Savage Continent

Imagine a world without institutions. No governments. No school or universities. No access to any information. No banks. Money no longer has any worth. There are no shops, because no one has anything to sell. Law and order are virtually non-existent because there is no police force and no judiciary. Men with weapons roam the streets taking what they want. Women of all classes and ages prostitute themselves for food and protection…

Thus opens Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent, an unrelenting non-fiction account of ground truth across Europe at the close of World War II and the years immediately thereafter. Based largely on primary sources on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Lowe takes the reader into a world obscured for multiple reasons by both victor and vanquished alike.

What is most chilling about Savage Continent is its blending of individual tales of brutality, deprivation, and survival with the national, regional, and geopolitical contexts for the post-war horror.
To use a well-worn phrase from this neighborhood, “it was intentional” that Soviet troops were allowed to rape and loot with abandon across their realm in occupied Germany. It was intentional that everyday Czechs turned on their ethnic German neighbors and strung them up from lampposts in Prague and elsewhere. It was intentional that greatest-generation American officers on multiple occasions and in multiple locales allowed partisans several days to settle scores with their now-conquered foreign enemies, as well as their domestic political opponents.

It was intentional that post-war tribunals convened to hold collaborators accountable for their treason devolved into farces of justice miscarried by judicial peers of the defendants. It was intentional that the sainted Democrat FDR and his haberdasher successor granted carte blanche to Stalin and his Red allies to sweep all of Eastern Europe into the Soviet sphere via mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and the ruthless imposition of tyranny.

More @ WRSA

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An example from FNC.  Check out the video.

RAPE OF GERMAN WOMEN: After Germany lost the Second World War

This is a very sore and personal subject for me.

 

Via comment by Badger on US to Sell Rest of GM Shares by Year-End, May Lose...

 I grew up in a different America. GM was the backbone of the nation I remember the phrase when something like this, "As GM goes, so goes the nation." There was nothing more solid than GM. Hearing and knowing this all the time I grew up it became part of me. So once I began working I bought GM stock every payday. I never took a dividend just repurchased stock at a very favorable price. So after 35 years I owned a lot of GM stock. So when I turned 53 the decision to retire was an easy one. We had always lived simple and never beyond our means or on credit. My enjoyed her job and planned to keep working. I would get about 30k a year just in dividends she made another 50k. I had lined up some part time work so the future looked bright. Then 2008 happened. The President illegally violated federal bankrupted laws and seized GM. He decided who should receive the value of GM and it sure was not the stockholders. So there went my life’s retirement on a whim of the President in violation of law. Then with the crash of the economy, my wife’s job of 18 years vanished.

There we were we were 58 she was 55 with no retirement, no jobs and just $10,000 cash in the bank. The plan was when she was ready to retire I would sell enough stock to payoff the house, which by then would have been under $15000. We had no car payments or credit card payments so just living expenses. We had seen the economy dip before but we did not yet comprehend the damage the President was doing. So there was no upturn in the economy and our cash was about gone. We are both well educated and were further trained by our employers over the years. Every job that fit our skills was the same answer you are far too qualified, you would not be happy. Code word you are too old and know too much we want dumb 20 something’s. Even scrimping and cutting back any jobs we got did not cover our expenses. Our mortgage was under $40000 on a $150000 house but planning for retirement it was only a 5-year loan. We tried and tried to refinance taking ZERO cash just switching from 5-years to 20-years to drop the payments. Since we had not been at our “new” jobs long enough or did not earn enough they would not refinance.

It was then inevitable at some point we were losing the house. We tried to sell but in 2008 and 2009 no one was buying even at two thirds the value. Finally, we made the decision the only option was bankruptcy. Unfortunately, unlike the President we could just not invent rules, as we wanted. So we moved from a beautiful home we spent years and thousands of dollars making just what we wanted into a two-bedroom apartment. The apartment was about one-fifth the size of our home so much of what we owned had to be sold off. We always loved antiques and had a home filled with lovely oak, cherry and walnut furniture. Other than a couple family pieces all, the rest is gone. I am a woodworker and spent my last 10 years of working buying and equipping a first class workshop. Not enough room in an apartment for a woodshop so all sold for pennies on the dollar. When I saw the check from the auction of my workshop, I wanted to take a gun and just end it.

After all that please do not feel sorry for me I sure don’t. I have my wife of 42 years which I love more today than when we married. We are healthy at least for people age 59 and 62. We are out of the apartment back into a house, we don’t own but rent which is fine. We make more than enough money to pay bills and some months enough left over to go out for a nice dinner. My daughter is happy and healthy. My granddaughter graduates college in the spring and is going with a very nice guy. So over all life is good, do not dwell on the bumps just remember the joys and keep smiling.

Democrat: Pull the plug on Obamacare website

Fears 'limping along' will sway 2014 election

Former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., D-Tenn., is the latest Democrat to criticize Obamacare.

Now a contributor for MSNBC, Ford told viewers Thursday morning that the Obamacare website should just be shut down so it could be fixed.

He said that was the best thing for Democrats, because he doesn’t think voters will see enough benefits from the law before the 2014 elections.

“The website problems, I thought, were, a week or two ago, were more isolated than they are. I happen to think it could be a more systemic challenge. There may need to be a greater honesty … not an honesty, I’m not saying people have been dishonest … but a greater acceptance they’ve got to step back and maybe shut the whole thing down. Limping along doesn’t serve anyone’s interest.”

His fellow panelists complained but he pressed on and made an even worse prediction.

“I was with a big investor yesterday who said, you know the next big challenge he believes for this? He believes there are not enough doctors in the system. So, you get to 30 million people signed up, we don’t have enough physicians to accommodate the flood of people that we want to have health insurance.”

The Democrat closed his remarks with another dire warning.

More @ WND

US to Sell Rest of GM Shares by Year-End, May Lose $10 Billion

 

The U.S. government expects to sell the last of its stake in General Motors by the end of the year, bringing an end to a sad chapter in the 105-year-old auto giant's history.

The Treasury Department, in a statement issued Thursday, said it still owns 31.1 million shares of the auto giant, less than 2 percent. It plans to sell them by Dec. 31, as long as the price holds up.

Shares of GM briefly hit $39 in trading early Thursday. They pulled back a bit by midday, but still were up 76 cents, or 2 percent, to $38.45. The shares have gained 34 percent this year.

The government received 912 million shares in exchange for a $49.5 billion bailout during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. So far it has recovered $38.4 billion of the money, but selling the remaining shares at Wednesday's $37.69 closing price gets the government $1.17 billion, leaving taxpayers short by roughly $10 billion.

More @ Newsmax

Some excellent portrait shots of Vietnamese before 1975

White is worn in mourning.  Reference last picture. 

Wife of Bearing Arms reader shoots home invader

 

Wichita Police say a woman shot an intruder inside her home late Monday night.
It happened in the 2200 block of South Lulu shortly before midnight on Monday.

A 28-year-old woman said she woke to someone ringing the doorbell twice. When that stopped, she heard someone at the backdoor. Her 8-year-old and 2-year-old daughters were still asleep, so she grabbed her handgun and went to investigate.

She then found a man standing in her living room who said, “How are you?” She told him to get out of her house, and he started walking towards the back door. She said that as the man was leaving, he reached for something in his pocket and that’s when she fired a shot.

Local hospitals were put on alert for a possible shooting victim. Police say a 19-year-old man walked into a hospital soon after suffering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder. He was treated, then arrested and booked into jail on three counts of aggravated burglary.

More @ Bearing Arms

Right to Keep and Bear Arms Preceded U.S. Constitution

 

The right to keep and bear arms preceded the U.S. Constitution, as our Founding Fathers “propounded” the right but did not create it. They enshrined it via the Bill of Rights, all the while knowing the origin of the right itself was to be found in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Thomas Jefferson learned these things from Common Law commentators like William Blackstone. It was Blackstone who so clearly showed that the right to be armed was a natural right “that common law might propound but did not create and could not revoke.” 

More @ Ammoland

"Knockout Game" Player Shot By Concealed Carry Permittee

Townhall reported on the "knockout" game last week, and now one participant is learning that trying to knock random people unconscious with a single punch could have dangerous consequences.

Marvell Weaver, a 17 year old from Michigan, attempted to "knock out" a man at a Lansing bus stop. Unbeknownst to Weaver, the man was a legal concealed carry permittee and was carrying a gun at the time.

After approaching the man and "shoving something" into his side, Weaver was shot twice and survived. He has been sentenced to a year in jail.

More @ Townhall

Senator Paul calls Reid a “bully”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid a “bully” who is breaking the rules of the Senate because he needs to do whatever he can to change the subject in the media, and protect Obamcare from the daily pounding it is getting.

Paul is referring to the so-called “nuclear option” that Reid and Senate Democrats resorted to Friday which eliminated filibusters for most presidential nominations.

 The Washington Post said it “reverses nearly 225 years of precedent and dramatically alters the landscape for both Democratic and Republican presidents.”

The paper also said it would lead to “severely curtailing the political leverage of the Republican minority in the Senate and assuring an escalation of partisan warfare.”

More @ WND

Supreme Court Orders Government to Respond in German Homeschoolers Asylum Case

 

 Great!

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:

The Supreme Court ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to respond in writing to Home School Legal Defense Association’s petition on behalf of the Romeikes. 

After fleeing persecution for homeschooling in Germany in 2008, the Romeike family was granted asylum by Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman in 2010. The Obama administration revoked their asylum in 2012 and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the administration’s position saying that Germany was merely enforcing a general law regarding truants. HSLDA appealed to the Supreme Court on October 10, 2013.

 “We are pleased by the Court’s interest in the issues we have presented in our petition,” said HSLDA Chairman Michael Farris. “Romeike v. Holder gives the Court an opportunity to address important religious freedom and human rights issues. We hope that after due consideration of the government’s brief they will agree to hear our case.”

Reason to Hope

Over 10,000 appeals are made to the Supreme Court each year, but only about 80 are heard. 
  
HSLDA Director of Litigation and Senior Counsel James R. Mason said he is hopeful.

                                                                More @ HSLDA