Sat Dec 28, 2019, 03:05 PM
HAB911 (8,176 posts)
Interesting read: How the right sold out to Russia
Now that Rep. Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee have opened an investigation into the Russia affair, and President Donald Trump has darkly warned in his State of the Union speech that “America will never be a socialist country,” it seems timely to recall a long-forgotten tale of revenge over unrequited love, in which members of the Koch family, which had helped build Joseph Stalin’s oil refineries, found their investments nationalized and themselves embittered.
In 1925, Fred C. Koch joined his MIT classmate Lewis E. Winkler to found the Winkler-Koch Engineering Company in Wichita, Kansas. After losing patent infringement lawsuits to more established oil and gas companies, they sought business overseas. Between 1929 and 1932, during Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan, Winkler-Koch built 15 thermal cracking units for Stalin, turning crude oil into gasoline. Jane Mayer, in a book that grew out of a 2010 article in The New Yorker, an unauthorized assessment of the Koch family’s spending habits, “Dark Money” (2016), quotes Gus diZerega, a “former friend of Charles Koch”: “As the Soviets became a stronger military power, Fred felt a certain amount of guilt at having helped build them up.” Perhaps. But that did not stop Winkler-Koch, in 1934, from providing engineering plans and overseeing construction of a huge oil refinery near Hamburg under the direction of Adolf Hitler, whom Fred Koch approached directly, purportedly greeting him with: “Heil Hitler.” The Winkler-Koch factory became a major source of fuel for the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and the mechanized tank and motorized attack forces that powered the Blitzkrieg into Belgium, Denmark, Poland and France. The factory was destroyed by Allied bombers late in the war. https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2019/02/how-the-right-sold-out-to-russia/
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27 replies, 3873 views
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Author | Time | Post |
![]() |
HAB911 | Dec 2019 | OP |
Wellstone ruled | Dec 2019 | #1 | |
paleotn | Dec 2019 | #6 | |
Mr.Bill | Dec 2019 | #10 | |
ck4829 | Jan 2020 | #22 | |
UpInArms | Dec 2019 | #2 | |
dalton99a | Dec 2019 | #16 | |
Kid Berwyn | Dec 2019 | #18 | |
Xolodno | Dec 2019 | #20 | |
ck4829 | Jan 2020 | #23 | |
ancianita | Dec 2019 | #3 | |
C Moon | Dec 2019 | #4 | |
Wounded Bear | Dec 2019 | #7 | |
hedda_foil | Dec 2019 | #14 | |
Kid Berwyn | Dec 2019 | #19 | |
ck4829 | Jan 2020 | #24 | |
rickyhall | Dec 2019 | #5 | |
patphil | Dec 2019 | #8 | |
bucolic_frolic | Dec 2019 | #9 | |
bucolic_frolic | Dec 2019 | #11 | |
ck4829 | Jan 2020 | #25 | |
rockfordfile | Dec 2019 | #12 | |
czarjak | Dec 2019 | #13 | |
Hotler | Dec 2019 | #15 | |
liberalla | Dec 2019 | #17 | |
ck4829 | Jan 2020 | #21 | |
oasis | Jan 2020 | #26 | |
underpants | Jan 2020 | #27 |
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 03:46 PM
Wellstone ruled (34,661 posts)
1. Money has zero
Response to Wellstone ruled (Reply #1)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:22 PM
paleotn (15,367 posts)
6. Yep. Money knows no loyalties. It also has no morals.
Response to paleotn (Reply #6)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:55 PM
Mr.Bill (19,660 posts)
10. And it doesn't come with instructions. n/t
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 04:12 PM
UpInArms (50,542 posts)
2. Scary 'graph
The right — in America, in Britain and in France — is now owned by the Russian deep state, and through willing enablers such as the NRA, has become a conduit for Russian funds and influence. So now the final revenge of the KGB’s Russia for the West has been revealed. They have nearly destroyed British parliamentary democracy. They have deeply undermined post-war French modernism. And they have helped install in the U.S. a buffoonish puppet, less intelligent if less inebriated than Boris Yeltsin, whose weakness Vladimir Putin also came to exploit. While few care to admit it, the result may very well be the end of the American experiment in democracy. |
Response to UpInArms (Reply #2)
Sun Dec 29, 2019, 09:45 PM
Kid Berwyn (11,101 posts)
18. Was just about to post that.
Glad there are more than a few left who do understand and give a damn.
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Response to UpInArms (Reply #2)
Mon Dec 30, 2019, 12:27 AM
Xolodno (5,614 posts)
20. The irony....
Russia's mixed economy is more socialist that ours. Even they know going hard right is a bad idea...and an idea they are willing to promote to anyone they consider adversarial for its self destruction.
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Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:16 PM
ancianita (30,201 posts)
3. Charles Koch is funding a Fifth Column to help Russia's black market insurgency into this country.
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:17 PM
C Moon (11,227 posts)
4. I wonder when the Putin-esque killings will begin in America.
Response to C Moon (Reply #4)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:26 PM
Wounded Bear (54,932 posts)
7. Ahem, Weinstein anybody? nt
Response to Wounded Bear (Reply #7)
Sun Dec 29, 2019, 01:13 AM
hedda_foil (16,089 posts)
14. I think you mean Epstein.
Response to hedda_foil (Reply #14)
Sun Dec 29, 2019, 11:52 PM
Kid Berwyn (11,101 posts)
19. Either way, they're no good unless they tell their tale.
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:21 PM
rickyhall (4,889 posts)
5. Skeletons
Koch & Bush families both got rich off Hitler & the Holocaust.
And Bush had the nerve to complain about Joe Kennedy getting rich off Prohibition. Koch built refineries, Bush helped finance Auschwitz |
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:34 PM
patphil (4,475 posts)
8. to paraphrase a line from The Tempest:
Greed makes strange bedfellows.
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Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:48 PM
bucolic_frolic (35,417 posts)
9. The World War connections of Big Business were very slow to leak out
They dared not tell the people. It was the 60s before info on aviation fuel was published, and only then in obscure high density tomes that few would read. My WWII dad always had a sarcastic comment for IGFarben, but I doubt he knew about American companies or politicians who were connected to funding and supplying Hitler's Nazi war materiel.
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Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:55 PM
bucolic_frolic (35,417 posts)
11. And just to be clear, these clowns that scream SOCIALISM! helped Joe Stalin's Communist USSR
now they're turning unfettered capitalism against everyone here
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Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 05:59 PM
rockfordfile (8,579 posts)
12. Republicans have always been traitors to our country. As long they're fascist
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sat Dec 28, 2019, 06:09 PM
czarjak (8,502 posts)
13. Those Russian ruses go way back?
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sun Dec 29, 2019, 10:57 AM
Hotler (10,014 posts)
15. Kicking. For a good read. nt
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Sun Dec 29, 2019, 04:54 PM
liberalla (8,177 posts)
17. PLEASE ! If you haven't read this article, do so now
Response to HAB911 (Original post)
Wed Jan 1, 2020, 09:08 AM
underpants (174,665 posts)