I subtitled a video of Comedian Zelenskyy speaking uncomfortable truths that President Zelenskyy denies right now.

Unfortunately, Representative Liz Cheney is no Albert Goring. Yesterday, during the January 6th hearings, Liz Cheney apparently, denounced her fellow Republicans for being Trumpists. She said, “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Liberals, so eager to want to believe in the Good Republican myth, they are willing to erase all of her previous history, her voting records, her corruption, and her fundamental beliefs about the world to build this mythology. This is a tendency in liberalism that seems to cut across, space, time and national borders. Liberals are so eager to welcome the anti-Trump Republican into their folds, we must make a dedicated effort to prevent the Trump washing of horrible people. Therefore, we decided to dedicate a new section of our newsletter to helping people remember. It is called We Remember

Proletary

In Memory of (Rumsfeld) Count Hayden

“The progressive press was unanimous in expressing its profound condolence over the heavy loss sustained by Russia in the death of Count P. A. Heyden. The fine personality of Pyotr Alexandrovich attracted all decent people irrespective of party or trend. A rare, and happy lot…

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5 years ago · 1 like · Esha

We have well-planted editorials slobbering praise all over Liz Cheney, in hopes that she will avoid the disgrace of losing the primaries in her home state. She is a dangerous neocon and a warmonger. Her only problem with Trump is that he makes warmongering look uncouth. Policy-wise, it is clear she disagrees with him on very little, since she voted with him 90% of the time in congress.

During undergrad, Liz Cheney penned an editorial in support of Apartheid South Africa. Don’t be fooled by the beginning where she says “Apartheid is an abhorrent system.” In Ron Nixon’s book Selling Apartheid, a book about the global apartheid lobby, he mentions how the apartheid lobby changed their tactics in 1987:

not further sanctions, but help from American business to provide jobs and assist black South Africans to prepare for a post-apartheid society. The group announced it would develop business links between black Americans and black South Africans, promote the education and training of South African blacks, and press for an end to apartheid by seeking other alternatives. As divestments by American Companies has been a failed tactic and practical disaster,'1

It seems like Liz Cheney was an excellent student of the pro-apartheid lobby, because in her editorial she wrote:

U.S. companies operating in South Africa can and do improve the lives of black South Africans. Aside from paying substantially higher salaries to blacks than other companies operating in South Africa, in 1985, these companies spent more than $500 per employee for education, training, health and welfare. A choice to divest can only be made if on believes a moral statement is worth more than the lives of those people.

After graduating from college, her biography states, “Cheney worked for the State Department for five years and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) between 1989 and 1993.” Meanwhile, her father was the Secretary of Defense for the same administration. According to an investigation from Washington Post article in 1991, Liz Cheney’s appointment at the State Department was pure nepotism. During the Gulf War, she spent her time overseeing USAID affairs in the Middle East and during the Iraq war, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department, who specialized in middle-eastern affairs.

In 1993, she took up a job with another colleague of her father’s Richard Armitage consulting firm. His nomination to be the Secretary of the Army had to be withdrawn. The Bush Whitehouse didn’t think they would be able to answer awkward questions about his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. The consulting firm essentially lobbies the state department and foreign governments on behalf of corporations who want to do ghoulish things.

In 1996, Liz Cheney graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. University of Chicago has a special talent where it can transform any human being into Milton Friedman.

Her appointment as a Deputy Assistant Secretary to Near East Affairs proved her commitment for neoliberalism. Apparently, she was able to feign concern for the plight of Jordanian women during her first meeting with Queen Rania. Of course, I suspect that she is so uncurious about the world that she spoke to Queen Rania about the only “women’s issue” that she was briefed on: honor killings. However, her idea of women’s rights seems to be entrapping them in debt known as microloans, while the state department spun fairy tales of female entrepreneurs making their riches on their falafel stands. Nearly 18 years later, most of these women have been more or less trapped in debt, and had to get extra jobs and more debt to pay off these “microloans”.

The book that Liz Cheney co-wrote with her father called “Exceptional” proves that she is her father’s daughter in every way. She is an American supremacist who thinks America should be continuously waging war on the third world to continue extraction and exploitation of the resources.

Liz Cheney does not believe that waterboarding is torture, and she does support “enhanced interrogation and rendition” if America is to do it. To oppose torture, according to her, is to support terrorists.

She has learned the skill of the big lie from her father. She continues to insist that the “enhanced interrogation saved lives.” She was also the number one spreader of another dangerous lie: Russia gave the Taliban bounties to kill American troops. Given what the US troops have done in Afghanistan, no monetary incentive is needed.

There is nothing the congresswoman would love more than another world war, and to that end, she penned this dangerous op-ed egging America to send American troops to protect America’s very expensive investment in Ukraine’s Democracy.

Ultimately, she has proved former President Trump correctly in one thing: She is a warmongering fool who belongs nowhere near the halls of power.

Despite Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, in an affront to the concept of justice itself, dying peacefully in his home from complications of a rare blood disorder, he managed to find himself posted on True To Liberty's “Victims of Communism” wall not once, but twice – and worse, beatified by John Paul II on 3 October 1998. If Alojzije Stepinac rests in a state of bliss then surely all proponents of decency the world over will be forgiven in short order for taking the torch from Sufi poet Rabia Al Basri in order to “set fire to Heaven and put out the flames of Hell, So that voyagers to God can rip the veils.”

True to its subsequent treatment of Archbishop Stepinac, any cursory glance at historical documents from the 1920s demonstrates the Vatican then had as little to offer in the way of opposition to fascism as it did when Stepinac was created Cardinal in 1952, as it did at his beatification 46 years later.

Shortly following the seizure of power in Italy by the National Fascist Party led by Mussolini, Secretary of State to the Vatican one Cardinal Gasparri, on 20 January 1923, took a meeting with Mussolini cloaked in the organizations typical secrecy; no record of the meeting's specific minutes exist, though what we know for sure is that the Vatican played an instrumental role in the elimination of one of the Fascist regime's political opponents: Partito Popolare, a centrist Christian-democratic party built around Catholic social teachings whose pro-labor and antifascist faction stuck in Mussolini's craw1.

Within a month following this meeting, Mussolini allowed for the restoration of the cross, began to pay tribute to the Church its land that was seized by the state, among other favors. Henceforth the upper echelons of the Catholic Church found themselves remiss to not support the Fascist state, a position that only snowballed with time; a mere 15 years later on 12 January 1938, seventy-two bishops and 2.340 priests stood before Palazzo Venezia chanting for the Devil: “Duce! Duce! Duce!”2

As such we must not try too hard to locate our surprise that even prior to joining the priesthood, Stepinac exhibited fascist inclination, joining in 1922 Hrvatski Orlovi (Croatian Eagles) – officially a youth football club, unofficially a source for training in paramilitary operations for the Independent State of Croatia. In 1924, a mere two years later, at age 26, Stepinac was accepted to Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, a German language seminary in Rome, benefiting from a Vatican decree issued a few years prior greatly expanding the scope of education in accordance with the Catholic teachings of the time.

Ordained on 26 October 1930 and saying his first mass on the following 1 November, Stepinac was swiftly appointed to the position of liturgical master of ceremonies to the Archbishop of Zagreb, Antun Bauer, on 1 October 1931. One scarcely has time to consider what a seemingly lofty title and position this is for a main ordained less than one year prior to hold before learning that slightly less than three years later on 28 May 1934, he was made Bauer's coadjutor bishop. Reportedly somewhere between the fifth and eighth choice for the politically sensitive position, the previous five or eight all being rejected by the powers which had say in the matter, both the Crown and the Vatican. Stepinac was looked upon favorably by the Vatican due to his ascetic lifestyle while in seminary, and King Alexander granted assent upon learning of Stepinac volunteering for the Yugoslav Legion in 1918 for approximately 4 months after WWI had ended.

The king latter wished to withdraw his support after receiving “additional information” (possibly regarding what was then Stepinac's ardent Croatian nationalism?), to which Archbishop Bauer responded [sic] “the Royal Word is irrevocable.”3

Thus, less than 4 years after ordination into the priesthood, Stepinac was consecrated archbishop on 24 June 1934. At age 36, he was the youngest bishop in the Catholic church–an archbishop, no less–now presiding over the largest archdiocese in Europe, without ever having been so much as a parish priest, and utterly unknown to the Croat peoples.

The new Archbishop Stepinac now found himself charged with the task of appointing presidents and general staff of Catholic Action and its affiliated organizations all hanging as an umbrella over a total of 49,000 members. Running parallel to these events in Borgatoro, Italy, on a budget of 25 Million Lira earmarked by Mussolini himself and the aide of the Italian army, one Ante Pavelić was overseeing the training of no small number of right-wing extremists in the art of sabotage and terror. In the year of Stepinac's consecration as archbishop, the Ustaše had bragged "that they had branches all over Yugoslavia," and by 1939, Stepinac had appointed Dr. Feliks Niedzelski, a committed Ustaše member as the head of the “Great Brotherhood of Crusaders” in Banja Luka under the direct supervision of Catholic Action.

Many Ustaše members were also members of the clergy. At a hearing before the Yugoslav authorities, priest Branimir Župančić, confessed: "In 1938, right on our Catholic St. Nicholas Day, I went from Zagreb (where Stepinac was the Archbishop) to Rome and did it through Florence and Siena. In Siena, I learned from some Dalmatians, especially from Francis Dionysus Juric, that Pavelić has an apartment five kilometers from Siena in one village (I do not know the name of this village for sure, but I think it is called Certosa). The three of us: me, Dionysus and another one whose name I don't remember, we agreed to go see Pavelić. Through an Italian pastor, we found out where Pavelić was, and he allowed us to meet Pavelić at the communion of His Church"

Of course, it was not only the 'lowly' parish priests who met with Ante Pavelić during his years as a terrorist. Ivan Šarić, archbishop of Sarajevo, met with Pavelić in the Vatican and penned a fawning ode to the meeting, later published on Christmas Day in an Ustaše newspaper:

In St. Peter's Basilica
I saw you in the Eternal City
With him with you the hug was pleasant
Like our house. 
God, himself accompanied you kind, strong,
To stand up for the house of our sacred word

The Independent State of Croatia's official news organization reported that they had recruited fighters from high schools, Franciscan monasteries, and the University of Zagreb – primarily its theology department, which of course fell under the purview of Archbishop Stepanic.

Even Catholic grade schools were not out of bounds for Ustaše recruitment fields, as testified one former student:

Even as a sixth-grader, in the Catholic school in Orešković, I joined the religious organization "Crusaders" in 1939. It was here, we were brought up in the spirit of the Ustaše. Jurica Frković and Juco Rukavina came to our meetings and gave us lectures against Serbs, Jews and Communists. Our slogan was "Kill the Antichrist, in the name of Christ.”

On 6 April 1941, upon the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and respective collaborators, the Yugoslavian Army, considered quite strong was surprisingly felled in short order, thanks to the network of Ustaše whose acts prior acts of sabotage and terror which made the army's disarmament comparatively effortless. Per the above sixth grader, now presumably an eighth grader and child soldier:

"We also organized our own strike group, which attacked the leftists at night. When the war broke out and the Yugoslav army broke out, we disarmed it. We immediately entered Ustaše, because we considered it our national duty."4

One week later on 13 April 1941, Pavelić's march into Zagreb was complete – he claimed his throne as Poglavnik of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), where the following day, Archbishop Stepinac blessed him.

In two weeks and one day's time from Pavelić assuming power, on 28 April 1941, the Ustaše, using the deaths of two members as pretense, 190 Bjelovar Serbs were gathered from Gudovac and surrounding areas, deemed Yugoslav rebels and executed by firing squad, surviving Gudovac inhabitants were made to dig a mass grave for the nearly two hundred victims, given quicklime to pour on their corpses to hurry the erasure of evidence. On this same day, Archbishop Stepinac dictated a letter to every church, clergyman and Catholic organization in Croatia stating:

"You should therefore readily answer my call to do elevated work for the safeguarding and progress of the Independent State of Croatia."

The relatives of one of the victims, however, unlike Archbishop Stepinac, were appalled by the heinous nature of this unquestionable crime against humanity, and reported it to the only authorities that were available: the Germans. A partial exhumation of the mass grave was ordered and 40 suspected perpetrators were arrested on the evening of 29 April following an investigation conducted by two Nazi officers who then reported to their superiors decrying the “disorder” in their sphere of control – the arrested Ustaše were disarmed and cordoned off in a high school before Mladen Lorković, an Ustaše official, following a meeting with Siegfried Kasche, the Nazi ambassador, wherein Lorković maintained it was an “internal Croatian matter,” (as well as inventing the prior crime of what was now “eleven dead Croat officials” to justify the massacre), was able to secure the release of the perpetrators on the condition a thorough investigation would be conducted. Obviously this investigation never took place, but it would begin a trend of Archbishop Stepanic demonstrating a higher tolerance/appreciation for violence against humanity than the literal Nazis.

Between 3 and 11 May, over 560 Serbs were killed by the Ustase in Glina, found in mass graves strewn through many courtyards, examination of the bodies left it safe to conclude that those who were merely shot could be counted amongst “the lucky.” Consider one Milos Buncic, the brother of the mayor of a neighboring town, the brother mayor was among the dead, along with his wife and their children. Seeing his brother and sister-in-law and nieces and nephews massacred, he fled, running directly into news that the Ustase were threatening to burn down his home and kill everyone in it lest he report to the Ustase command. Buncic complied and for his trouble was tortured for the next eight hours, until he finally lost consciousness. Believing that he was dead, the Ustase threw him in the cellar with five other corpses. On his reawakening, Buncic recognized among the corpses Adam Resanovic, a local shoemaker, and Stojan Slepcevic, a farmer, the others were tortured beyond his recognition. Upon seeing this wretched tableau, Buncic escaped through a window in the cellar.

Thee stench of this evil wafted its way to the ambassador to Vichy France, who wrote a letter to our Archbishop Stepanic expressing his "concern” to which Stepanic wrote:

At that moment, I received news that 260 Serbs had been shot without trial and investigation in the uprisings in Glina. I know that the Serbs have committed grave crimes in our homeland during these twenty years of rule.

But I consider it my episcopal duty to raise my voice and say that this is not allowed according to Catholic morality, so I ask you to take the most urgent measures throughout the territory of the independent state of Croatia so as not to kill a single Serb if his guilt is not proven that he deserved death. Otherwise, we cannot count on the blessing of heaven, without which we must perish. I hope you don't mind this open word.

With great respect, etc.

Zagreb 14. V. 1941.

The letter in its original Croatian

This awkwardly worded pseudo poetry which more prominently blames the Serbs for their own massacre and fears the possible dissolution of the NDH more than it does the potential of future massacres, serving more as a heads up to the Ustase that their insatiable bloodlust was becoming a PR issue and making them look bad before the... Nazis..

Compare that with what a Wehrmact General wrote about the Ustase

Compare the Gestapo's report on the Ustase monstrosity:

What is there to say about a man whose humanity utterly pales in comparison to the Gestapo writing to Himmler? Pope John Paul II's assurance that this man rests in a state of bliss, beatified, permitting his public veneration, blessed be, is incompatible with decency and good sense.

For every brick, we shall bring their story in this special December Series called “Featured Victims of Communism”

What they said:

In memory of General Roman Shukhevych (1907 – 1950) who, in 1943,  formed and led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought to rid Ukraine of enslavement from Soviet communist rule.  Shukhevych died in battle with Soviet security forces on March 4, 1950.

What they omitted

The map of the world before World War 1 looked vastly different. Most of Ukraine was part of Tsarist Russia except for an area in the west known as “Galicia” which was a “protectorate” of the Austria-Hungarian empire.

Inspired by the Bolshevik revolution, soldiers in the Austria-Hungarian empire simply “checked out”, leading to the collapse of the Austria-Hungarian empire. Modern countries were carved out with a whip of a pen as to maximize profits for the France-US-UK (“Faukus”) alliance. While carving out countries with no regards to people, their families, their ethnicities and historic ties, the Faukus alliance also tried to balkanize as much of Tsarist Russia as possible, to preserve these areas for their capitalist and imperialistic profits.

France had armed and trained petty industrialist Jozef Piłsudski for carving out what is modern day Poland. In what is now considered modern Ukraine, Faukus alliance armed Anton Denniken and his White Armies. Denniken’s antisemitism was so outrageous that Winston Churchill had to warn him to tone it down or else he may not be able to get continued support:

[M]y task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies.

Luckily, the Bolsheviks were able to defeat the White Armies in the region that is now known as Ukraine. Finally, Soviet Russia signed a peace treaty called Brest-Litovosk, where once again, the borders changed. The allies who were very supportive of “self-determination” for Ukraine became shocked at what many Ukranians themselves, determined. In 1920, Soviet Galicia was declared and it was short lived.

Worried about more people being able to “self-determine,” the allies gave their explicit blessing for Piłsudski’s armies to fight and carve out as much land as possible for his Polish Republic. During this process, Piłsudski’s armies engaged in a campaign of “Polification” which entailed the wholesale genocide of anyone who was not Polish(catholic). Despite this, the leader of what was left of the “White Ukrainian armies” Simon Petlura made a deal with the proverbial devil. According to the CIA:

The Ukrainian National Directory with Simon Petlura at the head was left completely to itself in these fateful struggles; at the end of 1919 it had to clear the battlefield and seek an alliance with the newly created state of Poland, whose head, Pilsudski [sp], had a great understanding of the danger from the east. In April 1920, Poland and the Ukraine concluded s treaty in conjunction with a military convention, A joint Ukrainian and Polish campaign led to the liberation of Kiev in May 1920, but it had to be abandoned soon and the joint armies had to clear the Ukraine. Poland deserted its Ukrainian ally in the peace treaty at Riga in 1921 when it recognized the Soviet government in the Ukraine. The regular war between the Ukraine and Moscow ended at that time.

Finally, in 1923, Faukus alliance officially recognized Poland’s annexation of Galicia, thereby forcing these Ukrainian nationalists to reap what they sowed.

Under this backdrop, Roman Shukhevych became part of the Second Republic of Poland. He managed to graduate from Politechnika Lwowska with a degree in Civil Engineering. Soon, he and fellow students, formed an illegal organization to “fight” for an “independent Ukraine.” But, that is a joke. If they truly wanted an independent Ukraine, nothing prevented from using their white armies to support to Soviet Galicia. In reality, what they wanted was a restoration of the feudal relationships when Galicia was a “protectorate” of the Austria Hungarian empire.

In 1931, Roman Shukevych became the head of the “militant” wing of the OUN known as UPA. Their organization engaged in petty terrorism where they mostly assassinated random government officials in the Second Polish Republic.

After the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933, hundreds of Ukrainians were recruited and trained by the Abwehr. We know this because during the war, many of the captured Wehrmacht soldiers immediately spilled the details about their collaborators. Abwehr General, Erwin Stolze, during this interrogation, recounted:

Making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, German intelligence was inteerested in using the "Ukrainian nationalists," who were an active spy-terrorist organization already proven to serve the interests of the German General Staff.

He further continued,

In 1937, with the intensification of preparations for an attack on Poland, contacts with the KONOVALTS organization were renewed.

When asked about how they assisted in the invasion of the USSR, General Stolze said,

At my direction, BANDERA began to organize insurgent groups in Ukraine, with the task of armed struggle against the Red Army and the seizure of some important objects, including the Drogobych oil sources.

At first it was assumed that by a single password given over the radio, the groups would begin open armed action. However, this was deemed inexpedient and I, together with BANDERA, decided that the groups' action was to begin automatically with the invasion of the Soviet territory by the German troops.

According to Abwehr, the UPA’s “offensive” was to coincide with the Wehrmacht’s Operation Barbarosa. On June 30, 1941, Yaroslav Stetsko (the man pictured in the left with Ronald Reagan and on the right with George Herbert Walker Bush), proclaimed an independent Ukrainian State.

He said:

The restored Sobornoye Ukraina (Cathedral Ukrainian State) will cooperate closely with National Socialist Great-Germany, which under Adolf Hitler creates a new order in Europe and the world and helps the Ukrainian people to break free from the Moscow occupation. Long live the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, may the guide of the OUN Stepan Bandera live on!"

After this proclamation of their “own state,”members of the OUN went on an orgy of violence. According to eyewitnesses:

• pregnant women were hit or kicked in the stomach.

• stripped a twenty-year-old Jewish woman, lodged a baton in her vagina

• Jews were forced to kneel and scream out loyalties to the OUN.

Most of the sadism is available on film with just a google search. They are too graphic to display on our website.

A week later, on the night July 6, 1941, the Nachtigall battalion followed a path from l'vov to Vinnitisa, spilling as much blood as possible. In their first city of Zolochiv, Soviet prisoners of war were deprived of food and water. Their rotten corpses were displayed to incite terror among the local population. In Satanov, they engaged in some gratuitous acts of sadism by setting fire to synagogues and forcing the Jewish citizens to say affirmations to Christ and pretend that they were filled with joy.

Members of the nightingale proudly boasted about their deeds. According to a Nachtigall fighter Viktor Kharkiv “Khmara” during this July march:

At the time of our march eastwards we saw with our own eyes the victims of the Judeo-Bolshevik terror, and the sight so strengthened our hatred of the Jews that in two villages we shot all the Jews we encountered. I recall one example. At the time of our march through one village we saw many vagrant people. Asked where they were going they answered that the Jews were threatening them and that they were afraid of spending the night in their houses. As a result of that, we shot all the Jews we encountered there.

The Nachtigall’s reign of terror continued until August 13, 1941. They were transported back to Frankfurt an der Order where they were given enhanced military training for "pacification" campaigns. On October 21, 1941, these same soldiers were reorganized as the 201st Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft Battalion also known as (“201”). Roman Shukhevych’s title was that of Hauptmann (captain) of the first company and deputy commander of the legion.

Anti-Partisan “Pacification”

The "blitzkrieg" strategy use of overwhelming force, with their advanced Luftwaffe (Air Force) to rush over Soviet territory and level as much of it as possible, corroding the landscape and civilization with indiscriminate bombing campaigns.

This total-annihilation approach to warfare drove rural villagers into undeveloped wooded areas; soon irregular militias known as "partisans" were formed, each resisting Nazi occupation in their own way, resulting in a kind of asymetric warfare. Hitler likened the partisans to the US's "struggle" against the "red Indians."1

Despite a massive technology deficit, the Belarussian partisans were comparatively successful: Partisan Nina Litwinczyk, obtained a job as a typist in the Gestapo headquarters, soon compiling a list of names of every national who had collaborated with the Nazis — this detailed exposure of the rat-line rendered the subsequent extermination campaign relatively effortless.

Another Partisan, Elena Mazanik, managed to infiltrate the house of Wilhelm Kube, planted a bomb under his bed scheduled to go off at around midnight — the component parts of the bomb so precisely attuned that come the end of its countdown, Wilhelm Kube was successfully erased from the mortal plain while his pregnant wife was left undisturbed until morning.

Roman Shukheyvich's 201st Battalion was to eliminate partisans, apprehend saboteurs as well as administer the Reichskommissariat — Nazi colonial outposts. Einsatzgruppen reports catalog daily operations in benign terminology rooted in the exact bare minimum amount of truth to escape designation as euphemism: "fought partisans," "quelled banditry," etc. belied the accompanment of savagery.

A pack of attack dogs used to track and tear apart partisans, their tactics compensated a lack of sophistication for primal terror. A standard program of no quarter given; policy handed down from on high from Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel that "attacks on soldiers in the East should be met by putting to death 50 to 100 Communists for one German soldier," adding that "human life was less than nothing in the East." The 201st Battalion followed to the letter and exemplified this decree, in a manner that chilled the bones of the "proper" Nazis:

Ukrainian militia on horseback, armed with pistols, rides and lang, straight cavalry swords, 'vere riding wildly inside and around the town park. As far as lve could make out, they were driving people along before their horses; men, women, and children. A shower of bullets was then fired at this human mass. Those not hit outright were struck down with the swords. Like some ghostly aparation, this horde of Ukrainians, let loose and commanded by SS officers, trampled savagely over human bodies, ruthlessly killing innосent children, mothers and old people whose only crime was that they had escaped the great mass murder, so as to be eventually shot or beaten to death like wild animals. (Testimony of Erwin Bingel)

In their first mission, they were dropped off by their German detachments near Lake Domzharitskoe, located in the Vitebsk region. For the first few days, the 201st Battalion did pursue the partisans, unsuccessfully, albeit. Instead, they decided to engage in "Plan B" – killing and destroying everyone in the villages.

They began in a town called Logoisk. According to a survivor (who maybe the only one), she and five others hid under a bush until nightfall. And then either a Russian or a Belarussian approached them and warned them against returning to the village. They said, " Run. They've killed everyone"

Another Partisan diary states, "On September 2 this year, Hitler's bandits broke into the village of Khrapovichi, Vitebsk district, they burned down 78 houses of the collective farmers, 97 outbuildings, all public yards and the secondary school building. They also destroyed the church.

Another survivor in a village in their rampage Maxim Kozlovsky recounts they “brought us all together in one place, then ordered us to go into a house eight at a time and began to shoot us. My wife and I went into one house, and my children into another. The forester's wife and her infant child begged not to be killed. Then the punisher snatched the child from her and hit her head against the corner of the house and shot her. They killed my two sons in front of my eyes and I ran away with my third son. We ran into the house, but the punishers found us there, shot me, wounded me in the back. I ran to the forest, I was ambushed, they shot at me, but I managed to escape. In the village, a woman and two other children hid my son under the floor. The child cried, the soldier shot, killed one boy, then set fire to this house."

In the course of Swamp Fever, the fascist managed to kill 10,013 Soviet Citizens and 1,217 were forcibly relocated to one of the forced labor camps. This wasn't all. He continued into massacres in Poland and Russia. In fact, he was a Forest Brother, engaging in acts of terrorism until he shot himself in 1950.

The sick joke and grand irony stitched into the border of the red curtain that closed on Roman Shukheyvich's wretched life is that he can so easily be touted as a "Victim of Communism" despite no one cut from this man's cloth, guilty of these crimes, having any reasonable claim to being cast as a victim of anything at all, is precisely because of his prowess as the harvester of sorrow he was. Per the autobiography of a subordinate regarding the movements of the Nachtigal detachment through the Ukrainian SSR:

"During our march, we saw traces of the Jewish-Bolshevik terror, this so strengthened our hatred of the Jews that in two villages we shot all the Jews we met."

The NKVD's "massacres" and "victims" references the killing of Nazis and their collaborators at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, apparently some kind of misdeed when performed by Communist hands—tell the same story: as these harbingers of death made their way through the west of Ukraine, if they encountered evidence of antifascist activity in a village, it was used as the impetus and rationale to slaughter all Jews in sight, sometimes entire villages.

The numbers bear this out: starting from the Nachtigall Battalion and the 4,000 Jews killed in their pogroms in Lviv and throughout the remainder of Western Ukraine as they moved towards the center and took Kyiv, "liquidating" over 30,000 Jews — when this human plague reached the land east of the Dnieper, "the Jewish Problem" was 'solved' by the 'liquidation' of over 4,000 Jews with those left being taken slave and cordoned off into groups of up to 1,000 at a time.2

Following this trail of blood and brutality blazed by the Nachtigall detachment in response to seeing "traces of the Jewish-Bolshevik terror," by the time Roman Shukheyvich was in Belarus with the 201st Battalion waging a terror campaign against the partisans. When Oberkommando Wilhelm Keitel issued the decree on September 16th 1941 that 50 to 100 Belarussians should be slaughtered for every Nazi killed by a partisan, he was merely elevating the savagery somehow both rabid in practice yet rational in calculation established by Shukheyvich's Nachtigall detachment in Ukraine to the level of an official policy that would greatly contribute to Belarus losing 25% of its population.

We know of this through investigations into the morbidity—literal corpse-counting—records released long after the fact, statements from perpetrators themselves — conducting thorough research in multiple languages revealed a distinct absence of living witnesses that were not directly responsible for this terror. The comparison made by Hitler himself to what was done to the "red Indians" by the US was disgusting and yet thoroughly warranted. This was a full scale, unbridled extermination campaign to clear the land for settlement by foreign invaders and the results are reflective of that.

And Roman Shukheyvich, as with those involved with the extermination of the indigenous in what is now the US, is memorialized and glorified on the basis of galling omissions, glaring obfuscations and outright denials of historical reality within cults of personality built by ghouls seeking reassurances of an alleged right of supremacy held by a "race" that reproduces itself on barbarism alone and condemns its victims with all of its own faults.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in propaganda campaigns operating organs like Victims of Communism to whitewash the legacies of some of the most brutal men history has on offer because that is the level of energy and resources that must be spent to validate their ideology of the ravenous devouring of the world itself.

An organization like "Victims of Communism" exists because without someone to invent the reality where any exist, we would never see them, without an organization in which time and energy, and above all, money could be spent converting slave owners and genociders into sympathetic figures in the crusade against an ideology built on the principle that every human has the right to be fed, clothed, educated and live indoors, we would notice we are permanently surrounded by Victims of Capitalism.

Among the names being floated for possible Biden Cabinet posts are Meg Whitman, the CEO of Quibi and former CEO of eBay, and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both of whom spoke at August’s Democratic National Convention. Massachusetts GOP Gov. Charlie Baker and former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have also been mentioned, as has former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who resigned from Congress in 2018 and became a lobbyist.

I expect ghouls to fill the cabinet of President-Elect Joe Biden, but the president-elect has said that Black Americans who don’t vote for him “aren’t really black.” After the South Carolina primary, Democratic-friendly punditry purposefully conflated “people in South Carolina” with “Black voters.” They also implied that any opposition or critique of Biden was a form of “anti-blackness.” His staff was also very sanctimonious when they claimed that the Black voters stood with Joe Biden.

Call me old fashioned, but if a group of voters are this loyal to the Democrats and Joe Biden, then the Democrats owe the group a minimal semblance of respect. That is, not appointing former lobbyists for Apartheid in South Africa to key cabinet posts.

Team Biden can’t even signal the most minimal standards in reward for the persistence and loyalty of the “black voter.” They have enthusiastically embraced former Sen. Jeff Flake as a potential cabinet member. His name is being floated ahead of any progressive name like Bernie Sanders or Pramila Jayapal.

The barest minimum of standards should involve blacklisting everyone who supported the ghastly ethnostate. Upon being elected to Congress, then Rep. Jeff Flake admitted to working for a lobbying firm that was registered on behalf of Apartheid South Africa.

In 1987, Jeff Flake testified in the Utah Senate about the strategic importance of Apartheid South Africa in the US cold war efforts. His exact words: “If the South African government were to fall to the Left (non-apartheid government) it would deprive the Free World of these important minerals.”

Jeff Flake’s first experience with South Africa was in the early 1980s when he did missionary work in South Africa. He spent much time with the white majority population evidenced by the fact that Jeff Flake speaks fluent Afrikaans.

South Africa has a majority of black South African population, but those in power were part of the minority white South African population. In order to stay in power, the white government created extremely draconian racial classification laws between 1948-1955. Each citizen was issued a document with their racial identity. Many Black South Africans were evicted from their historical homes to make room for the growing white population. Here is an example of an eviction notice from 1969.

During the same time, US and UK stood with it by using the fear of communism to garner support. In 1949, the State Department communicated that South Africa’s mineral resources such as uranium made it a “strategic ally” to protect.

The US cooperation with Apartheid South Africa ran deep. In the 1960s, the CIA helped the apartheid regime hunt down and arrest Nelson Mandela. However, during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, America’s consciousness was awoken. Many Americans were horrified to see the brutal tactics of the police, the violence against civil rights workers and the absolute racial terror.

In 1972, a former medical student named Steve Biko organized a Black People’s convention. It lead to outpouring global support from leftist groups around the world. However, in 1977, Steve Biko was arrested by the brutal police in South Africa. During his arrest, he was heavily beaten and thrown into a jail cell. He died later, naked and shackled. His death lead to global protests around the world.

Anti-apartheid protests emerged throughout South Africa to protest the state-murder of Steve Biko. The Afrikaner government responded with unseen brutality. The police killed over 2000 Black South Africans. According to some human rights groups, at least 30,000 Black South Africans were arbitrarily detained and ‘disappeared’ between 1977 and 1986. For the first time, Americans saw on TV white police forces responding to innocent black protesters with war-like violence. Many Americans started to pressure the US government to withdraw any support for the apartheid regime.

The South African Government responded by hiring an assortment of lobbyists to confound the situation. Their argument was the worst form of concern-trolling: “Sanctions only hurt Black South Africans” and this was the argument from Jeff Flake.

In 1990, Jeff Flake became an official registered agent for Rossing Uranium. Rossing Uranium's parent company was Rio Tinto, which owned many mineral interests across Apartheid South Africa and its supporter state Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe). In 1972, Rossing Uranium paid Black miners only 10% of the wages they paid White African people. After the end of the white rule in Namibia in 1989, Rossing Uranium still did not pay a living wage. Even as recently as 2014, uranium workers are dying of uranium poisoning and cancer in Namibia.

Sen Jeff Flake loyalty to his former employer has been steadfast. As recently as 2015, he co-sponsored a bill that legalized selling holy land from the Apache Nation to these mining interests.

Opposing Jeff Flake’s nomination to a cabinet position is a no-brainer. Even taking for granted that Biden’s cabinet would be filled with corporate ghouls, the Biden campaign owes black America a modicum of respect. Corporate America would prefer to do its ghoulish extraction business without the stain of an apartheid lobbyist.

Lastly, every corporate Democrat has been saying that we can “pressure Biden to move left” as a reason to vote for him. To test this out, let’s pressure Biden to not nominate someone who advocated apartheid.

Ideally, Biden would come out with a statement disabusing all news agencies of the idea that Jeff Flake would be considered for a cabinet position. Here is a sample statement for members of Biden’s communication team to copy and paste:

President-elect Biden stands against racism. He has always been an opponent of Apartheid South Africa. Rejection of Trumpism means rejecting all forms of racism. There is no room for a lobbyist for Apartheid South Africa in his cabinet. Mr. Flake will not be considered for any position in the Biden administration.

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Update: An astute reader just sent me this interesting article: Cruelty Case Against Jeff Flake’s Son Dropped In Arizona Dog Deaths

After Ed Miliband’s embarrassing loss to the Tories in 2015, the Socialist Campaign Group put forth Jeremy Corbyn as their preferred candidate for the leader of the Labour Party. In response, Jo Green, the Labour Head of Broadcasting texted, “Anyone who nominates [C]orbyn 'to widen the debate' deserves to be taken out and shot.”

Acting Director of Policy and Political Research Simon Jackson agreed with the sentiment and added, “quite. if the left can't get on the ballot it shows they're moribund… putting them on there only validates the views.”

On September 15 2015, Dan Hogan, then a Policy Communications Officer an Investigations Officer in GLU (which allegedly investigates the so-called anti-semitism claim) also said,“Stevie P should be shot. Jez's speech was a total crock of sh*t.” In response, Amy Fowler of fundraising responded with, “ I feel like he should have maybe addressed the massive elephant in the room that we all kind of hate him [Corbyn].

In 2015, no one expected backbencher Jeremy Corbyn to win the election for the head of the Labour Party. As the report itself concluded:

In 2015, the membership of the Labour Party was about 200,000 and then suddenly more than doubled, with many of those joining with a desire to elect Jeremy Corbyn following the 2015 General Election defeat. In 2016, it grew again to well over half a million, as many members joined to participate in the 2016 leadership election. At its height Labour Party membership was almost 600,000, or roughly 1% of the British population.

Instead of welcoming workers and laborers back into the Labour Party, the Blairite staff of the Labour Party tried to sabotage Jeremy Corbyn at every turn. On 8 October 2015, Director of Policy and Research Simon Jackson again texted messages to his colleagues conspiring to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. He said, “ I'm fairly settled now on the view that they have to get rid of him in the next couple of months or the trots will embed themselves.”

The GLU which was supposed to be neutral did everything but that. In September, 2015, John Stolliday discussed transferring over to the GLU. He said his new role would be “on the barricades for the resistance” against Corbyn. Later on, Stolliday texted,“ I reckon there will be some sort of plot post Xmas, but he will have enough support to limp on until we get wiped out in Wales & Scotland & local elections”

Before the 2015, Labour election, it seems like the GLU went on a self-described “trot-busting” spree. Some people were flagged as ineligible for liking a Facebook Page (For the Green Party). According to the report,

People were rejected as members or supporters in 2015 for retweets, including single retweets. A 21 August 2015 list of 238 rejected members, for example, included someone who “Retweeted Class War”; “Retweets the [National Health Action] party and appears to have been a supporter of them”’; someone with a “Pattern of retweeting Green Party material and expressing support”; and someone who retweeted a Mark Thomas tweet saying “Dear Labour… get fucked” after many Labour MPs’ abstained on the welfare bill, which was opposed by many Labour members. It also included members rejected with the note “green party supporter -likes on facebook”, and “likes a lotta greens on FB”.

In fact, the Trot-busting spree was so extreme that the GLU’s purges automatically got an appeal!

Their hatred towards people who they deemed “trots” were so extreme that the labour staffers fantasized about burning and urinating on a mentally ill member.

On April, 2017, when Theresa May called for a general snap election, instead of working to make sure that labour wins as many seats as possible, the staffers intentionally sabotaged Corbyn, his campaign and some members of the Labour Party. In February, they already talked about sabotaging the election in hopes of electing a new leader.

Furthermore, because many of the Corbyn supporters were young, Jeremy Corbyn’s relied much on social media and digital media. However, the party staffers tried to sabotage Corbyn there too!

Simon Jackson also fantasized about a severe labour loss to “save labour”

In May 2017, exactly one month before the snap elections, senior staffers thought “death by fire” for Corbyn would be “too kind.”

They further went on to sabotage Corbyn by assigning staff to a secret team permanently based in a separate building to aid Blairite MPS. All of this was kept secret from the leadership: Jeremy Corbyn.

In the end, it looks like they funneled over 200K to help right-wing Blairites without the express permission of the party. Of course, none of these staffers were investigated for money laundering.

Meanwhile, Corbyn’s speeches at the time were filling entire stadiums!

In the weeks leading upto the snap elections, these same staffers said they were “sick” after looking at Yougov polls where Labour was doing better than expected.

In fact, on Election Day, when Labour almost won: They had a hung parliament, these members reported that they were sad and sick.

Despite all this internal sabotage, Labour gained nearly 30 seats. Tories had a hung parliament.

Now, imagine if all the staffers had not been conspiring and/or colluding against Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, Jeremy Corbyn’s policies: nationalizing the railway, free meals, ending wars were very popular with the UK.

The report concluded:

Labour Party employees are usually engaged in politics and therefore obviously have political views. However, party staff are supposed to operate neutrally with fairness towards all members and affiliates, regardless of their faction or views.

The reality was the opposite. The party’s resources - paid for by party members - were often utilised to further the interests of one faction and in some cases were used to undermine the party’s objectives.

And now, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, many lives could have been spared with a Corbyn government. But, where is the investigation of these staffers that intentionally sabotaged Corbyn? Why has the British Media been silent about the contents of the report?

Read the entire 800 page report

If we dig into records of slave ownership, we can see that Tom Cotton’s family owned slaves.

Tracing Tom Cotton’s Genealogy was rather easy:

In 1741, the earliest relative John Cotton died. In his will, he bequeathed enslaved persons to his children. He had at least 5 enslaved people!

Another version of the will is even less flattering.

Two generations later, Thomas Cotton’s will says:

I give and bequeath to my nine children Mary CRYER, Moore COTTON, Letha COTTON, John COTTON, Allen COTTON, Sarah COTTON, Arthur COTTON, Noah COTTON, and Sanders COTTON, all my negroes and all my stock of all kind and all my household furniture and perishable property of every kind to be equally divided among my nine children before mentioned, at the death of my wife Priscilla

Thomas’s son Arthur Cotton seems to have moved to Tennessee during his lifetime with an inheritance of an unknown number of enslaved persons. Arthur’s son Jesse Hackney Cotton appears on the records.

Jesse’s wife’s family and Tom Cotton Ancestor Francis Ryon have been listed in the The 1850 Tax List for Drakes Creek Sec., Simpson Co., KY, p. 81, as owning 180 acres of land and seven slaves. Francis Ryon’s daughter Rebecca married Jesse Hackney Cotton in 1842. In 1859, Jesse and Rebecca moved to Yell County, Arkansas. According to the 1860 census, Jesse Cotton, owned twelve slaves.

Prior to 1831, Yell County, AR, was home to Cherokee, Chocktaw, Osage,  and Caddo nations. However, under Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, citizens of these nations were forcibly relocated westward.

Based on the Homestead Act, in 1870, Jesse applied for a land grant from the federal government. The US Dept of Interior, Bureau of Land Management shows the Homestead Certificate #1886, Application #8267, for 40 acres of land at the Dardanelle, Arkansas land office, land entry file #AR1970.489. He was given title to this land that was taken from the first nations shortly thereafter.

Jesse and Rebecca had 12 children. Rebecca died while giving birth to the 13th child. Their eldest son Leonard Ryan Cotton was a soldier for the confederacy. We know this because in 1915, Leonard Ryan Cotton applied for a pension as an ex-confederate soldier. Leonard Ryan Cotton died in 1920.

Thomas James Cotton, Leonard Ryan Cotton’s son, lived in this house, which has been named a “historical home” since 2001.

Both Leonard Ryan’s son and grandson owned multiple cotton gins. It is also possible that they did not pay the cotton gin employees in cash, as they set up a commissary for their employees. It was standard practice to pay in company scrip.

With all these skeletons in his closet, Tom Cotton does not want people to learn the truth about slavery. Unsurprisingly, he calls the 1619 project “neo-Marxist” propaganda.

Since Tom Cotton does not want you to know about his family’s slave-owning past, please do your job to troll him by sharing this article widely!

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Many of us spawn from evil. If there are uncomfortable truths about our parents and grandparents, it is best to be honest about it. For example, author Silvia Foti handled the revelation that her grandfather was a Nazi with honesty and grace. 

Of course, no one is responsible for the sins of their parents; if she had just stated that, it wouldn't have been an issue. It would be honest on its own. However, Jia decided to take a different approach. She claimed, "The vibe was that this was some sort of wild, ironic gotcha," while proceeding to whitewash the deeds of her parents and grandparents.    

The replies to the post showed us precisely what is wrong with America's journalists. A large number of journalists bought her story, uncritically, without a simple google search. If these journalists let Jia slide on such a blatant lie, we can't help but wonder when and if they would offer any pushback from those in power. Browsing any article about North Korea should give us a hint about the self-imposed gullibility or the very conscious advocacy on the part of our media.

 Jia could have engaged in honest discourse. She could have admitted that her parents' actions were morally wrong, but she still loved them as parents. Jia's brand was already about commodifying the self. Why not invoke her brand to discuss the implications of capitalism and globalization on this scale? But it seems like she is not the type to challenge power and write out a grand indictment of everyone in control and all of the global capital. That's why she probably went the easier route. 

For clarity, let's trace the history of what exactly happened in the Philippines around the 1980s to understand this. In the 1970s, Ferdinand Marcos, the US-backed tyrant, was facing fierce opposition from a strong communist movement on one side of the country and a fierce guerrilla Islamic liberation movement on the other side.

The Philippines was suffering from food shortages, exacerbated by typhoons and floods. The food shortages and displacements fed into the discontent, making the rebellion even stronger. Marcos declared martial law and waged war on his own people, killing 10,000. Some sources say he used napalm on his own population. 

After crushing the majority of the rebel forces, Marcos found a perfect solution to quell the unrest at home—and to deal with the unemployment and trade imbalance problems he had with the IMF. For Marcos, sending workers overseas allowed him to scatter any organized resistance to the far corners of the world. Plus, it keeps the families dependent on overseas labor, which discouraged any rebellion domestically.

Many gulf countries were facing labor shortages. In a perfect blend of capitalist interests, Marcos created the Labour Code of the Philippines in 1974. A framework created formal agencies to ease the transaction costs for employing migrant workers. Close to 500,000 Filipinos decided to try their luck abroad during the 15 years of martial law. They sent back their remittances, which now totals 10% of the GDP.

Filipinas in Copenhagen in 1973

In the beginning, the government served as the only intermediary between the employers and the labor market. In 1976, the government deregulated and allowed private labor brokers to take over. According to a 2004 survey, the Philippines' private labor brokerage industry earns annual revenue of USD 511 million. Currently, there are 3723 registered recruitment agencies and a large heap of unregistered recruitment agencies. 

Filipino laws clearly say that recruitment agencies cannot charge more than one month's salaries. However, it seems like the government does not particularly care to enforce these laws. The sheer poverty and desperation force the most vulnerable people to borrow money to cover agency fees. Sometimes the agencies themselves lend money at predatory rates: A study from Israel showed that 23% of Filipino workers are still paying their debt after two years. 5% have not yet repaid their loans after three years. Most labor contract lasts two years. As a result, most Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) extend their contracts just to pay off the loans from the previous contract.

Recruitment agencies serve to deliver the most compliant and obedient workforce, and also profit from the exploitation. Anyone can be exploited, even the smartest and most educated. Nena Ruiz, a retired teacher, was trafficked and enslaved by a Sony executive.

Today, the Philippines' median family income is 267,000 pesos, which is about 7000 dollars. In 1988, the median family income was 40,000 Pesos. Nurses can start off with $50,000, and teachers can start at $28,000. Like how millions of college students in America take loans to earn a higher income, millions of Filipinos pay recruitment agencies with loans regardless of how burdensome it seems

If they stayed in the Philippines with a local nurse's salary, private schooling would be out of the picture for their children. Instead, they have to adjust to public schools that may be susceptible to various unknowns. However, with a salary from abroad, private schooling becomes affordable. Of course, they imagine their family living in a safe neighborhood and, most importantly, giving their children a better future.

Not all Filipinos fall victim to predatory firms, but even for the most fortunate OFWs—who happen to get an ethical recruiting agency and an angelic employer—being an OFW means bearing a heavy burden. According to UNICEF, 9 million children each year are left behind as their parents work abroad. For these children, along with the increased remittances comes better nutrition, a safer neighborhood, better schools, and better education. They join the upper-middle class of the third world, but at a steep price—they are, in a very real sense, orphaned.

The OFW contracts run for one year, and at the end of the year, the parent gets some time off to visit their children. One worker recounts how she had to leave a 3-week old baby behind. Another man spent twenty years abroad. In those twenty years, he became a distant memory for his kids. When he returned home to retire, he was a stranger to his entire family. Perhaps this is why male suicide rates have increased in the Philippines.

In 1986, The Filipino people were excited to see the dictatorship of Marcos fall. They hoped the democratic presidency of Corazon Aquino would put an end to the constant cycle of family abandonment. But, soon, they realized that the neoliberal order rules over democracy. 

In an expose, a Japanese journalist coined the word Japayuki, a derogatory term for Filipina prostitutes. Many Filipinas who came to work in Japan would get married to rural Japanese men. Rural Japanese women were being sent to the cities for more opportunities. The government's response was to valorize them as heroes and offer empty rhetoric. 

In response to this, Filipinas in Japan organized the Philippine Women's League of Japanese. They were the first to highlight the Philippine officials’ duplicitousness. They said, "for their failure to address properly the unemployment problem, politicians back home have resorted to flattering the egos of Filipino workers stranded abroad with such accolades as 'unsung heroes,' 'saints,' etc. even when many of them are ending up in foreign jails."

They do have a point. Many migrant workers die from unsafe working conditions, or mere carelessness, where their lives don't matter. A Filipino worker died while working on the Doha metro. In Saudi Arabia, migrant workers died after a crane accident. Just last year, a Filipino migrant was killed after an accident with the cleaning machinery in Canada. Most recently, there is a worldwide toll that's borne by Filipino healthcare workers amidst the COVID-19 crisis

The worst-case scenario for these workers questions the benevolence of the universe. It shows the depths of potential evil in humans. Even western Democracies aren't free for them. Fedelina Lugosan was smuggled to the US as a teenager and enslaved for the next 65 years. She has finally reunited with her family.A German diplomat abused and enslaved two Filipina women.

Lest you think the abuse is limited to domestic workers, nurses in one of New York's most prominent hospitals recently won a labor abuse case. They were forced to work long hours for less than minimum wage. If this can happen in a "western democracy", what hope is there in a country like Saudi Arabia?

A nation of nearly 100 million desperate workers has allowed for the most parasitic businesses to thrive, with the help of recruitment agencies. With this glimmer of light, the agencies start off asking for small investments from potential candidates. Jia's grandmother perfected the tactic of starting small and then ballooning the debt.

Jia’s grandmother Florita Tolentino

In 1988, her grandmother Florita Tolentino started a business to recruit nurses from the Philippines. In 1992, she expanded it to teachers and nurses. In 2001, the family business was a significant beneficiary of the No Child Left Behind program. Her grandmother even lobbied Congress to allow teachers from the Philippines to come to teach in Texas. In 2002, Florita Torentino claimed that the state of Texas needed 800 teachers.  In 2001, she falsely claimed that Texas's teachers make $3000 a month and are exempt from paying taxes*.

The court records say that the Tolentino family took the school administrators on an all-expenses-paid beach resort to Hong Kong and the Philippines, where they "interviewed" the teachers. In exchange for this trip, they agreed to hire Filipina teachers. At first, the school district said they would employ 55 teachers.

With this preliminary order, the Tolentino family charged each of the teachers $6000 of a non-refundable deposit. Those who could afford it mortgaged their property and took out bank loans at reasonable interest rates. For those who couldn't, Omni Consortium charged a fee with a 5% interest compounded monthly, which was an annual interest rate of 60%. On top of that, Omni took 50% of the salaries for the first few years. The teachers recruited by Omni Consortium were already in $12000 of debt. Before they had even made it to the US, they were in debt roughly equivalent to two years of a median family income in The Philippines.

Before the date of travel, the school district changed its mind and said it only needed 16 teachers. Instead of returning the money, they lied to the teachers. Omni Consortium created fake employment applications and filed false visa documents. They also plunged the teachers deeper into debt bondage, forcing them to come to the US. Omni knew that there was no job waiting for the majority of teachers, yet they brought them over. The teachers lived in cramped quarters, with no furniture. Many had hardly any food. According to the FBI agent who investigated the case, they received a tip from an anxious catholic priest in the Philippines. The Catholic priest spoke about their living conditions, which began the FBI investigation.

While the teachers lived in absolute misery, Jia went to a fancy private school where the tuition costs $15000 a year. She also seemed to have money to travel to Venice and have a comfortable existence. 

Further investigation showed that nearly 373 teachers were brought over, exploited, and extorted during this period. In 2004, after the rescue of the teachers, everyone in the business was finally charged. After a lengthy trial, lawyers hired by the Tolentinos—likely with money the workers themselves had paid—secured a ruling of mistrial on a technicality: Two of the jurors had read some newspaper articles about this case. Finally, as it is in most cases, the family reached a plea bargain with the prosecutors. 

As for the teachers, some stayed on. Others went back home to the Philippines, but luckily, all of them got their debts canceled. It is unknown if anyone got restitution for the lost wages.

Jia tried to paint her family as a victim of ICE's persecution. Ironically, our framework to deal with undocumented immigrants via ICE creates the environment for exploitation: their status as “illegal” leaves debt-ridden, desperate people little recourse against the extortion of predatory recruitment agencies.  Quite often, calling ICE is used as a union-busting tactic.

Every year, nearly 66,000 Filipino workers come to the US. Almost 55% of them report working for less than minimum wage, and 44% of them  describe some kind of abuse.  The problem is much bigger than we think. If we, as a world, are to tackle this enormous problem that tears families apart and sucks out the humanity in many of us, we must learn to differentiate the victims from the collaborators. We must see through the trick mirror.

*No one is exempt from paying federal income taxes unless there is a specific tax treaty between the two countries, even then, you'd have to pay taxes in your home country.

[Edited 2020-05-25 to address Jia’s claim]

Today, she wrote:

I’m not sure that those who have been tweeting the horrific claims of usury and threats and abuse in the first federal indictment are interested in actually understanding the court case: I have had fifteen years to reckon with the possibility that the Bush-era security apparatus was righteous and truthful and that my parents were inhumane and deceptive.

By using the term, “Bush-era security apparatus,” she is appealing to people’s emotions. We know for a fact that many innocent people were targeted after 9/11. But that does not mean her logic is sound. For example, the police department in Wichita, Kansas has repeatedly violated civil rights. Their methods and practices are extremely shoddy and have an extraordinary number of false convictions. However, that does not mean that the BTK Killer is innocent. Each case must be examined in particular. One can’t use the reputation of an agency in general as a cover.

I understand the argument that any business involving immigration is inherently unethical: this is part of why I want to report out what their company was actually like, interview the nurses and teachers they worked with.

Jia, conveniently, ignores reports from teachers who were victims of the company. Evidence to back-up our assertion:

• In 2007, a teacher from Bacolod, gave a first-hand account of her experience in the company.

• Her dad and grandmother’s own guilty plea which includes an allocution of all the events that took place.

• During the trial, the government produced documentation from banks, Visa and Omni Consotium detailing various payments and receipts. (See Exhibits 45-51 and 54-70, these were just two teachers. The Government had exhibits for every teacher)

• Testimony from numerous teachers

For now, I’ll just say what I wasn’t expecting might need articulation: I would never have written this if I believed—I would have cut my parents off years ago if any actual scrutiny of the full casework suggested—that these allegations, which disappeared from the case after they could not be upheld in court, were true.]

Jia now produces a red-herring. Frequently, the government throws various charges at people in hopes of getting them to plea down. Yes, her parents did not bring in people who were “illegal.” Therefore, they did not technically commit 8 USC § 1324. But, that does not mean they did not violate numerous other statutes such as those against extortion, forced labor, and fraud. There is plenty of evidence to overwhelmingly suggest that they indeed had a business of doing just that.

In fact, her parents were charged with one destruction of records, which makes me wonder how many other instances of extortion did they get away with.

Link to the thread with some extra details

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