TBR News December 4, 2019
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. December 4, 2019:“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Commentary for December 4: “King Donald is now in England and the Brits are frightened lest he run his mouth and screw up their elections.
You can’t tell Trump to dummy up because he takes offense and deliberately does what he is asked not to.
He is viewed in Europe, and Asia, as a loud-mouthed nut.
Everyone is careful not to upset him lest he sanction their dogs or pipe tobacco and when he leaves their country, there is general relief and mocking satire in private.
If Trump knew what various foreign leaders thought, and privately said, about him, he would have a stroke and sanity would return to the American domestic, and foreign, political and economic scenes.”
The Table of Contents
• Trump blasts censure idea as House panel readies impeachment report vote
• Californians are turning to vending machines for safer water. Are they being swindled?
• House Democrats’ impeachment report accuses Trump of abusing power
• Think fake news isn’t a real problem? Look at Senator John Kennedy
• The Parentage of Al-Quaeda
• In Hong Kong, It’s US vs. China Now
• Germans in favor of ‘reducing reliance’ on US
• Andreas and Bernhard: Successful Counterfeiting and Economic Warfare
• The Season of Evil
Trump blasts censure idea as House panel readies impeachment report vote
December 3, 2019
by Steve Holland and Susan Heavey
Reuters
LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday rejected the possibility of U.S. lawmakers censuring him instead of impeaching him over accusations he improperly pressured Ukraine to probe a political rival, as Democrats prepared to lay out their case for impeachment.
Trump, speaking at a wide-ranging news conference at a NATO summit in London, lashed out at Democrats in the House of Representatives who are leading the impeachment inquiry into the Ukraine matter and denounced the censure idea raised by some members of Congress as “unacceptable.”
The Democratic-controlled House Intelligence Committee, which has spearheaded the impeachment probe, is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) to vote on its findings. It is expected to release its report to the public after the vote, a congressional source said.
The matter will then go to the House Judiciary Committee, which will launch its proceedings on Wednesday.
The full House would then vote on the formal impeachment charges. If the House votes to impeach Trump, then a trial would be held in the Republican-led U.S. Senate.
So far, analysts doubt Trump’s fellow Republicans in the Senate would convict and remove him from power, although some lawmakers have raised the idea of a censure in recent days as a way to rebuke the president’s actions without the risk of removal from office.
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Californians are turning to vending machines for safer water. Are they being swindled?
Vended water is many times more expensive than tap water. And there isn’t much evidence to show customers are getting the quality they’re paying for
December 2, 2019
by Mario Koran
The Guardian
Customers stream into the parking lot of a San Diego strip mall, lining up behind a windmill-shaped vending machine that fills their jugs for 25 to 35 cents a gallon.
“The water that comes from the tap, I don’t trust it, and it doesn’t taste good,” Miguel Martinez said on a recent afternoon, as he filled his bottle from the kiosk. Martinez lives in San Diego’s nearby Shelltown neighborhood, an area located minutes from downtown where many immigrant families have landed.
“Good water right here,” his friend says, patting the machine.
Martinez says he doesn’t mind paying a little extra money for what he believes is premium water that tastes better than what comes from his home faucet. It’s a steal compared with the individually sealed bottles you can buy at the store, he said.
I never drink tap water,” Eddie, a different customer who declined to give his last name, said in Spanish. He got used to buying bottled water 15 years ago when he lived in Mexico and never went back to tap water.
Eddie, who works in construction, said when he is at home he drinks sealed water bottles he buys from the store, but he keeps the three-gallon jugs he fills up at the kiosks when he goes to work.
“Even if they say the tap water is safe, how do we [know] it’s true?” he said.
Water vending machines have become a common feature in southern California. They’re not new – the state’s department of public health has licensed them since 1989 – and at first glance, they seem to offer a solution for California’s struggle to provide clean drinking water for all of its residents. Customers even swear by the improved taste and believe it is safer than tap water, even if there is not much evidence that they’re getting the quality they’re paying for.
Water vending wars
There are about 9,200 water vending machines clustered throughout California, according to the state’s public health department, which regulates the machines. The majority – 55% – are located in southern California, in the state’s five most populous counties: Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange.
The kiosks take city tap water – which must be clean enough to meet state and federal quality standards – run it through a filtration system that removes chemicals such as chlorine to improve taste, then dispense it to customers at an 8,000% to 10,000% mark-up. Vended water is cheaper than individually sealed, store-bought bottles, but many times more expensive than tap water.
The public health department requires water vending operators to inspect, clean and sanitize machines once a month, and list the last date of service on the machine.
But records suggest that the department has been lax in regulating the industry and double-checking the vending machines.
When the investigative news outlet Voice of San Diego dug into the issue earlier this year, it found that in 2015, the department only inspected two of the 1,100 machines in San Diego county, for example. Midway through 2019, it hadn’t inspected any. A spokesperson for the public health department told the Guardian statewide data for this year was not immediately available.
In the past, water and public health officials have raised concerns over the machines’ safety when they are not properly regulated.
In 1997, when the public health department still relied on water vending operators to inspect their own machines, the environmental toxicology bureau in Los Angeles county found that the dispensers located in southern California supermarkets had higher levels of bacteria than plain tap water – probably related to old filters or dirty spigots on the machines.
“You’re safer drinking the tap water,” a water official said at the time. “Not only are you safer, but you’re paying, oh, let’s see, about 250 times less per gallon.”
A few years later, a study by the not-for-profit Environmental Working Group found that water from two-thirds of the machines they tested in California, owned by the then industry leader, Glacier Water, did not match its marketing claims in terms of contaminants.
California’s vended water market is dominated by Primo water, which purchased Glacier Water in 2016 and owns 85% of the vended water kiosks in California.
At the time of its merger, Primo said the acquisition gave it 46,000 retail locations in the US and Canada. Today Primo is valued at $400m.
Vending machine companies usually offer a cut of their sales and possibly a signing bonus to stores that allow them to use their space.
The market is so profitable it has sparked ugly turf wars between water companies competing for the coveted space in front of stores.
About seven years ago, one vending machine company, Mountain’s Peak, filed a complaint against Glacier and accused it of threatening and pressuring store owners to sign contracts with Glacier. Glacier, in turn, accused Mountain Peak of benefiting from a plot to sabotage its machines and steal business.
The two companies eventually settled and agreed not to tamper with each other’s machines.
“It’s really a nasty business. It’s not a gentleman’s business,” Ed Rose, an attorney who represented Mountain’s Peak, told Voice of San Diego this year.
‘It is cynical and exploitative’
The concerns raised over lax regulation don’t seem to matter to the dozens of customers who line up to fetch water from the machines – many of them located in front of liquor stores and strip malls in low-income neighborhoods and immigrant communities.
Watermill Express, which operates the windmill-shaped water kiosks, did not respond to questions from the Guardian. But when asked in 2015 why so many kiosks were found in low-income neighborhoods, Lani Dolifka, the Watermill co-founder, told Fast Company that “budget conscious” clientele deserve options, too.
“Not everyone can afford to buy bottled water or have a water delivery service, but everyone needs access to safe, affordable, pure drinking water,” she said.
Debi Ores, a senior attorney with the Community Water Center, a not-for-profit organization that works to improve access to clean water for residents in central California, said the distrust of tap water is understandable for immigrants who come from countries without clean drinking water.
“If the water looks or smells a little funny, they might not have faith that the water is safe to drink. Especially if they’ve known people or had family members who’ve gotten sick from drinking the water.”
But the Environmental Working Group, which researches environmental issues, took a sharper view of the marketing in a 2002 report. At the time, it said the then industry leader, Glacier, was exploiting immigrants’ fear of tap water in order to turn a profit.
Glacier at the time estimated that 60% of its market in California came from Latino and Asian customers.
“On the surface, the targeting of recent immigrants may seem like smart niche marketing. But on closer examination, it is cynical and exploitative,” the report read.
“Glacier’s marketing strategy takes advantage of the fact that new arrivals, many of whom have limited English skills, may not know that California tap water is safer than the water back home. Then it charges people who can least afford it an inflated price for a basic necessity.”
Neither Primo nor Watermill Express responded to multiple phone calls and emails from the Guardian.
Questions over marketing aside, residents could be forgiven for not trusting the contents of their tap water.
In recent years, California schools have been scrutinized for providing drinking water with high concentrations of lead – contamination that can happen when ageing pipes leach lead into the water before it leaves the faucet, said Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist with EWG.
“There’s really no safe levels of lead, especially for children,” Temkin said. “It’s not necessarily a problem with the quality of the water that the utility is providing, but what’s coming out in the back end,” she said.
In a school less than two miles away from where Eddie and Martinez filled up their jugs, officials were alerted to contaminated water after a therapy dog reportedly refused to drink. When officials tested the water they found lead as well as a chemical that came from plastic pipes. It was probably the reason the school nurse reported that students vomited after drinking the water.
More than schools are at risk, though; homes in low-income communities are particularly prone to contamination tied to ageing infrastructure and lax monitoring standards, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Not a great solution’
Anxiety over having enough clean water has loomed over California for years.
Panic set in four years ago after a winter of unusually low snowfall, which the state relies on to refill water reservoirs, exacerbated drought conditions. Cities began issuing water restrictions, but by May of that year nearly 2,000 wells had run dry, leaving some communities without water.
The seven-year drought officially ended this year, but the dry stretch highlighted the precarious nature of water in California.
Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million residents in California still go without clean water, many of them in the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural hub, which produces a quarter of the nation’s produce.
Water vending machines may seem like an appropriate response to providing clean water for communities that struggle to provide it. But experts and advocates list a number of reasons why vended water falls short as a solution and may even further strain the residents who most need it.
While the majority of water kiosks are found in southern California, the regions that accrued the most violations for contaminated drinking water are located north of Los Angeles, in less populous areas of the state, according to EWG’s tap water database, which includes enforcement and compliance related information.
And the fact that the kiosks typically need a water supply that already meets federal and state standards means the machines wouldn’t work for areas where clean water is most scarce – places such as the San Joaquin Valley, which Jonathan London, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, has studied extensively.
Vended water could help some, but it also imposes additional burdens on families, London said.
“It’s not a great solution, long-term,” London said. “The vending machines unfortunately are not well-regulated.”
A lot of the people who are dependent on vended water don’t have cars, so it is hard for them to actually access it, he said. And buying filtered water, on top of the water coming through their pipes, puts an extra financial burden on low-income families and cuts into their monthly income, he said.
London and Ores instead favor longer-term solutions, like getting more residents off private-well water and on to public water systems of larger jurisdictions, which have more resources to treat and monitor water.
The Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund, linked to legislation the California governor, Gavin Newsom, signed this year, could provide some relief. The plan allocates up to $130m a year to help cash-strapped districts improve access to clean water.
Ores said it was a step toward sustainability and providing people the clean water they are entitled to.
“We’ve worked with communities that pay up to 10% of their monthly income on water,” she said, referring to places where people pay for vended or bottled water on top of what they spend on the unclean water pumped into their homes.
“People are spending a huge part of their income just on a basic human right.”
House Democrats’ impeachment report accuses Trump of abusing power
December 3, 2019
by Patricia Zengerle and David Morgan
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday laid out their impeachment case against President Donald Trump, accusing him of using the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election.
The Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee, which has spearheaded the impeachment probe that formally began in September, also said in a report that the Republican president had obstructed the investigation.
The committee is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) to vote on its findings.
The matter will then go to the House Judiciary Committee, which will open its proceedings on Wednesday.
If the full House eventually votes to approve formal impeachment charges, a trial would be held in the Republican-led U.S. Senate, where a two-thirds majority of those present would be required to convict and remove Trump from office.
At issue is whether Trump misused the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the 2020 election.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accused Democrats of using the impeachment process to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election. Opinion polls show Americans are bitterly divided over whether to impeach Trump.
Lawmakers and the public have heard testimony from current and former officials that military aid was withheld from Ukraine and that a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was conditioned on Kiev conducting the probe as well as one into a debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Think fake news isn’t a real problem? Look at Senator John Kennedy .
Today’s politics combine technology with propaganda, disinformation and corruption. But there is an alternative
December 3, 2019
by Richard Wolffe
The Guardian
Senator John Kennedy is not an idiot. He may be a useful one, from the Kremlin’s perspective. But objectively, the Louisiana Republican has nothing in his résumé that suggests a large cavity inside his cranium.
Kennedy earned the highest honors at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and he was executive editor of the Virginia Law Review at the not-too-shabby University of Virginia law school.
So how does a certified nerd – one of the elites of the elite – end up peddling Russian-backed disinformation on national television not once, but twice? And more importantly, what can the sane population of democracy-loving citizens do about it? (Apart from voting him out of office, which may be tricky in a state that Donald Trump won by a margin of 20 points in 2016.)
First, the facts about this fact-free member of the self-styled world’s greatest deliberative body. Kennedy popped up on Fox News last week and was asked a simple question by Chris Wallace. Who was responsible for the hacking of Democratic emails in the 2016 election: Russia or Ukraine?
This is not a difficult question. As they say in legal circles, it is settled law: the conclusion of the entire US intelligence community is that the guilty party is in Moscow, not Kyiv.
But what do the intelligence agencies, with their annual budget of more than $50bn, actually know? As Senator Kennedy saw it, not much.
“I don’t know,” he told Fox News. “Nor do you. Nor do any of us.”
This was obviously something of an embarrassment to the senator, or his staff, so a day later he appeared on CNN to say he was wrong. “I’ve seen no indication that Ukraine tried to do it,” he admitted.
But that was so last week. Kennedy reappeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday to reconsider his reconsidered remarks.
“I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election,” he said, in flat contradiction of well, everyone with a brain. Among those brain-driven people is Fiona Hill, the former Russia hand in the Trump White House, who warned Congress just last week that this Republican line of attack was entirely what Vladimir Putin wanted.
“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” she said.
This is sadly not just a tale about a moronic senator on a couple of Sunday talkshows. It cuts to the heart of our democratic process, as new tools of technology are combined with good old-fashioned propaganda, disinformation and corruption.
Kennedy’s lies did not appear out of thin air. They were concocted by a Russian government that has trashed Ukraine to justify its invasion and annexation of Crimea, as well as its everyday corruption and general commercial pillaging. They were propagated by the consistently pro-Russian stooge who sits in the Oval Office, who tweeted his encouragement at Kennedy on Monday.
“Thank you Great Republican @SenJohnKennedy for the job he did in representing both the Republican Party and myself,” said Donald Trump, as he helpfully confused his own interests with his party and Putin’s crypto-criminal state.
So what can you do about this plague of disinformation as we lurch towards elections on both sides of the Atlantic that feature politicians who mimic or partake in Putin’s propaganda?
The only antidote to a campaign of lies is a campaign of truth. And there are many organizations dedicated to propagating truth: they are called the news media.
You can share truth the way a Louisiana senator shares lies: with your friends and your pseudo-friends on social media. You can seek out truth-telling media – the kind that has no problem calling out the liars as liars.
And if you really feel like fighting for your own democracy, you can even pay for the truth that journalists deliver on a daily and hourly basis. It’s cheap, to be honest. Not least because the alternative is so very costly to the values we all hold dear.
Another senator, in another era, liked to say: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan may have served as a New York senator, but he worked for both Republican and Democratic presidents. The truth is neither a partisan choice nor a product of a certain time and place. It is as priceless as it is timeless.
The Parentage of Al-Quaeda
“There will be no peace in the Mideast as long as the US supports Israel.”
Colonel James Critchfield, Senior CIA Arab specialist,
January 1, 2019
Gregory Douglas
In April, 1978, a Communist coup took place in Afghanistan: Marxist members of the army deposed Sardar Mohammed Daud who had ruled since 1973. But, the Marxists were split into two rival factions: Khalq (“the masses”) and Parcham (“the flag”). The Soviets intervened, invading Afghanistan in December, 1979, and installed Parcham leader Babrak Karmal as President. Afghan mullahs and warlords immediately declared jihad against the Communist “infidels.” This led to a war by Islamist jihad fighters, raised by the CCIA with the active financial support of the Royal Saudi government to field an army of Muslim guerrillas (many of them Arab mercenaries) that resulted in the eventual complete withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989. By 1982, the jihad to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan was fully underway with the mujahideen (“jihad fighters”) receiving $600 million per year from the CIA and the same, matching, amount from the Gulf states. Between 1979 and 1988 the Central Intelligence Agency armed of thousands of Afghan moujahedeen (“freedom fighters”). The agency flooded Afghanistan with an astonishing array of extremely dangerous weapons obtained for them by the CIA through various arms dealer in the United States, and “unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern superpower,” in this case, the USSR. The number of Soviet soldiers killed (about 15,000), which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the period from 1989 to 1990, was a measure of the CIA’s success
It should be noted that the tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists the CIA armed to harass and embarrass the Soviet Union are the same people who in 1996 killed 19 American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; blew a hole in the side of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden harbor in 2000; and on Sept. 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon with an aborted strike at the White House. In July 1977, the head of Pakistan’s army, Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, seized power and declared martial law, and in 1979, he hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president who had promoted him. In retaliation, Carter cut off U.S. aid to Pakistan. Pakistan provided, and sub-rosa is providing, the fighters with sanctuary, training and arms and even sent its own officers into Afghanistan as advisors on military operations. Saudi Arabia served as the fighters’ banker, providing hundred of millions with no strings attached. Several governments, including those of Egypt, China and Israel, secretly supplied arms. And the insurgency enjoyed the backing of the United States through the CIA.
The CIA’s greatest preoccupation was supplying the Afghans with something effective against the Soviets’ most feared weapon, the Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship. The Red Army used it to slaughter innumerable moujahedeen as well as to shoot up Afghan villages.. After months of controversy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally dropped their objections to supplying the American Stinger, President Reagan signed off on it, and the “silver bullet” was on its way. The Stinger had never before been used in combat. It proved to be murderous against the Hinds, and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev decided to cut his losses and get out altogether.
As a result of their creation, funding and supply of the Islamic rebels, it was anticipated in the Department of Homeland Security that a Muslim would fire a U.S. Stinger low-level surface-to-air missile (manufactured at one time by General Dynamics in Rancho Cucamonga) from an area on the flight path at a major American airport into a jumbo jet. The CIA is known to have supplied thousands of them to the moujahedeen and trained them to be experts in their use.
Western analysts at the time also believed that the Soviet Union’s presence in Afghanistan was motivated by a desire to bring its forces closer to a strategic choke-point: the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the conduit for most of the world’s oil supertankers. Afghanistan is separated from the Arabian Sea by the sparsely populated Pakistani province of Baluchistan. Had there been a breakup of Pakistan or a favorable regime change, Soviet forces would have access to Baluchi or Pakistani ports. This is consistent with accounts from the Mitrokhin archive, according to which the KGB had supported seccessionist/nationalist groups in Pakistan, and intensified its support after the invasion. The U.S. CIA, on the other hand, has an ongoiong program of destabilizing certain Middle East and southern Russian areas that they and their strong supporters in the American and British oil industry view as vital in the escalating struggle to control the rapidly diminishing world supply of oil. Some of the CIA plans have been successful, as in Georgia and the Ukraine but others have failed, such as Venezuela and the Chechny area. Afghanistanian involvement was, however, a great success, in the short run. The Russians were heavily involved in their own Vietnam at considerable cost to them while the CIA’s men won victory after victory, eventually compelling the complete and humiliating Soviet withdrawal. Shortsighted as usual, the CIA did not seem to realize, or care, that a strong American presence in the volitile area was important for the future and their callous and abrupt abandoment of their mercenary troops left a very bitter taste in the mouths of the men who later went on to form the Taliban and the dreaded al-Quaeda.
In the following compendium of studies of the growing problem of highly militant Muslim fundamentalists, we will consider the situation that developed in Afghanistan, the part played by both the CIA and the Saudi government in the founding, arming and funding of this highy militant,embryonic but well-armed religious movement, the current operational programs of Al-Quaeda and finally, a study of a parallel group with nearly identical motives and operational patterns as the current militants.
Though some may argue that what is past is of no interest, in fact, what is past is but prologue.
In Hong Kong, It’s US vs. China Now
December 3, 2019
by Patrick J. Buchanan
At first glance, it would appear that five months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong had produced a stunning triumph.
By September, the proposal of city leader Carrie Lam that ignited the protests – to allow criminal suspects to be extradited to China for trial – had been withdrawn.
And though the protesters’ demands escalated along with their tactics, from marches to mass civil disobedience, Molotov cocktails, riots and attacks on police, Chinese troops remained confined to their barracks.
Beijing wanted no reenactment of Tiananmen Square, the midnight massacre in the heart of Beijing that drowned in blood the 1989 uprising for democratic rights.
In Hong Kong, the police have not used lethal force. In five months of clashes, only a few have perished. And when elections came last month, Beijing was stunned by the landslide victory of the protesters.
Finally, last month, Congress passed by huge margins in both houses a Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act that threatens sanctions on Hong Kong authorities should they crush the rebels.
When President Donald Trump signed the bills, the protesters now had the U.S.as an ally, and the Chinese reacted viscerally.
An enraged Foreign Ministry declared: “The US … openly backed violent criminals who rampantly smashed facilities, set fire, assaulted innocent civilians,trampled on the rule of law and jeopardized social order.
“This so-called bill will only make the Chinese people … further understand the sinister intentions and hegemonic nature of the United States. It will only make the Chinese people more united and make the American plot more doomed to failure.”
Thus do the Hong Kong protesters appear victorious, for now.
Sunday, black-clad masked protesters were back in the streets, waving American flags, erecting barricades, issuing new demands – for greater autonomy for Hong Kong, the release of jailed protesters and the punishment of police who used excessive force.
This confrontation is far from over.
Instead, it has escalated, and the US government, having given up its posture of benevolent neutrality in favor of peaceful demonstrators for democracy, has become an open ally of often-violent people who are battling Chinese policeinside a Chinese city.
On Monday, China retaliated, suspending visits to Hong Kong by US military planes and Navy ships and declaring sanctions on the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and half a dozen other US agencies that promote democracy for interfering in the internal affairs of China.
And there is another issue here – the matter of face.
China has just celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Revolution where Mao proclaimed, “China has stood up!” after a century of foreign humiliations and occupations.
Can Xi Jinping, already the object of a Maoist cult of personality, accept US intervention in the internal affairs of his country or a city that belongs to China? Not likely. Nor is China likely to accede to demands for greater sovereignty,self-determination or independence for Hong Kong.
This would only raise hopes of the city’s eventual escape from its ordained destiny: direct rule by Beijing when the 50-year China-U.K. treaty regarding the transfer of Hong Kong expires in 2047.
For XI to capitulate to the demands of Hong Kong’s demonstrators could cause an outbreak of protests in other Chinese cities and bring on a crisis of theregime.
XI Jinping is no Mikhail Gorbachev. He is not going to let his people go. He is not going to risk a revolution to overturn the Maoist Revolution he has served his entire life.
A ruler committing the atrocities XI is committing today in the concentration camps in the Uighur regions of China is staying his hand in Hong Kong only so the world and the West cannot see the true face of the ideology in which this true believer believes.
In providing moral support for protesters in Hong Kong who desire the freedoms we enjoy, America is on the right side. But to align the US with the protesters’ cause, and threaten sanctions if their demands are not met, is to lead these demonstrators to make demands that Hong Kong’s rulers cannot meet and China will not allow.
We should ask ourselves some questions before we declare our solidarity with the protesters engaging the Hong Kong police.
If the police crush them, or if China’s army moves in and crushes the demonstrators whose hopes were raised by America’s declared solidarity, then what are we prepared to do to save them and their cause?
Are we willing to impose sanctions on Beijing, such as we have on Venezuela,Iran and Vladimir Putin’s Russia?
Some of us yet recall how the Voice of America broadcast to the Hungarian rebels of 1956 that if they rose up and threw the Russians out, we would be at their side. The Hungarians rose up. We did nothing. And one of the great bloodbaths of the Cold War ensued.
Are we telling the protesters of Hong Kong, “We’ve got your back!” when we really don’t?
Germans in favor of ‘reducing reliance’ on US
A new YouGov poll has found that a majority of Germans are in favor of reducing reliance on the US and increasing ties with Russia. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany cannot defend itself alone.
December 3, 2019
by Davis VanOpdorp
DW
A majority of Germans are in favor of reducing Germany’s reliance on the United States militarily, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by the German news agency DPA.
According to the poll, 55% of Germans believe that European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should protect themselves from an attack without US help. In addition, a majority of poll participants believe the US should partially (23%) or completely (26%) withdraw its 30,000 troops stationed in Germany.
Conversely, 54% said NATO should work more closely with Russia rather than relying on deterrence. Meanwhile, 37% are for lifting sanctions against Russia relating to its conflict with Ukraine on the Crimean Peninsula, while 34% are against lifting such sanctions.
NATO members are currently gathered in London for a tense two-day summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to hold talks with US President Donald Trump, who has criticized Germany and other NATO countries for not spending enough on defense.
Merkel said last week that Germany is not in a position to defend itself alone. She also vowed to increase Germany’s defense spending to the NATO target of 2% of its gross domestic product “by the 2030s.”
However, 42% of Germans disagree with increasing the defense budget, currently 1.4% of GDP, while 36% agree. Nonetheless, 54% believe that NATO, which is set to celebrate its 70th birthday, is still a necessary organization.
Germany’s defense department underwent a leadership change in July, with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leader of Merkel’s center-right CDU party, replacing current European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Kramp-Karrenbauer has also advocated for more military spending and has promised the US greater military involvement.
DPA said 2,049 people took part in the survey, which took place between November 29 and December 2.
Andreas and Bernhard: Successful Counterfeiting and Economic Warfare
The root cause of all warfare is economics. Whether it is the seizure of a weaker tribe’s grazing land or the destruction of a rival power’s production capacity, war, to elaborate on Clausewitz, is a logical extension of political and economic aims. War launched against an unpopular head of state or a political system is war commenced solely for economic gains; the common rationale of a holy crusade is merely window dressing for popular historians to postulate.
The hatred engendered against Hitler by the American and British official propaganda machinery before the outset of World War II was due more to the success of Hitler’s barter system than to his personal dislike of Jews or threats to putative democracies in Central Europe.
Stripped of her colonies and gold reserves after the First World War, Germany had to incur massive, interest-bearing loans with both the United States and England to pay for needed imports. When Hitler came to power, he paid off the existing loans and instituted a barter system in which, for example, Germany would trade locomotives to Argentina for their beef and wheat. Previously, both countries had borrowed money from international banks at high-interest rates to pay for their respective imports.
The barter system, therefore, represented a serious threat to international banking interests thatcomplained loudly and effectively to their respective governments, demanding intervention and relief. Many economists referred to a boycott of German products, which was instituted in the United States and England as economic warfare, as indeed it was. The British were past-masters in creating economic warfare and experts in ruining the currency of their rivals by flooding the marketplace with counterfeit currency. During the American Revolutionary War, the British dumped so many counterfeit Continental notes into the economy that American currency became virtually worthless, and the phrase, “not worth a Continental” became common. Angered by French support of the American Revolution, the British counterfeited adulterated gold French Louis coins.
As a means of economic retaliation against Napoleon for his support of a French-dominated continental system which excluded England, the British counterfeited French assignats and franc notes. Napoleon retaliated by forging British currency. Later in the same century, the US federal government forged Confederate money in huge quantities.
The Soviet forgery of American currency in the 1930s, on the other hand, was not designed to destroy the US economy. Rather, the counterfeit gold certificates were manufactured to pay their agents. Since many of these agents were highly placed and expensive members of the Roosevelt Administration, Stalin’s experts concentrated on the manufacture of $100 gold certificates. As the duplication of official US banknote paper was a problem, smaller denomination bills were bleached and over-printed.
At the outbreak of World War II, economic advisors to the leaders of England and the United States urged their respective governments to forge German marks and flood the international market which would cause a collapse of confidence in that currency and, therefore, create tremendous inflation in Germany. The British did counterfeit German military scrip but used the blank reverse for propaganda messages. These were scattered by aircraft over Germany where their impact on the population was nil, but the impact on German leadership was considerable.
Exactly who in the Third Reich initiated the program for the counterfeiting of British currency is not known. One man, Alfred Naujocks, an SS-Sturmbannführer (or Major) in the SD, has taken credit for the inception of the plan in 1940. Naujocks was a longtime acquaintance of Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD and it was Heydrich who initially authorized the reproduction of British pound notes. The initial code name for the operation was “Andreas.”
It has been stated that the original purpose of “Andreas” was to falsify pound notes and drop them over England to create economic havoc. However, a more believable scenario, and one supported by period documents, is that the SS leadership envisioned the possibility of raising funds for their organization.
The SS was an official branch of the NSDAP and its funding came from the Party coffers, although the Waffen-SS drew on government funding for much of its military requirements. One of Himmler’s best assets in this economic struggle was his complete control of the KZ (or concentration camp system). Based on the institutions introduced by Lord Kitchener in South Africa during the Boer War to control the civil population, the KZ system encompassed a wide spectrum of inmates, ranging from professional criminals, communists, and political opponents of the government, including Jews and other ethnic and religious groups.
At the beginning of the war, there were 21,300 concentration camp inmates, housed in six camps. During the course of the war, the total number of inmates rose to over 400,000 lodged in an enormous network of camps scattered throughout Europe and the East. SS General Oswald Pohl and his deputy Richard Glücks organized a huge, free labor pool which would provide a major source of revenue for the SS. It was this system of forced labor that the SD turned to when “Andreas” was superseded by “Bernhard.” The “Andreas” attempts to forge British notes floundered in technical problems and contributed to personality conflicts within the RSHA.
The proper paper was nearly impossible to initially produce since, unlike the original, it did not properly fluoresce under ultraviolet light. Also, a proper numbering system proved extremely difficult to develop. In 18 months, “Andreas” had only produced a half-million pounds worth of counterfeit notes, many of which, however, were authenticated by the Bank of England when submitted by unsuspecting Swiss banks. Personal rivalry between Heydrich and Naujocks created so many problems that “Andreas” was eventually terminated
“Bernhard” was named for the new head of the scheme, SS-Hauptsturmführer Bernhard Krüger of the SD. Krüger, born in Reise, Saxony on November 26, 1904, was a specialist in forging documents and was assigned to Section VI F4 of the RSHA where his section assembled a large library of foreign documents of all kinds which were copied for intelligence operations.
.The second project, “Bernhard,” began only after Heydrich was assassinated by British agents in the summer of 1942. At that time, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Dörner of the RSHA began to assemble a team of specialists from the ranks of concentration camp inmates. This initial cadre was originally constituted at Oranienburg concentration camp north of Berlin, and on August 23, 1942, it was permanently established at Blocks 18 and 19 at nearby Sachsenhausen camp.
Major Krüger promised his inmate workers good housing, better and regularly served meals, no physical abuse, tobacco, newspapers, good clothing, and packages from outside sources. Most importantly, he assured them of survival. In return, he required full cooperation in the counterfeiting projects and the maintenance of strict security.
By the end of 1942, the 200-pound-pressure Stentz Monopel Type 4 press was moved to Sachsenhausen from its former location in the Berlin forgery center. Aside from the manufacture of the highest quality intaglio plates, the most important factor in the production of undetectable counterfeit pound notes was reproduction paper. British notes were printed on a high rag content paper and manufactured by the Portal, England firm of Laverstoke, which had been producing this paper for the Bank of England since the first quarter of the 18th century.
Paper used in the production of American currency was a 17- pound bond manufactured for the U.S. Treasury by the Crane Company. As the SD turned its attention to the counterfeiting of American currency in 1943, the same German firms that duplicated the Portal paper, Spechthausen and Schlichter, and Schall, successfully duplicated the Crane paper.
The counterfeit paper for pounds had to have not only the correct texture and appearance, but had to be properly and exactly watermarked and fluoresce with the exact shade as the original paper. The Germans solved the latter problem by a careful analysis of water used in the preparation of the original British paper.
The actual manufacturing of the pound note plates was preceded by a thorough study of thousands of original examples of the British pound in German hands. The Bank of England had 156 identifying points on their plates and the forgers were able to duplicate every one of them.
Copying the lettering and numbering of the original currency presented few serious problems to Krüger’s experts, but the vignette of Britannia, common to all denomination pound notes, proved to be extremely difficult to copy—a similar problem which had occurred with the portraits on American currency. On the pound notes, the vignette consisted of a crown-surmounted wreath enclosing a seated Britannia holding a spear in her left hand and a floral spray in her right. However, constant reworking eventually produced an exact copy. The correct numbering system for the pound notes was developed by German mathematicians, and the numbering system for the U.S. bills came from American published sources. As the British used German-made ink for their currency, this aspect of the project presented no problems.
The first run of counterfeit pound notes inspected by senior officials at the RSHA in Berlin was declared a technical success, but lacked the overall visual appearance of original, circulated currency. This was solved by the addition of Soloman Somolianov, a highly competent forger, to the Sachsenhausen crew. Somolianov, a Russian Jew, specialized in the forgery of British pound notes and was successful in adding the proper patina of age to the new pounds and later, U.S. dollars.
After the notes had been printed and aged, they were sent to the RSHA and SS-Oberführer Walter Schellenberg, head of Section VI of the RSHA and SD foreign intelligence, distributed the British pounds to various outlets—many of which are still officially unknown.
For many years the old rhyme, “A Pound’s a Pound the World Around,” recalled the preeminence of British currency throughout the world. The final product of “Bernhard” had been tested by passing it through the Swiss banking system and through them eventually pronounced genuine by the Bank of England. Armed with these bonafides, Schellenberg’s agents glutted the world’s currency markets with over 300 million British pound notes in denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 pounds, in varying degrees of perfection.
First-class quality notes that defied any detection were used to purchase gold, jewels and safe currency through neutral banking systems, while lower quality notes were used for less exacting customers such as Tito’s partisans from whom the SS purchased huge amounts of weaponry supplied to the Yugoslavs by British and American clandestine services.
In early 1943, full-scale production of U.S. currency began at Sachensenhausen. First, the $100 gold certificate was printed, followed by the $50 and $20 dollar silver certificates. Although specific information on the amount of U.S. bills counterfeited by “Bernhard” from 1943 has never been released by the U.S. Treasury Department, a conservative estimate based on German documents and other information puts the overall total at $50 million.
As the Soviet Army approached Berlin in 1945, the unit at Sachsenhausen was moved to Mauthausen in the Ostmark on March 12, 1945 and again on March 21, to Redl-Zipf, north of Salzburg.
Finally, on April 24, Krüger ordered the prisoners transferred to Ebensee where they were liberated by the Americans. Krüger had kept his word to the inmates and at one point, in November of 1943, had secured official permission from Berlin to award twelve War Service Medals and six War Service Crosses, 2nd Class without Swords, to more deserving counterfeiters. They were permitted to wear their decorations inside the camp area and since most of them were Jewish, the attitude of the camp commandant can only be imagined.
The liberated “Bernhard” people were free to follow whatever course they chose. There is reason to believe that a number of them continued their artistic endeavors but under different management.
Soviet and American intelligence agencies were extremely eager to locate Bernhard Krüger. Their interest had to do with American dollars.
As retreating SS units threw huge sums of counterfeit pounds into Austrian lakes and streams, the acres of floating and waterlogged notes put an effective end to the usefulness of the once-mighty British pound. It is interesting to note that not a single American bill has ever been identified as a counterfeit of the Sachsenhausen project.
The Soviets and Americans were eager to locate not only the finished U.S. bills but the plates and paper as well. Since the “Bernhard” people and their baggage fell into American hands, the Soviets ran a poor second in the race. They only managed to locate some of the workers but none of their products. Neither the plates, paper, nor German documentation relating to the counterfeiting of American money ever officially surfaced. It is noted that large sums of dollars suddenly appeared in the Mid-East as funding for various U.S. intelligence operations in Lebanon controlled by Haj Amin-El Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Many of the funds were in $100 dollar gold certificates.
The Germans were not the only country to liberally finance their intelligence agencies and assist their countrymen in building personal fortunes through the use of counterfeit currency. The basic difference is that the Germans did not manufacture their own currency.
This form of economic warfare has certainly not ceased with the downfall of the Third Reich. The Iranian government has, by all serious accounts, been forging nearly perfect U.S. $100 bills which have circulated throughout the world and caused the U.S. Treasury Department to issue newly formatted bills. The U.S. Treasury Department will eventually recall all outstanding older bills and carefully inspect them before making exchanges.
In 1984, over 2,000 extremely rare, nearly mint condition, ancient Greek silver coins, dating from 465 BC, were unearthed near Elmali in Turkey. The hoard of coins, in violation of Turkish law, quickly circulated into the international marketplace, and many coins sold for huge sums of money. Discovering that their national treasures had apparently been looted, the irate Turkish government forced the return of most of the horde through legal and diplomatic means. The British Museum inspected some of the rarer specimens and concluded that the entire collection had been recently manufactured at the Bulgarian State Mint in Sofia by that country’s intelligence agency to raise much-needed Western currency. Following this revelation, the value of rare Greek coins toppled as quickly as the British pound had fallen in 1945.
The irony of the “Bernhard” operation is that their 5 pound counterfeits are now worth more on the collector’s market than they were during the war.
The Season of Evil
by Gregory Douglas
Preface
This is in essence a work of fiction, but the usual disclaimers notwithstanding, many of the horrific incidents related herein are based entirely on factual occurrences.
None of the characters or the events in this telling are invented and at the same time, none are real. And certainly, none of the participants could be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be either noble, self-sacrificing, honest, pure of motive or in any way socially acceptable to anything other than a hungry crocodile, a professional politician or a tax collector.
In fact, the main characters are complex, very often unpleasant, destructive and occasionally, very entertaining.
To those who would say that the majority of humanity has nothing in common with the characters depicted herein, the response is that mirrors only depict the ugly, evil and deformed things that peer into them
There are no heroes here, only different shapes and degrees of villains and if there is a moral to this tale it might well be found in a sentence by Jonathan Swift, a brilliant and misanthropic Irish cleric who wrote in his ‘Gulliver’s Travels,”
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most odious race of little pernicious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
Swift was often unkind in his observations but certainly not inaccurate.
Frienze, Italy
July 2018-August 2019
Chapter 17
They next day, a large team of RCMP specialists arrived in Vancouver and began to completely seal off the city. Cars were searched as were their occupants, known counterfeiters homes were raided, terrified bank officials were relentlessly questioned by stone-faced Mounties and all over the city, innocent citizens were discovering truly amazing bonanzas in telephone booths, in the religious sections of the library and in other welcome places. Small children, on their way to school, found endless treasures on their streets and by noon the police were responding to frantic calls from local merchants who whispered that people as young as five were attempting to pass counterfeits in their stores.
Police cars raced up and down the streets, grabbing a seventy year old grandmother in a book store, two Bulgarian immigrants who had found three thousand dollars in a lavatory at the train station, a number of young children who had attempted to buy candy, toy guns and comic books in various stores and a large assortment of the local citizenry who soon found themselves jammed into overcrowded cells at the police stations while being processed as part of what the media was now calling the largest organized crime ring in Canadian history.
Chuck may well have sown the wind but the police were now reaping the whirlwind as the arrests grew into the hundreds. The jail was filled with loudly protesting victims whose statements that they had found the money in telephone booths or on the sidewalks of Vancouver were greeted with rude and sarcastic commentary from both the police and the officers of the RCMP who were running in and out of the building like raiding ants. Lawyers, reporters, television crews, relatives and friends clogged the lobby and every telephone in the building was constantly in use. Reporters were jostled by police dragging in more suspects and there was now a problem as to where to house the dangerous criminals.
Above the din was heard the high-pitched wails from a mother,
“But he’s only eight years old! He doesn’t know anything about counterfeit money!”
She repeated this like a mantra to unheeding police who had now run out of ink for fingerprinting and were down to their last pack of film for mug shots. The RCMP professionals were triumphant in the knowledge that they now had most of the incredibly diverse gang under lock and key. More arrests were expected as a result of the stringent roadblocks and the airport controls and plans were being made to house the incarcerated gang members in a high school gymnasium until they could be processed.
That evening, well aware of the havoc they had caused, Chuck and Lars were enjoying their dinner in the hotel dining room. It was filled with an assortment of doctors and members of the clergy as well as a number of uniformed police officials.
A plump woman in a chiffon dress was playing her version of music popular twenty years ago on a piano near the fireplace.
“How many people did they arrest so far, Chuck?” Lars asked as he carefully cut up his asparagus with the side of a fork.
“God knows. The last TV account said over fifty but that was an hour ago. I told you this would create a diversion, didn’t I?”
“Will they stay in jail?”
“Of course. The police never make mistakes, Eric, never. And about half the people they execute down in the States are completely innocent but they never talk about that either. Policemen and priests are never wrong, lad, and don’t forget that. How’s your steak?”
“Very good. Do we use bad money to pay the bill?”
“Don’t be stupid. We have no funny money left, not even a souvenir for your mother. Have some more wine….”
He had drunk most of a bottle of very expensive Chateau Lafitte and was considering ordering another. After all, there was plenty of good money left and he had discovered that American money was certainly much more preferred as a medium of exchange by the businessmen of Vancouver than their own national product. Or even very good copies of it. Chuck had decided that there was no point in leaving Vancouver for at least a week or until the roadblocks were lifted. He did not anticipate any trouble getting into the United States but a great deal in leaving Canada.
As the evening wore on, Chuck became very expansive, telling a series of jokes to Eric that passed over the latter’s head since a number of them were epigrams in Latin and Eric sometimes had trouble with polysyllabic English.
One of the religious diners could be heard singing a hymn in a decidedly off-key voice.
“Listen to that, Eric. As flat as one of your pre-teen lovelies. I can do much better than that.”
And he got up and walked, unsteadily, toward the abandoned piano.
He struck several chords and quite unexpectedly began to sing a hymn in what proved to be a magnificent baritone.
“‘Brightly shines our Father’s mercy from His lighthouse evermore,
But to us he gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower lights be beaming,
Cast a gleam across the wave.
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman, you may rescue, you may save.'”
This recital went through a number of verses and the depth, volume and quality of the singing riveted the entire room.
This was followed up by,
“‘Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.'”
There was considerable applause when he had concluded and before he could start on another sarcastic venture, a thin woman with prominent teeth came up to the piano.
“Oh, you have such a magnificent voice, sir! Do you think you could sing something for me? I have a piece that I just love…”
Chuck, who was feeling little pain, nodded politely.
“Of course, if I know it.”
“It’s from an opera. You know the one about the woman who dies and her lover goes to the underworld to bring her back. I can’t think of…”
“‘Che farò senza Euridice?’ Gluck’s ‘Orfeo.’ 1762. Here, let me play a few bars..”
She beamed.
“Oh yes! That’s it! Do you know it?”
“Madam, I cut my teeth on it. Let’s see if I remember how it goes…”
The aria was a fine showcase for his voice and he did it full justice with a performance that would have brought down the house at La Scala.
When he finished, the diners rose and applauded him, the woman was weeping into a cocktail napkin and Lars was staring at him in astonishment.
The weeping woman was joined by a man in a tuxedo, a very solid looking man with thinning hair.
“Excuse me sir,” he said in a very deep voice, “are you Welsh by any chance?”
Chuck shook his head.
“No sir, German and Irish. You?”
“I am Welsh and that was magnificent work, lad. I myself sing base baritone and my assistant over there, Inspector Jones, sings a very good tenor. We Welsh do enjoy singing, we do.”
These were obviously policemen and Chuck suddenly found himself becoming much more sober.
“Let’s try a nice Welch piece for you, sir.”
And he sang ‘The Ash Grove’ that had the other man weeping.
“Oh such a rendition, sir, such a treatment! Look now, do you know ‘Men of Harlech’?”
Chuck nodded and played a few notes.
“Oh yes, that’s it. Would you mind if my associate and I joined in with you?”
There was no problem and the baritone, base baritone and tenor joined in a very credible performance. The Welsh not only liked to sing but also were extremely proficient at it.
Following the concert, Chuck and Lars were invited to join the party of the Chief Inspector of the RCMP, Counterfeit Division, at his table. Mr. Morgan and Mr. Jones were so pleased with having had the opportunity to sing in public that they never considered that the master criminals they had flown across Canada to apprehend were sitting at their table in the dining room of the Bayshore Inn.
“How much longer are you going to be in Vancouver, Inspector?” Chuck asked as he finished off his bottle of wine.
“Oh my, just as long as it takes to clean up this mess. We had no idea it was such a widespread operation. Several hundred are now in custody and the good Lord only knows how many more will be apprehended. It’s a sad commentary on the state of our society when ten year old girls are forced into passing counterfeit money, very sad.”
Lars had visions of ten-year-old girls being forced into other activities but he kept his thoughts to himself. In the last few weeks, he had experienced things that he never even dreamed of. There was now enough money lying around hidden in various places to buy a dozen farms in Minnesota. Lars had never been ambitious in the past but the smell of money had a strong effect on him.
Chuck, on the other hand, had little interest in money other than to enjoy what it could buy and at the present time, he was considering how he could use his new base baritone friend to the best advantage.
“I would like to leave town as soon as I can, Chief Inspector, but I’m afraid that I would spend the whole day waiting for the traffic to move through your roadblocks.”
The Chief Inspector looked at the tenor.
“Well, I can see that we should be able to do something about that. Mr. Jones, why don’t you take one of the pool cars and accompany our friend here to the border and see to the roadblocks. Could you do that like a good lad?”
And so, with an official RCMP escort, Chuck drove his Cadillac loaded with loot and bundles of cash towards the State of Washington with Mr. Jones in front of him.
Traffic was indeed backed up for several miles but Mr. Jones drove on the shoulder of the road until finally stopped by grim visaged uniformed men.
He showed his identification and Chuck could hear every word.
“These men are on official business, Sergeant. I have authority to see them through to the U.S. Customs post over there. If you will be good enough to let us pass…”
After being escorted to the border, the tenor shook hands warmly with the baritone and the miscreants drove up to the U.S. side of the border.
There, the Customs officials were so impressed with the performance of the junior inspector that they waved Chuck through without let or hindrance.
“God must really love you,” Lars said as they drove towards Seattle.
“I don’t know about that, Eric, but just as long as He doesn’t interfere with me, I will do just fine.”
“I didn’t know you had such a good voice. I never heard you sing before.”
“I have many sides to my personality my norske friend. Picking locks and running away from frenzied female fatties are not all of my attributes. And now we have to consider what we will do next. I’m sure something will turn up soon enough.”
And all things being equal, it did.
(Continued)
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