1973: The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag Archipelago was published many years ago today:

"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "literary investigation" of the police-state system in the Soviet Union, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, is published in the original Russian in Paris. The book was the first of the three-volume work. The brutal and uncompromising description of political repression and terror was quickly translated into many languages and was published in the United States just a few months later."

It is a very difficult book to read but worth the effort.  The USSR collapsed at the end of 1991 but we can not forget what was done in the name of communism.

 

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1973: Top 10 this week WABC radio in New York

  1. The Most Beautiful Girl - Charlie Rich (Epic)
  2. Top of the World - The Carpenters (A&M)                     
  3. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John (MCA)                
  4. Just You 'n' Me - Chicago (Columbia)                        
  5. Time In a Bottle - Jim Croce (ABC)                          
  6. Hello It's Me - Todd Rundgren (Bearsville)                  
  7. Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress) - Helen Reddy (Capitol)     
  8. The Love I Lost -                                            
             Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (Philadelphia Int.)  
  9. The Joker - The Steve Miller Band (Capitol)                 
 10. Photograph - Ringo Starr (Apple)  

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We remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1911-2008)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died in 2008.   He was born in Kislovodsk, Russia on this day in 1911.

We remember him as an author who wrote about Soviet communism. He knew first hand what repression and tyranny really were:

"Beginning with the 1962 short novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," Solzhenitsyn devoted himself to describing what he called the human "meat grinder" that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually.
His "Gulag Archipelago" trilogy of the 1970s left readers shocked by the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin."

Mr. Solzhenitsyn was a real hero of the 20th century!

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We remember Pearl Harbor 1941

Today, we remember Pearl Harbor.   Again, we recall the bravery of everyone who died and fought in WW 2.

Let's hope that new generations always remember this day.

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"Tora! Tora! Tora!"... https://t.co/6PQjJATLzn via @amazon

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) December 7, 2017

December 5, 1872: What happened to the Mary Celeste?

On December 5, 1872, the Mary Celeste, an American vessel, was found near the Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.   The ship's supplies were untouched and everything looked normal.   However, there was not one passenger, or trait of anyone, on board.

So what happened?   We don't know.  There are many theories but nothing definite.  

It is one of the great shipping mysteries of the 19th century.

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1973: The day that Gerald Ford became VP

On this day in 1973,  Representative Gerald Ford became Vice President of the US following the resignation of VP Agnew.   

David Shribman wrote an article reminding us of just how fortunate we were that Gerald Ford was the man who assumed the office.

Put me down as one of those who believes that President Ford was a great president.  He did not fight a war or deal with an economic depression.  He did restore the presidency and that's no small achievement.

As President Carter said after taking the presidential oath:   

"For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.."

Yes, we should all thank President Ford for healing the nation.  It was no small task.

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Nov 30, 1874: Winston Churchill was born!

We remember today one of the great men of the 20th century:

"Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, is born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England."   (History)

Churchill was the man at the right time for the UK in World War II.   

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1963: President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas

As a kid in Cuba, I sat with my father and watched Fidel Castro on Cuban TV talk about the Kennedy assassination.  I don't remember what he said but my dad told me later that Castro was very nervous.  I guess that he felt that President Johnson would use the assassination to correct the mistake of The Bay of Pigs.  A few days later, I heard my father and some of his friends say the same thing over a little Cuban coffee and cigars.   

It was a very tense time in Cuba because the Castro regime was locking up dissidents, such as my father's cousin Dr. Ignacio Segurola who spent 14 years in prison without a trial.   My mother told me recently that she was afraid that my own father would be picked up because he refused to take a job with the newly created national bank that replaced all of the privately owned banks expropriated (or as they say "nationalized") during that time.

Over time, I've heard all of the conspiracy theories, watched a few documentaries and even that idiotic Oliver Stone JFK movie that came out in 1991.   

Can we finally call it?  President JFK was killed by a crazy guy who was hanging around with communists and supporting the Castro dictatorship in Cuba.

Yes, there were angry right-wingers in Dallas.  Some of them behaved poorly.  However, do you think that one of these groups would have "contracted" a head case like Oswald to kill anybody?.  My guess is that most of these right wing groups would have given Oswald a bloody lip for his communist ideas if they ever had a chance to run into him. 

A few years ago, James Piereson put the nail in all of the conspiracies, especially the nonsense that right wingers in Dallas or the "let's get into Vietnam" military industrial complex.

Mr Piereson tells us about Oswald, the communist who killed the president of the US:

"The facts are that President Kennedy was a martyr in the Cold War struggle against communism. The assassin was a communist and not a bigot or a right-winger. Oswald defected from the U.S. to the Soviet Union in 1959, vowing when he did so that he could no longer live under a capitalist system. He returned to the U.S. with his Russian wife in 1962, disappointed with life under Soviet communism but without giving up his Marxist beliefs or his hatred of the U.S. By 1963, Oswald had transferred his political allegiance to Castro's communist regime in Cuba.  

In April 1963, Oswald attempted to shoot Edwin Walker, a retired U.S. Army general, as he sat at a desk in his dining room. Walker was the head of the Dallas chapter of the John Birch Society and a figure then in the news because of his opposition to school integration and his demand that the Castro regime be overthrown. The rifle Oswald used in the attempt at Walker's life was the one he used to shoot Kennedy.  

Dallas police would not identify Oswald as Walker's would-be assassin until after the assassination of Kennedy, but Oswald, fearful that he would be identified for the Walker shooting, fled Dallas for New Orleans. 

In June 1963 he established a local chapter of Fair Play for Cuba, a national organization dedicated to gaining diplomatic recognition for Castro's regime. Oswald was filmed by a local television station in New Orleans circulating leaflets on behalf of the Castro government and was jailed briefly following a street altercation with anti-Castro Cubans. Soon thereafter he appeared on a local television program to debate U.S. policy toward Cuba.  

In late September, Oswald left New Orleans to travel to Mexico City in pursuit of a visa that would permit him to travel to Cuba and then to the Soviet Union. As documented in the Warren Commission Report, he took along a dossier of news clippings on his pro-Castro activities to establish his revolutionary bona fides with personnel at the Cuban and Soviet embassies in the city. 

Oswald returned to Dallas empty-handed after being told that his application would take months to process. He was still waiting on his application six weeks later when he read that President Kennedy's forthcoming visit to Texas would include a motorcade through downtown Dallas and past the building where he worked.  

The assassin's motives for shooting Kennedy were undoubtedly linked to a wish to interfere with the president's campaign to overthrow Castro's government. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy pledged to abandon efforts to overthrow Castro's regime by force. But the war of words between the two governments continued, and so did clandestine plots by the Kennedy administration to eliminate Castro by assassination."

Last, but not least, I have spoken to Cubans living in New Orleans in 1962-63 who got into heated arguments with Oswald over Cuba.  They will attest to the fact that Oswald was a "Castro loving communist," or exactly the kind of jerk who would kill the president of the US.

The right did not kill JFK.  The bloody communist did!

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1864: President Lincoln was reelected!

On this day in 1864, President Lincoln was reelected in the middle of the US Civil War.   

As people voted, General Sherman's troops were running around the South and winning battles.  Lincoln carried all but three states (Kentucky, New Jersey, and Delaware), and won 55 percent of the vote.   He won 212 electoral votes to McCellan’s 21.    

On one hand, it was a good victory for President Lincoln.  On the other hand, it was not a national election since the South did not participate.

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1973: Ferguson Jenkins traded to Rangers for a young Bill Madlock

Who remember this?   On this day in 1973, the Cubs traded 6-time 20-game winner Ferguson Jenkins to the Rangers for third baseman Bill Madlock and utility man Vic Harris.     

Jenkins won 25 games for a very young Texas team that challenged Oakland for the AL West title in 1974.   

He won 284 with a 3.34 ERA and 267 complete games over 19 seasons.    Jenkins was selected to The Hall of Fame in 1991.

On the other hand, Madlock went on to have a great career: .305 average and 2,008 hits in 15 seasons.  He won 4 batting titles, 2 in Chicago and 2 in Pittsburgh.

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1967: Che is still burning in hell after all of these years

By 1965, Che Guevara had faded from public life. His disappearance created all kinds of speculation about Che’s relationship with Fidel and Raúl Castro. After all, some close to Castro in 1959 had been killed in accidents, like Camilo Cienfuegos, or stuck in political prisons, like Huber Matos. Cienfuegos’s plane was never found, and Matos was eventually released in some prisoner exchange.  Matos spent the rest of his life in exile.

Che reappeared in 1966 in Bolivia, where he hoped to bring about a revolution.  How did he get there?  Who paid his bills? Why did he suddenly leave Cuba?  Many believe that Fidel and Raúl wanted him out, and starting a revolution in Bolivia was the exit.  I think it’s fair to say that Che had worn out his welcome with the Castro brothers, specially after they saw how popular he was with the international left.  As we learned, there is only one “popular” person in Cuba, and that’s Fidel.

Fifty-five years ago this week, Che was captured and executed by Bolivian troops operating with the CIA.  It happened very fast.  As we learned in his diary, Che and his men lacked food and medicine and were barely surviving in the jungle.  It’s possible that Che would have died of bad health and no medical care.  He was battling asthma attacks constantly.  Also, they were not getting a lot of help from Cuba, either by design or because the supplies could not reach them.  My guess is that Che was happy to get captured and hoped for some prison time and then a return to Cuba.  He did not get his wish.

Che subsequently became “the image” on all those t-shirts.  He became the ultimate anti-U.S. symbol, the image that every left-wing group goes to when its members have a gripe against the U.S.

Ironically, he was captured because the campaign in Bolivia failed miserably.  It failed for two reasons, as Humberto Fontova explained in Exposing the Real Che.  Read the book for more details, but it went down like this:

1) Bolivia was not Cuba.

2) The natives in Bolivia never bought into the idea that a band led by a guy from Argentina and Cubans was there to save them.  In the end, it was the villagers he was trying to “liberate” who turned him in.  Again, the Bolivian campaign was a total failure.  The locals never read the memo about Cuban health care, I guess.

Che was a murderer and a man who said awful things about blacks, for example.  This is from Guillermina Sutter Schneider:

In his diary, he referred to black people as “those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing.” He also thought white Europeans were superior to people of African descent, and described Mexicans as “a band of illiterate Indians.”

Today, we would call him a racist and a homophobe!  We’d cancel him from universities.  Twitter would delete his account.

So I still remember my father saying in Spanish that they got him.  Indeed they did, and many champagne bottles popped in the Cuban exile community this week in 1967.

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1901: President McKinley died on this day

On this day in 1901, President William McKinley died from gun shots.    During the 2016 election, Karl Rove often brought up the 1896 election and even wrote a book about it.

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1973: Remember Chile's 9-11

(My new American Thinker post)

Over in Chile, they remember another anniversary of the 1973 overthrow of President Allende.     

Back in 1970, Salvador Allende was elected in a very controversial three-way race that ended up in the Chilean supreme court.  The vote results were:   

Salvador Allende, socialist  1,075,616

Jorge Alessandri, independent  1,036,278

Radomiro Tomic, Christian Democrat  824,849

Allende won a plurality, or 36%.  It was challenged and ultimately upheld in the courts.  In retrospect, a runoff would have been better and Alessandri would have probably won.  It did not happen that way and Allende, whose socialist party was actually to the left of the Chilean communist party, made a massive turn to the left.

By the summer of 1973, Chile was in turmoil. Shortages abounded, political prisons were filled, workers were on strike, and Fidel Castro literally came down to give orders. President Allende had lost control of the situation.  I recall a business colleague of my father who returned from a trip to Santiago totally horrified with the situation.  He saw the panic in the streets, frustration and called it a perfect storm for a coup.

Allende embarked on what he called a "Chilean path to socialism" but he totally misread public opinion.  Chile did not vote for a bona fide communist revolution and President Allende was totally out of line.  

By the way, I see a connection to the current Biden presidency, or how the left totally misunderstood the election.  In Chile, that election result was comparable to the bitter fight between Trump and Biden but in no way a statement that the nation wanted a leftist transformation.

In early September, the Chilean legislature and the Chilean high court had ordered General Augusto Pinochet to take over. That was what the left calls the 'coup' although there are those in Chile who said it was not a coup given that Pinochet did not act on his own. He formed a military government and from there learned that it was not easy to turn around a country devastated by decades of extended socialism, culminating in the full blown communism of Allende.   He implemented market reforms, through his "Chicago Boys" free market economists, the first time such reforms had been tried -- privatization, free trade, private savings accounts for pensions (truly revolutionary) -- which was a radical shift. At times, the reforms were painful, and the adjustment was hard on the Chilean people.  Pinochet backtracked at least once, but in the end, went with the market reforms because it worked better than all other approaches. 

Is Chile better off today?  I say 'yes' but I respect those Chileans who lost loved ones during a very difficult period.  That included victims of the Marxists, of course, but also people on the left. According to reports, as many as 40,000 people were killed, tortured or disappeared at the hands of the regime, (the vast majority in guerrilla combat with the Chilean army in the first three years), yet there were many innocents and that's a black eye for the Pinochet years. 

Finally, Pinochet left power after losing big in a plebiscite in 1988, a notable thing given that actual dictators do not give up power.  Chile began its return to democracy the next year, and here we are.    

At the end of the day, Pinochet’s legacy is a prosperous and non-communist Chile, as Paul Weyrich wrote when Pinochet died in 2006.     

Pinochet saved Chile from turning into Cuba or Venezuela and most locals are very happy about that.   At the same time, Chile's left has flourished lately and let's hope that the new generation does not destroy the amazing progress of the last decades.

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Wonder what LBJ would think of the Democratic Party today

About ten years ago, our family was driving in South Texas, and we a saw a sign about the birthplace of Lyndon B. Johnson.

It was a reminder that LBJ was born here.  He was born August 27, 1908 not far from Johnson City, a place that his family had settled.

It was an even bigger reminder of how irrelevant he’s become to the Texas Democratic Party.  

The legend of LBJ is a lost memory in Texas politics.

In 1948, a young LBJ performed a miracle to win the U.S. Senate election. 

In 1960, Texas Democrats voted for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in a controversial election.

In 1976, Texas voted for Carter in another very close contest.  Texas gave then-governor Carter the 26 electoral votes that helped him get to 290 and victory.

What a difference for today’s Democratic Party.

Not long ago, there were Texas Democrats like Senator Lloyd Bentsen, a conservative Democrat.  He defeated then-businessman George H.W. Bush for the U.S. Senate in 1970.  

The history of Democrats in Texas makes for very enjoyable reading, as you can see in this rather lengthy but fascinating history of the party.  I found this part on recent Texas history so important:

Factional infighting in the Democratic party declined during the 1960s. First Johnson’s presidential ambitions and then his presidency dominated Texas politics in that decade. In 1959 the state legislature authorized a measure moving the Democratic primary from July to May and permitting candidates to run simultaneously for two offices, thus allowing Johnson to run for the Senate and the presidency. (This measure, dubbed the LBJ law, also benefited Lloyd Bentsen’s dual run for the vice-presidency and the Senate in 1988.)

Despite efforts by the Democrats of Texas to secure the support of state convention delegates and power within the party machinery, conservative Democrats retained control. Through the work of LBJ and the Viva Kennedy-Viva Johnson clubs, the Democrats narrowly carried Texas in 1960, reversing the direction of the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections in Texas. 

Similarly, the 1961 special election to fill Johnson’s Senate seat had a lasting effect on Democratic party organization in Texas. After Yarborough’s unexpected victory in the 1957 special election, conservative Democrats in the state legislature amended the election laws to require a run-off in special elections when no candidate received at least 50 percent plus one vote. In 1961, within a field of seventy-two candidates, three individuals made a strong claim for the liberal vote, thus dividing liberal strength and opening the way for a runoff between William A. Blakley, the interim senator and a conservative Texas Democrat, and John G. Tower, the only viable Republican candidate in the race. 

Liberal Democrats thought Blakley as conservative as Tower and opted either to “go fishing” during the run-off or support Tower, thinking it would be easier to oust him in 1966 with a more liberal Democratic challenger. Tower, however, easily won his next two reelection bids and eked out a third in 1978. Liberals also hoped that a Republican victory would encourage the development of an effective Republican party in the state and allow moderates and liberals to gain control of the state Democratic party. Indeed, Texas Democrats statewide remained divided between liberals who supported Ralph Yarborough and moderates who backed LBJ. The two factions waged war over the gubernatorial contest in 1962, when John B. Connally, a moderate to conservative Democrat associated with the Johnson wing of the party, was elected. 

As governor, Connally concentrated his efforts on economic development but received criticism from liberals who thought he neglected minorities and the poor. 

The Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, which traumatized the citizens of Texas, also deeply shook the state Democratic party since it propelled Johnson into the White House and created the need for a greater degree of accommodation between moderate and liberal Texas Democrats. In the 1964 presidential race Johnson carried his home state with ease. 

In the middle to late 1960s, however, Connally’s iron rule of the State Democratic Executive Committee further weakened the liberal forces within the state Democratic party. 

The results of the 1968 presidential election in Texas also emphasized the sagging fortunes of the Democratic party in Texas, as Hubert Humphrey barely managed to carry the state.

My guess is that most of today’s Texas Democrats do not have a clue of this history or the names mentioned.

Texas Democrats all sound alike today.  There is no ideological diversity as you saw in the state party that produced a man like Lyndon Johnson and others. 

There are no conservative Democrats – just very liberal Democrats who subscribe to the same message of income redistribution and identity politics.  They are Obama Democrats rather than Texas Democrats.

Where are the Texas Democrats calling on the party to be more centrist?  They don’t exist, and that’s why the party is so boring and cannot compete statewide in a dynamic state.

Yes, there is calm in the Democrat ranks – the kind of calm that happens when nothing is going on.

Wonder what LBJ would say of his party today, especially the ones who want to take down symbols of the old South?  

To say the least, LBJ would not recognize his party on another anniversary of his birth in 1908.  

Sadly, most of these liberal Texas Democrats would not identify him, either.

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1967: Remember when "To love somebody" and "Somebody to love" were on the charts?

Once upon a time, we collected 45s.  My brother and I spent every bit of our "savings" building a 45s colection second to none.  It worked out because we shared the same stereo, slept in the same room and had identical tastes.  Therefore, I liked what he contributed and vice versa.

I remember one time when I was accounting for our batch of 45s.  I realized that we had a song called "To love somebody" and another one "Somebody to love".

They are both classics from that wonderful musical year of 1967.

"To love somebody" was The Bee Gees' 2nd international hit, or the follow up to "New York Mining Disaster".  It was recorded by several artists and it is still very popular today.

"Somebody to love" was the first big hit by Jefferson Airplane, a California band.  The lead singer was Gracie Slick.

It was a great summer of songs.  

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A beautiful letter for Memorial Day

Rick Moran published a beautiful letter from The Civil War.

It's a letter written by Sullivan Ballou, a Major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers.

He wrote this letter to his wife. It was the last letter that he wrote before being killed:

"I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter."

Great love letter.

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May 15, 1973: Remembering the 1st of Nolan Ryan's 7 no-hitters

On this day in 1973, Nolan Ryan threw the first of his 7 no-hitters.   He beat KC with 12 Ks. 

We know the rest of history.   He pitched another no-hitter in 1973, 1974 and 1975.  He pitched #5 in 1981, # 6 in 1990 and # 7 in 1991.

I had the good fortune of listening to # 5 on the radio (it was on a Sunday afternoon against Baltimore) and catching # 7 with the late Mark Holtz calling strike three on Roberto Alomar to end the game.

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April 27, 1973: Steve Busby no-hitter # 1

We remember Steve Busby who threw his first no-hitter on this day in 1973.     It was the first no-hitter of the DH era, or not having to face a pitcher batting.     

Busby pitched another no-hitter in 1974.    

His career ended due to injuries and then became an excellent baseball TV analyst with the Texas Rangers.    

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We remember those who served in Vietnam, 1961-73

On this day in 1973, US troops left Vietnam.  

It ended a war that began when President Kennedy sent some advisers, was later escalated under President Johnson to 500,000 troops and finally ended by President Nixon.  

As you may know, the parties signed a cease fire in January 1973.   It followed the "famous Christmas bombing" when President Nixon forced the communists to sign the agreement.  We called it "Operation Linebacker" and it was effective.  The bombing missions were so good that the communists were shortly begging for a paper to sign.

Twenty-seven months later, or May 1, 1975, the North walked into Saigon, and we’ve known it as Ho Chi Minh City ever since.

Did it have to turn out that way?    

President Nixon did not think so.  He wrote about it in No More Vietnams, a book that gets better with age.  The point is that we choose to win wars or lose them, the latter of which we did in Vietnam.  To win would not have required a single soldier – just a few B-52s to remind the North that we meant to enforce the ceasefire.  We should remember that North Vietnam was devastated in 1973.

The tragedy of Vietnam is that the USSR could not believe that we let South Vietnam collapse in 1975, as Stephen J. Morris wrote on the 30th anniversary of the disintegration of Saigon:

If the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972. 
But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. 
Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the results were devastating for the south. 
As the triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight “a poor man’s war.”

Even Hanoi’s main patron, the Soviet Union, was convinced that a North Vietnamese military victory was highly unlikely. 
Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. 
Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself with a continuation of American logistical support. 
The former Soviet chargé d’affaires in Hanoi during the 1970’s told me in Moscow in late 1993 that if one looked at the balance of forces, one could not predict that the South would be defeated. 
Until 1975, Moscow was not only impressed by American military power and political will, it also clearly had no desire to go to war with the United States over Vietnam. 
But after 1975, Soviet fear of the United States dissipated.

No kidding that fear of the U.S. dissipated.  

The post-Vietnam years contributed to the perception that the U.S. was weak and unwilling to defend its interests.  From Nicaragua to Iran to the Soviets in Afghanistan and Cuban troops in Africa, it was a time of U.S. weakness.  

Thankfully, it ended with the Reagan presidency.

Yes, there were many mistakes in Vietnam, from using the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to send 500,000 soldiers to war to not fighting to win. 

I believe that the biggest mistake was not preserving our gains, or a South Vietnam that would have looked a lot like South Korea today.

Again, it could have turned out very different, especially for the many who served in Vietnam.  They won the battles, and the politicians lost the peace.

This is President Nixon's book and for some of the young people who don't remember.

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