce. We acquiesced like sheep because the commies had jails, jailers, security police, informers, and a well-equipped army. We had nothing but fear and oppression.

NBC’s Olympic opening ceremony introduction described communist Russia as “one of modern history’s pivotal experiments.”  To say that the murder and suffering of millions of citizens who disagreed ideologically with the Soviets, was a vital experiment is a slap in the face of decency and humanity. How can you say that murdering, torturing, oppressing, and imprisoning people for their thoughts was a vital experiment?  Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted on February 7, 2014, “The NBC Olympics is absurd. The Soviet Union was a ‘pivotal experiment?’ Really?  No, it was an evil empire that murdered and oppressed.”

A play at the Arena Stage in the D.C. area, “The Tallest Tree in the Forest,” dedicated praise to the communist Paul Robeson who traveled to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and defended the Soviet death machine, aiding and abetting evil. He never mentioned Holomodor, the genocide by man-made starvation in Ukraine in 1932-1933. He was also silent about hundreds of naïve Americans who left in the 1930s for the Soviet Union only to die in the gulags. http://alextimes.com/2014/01/the-cost-of-fighting-the-good-fight/

A self-described communist wrote, “Why you’re wrong about communism: 7 huge misconceptions about it (and capitalism),” in an ill-informed attempt to rewrite the dreadful history of communism by making fallacious comparisons to capitalism. The article is a disturbing list of how the far left views communism.

Progressives have been quite successful in indoctrinating Americans into believing their fantastic misrepresentation of history and I’d like to offer counterpoints.

1.       The author says, “Communism necessarily distributes property universally, but, at least as far as this communist is concerned, can still allow you to keep your smartphone. Deal?” Not true, the property is not distributed, you cannot make deals, property is confiscated at the end of a gun from all people and becomes the patrimony of the ruling elites who use it as they see fit. You would not have a smartphone in the first place unless someone from a free economy developed it first and brought it to the market. Communism mandates “groupthink,” discouraging and punishing people who are creative and who desire to become entrepreneurs.

2.       Capitalist economies were based on free exchange, on the coincidence of wants, until the job-killing EPA regulations and outrageous taxation prevented many companies from producing competitive goods at affordable prices; labor unions controlled by the left drove the wage of a high school graduate to almost $50 an hour in some sectors, prompting many companies to outsource jobs or move to other countries for cheaper labor and less corporate taxation.

Nobody “is forcing you to work for a boss who is trying to get rich by paying you less and working you harder.” You are free to quit, move to any part of the country, and get a new job. That is not an option under communism where everyone works for the state, has a work card which must be stamped by the authorities, and must get the state permission to move or change jobs.

It is not true that the “U.S. particular brand of capitalism required exterminating a continent’s worth of indigenous people and enslaving millions of kidnapped Africans. And all the capitalist industry was only possible because white women, considered the property of their fathers and husbands, were performing the invisible task of child-rearing and housework, without remuneration.”

We did not exterminate an entire continent although some Indians were killed and pushed off their lands into reservations. That hardly qualifies as mass extermination. We did not enslave nor kidnap Africans. The British engaged in the slave trade and the African men and women were sold into slavery to the British by their own tribesmen. The British brought the slaves to the New World. There are many nations and cultures today that still engage in the slave trade. Where is the leftist outrage over that?

Capitalism did not develop because white women stayed home and raised their children without remuneration. That is the most laughable statement I had ever read. Women around the world, of all races, raise their children with love and without pay because we love our children and it is our maternal instinct to do so. We are not invisible. Many of us hold part-time jobs and some have full-time professional careers.

3.       Communism killed at least 100 million people through purposeful starvation, mass shootings, torture, imprisonment in gulags, concentration camps for re-education into the communist ideology, and for resisting the confiscation of their lands, homes, farms, food, and personal belongings. Purposeful famine and starvation as it happened in the Ukraine is a “left wing problem.” Do deny this historical truth is to revise history.

4.       To say that capitalist governments commit human rights atrocities in your lame attempt to excuse the real atrocities committed by communist regimes is unbelievable. 

Capitalism is not responsible for the genocide in Africa; the killing of indigenous tribes and of Christians is committed by Muslim groups in third world dictatorships.

Capitalism is not responsible for the malnutrition in Africa – we have certainly donated billions in food, aid, and specialists to grow crops. 

We are not responsible for “climate-borne deaths.” How exactly are we accountable for climate that has been changing for millions of years? The climate change is called seasons caused by the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth’s axis, relative to the plane of revolution. Climate change is not man-made.

“Famine like the human species has never known is in the offing because the free market does not price carbon and oil-extracting capitalist firms have, since the collapse of the USSR, become sovereigns of their own.”  This sentence makes no sense. The author seems to imply that, if we don’t tax carbon, famine will take place. Carbon taxes do not benefit anyone but those who impose the taxes and do not reduce pollution.

Global warming is not settled science, it is a hoax and “consensus” science. We have certainly shoveled a  lot of global warming from our driveways this winter. And the expedition of Australian “scientists” to document how the ice caps had melted, were embarrassed when,  stuck in 13 miles of very thick ice, had to be rescued by crews with conventional fuel-driven means, at great cost to society. The desperate left called this cooling, that contradicted their global warming theory, the “Polar Vortex.” In my childhood, the Polar Vortex was called winter.

5.       Progressives, your brand of communism is not going to be “more open, humane, democratic, participatory, and egalitarian than the Russian and Chinese attempts managed.” It is still a form of tyranny, imposing your views of the world on the rest of us.

You cannot afford to bribe citizens forever into accepting your drug-induced utopian dreams that you have concocted in your social studies or ethnic studies classes at the liberal colleges you attended.

Your teacher lied to you in order to keep his/her high paying job and his classes full while promoting outrageous ideology.

 Your god, Marx, was a bum who never worked a day in his life, neglected his family, two of his children died of malnutrition, waiting on handouts from his rich benefactor.  There are only so many producers who work to spread their wealth around to the takers without a work ethic.

6.       “Communism is based on the total opposite of uniformity: tremendous diversity, not just among people, but even with in a single person’s occupation.” That is not true.

Diversity was strongly discouraged; we were expected to conform to a specific mold dictated by the communist party. We wore the same style shoes, always in short supply, and the same style clothes or uniforms.

If one tried to be different or do anything else other than what the assigned job was, you were taken in for questioning by the economic police, then by security police, your comings and goings were recorded by the bloc informer, your extra goods derived from such activity were confiscated, and your extra-curricular activities had to cease or else you went to jail.

“That so many great artists and writers have been Marxists suggest that the production of culture in such a society would breed tremendous individuality and offer superior avenues for expression.” Perhaps in your Marxist utopian dreams there was “tremendous individuality.” Avenues of expression were allowed within the strict communist ideology and slogans.

Yes, we had a culture; it was called Marxism and the worship of the communist party leaders. Every play, movie, poem, painting, picture, cartoon, song, dance, gymnastics, holidays, and athletic games had to proclaim communism and worship the dear leader. If an artist did anything that the party did not approve of, he/she was jailed and his/her works of art trashed and burned.

Lefties are delusional if they think that people had “universal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You had the right to breathe if the party allowed you to live within the confines of their ideology. You were not allowed to travel; you had to register your residence within 7 days of moving to a new street or a new apartment so that the police could track you. If you did not report your new location, the bloc informer did, and you were subsequently fined and jailed for not doing so.

7.       Capitalism fosters individuality, not communism. In capitalism you don’t have to live in the same type of housing, you have choices in your daily life. You can even stay home shamelessly and claim perennial unemployment, disability, accept welfare, and mooch off your parents until middle age because you are trying to find yourself.

You now have ObamaCare which frees you from the drudgery of having to work. Somebody else is paying for your health insurance.

Under communism everybody had to work. Nobody was fed for free or received welfare. We lived in the same drab and dirty concrete 300 square ft. apartments, took the same dingy buses to work, rode the same rickety bikes, and walked everywhere. We had free medical care but, unless you had the sniffles, most people died when real surgeries had to be performed.

http://www.salon.com/chromeo/article/why_youre_wrong_about_communism_7_huge_misconceptions_about_it_and_capitalism/

Another example of revisionist history is the CNN’s 1999 twenty-four episode documentary, “Cold War,” presented as objective history. On the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, CNN is rebroadcasting its documentary through November 8, 2014.

According to Jaroslaw Martyniuk, “the documentary was infused with an extreme brand of revisionism verging on the tragicomic,… distorting reality and suggesting moral equivalence between the behavior of the Soviet Union and Western  democracies.”

Martyniuk’s  objections to the documentary are as follows:

-          Strong emphasis on Soviet regime “lofty” goals of decent education, free health care, common ownership of the land, and fairness but no mention of the savage revolution, the mass shootings, property confiscations, social engineering, and the millions who died in deliberate mass famines engineered by Lenin

-          CNN indicates that Stalin’s aims were not aggressive, “he feared encirclement by capitalist countries, he was merely establishing a buffer zone through his Eastern European satellite countries of the Iron Curtain”

-          CNN barely mentions the Soviet Union as a “prison of nations” and Stalin as a tyrant who subdued Eastern Europe through brutal coercion and terror

-          The Berlin Blockade episode does not point out the disparate buildup of troops – 40 combat-ready Soviet divisions in Eastern Germany as opposed to 8 allied divisions in Western Germany

-          CNN describes the introduction of the new Deutschemark (currency) and the financial aid (Marshall Plan) to rebuild the war-torn  West Germany as acts of aggression

-          Truman’s attempt to contain communism is labeled by CNN as “the official declaration of the Cold War” but the Soviet aggression and expansionism is ignored

-          In the episode “Reds,” CNN compares the Soviet Gulag with the 1947 investigation of the “Hollywood ten” by the House  Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC); there is no moral equivalency between the internment of 25 million prisoners in the Arctic death camps and ten Hollywood stars who lost their jobs or were jailed for refusing to answer questions before HUAC

-          CNN documentary excuses Stalin and his monstrous crimes  - Soviet Union had a good reason to be concerned by the shortwave transmissions and programming from Radio Liberty; no mention is made of the risk Soviet citizens took by listening to freedom radio broadcasts – deportation to gulags

-          The CNN series allocate 45 minutes to China, commenting that Mao’s Great  Leap Forward “caused millions to die;” to report accurately, it was a mass killing of 45 million Chinese, one of the most deadly man-made disaster in human history

-          While depicting in great detail the electric chair death of Ethel Rosenberg, the Cultural Revolution in China that killed and persecuted millions in violent skirmishes, is barely mentioned

-          The Cold War documentary does not reference the Venona files, discoveries made more recently  in Russian archives, or by historians Anne Applebaum, Simon-Sebag Montefiore,  Timothy Snyder, Vasili Mitrokhin, Frank Dikötter, and M. Stanton Evans.

In an ideal world, students and viewers should listen to the trustworthy voices of average citizens who endured and survived a harsh life during the terrible times of the brutal communist regimes. They should not listen to “progressive” writers who have never experienced communist life but spew very confidently communist propaganda through rose-colored glasses, articulating strong opinions formed and spun from textbook theories that have a distinct anti-American agenda.

The Cold War was a “colossal battle between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and democracy and totalitarianism.” Revisionist presentation of communist atrocities is a sad distortion of truth and of history.

Sources:  CNN’s Cold War Documentary: Issues and Controversy, Hoover Institution Press, 2000

Jaroslaw Martyniuk, February 2014