Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
On the Lars Larson show during the CPAC get-together, write Carl Sundberg
and Donovan Sargent,Lars talks with ex-pat Erik Svane who emigrated to France, Erik tells us what conservativism is like in Europe and how some things are the same but some are very, very different.Among other places, the Lars Larson interview appeared on FM News KXL and on iHeart Radio.
Half the results published in peer-reviewed scientific journals are probably wrong
write Peter Wood and
David Randall in a Wall Street Journal piece entitled How Bad Is the Government’s Science?
(thanks to Instapundit).
John Ioannidis, now a professor of medicine at Stanford, made headlines with that claim in 2005. Since then, researchers have confirmed his skepticism by trying—and often failing—to reproduce many influential journal articles.Mr. Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars. Mr. Randall is the NAS’s director of research and a co-author of its new report, “The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science.”
… It seems as if there’s no end of “scientific truths” that just aren’t so.
… The chief cause of irreproducibility may be that scientists, whether wittingly or not, are fishing fake statistical significance out of noisy data. If a researcher looks long enough, he can turn any fluke correlation into a seemingly positive result. But other factors compound the problem: Scientists can make arbitrary decisions about research techniques, even changing procedures partway through an experiment. They are susceptible to groupthink and aren’t as skeptical of results that fit their biases. Negative results typically go into the file drawer. Exciting new findings are a route to tenure and fame, and there’s little reward for replication studies.
… A deeper issue is that the irreproducibility crisis has remained largely invisible to the general public and policy makers. That’s a problem given how often the government relies on supposed scientific findings to inform its decisions. Every year the U.S. adds more laws and regulations that could be based on nothing more than statistical manipulations.
All government agencies should review the scientific justifications for their policies and regulations to ensure they meet strict reproducibility standards. The economics research that steers decisions at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department needs to be rechecked. The social psychology that informs education policy could be entirely irreproducible. The whole discipline of climate science is a farrago of unreliable statistics, arbitrary research techniques and politicized groupthink.
An outspoken conservative, Ermey spoke to Fox News in 2016 about being "blackballed" from Hollywood over his political views.
"I've had a very fruitful career. I've done over 70 feature films," he said. "I've done over 200 episodes of [Outdoor Channel series 'GunnyTime']... and then [Hollywood] found out that I'm a conservative."
Actually, he corrected, "I'm an Independent, but I said something bad about the president. I had something unsavory to say about the president's administration, and even though I did vote for him the first time around, I was blackballed."
Ermey, who was an NRA board member, said at the time that his association with the organization and his disapproval of President Obama cost him acting jobs.
"Do you realize I have not done a movie in five to six years? Why? Because I was totally blackballed by the ... liberals in Hollywood," he alleged. "They can destroy you. They're hateful people [who] don't just not like you, they want to take away your livelihood ... that's why I live up in the desert on a dirt road ... I don't have to put up with their crap."
… sharing my knowledge and love of Paris is second-nature to mewrites an expatriate American corporate trainer who, after a decade in the City of Light, has taken the leap from trainer to tour guide through her Paris Personally company, which personalizes tours to your wishes and desires (see a sample of Tour Ideas). Gina Hunt continues:
… if you've decided to hire someone to help you get the most out of your trip, then you're not just looking for a cookie-cutter tour. You're looking to see Paris in a personal way. You're looking to make your experience of Paris unique and memorable. That's why you're looking for Paris Personally.FAQ
… because I know how to personalize your experience, you'll enjoy Paris in a unique and memorable way. I'm always professional, always focused on helping you have a great time, and I speak fluent French, bien sûr!
This is your chance to sing in Swahili!Horrible! A despicable racist named Roger Whittaker engages in Swahili cultural appropriation with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. And the appallingly un-woke members of the audience at the Jubilee Auditorium seem to be enjoying it…
Instapundit's Stephen Green links to Mark Hodge and James Beal's Sun story, which starts out thus:DONALD Trump has told Russia to "get ready" for American "smart" missiles heading to Syria while blasting Putin for partnering with "Gas Killing Animal" Bashar Assad.I can't help associating Gas with Poison — two largely invisible killers — and wondering whether, in the same breath, the "Republican firebrand" isn't referring to, and condemning, Putin's poisoning of a Russian spy and his daughter in the UK.
Since U.S. president Donald Trump announced John Bolton as his next national security adviser, the prospect of “possibly Washington’s most aggressive hawk”, as he was described by [the Financial Times’s] Simon Kuper (“Don’t get distracted. John Bolton is a huge threat,” April 7), having a central role in the formulation of American foreign policy has become a cause for foreboding apprehension for many.Be sure to subscribe to the Financial Times. It is worth it, for the daily is full of treasures like this one…
In 2005, as the then permanent representative of Armenia to the UN, I was a first-hand witness to then U.S. ambassador Bolton’s aggressive campaign for an anti-Iranian resolution at the UN General Assembly. Armenia’s position on the Iran vote did not meet American expectations, so the U.S. mission contacted us with an urgent request for an appointment with Mr. Bolton.
It was abundantly clear that Mr. Bolton was not ready to take no for an answer, and this peculiar situation called for unorthodox solutions. After a brief welcome, to my guest’s utter surprise I unveiled a map of Armenia and rolled it out over my desk.
With this visual aid, I impressed on him the relevant regional complexities facing my country and thus justified our position on the resolution. Before his departure, Mr. Bolton accepted a sip of Winston Churchill’s favourite Armenian brandy, Ararat, as a seal of our new understanding.
My advice to all potential interlocutors is to treat Mr. Bolton as a rational agent who is perfectly capable of engaging in constructive dialogue and adjusting positions based on new-found insights.
Armen MartirosyanAmbassador of Armenia to IndiaNew Delhi
Peu d'hommes sont précédés d'une réputation aussi sulfureuse que lui - patiemment bâtie et totalement assumée.
The left used to get very worked up about the CIA’s interference in foreign elections.The American Spectator's George Neumayr has penned what is possibly the best single article on the 2016 election scandal (thanks to Instapundit), the alleged Trump Russia collusion and the real wrongdoing that has been (deliberately) hidden by the noise covering that alleged scandal.
Liberals [used to] quote solemnly the work of Philip Agee, a CIA turncoat who wrote articles and books about the agency’s manipulation of this or that foreign election. But these days ACLU-style liberals shrug at the meddling of John Brennan’s CIA in the 2016 American election, mischief that the FBI is still trying to conceal.
It was reported recently that the FBI refuses to show Congressman Devin Nunes an unredacted copy of the origination document that triggered the probe into the Trump campaign. What is the FBI hiding? Paradoxically, nothing — that is, no classified information showing collusion between Trump and Russia. The FBI is simply trying to hide the embarrassingly partisan origins of its spying on the Trump campaign.
Were the redactions covering material harmful to Trump, that material would have been leaked by now. So the redactions can only be concealing the fingerprints of Hillary’s partisans in the Obama administration. The FBI will eventually have to fess up to the politicization to which it succumbed — that the most virulent Hillary partisan imaginable, John Brennan, had put pressure on FBI officials to start the probe, that a Trump hater, Peter Strzok, formally opened up the probe, that the smears of a paid opposition researcher for Hillary, Christopher Steele, contributed to the probe, that scandalous “intelligence-sharing” between Brennan and foreign intelligence agencies shaped the probe, and that FBI officials suspected the probe was unfounded but pursued it anyways at the insistence of Obama officials.
The FBI says it is redacting “sensitive information.” That’s true in an ironic sense: the FBI is very sensitive about the information, in that it illuminates the agency’s transformation into an opposition research shop for the Hillary campaign. Take her partisans out of the picture and the probe would never have started.
In an attempt to sanitize the probe, the media has attributed its origin to a drunken conversation between an Aussie diplomat and a minor Trump campaign volunteer. But that’s a joke. Maybe the FBI threw that into the pot at the last minute, but John Brennan had been stirring it for months before then. As Brennan told Congress, “we were uncovering information intelligence about interactions and contacts between U.S. persons and the Russians. And as we came upon that, we would share it with the bureau.” Notice his use of “we” in that statement. By “we,” Brennan meant his retinue of Hillary partisans at the CIA who had been shaking foreign intelligence agencies down for any dirt on Trump.
The British intelligence, in cahoots with Brennan and Christopher Steele (who was on Hillary’s payroll), figured largely into this mischief. In all likelihood it will come out that the “information” British intelligence shared with Brennan was just recycled Steele material. The “allies tipped us off to Trump-Russian collusion” storyline is a sham, designed to distract attention from a chain of Hillary partisans who in the thick of a campaign were circulating smears among themselves and calling it “intelligence sharing.”
It was the blinding, viscerally personal hatred of Brennan for Trump, perhaps more than anything else, that turned all those phony “tips” into a counterintelligence probe. In the grip of that kind of feverish antipathy, combined with his desire to continue as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan could convince himself of any Trump monstrosity and made it his mission to prod the FBI into harassing him.
… But it wasn’t enough for Brennan to push the FBI investigation. He also had to publicize it, which he achieved through another person in Christopher Steele’s orbit, Senator Harry Reid, whose Super PAC, as the Daily Caller reports, was run by the very Hillary lawyer who hired Steele’s services. Brennan briefed Reid on the beginnings of the FBI investigation he instigated, knowing that Reid would leak the contents of the briefing to the press.
About this astounding meddling in an election by a CIA director, the Philip Agees of the left have fallen completely silent. But that makes sense. After all, how can old radicals inveigh against the CIA as a “wilderness of mirrors” when it is John Brennan’s reflection in it?
A Hebrew prophet once asked the rhetorical question: “Can a leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin?” Much later, another prophet asked, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”Fay Voshell goes back a couple of thousand of years (thanks to Instapundit) to explain the modern left.
The idea [of the prophets] was that there are certain realities that humans cannot change by a mere exercise of will.
Even the beasts instinctively accept how they are made. But the prophets’ common-sense observations about the unchanging nature of material realities has in our day been thrown aside in exchange for a fantasy philosophy that is akin to alchemists’ dream that if we only had secret means to do so, we could change lead into gold.
The fantasy philosophy that insists human will combined with spiritual power can defy and change material reality is called Gnosticism. Gnosticism is basically a pessimistic belief, as it tries to repudiate the existence of the whole universe, which is seen as irretrievably corrupt. Devotees of Gnosticism crave being free from the curse of all things material and believe they may be released from the curse of this wretched world by a secret, inner spiritual knowledge accessible only by themselves.
Even Christianity, which celebrates the material world as still good, though fallen, has through syncretic thinking been afflicted with the idea that the human spirit can by a sheer act of will overcome material reality, including the built in limitations of the human body and its sensual desires.
… Eating only the Host [the daily Eucharistic wafer] was seen as an exercise in achieving a pure spirituality that eliminated or at least utterly transcended the fleshly appetites, including sensuality. Spirit over matter was to prevail. By an act of will, one could overcome the reality of the sinful body.
The ancient Gnostic idea that one can by an act of will repudiate material realities has been resurrected time and again, resurfacing to be part of the current liberal political ethos.
Such is the state of affairs in Gnostic leftist political thought that it is believed quite possible to declare one’s self by fiat to be sex opposite to the one you were born as. If you are a man who feels like a woman, all you have to do is to declare yourself to be a woman.
This denial of a reality that is foundational to all civilizations is being made into law in Europe and in America, with the deleterious consequences still to be completely realized.
As George Weigel notes in his recent National Affairs article entitled “Reality and Public Policy,” in 2007, Spain's Zapatero government enacted legislation allowing men to change themselves into women and women into men by simply declaring one’s newly recognized sex, with or without surgical alterations. The new man or woman could then be issued new national identity card reflecting the gender of choice. Weigel concludes, “It is hard to imagine a more explicit expression of personal willfulness overpowering natural givenness.”
In other words, reality be damned. The purely good will and spirit within the individual is to prevail over common sense and human tradition since time immemorial. I may look like a woman and actually be a biological woman, but if I decide I’m a man, who are you to question my inner light? Who are you to resist my truth about myself? As millions of American children are taught every day, “You can be anything you choose to be.”
As Weigel notes:
“[…]within a very short span of time, less than two generations, two aspects of the human condition that had been understood for millennia to be the very quintessence of givenness -- maleness and femaleness -- were no longer taken to be given at all. "Male" and "female" were not The Way Things Are. "Male" and "female" were "cultural constructs," usually manipulated by those in power for purposes of domination (Gnosticism thus adding a soupçon of Marxism to its ideology of plasticity).Weigel points out that the new Gnosticism engendered by the sexual revolution not only ignores and warps the differences between men and women, but it also warps the rest of politics:
“Gnostic anthropology -- the Gnostic view of the human person and the human condition -- is the antithesis of the Biblical view of men and women and their possibilities, which has long been one of the foundation stones of the Western civilizational project.”
“[…]if people are prepared to insist as a matter of fundamental civil rights) the unreal claim that marriage can encompass two men or two women, why should those same people not believe that America can continue to run trillion-dollar deficits with impunity? Or that the centralization and vast regulatory apparatus to be created by Obamacare will not inevitably lead to the rationing of end-of-life care? Or that the federal budget deficit has primarily to do with the wealthy not paying ‘their fair share’ ”?Seeing matters through the lens of Gnosticism’s sure inner light gives infinite plasticity to foreign affairs, as the belief one can discern how things really are by means of that inner light means one can deny actuality and proceed according to fantasy. For instance, liberal Gnostics can see behind the spittle-inducing statements of jihadists and know the Islamists are actually protesting poverty rather than really meaning to kill Jews and eliminate the nation of Israel. Because of their secret knowledge about the true conditions of humanity and the remedies for ill, Gnostics can see behind Iranians’ leaders desire to get rid of the “Great Satan” in order to issue in the reign of the 12th imam and see that at heart, radical Muslims truly believe in peace for all mankind.
Liberal Gnostics also can see clearly that the mass murders of American citizens by lone gunmen are really the fault of the NRA’s advocacy of gun ownership. They discern with inner clarity that the solution to violence is not only to disarm the American populace but to ensure none of our kids even so much as point a finger at anyone and say, “Bang; bang. You’re dead.” In brief, if your child doesn’t even think violent thoughts, evil will never happen.
Leftist Gnostics can also discern that anything bad that happens in the Obama administration is not really his fault. The bad seeds now producing bitter fruit were planted during the administration of G.W. Bush. The illogical conclusion: Nothing is ever Obama’s responsibility, much less his fault.
The fact some guy just murdered his wife and should be punished is trumped by Gnostic prophetic musings about the criminal’s past and pleasant dreams about rehabilitating him and his society in the future. The victim whose blood cries out for justice in the here and now is not as important as political augury extending back into the past to discern how things got this way as well as looking forward into the future to determine how things will change for the better. The present moment, the present reality is entirely insignificant. The murder is significant only for what it represents. It is symbolic, not real.
In sum, for the Gnostic Left, the reality of bad or even criminal behavior is trumped by the idea of how things were and how they ought to be, not how they are in the here and now.
But the greatest Gnostic denial of all is the denial of the almost limitless capacity for evil that lies within the human heart. In laying the blame on material reality as being inherently corrupt and in dreaming of fantastical utopias of the future, Gnostics fail to see that their mystical inner word of discernment can be as corrupted as anything actually occurring within the material world. That clear, spiritual inner voice is not necessarily pure as driven snow. It, too, has unpleasant realities and odious capacities. A soul can smell worse than the body.
As Weigel writes,
“Reality may be, and often is, unpleasant. But policies rooted in a failure to grasp reality are dangerous, and too often deadly. […] A culture convinced that everything is malleable and that there are no givens in personal or public life is not a culture likely to sustain serious debates about serious public-policy options.”… Ultimately, Gnosticism in all its forms, including current liberal political thought, owes its basis to the Devil’s lie to all humans: “You shall be as gods.” The lure of having infallible inner knowledge of how things really are combined with the mystical misconception that the will to power is all that matters, ignores not only material reality, but the reality of the fact that both good and evil speak to the human heart.
In the end, Gnostics’ belief that the still, small voice within can trump reality puts politics, national and international, on the road to perdition.
Brace yourself for a stampede of public figures all claiming to be King’s greatest admireras April 4th marks 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr was murdered in Memphis. Benny Huang, who has written about MLK before, declares that he will not pretend
to be one of them. Unlike a lot of conservatives I wouldn’t be caught dead trying to co-opt MLK and his undeserved aura of moral superiority.Related: • Today, MLK Jr Would Be Unemployable in America,
Not that King didn’t have a lot of nice things to say. I can support the sentiment behind his “I Have a Dream” speech despite the fact that it was co-written by King’s Communist Party handler. I firmly believe that we should judge people by the content of their character not the color of their skin.
But King did not. He simply mouthed those vapid words because he was trying to persuade a majority-white nation to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an unconstitutional monstrosity that turned out to be even worse than its critics had predicted. King’s tactical appeal to colorblindness was destined to be tossed aside the moment he achieved his short-term policy goals.
As the recognized advocate for America’s only substantial racial minority, MLK vowed to resolve the race issue once and for all in return for a few small concessions: our property rights, our right to free association, our free speech rights, and our right not to be subjected to involuntary servitude.
It would have been a terrible deal even if each side had held up its end of the bargain. But that’s not what happened.
Less than one year after King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech Congress gave him what he wanted: a sweeping nondiscrimination law that invaded the private sphere and unleashed the federal government’s massive authority to police even our thoughts and intentions. It was supposed to be government-mandated race neutrality which was something most Americans could get behind because of their inherent sense of fair play. Personally, I find the race neutrality part appealing but resent the government mandated part, especially as it applies to private entities.
The bill was passed by a congressional supermajority and signed into law by the old racist Lyndon Johnson who was afforded the opportunity to portray himself as the black man’s best friend which he most certainly was not.
That was the bait. Then came the switch.
About four months later King sat for an interview with the future Roots plagiarist Alex Haley in which he argued for racial preferences—which he would also soon get.
Said King:
“Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved and robbed of any wages–potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America’s wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation.”Translation: It’s payback time. According to King, everything America has is stolen wealth. White people should feel lucky that they’re being allowed to get away with merely being discriminated against for generations to come. They deserve much worse.
For the remaining three and a half years of King’s life he worked tirelessly toward Marxist revanchism. He supported racial discrimination (in his own favor), further eroded our constitutional rights with the Voting Rights Act and Fair Housing Act, and fought for an even more robust welfare state than even Lyndon Johnson had proposed.
In the same Haley interview King endorsed racial preferences in housing and hiring, as well as a $50 billion spending package exclusively for blacks—about $400 billion in today’s inflated currency. Funny how he didn’t mention any of that until after he got the Civil Rights Act.
King’s support for racial preferences stands in stark violation of the law he championed that same year. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 clearly states that employers may not discriminate on the basis of race. It does not say that employers may discriminate against whites (or Asians!) as long as they’re trying to redress historical grievances. More importantly: If the bill had contained that kind of language it never would have passed.
But alas, employers have been favoring black over white ever since. Martin Luther King did not oppose that kind of discrimination because he never actually opposed racial discrimination per se. He just didn’t like being on the wrong end of it—and who does?
The idea that King opposed racial discrimination is just one of several myths that won’t die. Let’s unpack a few others.
MLK was not non-violent. We’ve been taught this lie because he refused to fight with the policemen and redneck vigilantes who roughed him up. But he supported the ultra-violent Planned Parenthood and physically beat at least one of his many adulterous relations so we know he had no problem picking fights with women and children. That didn’t make him Gandhi it just made him a coward.
He also winked at urban rioting. It’s no wonder his followers honored his legacy by burning down more than one hundred American cities in the days that followed his assassination.
Nor was King a patriotic American trying to make his country live up to its founding ideals. He was actually only one degree removed from the Soviet Union and he almost certainly knew it. Imagine all the worst accusations that have been lodged against Donald Trump about his supposed collusion with the Russians to “steal our democracy”—then imagine that they’re actually true. That was Martin Luther King.
MLK was just starting to become a household name during the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott when he met a Communist Party apparatchik named Stanley Levison. According to King biographer David Garrow, Levison was King’s closest white friend.
Levison conveniently “quit” the Communist Party in 1957. He was still very much a small “c” communist though conveniently unburdened by the party membership card he had carried for ten years. In all likelihood his departure was a sham.
Levison was always the man behind the curtain. Even Garrow and other sources friendly to King admit that Levison got King his first book deal, reviewed the book line by line, wrote whole drafts of King’s speeches, did King’s taxes, and wrote his fundraising letters.
And yet I suspect that Garrow’s description of the relationship between these two men soft-pedals the truth: Levison did everything for King except speak with that booming black preacher’s voice. For that, the CPUSA needed an honest-to-goodness black man and a purported Christian.
There’s a word in the intelligence community for guys like Stanley Levison. They’re called “handlers.”
Stanley Levison joined the CPUSA in 1946 just when the wartime alliance between the US and the Soviet Union was crumbling. (See John Barron’s Operation Solo: Our Man Inside the Kremlin. ) Unlike party members who joined in the 1930’s, he cannot claim that he was attracted to the Communist Party only because of its fervent opposition to Hitler’s Germany. He was, like every other CPUSA member at the time, a fanatical defender of Stalin and Soviet Communism. If he hadn’t been he would have been quickly shown the door.
Even before Levison was introduced to King the FBI had already identified him as a party treasurer. Levison’s duties might explain why he was so closely involved in the “civil rights movement’s” finances. Where all that money came from is anybody’s guess but it’s not outlandish to consider the Kremlin as one possible source.
What we do know is that the CPUSA always did the Soviet Union’s bidding. Professor Harvey Klehr et al. argue convincingly in their excellent book The Soviet World of American Communism that the CPUSA was a willing instrument of Soviet policymakers. Their assertion is based on extensive review of Soviet archives opened to scholars in the early 1990s.
They write:
“[A]t every period of the CPUSA’s history, the American communists looked to their Soviet counterparts for advice on how to conduct their own party business. But there was more to it than that: these documents show that the CPUSA was never an independent political organization. There were moments when it was less strictly controlled by Moscow than at others, but there was never a time when CPUSA made its decisions autonomously, without being obliged to answer to or—more precisely—without wishing to answer to Soviet authority.”It should come as no surprise then that Levison was observed in 1962 by FBI counterintelligence meeting with the undercover KGB man Viktor Lesiovsky, who was then working ostensibly as an assistant to UN Secretary-General U Thant. This was after Levison “quit” CPUSA.
The Soviet Union was the puppet master pulling Levison’s strings through the CPUSA. Stanley Levison in turn was pulling MLK’s strings. A single tissue-thin layer separated King from Moscow and both sides knew it.
Once one understands this basic fact, so much else becomes clear—King’s insistence on an even more aggressive war on poverty at the expense of military spending, for example. Geez, why might the Soviets be interested in that? Consider his constant racial agitation. Might a divided America be a weaker foe? The Soviets certainly thought so.
Martin Luther King was dishonest, cowardly, and downright seditious. He was no hero and the world would be a better place if he had never existed.
A French police officer who offered himself up in a hostage swap Friday after an armed man reportedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” went on a rampage in southern France, has diedreport Kathleen Joyce and Lucia I. Suarez Sang on Fox News.
Details about the death of the officer, identified as Col. Arnaud Beltrame, were not immediately available.
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb wrote in a tweet early Saturday that Beltrame had "died for his country."
The officer had offered himself up unarmed to the 25-year-old attacker in exchange for a female hostage.
He managed to surreptitiously leave his cellphone on so that police outside could hear what was going on inside the supermarket.
Officials said once they heard shots inside the market they decided to storm it, killing the gunman.
Beltrame was grievously injured, and his death raised the toll from the attack to four.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest since Emmanuel Macron became president last May.
Police said the suspect, identified as Redouane Lakdim, 26, carjacked a vehicle, shot at police and barricaded himself inside a Super U supermarket in Trebes before officers stormed in, fatally shooting him.
The mother of a French police officer who was killed after he swapped himself for a hostage during an Islamic extremist attack on a supermarket says that she wasn't surprised by her son's courage.
Col. Arnaud … Beltrame's mother told RTL radio Friday night before the announcement of his death that
"I'm not surprised. I knew it had to be him. He has always been like that. It's someone, since he was born, who gives everything for his homeland."Asked if she was proud of him, she said he would have told her "'I'm doing my job mom, that's all.'"
She said to "defend the homeland" was his "reason for living."
