In 1983 I was working for Stoeger Industries as a salaried Regional Sales rep, with a 5 state territory in the South & Southwest consisting primarily of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana & Mississipi. Previously I'd spent 7 years I'd in the same kind of job in North & West Texas east of I-35 for a ultra large family owned Dallas based branch, along with access to Burns Wholesale in Denver & Ellett Bro's of South Carolina inventories. All of this was owned by a Chicago Based Small Business Investment Trust, named "LaSalle St SBIT" just like Romney's infamous Corp raider "Bain Capital...only our owner was bigtime bigger ie who'd already bought the Milwaukee Braves baseball team and sold it to a guy in Atlanta.
Why do I mention any of this ? This is how I got exposed to the world of Corp Raiders and how they operate in the American Political World. In 1983 I was asked to join the annual Meeting of worldwide importers of the Nokia owned SAKO Firearms division as a guest. What an eye opener on how things really work internationally. The SAKO General Manager at that time had already progressed up the Corp ladder to be the GM of SAKO, with 2 stops as GM in Nokia owned plants in Russia. The #2 Manager had participated in the building and completion of the Egyptian Aswan Dam project, after spending 20+ years at sea coordinating Nokia's shipping interests. These were the guys who called the shots and made the final decisions....until Corporate said do it this way and not that way. ... and in the sauna they sweated just like I did.
During the trip to Helsinki I got to meet and talk to a world wide group of people with a common goal. How to sell more SAKO hunting rifles and expand the presentation to include the SAKO takeover of Tikka from the Finnish owned Machine Gun factory and meld the SAKO & Tikka brands together, and grow the Hunting Rifle business world wide. Left unsaid was any mention of what was going to expand the now much larger available production of small arms Arms for the Finnish Government. ."to get ready" for the inevitable. More on that later....
I also got to meet the young man from England who at the age of 12 had killed 3 Russian Tanks in the Budapest Uprising of 1956 I think it was that the Russians put down just like they are now in the Ukraine uprising, by hiding until the tanks rolled past him and jumped up in top of a tank with a live grenade and dropped inside the tank ....the Russians were still making attempts on his life regularly and he had a Finnish Border Guard Lt "armed keeper" with him within arms reach 24/7 as an "honored guest" of Finland.
The memory that is keeping me awake nowdays, though was of the very old gentleman who greeted us everywhere when we got off the little 12 man bus we were transported on every where we went during the week long Moose Hunt prep & required shooting range event to qualify for a Hunting License...and on the little bus there was an open case of 30'06 ammo on the passenger seat behind the driver and if we "wanted" another box of ammo for some reason, just put your "empty box" in the case and take a fresh box of ammo any time you wanted...then this Old gentleman would greet you with a huge smile as you got down the Bus's steps, shake your hand and jabber at you in Finnish while he took a round out of the new box and showed it to you as he put it in your shirt pocket. At the end the last day of the Hunt we all gathered and the Scot's with us broke out a case oAWAYSf Feel Good stuff and passed it around....until an American from Salt Lake shouted over the laughter good cheer to ask "what is this take a bullet and give it back to me stuff??? The SAKO GM called the old Gentleman up to the dirt hill he was standing on and had a quiet few minutes and both of them started to cry harder than the old man had ever cried as he put the round of ammo in a shirt pocket...and said... This Old Gentleman has fought the Russian's 4 times in his lifetime. The Last time was when after WW II the Russians declared War on Finland again in '48 and captured a 40 KM wide strip of land from the Baltic to the North Pole, taking every farm every house every cow everything anyone had ...and this old Gentleman has NEVER been allowed to see his family since 1948, and they are NOT allowed OUT of the captured Land either.
This is what is going on today in Ukcrain. Please Please Please Do Not Believe anything anyone in Russia says. Putin is KGB thru and thru. These people I knew personally & were real personal experience for me, and brought back memories of the 2 guy's I went thru Lackland with who were kidnapped by the Russians .... one in broad daylight thrown in the trunk of a East German Stasi car one Sunday afternoon and raced thru Checkpoint Charly, and the other in Azerbijan who'd gone down to the Herder's Gate to practice his local language skills with the local sheepherders when he was taken.
Puten 1st last and Always is KGB.
Ron
