(Athenia was the first British ship sunk in World War II. The details in this report are incorrect.

(To the best of my knowledge only the Japanese used poison gas in combat in World War II.)

(The Sagaing would be sunk on Apr. 10, 1942 by Japanese aircraft.)

(Restricting communications is at the foundation of totalitarianism and still is.)

Update Jan. 13, 2020: To provide a modern example of how dangerous restriction of communication is we have to look no further than the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. Companies like twitter, facebook and google were accused of deliberately censoring, deleting, blocking or otherwise not allowing reports that indicated the son (Hunter Biden) of the democrat presidential nominee (Joe Biden) was involved in shady, multi-million-dollar business dealings with the communist Chinese government. It was also alleged that Joe Biden himself and other members of his family were to benefit a great deal from these financial arrangements. If this is true, then Joe Biden is a compromised individual. Credible evidence was presented in the form of a laptop computer, cell phone records, text messages and personal testimony from one of Biden's associates, but these companies immediately blocked this story from being published on their platforms. This included removing access to their accounts until they removed the story. In other words, you will obey our orders or else.

The print and television media were no better, none of the oldest networks (CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CBS, NY Times and NPR) covered the report. In fact, NPR, which is partly funded by the U.S. taxpayer, refused to cover the story at all saying "there is no story here."

Only after the election was over did the media begin to cover the story. It was learned only days after the election that Hunter Biden was under at least two federal investigations. By Nov. 9th, just six days after the election, reports of a poll showed that between 10% and 17% of voters said that they would NOT have voted for Biden had they known the details of the story that was suppressed by the media and the big tech companies. If that was true, the outcome of the U.S. election would have been a clear Biden defeat.

I was inspired to write this today because of a stunning admission by twitter (Jack Dorsey) about restricting communications. The twitter public policy account tweeted today (Jan. 12, 2020) the following;

"Ahead of Ugandan election, we're hearing reports that internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps.

We strongly condemn internet shutdowns-they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the openinternet."

It continued in a second tweet;

"Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections."

This absolutely stunning admission clearly shows that Jack Dorsey and twitter knew that what they were doing by suppressing information about a candidate, would manipulate the electorate and the outcome of the election. It is an admission that they knew they were deliberately interfering with the U.S. election. The tweet was right, suppressing information is HUGELY HARMFUL, furthermore it is outright DANGEROUS and DESTRUCTIVE. The Nazis restricted not only phone service, but what could be published in the media. They also completely controlled what was taught in schools. It was this kind of power that helped the Nazis pollute the minds of a generation and brought the world the Holocaust. It is what current dictators like Un-yung Kim in North Korea, Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran (who is allowed to have an unrestricted twitter account) and Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela do.

(Russia's sharp answer to London's note.)

(French attacks west of Völklingen remain under fire.)