[APRIL 1, 2016] During the 1930s, as Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany, the man who would turn out to be his most implacable foe was drowning — in debt and champagne.

In 1936, Winston Churchill owed his wine merchant the equivalent of $75,000 in today's money. He was also in hock to his shirt-maker, watchmaker and printer — but his sybaritic lifestyle, of a cigar-smoking, horse-owning country aristocrat, continued apace.

Stories of Churchill's special relationship with alcohol are legendary. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was his host at the White House during World War II, was astonished "that anyone could smoke so much and drink so much and keep perfectly well."

Churchill started his day with whisky, but it was champagne that was his truest passion — and now, for the first time, we get a glimpse into the extent to which that passion imperiled his already threadbare bank balance.

In a magnificently researched new book titled No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money, David Lough, a retired banker who read history at Oxford University, recounts the unbelievable story of the former prime minister's fiscal excesses. After years of sifting patiently through Churchill's bank statements and bills, Lough, a skilled financial gumshoe, has amassed a trove of material that he deploys to great effect in his book.

We learn of Churchill's ruinous stock market speculation circa 1929 and the inheritances he squandered; his gambling rousts at the casinos in Biarritz and Monte Carlo; the thousands of pounds he sank into the upkeep of Chartwell, his beloved country mansion in Kent; and the unceasing torrent of cash he poured into maintaining a first-rate cellar.

To get an idea of Churchill's annual alcohol consumption, here's what he ordered in 1908, the year he married Clementine:

• nine-dozen bottles and seven-dozen half-bottles of Pol Roger 1895 vintage champagne, plus four-dozen half-bottles of the 1900 Pol Roger vintage
• six-dozen bottles of St Estèphe (red) wine
• five-dozen bottles of port
• seven-dozen bottles of sparkling Moselle (white) wine
• six-dozen bottles of whisky
• three-dozen bottles of 20-year-old brandy
• three-dozen bottles of vermouth
• four bottles of gin

Lough never ceases to marvel at how such a prominent public figure got away by living his life well over the overdraft and alcohol limit — though he is more bemused than judgmental. (Far more scathing is Christopher Hitchens, who, in an excellent essay for The Atlantic, compared the prodigal and overindulged Churchill of the '30s to Shakespeare's glutton Falstaff, "so surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane." )

READ MORE: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/01/472459579/hitler-couldnt-defeat-churchill-but-champagne-nearly-did

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

WHAT FOLLOWS HAS NOT BEEN VERIFIED BUT NEEDS TO BE LOOKED AT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pWo64H0-78

At 5:47 in the morning, the lead vehicle of an Israeli convoy stopped moving. The road in front of it no longer existed. What happened in the next 4 minutes and 20 seconds killed 300 Israeli soldiers — the worst single engagement loss the IDF has suffered since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
14 armored vehicles. 340 soldiers. A road that drone coverage showed as completely clear. And a trap that Hezbollah had been building for over two decades.
In this video, we break down exactly how Hezbollah executed this ambush, why Israel's most advanced surveillance technology failed to detect it, what the 40-kilometer tunnel network beneath southern Lebanon actually is, and what 300 dead means for Israel's war strategy, its politics, and the entire Middle East.
The Latani River is still 14 kilometers north of where that convoy stopped. Netanyahu has not withdrawn the order to reach it.
This is not over.

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951

Brett Wilkins

A new Israeli law mandating the execution of Palestinians convicted of certain offences has drawn condemnation from the UN and human rights groups.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has urged Israel to repeal legislation legalising the hanging of Palestiniansconvicted of terrorism-related killing of Israelis – a law critics contend will not apply to Israelis who commit similar crimes.

The law  passed by the Israeli Knesset states that Palestinians must be hanged within 90 days if convicted of nationalistic killings in a military court. While the legislation does not allow pardons, it gives judges discretionary power when it comes to sentencing Israeli citizens convicted of similar crimes, and observers say it’s highly unlikely that any Israeli would ever be hanged under the law.

Palestinians and their defenders have also warned that the law could open the door to mass executions, including of anyone found to have killed Israelis during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, for which Israel retaliated with an ongoing assault and siege that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.

“Trials for crimes related to October 7 are supremely important, but they must not be anchored in discrimination,” said Türk. “All victims are entitled to equal protection of the law, and all perpetrators must be held accountable without discrimination.”

Other human rights defenders also condemned the new Israeli law and called for its repeal.

“The Israeli parliament’s adoption of a racist law authorising the hanging of Palestinian prisoners is the very definition of apartheid,” the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement Tuesday. “Even the South African apartheid government never adopted a death penalty law so explicitly racist.”

Taking aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza – CAIR continued, “The Netanyahu regime is completely out of control because our nation continues to bankroll its crimes, from the de facto annexation of the West Bank to the genocide in Gaza, to the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, to the occupation of Syria, to the illegal war with Iran that it triggered, to the closure of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.”

“Congress is not just failing to act, it is actively advancing more military support while treating that US taxpayer funding as automatic, even as these abuses escalate,” the group added. “Every member of Congress – especially Democratic leaders of the House and Senate – must condemn these crimes, including the racist execution law, and announce their opposition to any further military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime.”

A 2024 ruling by the  International Court of Justice in The Hague – where Israel is also facing a genocide case brought by South Africa in response to the US-backed war on Gaza – affirmed that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended.

More than 9,500 Palestinians are currently locked up in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women, according to advocacy groups. Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders say detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect behind bars, causing  many deaths.

Former prisoners as well as Israeli staff and medical personnel  say they have witnessed torture at prisons including Sde Teiman, the most infamous of Israel’s lockups, with victims ranging from children to the elderly.

Israeli physicians who worked at Sde Teiman described widespread serious injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces recounted rapes and sexually assaults by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.

Republished from Common Dreams, 31 March 2026

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/a-war-crime-un-rights-chief-urges-immediate-repeal-of-israels-new-death-penalty-law/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.