“I wanted to do something nice for her. She had so little time left to live.”

– Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky, the lead scientist for the Soviet space dog program, recalling with remorse the evening when he took Laika home to play with his children and have a hearty meal, on the eve of her historic space flight. As the technology to enable survival during re-entry had not yet been developed, Laika’s survival was not expected.

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A quiet and obedient part-husky and part-terrier, Laika had been a stray mongrel snatched from the Moscow streets and trained to fly into space in 1957. The Soviet space program exclusively used stray mutts because they believed life on the harsh streets made the dogs mentally tougher and more adaptable to training.

As the technology to re-enter the atmosphere had not yet been developed, Laika’s survival was never expected. She died by overheating hours into the flight, on the craft’s fourth orbit.

Laika had not been permitted the option to choose whether she wanted to be incinerated on reentry or not.

Dr Yazdovsky recounted years later that he never got over the look in Laika’s trustful, all-understanding eyes as the hatch closed, minutes before launch. According to him, her intelligence and sense of intuition were uncanny.

Laika’s journey proved that life could survive in the weightlessness of space, forever changing how we look at the stars.

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May 25th, 1959, is a date that Commander John Guion (Retd.) will not forget in a hurry.

Despite a favorable forecast, the winds had turned nasty. It was not raining though and so visibility was not too bad.  The skies remained overcast with a thick nimbus cloud cover, the ceiling just 2000 ft.

The drop zone was still 30 minutes ahead, around 150 kms north-east of Antigua in the West Indies, where the hardy tug had a date, with two young ladies. One was a Rhesus monkey named Miss Able and the other, much tinier, almost pocket sized, a squirrel monkey, Miss Baker – the world’s first two living creatures to return from space alive.

The vessel reached the rendezvous coordinates on schedule and waited, its decks heaving perilously, spray hitting the plexi-glass of the bridge, momentarily blinding the men standing behind, making them flinch involuntarily with every splash. Heavy-duty windshield wipers worked incessantly, to clear the glass and restore visibility.

Then, as if by some divine intervention, the seas subsided and the vessel’s pitch and yaw settled to just around 10 degrees to the vertical. Suddenly a section of the thick cloud cover lit up in a flash and an object emerged approximately 500 yards to the port, suspended from three billowing parachutes. Despite the breaking provided by the chutes, it slammed into the sea, kicking up a towering wall of spray which soon subsided and the object settled, bobbing up and down in the swells.

As soon as the frogmen attached the winch cable to the eye-bolt on the side of the capsule, it lifted off the water and started swinging in dangerously wide arcs, once even slamming against the hull with a nasty crack. Cmdr. Guion hoped that the furry astronauts inside were adequately padded up.

The capsule was set down gently on the deck and it was time to meet the girls. A technician connected the capsule’s power supply with an external cable and looked at his telemetry console and immediately his face broke into a wide grin.

“They’re alive!” he screamed at the top of his voice and a loud cheer rose from the deck. The back cover was hurriedly opened and a Nasa engineer reached in and brought out Miss Baker first and then Miss Able.

While Able seemed a bit subdued, shaking hands with her minder a bit too formally, Baker jumped into her handler’s arms for a cuddle, chattering away in glee.

Deep inside the bowels of the Kiowa the following words went out over the teletype….. “Able & Baker perfect, no injuries or other difficulties….” The tug then turned around and headed back to its Guantanamo Bay base.

All through their training, Able and Baker had been found to be smart, quick thinking, upbeat. While Able was a bit quieter, Baker was playful. Like Laila, they too hadn’t known what their life choices were. They had loved being pampered by their human handlers trusted them implicitly.

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On January 31, 1961, Ham, whose name was an acronym for Holloman Aero Med, became the first chimpanzee in space, aboard the Mercury Redstone rocket on a sub-orbital flight very similar to Alan Shepard’s. He had been snatched from his mother in Camaroon, West Africa, where he was born July 1957.

Ham performed exceptionally during his flight and splashed down in the Atlantic 60 miles from the recovery ship. He experienced a total of 6.6 minutes of weightlessness during a 16.5-minute flight. A post-flight medical examination found Ham to be slightly fatigued and dehydrated, but in good shape otherwise.

Ham’s mission paved the way for the successful launch of America’s first human astronaut, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., on May 5, 1961. Upon his death on January 17, 1983, Ham was laid to rest in front of the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

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Goliath weighed less than a carton of milk and stood just six inches tall. But he became a space icon long before the world had heard the name ‘Neil Armstrong’. It was a journey that he neither wanted nor understood. A squirrel monkey like him would be content to climb the forest canopy looking for grasshoppers and caterpillars. 

Yet, on 10 November 1961, Goliath found himself strapped inside a metal container and launched from Cape Canaveral in an Atlas E rocket.

Goliath’s odyssey was a short one. 35 seconds into flight, the rocket veered violently off course and exploded, killing him instantly.

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Three weeks after Goliath, Enos became the first chimp to orbit the earth, on November 29, 1961, aboard a Mercury Atlas rocket. He did two orbits and was recovered safely in good overall health. Enos paved the way two months later for American, John Glenn’s orbital flight on February 20, 1962.

Like Ham and the others, Goliath and Enos did not have the ability to make life choices.

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Félicette was the first cat launched into space in October 1963, from the Algerian Sahara, on a French Veronique rocket. Félicette did a sub-orbital flight and was successfully retrieved alive after a parachute descent. Then, two months post-flight, researchers put her to sleep just because they wanted to perform a post-mortem autopsy.

While the French people rejoiced at Félicette’s feat, no one mourned her murder for the sake of science. When one considers the fact that given the choice, a cat will almost certainly choose to live on, what happened to Félicette was murder, no question about it.

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Back in the Soviet Union, the dogs Veterok (“Breeze”) and Ugoyok (“Little Piece Of Coal”) were launched aboard a Kosmos 110 by the Soviet Union on February 22, 1966. The flight was an evaluation of prolonged effects during space travel of radiation from the Van Allen Belts, on animals. They landed back on 16 March, weak from muscle atrophy, making it a 22-day space flight, a duration that stood as a record until June 1974, when humans surpassed it on Skylab2. Both dogs recovered, lived out long lives and even had healthy offspring. The two intrepid canines proved that humans can recover their health after slightly longer duration space flights without significant long-term damage to their bodies.

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Dogs, cats, rats, rabbits, turtles, spiders, ants, bees, fungi, you name it and humans have launched them into space. The few that returned alive and adjusted well afterward, have sometimes been honored with fancy gravestones and memorials.

There are no such memorials for the millions of animals we kill for meat every day, even though it is a scientifically proven fact that we do not need meat to sustain our physical or mental health and longevity, a fact that hundreds of millions of vegetarians around the world prove everyday beyond any doubt.

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Those inside Apollo 1, the Challenger and Columbia shuttles and the cosmonauts in Soyuz 1 & 11, these men and women knew the odds and had been free to make their choices to go to space.

Laika and the others hadn’t been afforded that choice.

What would the Gods of the various religions of the world have to say about that? Killing random animals en masse for the sake of space exploration or for our sustenance or sport? Would the Gods deem the wanton killing spree moral?

Just as a 50BC Roman Consul would say when he presented his wife with a sturdy well-hung Nubian on her birthday, maybe the Gods would say to Wernher von Braun, “Aww don’t worry about it, we created them for your’s to do what you like.”

If we even remove morality from the debate, has the industrial scale killing of animals for the ultimate goal of long-duration space flight been worth it, even for the longterm security of mankind?

We cannot even predict when the next pandemic will strike after it is allowed to escape some government biological weapon lab. Or when the 5-mile diameter super-volcano magma chamber beneath the Yellowstone National Park will blow and bring in a decades-long worldwide winter and mini ice age. The next near-earth asteroid, far bigger than Chicxulub, might wipe us out completely.

Yet here we are, our leaders squabbling with each other over inconsequential pieces of land, spewing hate, kicking the proverbial can down the road, seeking the blessings of our religious myths and their fantasy Gods, instead of mounting a united worldwide response to address those extinction level events that are waiting to happen.

Exploration within our planet and its orbital space is one thing and it is necessary to intimately know our own home and its moon because they both have a strong influence on our lives. But exploration to live permanently on another piece of rock that takes 18 months to reach, whose very soil is so toxic that it can alter our cellular structures and DNA, where one just has to stand on his own two feet to get himself killed by deadly cosmic radiation, a trip that is a billion times more hazardous than going to the moon? Is it worth the time and expense right now?

Scott Solomon, in his book “Becoming Martian” thinks that human beings will be able to settle on distant planets and gradually adapt to their alien environments, that our physiologies (our cells) will mutate, adapt and evolve. Maybe so, but history shows that physiologies of living beings do not reconfigure overnight. That adaptation is called evolution and could take hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.

Maybe Dr Yazdovsky had more than just a twinge of regret that evening, in 1957, when he brought Laika home. Maybe he thought of driving her outside Baikonur and turning her loose, hiding her, anything so she missed that flight.

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I say we don’t give a flying fuck about going to Mars. Elon Musk is a nut job. I say fuck him.

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“This is a day I will never forget. I feel like I am in a dream. He has answered all our questions. The amphitheater reverberates, everyone stands up and cheers, waves, screams! I am crying like a toddler now! I am a different man! What a voice! What passion! I can barely control myself! Now everything is clear! He was born to lead! I am ready to sacrifice everything for this man!” – Joseph Goebbels, Reich Propaganda Minister, in giddy rapture, at a Hitler rally in 1938.

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In the immediate aftermath of World War II, ordinary Germans realized with horror a truth they had never known – that the world thought Nazism was an abomination, a blight upon the earth. They found it difficult to accept that they or their government had done anything wrong while the Third Reich flourished. They had been convinced that their Großdeutsches Reich was God’s chosen land and that they were God’s chosen people.

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Back in 2004, I spent time at a Christmas Eve party at the home of a German-Canadian colleague, whose father had had a Nazi past. When we migrated here, Canada had many such Nazis who had fled Germany at the end of WW2, in the guise of innocent civilians escaping Soviet brutality.

Soon as I set eyes on the old man, the blogger in me perked up, sensing a story here. I began discreetly looking for the tattoo. Members of the Wehrmacht, SS and WaffenSS had their blood groups tattoed prominently on their forearms, a very distinct 1/4-inch marking. I saw no tattoo or surgical scar from removal where the tattoo should have been.

Baldur Wirsing could have been a member of the SS-Totenkopfen a.k.a the ‘Death’s Head’ Unit of the SS, the vicious hardcore SS Unit whose members guarded the death camps. In that case he would have been exempted from being tattooed. (In the days after the German surrender, Allied troops had been taught to recognize those tattoos and to arrest on sight anyone who sported them).

Maybe he was drafted near the end of the war. At that point, the Third Reich had no time for tattoos, desperately recruiting anything on two legs aged 16 to 60.

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Given my morbid fascination with World War II, I tried to buttonhole the man where he sat quietly on an armchair stuffed with cushions in a corner. He held a 40-ml shot glass from which he constantly sipped a clear spirit.

Searching for an opening, I pointed toward his shot glass and asked what he was drinking and why he wasn’t chugging it down in one gulp. I associate shot glasses with wild one-gulp slugs but he was taking little sips, savoring it.

He smiled a personable but forced smile and said, “A good German does not gulp down but sips schnapps. The aim is to feel in command and not lose control.” He still held on to the guttural German accent and the distinct rhythmic tone, the ‘W’ pronounced like a ‘V’, the “TH” like an ‘S’.

A good German, hmmm. The 1940 edition perhaps???

“Were you in the Wehrmacht ….or the SS?” I am a bit of an adventurer. What the fuck could he do? Ask his son to throw me out?

His voice was barely audible. “If only you had been there….Excuse me.” He rose, holding the shot glass in his hand and disappeared into the adjoining room, closing the door behind him, leaving me gobsmacked.

For a moment I thought I saw that same exact dreamy look like the one Joseph Goebbels must have had at that 1938 rally he recorded in his diary.

“Nice talking to you,” I called after the old man as he disappeared from sight. Thankfully, in the hubbub, nobody had noticed our little interaction.

I hadn’t expected him to open up. Usually military veterans (especially those with moral injuries from committing war crimes) are reticent about their wartime experiences, sometimes even with their own families.

He must have been in his 20s in the 1940s.

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“If only you had been there…” The nostalgia rush is a universal emotion.

I am a baby boomer, having come of age early 1960s. We have our share of nostalgia – the secure jobs, the laid-back middle class existence, the two cars, the picket fences, the annual vacation and little kids running around the neighborhood unattended, while large business conglomerates spread all over. For the coloreds in white-majority lands, they felt safer under a new sense of security. The “sundown towns” were fewer than before the war.

The generation preceding the boomers was a vastly different one. It was defined by strong righteous folks who had weathered the Great Depression and the fought a war against Nazism and won. The America journalist, Tom Brokaw, called it “The Greatest Generation”. They too were nostalgic, about their will to prevail over evil in a just war and the glory that war brought to them. They expected all the credit for the economic boom that followed directly after the war, a prosperity that they felt was the direct result of their toil.

But the nostalgia that old man Wirsing had was different, a selective one. It was the nostalgia for an ethnocracy.

Baldur Wirsing had a distinct persona – that of a1930s-born Nazi / Nazi sympathizer who went about his business before the war, secure in the glory of a Germany transformed under its Fuhrer into ‘the greatest nation on earth’.

He failed to see Hitler as what he really was – an impulsive and immature individual driven by emotions, unable to think strategically – a loser who dragged down a whole nation into hell with him.

If one could add two personality traits – an overwhelming propensity to grift and a manic desire to commit sexual assaults – into Hitler’s character traits, he would be a Donald Trump doppelgänger.

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Germany might have won the Second World War had Hitler not exhibited atrocious judgement and taken impulsive, emotional, sometimes illogical and sometimes race-based decisions right from Day-1…..

1940 : He ordered German Panzer divisions to halt outside Dunkirk instead of destroying the trapped British Expeditionary Force, thereby allowing nearly 340,000 Allied troops to evacuate and live to fight another day. After the war, some captured German generals claimed Hitler intentionally let the British escape as a goodwill gesture, hoping Winston Churchill would negotiate a peace treaty. Hitler completely misread Churchill.

1941 : Four days after Pearl Harbor, for no reason whatsoever, Hitler declared war on the largest and most powerful nation in the world – America and in doing so, woke up a sleeping giant. How dumb is that?

1941-42 : Less than two years after he had signed a non-aggression treaty with Moscow, Hitler wasted precious resources ordering the largest military invasion in history – Operation Barbarossa – the disastrous invasion of Russia. Barbarossa was a totally unprovoked act of aggression that Hitler, in his paranoia, claimed was a “preemptive defensive strike”.

Having launched the invasion Hitler didn’t go straight ahead. Rather than allowing his generals to push direct for Moscow and capture it in a lightning attack, he quite inexplicably diverted his forces south toward Kiev.

1942-43 : With the 6th Army now in Ukraine, Hitler obsessed over capturing Stalingrad (today’s Volgograd). In his eyes, Stalingrad was a sudden opportunity, a low-hanging fruit. On his orders, The German forces took a sharp left and marched right into Stalingrad. The resulting 6-month Battle of Stalingrad destroyed an entire German field army (the 6th Army), leaving 1.0 million fighting men dead or wounded and turning the tide at the Eastern Front.

In all, Operation Barbarossa and the attempt to annex Russia cost Germany two million dead, 100000 wounded, 3000 tanks and mobile artillery pieces, 41000 trucks and personnel carriers and 210000 horses destroyed.

1941-43 : Instead of the hard left turn to Stalingrad, the Germans could have kept on southward and rolled through the Caucasus into Iran and annexed it. That way they wouldn’t be thirsting for oil by 1944. But Hitler lacked foresight.

1944 – the Endgame : His fortunes completely reversed by now, the Luftwaffe practically non-existent, Hitler committed his final fatal error – he did not heed Rommel’s advice when the revered Field Marshal urged him to move remaining elite Panzer divisions to the Normandy coast because he expected the Allied landings there. Instead, Hitler swallowed the lies manufactured by the British MI5 and transmitted to the German High Command through turned German spies. Some of those spies – now newly minted double agents – revealed Calais (350kms east) to be the location where the Allies would land and some reported that the invasion would be launched from Scotland and the landings would be around Oslo and Stavanger, Norway, 1500kms from the actual landings at Normandy.

1943-45 : Another huge strategic error was the lack of allocation of sufficient funds for the already ongoing nuclear research and the development of the atom bomb which would have assured a German victory. After all the scientists and the designs were essentially German. Here, racial ideology clouded Hitler’s judgement – the Nazis had already purged top-tier Jewish physicists who had fled westward. The list is a who’s who of nuclear physics – Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Lise Meitner, Leo Szilard and many others. These scientists drove the American Manhattan Project that led to the dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, the two nuclear bombs that folded the Japanese will to fight on, within just six days of Nagasaki and Germany lost its only fighting ally.

1944-45 : Unlike the atomic bomb, which suffered from underfunding, the V-weapons (Vergeltungswaffen or “Vengeance Weapons”) suffered from the exact opposite problem. For no apparent reason, Hitler became obsessed with them, pouring massive resources into a program that yielded little or no military returns.

The V-2 rocket program cost Germany roughly $2 billion US, a sum equivalent to the entire Manhattan Project. It absorbed vast quantities of rare exotic high nickel-chrome alloy steels, special aluminum alloys and highly skilled technicians. The state-run Mittelwerke GmbH was given carte-blanche to monopolize the entire potato crop to produce alcohol needed for the production of the V-weapons. At a time of severe food shortages, the potatoes would have provided ordinary Germans much needed sustenance. Instead, they starved.

Worse still, the V-1 and V-2 rockets were horribly inaccurate terror weapons. They could not target specific military bases or factories, so they were fired blindly at massive civilian targets like London and Antwerp. Neither did they slow down the Allied advance nor did they alter the course of the war.

The enormous amounts of steel, aluminum and labor spent on V-weapons directly took resources away from the production of conventional defensive weapons. Had they been funneled into developing and building more of the new jet fighters like the Messerschmitt Me-262, anti-aircraft guns and advanced radar systems, Germany could have significantly minimized the losses from the devastating 1944-45 Allied carpet bombing campaign that leveled German cities and infrastructure, when wave after wave of American B-17s and B-24s bombed German cities during the day while, in the night, Dresden, Hamburg, Essen, Cologne, Dusseldorf and the entire Ruhr got hammered by the British Lancasters, Mosquitos and Wellingtons.

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Right after the war, this personae of men like Baldur Wirsing adjusted to the new reality of living in a destroyed wasteland of a nation, as common German citizens again and behaving like they had been the victims.

When Germany recovered quickly, its astonishing economic miracle of the 1960s became their own achievement. They never acknowledged the invaluable help that the American post-WW2 Marshall Plan provided Germany, just as the post-WW1 Dawes Plan had done three decades prior.

Men like Wirsing do not recognize that the Nazis did terrible things. They refuse to believe that their Fuhrer really had been just a dumb fuck. All that they remember is that their Fuhrer had brought them “glory”. Even though they were on the losing side, to them theirs was “The Greatest Generation”. They remember with nostalgia Hitler’s tirade during a massive rally in Munich, 1937, where he proclaimed, “God is on our side, walking with us. Always before God and the world, the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills…”

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Baldur Wirsing passed on in 2014. Had he been alive today he would witness the current explosion of nationalistic right-wing anti-immigrant ethnocratic fervor worldwide. He would cheer on the inexorable march of the Alternative For Germany(AFD) Party to occupy the Bundestag. He would dream of donning his old SS-Untersturmführer’s uniform and heading for the nearest bierhalle where he, along with his Nazi Kamerads, could once again slant their right arms palms down, to the heavens with repeated toasts of “Sieg Heil!!” to their beloved Fuhrer.

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Alternative Title : India’s Affection Addict

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“If you want a friend, get a dog” – Harry S. Truman (US President 1945-1953), referring to overt physical gestures of affection in politics.

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“Hugging may not be in your culture, but it is in ours” – Subramanyam Jaishankar (Indian Minister of External Affairs since 2019), replying to a western journalist’s question about the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s penchant for giving foreign leaders rib-crushing bear hugs.

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What? Haven’t you heard of schlooping? It is a close and squishy, cheek-rubbing, folksy embrace, a hug so tight and so close that it can get a bit uncomfortable and embarrassing if you are at receiving end of it or if you treasure that thing called “personal space”.

By the way, “to schloop” and “Schloop-me-tight-Goober” are copyrighted SpunkyCanadian terms. I’ll sue you for a billion dollars if you use it without my permishun.😉

The Indian Prime minister, Narendra Modi, holds a PhD in schlooping, he is a hell of a touchy schloopy guy. Give him half a chance and he’ll schloop you. If you happen to be a head of state, film star, CEO or celebrity and you see Modi bearing down on you from across the room, you’re going to get schlooped whether you like it or not.

Admittedly, one human hugging another is a heartwarming sight. With the rise of hate everywhere, the world does face a love-deficit at the moment. So, here’s a disclaimer – there is nothing wrong with schlooping as far as I am concerned. 

Politicians schlooping each other in India is du jour. But when Modi schloops someone, there is a dreamy look on his face. He doesn’t let go – he keeps on schlooping you with that Alfred E. Neuman grin of sheer bliss. Just google Narendra Modi and you’ll see a zillion photos of him schlooping, looking slightly off to the side, his face seeming to say, “What? Me worry?”

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According to neuroscience, hugging (or in SpunkyCandian lingo, schlooping) releases a neuropeptide called oxytocin. Schlooping excites us and sends out just the right dose of oxytocin to the brain making us happy and comfortable. In children, schlooping and cuddling helps them grow into kind and compassionate adults. Or, so psychologists tell us.

They also tell us that in adults, schlooping leads to a feeling of well-being and helps enhance social connections and a sense of belonging. It lowers blood pressure and the heart rate. Schlooping also impacts the stress hormone, cortisole and leads to better sleep. 

Not so in the western world. At least not in formal settings.

After two decades in Canada being near white folk, I have realized that schlooping is sometimes not a very appropriate gesture here. The warmth that a schloop tries to convey, is lost on most white people in affluent nations. Take a look at Trump above. Can you just sense him cringing from the intimacy? Even Erdogan, MBS, Putin and Netanyahu, they look like they are merely tolerating it, waiting for the schloop to end.

In the west, most men folk do not understand how to react to schlooping, so don’t even bother to try. Would you find an Andy Burnham schlooping an Emanuel Macron? 

Burnham and Macron represent friendly nations and therefore one could make a case for hugs. Modi thought nothing of schlooping India’s arch-enemy, ex-Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif. Would you have dreamed of seeing Barack Obama schlooping Vladimir Putin? Donald Trump professed undying love for Kim Jong Un, but did you ever see him schloop the guy?

Why does it become so necessary for an Indian Prime Minister to slobber all over another dignitary? Is it his vanity, that his personal charisma should prevail over strategic thinking? Or is it his craving for affection?

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In the west, physical space is an important concept. Usually it is a two-foot envelope all around a person. Western folk take breaching that envelope as an annoyance, sometimes even as an act of aggression. Between straight men in the west, the only acceptable way to breach the envelope is through a handshake or a high five. Schlooping is frowned upon and can draw a grimace in response.

There could be a number of reasons for the aversion to schlooping between men in the west – one is a perception that any overt show of warmth is a sign of a lack of manliness. The Caucasian male is essentially a war-like sub-species of human beings, immensely proud of his masculinity, eager to march off into any conflict in order to show his manliness.

Schloops are quite normal in India and like schloops, holding hands is common between two straight male friends in India. Just walk out into the street and you’ll see at least one pair of males walking, holding hands. Try holding a straight man’s hand here in the west.

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Modi, with Agolf Twitler

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Schlooping, like any other pursuit, has it’s variations. Let me show you a few………..

‘Schleep’ is when a schloop ends in sex. You could go further – like you could think of doing a schleepa-doo-dee. For that, you might have to check into a motel room in a remote part of town under a false name, with a blonde with big baobabs.

There are goobers other than the schloop-me-tight-goobers of course. Let me introduce you to another kind of goober that inhabits the world – suck-my-face goober – another SpunkyCanadian copyrighted term. Suck-my-face-Goobers are annoying folks who like to kiss wet slobbering open-mouthed kisses that are disgusting. Their kisses have a ridiculous slurpy sound, leaving half the woman’s face wet and sloppy. Their tongues slurp around the woman’s palate like eels. Yechh!

Suck-my-face-goobers are usually men but once in a while one gets a female – like this married landlady twice my age in India, when I was twennie-five. She just couldn’t get enough of me and would slobber all over my face. I suggested to her that she might find schleeping my richard more fulfilling and I am happy to report that she acted on my suggestion with unnatural zeal.

But let’s stick to just schlooping, okay? I am too straight-laced to write about the others, though there was a time I even went schlapee-doo-shaa. Please, don’t ever make me tell you what that is.

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Interestingly, Modi likes to maintain a distance from his own fellow Indian politicos and supporters. He schloops Indians too but far less than he does to foreigners. At public meetings, he sits alone on a raised platform, with a single chair for himself. The architecture of power is clear. He is above the rest – and must be publicly seen to be so. He seems to resist displaying any public attachment, the ultimate Indian alpha male – emotionless, impervious to grief, pain or insecurity. 

Modi has rarely been seen schlooping members of the Indian hoi polloi – children, flood victims, farmers, factory workers or tribals. His cringy schloops are reserved for the ultra-rich, like the phoney Ayurveda tycoon and yoga teacher Ramdev, rapacious business magnates Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, cricket and Bollywood stars, anyone who smells of money.

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If I were the Indian PM, I would stop schlooping forthwith. It is futile to think that a hug can help build a personal bond between two heads of state. Instead, it makes the schlooped one cringe and feel awkward. A schloop is a deeply personal gesture. It is meant for those with whom one already has an ongoing warm personal bond or toward whom one develops an instant chemistry. Does Trump look like he can have deep personal connections with anybody, especially a brown-skinned guy with an atrocious accent, like Modi? Nope. Maintaining a certain distance and reserve is far more effective. 

The Indian Prime Minister does not seem to understand that with world leaders there is little or no possibility of forming close friendships. They are hardened politicos, with emotional fortresses around them which cannot be breached by schloops from the head of state of another country. When they are suddenly grabbed and hugged by Modi, they may grudgingly accept it but with more discomfort and condescension than genuine warmth.

In the end, these expansive gestures do little good to Modi’s image even if they release more oxytocin to the brain. Contrary to what psychologists say about the benefits of a warm schloop, it is doubtful if schlooping foreign heads of states fosters a better appreciation of Indian interests or greater acceptance of India or its Prime Minister. There are far better ways of pursuing India’s strategic interests abroad than through emotionally ambiguous touchy-feely gestures.

In international politics, it is more prudent to command respect and project strength than to go looking for a fleeting moment of facile affection.

There is no affection in diplomacy, only strength and opportunism.

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Xi Jin Ping is the only leader who has not been schlooped by Modi. Most likely, Xi’s strong aversion to schlooping has been made clear to the Indian side. 

After all, China does not need India and therefore does not have to bear the discomfort of a facile gesture such as a schloop. 

Xi is the host on this occasion. Modi’s hand is already (prematurely) extended as he approaches Xi, who looks more like a monarch, receiving a foreign envoy. Modi’s gesture shows eagerness to please, be accepted, while Xi’s projects impersonal nonchalance.

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“In all things that you see breathing the breath of life, either courage or craft or speed has from the beginning of it’s existence protected and preserved each particular race. But those to whom nature has granted none of these qualities, so that they could neither live by their own means nor perform for us any usefull service in return for which they could be safe under our protection, they lie exposed untill nature brings them to extinction”

– Lucretius(99-55BC), in De Rerum Natura (“On the nature of things”), 1900 years prior to Charles Darwin’s natural selection

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Imagine this ……..

It is 1598 and a boat from a large sailing ship beaches itself on a deserted island in the Indian Ocean, that we know today as Mauritius. Sailors jump out, wade ashore and begin exploring the surroundings. As they cut through the undergrowth, they see something they haven’t seen before – a huge ugly blunt-beaked bird, standing a metre tall, with brown feathers. The bird seems docile, as if it is domesticated. Having never come face to face with a predator, it makes no attempt to flee, seeming completely unafraid of the visitors.

They name the bird the “Dodo”, after the Portuguese word “doudo” which means “simpleton” or “fool”.

Mauritius is soon transformed by the men from the ship. Over the next two years, more ships arrive and soon there’s no place for the dodo to go. The men slaughter the dodos indiscriminately for their meat and the animals they had brought with them (the dogs and the rats that had stowed away in their crates), they eat the dodos’ eggs. In less than a century, the entire species disappears.

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The last dodo was sighted in 1688.

At the time no one believed that the dodo could be absolutely wiped out as a species. The word “extinction” hadn’t yet appeared in the world’s lexicons. Why would God create an animal, some thought, only to let it die out?

It took another 150 years for the dodo to be officially declared “extinct”.

Today we know a lot more about what drives animals to extinction. We have also become aware of the pressures that have started to bear upon our own species and it’s fragile longevity.

Yet, we think of ourselves as invincible, too smart to go the way of the dodo.

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Now, imagine this….

It is the summer of 1918. Phillis Brown, the daughter of a British army officer, lives in an upscale neighbourhood in the heart of London. When the First World War broke out four years ago she joined the Volunteer Aid Detachment, where she still works as a nurse, taking care of wounded soldiers returning from the Western Front in France.

The howitzers have finally fallen silent across Europe and Londoners are beginning to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. Phillis hears pre-school children in her neighbourhood singing a strange new nursery rhyme.….

Ring-a ring o-Rosies, pocket full of posies

A-tishoo!! A-tishoo!!

And we all fall down

I had a bird and it’s name was Enza

I opened the window

And in flew Enza!

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(When I was a kid in a missionary school in India, I was made to sing the same song, quite unaware of what the words really meant).

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As the war is drawing to an end, Phillis notices more and more of the returning soldiers having severe breathing problems. No one has a clue as to what the disease is but whatever it is, its deadly. Some of the soldiers have a dark purple flush spreading all over their bodies. Their lungs are filled with a kind of sticky pus and they gasp and wheeze as they try to breathe, their eyes filled with the kind of terror one feels when one is unable to understand what is happening to him.

The soldiers die in the hundreds, their screams caught inside their choked throats. After that those who come to visit them – their relatives and friends – they begin dying and their friends and relatives and theirs and theirs. Phillis realizes that this a mysterious infection of some kind, which starts with a head cold.

The winter of 1918 is now around the corner when one day Phillis catches a chill, followed by high fever and a dry cough. In order not to infect her family, she moves out and begins living in a nearby boarding house. Two days later aged just 20, one chill evening a week from Christmas, Phillis Brown breathes her last.

It is estimated that 50-100 million people died in the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic that is now known as the “Spanish flu”. More people died of this disease than all the fatalities from the two World Wars combined.

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Imagine this is 2020….

The COVID-19 pandemic – a common flu with a tweaked DNA that triggers acute respiratory distress syndrome or asphyxiation – makes one wonder about coming close to extinction. You are infected by just being in the same room as an infected person who is simply breathing normally. COVID-19 does not need someone to cough or sneeze next to you.

The virus, a microscopic parasite that has the ability to survive outside a host body for 3-4 days, deposits itself in the cells that line your throat and lungs and turns them into mini corona virus factories that churn out even more viruses that infect more cells, all the while disguising itself as a normal microbe, one of the many harmless microbes that already live inside you.

Soon your body is hijacked and you don’t even know it. That’s just the incubation period, when there are no symptoms, not even a sore throat or a cough. All around you people are beginning to wear masks so they don’t carry or receive the infection.

If you are an American, of course you are imbued with a typically American sense of faux bravado, a carry-forward of the American exceptionalism that we see today. “Let’s go about our lives normally, let’s not let the virus dictate how we live,” you say.

You ignore the warnings from experts like Dr Anthony Fauci. You throw insults at him, your elected leaders spew venom at him in congressional witch hunts [aka hearings], you call for his prosecution for having the audacity to curb your freedoms.

Then you take the step that kills you. You go out on a date.

As an American, visiting a nightclub is your birthright and no one can take that away from you, not even a virus. “Didn’t we go about leading normal lives the very day after 9/11? That way, the terrorists didn’t win and so will it be with this pesky virus. Isn’t our’s the greatest country in the world?” you’ll say and you will go out on a date.

But the virus is not a terrorist. It has no ideology, no emotion, no passion and no devotion to any belief. The virus does not have the ability to think. It has a single-minded goal – to find a host and replicate, to keep it’s host alive so it can live in it and multiply.

By the time you leave the establishment that evening, you will have infected 35 other people, including the girl you brought along.

5 days into the onset of the infection, your immune system has finally begun to fight the virus. You start getting the chills of fever, perhaps aching muscles, a sore throat and dry coughs too. You begin to lose your sense of taste and smell. Your immune system is now beginning to overreact. It is causing inflammation inside vital organs within your body, filling tiny sacs that hold oxygen in your lungs with water, in much the same manner as HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) afflicts alpine climbers. On X-rays, your lungs begin to exhibit dark patches – a sign that pneumonia is setting in. You try to take deep breaths in order to breathe in some air but you only wheeze. Your chest feels like it is in a vice grip.

At this point, there is a severe shortage of emergency room doctors. They are mortals too. There is no one to insert a tube down your throat and connect you to a ventilator. For the first turn in your young life, you see a gaunt man in a cape holding a long scythe hovering near your hospital bed, waiting to snip the thread that connects your soul to your body. If he has his middle finger raised as in the image above, you are history.

When there are millions like you across the world, it is a pandemic and that’s what happened in 2020

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The good news – so far, natural cataclysms have never wiped us out as a species, although a super-volcano in Indonesia 76000 years ago almost did. The eruption, known as the ”Toba Event”, ejected volcanic ash into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, creating a 1000-year cooling cycle that left only a few thousand human survivors in the whole world.

Pandemics too are natural disasters that have the ability to wipe us out as a species but somehow we have managed to survive those as well.

During the beginning of the Dark Ages, 540-542AD, the “Plague of Justinian” decimated the population of the region in and around the Byzantine Empire, around the same time that an Icelandic volcano erupted, blanketing the earth’s atmosphere with ash and bringing on a decades long winter. While the plague remained active for two centuries and took 100 million lives in Europe, the sudden cold caused by the volcanic eruption decimated crops the world over, triggering famines and taking another 100 million lives.

Imagine that – 200 million wiped out in world that had just 210 million humans living at the time.

800 years on, around 1350AD, we had the bubonic plague known as the Black Death or Pestilence, in Eurasia. Within just three years, a third of the world’s population (200 million) had perished.

There was a silver lining, though. It was man’s innate urge to level the playing field and get ahead. The Black Death created a labour vacuum, leading to wage increases that in turn led to better living conditions and the decline in feudalism across Europe. Ordinary folk suddenly had a say in how they wished to live their lives. A pandemic inadvertently led to progress.

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But just because we’ve never been completely wiped out in the past, doesn’t mean we won’t be in the future. The threat of new potentially deadlier existential threats have appeared over the horizon. Climate change, drug-resistant viruses, nuclear war, a large asteroid impact, out-of-control artificial intelligence, super volcanos, coronal mass ejections (solar flares) – these are very real threats of the modern age that could wipe us all out completely.

Historical record shows that once every thousand years, an event has occurred that has wiped out a sizeable percentage of the human population. Occasionally a mammoth cataclysm like the super-volcano in Toba has brought us a hair-breadth from extinction.

Dr Simon Beard, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk in Cambridge, thinks of himself as an optimist, but in his work he spends most of his time trying to figure out how the world might end. He says that an existential threat does not necessarily mean every last human being will die out. It could instead be something that destroys civilization as we know it. Humanity may just make it but we could be reduced to a handful, surviving at the subsistence level of hunter-gatherers who roamed Africa 100,000 years ago.

The two above mentioned plague pandemics started at European ports, carried in by merchant ships that had stowaway rats which had plague-infected fleas. In the case of the COVID-19, Chinese scientists suspect the source to be the pangolin, a species of ant-eater that is highly sought-after in China for it’s meat and scales.

If only the Chinese would stop eating crazy shit like cockroaches and snakes and dogs and pangolins, maybe the world would be a safer place. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) was caused by the Chinese, eating civets, that in turn had transported the virus from horseshoe bats to humans. Goddammit, who the fuck eats civets?

We gift our women with jackets lined with civet fur but we have to wait till the Chinese have eaten them first.

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If one were to follow the thousand-year thumb rule then it is now time for the next big one. Will it be another infinitely more infectious COVID-19 style virus? Could the thousand km diameter super magma chamber boiling and frothing beneath the Yellowstone National Park explode, its éjecta ushering in a millenium long winter? Or will it be 99942 Apophis, the half-kilometre thick near earth asteroid that is very likely to impact the Earth in 2029? Will there be an end game and if so, what’s it going to be?

Me? All I want is a night with Scarlett Johansson with no clothes on, before the next big one hits. I don’t give a fuck if there is no morning after that. 😊

 

“Teddy mustn’t see what is about to happen.” – Jian Ghomeshi (host, hit CBC radio show “Q” 2007-2014), as he turned the teddy bear to face the wall every time he prepared to violently assault women.

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There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure that women perpetually feign and almost never experience – Marquis de Sade

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We all love a bit of role-play in bed. Come on, haven’t you playfully held down your spouse by the wrists as you made love to her?…… Given her tiny bites on the buttocks or the ankles? …….. Tied her up (gently) to the bed posts and tickled her lips? (not the ones in front of her teeth, silly)……. Spanked her butt playfully, with a serving ladle? …… Whispered into her ear, “You have no idea what I’m going to do to you when we get home”, to which she shivered and said,” Ooooh! Are you going to hurt me, Daddy?”

Of course you have. We all find these little games sexually stimulating. Strictly speaking, the above are all mild forms of BDSM – ‘Bondage, Discipline and Sado-Masochism’. In plain language – kinky sex.

Accouterments employed can be chains, steel-studded belts, whips, knives, hot wax, high heels, leather restraints and of course, role-playing in which one of the participants assumes a position of power from where he humiliates the other, who in turn loves to be hurt and degraded both, physically and psychologically.

Consider K2, the second highest peak in the world after the Everest, regarded as the scariest and physically most demanding mountain to climb, way more brutal than even the Everest. Not without reason is the K2, named The Savage by those who have attempted to scale it. I posted a what-if on K2 and here it is…

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The Savage

“K2……just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human” – Mingma David Sherpa, 5-time K2 summiter.

Read full story

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K2 demands the very last bit of endurance from even the best of the best alpinists and yet, among those who have been able to brave the steep icy slopes and the crashing seracs and crevices and the bone-chilling 60 mph winds, many have reported feeling a release, on finally standing on the peak, a sense that is almost like an orgasm, the ultimate high, achieved only through great physical pain. 

This is what BDSM means to those who practice it.

It is all about role-play, where one partner plays the dominant role, known in BDSM jargon as the dom. The dom can be the wimp you come across in your daily life, shuffling along, his head bowed. BDSM turns him into a lion, something that he is not in his everyday life. Folk who are seriously into BDSM often choose roles that are the direct opposite of their regular persona.

The person in the submissive role, the sub, gives up control to the dom. In a similar case of opposites, very often those who love being whipped and beaten with birch behind closed doors, turn out to be alpha males in everyday life. They enjoy the release from the daily burden of command and responsibility. Subs are also the thrill seekers. The anticipation and the excitement built up (what is he going to do to me now? Ooooooh!) just makes them go crazy.

To illustrate my point – the pre-Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, the ultimate symbol of macho to his followers, regularly role-played as the sub when he made his 21-yr old niece, Geli Raubal, steal into his bedroom late in the night, back in the 1920s and perform urolagnia (“golden shower”, in today’s slang). He made her strip naked and urinate on him and then forced her to wipe her wet crotch roughly on his face as he licked furiously and came, his tiny richard twitching spasmodically. 

Geli Raubal was into the face rubbing phase when one of Hitler’s trusted aides, Otto Strasser, walked into the room unannounced, with an urgent message that couldn’t wait. Strasser later reported to the OSS that he watched in horror. Stricken with shame, Geli Raubal told her mother her uncle was a horrible monster and later, unable to live with it, she took her own life with Hitler’s revolver, aged only 23. 

How do I know Hitler had a tiny twiddle-de-dum? I don’t but I think he did. Take the size of Donald Trump’s thingamabob, for instance. Revealed to the world for posterity by Stormy Daniels, except that Trump’s has a “mushroom” head as per Stormy. Just like Hitler, Trump likes to be a sub, as per the alleged 2016 Moscow Ritz-Carlton pee tape. Many say the pee tape was a fabrication designed to smear Trump. Fuck ‘em. Trump is unsmearable. I don’t have the evidence but I believe the pee tape story completely. Trump is perfectly capable of such filthy behaviour.

Moral : If you are a BDSM sub, you very likely have a teeny-weeny tiddly-widdly.

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I once witnessed a very powerful Indian politician prostrating himself in complete submission before a freakish, obese, afro-haired, utterly phoney Hindu holy man called Sai Baba. The politician reached out and placed Sai Baba’s foot on the top of his head as he knelt in front of him and Sai Baba did absolutely nothing to stop the guy. I could sense that maybe in a way, the politico was a sub, in the midst of a kind of role-play of his own and that was his release from the tiresome exercise of called ‘playing God’ with ordinary Indians. It was not a sexual release but a way to cope with guilt. 

“Doesn’t he know that this funny-looking holy man creep is a two-bit phoney?” I wondered to myself at the time. Now I have a better understanding of why he did what he did.

And then there is the switch. The creepy holy man reportedly often randomly picked one of the young white male devotees who lived in the commune (ashram) with him, ushered him into his inner sanctum, then got on his knees and blew him. If true, it was a classic example of someone who switched back and forth between dom and sub. 

Now here was a guy who was really having a ball. Switching from dom to sub and back to dom and then to sub again. It is for the same reason why we love to munch on a pickled gherkin between bites on a hamburger. The tingle of the sudden change in taste is exhilarating. Same thing with switching in BDSM, I guess.

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BDSM goes as far back as slavery, the first recorded instance of the practice for sexual pleasure pain being a miniature bedside table sized sculpture (above) found at Giza, dating back to around 2500BC Egypt, possibly during the reign of the legendary Pharaoh, Khufu, builder of the great pyramid of Giza. I have to say the jury is out on whether the above depicted guy was in a consensual BDSM member of the nobility or simply a slave being punished.

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Seeking dominance and submission has been in our DNA all along. BDSM is graphically described in the 4th Century BC Indian philosopher, Vatsayana’s epic Kama Sutra. Even today, one can find carvings showing erotic flagellation and bondage in ancient temples such as the one at Khajuraho in Central India. 

Indians have always been horny bastards. Oh yeah.

The BDSM that makes the news channels is however, way rougher and goes by the generic label Rough and Kinky Sex. It is so rough in fact that most of us would find it disgusting and completely unacceptable. Organized medicine calls BDSM a mental and behavioral disorder that needs to be treated.

In case you have BDSM leanings, turns out that you needn’t be concerned about being considered weird due to the stigma. In fact you might even feel like celebrating. A 2013 study titled “Psychological Characteristics of BDSM Practitioners“ by researchers Andreas A. J. Wismeijer and Marcel A. L. M. van Assen, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, concluded that BDSM practitioners are psychologically healthier and less neurotic than those with a more sedate sex life. It observed that practitioners are generally more secure than the general population and folk who get their rocks off through BDSM tend to be more extroverted, more gifted with creativity and intelligence and more open to new ideas and zest for experimentation.

The above study however makes two things clear. One, that the apparent psychological pluses in being a BDSM practitioner apply more to the doms than to the subs and second, BDSM is healthy only when it is consensual. Otherwise, modern psychiatry would label you a sexual sado-psychopath.

That means if your partner says, “Ouch, thanks, I just came”, you are a well-adjusted, happy guy but if she says, “Ugh, keep your hands off me, you sleazeball” then, well, you are a sleazeball.

My colleague, Kenny, 40 and still single, is a charming Jamaican creole who trolls the St-Laurent and St-Denis cafes and bars every weekend, looking for ‘conquests’. He succeeds often and even takes a woman home on the very first meeting sometimes. Kenny is into light BDSM, like the fun scenarios I was talking about in para-1 of this piece. From the frequent bruises and bite marks on his neck and arms that he sports like badges, on Monday mornings, it looks as if he has many conquests. Last weekend things might have gotten a bit outa hand. Monday, Kenny was heard yelping ‘ouch! ugh!’ while taking a leak in the locker rooms.

History has shown us that kinky behavior and famous personalities are identical twins. The English author, James Boswell, indulged in an isotope of BDSM known as arborophilia. He liked to rub his crotch roughly against tree trunks, often lacerating his penis and testicles before reaching orgasm. The explorer, Sir Richard Burton, liked to be flogged by his mistresses, while Gregori Rasputin wanted his immense member tied tightly around its base with a string that cut right through and left a bleeding welt. Fyodor Dostoevski was so involved in sado-masochism that he was known as the Russian Marquis de Sade. 

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The entertainment world is replete with kinky folk too. Angelina Jolie used to love feeling the blade of a knife on her skin before Brad Pitt happened and Lady Gaga has sex in a see-through nun costume with crosses piercing her nipples, while Britney Spears is all whips, paddles and handcuffs. The biggest business in Hollywood is the BDSM paraphernalia business.

Around 10 years back, one more name got added to the stellar cast of celebrity BDSM practitioners, Canada’s crown prince of cool – radio show host, Jian Ghomeshi, whose daily show ‘Q’ on CBC was broadcast over 200 radio stations in North America.

When Ghomeshi was a little boy in England, he had a teddy bear he cherished. Most times, Teddy would sit on a low shelf by his bed, the glass eyes gazing down at him. As he later grew into adulthood, invariably before he lay his women down and began violently assaulting them, he would take the teddy bear and turn its face toward the wall, saying, “Teddy shouldn’t have to see what is about to happen.” And then he would proceed to beat, bite, scratch, punch and pinch them black and blue. 

First, about the guy. I am not well acquainted with his show but most Canadians have heard him on ‘Q’. His style was very impressive, no question about it. Jian Ghomeshi was a charming and charismatic host and listening to him interview a female celebrity gave one the sense that she was about to have an orgasm, the way she gushed.

Ghomeshi came across as a perceptive interviewer, his tone easy-going but no-nonsense, honest, professional and intelligent, never snooty or condescending. He could hold his own and put many a cranky celeb jerk in his place with good-humored straight talk that turned them around and made them behave with more restraint as the interview progressed. Remember the Billy Bob Thornton interview? Billy Bob Thornton – what a prime fucking jerk). Here it is…..

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Before the BDSM revelations, my impressions of Ghomeshi had always been positive, even though I didn’t go for the kind of topics that his show was famous for – dissemination of arts and entertainment events. He had built a career out of sounding like someone you could trust. He knew his subject and he knew his audience and he knew how to speak to them.

Ghomeshi’s fall off the radio stardom pedestal came in 2014, after revelations that he lead a double life. At work, he was a suave, debonair, charismatic genius and at home…. a violent monster. Over the next few months, the Toronto Star approached Ghomeshi with allegations that he had sexually assaulted at least three young women half his age, grabbing them by the hair, punching, slapping and slamming them against the wall during and prior to having sex with them.

Given his legendary mastery in exercising control over any conversation and that famous honey-garlic voice of his, Ghomeshi might have led the girls to believe that the sex would be just a little bit kinky and fun, before he revealed his true self.

It finally hit the fan when one woman, probably beaten up and then jilted, went to Ghomeshi’s employers, CBC and spilt the beans. This in itself wouldn’t have been sufficient, except that a number of other young women followed suit and revealed the gory details of Ghomeshi’s picadillos to the Star and other media outlets, including his employers. 

Ghomeshi has claimed all along that the rough sex was consensual. The fact that none of the women went to the police after the attacks, with one of them even going back multiple times for more, bolsters his claim. It is a strong reason why he got away with it.

Jian Ghomeshi’s dismissal was part, the sexual thing and part, the resentment that key figures at CBC felt against him for playing the preening goose that laid the golden eggs (which admittedly, he really did) and treading on senior toes like an ‘arrogant tyrant’ as many at CBC saw him to be.

At the end of the day, the question still remains – why? What gave Jian Ghomeshi his Jekyll and Hyde personality? Why did he enjoy inflicting pain?

Could it be that when he was a little child in his little bed in England, he frequently turned Teddy to face the wall so that the little stuffed bear wouldn’t see things it was not supposed to see?

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Parent birds encourage and guide their chicks to fly, often by luring them out of the nest with food……

My neighbor Guy Champagne’s son, Mark, is entering CEGEP-John Abott College for a diploma that’ll help him be an ambulance technician/first-responder, a job that pays top dollar but is still considered blue-collar. He’ll learn to drive ambulances and be a paramedic. The 3-year CEGEP tuition is free, funded by the Quebec government.

Guy cannot afford university tuition and neither is Mark willing to slog it out for five years to acquire a bachelors degree and then search jobs that don’t exist anymore. And honestly, under-graduate programs have never been a very attractive way to get ahead in life, over here in North America. The tuition fee and expenses are daunting. 

But of course, there are die-hards who will send their kids to university, come what may. Like immigrants from very specific regions, such as South and South-East Asia – like India, China, Vietnam…. They carry over an ethos built into their psychs from back home. For them, a bachelors degree is a ticket to respectability. The fact that in North America, respectability is viewed vastly differently escapes them.

Over here, even being in a blue collar job affords you two cars, a small cottage with a swimming pool and annual vacations abroad (if both spouses are working, which is usually the case). Couple that with the fact that, beyond a certain level, the Canadian exchequer grabs almost 50% of your salary in income taxes, in order to support all the free goodies like school and CEGEP education and free healthcare. In the end there is little difference between the take-home pay of a factory worker or a technician and a white collar exec – for the first decade after graduation at least. 

North American culture requires that young adults, barely out of their teens, leave his parents’ home the moment they get through CEGEP. A blue collar job is practically thrust at them. Post-CEGEP it is clearly understood that parents are no longer responsible. They have accomplished their duty and now their progeny are on their own.

The incentive to bear the torture of a 5-year bachelors degree and a punishing student loan and then to go earn barely a thousand or two more a year in a white collar job just isn’t there with today’s kids.

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Mark has had a more than decent childhood and he’s content with the prospect of being an ambulance tech. Hey, his father is a cop with the vice squad and his mum is a lab technician, collars as blue as they come. He is excited to be finally on his own, that’s all.

In a wealthy nation like Canada, if you don’t have very high expectations, your future is taken care of. You get laid off and the government looks after you and provides you with an income called unemployment insurance disbursement. You retire and the government pays you a pension. Even folk who have never held a job, like housewives, get a pension that can work out to almost a grand a month.

Then when you’re over 65, old age benefits kick in. In the end, when you can’t look after yourself any longer and have no one who is willing to take care of you, the government does, by putting you in a residence where you spend the rest of your days with others your age. 

Of late, government residences have earned a bit of notoriety but one hopes that these are stray happenings. Recently an 86 year old resident was found in her room after she had been dead four days. 

An Indian friend, Pravin Shankar, just retired and settled back in his home town of Lucknow in Northern India for a while. The six thousand dollars a month that he and his wife, Sheila, get as pension is a royal sum in India. For a few years, they spent the hot summer months in Montreal with their children and winter in India. 

Of late, however, Pravin and Sita have found the chaos of Lucknow too hard to bear. The murderous traffic, the pollution and the filth have become unbearable for them. Besides, most of their siblings and friends have passed away and the Lucknow they knew has lost its old world charm. Increasingly, they find themselves aliens in their own home town. Earlier, Pranav had wished he’d be cremated when he died – in Lucknow – and his ashes scattered on the Gomti, but now he will be content if the St Lawrence accepts their ashes when the time comes.

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Guy sought my help to drive him and Mark to Mark’s new apartment. It’s a cute little 2-BRHK with a tiny balcony overlooking the leafy bike path next to the St.Anne locks. Guy will be loaning his son the money for the rent till Mark gets part-time work somewhere nearby, probably waiting tables or something. It’s de riguer . Every young man here begins his college in this manner. The apartment is also bang opposite the John Abott College where he will be doing his ambulance technician’s course.

Unlike boys his age, Mark is a quiet and respectful young man, determined to make a life for himself. I remember him, as a 12-year old, eagerly arriving and helping to clear our back yard and front lawn of leaves at the end of fall, his happy face full of freckles. His face would shine when I gave him the twennie at the end of it and he’d run, skipping and jumping back home. The freckles are gone but the eyes remain clear blue and the straw colored hair is just a bit overgrown. 

Mark had enrolled in the West Island gym last year and consequently has developed bulging biceps. Someone had told him that, as an ambulance technician, he might find himself in a situation where he has to lift and carry an obese old lady down the stairs – therefore the muscle building program.

Rental apartments over here nearly always come with the basic amenities such as a cooking range, fridge, clothes washer/dryer, shower and window curtains and Venetian blinds, ceiling fans, phone and cable TV fixtures. The ones that are situated close to colleges even have stuff like book shelves and computer tables. Mark’s apartment is similarly endowed. Plus, over the previous weekend, Guy has already installed a bed, basic living and dining room furniture.

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I backed up into the driveway and we unloaded the stuff and carried it inside one by one. As we approached the front door, it was opened by a petite red haired girl, Mark’s girlfriend, Annie. Annie busied herself giving us a hand, smiling and giving Mark tiny pecks on his cheeks whenever she passed him by.

Arranging everything in its proper place took almost no time and we were done in an hour. It was late, around half past eight in the night and I noticed that the winds had picked up, blowing snow over across the balcony and the window panes. Everyone suddenly seemed at a loss for words. I took that as a signal.

“Guy, I’ll wait in the car. Bye, Mark, bye, Annie. Be good, you both,” I said.

As I shook the boy’s hand and turned and descended the stairs at the entrance, I noticed that neither the dad nor the kid were laughing.

I sank back in my seat and started the engine, the heating immediately making the interior pleasant. I turned to look over at the building. Through the glass of the living room window, I saw Guy with one of his arms around his son, his chin resting lightly on the boy’s head, which was buried in his chest and the other round Annie.

Afterwards when he climbed in and began to strap on his seat belt, his chest gave a heave and his eyes were averted. We sat in silence for a minute, staring out into the blowing snow.

“It seems like just the other day…. when he would clutch my little finger and drag me to the swing in the Benny Park…,” Guy’s voice broke. I switched on the radio.

The drive back was long and we made it back in silence.

The architectures of many US government institutions are designed to evoke the ideals of the “democracy” that existed in ancient Greece and later on in the Roman Republic which came into being around the fifth Century BC. America’s government buildings use Greco-Roman elements like triangular pediments, tall columns, wide porticos and grand frontal stairways in stone that appear to majestically rise up into the very heavens. 

I said “democracy” but ancient Rome was not really a democracy in the true sense of the word. The plebeians (common folk) had no say whatsoever in either its governance or its justice system. A few hundred ‘senators’, appointed through a patronage system, gave the impression of an elected republic. With Romulus, in 750BC, there were just 100 of them but by the first Century BC, Julius Caesar was packing it with over 900 of his loyalists, a tradition that continued until Rome as an empire ceased to exist, around 475AD. 

So, while they were in office, Rome’s senators were essentially a bunch of toothless yes-men, mere vassals carrying on a charade. The democracy that historians refer to in conjunction with ancient Rome, was a fake one – a joke. The American government has erected grand institutions like the White House or the Capitol to commemorate and celebrate the architectural side of that singularly mirthless joke.

---

The architects of the US Supreme Court went further. They had friezes carved high on the interior walls of the main chamber where today nine judges decide the fate of not only Americans but also the rest of the world. These friezes, in ancient Greco-Roman style as well, depict famous so-called “law makers” through history, starting with the 3200BC Egyptian King, Menes. 

The friezes are perhaps an effort to stress the importance of delivering justice and how the American judicial system, as a symbol of law and order, closely emulates what Menes and the rest of those gents in the friezes stood for. 

It is however astounding to me how Menes and his frieze buddies – a particularly dubious bunch that consisted of slave owners, misogynists and mass murderers – were chosen to be depicted on those friezes, men who in my opinion should not be allowed to even take a piss inside any real world courthouse toilet today, had they been still alive.

Perhaps, considering what America has become, these friezes and the men on them are entirely appropriate for what America now stands for. 

If you wish to read more about the friezes of the US Supreme Court, here is the link…..

It takes more than friezes to deliver justice

SPUNKY BONG

·

JUNE 19, 2025

“But Grandpa, where’s God?”

Read full story

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Also afflicted by this weird Greco-Roman architecture fetish are other important American institutions instantly recognizable around the world – the White House, the Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Archives, the US Federal Reserve, the Department of Treasury and the New York Stock Exchange. And then, only the good Lord knows why even some Ivy League universities like Columbia have succumbed to the fetish.

I am not recommending drab, no-frills Soviet-style building blocks, but conjuring up Ancient Rome with concrete and plaster seems megalomaniacal. Around 1955, America’s public image ceased being seen as a well deserved success story and began looking more like that of a tarnished and hollow, self-serving hegemon.

The Capitol is the same building on the steps of which, US Air Force Major Jason Watson (photo above) was arrested for simply following an official US military code, which states that a military officer is required to disobey an illegal order. Since 1955, that code has been violated numerous times but, on 1st July 2026, an American Air Force Major did something stupendous. He upheld it, knowing it would ruin his career, strip him of his rank, his salary and pension, discharge him dishonourably and most likely, incarcerate him inside a military prison for an extended period. 

And since he went up against Trump, it is also highly likely that Maj. Watson will be physically tortured and even killed, to set an example. 

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The other Ancient-Rome-fetish that has stricken the US is the use of Latin mottos and standards. The most famous of them all is “E Pluribus Unum” which literally means “Out of many, one”. All Americans, united. What?? Hah! Double Hah!! 

Want to hear about some other ‘double hahs’? There are plenty. The American government lavishes Latin as a motto on nearly every one of its institutions. Like the Great American Seal, right next to the E Pluribus mumbo jumbo..

• Annuit Cœptis: Translates to “He [God] has favored our undertakings”. It signifies divine approval of the American ‘cause’.
• Novus Ordo Seclorum: Translates to “A new order of the ages”. It signals the dawn of a new era of ‘independent American democracy’.

The architectures of many US government institutions are designed to evoke the ideals of the “democracy” that existed in ancient Greece and later on in the Roman Republic which came into being around the fifth Century BC. America’s government buildings use Greco-Roman elements like triangular pediments, tall columns, wide porticos and grand frontal stairways in stone that appear to majestically rise up into the very heavens. 

I said “democracy” but ancient Rome was not really a democracy in the true sense of the word. The plebeians (common folk) had no say whatsoever in either its governance or its justice system. A few hundred ‘senators’, appointed through a patronage system, gave the impression of an elected republic. With Romulus, in 750BC, there were just 100 of them but by the first Century BC, Julius Caesar was packing it with over 900 of his loyalists, a tradition that continued until Rome as an empire ceased to exist, around 475AD. 

So, while they were in office, Rome’s senators were essentially a bunch of toothless yes-men, mere vassals carrying on a charade. The democracy that historians refer to in conjunction with ancient Rome, was a fake one – a joke. The American government has erected grand institutions like the White House or the Capitol to commemorate and celebrate the architectural side of that singularly mirthless joke.

---

The architects of the US Supreme Court went further. They had friezes carved high on the interior walls of the main chamber where today nine judges decide the fate of not only Americans but also the rest of the world. These friezes, in ancient Greco-Roman style as well, depict famous so-called “law makers” through history, starting with the 3200BC Egyptian King, Menes. 

The friezes are perhaps an effort to stress the importance of delivering justice and how the American judicial system, as a symbol of law and order, closely emulates what Menes and the rest of those gents in the friezes stood for. 

It is however astounding to me how Menes and his frieze buddies – a particularly dubious bunch that consisted of slave owners, misogynists and mass murderers – were chosen to be depicted on those friezes, men who in my opinion should not be allowed to even take a piss inside any real world courthouse toilet today, had they been still alive.

Perhaps, considering what America has become, these friezes and the men on them are entirely appropriate for what America now stands for. 

If you wish to read more about the friezes of the US Supreme Court, here is the link…..

It takes more than friezes to deliver justice

SPUNKY BONG

·

JUNE 19, 2025

“But Grandpa, where’s God?”

Read full story

---

Also afflicted by this weird Greco-Roman architecture fetish are other important American institutions instantly recognizable around the world – the White House, the Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Archives, the US Federal Reserve, the Department of Treasury and the New York Stock Exchange. And then, only the good Lord knows why even some Ivy League universities like Columbia have succumbed to the fetish.

I am not recommending drab, no-frills Soviet-style building blocks, but conjuring up Ancient Rome with concrete and plaster seems megalomaniacal. Around 1955, America’s public image ceased being seen as a well deserved success story and began looking more like that of a tarnished and hollow, self-serving hegemon.

The Capitol is the same building on the steps of which, US Air Force Major Jason Watson (photo above) was arrested for simply following an official US military code, which states that a military officer is required to disobey an illegal order. Since 1955, that code has been violated numerous times but, on 1st July 2026, an American Air Force Major did something stupendous. He upheld it, knowing it would ruin his career, strip him of his rank, his salary and pension, discharge him dishonourably and most likely, incarcerate him inside a military prison for an extended period. 

And since he went up against Trump, it is also highly likely that Maj. Watson will be physically tortured and even killed, to set an example. 

---

The other Ancient-Rome-fetish that has stricken the US is the use of Latin mottos and standards. The most famous of them all is “E Pluribus Unum” which literally means “Out of many, one”. All Americans, united. What?? Hah! Double Hah!! 

Want to hear about some other ‘double hahs’? There are plenty. The American government lavishes Latin as a motto on nearly every one of its institutions. Like the Great American Seal, right next to the E Pluribus mumbo jumbo..

• Annuit Cœptis: Translates to “He [God] has favored our undertakings”. It signifies divine approval of the American ‘cause’.
• Novus Ordo Seclorum: Translates to “A new order of the ages”. It signals the dawn of a new era of ‘independent American democracy’.

Then there are U.S. Military & Coast Guard mottos that project ‘tradition, honor and duty’….

• Semper Fidelis (U.S. Marine Corps): Semper Fi for short, it translates to “Always Faithful”.
• Semper Paratus (U.S. Coast Guard): “Always ready”.
• Semper Supra (U.S. Space Force): “Always above”.

Federal Law Enforcement & Intelligence Agencies are not to be left behind in the Latin freak-out….

• Ex scientia tridens(FBI): “From knowledge, comes power”.
• Pace ac bello merita (FEMA):  “Service during peace and war”.

How about a new Latin motto fit for a great nation like America, from Spunkybong …..

Semper tyrannus : “Always a bully”. You can use it liberally, even though I just copyrighted it as an authentic spunkybong motto for America.

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But why the Latin??? What the fuck is wrong with plain old English, for Christ’s fucking sakes???

I know why – the American establishment thinks that by using Latin, it will look and sound profound, that it will really be transformed into that crappy oft-repeated Reagan quote…. “shining city on the hill” and that the world will, on seeing all that Latin, look up to America with awe, devotion and reverence.

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Now about Major Jason Watson and what he did…

Standing erect on the steps of the Capitol in front of gathered friends and media, he began in an unwavering voice… 

“My name is Jason Watson. I’m an active-duty Major in the United States Air Force. However, who I am is immaterial. In the grand scheme of things, I’m just a nobody. What matters far more than who I am is what I have to say and the price I’m willing to pay to say it……

……When the President of the United States orders military action against foreign countries absent an emergency scenario where American interests are under imminent, dire threat—as was done with Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran—that is an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress’s authority and a violation of the War Powers Clause. These violations resulted in the deaths of 13 service members and injuries to hundreds more. For this, the President and Vice President must be impeached, convicted, and removed….”

If you want to read the whole transcript of his speech, here is the link…. 

FULL SPEECH: Major Jason Watson’s Speech Before Being Arrested in Peaceful Capitol Protest Calling on Congress to Impeach, Remove and Convict Trump

If you would rather watch the video, here it is…..

In the end, nothing will change. Watson’s heroism will be in vain. That is what history has repeatedly told us.

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There have been many Major Watsons who were prepared to lose it all for the sake of justice. Like that lonely little man on Tiananmen Square on the morning of 5th June 1989. It was the day after the Chinese military had forcibly cleared Tiananmen Square…

Earlier, in the wee hours, the PLA had stormed into the square once again. This time, military show of might had been caused by a foam and papier-mâché statue that the students had put up overnight, to depict the “Goddess of democracy”. The statue had been deliberately made to face a huge portrait of Mao Tse Dong across the square. 

All of a sudden a man appeared out of the crowds that were staring at T59 tanks clanking noisily into the square.

The lone man, wearing a plain white shirt and dark trousers and carrying what appeared to be shopping bags, stepped in front of the lead tank. When the tank attempted to maneuver around him, he repeatedly stepped in its path to block it. He briefly climbed onto the lead tank and spoke with a crew member before eventually being pulled into the crowd by bystanders.

Tank Man’s true identity and ultimate fate remain a mystery till this day, thanks to the Chinese government’s selective censorship and the concerns of ordinary folks who knew him. The iconic photographs of his confrontation with the Chinese establishment have since become one of the 20th Century’s most defining symbols of peaceful resistance against authoritarianism.

An AP correspondent, a Chinese named Liu, was embedded in the crowd at the square with a few of his American colleagues. He had left his girlfriend and his camera equipment in his room at the 5-star state-owned Beijing Hotel, across the square. Liu later recalled feeling horrified, afraid that the Chinese government would never allow the goddess statue, an obviously western symbol, to remain and would resort to violence.

Instinct made Liu call his girlfriend and ask her to pick up his telephoto lens and as she peered through it, there was the Tank Man. She clicked repeatedly and called Liu back who then told her to take the roll of film out of the camera immediately and secrete it somewhere inside the room and someone would come to pick the roll up from her. Minutes later a blond American with a ponytail arrived in the lobby and she handed the roll over to him. After a little while she too slipped out into the square and mingled with the crowds until she found Liu and joined him. Beijing Hotel was teeming with plain clothes Chinese security personnel, definitely not the place for a photographer with explosive photos.

As they disappeared into the milieu, Liu remembered thinking, “Today AP owns the world”, meaning that the photo would be on newspapers all over the world.

What made Tank Man do what Major Watson did was one and the same thing – a deeply heroic sense of complete and total sacrifice, where an individual stops seeing himself and his well being as the priority.

But just as in the case of Maj Watson, Tank Man will be forgotten and there will always be a dictator, crushing resistance, in China.

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17 Dec 2010 would have been like any other day in Sidi Bouzid, a small town in the centre of Tunisia, had the press not stopped being afraid, if only for a while.

Just after midnight every day, 26-yr old fruit and vegetable vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi would push his cart to the wholesale market to load up and the head to his spot by the side of the road where he remained till sunset. He would then go home and repeat the same routine over and over.

On the 17th a cop arrived at his stall around 9am and confiscated his scales because he did not have a hawking permit. This kind of harassment had gone on for far too long and he had just about had it. Leaving his cart, Bouazizi went to the provincial governor’s office to register a complaint but was not allowed entry. In desperation the youth doused himself with a can of paint thinner and set it on fire. By the time a passing taxi driver stopped and used his jacket to try to douse the flames, it was too late.

In the immediate aftermath a small knot of friends and relatives gathered in front of the provincial office while others watched from a distance, too afraid to get involved. But soon, as if someone had suddenly opened the floodgates, the building was deluged by ordinary folks and the crowds grew larger by the day, drawing in people from nearby towns as well.

Then someone decided to post a video on Facebook and the whole incident exploded. The international press poured in and the rest is history. The man who posted the video was arrested and beaten close to death. “You are the one who has caused us so much trouble and now we are making an example of you,” said the cops.

But the protests kept growing and it wasn’t long before the Tunisian government collapsed with its President, a corrupt low-life called Ben Ali, fled the country, fearing he would be lynched. 

Grapevine strongly suggests that Ben Ali’s escape was made possible by the American government with whom he had been chummy for decades. America was blind to his authoritarianism and his human rights abuses, choosing instead – in the words of a US diplomat at the State Department, to see him as “a stable, friendly presence in the Arab world”.

In the end, nothing in Tunisia has really changed for the better. Young Mohammed Bouazizi’s act of defiance has been in vain. Now, a decade later, Tunisia has decisively reverted back to authoritarianism. Since seizing extraordinary executive powers in July 2021, the current Tunisian President Kais Saied has systematically consolidated control by suspending parliament, rewriting the constitution, weakening the judiciary and fiercely repressing civil society. 

President Saied has grown even closer to America than his predecessor. If Trump farts, Saied will be able to smell it.

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So, where is the western civilization and it’s organized religion that preaches it’s “as-you-sow-so-you-reap” BS to its followers and believers? Will America reward Maj. Jason Watson for upholding its military code and constitution or will it crucify him? 

A question is a non-question when one already knows the answer to it.

————————-

During her tenure as White House Press Secretary (2017–2019) and now as the Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has for long had her head stuck up the exit end of Donald Trump’s alimentary canal, prioritizing absolute loyalty over transparency. 

As White House Press Secretary, Sanders lied for Trump and frequently found herself caught between Trump’s shifting public narratives and chose to absorb the ensuing political heat rather than distance herself from her boss. 

Here are some specific incidents that highlight Sanders’ slavish deference to the 34-count convicted felon in the White House, who her evangelical-kook dad, Mike Huckabee Sanders claimed, had been sent to earth by god….

The Mueller Investigation & “Slip of the Tongue”

Following Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in 2017, Sanders claimed from the White House podium that “countless” FBI agents had reached out to express support for the decision and loss of confidence in Comey.

When interviewed under oath by Mueller’s team, Sanders was forced to admit that her public claim was a “slip of the tongue” and was not founded on any actual evidence. 

Despite being outed at a Grand Jury deposition as a liar, Sarah dear immediately returned to the White House podium to continue spewing more lies, defending Trump’s actions.

The Stormy Daniels Payoff

For weeks, in 2016-17, Sanders parroted Trump’s official line that he had no knowledge of a $130,000 hush-money payment made by his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to adult film actress Stormy Daniels on his behalf.

When 9/11 hero turned sleezeball, Rudy Giuliani, abruptly revealed on national TV that Trump had in fact reimbursed Cohen for the payment, Sanders was left exposed. Instead of pushing back on being kept in the dark, which probably was the fact of the matter, she repeatedly stonewalled the press corps, telling them, “I gave you the best information that I had at the time”, prioritizing protecting Trump over absolute transparency.

A Briefing Room weaponized against the Press

Sanders’ loyalty thrust her to wage open warfare against the media, a core strategy of the Trump administration. She routinely backed Trump’s assertion that major news networks were the “enemy of the people” and “fake news creators”. 

In 2018, following a heated exchange between Trump and CNN reporter Jim Acosta, Sanders shared a digitally altered, sped-up video on her personal Twitter account to justify revoking Acosta’s press credentials. The video falsely made it appear as though Acosta had laid hands on a female White House intern who was trying to take his microphone.

Phasing Out the Daily Press Briefing

The daily White House press briefing used to be a foundational pillar of government transparency but, as Trump grew increasingly irked by media scrutiny, Sanders systematically dismantled the tradition.

By the end of her tenure in 2019, Sanders broke the record for the longest period without a formal press briefing, going more than 90 days without taking the podium. Instead, Trump shifted to brief, informal gags on the White House lawn helipad that correspondents called “chopper talk”, where he controlled the narrative directly, making Sanders redundant.

Slavish loyalty

Sanders’ loyalty to Trump did not end when she left Washington. It served as the launching pad for her successful 2022 gubernatorial run in Arkansas. While other Republicans initially hesitated, even weighed alternatives, during the 2024 primary season, Sanders officially endorsed Trump early on at a high-profile rally, cementing her status as an untouchable figure within the MAGA base.

As Governor, she has consistently adopted Trump’s executive style and culture-war rhetoric, focusing heavily on conservative social policies, anti-woke rhetoric and strict border security initiatives, to signal perfect alignment with Trump’s agenda.

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While female Trump enablers share core traits like authoritarian deference with their male peers, they have turned out to be far more blindly slavish.

Psychologists group female enablers into four prominent archetypes:

The Protection-for-Submission Bargain (Benevolent Sexism)

Social psychologists distinguish between hostile sexism (open antipathy toward women) and benevolent sexism (the belief that women are fragile creatures who require male protection and should in return step back and occupy traditional roles).

This dynamic often manifests in women with traditionalist worldviews, frequently reinforced by the patriarchal white evangelical societal structures.

For female enablers, Trump triggers what psychoanalysts call a protective father fantasy. In today’s fast-changing, chaotic and threatening world, a powerful and aggressive patriarch promises absolute safety. The psychological trade-off is clear : they tolerate or rationalize his crude misogynistic language because they view him as a “flawed vessel” chosen to defend their families, faith and way of life. 

The misogyny and aggressive masculinity that critics see as a threat, these female enablers interpret as a protective shield.

The Internalized Misogyny Matrix

Internalized misogyny occurs when women subconsciously begin to believe that some women, other than they themselves, actually deserve misogyny. Research into voting behavior shows that a significant portion of female enablers hold highly negative views of female ambition, power and leadership.

On Trump’s match-ups against female opponents (like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris), research by institutions like Harvard Business School highlighted a false dichotomy, a spitefulness, among the Trump bitches : a subconscious bias that forms the belief that a powerful independent woman can be either competent or likable, very rarely both. Female enablers who hold these internalized biases often judge female leaders far more harshly on character and authenticity than they judge Trump. By enabling him, they validate a familiar, male-dominated social hierarchy where they feel comfortable and secure.

The next time there is a female Presidential candidate, be sure that those Trump bitches will be there in force, trying to take her down.

——————————————

Let’s take a look at Trump’s bitches, past and present….

Screeching Political Influencers and Operatives within the GOP command structure:-

Laura “Low Ratings” Ingraham : A right-wing influencer and TV contributor, Ingraham has this boiling animosity toward school shooting survivors. She publicly mocked and cyber-bullied a teenage survivor of the Parkland school shooting, for trying and failing to get college admission. She used a Taco Bell commercial to mock immigrant children in detention facilities, referring to the holding centers as “summer camps”.

Ingraham uses her platform to claim that immigrants – both legal and undocumented – are destroying “the America we know and love”. She calls medical care for transgender youth “child abuse”. After NBA star, LeBron James, publicly criticized Trump, Ingraham launched an on-air rant telling the basketball legend and respected philanthropist to stop “meddling in political matters” and “shut up and dribble”.

Laura “MagaGoblin” Loomer : Like Ingraham, Laura Loomer too has acute “school shooting survivor baiting” syndrome. If you have been a school shooting survivor then somehow you must be an anti-gun-rights thug. When she heard of a whole family of Salvadoran migrants with little children drowning in the Rio Grande at the border, Loomer lustily celebrated their unfortunate deaths on right wing TV. During the 2024 US Presidential elections, she observed on Newsmax that if Kamala Harris won, the White House would “smell vile, like curry”. Loomer has openly described herself as a “proud Islamophobe”, referring to Islam as a “cancer”.

Lara “Nepo-Brat” Trump : During the 2019 government shutdown, Lara Trump – Trump’s daughter-in-law – had the audacity to say that going without a paycheck was “a little bit of pain” for a “greater good”, addressing ordinary families of laid-off workers who were trying to make ends meet. On migrants, she fervently continues to believe that Americans living near the US southern border should start taking matters into their own hands, and like those Israeli West-Bank settlers, get guns to “confront” migrants. During the 2016 US Presidential campaign, she offered an influencer $15000 of campaign funds a month to buy her silence and ensure she projected a positive view of the Trump family.

Kelly “stock-tip” Loeffler : Shortly after attending a closed-door, confidential Senate briefing on the impending coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, Loeffler and her husband quickly dumped millions worth of personally owned stock. At the very same time, critics noted, she and her husband went on a buying spree, purchasing tele-conferencing software and vaccine-related medical stocks, while publicly she continued to downplay the severity of the virus. In spite of the consequently glaring smoking guns, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Senate Ethics Committee never seriously pursued any investigation of these two greedy grifters. Even among her own colleagues, Loeffler came to be known as “Quarantine Kelly”.

Then there is the other ultra-right Kelly Loeffler. A detailed analysis of Loeffler’s advancing of legislations against transgender athletes and BlackLives Matter activists has been published in a Jan 2021 Vanity Fair article that reads like a Wikipedia page on the Satan’s own daughter.

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Hateful Press Secretaries : 

Sarah “Quasimodette” Sanders : I have said enough about this scary broad already. See above.

Karoline “Bullshit Barbie” Leavitt : A spiteful attack dog, she regularly labels members of the media as “left wing hacks”.

Kayleigh “Milktoast” McEnany : A 2020 election denier, she repeatedly parroted the Trump line in early 2020 that the corona virus would never come to the US. In the end, 1.2 million Americans needlessly succumbed to the epidemic, convinced by Trump that the mask mandate and vaccines were some sort of a scam.

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Bitchy Attack Lawyers : 

Personal lawyer, Alina “Handy Dabba Doo” Habba : She was ordered by a federal judge to pay nearly $1 million in legal fees for bringing a frivolous racketeering lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.

Personal lawyer, Sydney “Lady Kraken” Powell : She orchestrated the unauthorized breach of the coding systems inside voting machines in Georgia, in an effort to illegally tamper with the voting results.

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Insanely Ambitious Pooches : 

Nikki “Birdbrain” Haley (Trump called her that and I agree) : During a UN address by the representative from Palestine, then US’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley walked out in protest and urged the Israelis to “finish them off”. Prior to that, she had attempted to change history by refusing to admit that slavery was the main cause of the American Civil War. A classic case of a colored person slavishly seeking legitimacy from her white constituents.

Kari “Border Broad” Lake [Ex-News anchor and current patronage nominee for ambassador to Jamaica]: She is an extremely bad loser who doesn’t know when to quit. She sued Arizona’s Maricopa County for allegedly rigging the Gubernatorial elections. The suit was thrown out, her claim being bogus. The exact same thing happened with her Senate race. When Trump later made her head of the VOA, she fired employees en-masse and in the end, her appointment was deemed illegal and the dismissals were declared null and void by the court. 

Natalie Harp : Trump’s Executive Assistant and operator of his social media accounts, Harp created all his puke-worthy posts, reportedly logging into Trump’s account at his direction and posting inflammatory messages, including a racist video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. She also created and circulated an AI-generated image portraying Trump as Jesus Christ. Harp deliberately bypassed standard fact-checking procedures, choosing instead to supplying Trump’s MAGA nutjobs with an unfiltered stream of unverified articles and conspiracy theories.

Close aides to Trump call her his “diaper nurse”. She believed to be the one always at his side and credited with changing his geriatric diapers after he has soiled them. “If there is one person who truly loves me, it is Natalie”, crows the orange-haired buffoon.

The smile is deceptively angelic. If one is curious about what true evil looks like, Natalie Harp is the raw personification of it.

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Stark Rabid Crazies : 

Kimberly “Gargoyle” Guilfoyle : In 2018, while at Fox News, an assistant accused her of severe workplace sexual harassment and emotional abuse. Having the looks and demeanor of a gargoyle must have had something to do with it. The network investigated the claims and ultimately paid the former assistant a settlement exceeding $4 million. 

Guilfoyle has a face that transforms into an ugly hideous mask when she smiles. Watch the YouTube clip below of her speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention. If you have just eaten, wait a while before watching it, if you do not want to throw up. It was like a high-octane audition for “Evita”…

https://youtu.be/Yo6nKT37JN0?si=isQ-SSFDIy4jeVVE

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Lauren “femdom” Boebert : In 2023, while attending a family-friendly musical in Denver, fellow audience members complained that Boebert and her date were openly vaping, taking flash photographs and laughing loudly. Surveillance video also showed the pair inappropriately groping each other during the show. They were kicked out by security.

Marjorie Taylor “Capitol Karen” Greene : In 2019, before taking office as Georgia Congresswoman, Greene filmed herself stalking a teenage school shooting survivor in Washington, shouting insults at him, calling him a “coward” and accusing him of using dead children to take away Second Amendment (gun) rights.

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Moronic Trophy Blacks : 

“Minecraft Mummies” Silk & Diamond : In 2020, the duo of black Fox News influencers broadcast conspiracy theories claiming that the coronavirus was a man-made, “Deep State” plot. They alleged that the death tolls were inflated to damage President Donald Trump. They also encouraged people to go outside without masks to “deliberately build immunity”. Even a channel as shitty as Fox News had to fire them.

“Wacky” Omarosa Newman : This controversial woman is hard to pin down. There are equal numbers of detractors and admirers. But the fact that she unlike most of us, found herself in the news for all the wrong reasons tells me she is a weird human being who hasn’t figured out what she wants out of life. And yet, she managed to have a close working relationship with Trump.

Lynne “Event Scammer” Patton : While serving in her official capacity as a HUD administrator, Patton interviewed New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents under the guise of a nonpartisan project. She used this access to produce a promotional video, which was secretly edited to make it appear as though the tenants were praising the Trump administration and criticizing local Democratic politicians. The edited video was then broadcast on the final night of the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Several residents later spoke out, pissed that they had been manipulated and asserting that their statements were twisted to support political policies they fundamentally opposed.

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Discredited Pooches, still hopeful : 

Ex-South Dakota Governor Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem : Anything I say about this Trump bitch will never be enough, I swear. With her, faux-pas and utterly bitchy falsehoods are du jour. Falsely accusing two fatally shot U.S. citizens of domestic terrorism, admitting in her memoir to fatally shooting the family dog simply because he was “untrainable”, using executive power to secure her daughter’s real estate license and misusing millions in taxpayer funds for luxury jets and self-promotional TV ads…. She could do all these in the course of a day. 

Ex-Attorney General Pam “Pedo-Protector Pam” Bondi : No one has played a more intense role in hiding, first Jefferey Epstein’s pedophilia and then, Donald Trump’s child sex desires, a hang-up that started when he publicly expressed a perverse yearning for his own then pre-teen daughter, in a radio show. This Trump bitch was also known as America’s first “pay-to-play” state Attorney General, when she began turning prosecutions on and off at will, depending upon how much money the accused put in her campaign funds. 

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Ex-Pooches, now enemies : 

Liz “Deadpan” Cheney : Despite her later criticisms of Trump, Cheney voted in favor of the vast majority of Donald Trump’s infantile legislative agenda while representing Wyoming in the House. When Dubya went to war in Iraq, she not only defended the rationale behind it, but vociferously argued that waterboarding, leading Iraqi prisoners crawling on their hands and knees in chains with dog leashes round their necks did not constitute torture.

Stephanie “Rasputin” Grisham : This Trump bitch made a mockery of the White House Press Secretary’s role that she played for nine months, by not holding a single press conference. She terrorized female subordinates in the White House into behaving like household pets.

Alyssa Farah “Grifter” Griffin : Like Cheney and Grisham, Griffin also flipped to the other end after her dismissal. Once a confirmed Trump toady, spewing lies from the podium as Press Secretary, she is now a “media pundit” trying desperately to reinvent herself and burnish her image. And make a few bucks in that process. But remember, a leopard doesn’t shed its…..

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Current Toady-in-Chief:-

Susie Wiles : Perhaps the person most responsible for the resurrection of unadulterated evil known as Trump 2.0 – and the disaster that is America today – is his 2024 campaign manager and now Chief-of-Staff. Wiles, the last and most consequential of Trump’s bitches, is a category by herself. A cunning operator, she projects an outwardly grandma-like looks and charm, while she has actively campaigned for retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies, drawing up a hit list and monitoring progress of criminal indictments almost on a daily basis. She justified the military strikes on alleged “drug boats”, not waiting to confirm if they really were traffickers and not simply fishermen. Critics fault Wiles for enabling all the polarizing actions of the Trump administration, including the mass deportation policies, the pardoning of January 6 rioters, and extreme budget cuts affecting agencies like USAID.

Then suddenly, quite inexplicably, in a series of 11 interviews in Vanity Fair, Wiles offered highly candid, behind-the-scenes criticism of her colleagues and the administration, taking care not to criticize her own boss, Trump. It was obvious that she meant to paint herself as the pragmatic “grown-up in the room”. Then, as suddenly, Wiles reversed herself and pushed back on the piece, calling it “disingenuously framed hit journalism that stripped her comments out of necessary context…”

Susie Wiles stands apart as the only one of Trump’s bitches who is not dumb.

Susie Wiles – Grandma from Hell

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34 felony financial fraud convictions, one proven sexual assault and an underage survivor’s eye-witness report of pedophilia, but all that does not matter to Trump’s bitches. They are a bunch of vacuous but fiercely ambitious, spiteful and strident broads. They operate with a clear understanding of the transactional nature of Trump, their heads are still firmly stuck up the exit end of his alimentary canal, prioritizing loyalty over transparency, a status they retain even when they inevitably fall out of favor.

Trump’s bitches do that not because they adore him, nope. They know what he really is. In reality they crave the Trump ecosystem that offers immense rewards, membership an elite club which would otherwise take decades to get into. One word from Trump and they can get on the gravy train. 

Take the recent announcement (not verbatim) of a low-life called Brian Goss – CEO, NovaRed Mining Inc, a piddly fly-by-night Canadian mining company that is centuries from ever putting shovel to ground, let alone dig up any minerals….

“With her vast expertise, Kristi Noem will provide support for our corporate development strategy. She brings with her strong leadership experience and deep understanding of policy, regulation and economic factors that impact resource development and infrastructure investment. Her appointment reflects a commitment to building a diverse advisory team to navigate the competitive critical minerals market”

UGH!! PUKE!!

Trump’s bitches, by remaining loyal, get a first-class seat in his Grift Express……. a voice on a national media platform like Fox (and now CBS) News with a 7-figure salary, lobbying-influencing deals, business development deals and political capital, all within the cocoon of the MAGA system. 

And if you are lucky enough to be a Natalie Harp, a Karoline Leavitt or a Kelly Loefler, you are now in the billionaire wives’ club. Thanks to your status as a close Trump associate, you never have to worry where your next meal is coming from.

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Trump’s bitches form but a tiny part of his enabler ecosystem, the likes of which America and the western world has never seen before. This cult consists of a sprawling, mutually beneficial network of political loyalists, conservative media outlets, billionaire donors and tech leaders. The coalition sustains his political movement by providing ideological rationalization, policy expertise, financial backing, and institutional protection for his administration’s goals.

About his bitches, Trump has carefully picked them over the years, their only qualification – blind loyalty. Doesn’t matter if they are by and large incompetent floozies. Does he really need any of them for his political success? My sense is that he does not, but he likes to have them around like little toys to manipulate and discard as and when he wishes. In garishly misogynistic America, he can get away with it.

One might ask, how do the Trump bitches, being female, manage the moral injury of slavishly following a convicted serial sexual predator and reported pedo? I mean if I was one of these broads, I wouldn’t touch Donny Boy with a barge pole. 

Turns out, they are a breed by themselves. To maintain sanity without suffering a moral meltdown, Trump’s bitches dissociate the despicable personal conduct of their leader from the pragmatic utility of their positions. To combat the inevitable shame of multiple daily moral compromises, they repeat to themselves bullshit, like “I am the stabilizing force in the room” or “God has sent him down to set things right, so what if he says those things” or “He says it as he sees it” or “To clean up the country he has got to be harsh” or, if nothing works, “the other guy is even worse”.

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I have been going on and on about Trump’s female followers and you may have begun getting the feeling that I am being unfairly female-centric in the sycophancy scales and maybe you think I am a misogynist myself. If yes, I could tell you to go fuck yourself but I’d suggest you read on…..

Statistics and sociological studies (and history itself) suggest that women make up the vast majority of followers in many notorious high-control groups and cults, often displaying unnaturally intense loyalty. And no one can doubt that Donald Trump has been sitting his fat ass on top of a nation-wide cult, no question about it. If you don’t agree that Donald Trump is a cult leader, you are wasting your time here. Get the fuck off my page, before I consign you to the 5th dimension, to spend the rest of yore miserable life with Mr Mxyzptlk and Lex Luther. 

To their credit, women prioritize family and community. While these qualities make them excellent leaders and CEOs, paradoxically they also bring them within the sights of cult leaders. The alpha-female Indian Prime Minister, India Gandhi, had a Guru she blindly followed, a charlatan named Dhirendra Brahmachari, who got on the gravy train ostensibly as her yoga instructor. He shouldn’t have had the right even to take a piss anywhere in New Delhi but there he was, sweeping into the Prime Minister’s office whenever he wanted.

Charles Manson’s “Family” was an exclusively female bunch whom the media named the “Manson Girls”. Manson specifically targeted middle-class women who felt alienated by their traditional families or disillusioned by society in the late 1960s. A male follower would have seen through his BS.

Jim Jones’s ‘Peoples Temple’, which ended in the Jonestown massacre in 1978, was heavily populated by women. Jones drew thousands of female followers by championing integration, racial equality, and socialist ideals during the height of the Civil Rights movement. He uniquely appealed to women who wanted to build a better, kinder world free of poverty and racism. Once isolated in the Guyana jungle, he eroded familial units so that he became the sole “Father” figure. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Remember Kellyanne Conway and how she discarded her husband, George Conway?

On 30th April 1945 in Berlin, with Soviet tanks just a block away, it was Frau Goebbels, inside the Fuehrer Bunker, who suggested that she and her family remain and take their own lives, even after Hitler gave her permission to leave with their kids. She poisoned her whole family, including herself.

The cult leader of all cult leaders was an Indian in 1970s’ India, named Rajneesh. If you were a wealthy white female, maybe a movie star with a peanut as a brain, who had been told Rajneesh was a mystic who could bring peace to your stressed out mind, there is a strong possibility he had convinced you that to attain that peace you had to go down on him repeatedly. That would be after he had convinced you to donate heavily into his “charity”. Until, alas, he dropped you and found another loser just like you to give him his twice daily BJ. Poor you. You had thought he was a spiritual mystic but I know what he really was – a grifter, a nut-job, a sexual predator.

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Should we wait for the Trump bitches to suffer the consequences of their vacuous greed and duplicity? Or for the millions of deluded, uneducated MAGA bimbos, who worship cult leaders like Trump, to come to their senses? 

I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. It is easier to see an empire in serious decline and dismiss it……

Domodedovo International Airport

Moscow, Russia

Autumn 2005

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The A380’s 20-wheel main landing gear touched down first, followed in ten seconds by the nose wheels, as the jet that resembled a beluga whale settled it’s 600-ton bulk on the tarmac, still hurtling on at a nippy 220 knots.

Almost immediately, the reverse thrusters on the two in-board engines came on, muffling the diminishing whine of the two out-board turbines that had shut down. The sudden drag brought the large airliner to a halt, 50 metres short of the white stenciled outer markers at the end of the four km long runway.

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52yr old Captain Tuz Strassner, ‘Ace’ to his crew, is in command of the giant jet tonight. Ace also happens to be the direct translation in English, of the Russian word ‘Tuz’. Why the Russian reference? Because Tuz was born in the medical hut of a Soviet strategic bomber base in an obscure town called Dnipro in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

There are still a good two hours to go before Tuz can have his hot shower and martini. An hour of briefing to the relief crew who will be taking over for the remaining leg – Moscow to Hong Kong. Another hour because his employers, Lufthansa, had messaged that the Airbus Service Rep at the Domodedovo would like a quick inspection of the on-board systems and fuel status and ask him questions on the overall flight performance, a procedure not uncommon for aircraft that are still within five years of introduction.

Strassner will have to turn in as soon as he checks into the Ramada Domodedovo. He has a fair amount of domestic travel scheduled for the next four days, which Lufthansa hadn’t hesitated to sanction, given the prestige involved.

More precisely, it will begin with a dawn flight in a Russian Air Force IL-76 to the eastern Ukrainian town of Dnipro, 900kms to the south. As a courtesy that is shown to a fellow pilot – and in this specific case, a show of respect – Strassner will be traveling in the cockpit jump seat.

During the next three days, Tuz Strassner will witness the exhuming of the remains of a woman at the Kraznopil’s’ke Cemetery in Dnipro and its transportation for re-interment at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. She will be the only woman ever to receive such an honor. The re-interment will be preceded by a lavish medal ceremony, right next to the grave itself, where the woman will be bestowed posthumously, the nation’s highest military honor, Hero of the Russian Federation, by the hands of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, himself. Later that evening, at a banquet in her memory, Capt. Tuz Strassner will be the guest of honor, seated at the same table as President Putin.

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Tuz Strassner has never really met the woman being honored, having been prematurely extricated from her womb in the waning moments of her life. To be precise, an hour after she had belly landed her Tupolev-16 Badger, one bone-chilling May afternoon in 1960. The woman had been test-flying a newer version, the Tu-16KSR-2, a high-altitude launch platform for future strategic warheads. The TU-16 usually has a crew of six, but that day, there were only two.

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Unbeknownst to the woman, approximately an hour prior, another aircraft had taken to the skies, this one from the US Air Force base at Badaber, outside Peshawar, in Pakistan.

Painted jet black with a non-reflective varnish, with no windows or markings to distinguish it, the grotesquely long and ungainly plane resembled a reluctant albatross with a very long wingspan.

The plane was a U-2, an unarmed, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, developed by the American defense contractor, Lockheed. It was owned and operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The plane was not designed for combat and carried no munitions, because at that time the Americans believed that no Soviet aircraft or ordnance was capable of intercepting it at 70000 ft.

The U-2 had arrived at Badaber a month prior, disassembled in pieces, inside the belly of a USAF C-134 aircraft. The pointy fuselage and the 60-ft long wings had been separately draped in white sheets so no one could get a glimpse. The hanger where it was assembled was out-of-bounds to the Pakistani hosts and everyone else except the ten Americans who would assemble it, including it’s pilot, a dude named Captain Francis Gary Powers.

There were strict protocols, as to who had a need to know. All elements of the U-2 program (then run by the CIA) were Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (SCI). None of the locals, other than these 10 men at Badaber and their masters 8000 miles away, had any clue about what the strange aircraft even looked like, until they saw it’s ungainly, lumbering take-off in the early dawn haze, a giant albatross with long drooping wings. 

Gary Powers had been well chosen. He had learned to fly a plane before he could drive a car. His mission was to fly right across the USSR at 70000ft and click pictures of Soviets bases and radar sites with his ultra-high resolution Hycon, a camera that had been designed by a Harvard astronomer with help of Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera. 

The U-2 had wings so long that they sagged when the jet was parked on the strip. To keep the fuel-filled wings from tipping side to side on take-off, two mechanics had to run along side the jet, holding on to the tips as it taxied and during initial 100 yards of the take-off. It’s skin was paper thin, just 0.02 inches thick, to keep its weight down, which meant that the aircraft was extremely delicate.

The U-2 was not designed for speed. At an altitude of 70000, any enemy threat was perceived to be non-existent and so the 460-mph cruising speed. It was still a tricky beast to fly. If an untrained pilot flew the U-2 too slow, it could stall and if he flew it too fast, the wings could come off. Complicating this was the fact that what was too slow at one altitude was too fast at another height. The same complication happened when the weight of the jet gradually lessened as it burnt up fuel.

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Taking off in the dawn haze, the U-2 climbed steadily and within twenty minutes, it had crossed into Soviet air space at 70000ft, an altitude so high that the curvature of the earth could be discerned clearly.

The Soviet Tu-16 Badger meanwhile completed it’s test parameters and was returning to base, a remote hub for strategic bombers in Soviet Ukrainian town of Dnipro, when it was directed to intercept the pencil-like sliver of an aircraft that was traversing Soviet airspace at 70000 ft and to bring it down with the Tupolev’s onboard KSR-2 missiles or it’s 23mm cannons.

However, when it became known that the Tu-16 was on a test flight and was not carrying any ordnance, she was directed to try and ram the intruder which she, after a quick tête-à-tête with her co-pilot, proceeded to do, knowing full well that they wouldn’t survive the collision.

The Tu-16’s newly extended service ceiling was just about 65000 ft, but that afternoon the woman couldn’t get it up beyond 59000ft.

As the Tu-16 began its tortured climb, word came over the radio that the intruding aircraft had been brought down, by a barrage of newly developed ground based Dvina missiles and the world woke up to the news that the pilot, a 31yr old American by the name of Francis Gary Powers, had bailed out and was captured alive. He had failed to swallow the cyanide capsule he had been handed prior to leaving the US. I suppose he chickened and decided to take his chances.

Powers wasn’t executed. The Soviets saw him as a bargaining chip and a propaganda prop. After 2 years in a Soviet prison, he was exchanged for Rudolf Abel, a British-born nuclear scientist and Russian KGB agent, incarcerated in the US for being involved in the “hollow nickel case”. Abel had been nabbed with a hollowed out ‘nickel’ (5c coin) with a tiny coded message inside. Abel was later even more famous for handing the Soviets the secrets of the fission bomb on a platter.

As to Powers, after he was back in the US, he spent the rest of his life as a disgraced man, doing trivial flying jobs, shunned by the very folks for whom he almost lost his life. He died in 1977, when the helicopter he was flying for a TV news crew crashed. 

Later, after 2 years in a Soviet prison, Powers was exchanged for Rudolf Abel, a British-born Russian KGB agent, incarcerated in the US for being involved in the “Hollow nickel case”. Abel had been nabbed with a hollowed out ‘nickel’ (5c coin) with a tiny coded message inside.

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As to the Badger, the stresses generated by the effort to attain the intercept altitude nearly tore it apart. The window on the far side of the young co-pilot, Leutnant Yuri Gorshkov, exploded from the pressure differential. Next, his seat belt tore off from the pull as he got squeezed and sucked through the jagged opening like a sausage, his screams choked by the -65degree celsius whiplash of the wind. All the hydraulics systems failed simultaneously thereafter, literally shutting down rudder and landing gear control. Fortunately the elevators still had mechanical override.

The woman, her temperament cooler than the icy environs of the cockpit, single handedly managed to bring the massive bomber down from the edge of the stratosphere and coasted it in, gently setting it down on it’s belly at Dnipro air base. She remained strapped in her seat while the plane hurtled down the tunnel of runway lights, out of control, slipping and sliding over the ice-slick tarmac. Swirls of stinging ice pellets whipped up from the tarmac, whistled in through the blown window and swished around the cockpit.

The big jet plowed through a radar shack and came to rest just feet away from a massive canal, it’s surface frozen but unstable from the spring thaw.

The woman sat slumped forward, motionless, as if peering down at something on the floor between her feet. It was her helmet, split in two. A small lead lined unit, situated just behind her seat, containing flight test-related instrumentation, had come loose in the impact and telescoped into her helmet with such force that the helmet had cracked open like a walnut and the lead lining of the box had smashed into her medula oblongata, crushing the back of her skull, the jolt breaking her neck at the same time.

That evening, the base hospital records showed the birth by Caesarian section of a sickly underweight boy. The baby was immediately stuffed into an incubator. The mother, who had by then succumbed to her injuries, was well known around the base.

The base personnel draped her ribbons and medals on top of her casket and there they lay, almost completely covering the lid, so extensive had been her accomplishments. Of these, the Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, Order of the Patriotic War were clearly visible.

As a mark of respect, the base personnel began calling the baby, “Tuz”.

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During a brief period of three and a half years, between 1942 and 1945, the woman had been known in the skies above the Eastern Front, by her call sign – ‘Belaya Roza’.

I thought that the Final Part was too abrupt. Y’see, I am not a trained writer and my mind scatters, like neutrons from an initiator.

Don’t know what an initiator is? I understand. You cannot be expected to know everything I know. 😋

An initiator kick-starts a nuclear chain reaction by emitting a blizzard of neutrons which then hit a soccer ball sized lump of Uranium-235, inside an atom bomb. You know what happens then of course.

I decided to insert another part between Part-2 and the Final Part, in order to make more sense.

So here it is…….

Ilushin-76 Transport

Russian Air Forces

2005

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It was the easy camaraderie inside the cockpit of the giant IL-76 transport that struck the American. Two aviators who, till a little over a decade ago, wouldn’t be caught dead in a ditch together, now sitting inside an aircraft, one escorting the other to a ceremony. Time changes everything.

The emotion of the moment rushed at Tuz Strassner, ex-Colonel, US Strategic Air Command, ex-Commander-B2 (Spirit) Stealth Strategic Bomber. Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Force Distinguished Service Medal. Active service in Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

And currently – off-duty Lufthansa Captain. Commander – A380.

The Ilushin had climbed steadily up to 39000ft and leveled off. Brigadier Arkady Prokopiev, in command, sitting ahead to Tuz’s left, cleared his throat and flicked the talk button,”Migalovo Center, India Lima Seven Six Tango, approaching Luhansk center. Request permission to descend to flight level one nine zero.”

“India Lulu Seven Six Tango, descend to flight level one nine zero, report and hold. You will have Luhansk center from here in a minute, at five seven two point one, repeat, five seven two point one. Have a nice flight. Over.”

“Khorosho”. The huge transport imperceptibly dipped it’s nose till it leveled off at 19000ft.

Clear of static, the short communication was a practiced and casual drawl, while remaining at the same time, clear and very specific. Between two highly trained, alert men in uniform, one on the ground at the 6955th Aviation Base at Migalovo, 50kms north of Moscow and the other, 8 miles above Ukraine hurtling south at Mach .80. To Strassner listening in, such ebb and flow of radio traffic was familiar, barring the accents of course.

The whistle of the four massive PS-90 turbofans was muffled and Tuz had tuned them out of his hearing pretty soon. The air was turbulence-free. Early mornings, the surface of the earth is cool and so are the layers of the atmosphere touching it. Cooler air has less turbulence. This is something a regular flier experiences. Take an early morning flight and you can be sure it will be a calm ride. Do the same thing in the afternoon and it’ll be bumpier.

Tuz gazed out the window. Here and there a few lily white wisps of cloud floated by, further above. Far to the east, the land was a barren white expanse, as far as the eye could see. Otherwise the sky was clear blue, visibility unlimited. All seemed right with the world.

Prokopiev pushed his seat back and accepted the mug of coffee that was passed to him by the young payload specialist, Gorky. The Commander gave Strassner a sideways glance, watching him bring his own mug up to his lips.

“So, what’s it like being a commercial pilot, Capt. Strassner?” The Brigadier wanted a conversation going.

“Call me Tuz, please. Flying an airliner? Well, here’s the truth. You don’t have as much time off as your neighbors think you have. You don’t make as much money as your relatives think you make and you don’t have as many girlfriends as your wife thinks you have. Still, I can’t believe they pay me to do this,” Strassner smiled.

Prokopiev let out a short bark of a laugh,” Pretty much the same with us. Except for the girlfriends.” The Russian winked and his slavic features spread in a wide grin. Start a Russian on women and he’ll go on and on, getting more vulgar by the second, even if he happens to be a Brigadier in the Air Force.

“But seriously,” Strassner picked up once again,” I’m constantly under pressure to carry less fuel than I’m comfortable with. Airlines are always looking at the bottom line and you burn fuel while carrying fuel. You hit a storm front and have to detour and suddenly you’re running out of gas and you have to divert to an alternate destination.” Prokopiev had turned in his seat and was listening intently.

Tuz Strassner continued, “The truth is, we’re exhausted. Our work rules mandate us to be on duty 16 hours without a break. That’s many more hours than a truck driver. And unlike a truck driver, who can pull over at the next truck stop, we can’t pull over at the next cloud.”

Prokopiev smiled at that and said, “Please, I am Arkady to you”. Then his expression turning grave, the Russian went on,” It is an honor to be here, to be a part of what is about to happen in the next two days”. The Russian was referring to the re-interment of Tuz Strassner’s mother from the Dnipro cemetery to the Kremlin Necropolis, followed by the awarding of the Hero of the Russian Federation medal to her, fifty two years after she was killed trying to land her crippled Tu-16 Badger in a desolate airfield in Dnipro.

“Thank you and I have to admit that these are my proudest days. I wish Dad was here to see this.”

The Brigadier had of course been briefed by the FSB about Strassner’s father. After the war, Luftwaffe Oberst Kurt Strassner had been captured by the Soviet forces but had managed to escape to the west before they’d had a chance to start pulling out his nails. He crossed the Baltic Sea in a freighter, disguised as a deckhand. Returning home to Konigsberg was not an option. The city had by then been depopulated in a brutal and swift ethnic cleansing drive by Stalin, the German citizenry either slaughtered or shipped off to Siberia, while Russians settled in and renamed the city ‘Kaliningrad’.

Once in West Germany, Strassner Senior wasted no time joining the nascent West German Air Force, the Luftwaffe Bundeswehr. In 1958, by then a decorated Brigadegeneral, Kurt Strassner was absorbed into the higher echelons of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND in short, the West German external intelligence agency that had been formed three years earlier. Then, in the spring of 1959, fate took Strassner to Moscow, to be posted in the West German High Commission as the senior military attaché.

It was at the 1959 May Day celebrations and the gala that evening at the Kremlin grounds that fate stepped in once again. Usually military attachés of foreign embassies were nearly always residents of their intelligence agencies and had KGB minders sticking real close and discreetly following their every move.

Brigadegeneral Kurt Strassner too had a KGB tag, Yuri Dudayev, who was his chauffeur and constant companion. KGB through and through, Yuri was still very likeable, a huge bear of a man with twinkling blue eyes, always ready with amusingly disparaging anecdotes about life inside communist Soviet Union. Strassner returned the easy amicability but knew enough to maintain a safe distance from the KGB staffer.

That evening Strassner had looked smashing in his full dress uniform. Pity he couldn’t put on his Second World War medals and gold sash, though he did not miss them at all. Jojo Strassner had never hankered after recognition.

And then fate stepped in, sweeping aside the Soviet paranoia. Even KGB agents gotta go when they gotta go. At the very moment that Yuri excused himself to go do a mocha (Russian for taking a pee), Strassner turned and bumped accidentally into a Soviet Air Force Colonel, a petite woman, immensely pretty even at 39, her uniform tunic bristling with decorations. Many of them, he immediately recognized as medals won during the Second World War, like the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War, the Order of the Red Star and some others that he did not fully recognize.

There was something else about her, a defiance, from the way her nose turned up just a wee bit.

She was not one of the guests. She had been summoned to a meeting just prior and had been asked to remain for the gala. Her commanding officer, General Alexei Petrovich, must have decided in the last minute that she was entitled to some fun, given that she had just received transfer orders to the Strategic Long Range Bomber base at Dnipro, Ukraine. She would be leaving to take up her new assignment, flight testing the new Tu-16A (Badger), in a week.

Fate dealt another hand when Yuri, drunk, excused himself and went home and before the evening was over, Strassner would come to know Colonel Raisa Komarova more intimately than he had ever known another woman. Calling it a one-night stand would not be appropriate but it had to be that way, given that she was about to go off on her new posting, in an area which was out-of-bounds to all foreign nationals.

Kurt Strassner did not know it yet but it had taken seventeen years for him to finally come face to face with the pilot of the Yak-1 that had so terrorized the Luftwaffe over the Eastern Front – the ace who at the time went by the call sign…Belaya Roza.

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