May 29, 2023

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey 

Memorial Day, What It Means, and Why

Friends,

Observing Memorial Day 2023, like millions of other Americans I recall the sacrifices of those who selflessly gave their lives in far off places like Guadalcanal or the Hurtgen Forest or Anzio beach. Some remain in neatly kept cemeteries in France or other countries. In many cases, those men did not understand fully “why” they were engaged in conflict, save that their country had called them to do so. And, thus, it was their duty to do so.

Has this not been the case with most of the conflicts in which the American nation has been engaged since the end of the War Between the States?

As we look back now, we can point to Korea and Pearl Harbor when we were attacked, and thus, with some justification, we can mention those conflicts as, at least from that perspective, justified. But how many other conflicts—wars—can we say the same thing about, and not just the more recent “American police actions” (in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.) which remain extremely controversial in almost every respect?

What about the Spanish-American War, arguably a blatant case of American imperial power against Spain? And World War I? Increasingly, the evidence points to a monumental error, perhaps a calculated one, on our part to affect the outcome of a European war, with eventually disastrous consequences for everyone involved. Is it not justifiable to say that the victory of the Triple Entente (i.e., Great Britain, France, and Imperial Russia) and the resultant Draconian peace, hugely facilitated and made possible by wrongheaded American intervention, set the stage for the rise of world Communism and, ineluctably, the accession to power in Germany in fourteen short years of Adolf Hitler?

And more, what of the mound of evidence indicating that Franklin Roosevelt, eager to enter the war in Europe on Britain’s side, took actions that forced the Japanese into war, making the Pearl Harbor attack all the more likely. Were his actions, what historian Charles C. Tansill called “the back door to war,” so designed? Historians and authors still hotly debate those assertions.

Through it all, through all those wars and military conflicts, and more recently through Vietnam, and then the Balkans and the Middle East, American boys, fathers, sons, and brothers have done their duty, not usually asking difficult questions, but rather answering the call when issued.

Has this not been the case almost always?

In 1941 it was far easier to make the case that our young men must answer that call. After all, for whatever reason, we had been attacked, and we had no other option than to respond and respond forcefully, to mobilize and prepare for years of grueling and painful war.

In his letters to my mother he left behind [now in the NC State Archives], my father, Harry S. Cathey, writes from France and Germany in 1944 and 1945. Some of the words and designations are obviously in a code they had between them—he could not identify locations in the combat zone. And what comes through above all are two things: his sense of duty to his country and his abiding love for my mother—no real complaints about his conditions, although he does express the wish that he can taste her cooking again and, of course, the hope to see her soon.

A member of the 101^st Cavalry, my father was assigned to a Light Tank (“Stuart” type, from available information) and was involved in reconnaissance operations. On March 15, 1945, near Kaiserslautern in the Rheinland-Pfalz, his tank was hit directly by a German projectile. Dad, then piloting the tank, was seriously wounded, and his best buddy Dale Lackey, the gunner, was killed.

What has always affected me deeply and impelled me to count my blessings is that shortly before that attack, my father and Dale had traded positions: my father had been for several days prior the gunner, and Dale the pilot. They often switched positions—and they had done so only hours before the fatal incident. That trade had saved my father’s life, almost miraculously, just as it had taken Dale’s.

After the war and after my father got out of Walter Reed Hospital with a permanent back disability, he and my mother went to Granite Falls, North Carolina, to visit Dale Lackey’s widow. And several years later, when I came along, I received in his honor and memory the middle name “Dale.” Throughout my life, always, I carry that name of a man who seventy-eight years ago perished in a place where just as easily my father could have been. Thus, Memorial Day is always significant for me, for I honor especially my father’s service and also the memory of his buddy.

Some seventy-five years later, I decided to search out any living members of the family of my father’s compatriot, and I discovered that Dale Lackey had had a son named Dale, born December 8, 1944, who never got to see and know his father. I looked him up and found him in Statesville, North Carolina, and I contacted him. With emotion I told him about my middle name in honor of his father, and how that change in tank positions saved the life of my dad. As we talked by telephone I think we were both deeply moved as we realized how war can radically alter destiny and lives, not just of its direct participants but also of their families.

After seventy-five years I made a new friend whose friendship is both very special and spiritual.

Thus, Memorial Day is very significant for me, for I honor especially my father and his buddy Dale Lackey whose name I also carry.

Those men are called “the greatest generation,” and the reasons that are given are that they “saved us from totalitarianism,” or “they made the world safe,” and the list goes on. Much of that we would now say was a kind of very questionable, self-justifying propaganda…but always with an embedded, fragile, often obscure kernel of truth.

They were not political strategists or encumbered with high positions in government where long-range policies were made. Perhaps if they had been, things might have been different.

I like to think, as I reflect on Memorial Day and its deeper meaning, that above all those men did their duty, experiencing the pain of separation, the privations of war, the many necessary sacrifices, and oftentimes death. In this they leave their memory and honor to us all, unselfishly.

And, so, we honor them, we remember them—at times our hearts still ache as we recall them in our presence, as we recall listening to their voices and stories, and as we admired and continue to admire their hard-earned and often weary wisdom.

That is, in so many ways, the real “why” of Memorial Day.

[Small portions of this essay were used for articles in Chronicles magazine (May 25, 2020) and Roll Call: The Journal of the NC Military History Society, May 2019]

                                                      May 12, 2023 

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Ukraine, the Neoconservatives and the LGBTQ Global Agenda

Friends,

I pass on below three informative articles. They originate from BREIBART News, REUTERS, and BUSINESS INSIDER; and they detail the acceptance of same sex couples in the Ukrainian Army, and, indeed, the growing acceptance of even trans ideology in Ukraine (including statements made by V. Zelensky that he will “revisit” the issue). No doubt, the large degree of American control and influence has much to do with this. When our benighted nation, through its foreign policy tentacles, wants something done in our client countries (which Ukraine has become), then it gets done, whether the native population wants it or not. What matters for the US is if the Elites in those countries act when our globalists demand they act. 

No wonder that the Far Left pushes frenetic and unquestioning support for the ex-porno clown Zelensky's regime (at the expense of the Ukrainian people). Everything our foreign policy wonks touch and then dominate becomes rotten, infected by evil. Our record, whether in Bosnia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan...or now in Ukraine, is one of unrelieved destruction of traditional cultures and morality, religious faith and belief, and the imposition of a foul global hegemony, intolerantly pagan and Godless, all in the name of “liberal democracy.”

Hundreds of thousands of Christians, in some of the most ancient Christian communities in the world in Iraq and Syria, have been massacred or displaced by American military intervention or the use of American-armed client terrorist groups (recall the late and unlamented John McCain’s embrace of ISIS-affiliated terrorists in Syria).  The fanatical ideological zeal of the dominant foreign policy Neoconservatives to construct a secular world, controlled by an anti-Christian globalist elite (e.g. World Economic Forum, EU, NATO, UN, etc.), and their scarcely disguised hatred for Western Christianity are eerie carry-overs from—a reminder of—their internationalist Trotskyite roots.

Indeed, for many Neocons does not their secular globalism in a way actually invert the salvific promises made to Israel in the Old Testament, especially as many of the leading Neoconservatives have Eastern European and Russian Jewish descent—and lingering memories of “bad old Russia” and historic Christian prejudice?

A remarkable admission of this genealogy came in 2007, in the pages of the once-conservative National Review. Here one finds the expression of sympathies clearly imported from the onetime Far Left and presented by contributor Stephen Schwartz: “To my last breath, I will defend Trotsky who alone and pursued from country to country and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling to Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit that he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology.” (See Paul Gottfried, “Dancing on a Hero’s Grave,” Takimag.com, May 29, 2007.)

Over the decades since the 1960s, the Neocons migrated to a more conservative and anti-Communist viewpoint, supposedly due to their opposition to anti-semitic Stalinism, but actually in reality more because of their fear and hatred of nationalism. By the 1990s they were in virtual control of what has become known as “ConInc,” AKA Establishment “conservatism incorporated.” Older conservatives—paleoconservatives and Southern traditionalists—were exiled to the ineffectual margins.

In 2016 Donald Trump (perhaps not fully aware of his role) threatened that consensus, and for that reason he had to be savaged, denounced, impeached, defeated. He had, to quote Hillary Clinton, unleashed “the Deplorables,” the MAGA Nation, which proceeded to gain back swathes of the conservative grass roots.

Still, many Republicans, especially those most prominently in the DC Uniparty, remain joined at the hip with the fanatical Left in support of far too many shared nostrums, most especially a zealous globalism and disastrous American overreach, and inflicting new “civil rights” on the American citizenry (which were little more than new layers of immorality).

And the expansion of American hegemony globally brings with it the necessity on the part of newly-submissive client states to dismantle and discard their religious and moral traditions. Thus, our embassies around the world often symbolically fly “Gay Pride” flags, while our foreign aid packages are tied to abolishing or removing “inequities” against “oppressed” groups, such as homosexuals, women, and trans people…and all the while dozens of NGOs work feverishly on the ground to change views on a variety of questions: all in the name of implanting the fruits and benefits of “liberal democracy.”

Thus, we should not be surprised at what is occurring in Ukraine: growing support for same sex marriage, the advent of active LGBTQ organizations, and the rise of support for them. After all the United State foreign policy establishment was largely responsible for the February 2014 coup d’etat that installed an American puppet regime in Kiev. And, certainly, the price for becoming an American minion is implementing the agenda that whoring regimes must accept.

Read on.

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Ukraine Debuts LGBTQ ‘Unicorn’ Troops

https://www.breitbart.com/social-justice/2022/05/31/ukraine-debuts-lgbtq-unicorn-troops/

JOHN HAYWARD   31 May 2022 

Ukraine’s gay, lesbian, and transgender military volunteers are adding an official unicorn patch to their uniforms, right under the national flag.

 

The patch is meant as a rebuke to Russian rhetoric about “de-Nazification” and Russian rhetoric about excluding homosexuals in the military forces of former Soviet territories [e.g., Russia] The unicorn patch became popular with Ukraine’s LGBTQ community after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Since there were supposedly no gay soldiers in the Russian army, gays sarcastically chose the mythological unicorn as their symbol.

 

Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) reported last summer that Ukrainian soldiers began coming out in greater numbers in 2018, including those deployed to fight Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Even then, gay Ukrainian troops thought identifying themselves could help counter Russian propaganda about fascists running Kyiv.

 

“One of our aims is to expose the lies of Russian propaganda myths that claim Ukraine is being ruled by a ‘neo-Nazi junta.’ How could there be talk of neo-Nazis in an army that has many gay-friendly units, and in which gay and lesbian active-duty and veteran service members can come out without fear?” Viktor Pylypenko, founder of a group called Ukrainian LGBT Soldiers, told DW in June 2021.

 

Similar sentiments were expressed by “unicorn” troops who spoke to Reuters on Tuesday. They said there was “no aggression, no bullying” when they volunteered for front-line duty against the Russian invaders, and their commanders said homophobia would not be tolerated. “The thing I’m worried about is that in case I get killed during this war, they won’t allow Antonina to bury me the way I want to be buried. They’d rather let my mum bury me with the priest reading silly prayers … But I am an atheist and I don’t want that,” one of the unicorn soldiers said, referring to his transgender partner.

 

LGBTQ recruits say they are deeply concerned with the repression they would face from Russia if Ukraine is conquered. They point to the harsh treatment of gays in Donbas, where separatists aligned with Russia-controlled towns and cities before the massive Russian invasion began in February, and the vicious treatment of gays by Russia’s Chechen allies. Whatever complaints about discrimination gay Ukrainians had before the war, they seem to be in agreement that life under Russian rule would be worse.

 

“The LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine is in huge danger should Russia win. If Russia wins, it means darkness. There will be no freedom, no opportunity to be yourself, no rights for diverse communities,” territorial defense volunteer Vlad Shast told Forbes in March.

 

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Ukraine's 'unicorn' LGBTQ soldiers head for war

https://www.aol.com/news/ukraines-unicorn-lgbtq-soldiers-head-071702718-144234922.html

HORACI GARCIA  May 31, 2022, 9:42 AM

KYIV (Reuters) - As volunteer fighters Oleksandr Zhuhan and Antonina Romanova pack for a return to active duty, they contemplate the unicorn insignia that gives their uniform a rare distinction - a symbol of their status as an LGBTQ couple who are Ukrainian soldiers.

Members of Ukraine's LGBTQ community who sign up for the war have taken to sewing the image of the mythical beast into their standard-issue epaulettes just below the national flag. The practice harks back to the 2014 conflict when Russia invaded then annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, "when lots of people said there are no gay people in the army," actor, director and drama teacher Zhuhan told Reuters as he and Romanova dressed in their apartment for their second three-month combat rotation. "So they (the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community) chose the unicorn because it is like a fantastic 'non-existent' creature."

Zhuhan and Romanova, who identifies as a non-binary person with she/her pronouns and moved to the capital from Crimea after being displaced in 2014, met through their theatre work.

Neither was trained in the use of weapons but, after spending a couple of days hiding in their bathroom at the start of the war, decided they had to do more. "I just remember that at a certain point it became obvious that we only had three options: either hide in a bomb shelter, run away and escape, or join the Territorial Defence (volunteers). We chose the third option," Romanova said.

Russia says its forces are on a "special operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and rid it of radical anti-Russian nationalists. Ukraine and its allies call that a false pretext for a war of aggression.

For Zhuhan and Romanova, their vocation gives them an added sense of responsibility. "Because what Russia does is they don't just take our territories and kill our people. They want to destroy our culture and... we can't allow this to happen," Zhuhan said.

Their first tour of duty around Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, about 135 km (80 miles) from the port of Odesa, changed their lives. They fought in the same unit and found it terrifying, Zhuhan contracted pneumonia, but, the couple says, their fellow fighters accepted them. "There was no aggression, no bullying... It was a little unusual for the others. But, over time, people started calling me Antonina, some even used my she pronoun," Romanova said. [....]

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Business Insider

A gay Ukrainian military couple engaged only days ago is being pulled apart to face the fear and heartache of combat alone

https://www.businessinsider.com/gay-newly-engaged-ukrainian-military-couple-facing-combat-fighting-russia-2023-4

Story by cpanella@insider.com (Chris Panella) • April 29, 2023

• A gay Ukrainian military couple that got engaged only days ago is heading off into combat. 
• Pasha, 21, and Vladyslav, 30, met a year ago and fell in love as war consumed their homeland.
• The couple told Insider that while war is tough, they haven't let go of hope.

Throughout the past year, thousands of Ukrainians have left their homes and former lives to fight against Russia's invasion. They've had to say goodbye to families and friends, unsure if they'd ever see them again. And as bloody battles rage on, Ukrainians have been forced to watch in horror as the war tears apart the country they once knew.

One couple has navigated much of the war with an added layer of concern: They're both fighting in the Ukrainian military. 

In this war that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, tragedy can strike in an instant. Pasha and Vladyslav, a newly engaged couple, are on their way into combat, but they won't be together. It's a tough time for the pair as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his campaign, though it faces struggles, to break Ukraine's defenses and enforce his unwanted vision for the country's future.

They worry for each other's safety, partially because they serve in separate battalions and areas. "It is very difficult," Vladyslav told Insider, but if they were able to see each other more, or possibly fight alongside one another, it'd make the days a bit easier. Currently, Vladyslav's trying to switch to Pasha's unit. "We'd like to do the job together," he said, but "it's hard to change battalions." 

The young gay couple began dating last year after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

They told Insider, courtesy of translator Maxim Potapovych, that they met on a dating app. That's pretty common for many modern couples, and at first glance, Pasha and Vladyslav's relationship is like any other.

They share pictures together on Instagram, some selfies of them making dinner and cuddling. In the past year, they've celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. Vladyslav turned 30 last September, with Pasha commemorating 21 just a few weeks later. "You're already 21 years old, what can I say..." he wrote on Instagram, "So as not to be dead by 22."

The harsh realities of their situation in a war-torn country are hard to miss.

One picture, posted by Pasha, shows the two holding hands while wearing their military uniforms. Another post details a vacation they took together. Pasha wrote, "These 10 days of my vacation have been better than half of my life before the war! You know when you weren't around before, I didn't care about life or death, whether to be shot or shoot."

Just days before the pair deployed for combat operations, Pasha and Vladyslav got engaged. Pasha said there was sort of an ultimatum in play: it was either get engaged or leave one another. They chose to stay together, and they celebrated as much as possible before the war called them back.

On Friday, their last day in Kyiv, Pasha and Vladyslav told Insider it's been difficult to fight in the war because it constantly tries to pull them away from one another.  And the combat is intense, no matter how much time you've spent on the battlefield. Pasha says the fighting feels like entering a "volcano." He said that "if he could describe it simply," he would say that a "normal, city person" has suddenly been thrown into a new environment where the heat, pressure, and sweat of battle can be overwhelming. 

Pasha joined the military in 2021 and is now a gunner. Vladyslav joined last year. Though neither told anyone they were gay, Pasha recalled experiencing homophobia and discrimination from the other soldiers in his first few weeks at a training camp. Ukraine freely admits gay soldiers, something that would never happen in Russia.

Before Russia invaded, Ukraine's stance on LGBTQ rights was murky. Gay marriage and adoption weren't legal, and although they still aren't, President Volodymyr Zelensky has since promised same-sex civil partnerships could be revisited after the war. There was also varying public opinion on gender and sexual orientation, although anti-discrimination laws in Ukraine offered some protection, and homosexual relations weren't legal in Ukraine until 1991. 

The atmosphere, especially in the military, has improved, the couple told Insider. There's a mutual respect of sorts, a realization that they're all fighting for the same cause regardless of sexual orientation.

That said, LGBTQ personnel don't yet have the same benefits as their heterosexual counterparts. When Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun submitted a draft to legalize same-sex partnership in early March, she noted that if an LGBTQ person is injured in combat, their partner can't make decisions about their medical treatment. 

Pasha and Vladyslav have talked about this issue, too.

In a post for LGBTIQ Military — an organization of Ukrainian LGBTQ active military members, veterans, and volunteers fighting for equal rights — the couple expressed their support for legalizing same-sex partnerships. They wrote that while they want to be able to marry, have children, and live happily together, there are also more immediate concerns about not being legally recognized as a couple. If one of them is injured, the other has no say in their hospitalization and care. If one dies, the other won't be able to claim their body, they said. 

It's a stark reality of both the war and LGBTQ rights. But Pasha and Vladyslav said they're hoping for a better future for themselves. They see the war as a fight against how Russia oppresses, how it treats its LGBTQ people — "full of discrimination, killing activists," Vladyslav said. 

Winning the war would mean winning freedom, both for Ukrainians and LGBTQ people like Pasha and Vladyslav. When Insider asked about the coming months of combat and how the couple is feeling, Vladyslav held Pasha closely and said: "We strongly believe Ukraine will win."

                                                     May 1, 2023

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

REAL AMERICA’S VOICE TV: A Refuge for Independent and Populist Citizens

Friends,

Some of you have heard me talk of the satellite news network, REAL AMERICA'S VOICE [RAV]. By far it is the most impressive, fearlessly independent, best researched televised media voice out there. It is both rightwing populist and traditionalist in orientation.

I receive it via DISH TV satellite; it is the only news, discussion, and interview television medium I now turn to on a daily basis. I recommend it strongly, as it cuts through the fog, unlike Fox News, which is part of the DC Swamp.

Among Real America's Voice programs:

1) There are two hours of the intrepid Steven Bannon's "War Room" and his in-depth reporting and commentary, live, 10 a.m. – 12 noon (and later another hour at 5 p.m.) each weekday. Bannon hosts regular interviews featuring such individuals as Darren Beattie (Revolver News), Peter Navarro, former Trump advisor Kash Patel, Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), Jack Posobiec (Human Events), and a couple of very unique and revealing ones recently with Donald Trump;

2) Investigative reporter John Solomon (recall him from interviews with Carlson) at 6 p.m.;

3) Turning Point USA with Charlie Kirk brings in the midday hour, with quite a bit on what is occurring in academia and education;

4) And in the mornings before Bannon there is "American Sunrise," with excellent former Fox reporter Ed Henry, with a couple of co-hosts....It is by far the best "morning program"--making "Fox & Friends" look like slick Soviet propaganda.

It is available on several platforms, including:

DISH NETWORK, channel 219;

Apple TV;

Roku TV;

Amazon Fire TV;

Samsung TV Plus, channel 1029;

Pluto TV, channel 240; and

Select TV, channel 106.

Real America's Voice is also available LIVE via its Web site, easily watchable at:

https://americasvoice.news/

I urge you to take a look for yourselves. And verify and test my judgment. I think you will like what there is, even if the news and reporting sometimes will send cold shivers down your back.

The United States--what there is left of it--is under severe and overwhelming siege from the enemies of our culture, our history, our civilization. Real America's Voice may yet be a small voice, but its viewership is mushrooming, and its message is resounding with more citizens tuning in each day. It stands against the Uniparty, against the Deep State, and against globalism.

Turn OFF Fox and join those who become informed.