Displaying posts published in

May 2020

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

MAY 8, 1945-GERMANY SURRENDERS-THE END OF THE WAR IN EUROPE

By on May 8th, 2020

On May 8, 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine during World War II.

The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark—the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany.

About 1 million Germans attempted a mass exodus to the West when the fighting in Czechoslovakia ended, but were stopped by the Russians and taken captive. The Russians took approximately 2 million prisoners in the period just before and after the German surrender.

Meanwhile, more than 13,000 British POWs were released and sent back to Great Britain.

Pockets of German-Soviet confrontation would continue into the next day. On May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself: “The age-long struggle of the Slav nations… has ended in victory. Your courage has defeated the Nazis. The war is over.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Apartheid and Coronavirus in the Middle East by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on May 8th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15979/apartheid-coronavirus-lebanon

Many Arabs and Palestinians took to social media to remind everyone that the only apartheid in the Middle East exists in an Arab country [Lebanon].

The latest Lebanese measure did not surprise those who are familiar with this Arab country’s long-standing discriminatory policies of apartheid towards Palestinians.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), “Palestinians in Lebanon cannot work in as many as 39 professions and cannot own property [real estate].”

The Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Samidoun… revealed that Palestinian refugees are “barred from 72 regulated professions, including medicine, public transit, farming and fishery.”

It now remains to be seen whether “pro-Palestinian” groups and individuals in the West will denounce Lebanon for its continued racism and discrimination against Palestinians.

Is Lebanon using the coronavirus pandemic to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?

A directive issued on May 1 by the Lebanese General Security, an agency responsible for immigration in Lebanon, bars, until further notice, the return of “foreign maids” and Palestinian refugees, even if their families have lived in Lebanon for generations. In the eyes of the Lebanese, there is apparently no difference between a “foreign maid” and a Palestinian Arab.

A Palestinian born and raised in an Arab country, in other words, is still considered by that Arab country to be a foreigner.

The May 1 directive, signed by Brigadier General Walid Oun, director of general security at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, says, “accompanying maids and people of Palestinian descent” may not board Lebanese expatriate evacuation flights. These are Palestinians from Lebanon who left the country to search for work and are now seeking to return home.

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Chinese Espionage Made Possible By Immigration Failures What visa fraud does to our national security and public health. Fri May 8, 2020 Michael Cutler

By on May 8th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/chinese-espionage-made-possible-immigration-michael-cutler/

With all of the focus on the Coronavirus pandemic other major issues. such as the immigration crisis, is being utterly ignored by the news media.

There is however, a direct nexus between failures of the immigration system and the current Coronavirus Pandemic.  China has robbed America blind of intellectual property that has included high tech research into biology, chemistry and physics. 

Indeed, Chinese espionage has become so routine across a wide array of areas including military secrets that the intelligence community has given it the sarcastic nickname of “Chinese Takeout!”

Obviously, in order to spy on America, Chinese operatives need to enter the United States.

Border security involves much more than our northern and southern borders, it also includes the vetting process conducted at ports of entry by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors and the issuance of visas at U.S. embassies and consulates overseas.

The preface of the official report 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

The Pulitzer Prize and the Corruption of History and Journalism History has been subordinated to the “passions and interests” of the present. Bruce Thornton

By on May 8th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/pulitzer-prize-and-corruption-history-and-bruce-thornton/

The Pulitzer folks have awarded their prize to the New York Times for the lead essay in its “1619 Project,” a bit of lefty agitprop so egregious that even throwback liberal American historians have ripped it to shreds. This offense comes two years after a joint Pulitzer award to the Times and the Washington Post for its brazenly partisan coverage of the Russian collusion lie cooked up by rogue clerks in the FBI and DOJ. Indeed, this bias is a long tradition for the Pulitzer. The Times’s man in Moscow, Walter Duranty, was rewarded with the prize for helping Stalin  obscure his mass murders, which suited the leftist inclinations of the Times and the Pulitzer board.

Yet this latest Pulitzer awarded for corrupting two of our esteemed and prestigious institutions is nothing new. What we have been experiencing since the Sixties is the tearing away of the last few shreds of the emperor’s stained and threadbare clothes. As a result, ideological activism has driven truth and critical thinking from both these professions.

First, we should remember that the Pulitzer Prize, like the Oscars, the Emmys, and with a few exceptions the Nobel Peace Prize, is a trade-guild marketing tool, not merit-based objective rewards for true excellence and achievement. Political and ideological preferences are branded by such awards and made into megaphones for publicizing biases for those preferences. It’s no coincidence that the Nobel Peace Prize has historically favored evangelical globalists and one-world anti-nationalists, or enemies of the West like the leftist ventriloquist’s dummy Rigoberta Menchu, and the murderous thug Yasser Arafat.  Watching the Oscars and listening to the winners’ speeches provide a seminar in left-wing platitudes and semi-literate bromides. Or look at this year’s Pulitzer Board members and you will find reporters, media executives, foundation functionaries, and university faculty all of whom are notoriously progressive.

Continue reading →
MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

What Does Michelle Obama Have to Complain About? By Kyle Smith

By on May 8th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/television-review-becoming-what-does-michelle-obama-have-to-complain-about/

Michelle Obama has had a blessed American life, but she’s all about her grievances in her Netflix documentary.

There’s a curious joy deficit in Michelle Obama’s video memoir Becoming, the Netflix documentary produced by her and her husband. As she glides from one beautiful space to another, surrounded by beautiful and famous people, with beautiful daughters and a beautiful bank account and much else to be grateful for, the viewer keeps waiting for her Flounder moment: Oh, boy, is this great!

Instead, the tone is mostly dour, pained, even somber. I suspect (and hope!) that, off-camera, the Obamas are a bit more full of joie de vivre than Michelle Obama is in this film, which is largely a litany of complaint. She says she felt so much pressure to be perfect for eight years in the White House that when it was over she let the dam burst by crying for half an hour (half an hour?) when she and her husband departed on Air Force One. She talks about the various times she feels she was targeted by racism, exaggerating what actually happened. She walks us through her press coverage, which she finds indescribably unfair and hurtful.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

COVID-19: Government’s Bad Choices and the Impact on Doctors By Keith R. Jackson

By on May 8th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/covid19_governments_bad_choices_and_the_impact_on_doctors.html

Private physicians’ offices across the country have had to furlough core staff, often with decades of service to their businesses, because of the coronavirus-induced, government-mandated shutdown.  Doctors who own these small business ventures, many of whom were on the front lines in the battle against AIDS back when it was 100% lethal, have been forced to sit on their hands at home for this pandemic.  Surgery centers, frequently the lifeline between economic solvency and bankruptcy for both private surgeons and hospitals, are lying dormant, their fixed costs still accruing.

Promised federal bailout money is not going to come close to repairing the long-term damage done by this medieval “fix” recommended by “the scientific experts.”  Those advising our leaders have provided a great excuse for the forces seeking to justify government-run health care and expand the power of an unchecked, totalitarian federal bureaucracy.  Medical practices, like many small businesses across the country, are being killed off for the cause of “saving just one more life.”  What they have done is unconscionable, poorly justified, and quite frankly, un-American.

History will not be kind to the CDC when the dust settles from this crisis.  The Communicable Disease Center exists to help us with situations just like COVID-19, pandemics being its purview.  It could be argued that having the nation prepared with accurate means of testing for novel viruses and being equipped with an adequate number of masks and ventilators would be an obvious first purpose for the agency.  Yet in the past couple of years, the agency has spent well over a billion and a half dollars for things like chronic disease prevention, health promotion, environmental health, and injury prevention.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Don’t Forget Why the Deep State Targeted Mike Flynn By David P. Goldman

By on May 8th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-p-goldman/2020/05/07/dont-forget-why-the-deep-state-targeted-mike-flynn-n389003

Now that the Justice Department has abandoned its prosecution of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, it’s important to remember what made the case of Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn so central to the Intelligence Community’s mutiny against Trump. As a reminder, here is what I wrote in Asia Times last November:

As chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, Flynn had warned that American support for Sunni jihadists in Syria had the unintended effect of supporting the new caliphate movement, that is, ISIS. Among all the heads and former heads of the 17 agencies that make up the US intelligence community, Flynn was the only one who had objected to the disastrous covert intervention in Syria and foreseen its baleful consequences. Obama fired him, but Donald Trump hired him as a top campaign aide and then appointed him national security adviser.

The Syrian debacle brought Russia into Syria in 2015; the American-backed jihad had turned into a Petri dish for Russian Muslims from the Caucasus, as well as Chinese Uighurs and a motley assortment of foreign militants. Russia had interests of opportunity, for example, a warm-water refueling station for its Mediterranean fleet, but the risk of blowback from the Syrian civil war was the most urgent motive for President Vladimir Putin’s intervention.

That is the background to the mutiny in the US Intelligence Community against the elected commander-in-chief.

Continue reading →