Today is Black Ribbon Day, known in Europe, where the commemoration originated, as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism & Nazism. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the treaty by which Hitler's German Reich & Stalin's Soviet Union agreed to divide up a conquered post-democratic Europe, was signed in Moscow seventy-six year ago to the day, 23 August 1939. Vladimir Putin, the president-cum-strongman of the Russian Federation, has defended the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as necessary, & like his predecessor Joseph Stalin he has systematically violated the territorial sovereignty of his neighbors. Stalin, the in days before war broke out between Nazi Germany & Communist Russia, invaded Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, & Poland; Putin, to this point, has invaded Georgia & the Ukraine, annexing the Crimea, & will surely continue this pattern of aggression unless the next American president has the courage & fortitude to enforce the world order we're spend the last seventy years building, at the cost of innumerable lives & uncountable treasure, explicitly to avoid the mistakes & provocations that lead Hitler & Stalin to think they could conquer at will without opposition from the Western democracies. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, finally rendering unavoidable the firestorm of World War II, seventy-six years ago today.
Black Ribbon Day, lest we forget.
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