Hero Cities

Russia’s practice of awarding the title ‘Hero City’ should be instituted in this new Obama era, not for courage and determination fighting the Germans in World War II but for protesting govenrmental control at Tea Parties without recognition from the media or our ‘great’ leader. Waves of tea party protestors in many cities continue to attempt to repulse the tide of growing governmental encroachment into our personal freedoms. Hero Cities like Odessa, Kiev, Stalingrad, Leningrad , Sebastopol and Moscow survived horrible times, their miseries and death tolls by heroic efforts of the Russian people. Other mind-boggling, heroic efforts were made by the Russian people during World War II to save the industrial base of their country during the German invasion. In 1941, for example 1523 industries were moved to the East involving 1 1/2 million railway wagon-loads of material. 498 enterprises required 71,000 railway wagons to be re-located. 8000 railway trucks were used for one industrial plant. These numbers are staggering even without a consideration of the immense sacrifice of human capital. Then there was Leningrad ( old, beautiful St. Petersburg), a city of 3 million besieged by the Germans for 2 1/2 years - from September 1940 until the breakout in January 1944 - during which 1/3 ( 1 million) of the inhabitants died from disease and/or starvation. But the Russian people never abandoned their fight for survival during the greatest and longest siege of a modern city in history.

Great too are our present conservative warriors manning the gates and ramparts against the attack upon their Constitutional traditions and personal liberties by liberals and our new President. America now has 44 czars as overseers to regulate practically every aspect of business and pleasure, public and private. Citizens from cities across America continue to demonstrate their displeasure with our leader. Granted the war is on a symbolic front, granted we are metaphorically being besieged by our politicians and President who hope to conquer us and establish a dictatorship of the socialist few enabled by sheeple who do have the courage ( like stalwart Russians ) to question the present state of affairs.