Last Saturday, my family and I went to the Russian store on Bardstown rd in Louisville, KY. I have only been in Kentucky for two months but already found the Russian store. I have a talent for finding the ethnic groceries no matter where I live.

We were happy to already find this little store. I heard that the owner was at first a Georgian, but now I hear that he might be Armenian Jew. I will ask him next time. We looked around the shop for delicious sausages and ikra. The owner gave my kids free candy. While we shopped we watched other people come in from all over the Soviet Union, most of them Jewish. Then, right before we left, two men came in who were obviously not Russian. The weren’t quite Uzbek looking either. They talked to my husband in Russian and later he explained to me that they were Meskhetian Turks.

I felt so ignorant. I thought I knew about most of the ethnic minorities of the former Soviet Union, but I realize now that I have a lot to learn. Meskhetian Turks were originally from Georgia but were forced to move to Uzbekistan by Stalin. After independence, the Meskhetian Turks were forced out the Ferghana Valley. Many are now trying to return to Georgia, but Georgia is also giving them a difficult time. Some have joined Christian religions in order to receive refugee status and some are being sponsored here in Louisville. Here is a story about Meskhetian Turks in Louisville. Here is another story about the US refugee policies and Meskhetian Turks. Here is another article from BBCnews.com. The article also explains how Meskhetian Turks receive refugee status.

“They are leaving as part of a resettlement programme managed by the US State Department and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

American diplomats and representatives of international NGOs say that for the last 15 years, Meskhetian Turks have been denied even the most basic of human rights here.

Only one in three Turks managed to get a Russian passport.

The rest are stuck in a legal limbo - with documents issued back in the Soviet era which are now invalid.

This means none of the Turks can get what is known as “registration”, a vital piece of paper without which no Russian can be admitted to a hospital, paid pension and benefits - or even be offered a job. ”

So I learned something new last weekend. Since Meskhetian Turks now have refugee status, we may see more of them here in the USA. See also Meskhetian Turks in Wikipedia.

Here is a story of a man who dressed as Santa Claus in order to kidnap children.

I was one of those children who believed in Santa Claus. I think because as a child I didn’t get a lot of toys except at Christmas or on my birthday. Even though my parents were not wealthy, we always got special presents. It always seemed like a miracle. (Now I know that it was actually credit cards!!) So you can imagine that if I saw a man with a long white beard I would think it was the REAL Santa Claus. I remember riding in my parent’s Ford Pinto Station Wagon sans seat belts and in the next car seeing a man with a long white beard in the next car. I was so excited and believed that was Santa Claus. I waved at the old man and he waved back with a sweet smile on his face. This was over 20 years ago so the old man probably really was a nice old Southern gentleman. I lived in Memphis not far from Faulkner country after all.The old man with the long white beard only brings happy safe images in my mind. There is the Colonel Sanders the founder of KFC, for Southerners, Robert E. Lee, for liberals, Karl Marx and then for every Christian child, Santa Claus. I remember seeing pictures of my great grandfathers, gentlemen looking so cool with long white beards. Men with long white beards were men to be respected and honored. They were usually kind to children, the men who would sneak you candy when your mother wasn’t looking. The candy was never even poisoned. When I was a child you felt safe saying “hi” to the old man with the long white beard. Sometimes the old men would play along and say they were Santa Claus. There was nothing dirty or nasty about it. It was innocent. I remember being invited into old people’s houses where their wives would give us cookies. It was kind of like a Dennis the Menace scenario. Old people were safe back then. They were your granddaddies and mamaws. They always let your parents know where you were and were likely to protect you as much as your own parents.

Now old people are no longer safe. Even “Santa Claus” might try to hurt your child. A man who looks like Colonel Sanders might really be a dirty old man. My daughter was lucky to live in Hawaii, probably the last place in the country where the elderly are safe. I even checked the sex offender’s list and it was clean where I lived. I did the same check in Alabama and there were several listed who attacked not teen girls but little children. One of the men had a long white beard.

Now long white bearded men no longer have an innocent respectful connotation. Now we think of old dirty redneck hippies who never grew up, motorcycle gang members, or Al Qaeda. My children will never be able to go up to the old man with the white beard anymore without my supervision. I even feel uncomfortable having my children sit in Santa’s lap. Gone is an innocent era.

Good Bye to an Era:
Guess who are these white bearded gentlemen.

This is a picture I posted in an old blog and was the most popular post I had in that blog. This is a picture of Ahmadinejad at last year’s Holocaust Denier’s conference. Because of his warped view of history and his desire to wipe Israel off of the map, he has been called names like Ahmadhitlerajad. I found a funnier name Kevin McCullough’s blog. He calls him Adolfadinejad. Love it!!

(from www.stefan-herre.de/islam_hitler.jpg)

Newt Gringrich wrote an interesting article about the Baker- Hamilton report, analyzing it according to history. He compares the Report to Chamberlain negotiating with Hitler. Very interesting.

It is the end of the year and nutty people with weird conspiracy theories are cropping up everywhere. Everywhere I turn there is a so called intellectual or world leader spewing out some garbage. Popular now are the anti-American/anti-Zionist conspiracy theories. Anti- American theories are popular among university professors like Noam Chomsky. Anti-Zionist conspiracy theories are popular among white racists like David Duke and followers of Louis Farrakhan. Then there are those who combine the two like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The sad thing is that thousands of people follow these theories and allow them to give public speeches and even hold world wide conferences.

In New York, Ward Churchill the infamous professor from Colorado who said that America is at fault for 9/11 gave a speech at the New School in New York City for the Women of Color student group. In his speech, titled “Sterilizing America: The Fabrication of Innocent Americans”, he described American foreign policy as “mass murder” and compared Vietnam Veterans to serial killers. See, American history as we know was truly invented by “little Eichmanns” in the American government. In his view, we are an evil empire bent on taking over the world, forcing the innocent people of color to eat McDonald’s hamburgers and to watch Mtv. Anyone who refuses to take part of our evil empire must be eliminated by our oppressive military, who after taking over a third world country will force it to give their women equal rights and to write a constitution. See, he is telling us the truth in his mind. Everything is a conspiracy. 9/11 was caused by revolutionaries who fight against the evil capitalistic empire. How dare we threaten the hijab and social programs!!! Smiling George Bush is our modern day Hitler. He got his power from Skull and Bomes. Churchill is lucky that his has his Freedom of Speech so that he can say those things without worrying about going to jail.

That is something that might happen in Iran, home of the Holocaust Denier’s Conference another place where nutjobs from all over the world can talk about their Zionist conspiracy theories to their hearts content. Famous racists like David Duke made their appearance. Denying the Holocaust is a personal passion of Ahmadinejad. He wants Israel “wiped off the map”. In his mind, Zionists exaggerated the Holocaust in order to gain control of Palestine and start the state of Israel. To many of us who have seen the films and pictures, this is like saying that no one has ever walked on the moon or that the world is flat. I noticed that one of the themes is one that I have heard Ahmadinejad apologists mention frequently, “How the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis.” What about how the Arabs collaborated with the Nazis?? That would unfortunately be a historical fact so not welcome to this conference.

Both the anti-American conspiracy theorists and the anti-Zionists believe that Israel is not a real state. All of the problems in the world are caused because either the Zionists or the Evil Western Capitalists set up the state of Israel. The joint hatred of Israel is causing many to join the nut camp of the Anti-American Zionists. I was sad to see that Jimmy Carter is traveling around supporting the theory that Israel is behind all that is evil in the Middle East and that the state of Israel was named as a cause of the Iraq problem according to the Iraq Study Group.

We may laugh and ridicule conspiracy theorists, but their conspiracies are being believed by many in the world including those in positions of power. We laugh at Holocaust deniers while allowing anti-Zionists and Anti-Americans to run their mouths freely without a fair debate. True we have free speech for Israeli and American haters, but rarely are they put to the test and proven wrong. If we are not careful, an anti-Zionist will become president and foolishly believing Israel to be evil, will withdraw support and unite with the conspiracy theorist wack jobs like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Michelle Malkin also has a post on Ward Churchill with some good pictures.