Why Stalin Starved Ukraine

Anne Applebaum's new book tells of an atrocity and cover-up that shape today's politics.

History is a battleground, perennially fought over, endlessly contested. Nowhere does this aphorism hold true more than in Russia. A majority of Russians recently voted Joseph Stalin the “most outstanding person” in world history (followed, naturally, by current President Vladimir Putin). No longer the monster of the gulags and purges that killed millions, Stalin now looms in the national consciousness as the giant who defeated the Nazis in World War II. Meanwhile, not only has Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized Ukraine’s eastern regions, its military adventurism has also extended to Syria. Putin, who once described the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century, looks determined to avenge the humiliations of Russia’s post-Soviet implosion. Integral to this endeavor is not just to flex the country’s geopolitical might in the present but to re-write its past.

It is this point that makes the historiography of the USSR—a subject worthy of deep study in itself—so relevant today.

More @ New Republic

Israeli Astrophysicist rejects UN IPCC – Finds ‘the sun completely overturns the way we should see global warming’

 

 Climate Depot

Award-winning Astrophysicist Dr. Shaviv is in Germany with many other skeptical scientists during the UN climate summit. Shaviv is warning about the scientific fallacies presented by the UN IPCC panel about global warming climate change. His full presentation at the conference is on November 10th. 

Dr. Nir Shaviv on Cambridge Debate: 'I was quite shocked to see how the audience was so one sided (though far less than the ridiculous 97:3 ratio we hear about!) and unwilling to listen to scientific arguments.'

Dr. Shaviv's Key scientific points: 'Evidence for warming is not evidence for warming by humans.'

'Anyone who appeals to authority or to a majority [97% claims] to substantiate his or her claim is proving nothing.'

'The polar bear population is now probably at its highest in modern times!'

'There is no single piece of evidence that proves that a given amount of CO2 increase should cause a large increase in temperature.'

'Over geological time scales, there were huge variations in the CO2  (a factor of 10) and they have no correlation whatsoever with the temperature. 450 million years ago there was 10 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere but more extensive glaciations.'

'The simple truth is that in the height of the middle ages it was probably just as warm as the latter half of the 20th century'

'Taking unnecessary precautionary steps when we know they are unnecessary is immoral. It is even committing statistical murder.'

'Let us use our limited resources to treat real problems.'

Why no one is talking about Trump’s game-changing deal

Via David

 

Bad news travels fast. Good news, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to travel at all.

Last weekend in Beijing, as part of his 12-day trip to Asia, President Trump announced that the US and China had signed an $83.7 billion memorandum of understanding to create a number of petrochemical projects in West Virginia over the next 20 years.

If the agreement holds tight, it is an economic game changer for the state.

And yet, speaking to the locals here, you wouldn’t even know it had happened.

More @ New York Post

NC youth football league raffles AR-15 to raise money for upcoming trip

 

A youth football league in Gaston County found a way to finance a team’s upcoming playoff trip, and not everyone approved of how the funds were raised.

League leaders raffled off an AR-15 live on Facebook to support the Optimist Pee Wee team from Stanley, WSOC-TV reported. Players were encouraged to thank people who purchased raffle tickets, according to the report.

More @ The Raleigh News & Observer

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article186005298.html#storylink=cpyMore @ The Raleigh News and Obsercer

Media disdain for Sarah Sanders gets personal

Via Billy

The national media’s relationship with White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has taken on a new tension over the last month, as journalists and news commentators have grown more and more personal in their hostility toward the Trump administration’s top spokeswoman.

Several high-profile columnists and writers have torn into Sanders over the last few weeks to mock her appearance, the way she talks, and most recently, an alleged disdain she showed the press by asking them at a briefing this week to say why they are thankful this holiday season.

More @ Washington Examiner

Trump: The President at War

 Via Billy

 

Political warriors Steve Bannon and Pat Caddell explain the keys to Trump's victory at Restoration Weekend.

Fun with IQ: Deep Thought

 

Once upon a time in America the ruling  dwarves, mostly psychologists, sociologists, academics, and suchlike riffraff,  held that all people were equal in everything, that men and women were identical, as were all races, ethnic groups, and cultures. Criticizing any of this could, and did, lead to firing, ostracism, and having to suffer crowds of mental defectives waving placards.

Resistance arose, the resisters calling themselves Race Realists or adherents of the Human-Biodiversity movement, HBD. These were brave people who tried to deal in observation, measurement, and reality–at first. They noticed that groups who were supposed to be equal weren’t.  Actually, most people had probably noticed the same things, these being obvious, but the Race Realists actually said so. A great wrath fell upon them.

Two things happened.

More @ Fred On Everything

This Is The Only Gun Modification That Matters

Fake News Alert: Trump Not Getting Rich from Office, Sacrificing Fortune to MAGA

Via Billy

From literally the first moment after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, liberals have been citing the “emoluments clause” of the United States Constitution to contend that Trump is illegally benefiting from foreign powers as president by virtue of his Trump Organization and its international hotels.

But as it turns out, just like that $400,000 salary Trump keeps donating back, the presidency is a money-losing proposition in the business sense too. But Trump is clearly not in it for the money.

According to the U.K. Telegraph, the room rates for the hotel chain that bears Trump’s brand have dropped, by more than 60 percent in some cases, from the time Trump took office.

More @ Conservative Tribune