Smooth Operator

Nah, this post doesn't have much relevance to Sade's 1985 single detailing the life of a cold-hearted, jet-set gigolo nor removing noise from data. So if a search engine brought you to this remote corner of the Web by error ...

"No place for beginners or sensitive hearts When sentiment is left to chance. No place to be ending but somewhere to start."

Europe between 1938 and 1945 was no place for beginners or sensitive hearts, so Winston Churchill tasked "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare," or the Special Operations Executive (SOE), to pry it back from the Third Reich. The average life expectancy of SOE agents serving in occupied territory was six weeks despite their extensive training.

Etienne and Violette Szabó during their honeymoon

Some SOE agents were particularly ungentlemanly--they were women. Section F of the SOE employed 39 female agents in occupied France. Thirteen never returned. Of those, Violette Szabó, who volunteered as an agent after her husband Etienne was killed at El Alamein, is most likely the best known. Szabó, the second woman to receive the George Cross, was beaten, raped, starved, and eventually executed and cremated at the Ravensbrück concentration camp with three other female SOE agents shortly before it was liberated by Allied forces.

If you're like me, avoiding the noise about important issues of the day such as a universal health care "right" that "the rich" are going to pay for, there's relief and lessons to learn from history. Then, rather than working and paying taxes, one can take solace in some Violette Szabó-inspired movies, books and even a video game, Violet Assassin.

I don't think Gervase Cowell, an ex-MI6 officer and British Special Forces Club historian, had Violet Assassin or morphine in mind when he told Queen Elizabeth II, "I help the old to remember and the young to understand."

Be True to Your Party or Pay: Kansas Politics

I read this column by Mike Henricks of the Kansas City Star even though I'm not a fan. The head comparing the Kansas GOP to Stalin hooked me.

It details political payback, the branding of traitors by both the Democratic and Republican state leadership. Certain people delete those branded from their smartphones. These traitors cease to exist: no chance of being sent to national conventions, no phone calls or e-mails answered, no invitations to Kansas Day ceremonies at the state capitol every January, and no lovely holiday cards from the powerful. It is worse than being sent to the gulag for a politico. A bullet in the back of the head is certainly more merciful.

I've been a registered Republican since 1979, the Jimmy Carter era. However, I have a strong libertarian streak. I never vote for a candidate who says more "common sense gun safety laws" are needed. Criminals by nature fail to abide by the law. There's plenty of laws on the books that can be used to stop their rampages. So I naturally draw the conclusion those candidates don't trust me or most of my country folk.

If politicians do not trust the ordinary citizens they want to represent, I'm not about to trust them. No matter if they are a Democrat or Republican, why would anyone elect a representative who allowed mistrust to stand between them and their constituents? If sent to any seat of government, they will only answer to party insiders, the big contributors, the lobbyists, and the moguls. The trinkets, junkets, private jets, chauffeurs, interns, hookers, easy cash and power will lure them until they're indicted or voted out of office into a firm of lawyers and lobbyists.

I'm not about to let party loyalty blind me from identifying with the natural and civil rights of individuals. Both parties are bankrupt. There is a reason why the founding fathers, who struggled and made provisions for the preservation of the "inalienable rights of man" did not make a single reference to political parties in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Dear Leaders, the loyalty squad works via a secret ballot at every election. The Stoic philosopher, Seneca the Younger, said, "Every reign must submit to a greater reign." For those who have left the ranks for a position of authority, Seneca's words are good ones to study.

Standing in the Gap

This is the f'irst Veteran's Day I've spent without my father. He served in the U.S. Army from 1951 to 1953.

An electrician with Flour Corporation and one-month veteran of marriage to Mom, Dad figured he would wind up in Korea. The Army put him in the Signal Corps and sent him to West Germany. He was one out of hundreds of thousands of Cold Warriors who, from 1945 to 1994, waited near the Fulda Gap and the North German Plain, the most-logical routes of a Soviet invasion that never took place. Then there were the thousands of Army and Air Force personnel who served in encircled West Berlin.

My friend, Chris, served in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, in Vietnam and in Germany. The Blackhorse was based in Germany three times: 1944-1948, 1956-1966, and 1972-1994. During the last period, its headquarters was at Downs Barracks in Fulda, where this Blackhorse memorial remains.

On this Veteran's Day, we shouldn't forget those who quietly stand in the gap: Marines at U.S. embassies, Coast Guard boarding teams, flight crews of Air Force refueling tankers, the men and women buried deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, the crews of Aegis guided missle destroyers and subs, the members of reserve units, those along an remote, fortified border with North Korea, and countless others past, present and future.