Archive for the ‘war’ Category

Now that Ukraine is taking back territory from Russia, now is the time for the New York Times to return Walter Duranty’s tainted Pulitzer

Posted: September 11, 2022 by John Ruberry in media, News/opinion, war
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Pro-Ukraine protest in downtown Chicago this spring

By John Ruberry

There is good news out of Ukraine, its forces have made gains in the Kharkiv region and they are near Russian border. There is much ground still to liberate, not only land that Russia has seized in the war that began early this year, but also the area that have been controlled by Russian separatists in the Donetsk region since 2014, as well as Crimea, which Vladimir Putin annexed the same year.

Ukraine has endured an unhappy history. World War II and the Holocaust devastated Ukraine. And in order to impose communism on wealthier peasants in Ukraine, Josef Stalin engineered a famine in the early 1930s, known there as the Holodomor, translating roughly into “man-made starvation.” Roughly four million people perished as a result of Stalin’s atrocities against the kulaks in Ukraine.

Even in a closed society, it’s difficult to coverup a famine. And news trickled out of Ukraine about the Holodomor. But a New York Times reporter, based in Moscow, Walter Duranty, dismissed such stories, instead of “famine” he wrote of “malnutrition” in Ukraine, for instance. 

For a series of 1931 articles about the Soviet Union, Duranty, for his “dispassionate interpretive reporting,” he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. 

While in Moscow, Duranty, was granted a rarity, interviews with Stalin; he also enjoyed another rarity, a luxury apartment in the Soviet capital. During the entire history of the USSR, housing of any kind was scarce. In Moscow Duranty had a mistress, whom he impregnated, and a chauffeur. Automobiles were also rare in Russia in the 1930s. 

In 1933, another journalist, or I should say, a real one, Gareth Jones, visited Ukraine and he was horrified by what he found. “If it is grave now and if millions are dying in the villages, as they are, for I did not visit a single village where many had not died, what will it be like in a month’s time?” Jones wrote for the London Evening Standard. “The potatoes left are being counted one by one, but in so many homes the potatoes have long run out.” 

Duranty’s response to Jones was a New York Times article, “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving.” That same year, Duranty wrote to a friend, “The famine is mostly bunk.”

Another shameful sentence from Duranty, about Stalin’s brutal policies as the Holodomor continued, “To put it brutally,” Duranty wrote for the Times, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Since the war began attention has been brought to Duranty’s undeserved Pulitzer. Even NPR took notice. “He is the personification of evil in journalism,” Oksana Piaseckyj told NPR earlier this year of Duranty. She is a Ukrainian-American activist who emigrated here as a child over 70 years ago. “We think he was like the originator of fake news,” Piaseckyj added.

The New York Times admitted on its corporate website about Duranty’s work, “Since the 1980’s, the [Times] has been publicly acknowledging his failures.” But it has not returned the tainted Pulitzer. It also notes that twice, most recently in 2003, the Pulitzer board has decided not to revoke its award to Duranty. 

It’s time for them to reconsider.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Righteous Among the Nations

Posted: May 31, 2022 by chrisharper in Israel, war
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By Christopher Harper

Master Sergeant Roderick “Roddie” Edmonds didn’t talk about his heroism in World War II, including his actions to save hundreds of his fellow soldiers, including several hundred Jews.

Edmonds served in the 106th Infantry Division, 422nd Infantry Regiment in the United States Army. He was captured and became the ranking U.S. non-commissioned officer at the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Germany, where – at risk to his life – he saved an estimated 200-300 Jews from being singled out from the camp for Nazi persecution and possible death. 

Edmonds arrived in the combat zone in December 1944, only five days before Germany launched a massive counteroffensive, the Battle of the Bulge. During the battle, on December 19, 1944, Edmonds was captured and sent to a German POW camp: Stalag IX-B. Shortly after that, he was transferred, with other enlisted personnel, to another POW camp near Ziegenhain, Germany: Stalag IX-A. 

As the senior noncommissioned officer at the new camp, Edmonds was responsible for the camp’s 1,275 American POWs.

On their first day in Stalag IX-A, on January 27, 1945—as Germany’s defeat was approaching—the commandant ordered Edmonds to tell only the Jewish-American soldiers to present themselves at the next morning’s assembly so they could be separated from the other prisoners. 

Instead, Edmonds ordered all 1,275 POWs to assemble outside their barracks. The German commandant rushed up to Edmonds in a fury, placed his pistol against Edmonds’s head, and demanded that he identify the Jewish soldiers under his command. Instead, Edmonds responded, “We are all Jews here.” 

He told the commandant that if he wanted to shoot the Jews, he would have to kill all of the prisoners.

The commandant backed down.

After 100 days of captivity, Edmonds returned home after the war but kept the events at the POW camp to himself.

After Roddie died in 1985, Edmonds’ wife gave his son Chris some of the diaries his father had kept. Chris, a Baptist minister, began researching his story and stumbled upon a mention of the event at the POW camp. He located several Jewish soldiers his father saved, who spoke about Roddie’s heroism. 

The interviews resulted in the 2019 book, No Surrender. See https://www.amazon.com/No-Surrender-Young-Readers-Extraordinary/dp/0062966170/

For his defense of Jewish servicemen at the POW camp, Edmonds, a Christian, was awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations,” Israel’s highest award for non-Jews who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

h/t to dawife Elizabeth

Walmart vs. The Navy

Posted: May 21, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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One of the great things about being in the Navy is the chance to interact with people from all over the United States, and even the world. It’s diversity in its truest form. I’ve met someone from every single state, almost every territory and plenty of immigrants from countries in every continent and heck, I’ve even met people that traveled to Antarctica.

I’m quite proud that I never wasted these opportunities to learn about the background of the Sailors around me. It’s how I learned about the real difficulties my African-American Sailors faced growing up, or the difficulties for Sailors from the backwoods portions of America. I particularly remember one Sailor’s response to my question “Why did you join the Navy?”

“Well Sir, it was either that or working at a gas station my whole life.”

For many people, the Navy is there chance to get out of a bad circumstance. Compared to most companies, the Navy is happy to pay big money to train someone with nothing but a high school degree and give them a decent paying job with good benefits. In fact, I’d say it was one of the only places that did this.

But that has changed.

Walmart is now paying truck drivers over $100K a year.

Lowes and Home Depot are paying for employees to be upskilled, without debt.

These companies and others have always had a path for people to excel. A friend of mine works in McDonalds Corporate Headquarters, but he got started as a teenager flipping burgers. The problem was not that there isn’t much opportunity, but that it wasn’t advertised all that well. Now that it is, that’s a good thing, because the more skilled our labor force, the better it is for everyone.

Except the Armed Services.

The military depends on a constant flow of young, somewhat educated young people (mostly men) to fill its ranks every year and replace the older, burned out service members that leave. The choice between the service or a life of gas station work is a real choice many Americans face every day. But if you can drive trucks for Walmart at $95K your first year, you’re making more then any non-nuclear Petty Officers in the Navy. Combined with not getting shot at in a war zone or deploying on a ship in such conditions it might make you turn to suicide, and it looks like a pretty good deal.

Even Business Insider is reporting on it now.

In the quest for manpower, my money is on Walmart, not the military.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency, because they’ll tell you everything is great while I tell you the truth. If you enjoyed this post, check out some of my books on Amazon, they make great gifts for your friends.

Stacy McCain Spots the Flaw in My Ukraine War Reasoning

Posted: April 11, 2022 by datechguy in blogs, war
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The Network: You are children and you require guidance. There is no room for imperfection.

Gary King: Hey earth isn’t perfect alright? And humans aren’t perfect and guess what? I ain’t perfect!

The Network: And there in lies the necessity for this intervention. Must the galaxy be subjected to an entire planet of people like you?

Andrew Knightley: Hey who put you in charge? Who are you to criticize anyone? Now, you might think Gary is a bit of a cock and he is a bit of a cock, but he is my cock!

The World’s End 2013

I few weeks ago I wrote this about Russia and the War in Ukraine

The real wild card is that we don’t know the actual war aim of Russia. If it was to secure eastern Ukraine they’ve pretty much already done so and everything else is gravy. They can pretty much stop fighting and declare victory at any time. It remains to be seen if Putin wants the whole thing (I suspect he does) not just because he wants to rebuild the old Soviet/Russian empire but also because Biden and company has given him the chance to achieve a bigger goal, the humiliation of the west and as long as the continued existence of the Ukraine is in doubt that goal is in reach.

Whatever happens Putin will declare victory.

Meanwhile Ukraine has a single goal, to survive as an independent nation. Even if Russia carves out large chunks of the nation if any is still there at the end they can claim to have held off the Russian bear. That’s the bottom line here, I predict that is the endgame of the western media and powers, to wait for this result and then declare it the greatest military victory since Midway. 

It’s been a few weeks and the news reports indicate that the Ukrainians have been having success around Kiev and that the Russians may be in retreat in that sector at this time.

As I’ve already stated I take all reports with a grain of salt as neither Russian, Ukrainian nor MSM sources are reliable, the first two because they will naturally in time of war spin things for their end and the latter because they’ve proved themselves dishonest and dishonorable. Furthermore I neither have the time nor the inclination to dedicate myself to sorting out the actual reality so the only thing I can state as an undisputed fact is that as of this writing Ukraine hasn’t fallen.

Stacy McCain however has a bit more time than me and he’s come across what, if true is one of the most important stories concerning the war about what the Russians did to the people of one village when the expected quick victory became a slow costly slog.

On Monday, police forensic teams arrived to investigate along with a team of men to dig out the bodies.

They hauled the man up who was slumped at the bottom of a well with a bruised and lacerated face and upper body.

Next they dug out Ms. Litvynenko’s body from the nearby grave. Her father glanced into the hole as four men pulled her out.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s her.”

The village is mourning its loss. Alina Sukhenko, who grew up in Motyzhyn, recalled her grandmother saying the Nazis only killed one person when they were in the village.

The Russians “looked for the strongest people,” said Ms. Semenova, Ms. Sukhenko’s friend. “Olha was a locomotive who pulled everyone else behind her.”

“If there is no locomotive, they think we will be slaves like in Russia,” she said. “But we will never be slaves.”

Assuming this report is correct we must presume that this type of thing is happening anywhere that the Russians are fighting. This should not be a big surprise as the Russians were not known for their gentle nature on their way to Berlin although in fairness in that case they were provoked, as the Ukrainians are now.

And this is the point where Stacy McCain calls upon Human nature to make a critical point:

 It would appear, based on this account, that Motyzhyn was perhaps the southernmost advance of the Russian force that came south out of Belarus via Borodyanka. The atrocities inflicted on the villagers at Motyzhyn seem to have been typical of the brutality that Russian troops practiced everywhere in Ukraine.

Now, let me ask: If you were Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would you be willing to cede anything in negotiations with the Russians who had done this to your people? Or would you rally your people to fight until there was not a single invader left alive to return to Russia? Whatever the cost, cut off their retreat, surround them and kill every one of them — no quarter.

By God, I know that’s what I’d do. 

It’s one thing for diplomats and elites to come up with compromises and trade away territory, it’s another to give into a blood enemy how has committed atrocities upon your people. If the Ukrainians didn’t think of the Russians as blood enemies before I suspect they do now.

This won’t end well, in fact the best case scenario will be two blood enemies boarding each other armed to the teeth.

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