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Victor Davis Hanson: The Truth About World War II

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/victor-davis-hanson-the-truth-about

Germany and its fascist allies started the war. They felt empowered to do so not because of supposed Allied aggression, but because of Western appeasement and isolationism.

In a recent and now widely seen Tucker Carlson interview, a guest historian named Darryl Cooper casually presented a surprising number of flawed theories about World War II. He focused his misstatements on the respective roles of Winston Churchill’s Britain and Adolf Hitler’s Germany—especially in matters of the treatment and fate of Russian prisoners, the Holocaust, the systematic slaughtering of Jews, strategic bombing, and the nature of Winston Churchill. 

Because of the size of the audience Carlson introduced him to, and because of the gravity of Cooper’s falsehoods, his assertions deserve a response. 

On the Treatment of Russian Prisoners

It is simply not true, as Cooper alleges, that Hitler’s Wehrmacht was completely surprised and unprepared for the mass capitulation of the Red Army and some two million Russian prisoners who fell into German hands in summer 1941. 

The virtual extinction of these POWs in the first six months of the war was a natural consequence of a series of infamous and so-called “criminal orders” issued by Hitler in spring 1941 to be immediately implemented in his planned “war of extermination” in the East. 

The edicts variously targeted for elimination prominent Soviet officials, intellectuals, Jews, and commissars. Just as importantly, Hitler exempted German soldiers from any criminal liability in what was expected to be the mass killing of Russians and Jews in general. 

In Mein Kampf, during the lead-up to the war, and even through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact years, Hitler had planned eventually to invade Russia, destroy the Soviet Union, put an end to what he called Jewish Bolshevism, and annex and then eventually resettle almost all of European Russia. In part he was encouraged by the German success in briefly absorbing much of Western Russia in late 1917 and early 1918. 

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“Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark” Sydney Williams

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

When Marcellus utters Shakespeare’s immortal line, he speaks of the corruption that led to Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet, being murdered. When Mr. Gingrich wrote the words in the rubric, it reflected his opinion that corruption, incompetence and dishonesty have come to characterize American politics. One does not have to be in accord with all that Mr. Gingrich believes to agree that politics in the United States has become polarized and that people, in general, have become disenchanted with those who labor in the vineyards along the Potomac. 

Complaints about politics and political leaders are as old as civilization, but they have reached new heights in the U.S., and, in fact, in much of the West. A PEW Research study, conducted a year ago, concluded: “Just 4% of U.S. adults say the political system is working extremely or very well; another 23% say it is working somewhat well.” Things have worsened since. On August 21 of this year Statista Research put the approval rating for the U.S. Congress at 16 percent. Keep in mind, this is despite the 118th Congress “being the most diverse Congress in American history.” Their report concluded that “nearly 60% of Americans have no confidence the parties can govern in a bipartisan way.”

When asked how they feel when they think of politics in the PEW study, 65% said they were “always/often exhausted”. Asked as to what words best described the current state of American politics, “divisive” and “corrupt” were the top choices. Members of Congress, especially those on the left, are famous for extolling wealth and income disparities. Yet, the median net worth of an individual member of Congress is more than five times the median net worth of American households. Wikipedia, in a list of presidents ranked by net worth, adjusted for inflation to 2022 U.S. dollars, shows that three of the last five U.S. Presidents head the list: Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. (George W. Bush is twelfth and Joe Biden is tied with Eisenhower for twenty-second.) Last on the list is Harry Truman, who famously replied when offered a corporate board seat: “You don’t want me; you want the U.S. Presidency, and it’s not for sale.” Today, everything in politics is for sale, including access.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The American Classroom Is More Broken Than You Think By Jonah Davids

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-american-classroom-is-more-broken-than-you-think/

For those who follow politics and current events, it should be evident that something has gone wrong with America’s public K-12 schools. A recent Pew Poll found that over half of Americans believe public education is heading in the wrong direction, with 69% of those concerned saying that schools are not spending enough time on academics and 54% saying that teachers are bringing their political views into the classroom.

These concerns of the public are well-founded. Math and reading scores are at their lowest in decades. Eighty percent of recent high-school graduates report being taught Critical Race Theory concepts in school such as “America is a systemically racist society” and “White people have unconscious bias that negatively affects non-white people.” Sexually explicit LGBTQ+ books line the shelves of school libraries, with parents who request their removal smeared as transphobic book banners akin to Nazis.

For conservatives, the solution seems simple: Get rid of Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ ideology in schools, and education will go ‘back to normal.’ While this is a step in the right direction, things are not so simple. This is because the foundations of public education in America — instruction, curriculum, management, discipline — have dramatically eroded over the last few decades. 

Not long ago, the purpose of school was understood to be the education of students, and deviations from that purpose were regarded with suspicion. Teachers stood at the blackboard and taught from textbooks while students sat at their desks, took notes, and answered when called upon. Students were expected to be punctual and well-behaved, and to master the material given to them. Teachers were expected to be professional, knowledgeable, and impartial. 

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Philly School Teacher Threatens Jewish Parents with Gun Violence

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.inquirer.com/education/keziah-ridgeway-complain-jewish-federation-greater-philadelphia-20240905.html

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia filed a complaint against a Philadelphia School District educator, saying the teacher is using her post to denounce Israel, attempting to “install her hatred” of Zionism into the curriculum, and threatening some Jewish parents via her social media.

The Deborah Project, a public interest law firm, lodged the complaint Wednesday against Keziah Ridgeway, asking for sanctions against the Northeast High School teacher. Legal director Lori Lowenthal Marcus said Ridgeway was openly calling for violence against the leaders of the School District of Philadelphia Jewish Family Association.

Marcus cited posts on Ridgeway’s personal social media accounts, including one with a gun emoji, in the complaint.

“It’s disgraceful that the Philadelphia School District has known about this aggressively antisemitic school teacher and has failed to rein in her profanity-laced, hateful public comments targeting Jewish families and students in the district,” Marcus said in a statement. “Now Ridgeway has resorted to threats of gun use against Jewish parents. What will it take for the Philadelphia School District to respond?”

In addition to the new district complaint, various organizations have also accused the district and Ridgeway of antisemitism.

Ridgeway, a veteran social studies and history teacher, in February raised concerns over the removal of her students’ assignment examining Palestinian art as an act of resistance. Among those who objected to Ridgeway’s students’ work were parents from the Jewish families group.

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Iran’s New Plan: Lost Gaza, So Take West Bank by Khaled Abu Toameh*****

Posted By on September 5th, 2024

One of the reasons the Palestinian Authority (PA) is reluctant to crack down on the “battalions” is because PA officials are aware that the terrorists enjoy widespread support among the Palestinian public.

The Palestinian Authority eventually fell victim to its own passivity. In 2007, Hamas staged a violent and brutal coup against the PA in Gaza, killing dozens of PA loyalists. According to a Human Rights Watch report: “Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Mohammed Swairki, a cook for [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City.”

The Israeli operation aims to prevent Iran and its Palestinian proxies from opening a new front against Israel from the West Bank.

The PA, however, has constantly violated the terms of the Oslo Accords by, among other things, failing to stop armed groups from operating in its territory and from attacking Israelis. The PA has therefore become part of the problem, not the solution.

If anyone is upset with Israel for its counterterrorism operation, they need to be more upset with the PA for not standing up to the armed groups and preventing Iran from establishing a terror base in the West Bank.

One of the reasons the Palestinian Authority (PA) is reluctant to crack down on armed terrorist groups, is because PA officials are aware that the terrorists enjoy widespread support among the Palestinian public. Pictured: Gunmen from a number of terrorist groups, including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Izaddin al-Qassam Brigades, Al-Quds Brigades, and Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, hold what they called a “joint press conference” in Jenin refugee camp on February 25, 2023. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has condemned Israel for initiating a large-scale military operation in the northern West Bank, near Jordan, but it has purposely chosen to overlook the reason behind the Israeli security’s operation. Israel’s counterterrorism operation, called Summer Camps, targets numerous Iran-backed armed terrorist groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), that have been operating freely in PA-controlled territories in the past few years.

The main objective of Israel’s operation is to thwart Iran’s intention, with the help of the armed groups, to turn not only Gaza, but also the West Bank into another terror base to be used as part of the Islamists’ Jihad (holy war) to destroy Israel.

The PA should applaud Israel’s security forces for pursuing the terrorists, rather than criticizing them. These armed groups, which refer to themselves to as “battalions,” pose a direct threat not only to Israel, but the PA as well. The gunmen have created their own state within a state in the areas under PA administration, openly contesting the PA’s legitimacy and making a mockery of its security forces.

Most of the gunmen there belong to Hamas and PIJ, which are strongly opposed to the Palestinian Authority and its policies, especially the security coordination between the PA security forces and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The two groups do not recognize Israel’s right to exist and seek to replace it, through Jihad, with an Islamist state. One of the reasons the PA is reluctant to crack down on the “battalions” is because PA officials are aware that the terrorists enjoy widespread support among the Palestinian public.

The Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank could have been avoided, had the PA fulfilled its duty of combating terrorism by dismantling the armed groups.

Article XIV, “The Palestinian Police,” of the Oslo Accord signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993 states:

“Except for the Palestinian Police and the Israeli military forces, no other armed forces shall be established or operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

Article XV, “Prevention of Hostile Acts,” states:

“Both sides shall take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities directed against each other, against individuals falling under the other’s authority and against their property, and shall take legal measures against offenders.”

The PA, however, has constantly violated the terms of the Oslo Accords by, among other things, failing to stop armed groups from operating in its territory and from attacking Israelis. The PA has therefore become part of the problem, not the solution.

Since 2021, several “battalions” made up of hundreds of gunmen, have appeared in the PA-controlled territories in the northern West Bank. They have carried out countless terrorist attacks against Israelis, both within Israel and in the West Bank. Since the beginning of this year, 30 Israelis have been murdered in terrorist attacks. Yet, we are not aware of a single instance in which the Palestinian security forces, tasked with maintaining law and order in the areas under PA control, have arrested or prosecuted even one perpetrator.

Many Israeli and Palestinian lives could have been spared had the PA done its job and taken action against the “battalion” gunmen. The PA, however, is still reluctant, or too terrified, to take on the armed groups. That is why the Israeli security forces were obliged to launch the current counterterrorism operation.

The Israeli operation aims to prevent Iran and its Palestinian proxies from opening a new front against Israel from the West Bank. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote on August 29:

“Iran is working to establish an eastern terror front against Israel through special units of the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], involved in smuggling weapons, funding, and directing terror organizations.

“In the first stage, they smuggle weapons into the Kingdom of Jordan, mainly through the Syrian border, attempting to destabilize the regime and turn the Israel-Jordan border from a peaceful one into a volatile front.

“From there, the weapons are smuggled into Judea and Samaria, particularly into Palestinian refugee camps, where an Iranian-Hamas terror infrastructure is being established, following the proxy model they’ve set up in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. The Palestinian Authority is unable to confront this threat, which also endangers its existence…

“All actions must be carried out with determination and speed, alongside tightening sanctions on the Iranian regime to curb its subversive activities.”

The PA has a history of failing — or refusing — to take action against armed groups operating in regions under its jurisdiction. The PA did virtually nothing to stop Hamas from building its terror infrastructure when it controlled the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s actions included smuggling weapons across the border with Egypt and building dozens of assault tunnels in various locations throughout the Gaza Strip and near the Israeli border.

The Palestinian Authority eventually fell victim to its own passivity. In 2007, Hamas staged a violent and brutal coup against the PA in Gaza, killing dozens of PA loyalists. According to a Human Rights Watch report:

“Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Mohammed Swairki, a cook for [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City.”

If anyone is upset with Israel for its counterterrorism operation, they need to be more upset with the PA for not standing up to the armed groups and preventing Iran from establishing a terror base in the West Bank. Failing to do so means that Iran’s proxies may soon hurl Abbas himself from a high-rise in Ramallah, the de-facto capital of the Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to launching more terrorist attacks against Israelis.

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

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MY SAY: HOSTAGES, NEGOTIATIONS, MURDER MUNICH SEPTEMBER 5 AND SIX 1972

Posted By on September 5th, 2024

At dawn on Sept. 5,1972 eight Palestinian terrorists dressed in tracksuits and carrying assault rifles and hand grenades in their gym bags scaled a fence into the  Olympic Village  Munich,  Germany.

The  terrorist group named Black September took hostages at the residence of the Israeli athletes team apartments at 31 Connolly Street, shot to death a wrestling coach named Moshe Weinberg and killed and mutilated a weight lifter named Yossef Romano. Nine Israelis were taken hostage and, early on Sept. 6 after a long standoff, all were killed after a disastrous rescue attempt at a military airport near Munich. Among the dead was a weight lifter named David Berger, who grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Mark Andrew Spitz a Jewish American competitive swimmer, nine-time Olympic champion, was the most successful athlete at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, winning seven gold medals, each in world-record time. He asked “ How can it be that “27 years after World War II, there were still madmen killing Jews because they are Jews.”   rsk

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms 1st Edition by Keith E. Whittington (Author)

Posted By on September 5th, 2024

Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians?

The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are now underway to restrict what ideas can be promoted and discussed in university classrooms. Professors at public universities have long assumed that their freedom to teach is unassailable and that there were firm constitutional protections shielding them from political interventions. Those assumptions might always have been more hopeful than sound. A battle over the control of the university classroom is now brewing, and the courts will be called upon to establish clearer guidelines as to what – if any – limits legislatures might have in dictating what is taught in public universities.

In this path-breaking book, Keith Whittington argues that the First Amendment imposes meaningful limits on how government officials can restrict the ideas discussed on university campuses. In clear and accessible prose, he illuminates the legal status of academic freedom in the United States and shows how existing constitutional doctrine can be deployed to protect unbridled free inquiry.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

China’s Campaign to Infiltrate America Is Worse Than You Thought By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on September 5th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-campaign-to-infiltrate-america-is-worse-than-you-thought/

On the menu today: Tear your eyes away from campaign coverage for a few moments and contemplate a pair of bombshells regarding the Chinese government’s far-reaching efforts to influence U.S. policy and suppress critics of the regime — violently, on U.S. soil. First, the Washington Post unveils a shocking report, showcasing how agents of the regime in Beijing attempted to curb-stomp pro-democracy activists during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco last November. Then, federal prosecutors announced charges against Linda Sun, the former deputy chief of staff to Kathy Hochul, for being an agent of the Chinese government in exchange for “millions of dollars in bribes.”

You know whom I want to win the 2024 elections? American elected officials who work for Americans, not Xi Jinping. Apparently, they’re rarer than you would expect.

Who Runs the Streets of San Francisco? Apparently, the Chinese Government Does

It will not surprise you that I feel more warm and fuzzy toward the Washington Post than the typical conservative.

When the mainstream media does good and important journalism, I think conservatives ought to applaud and encourage more of it, and yesterday, the Post unveiled a doozy, showcasing the scale and range of violence during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November — violence that appears to have been directed and facilitated by agents of the Chinese government, targeting democracy activists and critics of the regime.

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The Media Lies Add Up For some nine years, the media and the left have successfully fed the country a succession of rank deceptions and conspiracies. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on September 5th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/05/the-media-lies-add-up/

The public is exhausted after a decade of chronic untruth from the left-wing and its media.

The 2016 presidential campaign will be long remembered for the false allegation that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to warp the election.

Citing the bogus “Steele dossier,” loser Hillary Clinton and other Democrat grandees claimed that the victorious Trump was an “illegitimate” president.

Almost immediately, the left and media then pushed for the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller. He assembled a ‘dream team’ of partisan prosecutors to prove Trump-Russian collusion.

Some 22 months later, Mueller found no evidence that Donald Trump improperly won the 2016 election with help from any colluding Russians.

More hysteria followed when Trump was impeached in December 2019.

The left claimed he had pressured the Ukrainian government to look into the family of Joe Biden (then a potential 2020 election opponent) for its corruption with Ukrainian oligarchs—as a condition for releasing military aid designated to Kyiv.

Yet Hunter Biden was paid nearly $1 million a year by a Ukrainian energy company to enlist his father, Vice President Joe Biden, for quid pro quo services.

In turn, Joe Biden himself later bragged he had pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor, Victor Shokin—who happened to be looking too closely into the various shady schemes of the Biden family.

The deceptions and lies continued.

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Seriously, What the Hell Is Wrong With Tucker Carlson? Stephen Green

Posted By on September 5th, 2024

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/09/04/seriously-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-tucker-carlson-n4932223

“Oops!… He Holocausted again,” is one historian’s take on Adolf Hitler and World War II, as presented yesterday on Tucker Carlson’s X show.

FLASHBACK: I used to enjoy the occasional Tucker Carlson monologue on Fox News. His content was usually pointed and amusing and delivered with a breezy charm. But I rarely bothered with a Tucker Carlson interview. As an interviewer, too often, I found him strangely incurious and glib instead of breezy.

Carlson’s interview on Tuesday with alleged historian Darryl Cooper — like his interview in April with Reverend Munther Isaac, referenced in today’s flashbacks — was so much worse than merely glib or incurious.

Carlson chose to interview Cooper, whom he endorsed as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States” to learn exactly how World War II didn’t happen. According to Cooper — and Carlson nodded along the entire time — Winston Churchill was perhaps “the chief villain of the Second World War” and “primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did.”

It’s true that Hitler did not want or expect Britain to fight. He wanted Britain to acquiesce to German dominance of Europe from the Urals to Gibraltar and subsume the UK to Nazi interests. This is all a matter of historical record. Britain could fight or submit — that was Hitler’s choice, not Churchill’s. 

FLASHBACK: Carlson chose to interview Isaac to find out how the Jewish State of Israel treats Christians. Isaac is a priest who neither lives nor works in Israel and who uses the loaded phrase “Occupied Palestine” as his location on his Twitter/X profile. He is a Palestinian Christian from Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem, where Christian ministers serve at the mercy of the Palestinian Authority.

As for the Holocaust — brace yourself — Hitler was just being merciful, according to Cooper. “We can’t feed these people, we don’t have the food to feed these people,” Cooper imagined the Germans thinking after fighting on the Eastern Front accidentally created more prisoners and refugees than Germany could cope with.