There's a major asterisk next to this one because William Arkin had <a href="https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1557464955602890753">formerly claimed</a> at Newsweek that his sources told him AG Garland hadn't approved the Mar-a-Lago raid.


	And plenty of people got burned by that.


	This story claims that the FBI raid <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-sought-documents-trump-hoarded-years-including-about-russiagate-1734280">targeted </a>specific documents.

<blockquote>
	
		"The&nbsp;FBI&nbsp;raid on Mar-a-Lago last Monday was specifically intended to recover&nbsp;Donald Trump's personal "stash" of hidden documents, two high-level U.S. intelligence officials tell&nbsp;Newsweek.

	
		To justify the unprecedented raid on a former president's residence and protect the source who revealed the existence of Trump's private hoard, agents went into Trump's residence on the pretext that they were seeking&nbsp;all&nbsp;government documents, says one official who has been involved in the investigation. But the true target was this private stash, which Justice Department officials feared Donald Trump might weaponize."
</blockquote>


	According to Arkin, these documents involved Russiagate.

<blockquote>
	
		"The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges."

	
		"Trump was particularly interested in matters related to the Russia hoax and the wrong-doings of the deep state," one former Trump official tells&nbsp;Newsweek. "I think he felt, and I agree, that these are facts that the American people need to know." The official says Trump may have been planning to use them as part of a 2024 run for the presidency.
</blockquote>


	Is it true? Who knows. Arkin's sources were wrong about Garland. And that's a very basic thing. But it would provide a certain motive power for the controversy. It would explain why Trump wanted certain documents and why the Biden administration might want to seize them.


	Of course just because something sounds plausible, doesn't mean that it's actually true.

Did FBI Raid Seek "Exonerating" Russiagate Materials?

There's a major asterisk next to this one because William Arkin had formerly claimed at Newsweek that his sources told him AG Garland hadn't approved the Mar-a

Did FBI Raid Seek "Exonerating" Russiagate Materials?

The engine of Holocaust denial is a desire to kill Jews. Otherwise why bother?


	There's a fringe of conspirazoids, the sorts of people who believe that the moon landing was faked,&nbsp;that UFOs can be found in your backyard, and that 9/11 was carried out by the NYPD, and that Bigfoot killed JFK who are attracted to Holocaust denial among the many other conspiracy theory options.&nbsp;But the big leagues of Holocaust denials are associated with Nazism and Communism because they both specialized in the extermination of Jews.


	The "Palestinian" cause is a toxic inbreeding of Nazis and Communists.


	The Muslim Brotherhood, key players in the Arab Revolt, got a lot of their techniques from the Nazis. And the Nazi influence was felt most strongly in Egypt. But the "Palestinian" cause was manufactured by the Soviet Union.


	Mahmoud Abbas, the current dictator-for-life of the PLO, got his <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/abbass-untranslated-book-480751">Holocaust denial training</a> from the USSR. Abbas wrote it as a "student" in the Soviet Union as part of the&nbsp;Palestinian-Soviet Friendship Foundation which was itself <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/how-holocaust-denial-shaped-mahmoud-abbas-worldview/">crossbred with Nazi propagand</a>a.

<blockquote>
	
		&nbsp;PA President Mahmoud Abbas is profoundly fascinated by Nazi propaganda and has employed it in his own writings, particularly in his doctoral dissertation on the subject of the Holocaust, “The Other Face: The Secret Connections Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement,” which he wrote in Moscow in 1982. Two years later, Abbas published a book based on his dissertation. It is written in Arabic and, tellingly, has never been translated into any other language.

	
		There is a reason for this: The book is inspired by and based on the work of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. While he was a fugitive in Argentina, Eichmann formulated and disseminated Nazi propaganda according to which the Holocaust was a Jewish-Nazi conspiracy that sacrificed Jewish lives in order to create a Jewish state in Palestine.&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	So what did the Germans really expect when they invited the head of a terror group responsible for the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-714943">Munich Massacr</a>e?

<blockquote>
	
		At a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Abbas was asked by a reporter whether he plans to apologize to Israel and Germany for the 1972 Munich massacre, ahead of its 50th anniversary. Eleven members of the Israeli delegation and a German police officer were murdered after members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, which was linked to&nbsp;Abbas’s Fatah party, took hostages at the Olympic Village on September 5, 1972.&nbsp;

	
		“If we want to go over the past, go ahead,” Abbas responded in Arabic. “I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed... 50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts,” saying the last word in English.

	
		While Scholz could be seen wincing at Abbas’s Holocaust reference, he did not immediately rebuke the Palestinian president, although he had earlier rejected his use of the word “apartheid” to describe Israeli policies.
</blockquote>


	Scholtz has since tepidly condemned Abbas' Holocaust denial.


	The debate about Holocaust denial is less important than the motive for it. Abbas responded to his role in the massacre of Jews with Holocaust denial. That's typical. It's the essence of the purpose that Holocaust denial is meant to serve.


	The "Palestinian" cause is about finishing the work that the Nazis began. It's why Hitler is so widely admired in the Palestinian Authority. "Palestinian" Holocaust denial, like most kinds, is about paving the way for justifying the future murder of Jews.

Abbas' Holocaust Denial Tour Hits Germany

The engine of Holocaust denial is a desire to kill Jews. Otherwise why bother?


	There's a fringe of conspirazoids, the sorts of people who believe that

Abbas' Holocaust Denial Tour Hits Germany

Here's the JTA&nbsp;very <a href="https://www.jta.org/2022/08/16/united-states/texas-school-district-orders-librarians-to-remove-a-version-of-anne-franks-diary-from-shelves">deliberately</a> pushing its political agenda of getting sexualized books to kids.

<blockquote>
	
		A school district in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, has ordered its librarians to remove an illustrated adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” from their shelves and digital libraries, along with the Bible and dozens of other books that were challenged by parents last year...

	
		“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation,”&nbsp;by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman and illustrator David Polonsky, is a 2019 illustrated adaptation of the bestselling diary by the teenage Holocaust victim.&nbsp;The New York Times called the book&nbsp;“so engaging and effective that it’s easy to imagine it replacing the [original] ‘Diary’ in classrooms and among younger readers.”&nbsp;

	
		The parental challenge against the book came in February, and the district initially dismissed it, Hawes said. Hawes, who is not Jewish, is on a list of parents who can be called in to serve on a committee to review book challenges.

	
		“When we got ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ we thought, ‘This is a joke.’ But it wasn’t,” Hawes said, adding that the complaint was that “the book shouldn’t be read without parent supervision.” She suspected that the parent may have objected to the unabridged diary’s references to female genitalia,&nbsp;same-sex attraction&nbsp;and&nbsp;other sexual matters, which&nbsp;have been deemed “pornographic” by parental challenges in the past. But she couldn’t be sure because the parent who challenged the book didn’t show up to the meeting.
</blockquote>


	This is not Anne Frank's diary.


	This is a comic book based on a version of the diary that neither Anne nor her father wanted published.


	I've written about the abuse of Anne Frank's legacy multiple times. There's the famous play that eliminated her Jewishness. There's also the 'unabridged' diary. This is material that Frank wrote when she was younger that she then got rid of. Her father respectfully edited the diary when he fulfilled her wish to have it published. After his death, the "unabridged" diary containing sexual materials that neither the dead girl nor her father wanted to publish was gleefully put out there.


	The material that parents objected to in&nbsp;“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation”, even assuming it's true to the unabridged version (I have no idea if it is) was also the material that Anne's older self censored and that her father got rid of. It doesn't belong in schools and shouldn't be in public view. It's an insult to her memory.


	Not everything people write as 13-year-olds should be out there. Nor should they be forced to live with it after death.&nbsp;


	The publishing interests pushing this claim that they have some moral right to dig up and publish material that Anne did not want out there for the "greater good".


	Getting it out of libraries and out of publication is a very good thing because it's effectively stolen material that was never meant for publication. It's no different than publishing sexual materials or photos of any other deceased person&nbsp;that they would have not wanted in the public realm.&nbsp;


	Exploiting the Holocaust to push a sexual agenda in schools is despicable. And using stolen writings from a murdered Jewish girl to do so is equally so.


	Anne Frank deserves better. So do our children.

This Version of Anne Frank's Diary Should Be Removed From Libraries

Here's the JTA&nbsp;very deliberately pushing its political agenda of getting sexualized books to kids.


	
		A school district in suburban Fort Worth,

This Version of Anne Frank's Diary Should Be Removed From Libraries

NY Gov Hochul Won't Lock Up Criminals, Will Ban Toy Guns

Toy guns don't kill people, violent criminals who aren't locked up kill people.


	But New York's Governor Hochul has made it clear that, along with

NY Gov Hochul Won't Lock Up Criminals, Will Ban Toy Guns

I remember the controversy over dropping Truth, Justice and the American Way. But that was just the beginning.


	This story involves Spider Man: Remastered, a game for Sony video game consoles that recently came to the personal computer. PCs have a vibrant modding community, much of which is based around a site known as 'Nexus'. While the game's fictional depiction of New York City contained the inevitable 'Pride' flags, a&nbsp;'modder' on that site reportedly figured out how to trigger an alternate graphic used in Muslim countries that would get rid of the flag. And he replaced the Pride flags with American flags.


	Anyone downloading the 'mod' would be able to replace all the 'Pride' flags with the Stars and Stripes.&nbsp;


	Since Spider Man: Remastered is a single-player game, it's an individual choice and nothing they did would have any impact on anyone else playing the game.


	Despite hosting a variety of violent and sexual mods,&nbsp;Nexus, the modding site, responded by banning the 'modder' declaring that sort of thing isn't welcome here. The ban however has only made the mod <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/woup7g/nexus_mods_removes_spiderman_mod_that_replaces/">more popular </a>and it's being distributed across a variety of sites.


	While it's been a while since Gamergate hit the scene, the struggle between the social justice elites and gamers has never actually gone away. Gaming journalism has become much less relevant since, but at the same time corporate wokeness has become more rigidly policed.&nbsp;


	And the one thing you can't do in even the most violent games, as Rockstar's GTA 6 series and its studios are reportedly being remade to be sensitive and politically correct, is be proud of being an American.

Pride Flags, Yes, American Flags, No in Spiderman Game

I remember the controversy over dropping Truth, Justice and the American Way. But that was just the beginning.


	This story involves Spider Man: Remastered

Pride Flags, Yes, American Flags, No in Spiderman Game

Geographically, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe (about the size of Texas and some 1800km across from west to east); it has a population of more than 40,000,000. The Russian invasion is being conducted along four axes: 1) from the north, out of Belarus; 2) from the northeast, along the Chernihiv-Sumy-Kharkiv axis; 3) out of the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine (with the help of the two Russian separatist republics of Luhansk and Donetsk); and, 4) out of Crimea in the south. In general, while the Russian assault has been significantly less effective than anticipated, Russian forces are still managing, deliberately and inexorably, to encircle and bombard key Russian cities and towns, e.g., the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second largest city), Mariupol. In the process, they have created the most tragic humanitarian disaster in Europe since the end of World War II, with more than 2,000,000 refugees now fleeing Ukraine.


	The Initial Russian Air &amp; Missile Strikes.


	When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Western military observers expected the Russian Air Force (VKS) to unleash something akin to the “shock and awe” campaign of our first Gulf War in 1991. At the start of Operation DESERT STORM, U.S. and Allied air forces conducted literally thousands of sorties, paralyzing Iraq’s leadership, destroying its military infrastructure (including air bases), and eliminating or at least grounding the Iraqi Air Force, giving Allied air forces complete command of the air, something air war theorists call “air supremacy.”


	Surprisingly, however, Putin’s invasion began quite differently: Instead of a massive aerial assault with dozens, even hundreds of combat and support aircraft, the VKS operated in “penny packets” of two or three aircraft, or even with single fighters or fighter-bombers. And although they have neutralized many Ukrainian airfields, and destroyed dozens of aircraft, they’ve yet to complete the task of driving the Ukrainian Air Force from the skies and establishing total air supremacy. (According to U.S. defense officials, the VKS, as of March 7th, had launched more than 600 missile strikes, which, whether or not by design, have struck both military and civilian targets.)&nbsp;


	We are still waiting for Russia to commit the majority of its air forces, which qualitatively and quantitatively vastly outnumber those of Ukraine—e.g., Russia began the war with more than 700 fighter craft, Ukraine with less than 50. Russia, of course, also has many more fighter bomber and bomber aircraft. Yet given the mediocre to poor performance of the VKS to date, it may be that the Russians simply do not have the capabilities needed to effectively coordinate the kind of complex air campaigns the U.S. and its Allies were able to conduct over Iraq in 1991 and 2003.&nbsp;


	The Russian Ground Advance Broken Down.


	1) The Northern Axis:


	Along this axis, Russian forces debouched from Belarus (Russia’s ally) and moved south on Kyiv, about 100km from the Belarusian border. Here, the Russians have deployed large numbers of battalion tactical groups (BTGs), each of which consists of about 800 men, with artillery, tanks, anti-tank weapons, etc..


	This large attacking force, whose columns stretch back some 40 miles toward the Belarusian border, has reached the western outskirts of Kyiv; however, it has barely budged over the past several days. Why this is so has evoked considerable head-scratching. Certainly, Ukrainian resistance has been quite more robust than anticipated. It also appears that many of the vehicles in this enormous convoy have broken down due to lack of preventative maintenance; in fact, vehicle tires appear to be failing at an alarming rate (many of these tires are of Chinese manufacture and have suffered damage over time due to exposure to the sun). The Russians are also building forward operating bases and casualty collection points to support their impending attack on Kyiv, and that, of course, takes time. They are also moving up supplies and reinforcements, while conducting air, artillery, and ground rocket attacks on Kyiv to weaken its defenses and intimidate the civilian population. A major ground assault on Kyiv, following the completion of its encirclement, is expected any day.


	2) The Chernihiv-Suny-Kharkiv Axis:


	The main attack along this axis is from the northeast and is also directed at encircling and seizing Kyiv. Taken together, these two axes (1 and 2) make up the primary Russian effort—an envelopment of the Ukrainian capital from the north, northeast, and east. Russian forces are&nbsp; assembling on the southern outskirts of Chernihiv, most likely with the intention of encircling and then taking the town; this assessment is supported by the fact that the Russians are moving deadly thermobaric multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) into the vicinity of Chernihiv. Russian ground forces along this axis have reached the eastern outskirts of Kyiv; however, Ukrainian force (primarily Territorial Defense units) in this region have managed to ambushed vulnerable Russian supply columns and depots.


	3) The Donbas Axis:


	This sector, in southeastern Ukraine, is where the two ethnic Russian separatist republics—with support from Putin—were established in 2014. Desultory fighting in the Donbas has taken place for past eight years, resulting in some 14,000 deaths. The Donbas is strategically significant, in part at least, for its coal and other minerals; the region experienced savage combat during WWII.&nbsp;


	Hitherto, Russian forces do not appear to have opted for a major offensive out of the Donbas; rather, they are using their forces to pin in place Ukrainian forces along the so-called line of contact. (Note: The line of contact, established after the Russian invasion in 2014,&nbsp; runs roughly 400 kilometers through the Donbas; Ukraine controls the west side of the line while Russian-led forces control the east.) Yet other Russian forces that are now moving deliberately up from the south, out of Crimea, could be used to encircle and destroy Ukrainian forces in the Donbas if they continue to sit along the line of contact and fail to pull back out of danger of encirclement.


	4) The Crimean Axis:


	Here the Russians have realized their most success to date. Oddly, they have attacked out of Crimea along three separate axes that are not mutually supporting—north toward Zaporizhia, east along the Sea of Azov past the port of Mariopul, and west along the Baltic Sea toward the port of Odessa. Along the Sea of Azov, they have surrounded the port city of Mariopul and linked up with forces in the Donetsk Oblast (administrative territorial region), giving Russia a narrow land bridge to Crimea. The situation in Mariopul is horrific, as the Russians continue to&nbsp; pound the city with artillery, killing many civilians.


	Northwest of Crimea, Russian battalion tactical groups have captured the city of Kherson (the first major city to fall). To the east, Russian forces are bearing down on Zaporizhia, a major port and industrial center situated on the banks of the Dnepr River. Along the Black Sea coast, Russian BTGs are advancing on the strategically significant port of Odessa, but are still approximately 100 kilometers east of the city. The capture of both port cities, Mariopul and Odessa, would enable the Russians to bring in reinforcements and supplies from the south unimpeded by enemy action, while cutting off Ukraine from outside assistance through these same ports.


	What Comes Next?


	If Western reporting is to be believed—and keep in mind that most of this reporting has been relentlessly one-sided (i.e., pro-Ukrainian) and often wrong—Putin is apoplectic about the desultory results of his invasion to date; he is also ill and may be dying we are told. Another media narrative is that the Russian president had expected his troops to be greeted as liberators and for Kyiv to sue for peace within a few days time. Of course, this failed to happen as the Ukrainians, now supported by a small contingent of volunteers—Americans, British, Swedes, Lithuanians, etc.—of Ukraine’s International Legion--continue to “punch above their weight” while the Russians do quite the opposite.


	Indeed, the Russians, according to U.S. military estimates, have sustained close to 5000 fatal losses, with confirmed losses of some 850 tanks, other armored fighting vehicles, artillery, etc., while Ukrainian losses (on both the ground and in the air) have been much lighter. According to a reliable source, the ratio of Russian/Ukrainian equipment losses is 3.4:1. Yet despite it’s hitherto dismal performance, Russia’s vastly (numerically) superior forces continue to edge closer to their objectives along all axes of their advance—an overarching reality that most Western observers have ignored.&nbsp;


	So what will Putin do next? To answer this question, one needs look no further than his tactics during the Second Chechen War of 1999/2000 and, more recently, Russia’s intervention in the Syrian Civil War. In both cases, when ground forces were unable to secure key objectives, Putin’s military resorted to savage, murderous, and outlawed tactics. In Syria, Russian air forces helped maintain Bashar al-Assad in power by conducting attacks on schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and other civilian infrastructure, grinding towns and cities into dust and killing scores of civilians. Sadly, it looks like Russian forces in Ukraine are now pivoting to this proven successful, albeit horrific strategy; in fact, Ukraine reported today (March 8th), that Russian bombs struck a maternity hospital in Mariopul, trapping children and others beneath the rubble.


	In other words, Putin shows no signs of letting up and is, as noted, redoubling his efforts to smash Ukraine (hand-to-hand combat has been reported today in Kyiv for the first time). And&nbsp; while Putin escalates the violence of his war, now turning to outright atrocities, the U.S. and NATO continue to escalate their sanctions, with President Biden hanging an embargo over the importation of Russian oil (currently about 600,000 barrels/day). Moreover, a clutch of U.S. foreign policy “experts” has just called for establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine—a reckless idea (yet one, astoundingly, supported by 70% of the U.S. public, no doubt under the baneful influence of social media) that could place America and NATO one incident away from nuclear war. Yet thankfully, it appears that at least one hare-brained idea—that of dispatching Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine—has been rejected by the Biden Administration. What this clusterf**k of a conflict will lead to in the days, weeks, even months ahead is anyone’s guess, but the fact that both sides are ratcheting up their responses does not bode well for the future.


	Craig Luther, Ph.D., is a former USAF historian and Fulbright Scholar. He has written 9 books on World War II, his recent ones focusing on the eastern front. See his WWII website with excerpts from his recent books at: <a href="http://www.barbarossa1941.com./">http://www.barbarossa1941.com.</a>

Will Putin Up the Ante?

Geographically, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe (about the size of Texas and some 1800km across from west to east); it has a population of more than

BLACK LIVES MATTER has taken America by storm. Simply put, it is a radical Leftist outfit that seeks to replace capitalism with socialism, abolish the police (and let criminals out of jail), and looks to socialist Venezuela as a model. Historically, BLM’s antecedents reach back to the Black Panthers of the 1960s; in recent years it has drawn inspiration from the radical Occupy Wall Street movement.


	The BLM movement was given added impetus by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The Left mobilized upon Brown’s tragic death in 2014, BLM and other radical groups promoting the false narrative of "Hands up! Don't shoot!"--supposedly the young man’s final words before he was, we were told, brutally gunned down by a racist white cop. Destructive and deadly riots ensued.


	Of course, "Hands up! Don't shoot!" was One. Big. Lie. Every black witness who testified before the grand jury stated that Michael Brown had attempted to force his way into the officer's police cruiser, assaulted the officer, and tried to grab his weapon. Looked at objectively, Mr Brown was a thug who, sadly, paid with his life for the terrible choices he made; even the Obama justice department could not come to a different conclusion.


	Yet due to his death at the hands of a white police officer--as well as 2 or 3 similar events in recent years--the monstrous lie took hold that white police officers were engaged in genocide against black men. This dangerous falsehood was assiduously promoted by many in the media and by legions of “progressive” professors on our college campuses, where sadly, the mostly white student bodies lapped up every word; "yes, they thought, America is irredeemably racist, and there is nothing we can do to remove the stain of bigotry from our white skin except bow down before the New Racial Conformity.” So today young whites fall to their knees to repudiate their "white privilege" and beg for forgiveness that will never be forthcoming. And why not? Because, our new racial overlords lecture us, racism is not simply inherent in white America’s shameful past, it still permeates our white skin, and we can do nothing about that; it is who we are. White folks can even debase themselves by washing the feet of black men (as has occurred recently in several separate incidents), yet the original stain of white racism can never be symbolically washed away.


	Of course, the protests and riots of the past two weeks were triggered by the tragic death of George Floyd. He certainly did not deserve to die, and those responsible should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. However, it is troubling that this man has been transformed into a tragic hero of the Left--this man with a long “rap” sheet, who once stuck a pistol in the stomach of a pregnant woman during a home invasion robbery.&nbsp;


	Yet Floyd’s untimely demise is ruthlessly exploited by BLM as yet another example of the “fact” that black men are being murdered wholesale by racist police officers. Might there be at least a scintilla of truth to that explosive charge? Question: How many unarmed African-Americans were shot and killed by police last year?


	90,000? 
	9,000? 
	900? 
	90? 
	9?


	If you selected "9" you’d be correct. In other words, in the millions of encounters law enforcement had with African-Americans in 2019, only 9 unarmed blacks were killed; and according to police records, a majority of the fatal encounters were the outcome of fully justified police actions. In the same year, 19 unarmed whites were shot dead by police; yet no one hears or even seems to care about these victims, because they don’t fit the Left’s narrative. (Note: The above data is gleaned from the Washington Post’s data base of fatal police shootings; however, after this tally of 9 unarmed black victims was reported by several news outlets, the Post scrambled to reclassify more than a dozen of its armed victims of police shootings as unarmed in an obvious attempt to plump up the number of black victims; still, even the new figure [if it can be trusted] raised the number of unarmed black victims in 2019 to just 15, which comprise just 0.2 percent of all black homicide victims.)


	Annually, some 93% of all black homicide victims are killed by other blacks; in Chicago a few days ago 18 African-Americans were shot and killed on a single day of almost unparalled violence—all by other blacks. Of course the thousands of overwhelmingly male African-Americans killed each year by other African-Americans are also of little concern to the radical Left and their “progressive” media allies, as they work together to whip America into a veritable frenzy of rioting, looting, destruction, even murder.


	Where do we go from here? I have no answer to that question, other than to say that all good people who believe in real justice (not the Marxist scam of "social justice") need to raise up their voices in opposition to the scurrilous lies and uncivilized behavior of groups like BLM. Police are NOT waging war on African-Americans. This is NOT a nation mired in systemic racism. We are a flawed yet decent people, who for decades have struggle successfully to right the wrongs of our past. We need bow down before no one.


	Yet time is short. The Left has prepared the cultural battlefield well, and with BLM in the vanguard, they have turned to outright insurrection in an effort to obliterate the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our civilization This is now occuring right before our eyes in Seattle, where BLM, Antifa, and other radical groups have seized control of a large swath of the city; while they beat innocent people and extort money from businesses, the mayor hails them as patriots and orders the president back into his bunker. “Black Lives Matter!” she virtue signals.


	So where do things stand at this utterly surreal moment in our nation’s history: After 50+ years of relentless Leftist agitation, America has finally reached an existential tipping point; indeed, should Biden win the presidency in November, his victory will be far from a conventional one; more likely it will signify a final and enduring seizure of power by BLM, Antifa and other Marxist/anarchist forces bent on destroying all decent Americans hold dear.


	Craig Luther completed his Ph.D. in Modern European History at UC Santa Barbara. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, retired U.S. Air Force historian, and <a href="http://www.barbarossa1941.com">author of 8 books on the Second World War</a> focusing on German military operations on the eastern front. His recent book, First Day on the Eastern Front: Germany Invades the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941, was selected by the WW2 book aggregator site Stone &amp; Stone WW2 Books as one of the six best books on WW2 published in 2018.


	* * *


	<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/quintanomedia/49983998903/in/photostream/">Photo credit: Anthony Quintano</a>

The BLM Movement: An Existential Threat to America

BLACK LIVES MATTER has taken America by storm. Simply put, it is a radical Leftist outfit that seeks to replace capitalism with socialism, abolish the police (

During one of my recent research trips to Germany, among a small discussion group, a colonel in the German Bundeswehr raised a few eyebrows with an off-the-record observation: If Russian President Putin, he posited, ever unleashed his large and powerful mechanized forces across the North European Plain – through Belarus, Poland, Germany and beyond – nothing would be able to stop them. While such a grim prospect surely centers the mind, it also begs the question: Why would Putin, no matter how aggressive his behavior in recent years has become, ever commit such a staggering and calamitous act?


	Setting that question aside for the moment, it is sobering to acknowledge that the Bundeswehr colonel was on the mark – given Western Europe’s alarmingly poor state of military preparedness, it would be unable to mount a meaningful challenge to a major Russian conventional attack, short of escalating to nuclear weapons. And since the latter option is, well, no option at all, and considering that any conventional resistance put up by NATO alliance members such as Germany, Belgium and France would amount to little more than token resistance, one wonders: Would these countries, and their countrymen, fight to save Berlin, Brussels and Paris, or simply bow to the inevitable and capitulate?&nbsp;


	Of course, if Putin were to send his tanks rumbling westward, U.S. forces in Europe would contribute to its defense, but these forces do not signify the imposing threat they once did, having been reduced to a tiny fraction of their Cold War order of battle. Today (2016), there are barely 65,000 U.S. troops permanently based in Europe, and the value of even this small force was seriously compromised in 2012 and 2013, when the Obama Administration deactivated the U.S. Army’s two heavy brigade combat teams stationed in Germany – effectively eliminating Europe’s primary heavy armored force.&nbsp;


	More significantly, due to the troubling state of preparedness of U.S. military forces, in part the result of the Obama Administration’s deep cuts to personnel, equipment and training – cuts which are hard to fathom in our increasingly precarious world – there is reason to doubt that the U.S. could make a serious contribution to the defense of Europe against a future Russian ground attack without resorting to all out nuclear war. In its annual report for 2016 on U.S. military strength, the conservative Heritage Foundation changed its overall assessment of the U.S. Army from “marginal” (2015) to “weak,” largely the result of a “drop in capacity,” for the Army now has fewer brigade combat teams ready for deployment overseas.


	In June 2015, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that the U.S. would preposition heavy weapons, including some 250 M1-A2 tanks, in Poland and the Baltic states as a counter to Putin’s aggressive moves. (Implementation of this plan is not to begin until early 2017.) Yet to employ an idiom from the “Cold War,” this proposed force will not be large enough to be anything more than a token “trip wire,” which in 1956, 1962 or 1968, could have triggered a U.S. nuclear response – a response which today would be inconceivable.


	In other words, due to the inadequate strength of U.S. personnel and heavy weapons now (or soon to be) stationed in Europe, as well as the burgeoning shortfalls of America’s military in general, the Europeans would be left largely to their own devices to face Russia’s 775,000 active military personnel (two million active reserves), 2600 main battle tanks (MBT) (with 17,500 in storage!), 4200 artillery pieces (self-propelled, towed and multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS); with thousands more in storage), 11,000 armored personnel carriers (APC) and infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), 1200 combat-capable aircraft (including 140 bombers and about 1000 fighter, interceptor and ground attack planes), several hundred attack helicopters, and naval assets including 35 major surface combatants and 59 submarines. Given this grim reality, what conventional military forces could the strongest Western European “powers” – Germany, France and England – muster for a major war against Russia’s conspicuously superior military might?


	The answer to this query is troubling at best. Germany’s post-war Bundeswehr, once one of the largest and best-equipped armed forces in the world, was reduced to simulating heavy machine guns with broomsticks in a recent NATO exercise; since the end of the Cold War it has axed 90 percent of its armor and now possesses slightly more than 200 main battle tanks, while in recent years many of its fighter planes have been grounded for the want of spare parts. Germany’s NATO ally, France, Western Europe’s sole strategic military power (with its own nuclear arsenal), has a professional army that is tough and capable, but with only 100,000+ troops and 200 tanks it is no match for the much larger forces Russia could field, even if its forces are combined with those of Germany. As for Great Britain, the disgraceful dismantling of its military power has reduced its once formidable blue-water navy to a mere 19 major surface combatants; until completion of two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, it possesses no operational aircraft carriers. The British Army is small (less than 100,000 regulars), much smaller than in Operation DESERT STORM (1991), when it contributed to the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In other words, the force structures of these once great European powers are not keeping President Putin awake at night.


	But just what would a conventional ground war in Europe against Putin’s Russia look like? To answer this question we need look no further than Russia’s two Chechen wars (1994-96 and 1999-2000). In late 1999, Russian forces entered Chechnya and laid siege to its capital of Grozny. Russian artillery and missiles meted out indiscriminate destruction on the city; in general, observers were shocked by the brutality of the Second Chechen War and, in 2003, the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth. Anyone viewing photographs of Grozny from that period will be struck by its resemblance to Stalingrad in 1943, or Berlin in 1945, so thorough was the obliteration of the city. The Russian invasion put an end to Chechnya’s de facto independence, restoring Russian federal control; but the bitter conflict witnessed wide-spread human rights violations by both sides, while a guerrilla war against Chechen insurgents went on for years.


	Russia’s recent intervention in the Syrian civil war – following an official request from the Syrian government for military support against rebel and jihadist groups – has witnessed the same brutal and deadly pattern of indiscriminate bombing and civilian deaths. Indeed, the Russians, it seems, never got the post-modern message that “War is Never the Answer” and no longer a legitimate tool of national policy, as revealed not only by their behavior in Chechnya and Syria but by their aggression in Georgia (2008), the annexation of the Crimea (2014), and the stealth invasion of the Donbas region of Ukraine (2014).&nbsp;


	It can be argued that Vladimir Putin is the most successful Russian leader since Joseph Stalin; he is also one of the most dangerous. He views the break up of the Soviet Union as the most catastrophic geo-political event of the past century and is determined to reestablish as much of that empire as his growing strength, and Western weakness, will permit. So he pokes and probes along the periphery of the NATO alliance, thumbs his nose at a distracted and weakened America, and threatens his neighbors with potential military or economic sanctions. Angered by the expansion of NATO up to the very borders of Russia, Putin could risk precipitating a major crisis in an effort to divide, or even dismantle, the NATO alliance. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;


	Which leads us back to my query about President Putin himself – to wit, would he ever risk loosing the “dogs of war” on Western Europe? Perhaps simply revealing his contempt for his adversaries Putin, in September 2014, boasted that “he could, at will, occupy any Eastern European capital in two days.” The implication being that his greatly superior mechanized forces could seize Berlin, Brussels or Paris in just a few more days’ time? And yet, given the collective weakness and lack of will he acutely senses in Obama’s America and NATO in general, one can only surmise that Putin remains confident he can reach his geo-political and military objectives without having to resort to all-out war. He will simply continue to ratchet up the pressure (military and economic), intimidation, and the bullying behavior to achieve his goals. In short, a massive Russian offensive across the North European Plain is out of the question. &nbsp; &nbsp;


	Thus, even if this article signifies little more than an “academic” exercise – inspired by the deliberations of an anonymous Bundeswehr colonel – it remains a sobering thought indeed that, given the existing “correlation of forces” between Russia and Western Europe, the latter, in a very real sense, remains captive to the mind and machinations of one Vladimir Putin.&nbsp;


	&nbsp;


	&nbsp;

Contemplating War in Europe

During one of my recent research trips to Germany, among a small discussion group, a colonel in the German Bundeswehr raised a few eyebrows with an off-the-

Contemplating War in Europe

President Obama came into office in 2009 promising "transformation" and he has delivered on that promise. Over the past 7 1/2 years&nbsp;we've witnessed trillion&nbsp;dollar deficits&nbsp;and the establishment of a highly politicized and inexorably failing&nbsp;health care system ("Obamacare");&nbsp;the "weaponization" of government agencies (think, IRS, EPA, DOJ) to intimidate and attack his political opponents;&nbsp;the&nbsp;calculated&nbsp;and feckless decline of American power and influence throughout the world;&nbsp;relentless redistributionist policies; and&nbsp;the president's&nbsp;support (often with a wink and a nod)&nbsp;of thuggish (and sometimes violent)&nbsp;radical&nbsp;groups like "Occupy Wall Street" and&nbsp;"Black Lives&nbsp;Matter."&nbsp;As a result, America is "on edge" -- socially, racially, economically -- as it hasn't been for decades. Indeed, many have reached the sobering insight that America's best days may now be behind her.


	Overlooked by most in Obama's relentless efforts to "remake" America&nbsp;has been his ongoing and&nbsp;dangerous&nbsp;transformation of our military. Here I am not going address the dozens of weapon systems cut, or the tens of thousands of troops given their "pink slips." What I want to&nbsp;speak to is his administration's&nbsp;systematic destruction of the 200+ year-old culture of the U.S. military. This "multicultural makeover," happening right before our eyes, threatens to undermine the very fabric of our armed forces.&nbsp;The&nbsp;forced acceptance of open homosexuality and the&nbsp;burgeoning hostility toward Christianity; the&nbsp;gratuitous degradation of our troops (e.g., forcing ROTC cadets to march in red high heels to experience what it's like to be a woman;&nbsp;making&nbsp;male soldiers&nbsp;wear simulated lactation devices, or lecturing them on "white privilege," dare I&nbsp;go on?); the&nbsp;"full-court press" to make our forces&nbsp;more diverse, most alarmingly by opening up&nbsp;combat positions (even special forces) to female soldiers; and the relentless&nbsp;purging from the ranks of dozens of fine general officers whose only&nbsp;"offense" was their failure to "get with the program" -- all of this,&nbsp;like some nightmarish "progressive" Blitzkrieg, is now wreaking havoc with our&nbsp;reluctant&nbsp;service members,&nbsp;the&nbsp;objective being&nbsp;that of&nbsp;a complete and irreversible&nbsp;cultural transformation. What's next, I wonder -- weaponized hair and nail salons on wheels?&nbsp;&nbsp;


	One of those leading the charge in the&nbsp;radical mutation&nbsp;of our military culture is Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus. The former Democratic governor of Mississippi has enthusiastically spearheaded our president's plan to&nbsp;weaken -- and, ultimately,&nbsp;tear asunder --&nbsp;the bonds of brotherhood that have served our nation so well from Valley Forge to Iwo Jima and Fallujah. To the Bolsheviks now running the show in Washington, D.C., the U.S. military signified the final frontier -- the last bastion of (white, heterosexual)&nbsp;alpha male institutional domination that they still needed to&nbsp;extirpate "root and branch" to complete their bewilderingly successful 40-50 year march through our cultural institutions. And Ray Mabus is the president's point man. Or so it seems. His most damaging&nbsp;contribution to the&nbsp;deep and disturbing social changes rocking our military has been his full-throated support&nbsp;for the integration of women into all -- and I mean&nbsp;all&nbsp;-- combat positions in the U.S. Marine Corps.&nbsp;Infantry, armor, artillery,&nbsp;recon, special forces -- women are now to serve in all these combat branches and not simply in token numbers. This despite the fact that, according to surveys of military women, over 90% have absolutely no desire to serve in combat positions. Yet this is of no&nbsp;consequence to the small cabal of radical feminists and their enablers -- they are in control and they will do just what they want to do, for whatever nefarious purpose. In all honesty,&nbsp;do you think that Ray Mabus and his ilk&nbsp;believe a 5'4" female, weighing 110 pounds, will be able to meet the&nbsp;highly rigorous&nbsp;requirements of combat that today&nbsp;is the sole domain of much larger, much stronger men? Has anyone even considered the hygienic effects of having women serve in the field for weeks on end? And if anyone wants to further explore the history of mixed-gender combat units, simply look at the Israeli example. A catastrophe it was.


	When the&nbsp;Marine Corps&nbsp;leadership produced a study making unequivocally clear that all-male units performed significantly better than mixed-gender units, Mabus would have none of it. He "savaged&nbsp;officials who ran the study, accusing them of bias and not wanting women to succeed." (<a href="http://dailycaller.com/">Source</a>: Jonah Bennett, "Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to Step Down," 3 March 2016.)


	A paragon of political correctness -- that evil, sinister twin of Marxist multiculturalism -- Mabus is also supported&nbsp;the elimination of&nbsp;that loathsome&nbsp;word&nbsp;"man" from all job titles in the U.S. Navy. There are 21 job titles in the Navy which include the word "man" (e.g., "fireman"), and Navy officials were to report to Mabus by 1 April on what was to be done to&nbsp;efface such "sexist" titles from the vernacular of the Navy.&nbsp;Wonder how that went.


	Navy recruiters will now&nbsp;be forced to push diversity at all costs -- women and&nbsp;minorities are in, white males are out, regardless of the impact such a policy may have on&nbsp;morale and&nbsp;mission effectiveness. Yet&nbsp;the impact on morale, on fighting qualities, is of little concern to Mabus and his merry band of&nbsp;Bolsheviks, as they turn our armed forces into a lunatic&nbsp;laboratory for the&nbsp;New Marxism&nbsp;-- an experiment which may well wreck the Marine Corps (and other service branches) as currently configured, as the final white alpha-male bastion in American society is expunged once and for all.&nbsp;And all in the name of "diversity"&nbsp;-- diversity ueber alles.


	Not too very&nbsp;long ago, the&nbsp;thought of handing machine guns or grenades&nbsp;to young women&nbsp;and telling them to fight for us&nbsp;would have been met with derision --&nbsp;horror even; indeed, no sentient human being would have entertained such a barbaric thought. Would America have been a greater, a more just nation had&nbsp;several hundred&nbsp;young women -- some no doubt pregnant -- been among the 1500 American&nbsp;G.I.'s who died on Omaha Beach on 6 June 1944? And, today, any female Marines captured by Islamic State would be&nbsp;systematically tortured, raped and killed; that would be the inevitable&nbsp;result of the gender policies promoted by&nbsp;preternatural fools&nbsp;such as&nbsp;Ray Mabus.


	In a larger sense, the cultural evisceration of our military&nbsp;on the altar of&nbsp;multiculturalism,&nbsp;diversity,&nbsp;whatever you want to call it, should surprise no one. At its very core, multiculturalism seeks to destroy -- to crush all that is Good, Decent, Moral and Just in our&nbsp;fading Judeo-Christian society. As I said, this sinister process has been underway for decades, yet only now, under Barack Obama,&nbsp;have the Bolsheviks&nbsp;been let loose on our armed forces.&nbsp;Sadly, our military brass have, for the most part, simply&nbsp;stood by and watched as Mabus and his ilk wielded their wrecking balls. I cannot recall the case of a single general who, in an act of moral courage, resigned from the service in protest.&nbsp;Yet there is a fundamental difference between physical and moral courage, is there not?


	In recent days, Russian fighter-bombers&nbsp;have done barrel rolls within ca.&nbsp;30 feet of our planes and ships inside international waters. Such reckless behavior (no doubt part&nbsp;of Putin's plan to ratchet up the level of intimidation)&nbsp;leaves little to no room for error and focuses one's mind on the possibility of a tragic international incident, even war. But as the Army chief-of-staff testified recently before&nbsp;the Senate Armed Services Committee, if it ever came to war with Putin's Russia, we'd most&nbsp;likely&nbsp;get the short end of the&nbsp;stick.


	Such is the state of America's armed forces under&nbsp;Barack Obama and Ray Mabus.

Barbarians Inside the Gates

President Obama came into office in 2009 promising "transformation" and he has delivered on that promise. Over the past 7 1/2 years&nbsp;we've witnessed

Frontpage Mag

dr. craig luther

Will Putin Up the Ante?

The BLM Movement: An Existential Threat to America

Contemplating War in Europe

Barbarians Inside the Gates

FPM Series

Disloyal Military

Progressive Fascists

Racist Mayors

The Point

Did FBI Raid Seek "Exonerating" Russiagate Materials?

Abbas' Holocaust Denial Tour Hits Germany

This Version of Anne Frank's Diary Should Be Removed From Libraries

NY Gov Hochul Won't Lock Up Criminals, Will Ban Toy Guns

Pride Flags, Yes, American Flags, No in Spiderman Game

Events