"Studying the courage of a Polish Nobel Prize-winning labor leader, a momentous workers’ uprising, and a fearless sainted pope who resisted tyranny would help topple the walls that block students from understanding our shared past."

Jamie Glas writes in The Federalist,

“The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures,” said Poland’s Lech Walesa, the charismatic Gdańsk electrician who co-founded Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. “But it all started in the shipyards.”

Labor Day is a good time to remember Walesa, who turns 75 in September and 35 years ago won the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s probably the most important labor leader of our era. Together, Walesa, Solidarity workers, Western leaders, and Pope John Paul II defied Soviet totalitarianism in Poland, playing a decisive role in ending the Cold War and expanding human freedom.

...Students should learn that, throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, the Soviet puppet government and 200,000 occupying soldiers attempted to crush workers’ protests in Polish cities. This Orwellian police state even tried destroying independent labor unions and the Catholic Church.

“[I]n Poland we have the very first revolution in the world conducted by the working class, directed not against a capitalist system,” the late American Federation of Teachers’ President Albert Shanker said, “but against a communist dictatorship…”

...“A shipyard is a window to the world,” Walesa said. American schoolchildren desperately need to acquire a heroic vision of the human spirit drawn from the hard lessons of history. Studying the courage of a Polish Nobel Prize-winning labor leader, a momentous workers’ uprising, and a fearless sainted pope who resisted tyranny would help topple the walls that block students from understanding our shared past.

Read more here.

Europe waking up?

Here is the cover of a Polish magazine, 'wSieci,' which features the image of a white woman, draped with the European Union flag, screaming as she is being groped and assaulted by dark skinned male arms.



Kirsty Major writes at The Independent,

The image is a reference to the sexual assaults that have been claimed to have been perpetrated by migrant and refugee men against European women.

The 1,000 reports of theft, sexual assault and rape of women at Cologne’s central train station on New Year’s Eve led to calls for stronger immigration controls.

...In the cover article, writer Aleksandra Rybinska states that issues with migration are the result of an unavoidable clash of civilisations between Islam and Christianity.

He believes that whilst Muslims are actively promoting this war, Europeans are engineering their own downfall by ignoring the negative impacts of multiculturalism.

Quoting historian Arnold Toynbee, he writes: “Civilisations die from suicide, not by murder”.

...The news comes after Poland’s government - alongside Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - stated that they will support Balkan countries to seal their borders with Greece in order to stem the flow of migrants and refugees.

Read more here.

"God, honor, homeland"

Theodore Shoebat reports that on Wednesday of last week,

Tens of thousands of Christians in Poland took to the streets to fight Islam and leftism, crying out “Stop Islamisation” and the most beautiful words of “God, honour, homeland”.

Read more here.

Provoking the wisdom of peaceful second thoughts

Austin Bay writes about Article Five of the NATO Treaty:

In Article 5, NATO members agreed, "that an armed attack against one or more of them ... shall be considered an attack against them all." Each member would then take "action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain" NATO security. The enemy had to attack a member's territory or member "forces, vessels or aircraft" operating "in or over" NATO territory.

That last clause told the Kremlin that an attack on U.S. soldiers in West Germany would trigger Article 5. Observers referred to U.S. soldiers on the "intra-German border" as "trip wires." And we were. I served a year in a U.S. Army armored cavalry regiment covering the Fulda Gap invasion corridor. From one of our observation posts we could watch the Soviet tank regiment stationed in Meiningen, East Germany, exercise on a live-fire range a short seven kilometers from the border. The regiment had over 100 T-62 main battle tanks. Four Russian divisions were positioned to follow the forward regiment. Occasionally, our ready-to-go reaction force consisted of two tanks. However, if the Russians "attacked from garrison" (a type of surprise attack), they would have to fight us. Even if this first battle was fatally brief, our resistance guaranteed Moscow faced a global war. The Russians knew the U.S. Air Force could shatter their tank divisions. The U.S. Navy would maul the Soviet fleet.

Our physical presence sent two strategic diplomatic messages. Hey, Obama administration smart diplomacy practitioners, listen up.

Message One: We encouraged aggressive Kremlin war planners to avoid actualizing their aggression. Think twice; then go have a shot of vodka.

Message Two: We assured other NATO members that the U.S. would fulfill its Article 5 commitment. We were there to deter conflict. We bet that George Kennan was right. Contain the Soviets. After frustrating their aggression, at some point they would "mellow."

Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin pals have "de-mellowed." According to Putin, NATO and the U.S. are enemies, and our policies provocations. This repeats 1975 Soviet agitprop, which described my out-gunned unit as an imperialist occupier. Hey, Vlad, let me abuse words just like you do, buddy, to satirize your lies. We sure were provocative. We provoked second thoughts, you old KGB colonel, you. We intentionally provoked frustration in you and other Communist imperialists.

...Last year, Poland's foreign minister said NATO should station two heavy (armored) brigades on Polish soil. In May 2015, senior officials in the Baltic states asked the U.S. to establish permanent military garrisons in their countries. At the present time, the U.S. will briefly send units to Poland and the Balts (rotational units). NATO also conducts fairly robust exercises in these countries.

To Eastern Europeans, rotation, unfortunately, implies transitory.

This is not a case where our allies are asking Uncle Sam to bear the burden while they party in France. In February, Poland launched a $36 billion defense modernization and expansion program. Poles and Balts want U.S. forces to, you know, provoke Putin -- provoke the wisdom of peaceful second thoughts.

I knew it! It's about keeping Europe dependent on Russia for its fuel supply!

Robert Zubrin writes about how Putin is fomenting a world-wide anti-fracking campaign.

The fact that Kremlin opposition to European fracking has nothing to do with environmental concerns should be clear even to the dullest among us, because Russia has massive fracking projects of its own underway in Siberia. The real goal is to keep Europe dependent upon Russia for its fuel supply. Natural-gas prices in Europe are quadruple those prevailing in the United States, and by maintaining a near-monopoly on overpriced European natural-gas imports, the Putin regime assures itself of a vast source of revenue. This allows it to rule and rearm Russia without permitting the freedom necessary to develop the country’s human potential. Furthermore, so long as Europe is kept critically dependent upon Russia for fuel, Moscow can paralyze and render ineffective any Western response to its plans for conquest, whose initial steps are currently being demonstrated in Ukraine. More, and much worse, is certain to follow so long as Europe remains helpless.

The Kremlin’s all-out effort to stop fracking in Western nations is not limited to openly broadcasting lies, hysteria, and propaganda through its official media organizations. It also engages in covert operations, behind-the-scenes lobbying and payoffs, and political manipulations using its agents of influence. Many of these are documented by former U.S. ambassador to Lithuania Keith C. Smith in a recent paper published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In this paper, titled “Unconventional Gas and European Security: Politics and Foreign Policy of Fracking in Europe,” Smith details Kremlin/Gazprom behind-the-scenes operations that were instrumental in obtaining fracking bans in Germany and Bulgaria. Similar dirty work appears to have been involved in ramming through fracking bans in France, Italy, and other European countries.

Many Western companies are willing to support Moscow’s energy policies in order to gain stronger positions in the Russian market. As the UralSib Bank’s Chris Weaver remarked, “Gazprom does not have to knock on the door of the European Parliament, Total {French} and Basf {German} do it on its behalf” . . . West European intelligence services report that there has been little or no reduction in the number of Russian agents operating in their countries since the end of the Cold War. The Kremlin’s goals have shifted from military targets to developing “agents of influence” within European governments and in the three major EU institutions. With President Putin playing a direct role in Russia’s energy relations with Europe, one should assume that his KGB-honed skills and those of his major advisors are being applied to maintain Russia’s leading position in Europe’s gas import market.

If Europe’s fuel supplies remain under Russian control, the continent is doomed to fall under Russian domination. America could help supply gas, but its exports are being bottled up by the Obama administration, which refuses to approve the necessary permits for constructing liquid-natural-gas export terminals. France and Germany have plenty of shale suitable for producing gas, but on the instigation of Russian political agents of influence, they have not only banned fracking but are moving to shrink or shut down their own nuclear-power industries as well. The UK also has large shale resources that could be fracked to provide the necessary gas, which is why an all-out Moscow-backed campaign has been launched to stop fracking there as well. If that succeeds, the only remaining hope for Europe will lie in its east.

Ukraine has the third-largest shale resources in Europe. But, as a result of the Western paralysis caused by Europe’s Russian-gas dependency, Ukraine is being conquered, and in fact, its eastern reserves have already been overrun. The Baltic states also have plenty of gas-rich shale, so they will be targeted next. Based on the pathetic Western response to his Ukrainian land grab, Putin has every reason to believe that he can take them at will, and, unfortunately, he is probably right.

That leaves Poland, which has the largest shale-gas reserves of any country in Europe and a fiercely independent government intent on their development. Polish shale-gas reserves are estimated at 790 trillion cubic feet (TCF), more than 150 times the 5 TCF per year that Europe imports from Russia. If the Poles can develop those resources, Putin’s power to create an Eurasianist empire stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok will be severely compromised. But they will do Europe no good at all if Putin can seize them first.

Poland is a country that knows the value of freedom. When their turn comes, the Poles will fight. But if Putin’s anti-fracking campaign prevails, the Poles will fight alone.

Read more here.

What will be Vladimer Putin's next move?

Michael Totten writes,

Putin could take Eastern Ukraine, but it would do him no good. It’s the poorest part of the country and would turn into an instantaneous money pit for him, akin to the United States annexing Tijuana in Northern Mexico. He can’t possibly want that, not if he has any sense.

He’d lose all his leverage over Kiev. Even an unspoken threat of invasion, occupation, and annexation is enough to make Ukraine act with tremendous caution toward Moscow, but if Putin pulls the trigger, Kiev would have nothing left to lose.

Never mind the price he’d pay internationally for that kind of stunt; invading and occupying the largest country in Europe would require more than a half-million troops and God-only-knows how much money. And for what purpose? Ukraine poses no national security threat whatsoever to Russia.

It’s no big deal that Poland is asking for American ground troops. That’s just predictable, and prudent, geopolitical posturing. If Ukraine asks, though, that would be the time to start getting nervous.

Read more here.
thanks to Instapundit for linking to Totten.

THEY KEEP ASKING, “WHAT SHOULD OBAMA DO ABOUT UKRAINE”? WELL, I SAY “NOTHIN’”!

Guest post
By Curt Dale

The media anchors keep wringing their hands and asking, “What should Obama do about Ukraine”? and I vehemently reply, “Nothin’”! I really don’t want him to do anything. Tell me one thing Barry has ever done that he didn’t totally foul up, and if he touches this, he will screw it up even worse than he already has. Please consider what he’s done in 5 years and find one thing that he hasn’t turned into a total catastrophe: rendered our great military essentially ineffective in 5 years though cuts, by firing the good generals and admirals; Obamacare is a disaster; Bailout was a disaster; Insurance bailout a pending disaster; Benghazi absolutely traitorous; turned into an essential terrorist organization; IRS; ignoring Keystone pipeline has cost most of us much of our income; gasoline prices (doubled to tripled); his EPA has created mass destruction though manmade disasters; essentially destroyed “balance of power” in our government; enormously enhanced illegal immigration; shovel ready jobs weren’t; destroyed respect for the Oval Office and the Office of the Presidency; messing up on Syria by doing nothing; fouling up the withdrawal from Iraq, and Iran, making a fool of himself about Guantanamo Bay; working to destroy Israel; destroying the respect of other nations for America; ad infinitum.

Barack Hussein Obama has no sense of history, no sense of the actual world situation, and would have no idea of how to take action. Keep in mind that Sarah Palin told us this Ukraine scenario was highly probably when she was running for Vice President. But he and his lot poo-pooed her. Now, here it is on Obama’s plate, and he has vastly weakened the U. S. Military to the degree that he does not have the ability to respond militarily. Frankly, even if Obama had sufficient military, he doesn’t know how to employ it, and has chosen new generals and admirals who are such sycophants that they probably couldn’t help much either.

With the 20,000 plus Russian troops who have moved into The Crimea already and others standing by to move into the eastern Ukraine at Putin’s whim, Obama is caught with his bare, er, uh, face hanging out, lookin’ and soundin’ dumber than dirt, and letting Lurch Kerry blabber like an idiot about what powerful things the US can do. We generally can’t do squat, folks.

When I was in the Air War College, we studied the Folda Gap Scenario as a possibility of how the USSR could take over Europe. It would have been a monstrous battle, but we’d have had a good chance of winning. Now, Obama has wiped out that advantage through his total disdain for military power and ignorance of what its value is to national security and international leverage. He just threw it all away in a few short months. I don’t know whether to laugh at Obama’s stupidity or to cry at the horrible results of his stupidity.

Obama said, today, that, this move by Putin ‘will be a costly proposition for Russia.” Hey, dummy! Thus far, without firing a shot, 16,000 Russian troops have walked into the Crimea, and took over a major part of a nation. Free, too! Does taking over the assets of this magnificent 10,000 square mile peninsula with a whole coast line of ports, coves and bays on the Black Sea, and operating year round seaport for the Russian Navy, airbases, and a strategic location, all priceless, seem to be a “costly proposition for Russia?” Costly to Russia, Mr. President! Not quite. Actually “priceless proposition for Russia”! Barry, sounded like the incompetent boob he is, today. It is “almost” painful for me to refer to the President of the United States in such terms. I didn’t even say that about LBJ, Carter or Clinton. They had not reached that low level but Obama fully qualifies for the description.

Obama set himself up for this situation over the past 5 years. And he also set up a marvelous chess move for Putin. Putin can move right into the eastern Ukraine, and he probably has Poland quaking in its boots, Romania can be just as easy a conquest, and Turkey is pretty much fair game if Putin wishes. Obama has helped decimate the EU and NATO forces, so what will they do to slow down Putin? Consider also that Putin’s just signed a pact with China that doubles his ante in many ways. Will China now make the same move into Taiwan to reclaim it? I wonder what warning Obama will give to China when it makes its move? Maybe economic sanctions against China? Oh, keep in mind that they just about own us, guys, with the trillions of debt we have. Not much leverage left there, huh?

I and millions of others fought the Cold War successfully to the point Ronald Reagan was able to say, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall”! And, Gorbachev did. Vladamir Putin is poised to put the USSR back together. And all Obama does is talk!

So, what should Obama do? I’ll make two suggestions. First, shut his yap, and quit making it worse! Second, resign?

Colonel Curtis D. Dale, PhD, USAF (Ret)