Thank you for the opportunity to read The Naked Capitalist and Midgley’s review of it. I think his review is very perceptive, and there is very little I can add to it.

Midgley is correct in his basic statement that Skousen has simply taken extended passages from my book, in violation of copyright, and put them together in terms of his own assumptions and preconceptions to make a picture very different from my own. Skousen is apparently a political agitator; I am an historian. My book merely tried to give an account of what happened in the world in the early part of the 20th century. I did a good deal of independent research on it, much of it in places which did not attract Skousen’s attention at all (such as French economic history, and economic history in general). The book was published five years ago. On the whole, except perhaps for my section on Red China, it has stood the challenge of later information fairly well. The chapter on “Germany From Kaiser to Hitler” has just been re-published by Houghton Mifflin in a book entitled Why Hitler?

Midgley has pointed out the chief distortions of my materials in Skousen’s book. My picture of “Financial capitalism” said that it was prevalent in the period 1880-1933. Skousen quotes these dates in several places (p. 14), yet he insists that these organizations are still running everything. I said clearly that they were very powerful, but also said that they could not control the situation completely and were unable to prevent things they disliked, such as income and inheritance taxes. Moreover, I thought I had made it clear that the control of bankers was replaced by that of self-financing or government-financed corporations, many of them in the West and Southwest, in oil or in aero-space, arid I saw a quite different alignment of American politics since 1950 (pp. 1245-1247). Skousen implies that financial capitalism was not only omnipotent but immoral, both of which I denied.

Most notably, Skousen asks in his foreword: “Why do some of the richest people in the world support communism and socialism?” He says that I give the answer. I never anywhere said that financial capitalism or any of its subsidiaries sought to “support communism.” On the contrary, I said two things which Skousen consistently ignores: (1) that bankers sought to influence all shades of American political opinion across the board from Right to Left (p. 945); and (2) that Wall Street support of Communist groups was based on three grounds, one of which was to “have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on their actions, if they ever went radical” (p. 938). Morgan’s pipeline to the Liberals (the Straights) was no more liberal than his pipeline to the Communists (the Lamonts) was communist. Skousen simply assumes that anyone who tries to infiltrate the communists or contributes funds to them must be a sympathizer, but, as he must know, the FBI has been doing this for years, as the CIA has been doing it all across the political spectrum on American campuses in recent years.

I must say that I was surprised at the picture of myself which I found in Skousen. Midgley is correct in his statement that I never claimed to be an “insider” of the Eastern Establishment, as Skousen seems to believe I was; I simply said that I knew some of these people, and generally liked them, although I objected to some of their policies. It seems to me that Skousen is unable to understand their point of view, simply because he upholds what I would regard as “the Radical Right” view that “exclusive uniformity” is the basis on which our society should be based. My own view is that our whole Western tradition rests, despite frequent aberrations, on what I call “inclusive diversity.” These are the last two words of my book, and they are its chief message, which seems to me to be one of the chief aspects of the Christian way of life: that diverse peoples with diverse beliefs must live together and work together in a single community. It seems to me that the Wall Street power group sincerely held this belief; that is why they made Harvard and other institutions they influenced so “liberal.” They felt strongly that communists and the Soviet Union and other diverse peoples were in this world together and had to live and let live in order to co-exist. It seems to me that this is what Skousen cannot accept. His political position seems to me to be perilously close to the “exclusive uniformity” which I see in Nazism and in the Radical Right in this country. In fact, his position has echoes of the original Nazi 25 point program.

Midgley says that Skousen was triggered into writing The Naked Capitalist by my critical remarks on the Radical Right. I agree with him. If you will look at my book (pages 146-147), you will see that the Round Table Group, under the influence of Lionel Curtis, held basically Christian beliefs. These were sincere. But they bungled them greatly in application. Perhaps it was intellectual arrogance to expect to “build the Kingdom of God here upon this earth,” and they certainly failed disastrously. No one knows this better than I do. But I still cannot condemn them, and I cannot see that the American Radical Right has anything better to offer. I think the Round Table effort failed because they tried to work through government, rather than through each person’s individual effort in his private life.

I thank the organizers of this conference for the honor of inviting me to address you.

The true history of Soviet-Polish relations from 1939 to 1941 is very different from the false version promoted by Polish nationalists and by anticommunists everywhere.

I will speak briefly about the issue of Katyn.

As most of you know, I have now published two books on Katyn. My most recent, and most complete, book is Тайна катынского расстрела. Доказательства, решение (Тверь: Изд. Кормушкин, 2020), translated from English.

In this book, I examine all the evidence concerning the Katyn issue. Much of this evidence is contradictory. Some of it has to be falsification.

I discovered that ALL of the genuine evidence – the evidence that cannot be falsification – points to German, not Soviet, guilt in the mass murders of Polish prisoners known as the “Катынский расстрел”

It was the Germans – the Nazis – who planned and carried out the fabrication to blame Stalin and the Soviet leadership for shooting the Polish prisoners whom the Germans themselves had murdered.

However, the Nazis could never have convinced anyone without the help of the Polish Government-In-Exile, in London. If the Polish regime had not agreed to support the Nazis in blaming the Soviets, no one would have paid any attention to the German claim of Soviet guilt.

Likewise, if the Polish regime had said that the Germans were to blame – or even if they had said: “We do not know who is to blame” – no one would have believed the German claim of Soviet guilt.

Therefore, it is clear that from the beginning the Polish Government-in-Exile conspired with the Germans.

The Western Allies did not accept the German – Polish account until well after the end of the war, when the anticommunist Cold War had begun.

At some point before 1959, Nikita S. Khrushchev ordered that documents be forged that would blame Katyn on Stalin. Some documents from Khrushchev’s forgery plot have been preserved.

Ultimately, Khrushchev decided not to continue his plan to blame the Stalin leadership. He probably did so because Khrushchev himself was a member of the Politburo in the spring of 1940, so any plot to blame Stalin and his supporters would have also implicated Khrushchev himself.

However, some of the documents that Khrushchev had drafted were not destroyed, but were kept in a secret folder.

We know that Aleksandr Shelepin, Chairman of the KGB between 1959 and 1961, was convinced by the forged documents that Stalin had ordered the Poles to be shot. It appears that others in the Khrushchev-era Soviet leadership also believed this, though Khrushchev himself did not, of course.

Therefore, in 1988, when Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and Falun decided to blame Stalin and Lavrentii Beria for Katyn, it is likely that they believed it.

However, they had no evidence. So they had more documents faked. These Gorbachev-era fakes were put into the same folder with the Khrushchev-era fakes. This folder was named «Закрытый пакет № 1» – “Closed Packet No.1.”

In the frenzy of accusations unleashed by Gorbachev against Stalin and the Stalin-era Soviet leadership, this folder of forgeries became the “evidence” that the Soviets had shot the Poles.

In 2010 the late Viktor Iliukhin, member of the Duma for the КПРФ, published documents and other materials that he claimed had been given to him by a member of the Gorbachev team who had fabricated the Gorbachev-era documents in “Closed Packet No. 1.”

At that time, it became clear to anyone who was interested in historical truth that neither of these document collections could be used to determine who was really guilty of shooting the Polish prisoners.

This was a blow against the anticommunist Polish nationalists, the Polish regime, and anticommunist, anti-Stalin forces within Russia such as the “Memorial” Society. These forces simply ignore the evidence Iliukhin published. So does the Russian government.

Meanwhile, more evidence has appeared since the mid-1990s that points to German guilt and/or to Soviet innocence. I studied all the evidence in my book. I will soon publish an article in and English-language academic journal that examines this newer evidence. When it is published, I will send it to my friends in Tver’. I hope they will translate it into Russian.

The conclusion is unequivocal: on the evidence, the Soviets cannot possibly have killed the Poles. Therefore, the Germans did.

For the details, I refer you to my book. I also refer you to a very perceptive review of my book by Олег Сдвижков, «Загадка Катынского расстрела» and another skillful and appreciative review by Vladimir L. Bobrov.

Despite all the evidence proving Soviet innocent at Katyn, the Polish government, along with anticommunist and anti-Stalin forces in the rest of the world, continue to blame Stalin and the Soviet leadership.

The Russian government also continues to blame Stalin and the Soviet Union.

But the evidence of Soviet innocence continues to grow. The recent excavations at Mednoe, sponsored by the Polish government and the “Memorial” Society, failed to find the bodies of the more than 6,200 Polish prisoners that are supposedly buried there.

This means that the testimony of the late NKVD officer Dmitry Stepanovich Tokarev (Дмитрий Степанович Токарёв) is false! Moreover, there are many problems with Tokarev’s testimony, which I discuss in my book. It is clear that Tokarev was threatened with some kind of punishment if he did not testify that the Soviets had shot the Poles.

In conclusion: the Russian government, together with the Polish regime and anticommunists worldwide, continue to falsely blame Stalin and the Soviet leadership of the mass murder of the Polish prisoners.

It is the citizens of Poland, perhaps more than anyone else, who have been most shamefully deceived about Katyn. The lie that the Polish prisoners were shot by the Soviets poisons the relationship between Russians and Poles. It helps the crypto-fascist Polish government fan hostility against Russia and friendliness towards NATO. In doing so, it endangers the security of all of Europe.

It is up to private citizens, such as yourselves, to wage the fight for historical truth. The Tver’-Mednoe organization is leading the way for the whole of Russia, and for the whole of the world, in this struggle.

I am very proud to play a small role in the struggle for historical truth concerning Katyn, and to stand shoulder to shoulder with my friends of Tver’.

Grover Furr
Montclair State University, Montclair NJ USA
November 15, 2020

“You will die in seven days.” A strange, disturbing video is carrying a curse. Whoever sees it receives a phone call and seven days later, the viewer dies a horrible death. When Katie Embry (Amber Tamblyn) dies, her aunt Rachel (Naomi Watts) begins investigating the rumors of the tape. When she watches it, a countdown begins as she must find the mystery behind the girl (Daveigh Chase) in the tape and stop the cycle. When Rachel’s son Aidan (David Dorfman) accidentally watches the tape, Rachel must solve the mystery of Samara and where the deadly tape originated.

Directed by Gore Verbinski, The Ring is a remake of the 1998 horror film Ringu which is an adaption of Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel. The movie was relatively well received and was a blockbuster at the box-office by tapping into the PG-13 horror market. The movie started a big chain of Japanese imports and remakes.

I love a good horror movie, but as an adult, horror movies sometimes struggle to scare. There is something to be said about The Ring which manages to bring scares, a compelling story, and a great cast to a PG-13 film.

The Ring does a good job of scaring without showing much. It plays on the idea of the Bloody Mary type of legend. If you see the video, you’re dead, but the temptation to see the video is also great. With that as a basis, the movie is able to freak out viewers by making them watch this cursed video within the movie. It is all made up, but it plans this hint of doubt in their mind that they are along with Naomi Watts’ character for the ride. She has to solve the mystery of the video to save the viewers.

The Ring also is benefited by strong acting. It gets two good child actors in David Dorfman as the somewhat psychic Aidan, and Daveigh Chase as the creepy Samara that the smart script makes parallels between. Naomi Watts just off of her breakout role in David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. turned an easy role into a much better role and really did a nice job as the mother fighting for her life and her son’s life…which leads to a difficult choice for her character at the rather open ending.

Gore Verbinski does a great job with the visuals in the movie. First he had to recreate a video that was half-way creepy, and he did it with a lot of style. I know that you are supposed to like the original more than the remake, but having seen both Ringu and The Ring, I actually kind of enjoyed The Ring more. The movie is just faster paced and better constructed.

The Ring is a creepy movie. It is scary and full of jumps. It manages to do this while keeping it PG-13. This shows the power of film and how something can be scary without being gory. Unfortunately in the modern market, this wasn’t enough and The Ring was followed by the disappointing The Ring Two in 2005.

A (Arthur) Bertram Chandler is a name that has pretty much disappeared from contemporary SF history, although in the 1950’s and 60’s he was an extremely popular author. Baen Books have recently begun to release his John Grimes novels in omnibus editions, although his most famous stories are those from The Rim World.

The Rim of Space is the first of these. Admittedly rather short, they are great fun, if a little dated.

The stories are very much based on a life at sea, (not too surprisingly, as Chandler’s own background was that of a seaman), and cover the issues caused by long distance travel, the loneliness of the seaman space-traveller, the monotony of the different ports relieved only by the fleeting relationships he (or she) has from port to port.

If all of this sounds a little like ‘the Titanic in space’, to some extent you’d be right: Derek Calver, recently disembarked from the Galactic equivalent of the UK Royal Navy, ups and joins the rather less rigid Rim Runners, a space version of the UK Merchant Navy, looking for adventure. Here, as part of the crew of the Lorn Lady, Calver finds himself one of a ragtag bunch. Captain Engels is an old Spacer, as creaky as his spaceship. There’s also Levine, a Psionic Radio officer; Arlen, the only woman on the ship, a rather remote personality; Bendix the Interstellar Drive Engineer; Renault, the Rocket King; Brentano in charge of Electronic Radio; Maclean the Purser; and Old Doc Malone, the Bones of the operation.

Once the key characters are set up (admittedly rather sketchily on the most part) the book focuses on two of them. It’s not long before we find Calver quickly involved with ‘Calamity Jane’ Arlen and saving her from a hostage situation on the planet Tharn. Calver himself is held as a hostage by spies determined to work against the Federation on Grollor and also involved in a dalliance with espionage operative Sonya Verrill. He then meets lizard-like dinosaur aliens with a liking of tea on Stree to then endure a hurricane whilst having repairs on the marine planet of Mellise. Finally, the Lorn Lady and its crew have a challenge saving the spaceliner Thermopylae off the planet Eblis out on the Rim. It’s all good pulp stuff, and all rather 1950’s British Colonial, in its quaintly old-fashioned manner.

On the not so good front, the reader should be warned that the book has typical 1950’s values towards women, although not as explicit as some books of that time. There are times when the only female of the crew goes off to make coffee and sandwiches for the rest of the crew on the bridge. There’s even a bit of slapping going on – nothing sexual, but some rather unfortunate rough handling of the female natives and the odd slap to and from women. (I‘m not condoning this, btw, but it would be wrong of me not to point it out.) These are rather typical of 1950’s & 60’s SF, but some readers may find such stereotypes rather irritating.

Whilst the general plot is typical pulp, as ever on these things, though, it’s the comments along the way that fill out this tale. There’s death, exciting adventure and a fair degree of contemplation over the result of bringing trinkets to natives, nearly a decade before the evolution of Star Trek’s Prime Directive. Life out on the edge of the galaxy, at the Rim, is quite odd and the crew’s encounter with a ‘Rim Ghost’ is quite memorable, suggesting that life out on the Rim may be subject to alternate variations – a theme Chandler was to return to in later stories.

This was a book that rose above its rather low expectations. Expecting fast-paced, low quality pulp fiction, I was surprised how contemplative and well thought out the book was. It’s a great read, which, although typically 1950’s pulp and thus unlikely to blaze a trail through SF fiction, is entertaining enough to hold interest and make me want me to read more. Surprisingly reminiscent of early Poul Anderson for its literacy and often melancholic mood, this is an old gem that’s worth a read.

Cambie Street is a street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is named for Henry John Cambie, chief surveyor of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s western division (as is Cambie Road, a major thoroughfare in nearby Richmond).

There are two distinct sections of the street. North of False Creek, the street runs on a northeast-southwest alignment (following the rotated street grid within Downtown Vancouver). As such, the street direction is approximately 45 degrees to that of the Cambie Bridge, and there is no seamless connection between the two. Instead, Nelson Street carries southbound traffic onto the bridge, and Smithe Street carries northbound traffic away from the bridge. The downtown section of Cambie Street runs from Water Street in Gastown in the north to Pacific Boulevard in Yaletown in the south and is a two-way street for its length.

South of False Creek, the street is a major six-lane arterial road, and runs as a two-way north-south thoroughfare according to the street grid for the rest of Vancouver. This section of the street was originally named Bridge Street, and was first connected to Cambie Street after the first Cambie Bridge opened in 1891; it was renamed Cambie Street after the second Cambie Bridge opened in 1912.

Between King Edward Avenue West and Southwest Marine Drive, the street has a 10 metre wide boulevard with grass and many well established trees on it; the boulevard was designated as a heritage landscape by the city of Vancouver in 1993.

When proposals to build SkyTrain’s Canada Line (formerly known as the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver or RAV Line) along Cambie Street first emerged, they were heavily protested by residents and business owners who wanted to keep the street as a heritage boulevard. They argued in favour of using the existing Arbutus Street rail corridor instead.

Once the decision was made to use the Cambie alignment for the Canada Line anyway, residents along the corridor successfully persuaded authorities to put the rail line in a tunnel instead of running it as a surface route, and to dig the tunnel using a tunnel boring machine. However, due to cost concerns and time constraints, the winning bidder decided to use a cut-and-cover method to build the tunnel – which required disruption to traffic and business along the corridor during the construction. As such, even though it cost less and was much faster than using a tunnel boring machine, the plan drew heavy criticism from area residents and businesses.

During 2006 to 2009, portions of the street south of False Creek were closed to traffic to allow for construction of the line. The cut-and-cover tunnel runs underneath the east side of the street for most of its route. South of West 63rd Avenue, the line emerges from the tunnel and runs on an elevated structure across the Fraser River.

Gregor Robertson, who later became the mayor of Vancouver, was a strong supporter of Cambie Street merchants and spoke regularly about hardships from the Canada Line construction. He called the handling of the rail line construction an “injustice.”

On March 23, 2009, Robertson testified in a lawsuit brought by Cambie Street merchant Susan Heyes, owner of Hazel & Co., in the B.C. Supreme Court regarding damage to her business from the construction, a lawsuit for which she was awarded $600,000 by the B.C. Supreme Court due in part to the fact that there was insufficient action to mitigate the effects of Canada Line construction on Cambie Street merchants. The award for damages was later reversed at the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which determined that while the project had resulted in a legal nuisance to the claimant, the government had acted within its authority and was therefore not liable for damages. Leave for further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was subsequently denied. On the Canada Line’s opening day of August 17, 2009, Robertson said Greater Vancouver needed more rapid transit but the Canada Line was a “great start” and that he was a “Johnny-come-lately” to the project.

At about the same time as Capcom decided to release one of the worst Megaman games ever made they also graced us with one of the finest. Megaman Zero 2 stands as more then just an excellent game, it has knocked off Megaman 3 as my all-time favorite game among the Blue Bombers’ series. It takes everything that made the first one great and – get this – actually adds a whole new host of gameplay elements to a series instead of doing nothing but adding new bosses. Might even be a first for the lineage considering how much cool stuff got added and traditional ways got altered.

Weapon absorption through bosses has returned, but now it actually takes memorization and skill to obtain them. Instead of the typical method of merely beating the boss to acquire new weaponry you now have to score an A ranking on the stage in order to gain access, no easy feat by any means. Certainly don’t expect to beat a stage and then come back later to get good at it, as once a stage is done your rank is stuck and the boss doesn’t reappear. Thankfully, the weapons are completely optional and you still get element powers from destroying bosses no matter what, and now you can also earn new suits that boost your attributes in different ways or give you special powers. Finally, the Triple Rod from the first game has been removed in favor of the far cooler Chain Rod, which works as a grappling hook and can yank enemies and blocks around.

These are the tools you’ll need to survive the levels, most of which are fairly straightforward affairs but each is pulled off beautifully in most every way. Every one is distinct and unique from the previous, even if the enemy listing gets recycled a bit too much. From atop a speeding train to leaping amongst flying ships, they certainly give no sense of repetitious locales. For the most part the music keeps up equally striking, as while a few stages have tunes that seem pulled from a library of generic incarnate a number of them have inspired melodies that best any I’ve heard from Megaman games in years. I actually found myself humming along, something I haven’t done since the days of the NES games.

Missions rarely stray from traveling from Point A to boss, but distractions are numerous and welcome. Mid-bosses are now common and mark a restart point and sometimes they’ll give you a new objective for part of the travel like protecting someone (surprisingly fun!) or finding lost soldiers, none of which are too difficult and often requires a bit of poking around. Searching can often turn up much of the hidden items as well, especially if collecting all the Cyber-Elves is a priority as many are placed in locations that can only be accessed with a high risk of death and a keen eye. The Cyber-Elves are still there to provide extra services like automatically providing an A rank for the stage or cutting down a boss’ lifebar, but they can only be used once and then they’re gone. They can definitely be helpful for some of the stages but I often never even equipped them, let alone used any.

The difficulty has been toned down a bit from Megaman Zero, as continues are no longer limited and the level design is much more solid and elegant. I can only think of one level that delivers cheap shots but, like the rest of the game, it can be overcome through planning and memorization. It just happens to be very painful learning how to make it work right. On the flip side the bosses are still tough and relentless, throwing patterns and attacks that will kill Zero in only a couple of hits and yet that creates a damn good sense of accomplishment after beating some of them. I can think of more then once when I began verbally spouting off, “Yeah! What now?!” after toppling some boss that had all but laughed at my attempts to stop it. Granted, now some people think I’m crazy for talking to videogames, but that’s a small price for getting to tell off a robot master.

Really, is there anything this game doesn’t do well? The Chain Rod can be difficult to handle at times, the translation is less then stellar with spelling mistakes here and there (“form” instead of “from,” “devise” instead of “device”), and the game is built on memorization and repetition, but aside from the bad English those aren’t necessarily detractions in my eyes. For something so clean, stylish, and graceful, I can’t help but love it. It may not have a few things Megaman 3 did (most notably Protoman’s theme music) but in pure gameplay it oozes excellence that helps push the entire family of Megaman games in the direction its been needing for years. Go, play this, and pretend Megaman X7 doesn’t exist.