By Eva Bartlett, Website, 8/20/25

Grok is a crock of…

Published on Revers: Is it possible to trust Grok? Let’s explore it using the example of Donbass

Increasingly on X, people are relying on Elon Musk’s “Grok” algorithm for verification of information in posts. However, while to some this may seem a useful tool, what it is doing is reinforcing Western and allied regimes’ positions and whitewashing their crimes.

Grok draws information from dominant narratives—usually established by legacy media with its very long track record of pro-Western lies and war propaganda—to conclude whether information in a particular post is true. When it comes to matters in which the West and Israel (among others) have a vested interest in controlling the narrative, Grok sides with the claims purveyed by legacy media. Instead of providing objective, truthful, answers, it creates a propaganda loop of actual disinformation.

Thus, as was the case some days ago, Grok determined that a post of mine on Ukraine’s use of internationally-banned PFM-1 “Petal” mines against Donbass civilians was “pro-Russian disinformation” and that, “Evidence suggests PFM-1 use in Donetsk (2022) was likely Russian false flag, not Ukraine…”

This is in spite of the fact that I was back in Donetsk in late July 2022 when Ukraine fired rockets containing hundreds of these mines on Donetsk and surrounding areas. On July 30, at 9:23 pm, I wrote on my Telegram channel about a strong explosion I’d just heard in central Donetsk. An hour later, DPR journalist Georgy Medvedev wrote on his channel warning civilians not to go near the mines and not to walk on grass or areas where they could have landed. In fact, for weeks after, I walked constantly looking down at my feet and avoiding anything that was visible pavement, so tiny and difficult to see are the mines.

They are the size of an average lighter, brown or green, and blend in very well wherever they land. Even when I saw a sign warning of a mine, it was difficult to initially see them.

These high-explosive pressure mines mutilate or tear off feet and legs up to the knees, but also explode hands or animals. According to Konstantin Zhukov, Chief Medical Officer of Donetsk Ambulance Service, a weight of just 2 kg is enough to activate one of the mines. Sometimes, they explode spontaneously. If they aren’t disturbed, they can lie dormant for years.

As I wrote at the time, according to DPR Emergency services, Ukraine fired rockets containing cluster munitions, with over 300 Petal mines inside. The cluster explodes in the air, disseminating the mines widely. Due to their design, most land without exploding.

Even after sappers had cleared an area of the mines, a strong wind or rain could, and did, dislodge mines which landed on rooftops or in trees.

The mines are indiscriminate weapons which pose great danger to civilians. Ukraine signed the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, under which Ukraine was obliged to destroy its 6 million stock of the mines. However, reportedly, it still has over 3.3 million such mines.

I documented the mines, and the Emergency Services sappers’ clearing and destruction of the mines, in various regions of Donetsk and Makeevka (east of Donetsk). I wrote about them, then wrote a follow up article three weeks after the late attacks, highlighting that by that point 44 civilians had been maimed by the mines, 2 of whom died of their injuries.In November 2022, I met a 14 year old boy being treated in a Donetsk hospital after he stepped on a mine in a playground, losing his foot to the explosive.It should be noted that Ukraine first deployed these mines in March 2022, during the battles for Mariupol.As of July 9, 2025, 186 civilians have been maimed by the mines (including 11 children), three of whom died of their injuries.

*Video HERE

Grok’s dubious, very partial, Western sources

Grok’s determination that my reporting is false reads like one of the many smear campaigns I and colleagues have been subjected to, with the usual insertion of the “Kremlin disinfo” qualifier meant to discredit my writings. In fact, Grok drew from the Wikipedia smear entry on me, citing Wikipedia’s incorrect claim that I’ve lived in Russia since 2019, when in fact I moved to Russia in 2021.

Who did Grok deem credible? The very partial Western NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), which in February 2023 surprisingly issued a report about Ukraine’s use of the mines in Izium, but (unsurprisingly) not on Ukraine’s use of the mines in the Donbass.

Grok cherry picked aspects of the HRW report to whitewash Ukrainian culpability in the Donbass, adding claims from various Western media agencies (DW, France 24, Reuters) to accuse Russian forces themselves of dropping the mines on Donbass cities.

An admission buried in the HRW report—which Grok did not highlight—was that it,“has not verified claims of Russian forces using PFM mines in the armed conflict.”None of Grok’s sources were anywhere near Donetsk to investigate Ukraine’s deploying of the mines. 

Similarly, some months ago I came across and refuted Grok’s repeating of the legacy media 2022 claims of alleged “mass graves” outside of Mariupol. I had actually gone, in April 2022 and in November 2022 to each of the three sites named in media reports and found no mass graves, but normal, functioning, cemeteries, with individual plots and in the case of the largest, Stary Krim, a chapel and a funeral ongoing at the time I was there, a recently-deceased elderly man being buried in the cemetery.

None of the sources cited in the media’s baseless accusations were anywhere near the three cemeteries which they dubbed mass graves.

The issue is not even about this algorithm’s discrediting of my reports (reports which other journalists find credible), but that it is using the same clearly partial sources that legacy media uses to justify or whitewash NATO and allies’ crimes.

As I’ve written previously, HRW is one of many Western-funded NGOs with a history of downplaying or ignoring crimes committed by Western governments or proxies. HRW, Amnesty International, and many more oft-cited supposedly neutral bodies have very clear ties and allegiance to Western governments.

Citing them as credible, as noted previously, creates a propaganda loop of disinformation that aligns with Western objectives around the globe. This isn’t accidental, it is by design.

Some on X posit how Grok functions not actually AI, not independent. For example:

“Grok barely resembles AI, fwiw. It’s essentially a Google-like search engine (similarly perverted by the security state) filtered through an LLM (large language model)
to give it the veneer or gloss of AI. It is not independent, and its results can be predetermined. It only mimics intelligence.”

While Grok does seem malleable, if enough people contribute non-Western talking points (as was the case on the thread in question, with Grok eventually admitting my reporting was factual), its go-to programming is to recycle Western narratives, particularly anti-Russian ones, including parroting Western think tanks calls for regime change in Russia.

There is some room for hope: increasingly more people are calling out Grok as the algorithm mouthpiece for the West that it is.

Note: Typos are in the original article.

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 8/25/25

Something has changed in the war in Ukraine. Kyiv hit the Soviet-era Druzhba oil pipeline that ships the black stuff from Siberia to Budapest – and they hit it three times in two weeks. The pipeline is now out of action for at least five days, according to the Russian side.

This is new on two counts. The first is that while Ukraine has been hitting Russian energy assets since the drone war started in 2023 with drones that have ever increasing range, due to fuel constraints they have been able to carry much more than 50kg of explosives. As most of Russia’s refineries were hard-topped in the Cold War and more recently have been covered with netting, all these drones could do is start some superficial fires that were usually put out in a day.

Now they are doing serious damage. The fire at the Novoshakhtinsk refinery has been blazing for five days now and the Russians are unable to put it out. The key Baltic oil terminal port at Ust-Luga was also hit by what looked like a very big explosion this weekend, according to video posted on social media.

Some 10% of Russia’s refining capacity has been hurt according to reports and production has plummeted while petrol and diesel prices have soared fuelling a growing fuel crisis. Ukraine has never been able to do this much damage before.

What is going on? The second thing is have started to see reports that these refineries are being hit by drones “and missiles”. I don’t recall reports of Ukrainian missiles being used that are that powerful or could fly that far before. There has been a lot of reports about the new FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile in the last week after an AP camera crew were shown the factory that makes them.

These are what Ukraine has been calling for since the start of the war. They can fly 3,000km which would put even the Omsk refinery in range, one of Russia’s biggest refineries, and carry around 1,250kg of explosives. That will do the job.

Where did these missiles come from? According to the AP report they have been developed in only nine months and Ukraine will be able to make seven of them a month by October. That is still a tenth of what Russia is producing missile-wise, but you only need one of them to land on Omsk to cause Russia a major headache.

Personally, I think it’s highly likely that the Flamingo was developed with EU help, or even that the parts are being manufactured in the EU and shipped to Kyiv for assembly, but this is pure speculation at this point. The previously announced Ukrainian new missile, the Palyanytsia, is a hybrid drone-missile, took 1.5 years to develop, is still not in serial production and can only fly about 700k with a payload of 20kg of explosives. The Flamingo is in an entirely different league.

It shouldn’t be surprising if the Ukrainians have had some covert help from the Europeans as that would also fit with the general drift away from simply supplying Ukraine with arms and money and instead helping them build up their own defence sector that is already well under way with the so-called Danish model.

Also, the timing is suspicious. Nine months ago, is when Trump took over and it was clear from the start that he would wind down US support. In facto anyone that took over was going to winddown Ukraine’s support, as long as the Republicans control the House. This weekend US Secretary for Defence Pete Hegseth said that he was putting a de facto ban on Ukraine using long-range missiles, which he can do as all the Western-supplied ones, including the Franko-British Storm Shadows, use US satellites for guidance.

Ukraine’s western partners have never liked the idea of Kyiv hitting Russian oil assets. The Biden administration refused to grant permission until last November and even then with many caveats. German has refused point blank to send its powerful Taurus missiles which are very similar in profile to the Flamingo thanks to the West’s “some, but not enough” policy of managing any escalation with Russia.

But as the West begins to walk away Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has reached a “screw it” moment and Bankova appears to be increasingly taking things into its own hands and started to blow up refineries.

Interestingly, Kyiv played with the idea of targeting Druzhba last August when it sanctioned Russian oil company Lukoil effectively barring it from sending Hungary oil via Druzhba. But it was done very delicately in an effort not to piss off the European Commission (EC). Only Lukoil was sanctioned, allowing the state-owned Rosneft to replace its quota so the volume of oil flowing was not affected. The move was as much a signal to Brussels as well as testing the water.

This August’s attacks are much more serious and also come at the peak of Russia’s driving season. There are no half measures here. Kyiv is trying to destroy Druzhba and screw what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen think.

The attacks – three in a row – have sparked a war of words with a bunch of letters and snarky comments being traded on social media over the weekend between Budapest, Brussels and Kyiv. It remains to be seen what comes out of this, but the European fuel market could be as hard hit as the Russian. And what if oil prices spike to over $150? That will also cause problems for Trump and the Republicans that face midterm elections next summer and will not be happy with gas at over $5 at the pump then. In fact they will do everything they can to avoid that, which bodes ill for Washington’s relationships with Bankova.

Final point is that China has offered to send peacekeepers to Ukraine if there is a UN mandate. This comes on top of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying very clearly that Russia has to be involved in the security guarantees if any are offered. Zelenskiy himself also said that Russia needs to offer “ironclad” security guarantees to Ukraine if there is going to be a ceasefire – using Russia’s own words who demanded “ironclad guarantees” of Ukraine never joining Nato just before the war started.

So far only France and Britain have offered to send troops, but as we reported this idea is unworkable. The main problem is: what will the rules of engagement be? There is no way you can allow British troops shoot at Russian troops and if they can’t shoot what use are they? However, bringing in non-Nato peacekeepers is a viable option. And BRICS nations would be acceptable – to Russia at least.

More interestingly, Lavrov (and implicitly China) are suggesting a wider deal that goes beyond the Ukraine. Lavrov gave his famous “new rules of the game” speech in February 2021 that called for the West to stop treating Russia like a child and “punishing” it for its “bad behaviours” with sanctions – something that the Developed World doesn’t do to each other. (Israel’s current unpunished genocide in Gaza being a glaring example.)

Lavrov has also obtusely called for a general reset in pan-European security arrangement, which can be included in Putin’s vague references to dealing with the “root causes” of the war. That is generally assumed to mean no-Nato for Ukraine, but in 2008 aft4er Dmitry Medvedev was made president, the first thing he did was travel to Brussels and propose negotiating a new pan-European security deal. It would have created a council to manage relations and both Russia and the West would have offered each other new post-Cold War security deals. Ironically, this would have included Ukraine and would have prevented the war that started in 2022. The whole thing would have been done under the umbrella of the UN, which has just come up again.

Personally, I think that this is what Putin is holding out for, in some form. The Kremlin has already made it crystal clear that it wants to restart all the Cold War missile agreements, which is part of the same new global security guarantees that Russia is looking for. But we are still a long way from even broaching any of these topics. Lavrov is complaining loudly that Russia is being excluded from the current security guarantees talks and is suggesting any meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin is dead in the water before it starts without this conversation.

By Brian McDonald, Substack, 6/26/25

Everyone thinks they understand the Budapest Memorandum. Almost no one actually does.

In the manner of things that get loudly misremembered in the trenches of modern discourse, the documents have acquired the aura of a sacred covenant. It’s promoted as a solemn, signed promise by the United States and the United Kingdom to leap to Ukraine’s defence, guns blazing, should its borders be crossed. It never was. And if we are to speak of memory, we might as well begin with the facts.

When the Soviet Union folded like a tired accordion, three newly independent states awoke to find themselves the accidental custodians of nuclear warheads: Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. But these were warheads without a trigger. The launch codes remained in Moscow. The rockets could no more be fired from Kiev or Minsk than from Kansas or Manchester.

The Budapest Memorandum—actually three documents signed individually in December 1994—was not a mutual defence pact. It was not NATO-lite. It was an exchange: these three post-Soviet states would join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear nations. In return, the US, UK, and Russia would respect their independence and existing borders. That was the word. Respect. Not defend. Not fight for. Political assurances were given, not legal guarantees. There were no clauses demanding action. No provisions for retaliation. It was a gentleman’s agreement in an age increasingly short of gentlemen.

This point matters. Because nearly every time a public figure invokes the Budapest Memorandum—be it a billionaire with a Twitter account or a former diplomat with a selective memory—they speak as if it were a treaty inked with blood. It was not. There was no enforcement clause. No punishment for violation. No military obligation. And the very countries now waving the memorandum as a banner have, at times, treated it with the same ceremonial reverence we might reserve for a cocktail napkin.

By 2006, the United States and Britain had already sanctioned Belarus in response to its elections—a move that, strictly speaking, ran contrary to Article 3 of the memorandum, which called for non-interference in economic affairs. Washington later admitted in 2013 that the document was not legally binding, after another round of penalties were imposed on Minsk. The memorandum was a political understanding, not a military contract. The sanctity of the agreement, such as it was, had already been punctured before Crimea ever came into the frame.

There’s a detail the television panels never quite get round to. Back in ’93, when the Soviet state was being smashed into 15 pieces, Moscow did something no accountant would recommend. It gathered up every rouble of the USSR’s foreign debt—its own share and everyone else’s, too—and said, “We’ll carry it.” That meant Ukraine’s bills, Belarus’s, Kazakhstan’s, the lot. Even the tsarist IOUs from before the First World War were hoisted on to Russia’s back. Call it vanity, call it house-proud tidying after a drunken party, but it was a staggering assumption of liability.

The consequences were brutal. The load nearly crippled the new federation. By the summer of ’98, with oil in the doldrums and the bond traders circling like gulls over a trawler, Russia defaulted. Kiev, Minsk and Almaty, starting life debt-free, kept their credit intact; Moscow, having traded the launch codes for a mountain of invoices, got a pat on the head, a permanent seat in the Security Council—and, soon enough, sermons about economic virtue from the same capitals that had watched it sink.

No one’s hands are spotless here. The Budapest handshake was handled casually by every signatory long before tanks ever entered the conversation. Each party saw in it what suited them, and discarded the rest.

This isn’t to diminish Ukraine or hold Russia as beyond reproach. We’re not here to litigate the rights and wrongs since 2014. The Budapest Memorandum was never a shield. It was a handshake struck in the afterglow of the Soviet collapse. But time, as ever, proved the harder bargainer. The story, if we’re going to tell it at all, should be told straight. It was a Cold War coda—a quiet understanding among powers eager to close one chapter and get on with writing the next.

It has since been twisted into a rallying cry. Invoked by those who haven’t read it—or hope you haven’t. Misunderstanding and misrepresentation have done the rest

The Budapest Memorandum was a diplomatic accommodation, not a promise to fight. All parties have breached it, to varying degrees. And those who cry foul today might do well to examine how the ground was prepared, not just how it was trampled.

In the end, it may be fitting that the document is so widely misunderstood. It was born of ambiguity, signed with smiles, and upheld only so long as it was convenient. That, too, is a kind of legacy—not of honour or law, but of geopolitics.

Geopolitics, like football, is rarely won by the pretty pass—but by who’s still kicking shins and hacking clearances in the ninety-fifth minute. But myths endure for a reason—and the Budapest Memorandum is now less history than incantation.

Russia Matters, 8/29/25

1. A U.K.- and France-led “coalition of the willing” has pledged postwar protection for Ukraine, but European officials admit to Financial Times that European troop deployments would require support by the U.S.The latter has already agreed to provide “strategic enablers,” including intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, command and control and air defense assets, but its consent is contingent on commitments by European capitals to deploy tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine, according to the officials interviewed by Financial Times. Even with fighting showing no signs of subsiding, Western capitals have sketched out a rough post-war plan that would involve a demilitarized zone, patrolled by neutral peacekeeping troops from a third country agreed by Ukraine and Russia. A far more robust border behind that would be defended by Ukrainian troops armed and trained by NATO militaries, according to the plan as reported by Financial Times. However, European plans to send thousands of troops into Ukraine¹ post-peace deal face skepticism from the public and parliaments, especially in Germany, where 56% oppose such deployments, according to The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, French support for sending troops to Ukraine hinges on a formal peace accord, and most Britons favor peacekeeping, but not direct conflict, according to The Wall Street Journal.
2. Russia is demanding Ukraine cede all of Donbas in the east, but would be willing to freeze the conflict in the south along current front lines, Turkey’s top diplomat Hakan Fidan said in an interview with TGRT Haber on Aug. 28. At peace talks in Istanbul earlier this year, Russia’s negotiators demanded Ukraine pull out of not only the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, which comprise the Donbas, but also from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts² entirely as a precondition to ending the conflict, according to AFP. However, during the latest, third round of negotiations in Istanbul on Aug. 23, the Russian and Ukrainian parties presented concrete positions for the first time, according to Fidan as reported by RBC.ua. These positions were then brought up for discussion during the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and following this summit, Moscow scaled back its demands, Fidan claimed. “That was when we saw the beginning of the end,” Fidan said, according to Korrespondent.net. Fidan acknowledged it would be difficult for Ukraine to give up its territory, including heavily fortified terrain in the east that could leave Ukraine vulnerable, according to AFP.³ Interestingly, responding to Fidan’s revelations, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov did not explicitly reject them, but called for negotiations to be discreet. Such a reaction could be interpreted as a confirmation of Fidan’s claims.*
3. Trump has privately fumed in recent days that his high-profile attempts at Ukraine diplomacy have yielded nothing, one senior administration official and one former official who stays in close touch with the White House told The Atlantic. Trump has also directed some frustration at Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, believing that they are being unrealistic in their demands and need to accept that Ukraine has to lose some territory to end the conflict, the current and ex-officials told the magazine. “He just wants this over,” the senior official told the Atlantic. “It almost doesn’t matter how.”
4. In the period of July 29–Aug. 26, Russian forces gained 180 square miles of Ukrainian territory, which marks a 24% decrease from the 237 square miles these forces gained in the period of July 22–Aug. 19, 2025. Comparing shorter periods, such as the past week to the preceding week, shows that in the period of Aug. 19–26, Russia gained 48 square miles of Ukrainian territory (roughly two Manhattan islands), which marks a 92% increase from the 25 square miles Russian forces gained in the period of Aug. 12–19, according to the Aug. 27, 2025, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. This week saw Russian troops capture two villages in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time, according to The New York Times and DeepState.  
5. A Russian attack on Kyiv overnight on Aug. 27–28 caused what Ukrainian media described as record damage across the Ukrainian capital, leaving at least 23 dead and affecting 33 locations with nearly 100 buildings damaged. Zelensky said the strike was the second-largest attack since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, Reuters reported. “We have an anti-record—damage in all districts of the city,” head of the Kyiv City Military Administration Tymur Tkachenko told media. During the attack, Russian forces launched 629 drones and missiles against Ukraine. Ukrainian air defense and electronic warfare units managed to destroy or suppress 589 targets—including 563 drones and 26 missiles. Nonetheless, two of the missiles struck within 50 meters of the EU mission, according to The Washington Post, Financial Times, Euronews, RBC.ua and Korrespondent.net.
6. With a nod from the White House, U.S. and Russian officials have recently discussed potential energy deals, including Exxon Mobil’s return to the Sakhalin-1 project and U.S. purchases of Russian LNG and nuclear icebreakers, according to The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Meanwhile, Russian fertilizer giant Acron increased U.S. sales by 1.7 times to $380 million in early 2025, making the U.S. its fastest-growing market, according to Kommersant. These developments, alongside ongoing U.S. imports of Russian HEU, raise questions about Washington’s efforts to justify secondary sanctions on Russian trade. Despite these questions, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said this week that India needs to stops buying Russian oil if it wants newly-enacted U.S. tariffs on Indian imports to drop from 50% back to 25%. Data by the U.S. Census bureau shows that U.S.-Russian trade in January-June 2025 totaled $ 2,780 million compared to $ 2,117.5 million in the same period last year, rising by 31.3%.

You may have noticed that I’ve been cross-posting some interesting articles by retired trial lawyer (and friend) Sylvia Demarest. At the request of some of her Substack readers, she has written a more detailed account of her background which is reprinted below. – Natylie

By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 7/24/25

Introduction –A Repeat from Part 1–or scroll to Part 2.

I started this Substack in April of 2025 to discuss why a citizen’s movement was needed to reform our economic system. I wanted to share some of the knowledge and observations from my life, a life during which I was privileged to live the promise of the American Dream. I say this because, like so many people my age who had grown up in rural America, I went from 18^th Century poverty as a young child, to 20^st Century professional success as an adult, during a “Golden Age” of opportunity in the United States. As time went by the country changed, and the opportunities I had were taken away. I wanted to write about how and why this happened, and what could be done about it.

When I started this Substack adding my name did not seem important, and the first essays were posted with just the Substack’s name. When other sites began to repost the essays, I was asked to include my name. Now subscribers have asked me to share some of my life and professional experiences. I am happy to do so. I started this Substack to build a community for reform. Building such a community requires trust. Building trust requires transparency. This essay explains who I am, where I come from, and what I worked on during my legal career. I am too old to lead a populist movement, but I can help educate people who can lead such a movement. I sign these essays as a guest writer because I plan to post other essays by guest writers.

I am a retired female trial lawyer. I graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1969. I was born in August of 1944 to a French Cajun family of farmers, trappers, and hunting guides, I grew up in small rural community in Southwest Louisiana south of Lake Charles called Grand Lake. I was the first generation to speak English when I entered 1^stgrade. My family was poor but stable, my parents had a 3^rd grade education. Even though we were poor, I do not feel I was deprived, quite the contrary. I treasure my background, my family, and my heritage. My early childhood was the 18^th Century part of my life until around age 7 or 8. I remember when we got electricity, a paved road, and running water. I may have been in Law School by the time my older brother installed indoor plumbing. The local school I attended was rural, and very small. There were 13 people in my high school graduating class. My education in the basics was not the best, as you can probably tell by reading my essays. My primary focus before college was reading and sports.

Part 2: College, Law School, and Practicing Law

California dreaming

I had an older sister and an older brother. They were both on their own by the time I was born. My older brother’s name was EJ. When I was around 10, he and his wife built a home near my parents. EJ was a caring brother, always very concerned about my welfare. He did a lot of things for me I did not know about at the time. My sister’s name was Flora Belle. She had polio as a child and limped as a result–but her limp was so elegant you really did not notice. She and her husband also built a house next to my parents. Belle was interesting, funny, and very intelligent. We would visit for hours talking about the world and politics.

EJ worked in the oil fields. At some point he and his family moved to California, to a town called Coalinga where he continued to work in the oil industry. Coalinga stands for “coaling station A” on the transcontinental railroad.

College was free in California at the time (not today!) so EJ offered to let me live with his family and attend the local junior college, that way I could put off having to borrow money. The week after I graduated from High School in 1962, I left for California on the Sunset Limited–a train from Lake Charles to Los Angles.

Unfortunately, living with my brother’s family did not work out. I realized this and tried join the military. Joining the military was a common way for low-income kids to escape poverty. I got turned down and advised that my psychological profile was not consistent with military discipline! I eventually left my brother’s home. I did not want to ask my parents for money or try to continue to live with my brother. My college history professor offered to let me live with his family, but I decided to move to the bay area and find a job. No one knew where I had gone or how to reach me for several months. The reality of life in a big city made me realize that if I was going to have any success in life, I had to get back to Louisiana and go to college.

I found my way back to Lake Charles, called my Dad from the Greyhound Bus station, and asked him to come pick me up. His first words were: “We thought we would never hear from you again.” I had been stubborn and irresponsible, and had unnecessarily worried people who cared about me, but the experience had grounded me in the reality of the world. It kept me in school until I finished and was licensed to practice law. Meanwhile, I knew, if I failed, I could always go home.

I returned to Louisiana in the Summer of 1963. I worked as a waitress to save money so I could go back to college that spring. I was working as a waitress when I watched Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech in August, and when it was announced that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. In college in Coalinga, my history class had followed the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. Now, JFK had been murdered.

The University of Southwest Louisiana at Lafayette

I enrolled at the University of Southwest Louisiana at Lafayette (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in the Spring of 1964. I was completely ignorant of college life, and without much money. I worked in the college cafeteria serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to earn money.

My first task was to figure out how to fit in. I flipped through the college annual and saw the debate team and Professor Roy Murphy. I had no experience or training in public speaking, but I knew I could talk, so I took Speech 101 with Prof Murphy. When I gave my first speech, Prof asked me to stay after class. He invited me to join the debate squad. I also got a job in the speech department, doing odd jobs for the professors.

We went to nationals that year. The debate team took a train all the way from Lafayette to Washington State, across the west, and through the Columbia River valley to Tacoma Washington. It was my second long train trip and I had seen a lot of western USA.

Through Prof Murphy and the debate team, I discovered my natural talent for public speaking. This led to my decision to become a lawyer and attend the University of Texas School of Law, I entered law school in 1966 without a college degree under the pre-law program. I graduated and was licensed in 1969. Prof Murphy told me he did not have to teach me how to debate—as they say, I was a “natural”.”

A Short Summary of My legal career

Because of my age and my sex, I experienced a lot of “firsts” in my career. In law school I was the first female teaching quizmaster teaching legal advocacy, the first female Hildebrand Moot Court Finalist, and the first female on the National Moot Court Team. This is because there were very few women in law or in law school at the time. Today’s enrolment is very different; women make up half the student body.

As I was finishing law school at UT, I decided I wanted to be a trial lawyer; a field of law women did not go into at the time. This turned out to be a very wise decision. The situation is very different today; there are literally thousands of great female trial lawyers in Texas and across the US. This was not the case in 1969.

My first job was as a “Reggie” under the Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship Program. The Fellowship was in poverty law and lasted 2 years. We went through a training program at Haverford College, which was disrupted by complaints from minority Reggie’s. After that, the program operated out of Howard University in DC.

The Reggie program focused on analyzing local and state legal issues that negatively impacted poor people and figuring out a way to address those issues through litigation. This meant I was in court, filing cases, arguing motions, and trying cases, almost immediately. At the conclusion of my Reggie, I became a staff attorney at the Dallas Legal Services Foundation in Dallas, now part of North Texas Legal Services. When the executive director position became vacant, I ran for and was elected Executive Director in July of 1973. I served for 3 years until 1976 managing a program of 20 lawyers.

During my legal services career I worked on, and tried, several civil rights cases, involving desegregation, single-member districts, equal education, and freedom of speech, to name just a few. In 2023 the Dallas Bar Association gave me and Edward Cloutman the Martin Luther King Justice Award for the civil rights work we did during the 1970’s.

After my legal services days I went to work for a local trial firm, the Law Offices of Windle Turley PC. I worked on and tried product defect cases including several post-crash fire cases involving automobiles and 18 Wheeler Trucks. I was head of the Products Liability department and served on the firm’s board of directors. I was a frequent speaker and writer at continuing legal educations seminars. I also wrote a law review article on The History of Punitive Damages in Texas based on my work in the Maxey v. Freightliner case.

I started my own firm in 1983 and practiced law there, with several partners, until I retired from the practice of law several years ago. In 1983 I was elected President of the Dallas Trial Lawyers. Over the years, I have been named a “Legend of the Law” by the Litigation Section of the Dallas Bar Association, and a “Legal Legend” by the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association.

During my legal career, I had the opportunity to work on many significant cases at the trial and appellate level. I will discuss just one in this essay. Does vs. Father Rudolph Kos and the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. This case was tried many years ago, and a verdict was reached in July of 1997. It remains the largest verdict against the Catholic Church for the sexual abuse of children by Catholic Priests. Several individual cases had been filed, and they were consolidated for trial. Although we each represented our own clients, I had the pleasure of trying this case with my mentor, Windle Turley.

As I worked on these abuse cases I realized that no one was documenting the crisis or working to preserve important documents and information. I decided to begin a priest-perpetrator database and to collect as many relevant documents as possible. I was fortunate because my legal assistant, Patricia McLelland was a librarian and database expert. Over the years we collected information on the crisis and the priests who had been publicly accused of abusing children. At the conclusion of the Kos case, I donated that database to Bishop Accountability along with 100 bankers boxes of documents. BA continues this important work.

BA plans to donate the archive to a university. On the 20^th anniversary of the Kos case the Texas Law Book did a review of the case and published several articles. One was about the database Trish and I put together: Sylvia Demarest’s Gift of Disturbing Data

I have also traveled extensively, including to Russia. I volunteered for many years with the Center for Citizen Initiatives and its extraordinary founder, Sharon Tennison. I traveled to the USSR in 1988 as part of a legal group. I also traveled to Russia with Sharon, including visiting Crimea in 2017 and meeting with the Crimean Parliament. As a result of my travel, my reading, and research, I learned a great deal about Russian history, as well as geopolitical issues around the world: including Russia, Europe and West Asia. Sharon Tennison spent her life working to improve US/Russia relations. Her book, “The Power of Impossible Ideas: Ordinary Citizens’ Extraordinary Efforts to Avert an International Crisis”, discusses her important work and is highly recommended.

My entire career was spent representing ordinary people against entrenched interests. I was fond of saying–“My job is to assail the citadels of power and privilege on behalf of the poor and the powerless”. As a civil rights attorney I sued public institutions that discriminated based on race or ethnicity. As a private attorney I sued corporations over negligence and defective products, doctors and hospitals over medical negligence, and the Catholic Church over the abuse of children by Catholic Priests. I continued my childhood reading habit. I own an extensive library, keep up with current events, and read dozens of books a year.

My Dad and the local bank

My Dad was an honest good-hearted man. Over the years he had developed a relationship with the local bank, borrowing and repaying small sums of money as the need arose. My twin brothers were eight years younger than I. One brother got my Dad to co-sign a note for a double wide trailer. My Dad co-signed thinking he was pledging one acre of land, but after he signed, the bank, without telling my Dad, added a pledge of all the family property, including my parent’s home.

My brother defaulted on the note and the bank filed to foreclose on the property. It was in the mid 1980’s and I was practicing law in Dallas. I am not licensed in Louisiana, so I hired a local lawyer, Randy Roach, to contest the foreclosure. Randy saw that the pledge had been added after my father signed the note, and counter sued to cancel the pledge. The case went to the Louisiana Supreme Court where we lost a 2-1 decision.

My Mom had not been part of the case, and Louisiana is a community property state. I advised the bank that I would litigate again, this time on behalf of my Mom. The bank settled. Had I not been able to contest the foreclosure my parents would have been homeless. Banks did this to people all over rural America.

Conclusion

I started this Substack because I am a populist in the tradition of the 18^th Century populists who focused on economic fairness. I practiced law as a populist because I always represented ordinary people against powerful interests. To learn more about the history of populism, read my essay The History of Populism and Populist Policies in the US.

I hope this essay is helpful to anyone interested in learning who I am, why I am a populist, and why I write these essays. Please share, comment, and get your friends to subscribe to this Substack. Thank you for reading this brief autobiography.