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HISTORY

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Whittaker Chambers through the Eyes of Rebecca West By Peter Baehr *****

By on April 9th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/04/20/whittaker-chambers-through-the-eyes-of-rebecca-west/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

West understood more clearly than anyone the allure of Communism for educated Westerners

Bolshevism’s appeal to Western intellectuals is a mystery we still struggle to explain. Why did artists who despised patriotism show a larger loyalty to Russian chauvinism? Why did writers defend a regime that repeatedly imprisoned, tortured, and killed writers? In short, why did intelligent people who lived in free countries worship at the altar of despotic states? Few thinkers studied this enigma more carefully than the British critic Rebecca West (1892–1983).

That is not an achievement we associate with her name. Rebecca West is more likely to be recalled for The Return of the Soldier (1918), an innovative psychological novel; or for Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), that grand bio-travelogue of Yugoslavia on the cusp of war. Her reports on the Nuremberg trials, and the post-war trials of British fascists, also continue to find readers, especially among students of journalism. West’s writings on Communism, by contrast, lie unread, unsung. Many of them sparked controversy in her own day, and are well worth revisiting in ours.

In articles, book chapters, and book reviews spanning six decades, she returned to the allure of Communism for educated Westerners. (Its attraction for militant members of the industrial working class was no real puzzle, she said, not least because Marxism deified the proletariat.) Reviewing the second volume of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago for the Sunday Telegraph, West bitterly recalled that “25 years ago a large part of the Western European and American population of intellectuals were, with disgusting single-mindedness, pimping for Stalin.”

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A Letter From and About Lombardy Salvatore Babones

By on April 5th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/a-letter-from-lombardy/

Lombardy is ground zero of Italy’s coronavirus crisis. One of the richest regions in Europe, it is home to Italy’s financial capital, Milan, also a world fashion capital, which may be how Lombardy caught the coronavirus. Clothes that are designed in Milan get manufactured in China. Lots of people travel back and forth to make that happen.

Lombardy is, of course, named for the Lombards, the marauding German tribe that conquered Italy in the late 500s. The original Lombards ruled Lombardy for around 200 years, until losing it to Charlemagne in 774. They soldiered on in southern Italy for much longer, in fact until 1077, when they were finally defeated by the Normans. Yes, those Normans.

Eat your heart out, 1066. While William ‘the Conqueror’ was busy subduing a poor, remote, semi-barbarous island in the North Sea, his upstart rival, Robert Guiscard, took possession of the rich, cosmopolitan urban centres at the crossroads of the Mediterranean. William got cold, grey London. Robert got sunny Naples and the Amalfi Coast.

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How Isaac Newton Turned Isolation From the Great Plague Into a “Year of Wonders” Kerry McDonald

By on March 31st, 2020

https://fee.org/articles/how-isaac-newton-turned-isolation-from-the-great-plague-into-a-year-of-wonders/?utm_source=ntnlrvw&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=nationalreview_partnership

In 1665, “social distancing” orders emptied campuses throughout England, as the bubonic plague raged, killing 100,000 people. Isaac Newton, a 24-year-old student from Cambridge, was among those forced to leave campus and return indefinitely to his childhood home.

College students around the world left campus this month, unsure when they would return and what daily life would look like until then. Forced to leave their friends and classmates behind and return to their childhood bedrooms, young people, who on average are less impacted by COVID-19’s dire health effects, may understandably feel angry and resentful. Free and independent, with their futures full of possibility, these students are now home and isolated. It can seem wholly unfair and depressing. But the story of another college student in a similar predicament might provide some hope and inspiration.

Isaac Newton’s Quarantine Experience

In 1665, “social distancing” orders emptied campuses throughout England, as the bubonic plague raged, killing 100,000 people (roughly one-quarter of London’s population), in just 18 months. A 24-year-old student from Trinity College, Cambridge was among those forced to leave campus and return indefinitely to his childhood home.

His name was Isaac Newton and his time at home during the epidemic would be called his “year of wonders.”

Away from university life, and unbounded by curriculum constraints and professor’s whims, Newton dove into discovery. According to The Washington Post: “Without his professors to guide him, Newton apparently thrived.” At home, he built bookshelves and created a small office for himself, filling a blank notebook with his ideas and calculations. Absent the distractions of typical daily life, Newton’s creativity flourished. During this time away he discovered differential and integral calculus, formulated a theory of universal gravitation, and explored optics, experimenting with prisms and investigating light.

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EDUCATION, HISTORY Comments turned off

American Historians Present Jihadi Terrorists as Western Allies By Raymond Ibrahim

By on March 30th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/american_historians_present_jihadi_terrorists_as_western_allies.html

Considering that Muslims have at times allied with Europeans, sometimes even against fellow Muslims, why present Muslim attacks on Europe throughout history as ideologically driven — as jihads (“holy wars”) against the infidel?  Why not see them all as generic wars?

This is the main point of an apologia being leveled against my book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.  Thus, weeks before my recent lecture at the U.S. Army War College, another speaker was brought in to present an “alternative view.” That speaker was John Voll,* professor emeritus of Islamic history and past associate director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.  (This center was “gifted” 20 million dollars from Prince Alwaleed — a Wahhabi who suggested that the 9/11 attacks were based on America’s position “toward the Palestinian cause” — for the express purpose of improving Islam’s image in the West.)

According to the War College’s advertisement:

In contrast with the well-known story of Muslim-Christian military conflict, less well-known is the long history of Muslim-Christian alliances and cooperation, even in times of conflict.  Voll will address risk of misunderstanding when the history of clashes between Islam and the West is viewed in broad generalizations.  Voll will focus his discussion on alliances and conflicts in the modern era[.]

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La Corona: John Donne Shows Us How Prayer and Faith Can Fight the Virus By David Solway

By on March 28th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/la-corona-john-donne-shows-us-how-prayer-and-faith-can-fight-the-virus/

In response to the deluge of articles, reports, blogs, vlogs, news items, panel discussions, and press briefings that confront us at every turn regarding COVID-19, we apprehensively follow the prescriptions and advisories intended to combat the pandemic. We wash our hands five times a day, we practice “social distancing” (a new term that has entered the lexicon), we hunker down at home, we go into quarantine, we put our wavering hopes in hydroxychloroquine, and we hoard, hoard, hoard though the shelves are now as bare as they perennially were and are under communism. And we worry, too, that the cure may be worse than the disease as financial markets tumble, businesses close, unemployment skyrockets and the supply chains are indefinitely disrupted.

Aside from the various cautionary practices daily recommended and instructions regularly issued, personal and collective prayer has also come to be recognized as an antipathogen. Pope Francis called on followers to pray for the suffering. A National Day of Prayer has been organized in the U.S. to allay the disaster that has befallen us. “No matter where you may be,” said President Trump, “I encourage you to turn towards prayer in an act of faith.” Some theologians and no doubt laypersons believe that the Lord’s wrath has been visited upon a decadent and corrupt society, a modern version of Sodom and Gomorrah threatened with the viral equivalent of “fire and brimstone,” which prayer, contrition, and repentance may serve to mitigate.

I have nothing against prayer if it leads to introspection, humility, and personal strength to withstand the trials that afflict us and others, but prayer must be accompanied and supplemented by benign, determined, and virtuous action. The only way to find safety in Zoar (Genesis 19: 22-23) is through profound social and cultural change to overcome our moral decay. Our society indiscriminately slaughters its unborn. Such a society cannot find favor in the eyes of the Lord; consequently, the vast and lucrative abortion industry that thrives in the nation needs to be ended. Those seeking abortions should be subject to counseling and to medical intervention only in cases that are critically pressing.

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FOREIGN POLICY, HISTORY Comments turned off

Lessons from History: The Reagan Legacy by Peter Huessy

By on March 23rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15746/reagan-nuclear-legacy

Even if Reagan believed the Soviets would never fire a long-range missile at the US — which he certainly did not believe — what about the long-range missile threats against the United States from China? Certainly, given such threats, the United States had the right to build strategic missile defenses, making any deal to forgo missile defenses with the Soviets an absurd proposition.

Even worse, what was described as “arms control” in the SALT 1 and 2 treaties was just an agreement between the Soviets and the United States largely to build-up US nuclear arsenals as it was already planning to do even without the arms treaties.

Reagan left an open window of consensus to 1) modernize the US nuclear deterrent, 2) seek future arms control that includes limiting all nuclear weapons, including China’s, and 3) deploy more robust missile defenses especially in the near term and refuse to negotiate away America’s current and future missile defense capability.

If these three “Reagan” factors can be preserved, the US may indeed remain safe from nuclear conflict. As these policies keep the US safe, hopefully its leaders will realize how well Reagan’s policy of “peace through strength” worked.

President Ronald Reagan envisioned a future with a highly survivable and modernized nuclear arsenal, markedly lower warhead numbers reduced through verifiable arms control, and the eventual deployment of robust missile defenses. The goal? To vitiate a nuclear-armed adversary’s ability to disarm the USA through a massive nuclear strike and to defeat any small or limited attacks from rogue states or terror groups.

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America’s Forgotten Epidemics Long before Covid-19, deadly infectious diseases were common in the U.S.—until science conquered them By  David Oshinsky

By on March 13th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-forgotten-epidemics-11584113203?mod=hp_lead_pos10

It may have been the high point of America’s fragile love affair with medical science. “SALK’S VACCINE WORKS,” screamed the nation’s headlines on April 12, 1955. “POLIO IS CONQUERED.” An insidious childhood disease that came like clockwork each summer during the middle years of the 20th century, killing thousands and crippling many more, would be all but eradicated in the U.S. within a single generation.

Rarely, if ever, had a scientist received the instant adulation that awaited Jonas Salk. Tributes piled up, including the Congressional Gold Medal, awarded previously to the likes of Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh and General George C. Marshall. The Eisenhower White House circulated a memo suggesting a Rose Garden ceremony for maximum political gain: “We’ve [got to] show that the president is just as interested as [Franklin D. Roosevelt] in polio…to take away the perennial Democratic thunder.” Yet those who witnessed the event were touched by its simple humanity. “No bands played and no flags waved,” wrote a reporter who had followed Eisenhower for years. “But nothing could have been more impressive than this grandfather standing there and telling Dr. Salk in a voice trembling with emotion, `I have no words to thank you. I am very, very happy.’”

New vaccines soon followed—for measles, mumps and rubella. Coupled with earlier laboratory miracles, including the introduction of antibiotics like penicillin and streptomycin, Americans saw a huge jump in their life expectancy, driven by the precipitous decline of infectious diseases. The war against germs, it appeared, had become a rout.

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Sham Justice, Redux: Why the Deal of the Century will fail, and Israel must act Unilaterally… by Gerald A. Honigman

By on March 13th, 2020

http://www.geraldahonigman.com/blog/2020/03/13/sham-justice-redux-why-the-deal-of-the-century-will-fail-and-israel-must-act-unilaterally/

To better understand why “The Deal of the Century” hit a very-predictable obstacle, let’s turn the clock back a bit…

Not having to yield anything whatsoever in utter rejection of anyone else’s dreams and rights in the region, on November 29, 2012, Arabs simply had their own one-sided vision of justice–which is no justice at all–endorsed by most of the rest of the world at the United Nations…the same body which passed the infamous “Zionism Equals Racism” resolution in the ‘70s.

Very little has actually changed since then either. Arabs and Muslim (i.e., Arabized) Turks, who have massacred, outlawed scores of millions of other native peoples’ language and culture (Kurds, Amazigh/Kabyle/“Berbers,” etc.), and so forth still continue to get free passes in too many circles (especially academia) while the Jew of the Nations–Israel–and the national liberation movement of the world’s most oppressed people, Zionism, continues to be exposed to endless hypocritical vilification.

Arabs timed that 2012 event so that the date fell on the anniversary of the November 29,1947 United Nations’ vote to partition what was left of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine, after Arab nationalism–in another of its many permitted varieties–was already awarded almost 80% of the total area in 1922 (“Transjordan”), into one Jewish and a second Arab state.

Obviously disappointed, Jews nonetheless accepted the ’47 partition plan (at almost the same moment in history that the Indian subcontinent was being divided between Muslim Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, with similar population exchanges as well)–even though their state would emerge on a mere 12% of the original post-World War I Mandate’s territory. On a world globe, Israel appears as a mere fleck adjacent to the over six million square miles of territory Arabs got to claim for themselves in the region. Try finding it without a magnifying glass. Arabs claim Jews got most of the land…taqiyya.

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How the U.S. Won World War II Without Invading Japan More people died in the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo than at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Warren Kozak

By on March 9th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-u-s-won-world-war-ii-without-invading-japan-11583698141?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

The U.S. entered World War II in 1941. Yet American planes couldn’t dent a roof in Japan until 1945. The 1942 Doolittle raid, with its 16 bombers that took off from carriers, showed great ingenuity and bravery. But it had zero impact on Japan’s ability to make war.

The raid was designed to boost morale after Pearl Harbor. When the U.S. didn’t follow up with more attacks, the Japanese believed their homeland was invulnerable to enemy bombs because of the emperor’s divine presence. That hubris ended 75 years ago Monday with an event that set in motion the eventual U.S. victory.

First, a little more history: The U.S. could reach Japan only after the Marines took the Mariana Islands at great cost in 1944. The largest airports in the world were built within months and filled with new, modern B-29 bombers. The B-29 was a marvel and the greatest expense of the war at $3 billion, compared with $2.4 billion for the Manhattan Project. Each plane was three times the size of the next-largest bomber, the B-17. The B-29 could fly 3,700 miles and cruise at an altitude high enough to elude antiaircraft fire.

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Nothing New in the Sick World of Jew Hate Joan Swirsky

By on March 9th, 2020

https://www.thepostemail.com/2020/03/08/nothing-new-in-the-sick-world-of-jew-hate/

“Though marked by levity, Purim is deadly serious: We are reminded that Haman exists in every generation and that we Jews dare not ignore our own identity.” Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik 

This year, the Jewish holiday of Purim begins on Monday, March 9th and ends on March 10th. It is a significant holiday that has everything to do with Jewish survival, which today is as relevant as it was throughout Jewish history, not only 75 years ago in Nazi Germany when six-million Jews were savagely incinerated in burning ovens while the entire world looked on, but also 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 years ago!

The story of Purim takes place in ancient Persia (now Iran). The Holy Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed more than 50 years earlier and the Jews had become servile subjects in Persia.

The King of Persia, Ahasuerus, who was drunk at the time, became furious with his exquisite wife Vashti when she refused to undress before his court, so he ordered her execution. But after her death, he became lonely and had his servants orchestrate a beauty contest so he could pick another wife. When Esther appeared, he was enchanted with her great beauty and married her, making her the Queen of Persia.

 

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