On the night of 31 August 1939, a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content of the message). The operation was named “Grossmutter gestorben” (Grandmother died). The operation was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of Polish anti-German saboteurs.
To make the attack seem more convincing, the Gestapo murdered Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried German Silesian Catholic farmer, known for sympathising with the Poles. He had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo and dressed to look like a saboteur, then killed by lethal injection and given gunshot wounds. Honiok was left dead at the scene so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was then presented to the police and press as proof of the attack. Several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp were drugged, shot dead on the site and their faces disfigured to make identification impossible. The Germans referred to them by the code phrase “Konserve” (canned goods).
What? You thought your life of ease and privilege as a Citizen of the decadent New Rome would last forever? Struggle, Run, or Die. I’ve been warning you since 2005.
Trump says he’s blocking Postal Service funding because Democrats want to expand mail-in voting during pandemic
By Felicia Sonmez and Jacob Bogage, Washington Post
August 13, 2020
President Trump said Thursday that he does not want to fund the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats are seeking to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency.
“Now, they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”
Trump has railed against mail-in balloting for months, and at a White House briefing Wednesday, he argued without evidence that USPS’s enlarged role in the November election would perpetuate “one of the greatest frauds in history.”
During the Wednesday briefing, Trump told reporters he would not approve the $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service, or $3.5 billion in supplemental funding for election resources, citing prohibitively high costs. But he went further in remarks Thursday morning, blaming Democrats’ efforts to make it easier for Americans to vote amid the pandemic.
“There’s nothing wrong with getting out and voting. . . . They voted during World War I and World War II,” Trump told Bartiromo.
…
“In the legislation we had $25 billion,” Pelosi said. “That is the number that is recommended by the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service. . . . In earlier covid bills, the president has stood in the way of any money for the Postal Service.”Pelosi noted that the among other things, the Postal Service delivers many prescriptions, which is particularly important in pandemic times.
“So they’re hurting seniors; it’s a health issue. . . . So, when the president goes after the Postal Service, he’s going after an all-American, highly approved-by-the-public institution,” she said.
The campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden criticized Trump’s statement, saying Trump was “sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon.”
“This is an assault on our democracy and economy by a desperate man who’s terrified that the American people will force him to confront what he’s done everything in his power to escape for months — responsibility for his own actions,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Democrats earlier in the spring had rallied to the Postal Service’s defense when it sat on the brink of insolvency. Postal officials warned at the outset of the pandemic that declines on mail volume could have led the agency to run out of money in October.
As Congress agreed to a $13 billion emergency grant for the USPS in an early round of coronavirus relief spending, Trump threatened to veto the bill — worth $2 trillion and full of funding for unemployment benefits, small businesses and national security industries — if it included any direct funding for the Postal Service.
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