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On the tribulations of an expatriate in Europe
Saturday, February 21, 2026
The Great Banquet
Friday, February 20, 2026
The Quiet Hero Who Never Stopped — Billy Waugh
In the jungle near the Laotian border in 1965, Billy Waugh lay bleeding where he fell. Bullets had ripped through his body. His head. His legs. His torso. North Vietnamese soldiers moved past him, stripped him of his clothes and weapons, and left him exposed in the undergrowth. Naked. Wounded. Alone.
Men usually died there.
Billy Waugh did not.
He pulled himself forward inch by inch. Every movement tore open gunshot wounds. Blood mixed with dirt and leaves. Insects crawled across his skin. Breathing hurt. Staying conscious hurt more. Still, he kept moving. For hours, he dragged himself through the jungle until somehow, against every rule of war and medicine, he lived.
When he finally made it out, doctors pieced him back together and delivered the verdict. His fighting days were done. His body had taken too much damage. He had earned the right to go home and stay there.
Billy Waugh listened politely.
Then he ignored them.
War had already shaped him long before Vietnam. He joined the Army in 1948, barely out of his teens. He fought through Korea while others were settling into ordinary lives. When that war ended, he did not look for comfort or stability. He chose harder ground.
In the mid fifties, he joined the Green Berets. Special Forces suited him. The silence. The endurance. The understanding that success often meant no one would ever know what you did. By the early sixties, he was operating with MACV SOG, a unit so secret it barely existed on paper.
Their missions crossed borders the United States officially never crossed. Laos. Cambodia. Deep jungle patrols where capture meant torture or execution. No public records. No ceremonies. Just the work.
The ambush that nearly killed him did not slow him down. Over the course of his military career, Billy Waugh was wounded eight separate times. Eight Purple Hearts. Eight clear chances to walk away. Each time, he chose to return.
He also helped pioneer high altitude parachute insertions, jumping from extreme heights and opening low to avoid detection. Today, it is standard practice. Back then, it was experimental and unforgiving. He learned it the hard way.
Eventually, age forced him out of uniform. But retirement never fit him.
In 1977, he joined the CIA.
For the next twenty years, he worked in places the military could not openly go. Fragile governments. Violent networks. Conflicts that required deniability. In the early nineties, the agency sent him to Sudan to track a man most Americans had never heard of.
Osama bin Laden.
Billy Waugh found him in Khartoum. He photographed him. Mapped his routines. Identified his associates. Long before the world knew the name, Waugh had already put a face to it. Around the same time, he also helped track Carlos the Jackal, contributing intelligence that led to Carlos’s capture in 1994.
Still, there were no headlines. That was understood.
Then came September 11.
As the United States prepared for war in Afghanistan, the CIA began assembling teams to operate in mountains where cold, altitude, and terrain were as dangerous as any enemy. Billy Waugh volunteered.
He was seventy two years old.
The agency hesitated. The conditions were brutal. Younger men struggled to keep up. Waugh insisted. He knew the enemy. He had chased bin Laden years earlier. He could still do the job.
They sent him.
In Afghanistan, he carried his gear like everyone else. He slept on frozen ground. He operated alongside men half his age. Korea. Vietnam. The War on Terror. One lifetime had not been enough.
Billy Waugh died in 2023 at the age of ninety three.
There was no grand public reckoning of his service. There could not be. Much of what he did remains classified. Many missions will never be named. Many lives saved will never be counted.
That is the bargain of that kind of service.
He never chased praise. He never waited for permission to stop. He went where he was needed because he believed someone had to.
Billy Waugh stands for a kind of hero most people never meet. The ones who endure quietly. Who accept that history will only ever tell part of the story.
They do not ask to be remembered.
But they should be.
Why wasn’t Prince Andrew arrested?
love me some royal tea 19h
He just was, thirty minutes ago.
They were building a case against the Andrew formerly known as Prince. He was arrested this morning in England on the charge of “misconduct in office”.
From 2001 to 2011, Andrew served as the UK's Special Representative for International Trade and Investment. And he appears to have given out confidential information to a rather shadowy figure in America better known as Jeffrey E. who definitely did not hang himself in his jail cell in 2019…
You can say a lot about the British, not of all it positive, I’m sure. Every society and every government has its rotten apples, and every family has it’s black sheep. Andrew surely is the blackest of sheep ever to bleat in anyone’s family tree, ever. It’s been centuries since any royal has screwed up so badly that he got kicked out of his residences and stripped off his princely titles, his charitable causes and all royal organizations attached to him. The only thing Andrew was allowed to keep was his first name and his medal from the Falklands War.
Andrew just got arrested. The wheels of justice do not always move fast, but they DO move. Meanwhile in America, the entire network of creeps being dismantled methodically around the world remains free — perks of electing the biggest creep of all as your President, I suppose. Andrew Mountbatten was not so fortunate; King Charles has turned his back to his wayward brother, as have the government and all other royals.
Footnotes
Does blood pressure medication have to be taken forever?
Studied at University of Michigan Jan 26
I was placed on blood pressure tablets six years or so ago after my routine medical checkup indicated that my blood pressure was alarmingly high at 165/105. I was given a prescription by my doctor and told that I would have to take the tablets for the rest of my life.
I'm talking about feeling like the whole world was crashing in around me at that exact point in time. I was only in my early forties at the time, and the thought of being dependent on pills forever made me feel like a failure. I mean, I didn’t think about it a whole lot back then, just got the prescription and began taking the pills like I was supposed to be doing. However, after reading many different reports of people being able to cure their high blood pressure naturally, I began to think if I was really stuck on these pills forever or if there was indeed a different way.
The fact is, while some individuals definitely do need to be on medication for hypertension, others can minimize, if not completely avoid, a need for medication. Well, this is not necessarily the same for everybody.
Of course, aside from my personal frustration over the diagnosis, whether or not you really need medication forever would depend on what is actually causing your high blood pressure to begin with. If it is genetics, kidney diseases, or damage to organs, then indeed, it would require long-term medication. If it is lifestyle changes, if it is your obesity, your lack of exercise, or your drinking habits, you could actually manage to lower your blood pressure enough to successfully stop your medication, under medical supervision, of course. By the way, it is absolutely not advisable to stop your blood pressure medication on your own, as the rebound effect is quite dangerous.
I have been made aware of different ways in which one can address the real causes of hypertension with the help of an article that was recommended to me by a functional medicine doctor. This article has literally enabled me to decrease my medication by seventy-five percent and to get my blood pressure completely into normal range with lifestyle changes alone.
Well, I no longer just accept the fact that I am on these medications for good or that medications are the only answer to hypertension, etc. And instead, I have made it a point to address this issue or condition through various facets while, at the same time, working hand-in-hand with my doctor. This is in addition to losing some weight, which is known to greatly lower blood pressure in most people, eating a healthy diet full of potassium and magnesium while avoiding sodium, as well as regular exercise, which is good for the cardiovascular system, reducing stress through meditation and adequate sleep, giving up drinking, which was a huge contributor to my hypertension, getting regular blood pressure monitoring, etc. In addition to all this, there is still a big difference between understanding that, sometimes, medication is a lifesaver when you need it, but it doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence if you are willing to really make some significant lifestyle changes. Work with your doctor, really, and you would be amazed at just how your body heals itself.
True protection comes from kindness, not confrontation
Posted by 17h
Lisa Marie always considered herself a daddy’s girl, and for her, those words held profound weight. To Lisa, Elvis Presley wasn't the towering legend the rest of the world saw; he was simply her father, a man whose love felt absolute and safe. When he passed away in 1977, Lisa was only nine years old—far too young to realize how rare and fragile that kind of protection truly was. Yet, the memories he left behind remained vivid, serving as quiet proof of his deep devotion.
In her memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie recalled a specific moment that stayed with her forever. She had spent the night at a friend’s house nearby, and the next morning, an older neighbor began speaking to her cruelly. The woman mocked her father, dismissing him with sharp, hurtful words that stunned Lisa. It was the first time she had ever heard anyone speak poorly of the man she adored, and it left a wound she didn't yet know how to heal.
When Lisa told Elvis what had happened, he didn’t brush her feelings aside. He listened intently and then asked a simple question: "Where does she live?"
Shortly after, he drove Lisa straight to the woman’s house. Elvis stepped out of the car looking unmistakably like himself—calm, composed, and dignified. Lisa watched from a distance as they spoke. What began as a tense encounter ended in something entirely unexpected: the woman softened, asked for an autograph, and even posed for a smiling photograph with him.
For Lisa, that moment became a defining image of her father. He didn’t respond with anger or a desire to humiliate. Instead, he chose presence, dignity, and love. He showed her that protection doesn’t always require confrontation; sometimes, it means standing tall and letting kindness disarm cruelty. In her eyes, Elvis was never just the King of Rock and Roll. He was the man who showed up when she needed him most, making her feel safe in a world that could often be loud and unkind.
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