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HISTORY

Growing Up Under Mao :Book Review by Wolfgang Kasper

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/04/growing-up-under-mao/

When the Cultural Revolution raged in China in the 1960s, I was not very interested. Periodic violent repression and maltreatment of non-conformists was what communist regimes did. My attitude changed in the late 1970s when I met some Chinese academics who visited Australia. They told harrowing tales of their personal suffering in the Cultural Revolution. This was much more brutal than the suppression of uprisings in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Poland (1956, 1980) and Czechoslovakia (1968). The Great Leap Forward (1959 to 1961, when an estimated 20 to 45 million were starved) and the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1977, when around 1.5 million were murdered) were orders of magnitude above the periodic ructions in Eastern Europe. In 1981, on a lecture tour around China, I met people then in their seventies and eighties who had recently been restored to leading positions. They were resolutely determined that these atrocities “must never be allowed to happen again”. Clearly, the Mao-era convulsions sprang not only from Marxist totalitarianism but also had roots in China’s history.

Summary accounts of these events of course circulated in the West. But where were the detailed personal stories that added colour and substance? Had Chinese authors written “literary digestions” of the events? In recent years, fewer and fewer mention the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, as the generations that lived through the terror are thinning and new worries have taken over. Are these horrors, and the lessons from them, slipping into oblivion?

Why Sun Yat-Sen Was An American Thinker By Laura Lam

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/why_sun_yatsen_was_an_american_thinker.html

In modern Chinese history, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) holds a unique place. He led the revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1911; devoted his life to championing an independent and democratic China; and was a revolutionary leader and a man of vision. Sun remains the only political leader honored by both mainland China and Taiwan. What’s fascinating about Sun, but little known in America, is that his birthplace, formal education, medical training, religious faith, and political values made him a true American.

Sun’s elder brother concealed the fact that Yat-sen was an American. His family would claim that he was born in China because a Chinese identity was crucial to his mission for China’s future but contemporaneous records show that he was an American citizen by birth. The National Archives at San Francisco verified on April 29, 1904, that Sun had US citizenship. The American Institute in Taiwan also confirms that Sun Yat-sen was born in Hawaii.

When Sun was 4 years old, his parents took him back with them to China. Then at age 12, he sailed on a British steamship back to Hawaii, to live with his elder brother. Sun received his secondary education at the ʻIolani School under the supervision of the Church of Hawai’i.

At 18, Sun wanted to convert to Christianity. He was baptized in Hong Kong by Rev. C. R. Hager, an American missionary. He began studying Western medicine at the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese. At 22, he joined a group of revolutionary thinkers called the Four Bandits. They founded the Furen Literary Society, which emphasized discipline, purifying the character, and learning from the West. In 1892 Sun graduated with a medical doctorate degree from the University of Hong Kong, a globally respected educational establishment in the British territory.

In 1894, Sun wrote a petition to the Qing Viceroy of Zhili, Li Hongzhang, presenting his ideas for modernizing China but was refused an audience. That same year, he founded a nationalist party in Hawaii, the Revive China Society. It would later be renamed the Kuomintang.

Points that Putin Apologists Miss by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18415/putin-apologists

The second charge related to NATO’s alleged rush to included Ukraine, or what [Professor John] Mearsheimer calls “reckless expansion”, provoked Putin is equally absurd.

For almost two decades, Russia made no objection to NATO enlargement that included former members of the Warsaw Pact. Under Putin, Russia even concluded a deal for cooperation with NATO on issues of mutual security with the Helsinki Accords as historic reference. In 2002, Putin met NATO Secretary-General George (Lord) Robinson and quipped that “maybe it is time NATO invited Russia to become a member.”

In NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit, both Georgia and Ukraine expressed the desire to apply for membership but were quietly told not to submit formal applications. The undeclared reason was the persistence of irredentist problems both had with Russia. Putin interpreted that as a rebuff to Kiev and Tbilisi by NATO and invaded Georgia, snatching South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

What would Putin do if China invaded Russia to regain control of territory that was once Chinese?

If we accept that what once belonged to one state can never belong to another, Crimea must be handed over to Turkey as successor to the Ottoman caliphate….

Who do you think is to blame for the war in Ukraine?

For the Blame-America-International the answer is simple: the culprit is the United States.

The Ethnic Cleansing of the Pandits of Kashmir By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/the_ethnic_cleansing_of_the_pandits_of_kashmir.html

In Vivek Agnihotri’s recent film, The Kashmir Files, frenzied crowds of Muslims chant Raliv, galiv, chaliv! (Convert, leave, or die!) as Hindu Pandit families cower in their homes. Bands of Islamic militants gun down security personnel and walk into Pandit homes to loot, rape, and murder. Wearing Indian army uniforms, they walk into Pandit villages and refugee camps, trick the residents by saying they must move to a safer location, then line them up and shoot them.

The film is set in Kashmir in the early 1990s. By then, the Pandits had long been reduced to a minority—about 140,000, or three percent of the population—in the beautiful Kashmir valley, their homeland since at least the fourth century BCE. Since the late 1980s, Islamic militancy, in the guise of a freedom (Azadi), movement gained momentum. As Pakistan-backed militants unleashed a campaign of mass murder, rape, and gory atrocities such as sawing a woman alive, nearly 100,000 Pandits were forced to flee. Agnihotri composes some of the shocking events of that exodus into a unified story that has left audiences in India gasping—and angry that a compromised media never gave this ethnic cleansing due coverage.

Clausewitz, Russia, and Ukraine The Russians may have learned again what history teaches: that those who plan to win a short war often end up losing a long one. By Mackubin Owens

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/05/clausewitz-russia-and-ukraine/

What can we learn about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine from a long-dead German who wrote during the time of the Napoleonic Wars? A great deal, it turns out. 

Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian “philosopher of war,” had much to say about the timeless nature of war. He contended that although the character of various wars may differ, the fundamental nature of war remains constant: a violent clash of opposing wills, with each side seeking to prevail over the other. Despite the claims of Clausewitz’s detractors, technology has not negated his insights. For confirmation, we need look no further than the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

While Clausewitz’s most famous aphorism is that “war is the continuation of policy by other means,” perhaps the observation most applicable to Putin’s decision to “roll the iron dice” against Ukraine is this from On War: “the first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.”

As the war drags on, it seems clear that Putin has failed on that count. He apparently envisioned a short war, characterized by a coup de main, the rapid seizure of Kyiv and the replacement of the Zelenskyy government with a Kremlin puppet. This was the model that the Soviets executed during the invasion of Afghanistan in 1978. For a number of reasons, also identified by Clausewitz, the current effort failed. 

As Clausewitz taught, war is not linear. It is not a predictable phenomenon occurring in a deterministic, mechanistic world. Rather, war is a highly complex interactive system characterized by chance, “friction,” unpredictability, disorder, and fluidity. As such, it cannot be subjected to precise, positive control or synchronized, centralized schemes.

Chabad’s Ukraine Mission The story of the Jews plays an outsize role in the country’s history and present. By Dovid Margolin

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chabads-ukraine-communism-ussr-tsar-de-nazification-russia-invasion-hasidic-movement-jewish-community-repression-persecution-antisemitism-refugee-11648745664?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

History has been a battleground between Russia and Ukraine for years, and the story of the Jews has been part of that fight. This can be heard today in Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric about “de-Nazification” or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s exhortations, amid Russian bombing, to remember Babyn Yar’s murdered Jews. But the past is more than a backdrop for geopolitical maneuvering.

The founding of the Hasidic movement by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760) in what is today western Ukraine revolutionized Jewish life. And Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson—the Rebbe, or the seventh leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement—was born in Ukraine 120 years ago and later helped spark Judaism’s post-Holocaust religious revival.

The Rebbe was born in Mykolaiv on April 18, 1902, to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and Chana Schneerson. His maternal forefathers had been the city’s chief rabbis since 1854. During a 1905 pogrom, his mother hid in a cellar with other women, whose children’s terrified screams risked attracting the anti-Semitic marauders outside. Years later, she would recall her 3-year-old son soothing the other children.

In 1908 Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was elected chief rabbi of what is now Dnipro. There the future Rebbe celebrated his bar mitzvah while helping his parents care for Jewish World War I refugees forcibly expelled from the Russian Empire’s western provinces. But Czarist persecution paled in comparison with the destruction of Jewish religious and communal life under communism.

What Real Economic Warfare Looked Like Sanctions against Russia over Ukraine are mild compared with Britain’s effort against Germany before World War I. Nicholas Lambert

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-real-economic-warfare-looked-like-russia-ukraine-world-trade-great-britain-11647637729?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has accused the West of waging economic warfare. Many in the West have agreed, celebrating the supposedly unprecedented nature of Western sanctions as evidence that the West isn’t dead yet. But these claims on both sides are overwrought. There are precedents: The U.S. government froze the assets of Japan’s central bank in July 1941. And we could go back further still, to a time when the world knew better than it does today what this kind of warfare could achieve.

The only previous period when the world economy was as globalized as it is now was in the early 20th century, before World War I. Then as now, advanced industrial nations depended on access to the global trading system for sociopolitical stability. Globalization was characterized by high volumes of international trade, driven by cheap oceanic transportation and facilitated by cable and wireless communications and sophisticated financial instruments.

These made possible long-distance supply chains and just-in-time ordering (then known as “hand to mouth”). The system lowered costs and reduced consumer prices, but it was fragile. If an economic shock occurred, its effects were bound to propagate swiftly throughout the entire system. All of this should sound familiar.

Britain, the hegemon of the day, had a uniquely powerful capacity to turn the propagation of shock to its advantage. British companies dominated the infrastructure of the global trading system: international financial services, shipping and telecommunications. Taking what would now be called a “whole of government” approach, the British government realized the strategic opportunity latent in this dominance well before 1914 and planned accordingly.

Purim Guide for the Perplexed 2022: Yoram Ettinger

Purim 2022 will begin in the evening of Wednesday , March 16 and ends in the evening of Thursday , March 17
Purim 2022 will begin this evening of March 16 and ends tomorrow evening. There is no one better to explain the relevance of this Jewish holiday than my friend Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger. rsk

1. Purim is a Jewish national liberation holiday – just like Passover and Chanukah – which highlights optimism, commemorating the transformation of the Jewish people from subjugation to liberty. It is celebrated seven days following the birth and death date of Moses, who is a historical role model of liberty, leadership and humility.

Purim is celebrated (on March 17, 2022) at a time when the relatively cold and stormy winter shifts into the relatively warm and pleasant spring.

2. Remembrance is at the core the Purim holiday, and the Scroll of Esther – which narrates the Purim saga – is also named The Book of Remembrance.

The aim the hero of Purim – Mordechai who became the chief advisor to the King of Persia – was to alert the assimilated Jewish community of Persia, that forgetfulness and detachment from their Jewish roots lead to oblivion, while the systematic nurturing of remembrance of historic roots is the foundation of productive action, and a prerequisite to growth, security and respect by fellow human beings.

The pre-Purim Sabbath is called The Sabbath of Remembrance, commemorating the deadly threat of the Amalekites, who aimed to annihilate the Jewish people upon deliverance from Egypt.

Commemorating deliverance from lethal threats, aims to avoid wishful-thinking and dwell on a realistic view of the world, which is replete with threats.

Furthermore, the main events and personalities of Purim are connected to major Biblical milestones.  For example, Queen Esther – the Purim heroine -was emboldened by the legacy of Sarah the Matriarch, and the deliverance of the Jews of Persia by Mordechai was inspired by the legacy of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, and by the determination to rectify the flaws of King Saul.

Ukraine-Russia Is Grayscale, Not Black and White Perhaps the BRICs are the last line of defense against the New World Order Bill Hennessy

https://www.hennessysview.com/p/ukraine-russia-is-grayscale-not-black?token=

We’ve been hearing about the New World Order since 1991. President George H. W. Bush declared the purpose of Desert Storm was to implement that new world order. He did not provide details.

Klaus Schwab did. “By 2030, you will own nothing and be happy about it.”

The New World Order is about surrendering your life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness to experts. You won’t have to worry about a thing. There will be no wars because the New World Order won’t allow wars. There won’t be crime because no one will have anything to steal. There won’t be rape because there won’t be sex because the drugs and surgeries will make us all sterile and frigid. Where will babies come from in the New World Order? That’s not your concern—now, go back to your Instagram feed like a good little boy.

Sometimes I wonder if a few of the world’s countries are trying opt out of that New World Order. A few countries like the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China.) Together, those four countries represent about half of humanity. Throw in chunks of Africa, and they’re the majority.

Yet, China, Russia, Brazil, and India hardly share a common worldview. They’re very different in the ways the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden are the same. What we call the “Western World” is really the remnants of the Catholic World. Though all the countries of the Western World are now semi-officially atheist and anti-Christian, their historical cultures, their legal systems, their protocols, their languages all derive directly from the Church.

These formerly Christian countries were, by and large, the ones responsible for the New World Order and all its precursors: the League of Nations, the United Nations, NATO, and, even, the UN. Some of us suspect the New World Order is really just the Medieval Church world minus God. Or, rather, that ancient world, but with the creature in charge instead of the Creator. And that’s terrifying. Man without God is nothing but a predatory animal with nuclear weapons. We’d be better off letting dogs run the place.

[Aside: the Catholic Church’s hierarchy is more New World Order than Old World Order these days, too. If forced to choose between the Social Kingship of Christ and Klaus Schwab’s worldwide ant farm, the pope and his department heads would take the first flight to Davos.]

Putin’s ‘De-Nazification’ Claim Began With Marx and Stalin Anti-Semitic myths have long been a staple of communist ideology and Soviet disinformation.By Juliana Geran Pilon

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-de-nazification-claim-began-with-marx-and-stalin-world-imperialism-russia-soviets-communism-11647032625?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Vladimir Putin’s pretext for war against Ukraine—to “de-Nazify” a democratic country led by a Jewish president—would be preposterous were it not resting on a myth long a staple of Soviet disinformation and ideological warfare.

The rationale harkens back to the centuries-old caricature of the greedy Jew, Shakespeare’s Shylock, recycled by Karl Marx in his 1844 essay “On the Jewish Question.” Claiming that “the God of the Jew is money,” Marx, himself a Jew, blamed capitalist exploitation on greed, specifically the Hebrew variety.

Decades later, as fascism joined Nazism, Marxists consigned both to the last stage of capitalism and history. Come the revolution, the Marxists reasoned, when communism abolishes property and thus greed disappears, so will Judaism. That explains in part why many communist Jews in Russia abandoned their religion and traditions.

But that apostasy wasn’t enough for Joseph Stalin, who never trusted his Jewish comrades, notably his principal rival, Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein ). In the 1930s, Stalin found the perfect rationale for killing his opponents and escalating internal repression: The “traitors” were in league with “world imperialism.”

This neo-Marxist narrative persisted and Mr. Putin, a KGB colonel turned billionaire, is using an updated version against Ukraine. Here’s a brief history.