A Glibertarians Exclusive: Blood and Gold, Part V
19 September 1987 – Marseille
Hess pulled his hand out of the coat pocket, hissing in agony as the ultraviolet lights burned his flesh. He extended his arm. Van Helsing, aiming at Belos’ knee, didn’t notice the movement, but Bouchard did, and squawked in alarm.
Too late. Hess shot the heavy gold coin with his thumb, as a child would do a coin-flip to settle a wager. The heavy gold coin slammed through the fuse box, shattering it.
The UV lamps went out. So did the regular lighting. The room was plunged into darkness.
Our element now, Hess said silently.
The Frenchman Bouchard was still standing behind the table. When the lights went out, he dropped the case of Swiss coins and the knapsack of Nazi gold and turned to flee. Too late; Hess leaped after him, grabbed him, and threw him at van Helsing. The American was still standing as well, pumping shots from his sidearm at where Belos had been crouching under the onslaught of UV light – but Belos was no longer there.
The Frenchman crashed into van Helsing, who dropped his pistol. Both men fell to the floor. Belos scooped up Bouchard with one hand, slammed a foot down on van Helsing. He looked at Hess.
“Father,” he asked. “Thirsty?”
Hess grinned. Belos tossed the Frenchman to him, then reached to snatch van Helsing off the floor.
Moments later, two corpses lay on the floor – not the two van Helsing and Bouchard had intended. Hess stepped to the fuse box and threw the master switch on the side to OFF. He opened the fuse box and retrieved the gold coin from where it was lodged in the back panel; the coin was slightly scorched but otherwise undamaged.
“Always insist on gold,” Hess advised. Belos, still wiping blood from his mouth, grinned.
“What now?”
Hess pondered for approximately six seconds. “We take all the gold. We shall have to find some other way to launder the Nazi bullion, but that’s not impossible. I propose a fifty-fifty split of each, bullion and Swiss coin. Does that suit you?”
It was a fair enough offer. “It does,” Belos replied.
They divided the loot as agreed. Belos took the case, while Hess retained the leather knapsack. “What now?” Belos asked when that was done.
“They planned to burn the building with us inside. I suspect they have containers of petrol or something else suitable here somewhere. Turnabout, it seems, is indicated.”
“Agreed.”
They walked away into the night as the first flickering lights came from the windows of the late Bouchard’s business. Hess was pensive; Belos, noting the older man’s unusual quiet, looked at him, raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I may as well tell you,” Hess said. “I know of two other caches of Nazi gold. München, and Rome. What say you, ‘son’? We made a fair enough partnership on this adventure.”
“What say I?” Belos smiled. “I say, lead on, ‘father.’”
***
21 November 1987 – south of Encampment, Wyoming
Belos Ionescu – “Braxton Iocca,” as his British passport proclaimed – stopped his rented car at a lonely gate on what the signs proclaimed to be Wyoming State Highway 230. A mailbox stood at the end of the lane the gate blocked; a label on the mailbox proclaimed the family name: VAN HELSING. A house and some outbuildings stood a few hundred meters away from the highway. No other habitations were in sight.
Belos looked at his watch. 2:14 AM. They’ll all be asleep. Good. It’s time to cut away this last branch of that troublesome family.
He got out of the car, closed the door slowly, and started through the darkness towards the house.
***
22 April 1988 – Utah, United States
Hess had insisted on coming to view the property in the evening, as the sun was sinking behind the mountains to the west. The listing was for over three hundred acres of what the American real-estate agent described as ‘badlands’ surrounding a huge mesa, a column of red-brown rock about three times as wide as it was tall.
“You said, there is a path to the summit,” Hess asked. “Do you think it could be expanded to a road?”
“I’m not an engineer,” the realtor demurred. “But I would think so, yes. I can refer you to a couple of reputable local engineers that could tell you for sure.”
“Very well.” Hess examined the rocky slopes critically. Yes. A house atop the rocks – an aerie. This place, this high, dry, lonely place, it is very different than any place I’ve lived in before. But what is life without change?
“When may I speak with your engineer? Assuming that it would be possible to build on that high mesa, I think I would be interested in making an offer on this property.”
“I’ll call my guy first thing in the morning,” the realtor promised.
***
04 August 2497 CE – Tarbos, high orbit
“Grandfather?”
Hess looked up. His ‘granddaughter,’ Christine, had just walked through the portal into the Red Witch’s control suite. “Yes?”
“Is everything all right?”
“Of course, child. I was… woolgathering. Pay it no mind.”
“As you wish.” Christine sat at the pilot’s station. Her long, slim hands flew over the control boards. “We’re far enough out of Tarbos’ gravity well. I can program the jump to Jinx now.”
“Good. Please do so.”
Christine programmed the yacht’s navigation suite with quick precision. With that done, she leaned back in the pilot’s chair. “Done. We’ll be at Jinx in about twelve hours. Amazing what that drive upgrade did for transit times.”
“Indeed.”
Christine looked at Hess keenly. He seemed uncharacteristically self-absorbed. “Are you sure everything is all right?”
Hess shook his head. “Thinking of old times,” he said. The old man smiled. “There are always those moments, when you have lived as long as I have, when you could have been ended very easily. I was remembering one such, one very nearly five hundred years ago now. In years to come, I expect you will have occasion to do the same.”
“I’m sure I will. In the meantime, we have our interests in the Rim Worlds to deal with.”
“Yes,” Hess said. “Business always requires attention.”
He lapsed back into thoughtfulness as the yacht jumped into hyperspace for the transit to the Rim Worlds.
Nazi Space Vampires! Awesome
+1
👍
+2
Very nice. Bloodsuckers emerge victorious across the galaxies. And here on planet Earth, life imitates art.
If anybody was wondering, there is indeed a Wyoming State Route 230.
I haven’t spent much time in that part of the state. It looks interesting.
“Democrat Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs asked Twitter, now called X, to censor critics of a tweet she posted while serving in the state legislature. According to Arizona Capitol Oversight, a self-described government accountability website, “then-Secretary Katie Hobbs and her government office engaged in an extensive campaign to censor her critics before and during her campaign for governor.”
Hobbs tweeted a comparison likening Trump supporters to Nazis. Hobbs allegedly sought retribution against critics of that tweet.
“@realDonaldTrump has made it abundantly clear he’s more interested in pandering to his neo-nazi base than being @POTUS for all Americans,” Hobbs posted in 2017.
Hobbs received backlash for the tweet in 2020, with some questioning her ability to practice impartiality as Arizona’s Secretary of State. She was sworn in to that position in 2019, after winning the election in 2018.”
https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/arizona-gov-hobbs-requested-twitter-censor-critics-post-comparing-trump
The Big Tech censorship was more of an influence on the 2020 and 2022 elections than the election fraud and voter fraud.
In the closely watched State of Missouri et. als. v. Biden lawsuit, Judge Don Willett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said that “officials appeared to practice “fairly unsubtle strong-arming” and make “not-so-veiled threats” in the vein of “this is a really nice social media platform you’ve got there, would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Damn, I missed where Willer was appointed to the 5th Circuit. I’d love to see him on the SC, but he doesn’t have right (idiotic) pedigree.
I’ll be heading out soon to race a boat from Kanehoe Bay back to Waikiki. We raced the opposite direction on Saturday. It was three hours tacking with high winds on the nose and big swells. Once we got around the east end of the island the conditions improved but working the boat was a lot like work.
Today will be the opposite conditions. Light winds and a dropped sea state. Hopefully there will be enough wind we won’t be bobbing around in the sun.
It was 76 walk on the moon degrees when the sun rose a few minutes ago with a high of 89 expected.
Enjoy your day everyone.
“Parents in Jefferson County, Colorado, claim that some school teachers were instructed on how to get around state and federal laws prohibiting schools from conducting surveys about students’ “gender identities” by their teachers union.
According to CBS, school administrators told teachers to not conduct surveys on preferred pronouns out of an abundance of caution while lawsuits on the matter go to court, but the Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA) told teachers a way around the policy.
An email sent to teachers from the union said, “If you do a questionnaire, please make it a paper and pencil activity – any digital records are more permanent and may be requested under federal law.” It added, “Make your notations about students and not hold on to the documents.”
School board member Susan Miller told the outlet, “The leadership actually provided an avenue to get around the law and basically saying it was OK.” She noted that the union, which is supposed to protect teachers, instead put them at risk of losing their jobs and licenses…”
https://thepostmillennial.com/colorado-teachers-union-instructs-educators-to-destroy-evidence-of-gender-identity-indoctrination
Ban teachers unions. They are college educated professionals, not laborers. There is no need for them to have a union.
Arrest the union leaders for conspiracy and racketeering.
I have been trying to hack through the tangled underbrush of the City Journal article ksuellington linked this morning. This was worthwhile:
As the populist academic Michael Lind recently argued, “If you are an intelligent and thoughtful young American, you cannot be a progressive public intellectual today, any more than you can be a cavalry officer or a silent movie star,” since at this point “intellectual life on the American center-left is dead.” The spirit of adventure and debate that once drove the Left has, as he wrote, “been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned,” while the mainstream marketplace of ideas is now filled with “the ritualized gobbledygook of foundation-funded single-issue nonprofits like a pond choked by weeds.”
The question is, how many of the victims of higher indoctrination recognize how tightly they have been handcuffed to left wing conventional wisdom?
Citation needed.
It’s beyond collegiate indoctrination. Colleges create a perverse worldview that doesn’t correspond with reality. The end result is, objectively speaking, moral bankruptcy.
Consider that JP Morgan refuses to do business with gun manufacturers, Christian groups, etc. They will debank you and not think twice (despite the fact that a fractional reserve bank in the 21st Century is about as ‘private’ as the post office). But, JP Morgan was intricately involved in paying off Epstein’s rape victims and laundering pedo money- even after Epstein’s conviction. This all is a statement of fact based upon the investigation by the Virgin Islands. No one is going to stop doing business with JP Morgan in the white collar world.
In jails arsonists or murderers will kill a pedophile. We all know this. It’s common knowledge. Yet, JP Morgan does business with pedophiles. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that blue collar criminals have a higher moral code than bankers and white collar workers. Only college allows you to be stupid enough to not reach that obvious conclusion.
Not the only conclusion, unfortunately.
What other conclusion can be reached? I’m seriously curious. Not trying to argue.
It’s not just that JP Morgan is doing business with Epstein, but at least one of their execs (and possibly more) were participants in that scheme.
Not to dispute the moral bankruptcy argument, though I think the killing of pedos in prison is more of expectations and ability (both physical and mental) of fellow inmates, rather than actual morality. There isn’t a whole lot of non-involved vigilantism against pedos outside of prison as far as I know.
A staggering number of “elites” were involved with Epstein island. Enough to where I think you could honestly say that the whole Qanon has more than a little validity to it. If Qanon supporters were looking to prove their contention that a group of elites were abusing children on the downlow, what would they need to prove that more than Epstein island? What WOULD constitute proof of that?
The left, which is now grounded in faith in all these institutions, cannot have Qanon being even remotely true so they viciously attack people who are merely concerned that people are victimizing children and teenagers. Powerful people, at that.
The least believable part of Qanon is that some rogue FBI agent is trying to “bring it all down”. That’s farcical.
Everything else has been proven to be correct.
If you’re a partner at JP Morgan you are, at a minimum, an accessory to pedophilia. Their compliance department flagged the Epstein transactions after he was convicted and management overruled them. And the compliance department isn’t blameless, either. They had a duty to their clients to insist on ending that relationship, but they relented almost immediately.
If some plumbing company kept a guy employed, after being convicted of pedophilia, and management was involved in hiding that fact, no one would blush at called that a pedophile company.
I just don’t see it
Gustave wasn’t aruging against that. He was simply adding to this and saying you could draw some other conclusions, as well:
Only college allows you to be stupid enough to not reach that obvious conclusion.
I agree on that point. I’m not arguing here. Sorry, I don’t write so well.
Me neither.
Moral degeneracy and ability to get away with it has been a feature of elitists throughout history.
Colleges are screwing themselves into a corner with this; ANALYSIS: Academics think a 4-year degree is everything, employers disagree
Campusreform.com, but a lot of good links showing how much the universities are diverging from the rest of the world.
Helps if I put a link in: https://campusreform.org/article?id=23817
Man Wears Mask To Let People Know He’s Terrible At Risk Analysis
“If I immediately set the expectation when I meet someone that my decisions will be devoid of rationality, it isn’t a surprise later on. Thanks, mask!”
This of course immediately conjured recollections of seeing masked and helmetless motorcyclists.
*I almost never wore a helmet.
My favorite was the guy I saw riding his motorcycle, no helmet, and a mask.
A black leather gimp mask.
Local fire district is whining about decreasing rates of volunteer firefighters but ignoring the increasing demands they place upon volunteers and the tax burden they keep increasing. Fuck em.
Colleges create a perverse worldview that doesn’t correspond with reality.
Objective reality is for chumps.
The Cave and the Light. Plato v. Aristotle- the unending debate
In the immortal words of Socrates, “I drank what?”
That’s just your truth, man.
At the end, I was wondering about a fourth Doctor Doctor Who reference. Then I saw Rimworlds and thought “Niven reference”?
This story is a prequel to Sky of Diamonds by Anderson Gentry.
I guess I need to buy Animal’s gooks.
*books*
Hey, we all need to refresh our orphans. No shame in buying used.
Fear and loathing at the auto show
Mercedes-Benz and BMW took the wraps off electric concept cars as they look to catch up with Tesla in the premium end of the market.
At the IAA auto show in Munich, Mercedes showed off the Mercedes-Benz Concept CLA Class while BMW revealed the BMW Vision Neue Klasse.
These cars are built on an entirely new platforms from the German automakers that will underpin both their EV offerings for the coming years, in what has been their most aggressive push into battery-powered vehicles yet.
——-
“This proprietary chip-to-cloud architecture represents a completely new approach for the company and will be a largely hidden yet defining aspect of all its future vehicles,” Mercedes-Benz said in a press release.
Swell. Sign me up.
The car in the pictures is hideous.
That interior… *barf*
Hideous is an understatement.
They missed a spot for view screens. The whole headliner could be a series of panels giving the driver vital information, like charging status, free trials of Ozempic, and the latest correct pronouns.
On a dark and desolate road, during a thunder storm the Mercedes suddenly stopped. Clause looked down at the dash where the warning light illuminated, “No signal.” His only choice now was to walk the 30 kilometers back to town. He diligently did so, for the good of the planet.
Remembering his left behind exit permit in the car, Clause needed to figure out a way to evade the town’s guards who checked everyone’s permission papers. Not that it would have done any good to have brought it. Without the destination stamp, his permit was invalid for re-entry and subject to immediate termination no different than if he merely tried escape. Just a few days anyways, as soon as the unfulfilled permit hit the mismatch report, the True-Up Squad would be coming for him. Clause tugged his collar tighter again his neck and turned back into the wind.
“chip-to-cloud architecture”
What does that even mean?
Built in security capabilities for “internet of things” devices. Currently the devices are too weak and/or too poorly designed to have good security, so they are easily hacked using a lot of different methods. The idea is to develop chips that have the ability to easily make a secure cloud connection with strong cryptography built in. That way device manufacturers are less likely to accidentally expose security flaws that can be exploited.
I was just going to say it is like farm-to-table wifi.
OT: Cock on open compared with Cock on close.
And I expected that would be about chickens.
Just a little under the weather
Germany is once again the “sick man of Europe,” according to Hans-Werner Sinn, president emeritus at the Ifo institute, and the challenges that poses, particularly in terms of the country’s energy strategy, could serve to benefit increasingly popular right-wing parties.
The “sick man of Europe” moniker has resurfaced in recent weeks as manufacturing output continues to stutter in the region’s largest economy and the country grapples with high energy prices. The label was originally used to describe the German economy in 1998 as it navigated the costly challenges of a post-reunification economy.
“It is not a short-term phenomenon,” Sinn told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy on Friday.
You mean people are starting to notice how pointlessly destructive left wing eco-nuttery has been?
Sinn said investor doubts about the feasibility of Germany’s sustainability goals also play into the description of the country as the “sick man of Europe.”
One target currently in the sights of the German government is becoming carbon neutral by 2045. These plans came into sharp focus as Europe looked to detach itself from Russian gas supplies following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and prices shot up.
Some described Germany’s ambitions to move away from Russian gas as “wildly optimistic,” particularly in light of the country’s climate targets.
Objective reality is for chumps. Keep clinging to your doomsday cult superstitions.
ARRRRGH! A gnat flew up my nose and it’s still moving.
I am going to shoot myself.
Chase it out with some coke.
Oh, lordy! A gnat on coke! 😳
I seriously did consider snorting some tequila up there.
I think the gnat stared into the abyss of my brain and died.
Go sniff some black pepper dust. It will make you sneeze and blow that little fucker right out.
Send in the spider.
“There was a young lady who snorted a gnat,
And that was that.”
Hopefully it’s not one of those brain eating gnats.
Or a CIA nano-bot.
That would be a gnano-bot.
HELLO,FELLOW AMERICAN PATRIOTS
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/1006065868
$4k for a snubbie, with 6 days left. 😯
Is that because it was never used?
French army, i.e. never fired, only dropped once?
A. Colt revolver
B. Nickel plated
C. How many blued Smith and Wesson J-frames can I buy with $4055?
Not just no, but hell no.
*The first thing I do when a sales pitch involves the word RARE is move on and look elsewhere.
It has 110 bids. Something weird is going on there.
$4k for a snubbie, with 6 days left.
Good gravy. Is it the gun that killed McKinley?
It is solid gold but disguised with a nickel plate.