[Just The News] On this episode, join Victor Davis Hanson and co-host Jack Fowler, as Victor answers questions that have been sent in by listeners of the show, on topics ranging from the founding of America to farming.
[Sean of the South] The 94-year-old woman gets a jumpstart on Decoration Day every year. The cemetery gets busy at her little church in Elmore County. She likes to be early to the party.
She has brown-flecked hands. Tissue-paper skin. She arrives at the cemetery accompanied by her grandson. They get there in the morning, before the heat of the day. When fog still hangs above the earth.
Her grandson helps her out of the car. She uses a four-pronged cane to walk. Her grandson carries a box of decorations.
"What was my grandfather like?" the kid asks.
"He was a good man," she says, placing a black-and-white photo on her late husband’s grave. In the photo, a young man is wearing an Air Force uniform.
He was a pilot. He dropped bombs for a living.
"He never got over it," she said. "It haunted him, killing all those people just by mashing a button."
Southerners do not "press" a button. They "mash" it.
"After the war," she went on, "he used to wake up at night sometimes, crying, and I didn’t know what to do but rub his back."
Memorial Day is what most people call it now. But it’s still called Decoration Day in many areas. Especially in the Appalachian portions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, north Georgia, northern and central Alabama, north Mississippi. Also, in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, the Rocky Mountain regions of Colorado Utah, and in parts of California.
It all started after the Civil War. Women and children would decorate the graves of fallen soldiers. By World War I’s end, some 120,000 Americans died in combat. By World War II, nearly 420,000 American soldiers were deceased.
In U.S. towns, from coast to coast, families placed framed photographs on graves. Stuffed animals. Little flags. Keepsakes. Notecards.
"I remember when you couldn’t visit a cemetery without seeing photographs everywhere," says the old woman. "They don’t do pictures very much anymore. Now everyone mostly does flags."
Families also put pebbles on tombstones. A practice which started in Biblical times. Likewise, there are lots of pennies on grave markers. If you place a penny on the plot of a loved one, you’re granted one wish.
I wonder what most people wish for.
And flowers. Today, the flower industry experiences few inventory surges—save for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day—like they do on Memorial Day.
You can see all the flowers if you pull over and visit any graveyard, off any two-lane highway. Roses, tulips, lilacs, daffodils, sunflowers, carnations, marigolds, chrysanthemums, and plastic flowers of every color, shape, size, and denomination.
The old woman has selected carnations. White ones.
"Harry doesn’t care if we decorate his grave," she says. "Besides, he didn’t die in combat, and people in heaven don’t care about flowers. It’s me who cares."
But it’s not just her. More than 41 million Americans served in the military over the last century. More than 600,000 have died in service since World War I. Memorial Day is theirs. Not ours.
Which is why the old woman has one thing to say about their memoriam:
"Don’t say ’Happy Memorial Day’ this weekend. It’s not happy. It ain’t about parades and barbecues. It’s about missing someone so badly you can’t breathe."
[ET] The U.S. establishment’s capitulation to the global left led to a complete occupation of U.S. institutions and the ultimate corruption of the free world.
"The enemies from within are more dangerous to me than the enemies from the outside," said Republican Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump, at a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on May 11, 2024.
At a Springfield, Illinois, event, some 20 years before the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln delivered a prophetic message to his fellow citizens: "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
The speech is said to be the origin of the popular quote wrongly attributed to Lincoln: "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
While these were not Lincoln’s exact words, most Americans understand that the 16th and 45th presidents of the United States were troubled by the same thing—the potential self-destruction of their nation.
History has demonstrated that internal discord can be as dangerous to a sovereign country as a foreign aggressor.
A HISTORY OF BETRAYAL
In 2013, American author Diana West published "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character." Her book initiated an important debate about the modern history of the American Republic.
Ms. West contended that Nov. 16, 1933, was the beginning of a long assault on the security of U.S. democracy. This was the date when Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to normalize relations with the murderous communist regime known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. FDR’s fateful decision opened America’s doors to an unprecedented invasion of Marxist militants, communist spies, and domestic fellow-travelers.
[IsraelNationalNews] Professor Anne Bayefsky, the Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and President of Human Rights Voices, spoke to Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about the International Court of Justice's order that Israel must "must immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate" which could cause "the physical destruction" of the Palestinian Arabs.
Professor Baysfky stated, "The UN's highest legal body is a political tool of global antisemitism. The presiding judge in this case was ICJ President Nawaf Salam. He is from Lebanon, a country that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. His name was on the ballot for Lebanese Prime Minister in the two most recent elections. He was his country’s UN ambassador for 10 years up until 2017, serving as President of the Security Council and Vice President of the General Assembly during that time. His social media activities include memes telling Israel 'unhappy birthday to you.' In short, he is a rabid anti-Israel politician that the UN has dressed up as a judge."
"As Salam read out his kangaroo court's decision to the world, what sources did he cite as providing the opinion's factual foundation? The United Nations, of course," she said.
Bayefsky noted, "As Israeli Judge ad-hoc Aharon Barak pointed out in his dissent, the majority took uncorroborated UN sources at face value, in itself an affront to legal standards. Not only are UN actors political entities, or selected and governed by political bodies, some of them actually participated in October 7. Their pathological anti-Israel bias is patently obvious, starting with the refusal of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council to condemn Hamas terrorists and their October 7 atrocities - ever."
"But perhaps the standing of this 'legal' farce is best demonstrated by the reaction of Hamas to the decision. Hamas said: 'We welcome the decision by the World Court' before referring to the Jewish state as the "Zionist enemy" they intend to annihilate. When the fans of a decision that purports to be anti-genocide, are those who are openly committed to genocide, it's a clue that justice has not been served," she said.
"This is the real cycle of violence. Palestinian terrorists murder and rape Jews. They then look to the United Nations for justification, excuses, and cover. The UN - and its World Court - delivers. And Palestinian terrorists promise more of the same. Instead of the rule of law, we are witnessing a return to the state of nature," Bayefsky concluded.
And not just Israel. Ask yourself why [American] WOT was lost?
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
05/26/2024 02:11 ||
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Link ||
[74 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
[IsraelTimes] Israel needs to make hard choices as to who will run the Strip after the war, with few good options to be found.
Diminished but not deterred, Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... is still putting up a fight after seven brutal months of war with Israel, regrouping in some of the hardest-hit areas in northern Gazoo
Continued on Page 49
#3
Fatah rule over Gaza would be a very bad for the Gaza population. It would probably result in a low to sometimes hot conflict between pro Hamas forces and pro Fatah forces, a significant amount of graft, a very slow reconstruction, continued reliance by Gaza on electricity and water from Israel, food from donors and money from the petro States.
That's unfortunate for the Gazans but if they want better governance, they'll have to work it out themselves.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
05/26/2024 14:41 Comments ||
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#4
See: Any story about mob territory and the violence associated with contests over it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/26/2024 14:58 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] One of the legendary submarines of the Second World War, the American submarine Harder, was discovered at the bottom of the South China Sea. This was reported by Business Insider with reference to the archaeological department of the US Naval History and Heritage Administration (NHHC).
USS Harder, known for its daring attacks on the Japanese fleet, was sunk on August 24, 1944, off the coast of the Philippines. The crew was commanded by officer Samuel Deeley, who was called the "destroyer killer".
It is noted that only the conning tower on the submarine was damaged, otherwise the ship is intact.
The discovery of the boat at a depth of 1140 m was reported by participants in the Lost 52 project, dedicated to the search for 52 American submarines that sank during the war. The archaeological department explained that it is difficult to identify submarines, but the USS Harder is perfectly preserved. The Lost 52 team collected detailed data using photogrammetry technology and underwater robots.
The Gato-class diesel-electric submarine USS Harder (SS-257) began construction in December 1941. In the spring of 1943, she began combat duty at the Pearl Harbor base. The submarine went on six combat cruises, in one of them she sank three Japanese destroyers, and also destroyed or damaged two more.
The submarine Harder went on its last voyage with another submarine, USS Hake. A team of 79 sailors discovered two Japanese ships in Dasol Bay in the northern Philippines and managed to fire three torpedoes before sinking as a result of enemy depth charges. The USS Hake managed to evade.
At least six submarines were found by members of the Lost 52 project. They said that, out of respect for the families of the sailors, they announce finds only after they are fully confirmed.
As Regnum reported, earlier in the United States they found a “cursed” ship that disappeared along with its crew in 1909 on Lake Superior. The wooden steamer Adella Shores set sail from Whitefish Point and ran into a storm. Its wreckage was found only in 2021. After this, experts studied numerous archival information and confirmed that the same ship had been discovered.
In January 2023, British researchers identified the name of a warship whose wreckage was recovered off the coast of Great Britain in 2019. We are talking about the Dutch ship Klein Hollandia, built in 1656 and sank in 1672 as a result of a battle in the English Channel. Its wreckage was located at a depth of 32 meters near the city of Eastbourne.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
05/26/2024 6:44 Comments ||
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#2
...A grim detail: one of the ships hunting Harder that day was the IJN's Patrol Boat 102.
PB 102 started life as USS Stewart (DD-224), part of the doomed US Asiatic Fleet at the beginning of the war. She had done well but was seriously damaged during the retreat to Java. Stewart was drydocked there for repairs...but the yard crew botched the process, she fell off the blocks, and had to be abandoned. When the Japanese showed up, they couldn't resist the opportunity and repaired/recommissioned her.
Somehow, PB102 survived the war to be recaptured and brought back to the states. She was sunk as a target off San Francisco in 1946.
#3
Andrew Jackson May (June 24, 1875 – September 6, 1959) was a Kentucky attorney, an influential New Deal-era politician, and chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee during World War II, famous for his role as chief architect of the Peacetime Selective Service act. May was implicated in the leak of classified naval information, and later an unrelated conviction for bribery. May was a Democratic member of United States House of Representatives from Kentucky during the 72nd to 79th sessions of Congress.
May was responsible for the release of highly confidential military information during World War II known as the May Incident. U.S. submarines had been conducting a successful undersea war against Japanese shipping during World War II, frequently escaping their anti-submarine depth charge attacks. May revealed the deficiencies of Japanese depth-charge tactics in a press conference held in June 1943 on his return from a war zone junket. At this press conference, he revealed the highly sensitive fact that American submarines had a high survival rate because Japanese depth charges were exploding at too shallow a depth. Various press associations sent this leaked news story over their wires and many newspapers published it, including one in Honolulu, Hawaii.
After the news became public, Japanese naval antisubmarine forces began adjusting their depth charges to explode at a greater depth. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, commander of the U.S. submarine fleet in the Pacific, estimated that May's security breach cost the United States Navy as many as 10 submarines and 800 crewmen killed in action. He said, "I hear Congressman May said the Jap depth charges are not set deep enough. He would be pleased to know that the Japs set them deeper now."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ET] The U.S. establishment’s capitulation to the global left led to a complete occupation of U.S. institutions and the ultimate corruption of the free world.
