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…
This is a mugshot of Václav Havel. There are at least two others of the Czech playwright. Who can deny that this proves that the dissidents of Czechoslovakia were nothing but convicted felons and criminals who for years and years were — thankfully — never allowed to join or to influence the communist government in Prague?
By contrast, Gustáv Husák, the president and communist party leader for almost 20 years was never investigated by the police (secret or other) nor was any other communist honcho (unless, of course, like Alexander Dubček during the Prague Spring of 1968, they went against the accepted policies of the élite, the country's deep state, and the communist superpower in Moscow). How — how on earth — could the people of Czechia and Slovakia be so dastardly as to elect a convicted felon like Vaclav Havel as president of Czechoslovakia (the very first after the communist era)?! (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah Hoyt.)
Then we have a prison photo of Alexander Solzhenitsyn (not technically an official mug shot). This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Russian leaders (communist or other) such as Stalin, Brezhnev, and Putin, none of whom were ever indicted (not once), were far better people and much more upstanding citizens than that sorry excuse for a convicted felon ever was. Other people whom the Kremlin occupants were obviously superior to include Andrei Sakharov.
Next (below), we have a photo of Martin Luther King Jr having his mugshot taken in Birmingham before going to a jail cell from which he wrote his famous letter. Obviously, someone creating as much havoc and spewing as much hate speech as MLK Jr should never had had his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" published and disseminated for the nation and the world to read.
As for Nelson Mandela, finally, what business does that convicted felon have in being in the South African president's office?! That's the second convicted felon who got elected to the presidency (although for the first time, not for the second). It's scandalous! It's a travesty!
In conclusion, can't we say that Americans are lucky?
America has finally figured out that people in the West were wrong to demand that the Soviet Union, Communist China, and like régimes should imitate the United States. Instead, the USA should try to become more like a banana republic such as China, Cuba, or Venezuela.
Thus, we must hope the party in power can use their wisdom to transform the United States into a one-party state in order to use kangaroo courts to put more Republicans and other enemies of the people behind bars and, indeed (why not?), park them inside concentration camps.
(Yes, true enough: there may have been an iota of satire in the past couple of paragraphs…)
Establishment politicians and mainstream media have fought harder
than on any other issue to convince the public that voter fraud is a
conspiracy theory. But unconstitutional changes to state election laws,
unsupervised ballot drop boxes, voting machine errors, mathematically
improbable voter turnout, and other examples of outright voter fraud
that were denied a chance to be presented in court between the 2020
election and Biden's inauguration can't simply be chalked up as
coincidental. All those things occurring simultaneously make the fraud
seem coordinated.
In response to the most recent
indictments, Trump's attorneys indicated they finally have a platform to
"fully re-litigate every single issue that occurred during the 2020
election," of which there were many. The most important issue in
America may finally get its due.
Trump's 2016 victory was fueled
by flipping the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from
blue to red. Pennsylvania and Michigan had not voted for a Republican
in a general election since 1988, while Wisconsin hadn't voted for one
since 1984. Those three states delivered Trump the necessary electoral
votes to become president. It also sent a signal that blue strongholds
were no longer a "given" after the people of those states were fed up
with delivering victories for politicians who never went on to deliver
results for them.
In addition to "Hillary Clinton's blue wall,"
Arizona and Georgia were also viewed as potential swing states that
Trump needed to retain as previous Republican nominees did to
have any chance at victory. Twenty sixteen made it clear that those
states would again decide the 2020 election. Suspiciously, after
America was forced to anxiously await the results for days following
election night, those five states all "flipped" to Biden despite Trump
outpacing his record 2016 turnout by even greater margins.
Even as mathematically
improbable-without-being-previously-counted percentages of ballots
favoring Biden continued pouring in on November 4, Georgia secretary of
state Brad Raffensperger concluded
that with voter turnout already exceeding the 2016 total by 400
thousand votes, and Trump leading by over 105 thousand votes with just
2% of the vote left to count, there simply were not enough outstanding
votes for Biden to win the state.
Coincidentally,
as Raffensperger began stating this on live television, his connection
to the program was disconnected. But when he returned, Raffensperger
doubled down. Questioned by NBC News panelists, he said, "Even if one
of the candidates got the remaining 100%, it wouldn't be enough to
change the result."
Despite this determinative revelation, Raffensperger later switched gears when he told
the January 6 committee, "If you looked at all the numbers, it never
added up to anywhere near what could throw the election in doubt,"
completely contradicting his previous claim in the process.
In Michigan, a recent report
exposed the scheme that delivered Biden with unprecedented amounts of
ballots in the early morning hours of November 4, which included an
excess of 800 thousand ballots being sent to non-qualified
voters. Michigan was allegedly decided by 154,188 votes, making the
results more than questionable.
In March of 2022, former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gabelman's investigation
unearthed a nursing home exploitation scheme so egregious that his
suggested remedy was decertifying Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes. Even
Assembly speaker Robin Vos, previously an election fraud denier,
conceded that "widespread fraud" had occurred. Later, the state Supreme Court determined
that the absentee ballot drop boxes through which 2 million votes were
submitted during the election were actually illegal. The majority
opinion described the outcome as "obtained by unlawful procedures," as
Wisconsin was decided by just 20 thousand votes.
There were
concerns regarding Pennsylvania's voting procedure long before any votes
were even cast. The Keystone State's Senate Republican Caucus and the
Republican Party strongly argued
that the state Supreme Court extending the deadline to count ballots
violated the U.S. Constitution's Elections Clause by taking away the
Legislature's authority to "set the times, places and manner of federal
elections." This was ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court just prior to
Justice Barrett's confirmation. This led to a 4-4 decision, which
results in a "stay." Had this been heard after her confirmation, it is
likely Barrett would have ruled against the extensions that led to
Biden's constitutionally questionable "comeback."
But
of all the suspected fraud in 2020, Arizona was the first state that
raised suspicions in real time. Despite not voting Democrat in a
two-candidate presidential election since 1948, Fox News shockingly
called the state for Biden after just 27% of the vote was
reported. This sparked a forensic audit that concluded that the number of illegal votes exceeded Biden's alleged 11-thousand-vote victory fivefold.
When
vote-counting was inexplicably halted on Election Night, Trump led all
these states by six figures. A combination of any three of these states
holding would have secured him a second term, which is why Democrats
fought so hard to steal them.
But even putting state-specific statistics
aside, a basic analysis of election history signals the improbability of
Biden receiving the number of votes he allegedly did.
Every
general election since 2004 has seen between 120–130 million total
votes. The 2020 election reportedly saw 155 million votes. There were
roughly 168 million registered voters in 2020, which means that voter
turnout in 2020 was an astonishing 92%. This is statistically
improbable when you consider that countries such as Australia institute compulsory voting,
which mandates that citizens vote or pay a fine. Yet its most recent
turnout rate was in the high 80s. America voluntarily outpacing a
nation that financially penalizes non-voters does not pass the smell
test.
Though transformational candidates can generate an uptick in
voter turnout, a previously failed, two-time-primary-losing candidate
such as Joe Biden is not likely to be the one who does this. He ran in
1988 and 2008 and never won the hearts of voters. He dropped out of the
1988 race after he was caught plagiarizing, and twenty years later was
rejected by the party base again before being plucked off the scrap heap
by Obama. After serving as vice president, his public image only
worsened as it became clear he was the same old Joe Biden, except he now
exhibited cognitive limitations. He won just one bellwether county and
fewer than 500 total counties compared to Trump and Obama, who won
roughly 2,500 and 900, respectively. Yet as it stands, it is said Joe
Biden received the most votes in American history.
President Trump
did not try to "subvert" the election, nor did he secretly know he
lost. Any beyond-surface-level inspection of the 2020 election reveals
its fraudulency. Trump was not only allowed to dispute an election he
felt was fraudulent, but as president was constitutionally obligated to
do so. That is the opposite of criminal. In fact, he is one of the
only public officials willing to uphold the oath he swore. Trying to
imprison him for this not only is a tall task, but also puts them at
risk of allowing him to publicly prove that "The Big Lie" is the real
"Big Lie."
The evidence exists for Trump to finally prove that his over two-year-old claims are valid. All he must do now is present it.
In French, the final D in Donald is not pronounced but still, you would expect French television producers to know the spelling of Trump's first name by now (the typo was corrected in the middle of the program)
As the banana republic that the leftist Democrats are attempting to transform the United States of America into indicted Donald Trump for a fourth time, French television became interested in the 45th president again, and RIF's Philippe Karsenty was invited on Tuesday evening to appear on two BFMTV shows.
Moreover, a sister organization was asked to weigh in. "Il y a de réels risques concernant une éventuelle condamnation", estime Nicolas Conquer, porte-parole de “Republicans overseas France”. RIF stands for Republicans in France while
ROF stands, as noted, for Republicans Overseas France. Both work towards the same goals.
États-Unis: "Les Démocrates veulent empêcher Donald Trump de reprendre la présidence", pour Philippe Karsenty (porte-parole du "Parti Républicain US" en France) pic.twitter.com/KvuwpxpkZN
Since Norway became wealthy on oil in the ’60s, it’s prided itself on
its commitment to the weak and ill-fated and has been put on a pedestal
by every left-leaning candidate everywhere
writes Hannah Spier in The Spectator regarding The Dark Side of Norway’s Social Democracy (The Alarming Rise of Disability Claims and Entitlement Culture). The Norwegian psychiatrist based in Switzerland, author of the Substack Psychobabble, adds that "Being a fully-fledged Norwegian patriot
who celebrates our national day religiously, the deterioration of the
social democracy is painful to behold."
Little do they [the ubiquitous left-leaning candidates] know that in 2022, 52 percent of the Norwegian population received government financial aid, with 10.5 percent
of the population on disability leave, a number that is estimated to
increase by about 2.5 percent each year. The rate in psychiatric
disability is rising drastically in the youngest, while pensioners sell
their hard-earned houses to afford ever higher taxations on
lower-than-promised retirement payouts.
In 2012, there was an uproar in Norwegian news media because of a new phenomenon called “å nave,” which is slang for someone using social welfare.
… This year, governmental financial aid for 18- to 29-year-olds is at an all-time high, three times
more than that in 1995. Among the Gen Zers on welfare, 63 percent claim
to have psychiatric problems. They claim to have exactly the type of
symptoms subjectively diagnosed by a health care worker whose natural
proclivity is to have sympathy for them — not hired as a guard dog but
trained to see suffering.
… Left-wing politicians tend to liken getting short-term disability aid
to driving on the motorway and waiting for a petrol refill on the hard
shoulder. The problem is that Norwegians have never learned the
responsibility needed to make sure that there is petrol in the car in
the first place. Now, the hard shoulder is packed with cars waiting to
have their refill — as is evident in the fact that 81 percent of those who receive short-term disability leave go on to receive lifelong disability pay.
In Scandinavia … the weather is appalling, the taxes
are the highest in the world, the cost of living is similarly
ridiculous, the languages are impenetrable, the food is (still) awful
for the most part … Sweden is supposedly "neutral" (it’s not, and has not been
for decades) … since the days when it sold iron ore to Hitler … The Norwegians have … taken their foot off the gas in terms of
their work ethic … [And] Denmark has the highest direct and indirect taxes in the
world, … the
highest energy taxes in the world, car import duty of 180%, and so on … How the money is spent is kept deliberately opaque by the authorities.
[With] a reputation for being peaceful,
egalitarian, progressive, liberal and educated, [besides] having excellent
furniture and crime novels, too … Scandinavia
countries just seem to do it better — an idea that supporters and
critics label "Nordic exceptionalism."
The Independent's Ana Swanson explores the idea of the utopian fantasy that Denmark and its sister nations are made out to be:
But how much truth is there in the popular idea of Nordic exceptionalism? Michael Booth,
a British journalist, examines this question in detail in a recent
book, "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the
Scandinavian Utopia." Booth, a U.K. native who has lived in Scandinavia
for over a decade, plays the part of a cultural interpreter, examining,
poking and prodding the reality of life in Nordic countries from every
angle. Booth finds plenty to question in the rest of the world's
assumptions about the Nordic miracle, but also lots that we can learn
from them.
Why is it that the Nordic model has attracted so many fans, but relatively few visitors?
Denmark is a pretty good place to live but it is by no
stretch of the imagination the utopia many in politics and the media in
the U.S. claim it to be.
We all like to have a "happy place" — somewhere over the
rainbow where we imagine life to be perfect — don’t we? For many, that
place used to be the Mediterranean: we all dreamed of a stone house
among the vines. After the economic crash, I think a lot of people
started to look towards Scandinavia for what they believed to be a less
rampantly capitalistic form of society.
The difference is, few actually actively seek to move to
Scandinavia, for obvious reasons: the weather is appalling, the taxes
are the highest in the world, the cost of living is similarly
ridiculous, the languages are impenetrable, the food is (still) awful
for the most part and, increasingly, these countries are making it very
clear they would prefer foreigners to stay away.
What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you find in how the rest of the world understands the Nordic countries?
Again, I think we've all been guilty of projecting some kind
of utopian fantasy on them. … Denmark … promotes itself as a "green pioneer" and
finger wags at the world about CO2 emissions, and yet it regularly beats
the U.S. and virtually every other country on earth in terms of its per
capita ecological footprint. For all their wind turbines, the Danes
still burn a lot of coal and drive a lot of cars, their country is home
to the world’s largest shipping company (Mærsk), and the region’s
largest air hub.
Sweden is supposedly "neutral" (it’s not, and has not been
for decades), yet since the days when it sold iron ore to Hitler, its
economy has always benefited from its arms industry, which is one of the
world’s largest.
The Norwegians have fallen prey to precisely the same kind of
problems as other oil-rich states: their economy depends far too much
on one industry (oil), they’ve taken their foot off the gas in terms of
their work ethic, and now all young Norwegians want to do is be
"something in the media" or open a cupcake place.
Politicians in the U.S. like Bernie Sanders praise
Denmark for its relative income equality, its free universities,
parental leave, subsidized childcare, and national health system. That
all sounds pretty good, right?
It is fantastic in theory, except that, in Denmark, the
quality of the free education and health care is substandard: They are
way down on the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment]
educational rankings, have the lowest life expectancy in the region,
and the highest rates of death from cancer. And there is broad consensus
that the economic model of a public sector and welfare state on this
scale is unsustainable. The Danes’ dirty secret is that its
public sector has been propped up by — now dwindling — oil revenues. In
Norway’s case, of course, it’s no secret.
You describe the Danes as having a strong sense
of work-life balance – specifically, being much more focused on life
than work. What are the positives and negatives of that attitude?
Positives: Danes spend more time with their families. Negatives: Danes
spend more times with their families. Plus, they have run up huge
private debt levels, and no one answers the phone on a Friday afternoon.
… One thing that’s often glossed over among outsiders is
the extraordinarily high tax level, which is high for the middle class
as well as the wealthy. Do Danes think that they get their money’s worth
in social services? Do you?
Denmark has the highest direct and indirect taxes in the
world, and you don’t need to be a high earner to make it into the top
tax bracket of 56% (to which you must add 25% value-added tax, the
highest energy taxes in the world, car import duty of 180%, and so on).
How the money is spent is kept deliberately opaque by the authorities.
Danes do tend to feel that they get value for money, but we should not
overlook the fact that the majority of Danes either work for, or receive
benefits from, the welfare state.
Greater numbers of immigrants have been leading to rising
xenophobia in some Nordic countries, as well as higher income
inequality. Do you think these trends say anything about the strength of
the Nordic model?
All of Europe is dealing with this issue, but of course
smaller populations feel more threatened, and cynical right wing
politicians (if you’ll forgive the tautology) take advantage of that
fear. Also, there is no "Nordic model" when it comes to immigration and
integration: there is the Swedish model (open door) and the Danish model
(close the door and put up a "Go Away" sign), which the Norwegians and
Finns are copying.
Denmark has won almost every happiness survey since 1973,
but you describe them in the book as a “frosty, solemn bunch” who take a
lot of anti-depressants. Do they really deserve to be consistently
ranked as the world’s happiest country?
No, it’s a nonsense and, in fact, they have dropped from the
top spot in recent surveys, mostly because they are not as rich as they
once were. The sad take-away from that is, money does, in fact, make you
happy. I don’t think they ever were the "happiest" people in the world,
but you could argue they have been the most "satisfied." They are good
at appreciating the small things in life and making the most of what
they have — a legacy, I think, of experiencing the rough hand of
geopolitics in the 18th and 19th centuries.
When he planned to go see the Christopher Nolan movie Oppenheimer, Steve Byrne was shocked to learn from his mother that, when she was an infant in the 1940s, her family had been living in Hiroshima. Echoing Bill Whittle's post that Over
one million warning leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and
33 other Japanese cities 5 days before the Hiroshima bombing, the conservative-leaning comedian (who is of Korean, not Japanese, heritage) intoned: "Some real perspective. If not for the leaflets dropped by US Armed Forces… I absolutely would not be here today." Upon reading those leaflets, her parents had fled the city, into a tunnel or a shelter in the mountains, and were outside the city on the day the atomic bomb was dropped…
For almost 20 years, this blog (which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year) has regularly brought stories about little-known facts and quotes regarding the atomic bombings over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945. The present post is certainly one of the most important of them all.
For once, indeed, the crux will not be on the Japanese and the Americans, but on the Soviets and the Europeans.
The main gist of this story starts below photos taken by my father at the age of 12 of the British forces build-up during the Summer of 1945 after the Nazi defeat on V-E Day.
Montgomery's British forces rushed to the North of Germany, beating the
Red Army in forcing the surrender of the German forces in Northern
Germany and occupied Denmark (that will be the content of a future post), and thus avoiding the fate of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and all the other Eastern countries — for 40-something years.
Many praise the Russians for winning World War II. If it hadn't been for the
Anglo-Americans, wouldn't the Russians, wouldn't Stalin, have continued
all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, taking all of Western Europe (or at least the mainland) as
well?
Following
the Nazi surrender, Marshall Montgomery paid a visit to Copenhagen and
drove through its streets. From May to July 1945, British ships accosted
and RAF planes landed in droves. Normally,
with a disciplined army having surrendered, such a show of force would
be
unnecessary. But they weren't there for the surrendering German
prisoners; they
were there to guard against the Red Army
Accompanied
by his uncle, my father went to Copenhagen and visited the city's
harbor and airfields to see the British armada at the harbor and the
planes landing in the airfields. He was all of 12 years old. (Update: Spasiba for the Instalink, Ed Driscoll of Instapundit.)
Montgomery driving through Copenhagen on May 12, 1945 (my father's photo at age 12)
HMS Birmingham docks on May 10, 1945 (photo by Eskil Svane, 12)
HMS Birmingham in København Harbor on May 10
HMS Birmingham was quite popular with the Danish people
Mosquitoes at Kastrup airfield, July1, 1945
A Spitfire on Kastrup airfield as the RAF holds an airshow (and probably not just for the Danes, but for any Soviet diplomat present)
Douglas Dakota DC3s on show at Denmark's largest airfield
The Soviet Union's (secret) intentions and plans were confirmed after Antony Beevor spent time in Moscow, unearthing many a previously top secret document in the archives, and leading to his writing in his history of The Second World War about "the two pitiless totalitarian systems which fed off each other."
In the penultimate chapter, Cities of the Dead, Beevor writes that after the German capital fell in May 1945, the American ambassador to Moscow paid a visit to the Kremlin:
'It must be very pleasant for you', [Averell] Harriman said, making conversation, … 'to be in Berlin after all your country has suffered.' The Soviet leader eyed him. … 'Tsar Alexander went all the way to Paris,' he replied.
That was not entirely a joke. Well before Churchill's [notion of a war erupting between the Western allies and their USSR ally], a meeting of the Politburo in 1944 had decided to order the Stavka to plan for the invasion of France and Italy, a General Shtemenko later told Beria's son. The Red Army offensive was to be combined with a seizure of power by the local Communist Parties. In addition, Shtemenko explained, 'a landing in Norway was provided for, as well as the seizure of the straits [with Denmark]. A substantial budget was allocated for the realization of these plans. It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralysed by their colonial problems. The Soviet Union possessed 400 experienced divisions, ready to bound forward like tigers. It was calculated that the whole operation would take no more than a month
… All these plans were aborted when Stalin learned from [Beria] that the Americans had the atom bomb and were putting it into mass production.' Stalin apparently told Beria 'that if Roosevelt had still been alive, we would have succeeded'. This, it seems, was the main reason why Stalin suspected that Roosevelt had been secretly assassinated
… Stalin had achieved everything he wanted at Potsdam, even though he had been forced to cancel the invasion of western Europe out of fear of the atom bomb
"The western Allies were finding that they could liberate half of Europe only at the cost of enslaving the other half." As it happened, explains Antony Beevor in the final pages of his 900-page book, "one half of Europe had to be sacrificed to the Stalinist maw to save the other half."
(Indeed, in "Northern Germany the British 7th Armored Division was approaching Hamburg, while the 11th Armoured Division advanced rapidly ahead towards Lübeck on the Baltic. This followed Churchill's secret instruction to Field Marshall Montgomery … to prevent the Red Army from seizing Denmark")
Astounding News
This is astounding news. Nothing less. What does it say about the use of the atomic bombs — not to mention, for that matter, McCarthyism along with the alleged paranoia regarding the later Red "Scare" as well as the alleged daftness of the American people?
When unhappy Western elites — quite a number of them from Europe, especially Western Europe — criticize Uncle Sam's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as evil and useless war crimes and no more than a(n outright hateful?) warning to the USSR, they usually mean it to mean that tens of thousands of Japanese citizens were sacrificed simply to prevent nothing more harmless than a few handfuls of (gallant soldiers in) Koba's Red Army joining in some little way in the victory over the Japanese Empire.
It was indeed a sign to the Red Army, and it did prevent Stalin from prolonging the war mercilessly after the Nazis' defeat and achieving his project to take over all of European continent.
There was scarcely a
crime the Nazis or the knights of Bushido had committed, or even
imagined, which the Soviet regime hand not also perpetrated, usually on
an even larger scale. It ran precisely the type of system which had
produced the war and its horrors. More specifically, the Nazi-Soviet
Pact of September 1939 and the Japanese-Soviet Pact of April 1941 had
made the Axis aggressions possible.
There is no denying that a vast number of
Soviet citizens lost their lives in World War II. Without the Russian
people’s appalling suffering and sacrifice, the Allies might not have
triumphed in the end.
But there is also no denying that Moscow
was Nazi Germany’s partner in unleashing the war, the deadliest in human
history, in the first place. Victory Day is a good opportunity to
review the record of Russian culpability in plunging the world into war —
a record the Kremlin’s propagandists have been trying to obscure for
decades.
… for the first two
years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They
secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror
and destruction.
In the months that
followed the Nazi-Soviet takeover of Poland, as Hitler’s troops
conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France and bombed much
of London into rubble, Stalin’s forces continued their illegal war of aggression and conquest. [the three
Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the formerly Romanian territories of
Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, Finland…]
… In short, for the first two
years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They
secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror
and destruction.
Moreover, a Lithuanian testified that his father had said if he had the choice, he
would rather live under 10 years of Nazi occupation than under one single year of
communist occupation.
Certainly after Hitler's betrayal and his invasion of the USSR, but possibly even before, Stalin's goal was to defeat the Axis powers but his ultimate goal was to turn thereafter against his allies and sic his divisions against those who had supported him all these years and take over the entire continent, and this he ordered the Politburo and the NKVD to plan.
The only thing that aborted the plan of 400 Soviet divisions launching a brutal, a traitorous, and a bloody attack on his erstwhile allies was the news of the atomic bombsand their use over two Japanese cities.
Post-War History
Is there ever anyone who jokes or sighs or rolls his eyes about paranoia or witch hunts regarding Nazism or fascism? No, and with good reason. (Indeed, after ranting and giggling for years and years about Godwin's Law, the left has dropped all pretenses and shows its usual doublestandards as it has been using the fascism/Nazism/Hitler charge ceaselessly against conservatives and members of the — anti-government (!) — Republican Party.)
Why, then, should anyone (Joseph McCarthy first among them) be described as paranoid about a régime that, on the internal front, murders millions of its citizens and, on the external front, was indeed planning an invasion of Europe and the West (with the aid of those countries' domestic — i.e., traitorous — communist parties) — submitting all conquered territories and countries to the same bloody internal policies as had occurred in Eastern Europe's Bloodlands?
This brings up the so-called "paranoid" "witch hunts" against communists
in post-war America. Here is a question that is seldom brought up: Who
was head of the Kremlin when the term "McCarthyism" was coined? A fellow
by the name of Stalin. As for the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), another question is, how many people are aware that
the maligned council was not solely involved with communists? Indeed, wasn't it formed the year prior to the Nazi/Soviet non-aggression treaty, in 1938, to investigate disloyalty by subversive organizations tied to either pro-Soviet communists or — yes — pro-German fascists?
It is certainly time for two things: for Hiroshima to cease being an excuse for anti-Americanism and for "McCarthyism" to cease to be used as an allegedly neutral and objective expression.
This post could end here.
Over ten years after Antony Beevor came out with astonishing revelations from the Kremlin's archives mentioned above (The Second World War was published in 2012), the historian's conclusions are still not accepted by the élites (they are not challenged — with arguments good or otherwise — they are simply ignored), leading them to call opposition to communism and to the USSR "a political movement
characterized by rank know-nothing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic
demagogues."
Let this sink in: Both of the authors of the book behind what the
New York Times calls "Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb'” — "a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms" — worked at The Nation and were therefore, in some capacity or other, close to communism and invariably doubling as experts in spewing anti-Americanism.
Once and for all, fellow journalists and fellow citizens, conservative and liberal alike (although I hardly expect the latter to follow this piece of — friendly — advice), stop saying "Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election" and stop referring matter-of-factly to "the election that Trump lost", to "Trump's defeat" and "false claims", and to "Trump tried to change the results" of "Joe Biden's victory" and to "swing the election in his favor".
The way that even conservative outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, not to mention RINOs like Mike Pence, buy into and repeat the drama queens' (the leftists' and the mainstream media's) "talking points" (not to call those double standards a language of hate) is unconscionable and deeply troubling (see Tuesday's WSJ editorial defending Donald Trump while calling his "post-election behavior" in 2020 "deceitful and destructive" and referring to his "disgraceful" "malfeasance").
As for National Review (thanks to Glenn Reynolds), which also pushes back against the Trump indictment, the magazine feels the need t point out that it "condemned Trump’s appalling actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election" as well as "Trump’s deceptions": "Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political
office is damnable." (Thanks for the hyperlink, Sarah Hoyt.)
Phrases like “baseless fraud claims”, “sham election investigations”, and “false claims of election fraud” come straight from the Democratic Party.
Where are the "allegedlys," the "reportedlys," and the "accused ofs"?
Meanwhile, Joe Biden's — far worse — shenanigans, both as senator and as occupant of the White House, are duly opposed but never with such vitriolic wording. The opposition is quite restrained and, even if principled, almost of the "Ho-hum" variety (rarely, if ever, loaded words like "disgrace(ful)", "appalling", or "malfeasance").
Back to "Trump's attempt to overturn the election": • the wording is not neutral, • the wording is not objective, and • the wording is not non-partisan.
Far from it.
Remember that Donald Trump's whole message is exactly, or almost exactly the same, i.e., that it was the Democrats who tried to overturn (and succeeded in overturning) the 2020 election. We could even use similar wordings: "the election that Biden lost", "Joe's defeat", "false claims", and "the Democrats tried to change (and succeeded in changing) the results". Indeed, the 45th President called it "stealing the election" and thus… undermining democracy.
Given that the charges are basically the same, shouldn't a media that was neutral, objective, and independent give equal space to both charges?
And if a reporter, or a common citizen, were to examine the rival charges independently and dispassionately, wouldn't an intellectually honest person (journalist or other) conclude that there is more evidence in Trump's favor?
The MSM — even conservative outlets — profess to claim that, in two and a half years, they "have seen no evidence
that the election was stolen."
Isn't it "evidence" of a stolen election — evidence that is "appalling" — that election offices in a handful of states in which Trump was leading after voting ended closed at midnight — a move that was absolutely unprecedented — and when they re-opened the next morning, several hours later, Joe Biden was suddenly ahead? Is that sentence a "deception" or "mendacious rhetoric"?
There are several pieces of evidence, WSJ, but, besides the one just mentioned, let two stand above the rest.
• Does it make sense, how conceivable is it, that a doddering professional politician with nary a history of a gift for gab or one of national popularity (unlike, say, deservedly or not, Ted Kennedy) would not only beat the Republican Party's rock star (Donald Trump) in votes, but also the Democrat Party's rock star (Barack Obama) — especially since his (rare) campaign speeches and (rare) campaign appearances hardly attracted any significant number of individuals, let alone crowds, and since, indeed (upon the strange advice of VIPs like Nancy Pelosi), he hardly left his basement to campaign?
• One of the main reasons many of us are skeptical do not pertain to the (long) list of evidence which follows below, but to the very fact that the mainstream media has been trying to stifle all debate on the subject, and that from the earliest hours of November 4, 2020. It simply won't do to simply repeat that it is a lie (or "the big lie") and a "baseless" or an "unfounded" claim without ever giving, at least once in a while, some evidence thereof. Actually, no, scratch that. Just giving one in-depth single article or news story in which every one of Trump's claims is meticulously debunked would be enough, and the New York Times and the Washington Post could refer to it by linking the word "unfounded" or "lie" to it in every every other subsequent news story, but that "ur-article" does not seem to exist in any editorial office.
As far as lies (big or otherwise) are concerned, in all honesty, most of the lies seem to be coming from the Left and the Democrat Party.
For instance, the five police officers killed during the January 6 "riots", as mentioned by one politician after another. Why don't we know the names of said police officers? Why don't we know the exact times on January 6 each one was allegedly murdered? Why, for goodness sake, don't we know the name of… the assassins? Why don't we know their fate? Shouldn't the alleged cop killers have been in the forefront of the "insurrectionists" judged for the "attack on (our) democracy"? Shouldn't we all agree that those cop killers (if they exist) should be given life or the death penalty?
As mentioned, the pieces of evidence regarding the 2020 election were known immediately, and for the past two and a half years, they have only been adding up.
As early as January 2021, a gentle giant like Dennis Prager posted a list of common-sense reasons as why to be skeptical of the results of the 2020 Election, otherwise known as "an election that violated every anti-fraud protocol and that resulted in statistically impossible numbers".
The anomalies:
In 132 years, no president has received more votes in his run for
reelection and lost. Yet Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in
2020 than in 2016 -- and lost.
Trump won 18 of the 19 counties both Democrats and Republicans regard
as the "bellwether" counties that virtually always go with the outcome
of presidential elections. Yet he lost.
He won four bellwether states -- Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina. Yet he lost.
Republicans held onto all the House seats they were defending and gained another 13 seats. Yet, Trump lost.
Add the following to the anomalies:
Unprecedented efforts were made in some states to change election laws.
Mostly Democratic states sent out tens of millions of ballots or
applications for absentee ballots to people who never requested them.
Voting began in some states six weeks before Election Day.
People have submitted sworn affidavits at great personal cost and
with possible perjury charges that they witnessed ballot tampering on
election night.
But all these things would matter little if Democrats involved in
ballot-counting felt morally compelled to count votes honestly.
So, then, there is one question I have never heard posed that trumps
all other considerations: Would moral considerations prevent Democrats
from cheating to oust Trump? Or, to put the question in the positive:
Would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe
Biden?
The answer to the first question is no: Moral considerations would
not prevent decent Democrats from cheating to prevent Trump's
reelection. The answer to the second question is yes: Decent Democrats
would deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Biden.
For four years, the media and their party, the Democrats, told us
every day that Trump is a fascist, a dictator, a racist and a white
supremacist; that he was an agent of the Russian government -- a
real-life Manchurian candidate. We were also repeatedly told by the
lying media (Trump's accurate description of the mainstream media) that
in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said there are "very fine" Nazis
(see the PragerU video, "The Charlottesville Lie"). Yes, the media told
us with a straight face that a man with a Jewish daughter, Jewish
son-in-law and Jewish grandchildren said there are fine Nazis. Biden
said he decided to run for president because of this lie.
So, then, here is the question: Why would anyone who sincerely believed Trump is a white-supremacist fascist dictator not cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming or remaining president of the United States?
Let me sharpen this question: Isn't someone who could prevent a fascist, white-supremacist, Nazi-defending dictator morally obligated to cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming president?
I certainly would. If I were in a position to cheat in order to
prevent a fascist from becoming president, why would I not cheat?
Breaching the U.S. Capitol a month later "was the worst offense against
democracy," continues Tuesday's WSJ editorial, adding approvingly, "and more than 1,000 people have been prosecuted in connection
with it." The Wall Street Journal's editorial
columns have been clear from Election Day that we have seen no evidence
that the election was stolen, and that Mr. Trump should have resigned in
disgrace after the events of Jan. 6. But
the good news of that day, and of all four Trump years as President, is
that America’s institutions held up under great stress. If there was a
conspiracy, it was by a gang of misfits.
Since the long list of evidence produced by Dennis Prager as early as January 2021 (most of which were known already in November 2020), we have had (among many other things): • the Twitter Files, • the definitive debunking of the 51 "experts" who called Hunter's laptop a hoax,
• Tucker Carlson's release of Capitol videos which the Democrats
wouldn't release during their "committee" and which the mainstream media showed no interest in sharing.
And yet, the MSM — even conservative outlets — still profess to claim that they "have seen no evidence
that the election was stolen."
Any single one of the above pieces of evidence, even alone, could, would, and should feature in Trump's declaration that fraud caused him to lose the 2020 vote.
What is appalling is the degree to which even hardcore conservatives seem to be way led by the Left's lies and fairy tales as well as the degree to which they forget how they were snookered by the progressive scammers who have nothing for them but hate and contempt.
The New York Times seems to be deliriously in favor of the movie Oppenheimer, with Kai Bird assuring us in his New York Times
piece that opposition to the Red Scare was good and principled, that he hopes
that "Christopher Nolan’s stunning new film on Oppenheimer’s
complicated legacy will initiate a national conversation", and that
we can rest assured that even TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) — our words, not his — manages to be part of the equation.
Kai Bird is the director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the New York Times tells us, as well as, more importantly,
co-author with the late Martin J. Sherwin of “American Prometheus: The
Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, the book behind Christopher Nolan's "brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms".
Hmm, might there be something that the Times is not telling us about Kai Bird
in the intro to this column of his? We shall find out soon enough (below the color picture below, if you are pressed for time)… Update: Thanks for the Instalinks, Ed Driscoll and Sarah Hoyt…
In
any case, Bird writes:
Celebrated in 1945 as the “father of the atomic
bomb,” nine years later
he would become the chief celebrity victim of the McCarthyite
maelstrom.
And here is how Kai Bird starts his proposal to "initiate a national conversation" (which usually means "Shut up! And listen to the Drama Queens' fairy tales, exclusively, and accept them hook, line, 'n' sinker") with "informed civil discourse" leading to "wise policy decisions":
Sadly, Oppenheimer’s life story is relevant to our current political
predicaments. Oppenheimer was destroyed by a political movement
characterized by rank know-nothing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic
demagogues. The witch-hunters of that season are the direct ancestors of
our current political actors of a certain paranoid style. I’m thinking
of Roy Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel, who tried to
subpoena Oppenheimer in 1954, only to be warned that this could
interfere with the impending security hearing against Oppenheimer. Yes,
that Roy Cohn, who taught former President Donald Trump his brash,
wholly deranged style of politics. Just recall the former president’s
fact-challenged comments on the pandemic or climate change. This is a
worldview proudly scornful of science.
Over ten years after Antony Beevor came out with astonishing revelations from the Kremlin's archives (his massive The Second World War
was published in 2012), the historian's conclusions are still not
accepted by the élites (they are not challenged — with arguments good or ill — they are simply ignored), leading them to call opposition to communism and to the USSR "a political movement
characterized by rank know-nothing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic
demagogues."
Astonishingly, [Oppenheimer] had gone so far as to say that the Hiroshima bomb was
used “against an essentially defeated enemy.” The atomic bomb, he
warned, “is a weapon for aggressors, and the elements of surprise and
terror are as intrinsic to it as are the fissionable nuclei.”
As Antony Beevor has shown, these
"forthright dissents," however honestly believed, have proven to be false — since the atom bomb
did do something which is nothing less than formidable (not in the Pacific theater, but in the European): prevent the Russians from making a U-turn, betraying its allies,
refusing to halt the Red Army's advance, and proceeding with the
conquest of the rest of the European continent. Science, anyone?
The Soviet Union's (secret) intentions and plans were confirmed after Antony Beevor
spent time in Moscow, unearthing many a previously top secret document
in the archives, and leading to his writing in his history of The Second World War about "the two pitiless totalitarian systems which fed off each other."
In the penultimate chapter, Cities of the Dead, Beevor writes that after the German capital fell in May 1945, the American ambassador to Moscow paid a visit to the Kremlin:
'It
must be very pleasant for you', [Averell] Harriman said, making
conversation, … 'to be in Berlin after all your country has suffered.'
The Soviet leader eyed him. … 'Tsar Alexander went all the way to
Paris,' he replied.
That was not entirely a joke. Well before
Churchill's [notion of a war erupting between the Western allies and
their USSR ally], a meeting of the Politburo in 1944 had decided to order the Stavka to plan for the invasion of France and Italy, a General Shtemenko later told Beria's son. The Red Army offensive was to be combined with a seizure of power by the local Communist Parties. In addition, Shtemenko explained, 'a landing in Norway was provided for, as well as the seizure of the straits [with Denmark]. A substantial budget was allocated for the realization of these plans. It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralysed by their colonial problems. The Soviet Union possessed 400 experienced divisions, ready to bound forward like tigers. It was calculated that the whole operation would take no more than a month
… All these plans were aborted when Stalin learned from [Beria] that the Americans had the atom bomb
and were putting it into mass production.' Stalin apparently told
Beria 'that if Roosevelt had still been alive, we would have
succeeded'. This, it seems, was the main reason why Stalin suspected
that Roosevelt had been secretly assassinated
… Stalin had achieved
everything he wanted at Potsdam, even though he had been
forced to cancel the invasion of western Europe out of fear of the atom
bomb
This
is astounding news. Nothing less. What does it say about the use of the
atomic bombs — not to mention, for that matter, "McCarthyism" along with
the alleged paranoia regarding the later Red "Scare" as well as the
alleged daftness of the American people?
It
was indeed a sign — to the Red Army — and it did prevent Stalin from
prolonging the war mercilessly after the Nazis' defeat and achieving his
project to take over all of European continent.
Why in post-war America and Western Europe should anyone (Joseph McCarthy
first among them) be described as paranoid about a régime that, on the
internal front, murders millions of its citizens — an average 1600 citizens died every day — and, on the external
front, was indeed planning an invasion of Europe and the West (with the
aid of those countries' communist parties) — submitting all conquered
territories and countries to the same bloody internal policies as had
occurred in Eastern Europe's Bloodlands?
Back to the book, to the movie, and to the New York Times. Kai Bird:
This was the real tragedy of Oppenheimer.
What happened to him also damaged our ability as a society to debate
honestly about scientific theory — the very foundation of our modern
world.
Hellooo! The right is quite willing to debate about scientific theory, honestly or otherwise, and about any other subject. It's the Left that shuts everyone but themselves down.
Quantum physics has utterly
transformed our understanding of the universe. And this science has also
given us a revolution in computing power and incredible biomedical
innovations to prolong human life. Yet, too many of our citizens still
distrust scientists and fail to understand the scientific quest, the
trial and error inherent in testing any theory against facts by
experimenting. Just look at what happened to our public health civil
servants during the recent pandemic.
Are
you talking about the public health civil servants (Fauci first among them) who
treated everyone like dirt? Isn't respect supposed to be mutual? How
about this, Kai? If you want respect for civil servants and
scientists (as well as for politicians and bureaucrats), let them show respect towards us. As well as towards their…
colleagues! Meaning, first of all, not silencing people (not least
fellow doctors and fellow… scientists!) who have reasons, good or ill,
for disagreeing with you.
Kai Bird lives in such an echo chamber that he can't even process, or pretend to
process, the (numerous and quite rational) challenges (no, not "fact-challenged" comments) that have arisen through the years,
sorry through the decades, with regards, among many other subjects, to the Covid pandemic and to global warming.
We stand on the cusp of another
technological revolution in which artificial intelligence will transform
how we live and work, and yet we are not yet having the kind of
informed civil discourse with its innovators that could help us to make
wise policy decisions on its regulation.
How do you propose to have "informed civil discourse" when people like yourself are
always referring to people whom you you disagree with as "racists" or,
to use your own preferred vocabulary, "rank know-nothing,
anti-intellectual, xenophobic
demagogues"?
Oh yes, we almost forgot: it turns out that what the New York Times
does not tell you in its bio for the above-mentioned article is that Kai Bird (beardless, holding the book in 2006) also used to be an editor at The Nation. This is the type of individual the New York Times seeks to rely upon to bring you "all the news that's fit to print" — maybe not a communist, but something close thereto.
Let that sink in: one of the authors of the book behind what the
New York Times calls "Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb'” — "a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms"
— worked at The Nation and was therefore, in some capacity or other,
close to communism and invariably doubling as an expert in
spewing anti-Americanism.
Wait a minute. It turns out that: so was the other author.
Whereas Kai Bird was "an associate editor of The Nation magazine from 1978 to 1982 and then a columnist for the magazine", Wikipedia informs us, Martin J Sherwin "served on the board of The Nation, to which he was a regular contributor. While a professor at Princeton University, he taught and mentored Katrina vanden Heuvel, now editor-in-chief of The Nation." (Unimportant aside: Since vanden Heuvel resigned in June 2021, Wikipedia is not always up to date…)
Where the authors purport to denounce "anti-intellectual[ism]", doesn't this make it likely that their book (as well as Nolan's movie?) is another (tired?) example of anti-Americanism?
And, to no one's surprise, the Pulitzer committee chose two Nation veterans to win their prestigious (?) award. Okay, fine. Maybe it turns out that theirs indeed was the best book of the year (Amazon shows thousands of positive votes amounting to 4.6/5 stars). But with the Pulitzer's choices through the the past few years — I mean, through the past eight to nine decades — you are allowed to show a slight degree of skepticism.
Now you might (especially if you are a leftist) say this is unfair and that we are being judgmental and that this is typical of conservatives' tiny and bigoted minds, but in that perspective, notice that conservatives are not the ones rushing to Amazon every time an adversary's book is published to try to drown the title under a deluge of one stars and laconic one-sentence attacks.
Oh, and don't forget: while the MSM is raving over Oppenheimer — and would poo-poo any mention of the original authors leaning communist as outdated and medieval — its members are going berserk over Sound of Freedom.
Whatever the case, the book's preface reads: "In the 1930s, at the University of California, Berkeley … he was moved by the consequences of the Great Depression at home and the rise of fascism abroad to work actively with friends —many of them fellow travelers and communists — in the struggle to achieve economic and racial justice." Notice how the book pointedly ignores to what degree the "fellow travelers" turned out to be, willingly or otherwise (i.e., "useful idiots"), Stalin's henchmen.
The book's first chapter starts with a "bittersweet" memorial service in 1967 after the death of the "passionate advocate for social justice", with 600 attendees, among them "Robert's younger brother, Frank Oppenheimer, whose own career as a physicist had been destroyed during the McCarthyite
maelstrom" — while conveniently not mentioning that the latter was a member of the Communist Party, as was, or as had been, Robert's own wife (at a time when being a member of a communist party, of any communist party in virtually any country, meant being an ally, and indeed an admirer, of Joseph Stalin, of the NKVD's/KGB's police state, and of the Kremlin's propaganda).
Some compared Oppie's 1954 "public humiliation to the 1633 trial of another scientist, Galileo Galilei, by a medieval-minded church; others … recalled the ordeal of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in France in the 1890s." Thus, nowhere in the preface and in the first half dozen chapters is the Stalinist threat, not to mention the Soviet Union's own trials (sic), ever mentioned, or even alluded to.
“American Prometheus: The
Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” is indeed a fascinating read, and that explains why, while reading the first four or five chapters, I would occasionally look a name of a fellow student or colleague at the Harvard, Cambridge, and Göttingen universities up in Wikipedia, quite innocently, and be surprised to learn that, like his brother (Frank Oppenheimer), they were members of their respective countries' communist parties, something not mentioned in the Bird/Sherwin book I was reading (at least not until that point in the book).
Let us conclude this post with an all-important return to Wikipedia's Martin J Sherwin and Kai Bird pages: both men have been experts in nuclear weaponry for decades, we learn, which really means that they have been critical of nuclear weaponry for decades, but only the American or the Western kind, never or rarely the Soviets' nukes.
For instance, we learn that "Bird's biographical [?!] works include …Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy
(1998), which he co-edited with Lawrence Lifschultz." The "Denial of
History"? I can't say that I have read this book, but if you remember 1995's Smithsonian controversy at all, it was that a display of the Enola
Gay Superfortress contained wording to the effect that (wait for it) racism (!) was behind
the USA's war in the Pacific (conveniently leaving out he fatc that in the
European theater, America's "racist" G.I.s were fighting blond,
blue-eyed Aryans — aka, I suppose, white supremacists) or at least behind the atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Holy Molly. It has been racism from Day One for the left's fanatics and their "national conversations". From one museum's display generating controversy across the land to the preposterous1619 Project being eagerly accepted by a plethora of schools and universities from sea to shining sea, an end must be put to these fairy tales by the usual Drama Queens.
Even when Bird and Sherwin published their award-winning biography in
2005, there was already abundant evidence that Oppenheimer had indeed
once been a member of the Communist Party of the United States.
… Even before the evidence from the Russian archives, proof that
Oppenheimer had been a Communist did not emerge from his enemies or from
unreliable witnesses or ambivalent phrases in sketchy documents.
Several of his friends, acquaintances, and graduate students—all of whom
remained left-wingers—wrote memoirs or gave interviews in which they
detailed Oppie’s membership in the Communist Party.
… [The] new evidence … comes from the Vassiliev Notebooks. These are
copies and summaries of documents from the KGB archive that we discussed
extensively in our 2009 book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America.
… The evidence by the mid-1940s was that he had left his earlier Communist
allegiance behind and was anything but a party sympathizer. But one of
the major contributing factors to his loss of security access was his
own unwillingness to provide a candid and honest account of his earlier
Communist ties and why he had put them aside. If he continued to lie
about such matters, how could he now be trusted?
