Posts Tagged → Israel
This miraculous Thanksgiving, break the binary
Today is Thanksgiving in America, our uniquely American holiday based on the Puritans’ survival experience with Native Indians on the Atlantic coast roughly 400 years ago. While it has sadly become a holiday of cheap mattress sales, the fact is that most Americans still understand what a uniquely bountiful land of opportunity America is, and they give thanks to our Creator for it.
In 2024, we also give thanks today for a truly miraculous peaceful victory over bipartisan forces of darkness and evil in our recent national election. No matter that every official lever of power, corporate finance, media marketing, and cultural curatorship was pushed or pulled against Donald Trump, he nonetheless prevailed with a majority of the national vote as well as the Electoral College (folks, without the Electoral College there would be no UNITED States, because individual states in rural flyover country would have no incentive to unite with the more populous coastal enclaves).
And his opponent burned through more than a BILLION dollars of campaign funds, to no avail. Truly a miraculous election result…
Through our recent election, official power is being removed from the corrupt, violent hands of the impure and given into the hands of our peaceful citizens, the rightful owners of all things government, as was originally intended in 1776. This miraculous result is on a scale of only a few moments in history, where the good guys won against overwhelming odds, and which then resulted in good values being transmitted through the following generations, resulting in the free America we now enjoy and love.
The 479 BCE united Greek final stand against the invading Persians at Plataea is one such moment, and the orthodox Jews’ 175 BCE successful stand against the Seleucid Greeks and their “leftist” assimilated Hellenic Jewish allies is another, a long fought guerilla war commemmorated as Hanuka.
After Plataea, forms of democracy, free thought, and individual representation in government (the “Greek ideal”) became more broadly accepted. When the Maccabees defeated the hedonist Hellenist Jews and pagan Greeks in Israel and Jerusalem, Torah Judaism prevailed and survived, giving the world the widespread monotheism it now relies upon for the rule of law and individual rights we all take for granted.
A good case can be made that this month’s election resulted in a similar scale defeat of evil. Yes, this election was not about the next four years, but rather about the next 250 years of America as a constitutional and free nation. We were that close to losing everything.
However, we cannot get too caught up in the battle lines as they were drawn up on November 5th, 2024. We must break the Republican-Democrat binary that is really a corrupt Uniparty united against We, The People.
Yes, the Republican Party has some elected officials who stand for freedom and liberty, and no, I cannot think of one single elected Democrat who stands for freedom and liberty. But that only means that the majority of elected Republicans and all of the elected Democrats are united against pro-citizen freedom fighter Donald Trump.
Trump is our champion, a representative of and champion for all American citizens. He is the modern incarnation of our first president, George Washington. We must stay focused on him and active in implementing his agenda.
When President Trump is gone, it is hard to know who will again so fully pick up the mantle of We, The People. So it is incumbent upon us today to really give thanks for this reprieve we have all miraculously enjoyed, and to work hard these next two years to ensure that our freedoms and our government of, by, and for The People, are fully conveyed to the next generations of Americans.
Give no power to political parties, give no longevity to career officials, but give aggressive support only to those few who actually represent us. Give thanks that we have this one opportunity for the restoration of good and proper government, right now, for many generations to come.
Wow, Columbus Day
Now that a long term study of Christopher Columbus’ DNA has revealed that he was a Sephardic Jew from Spain, and like hundreds of thousands of other Jews also likely a refugee of the 1492 Spanish Expulsion and then the Catholic Church’s Great Inquisition, we have to ask: Columbus Day, now what does it really mean?
By way of background, upon ending the imperialist Muslim “Moorish” occupation of Spain, in 1492 the newly victorious Catholic Spanish Queen Isabella (“Jezebel” in English, Eezavel in Hebrew, one of the most notoriously evil and violent queens of the Hebrew Scripture and Jewish history, and just so was that Spanish namesake queen) dictated that all Jewish citizens of Spain had to convert to Catholicism or get out. Like leave their homes, money, possessions, and just exit the jurisdiction with the clothes on their bodies.
The history of the Spanish Expulsion is well documented, and for our purposes here we will simply use it as the starting point for Christopher Columbus’ career. He, like almost all of the Spanish Jews, cast about for ways to get out of the coming inferno. Forced conversions were bad enough, with small children taken from their parents to be raised as Catholics in convents and monasteries. But the fallout of even the slightest suspicion that the poor Jewish person had not completely and absolutely accepted Catholicism was really bad.
In sum, tens of thousands of innocent Jews were tortured, robbed, and then burned alive by the Spanish government for the simple reason that they were suspected of having retained some loyalty or interest in their former religion, the religion of their ancestors for thousands of years, and their wealth could also be taken. Bad stuff, really evil stuff, very much the low point for the Catholic religion.
Talk about reparations! What would the descendants of the survivors be owed by Spain or the Vatican today?
[The wild excesses of the Catholic Church, such as the Great Inquisition, kick started the Reformation, resulting in the creation of Protestant Christianity, which “protested” the really bad behavior of the Church at that time, at every level, targeting not just Jews but anyone who dared question Church doctrine]
For several months I have been reading “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” by Edward Kritzler. This is not a long book, but it is nowhere as whimsical a read as its catchy title suggests, and so I have slogged from one mass auto de fe to another, each set in a different part of Europe or the Caribbean, or South America, or Mexico, or New Mexico…Everywhere the Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal ran, they were then hunted to the death by the Spanish Inquisition.
To say that the persecuted Jews got tired of this shitty treatment is an understatement, and quite a few of them took to the high seas to attack the Spanish treasure ships bringing slaves, gold, silver, and gems from South America, as well as sugar, rum, spices, and slaves from the Caribbean to Spain. Quite of few of these Jewish pirates who were focused on revenge against Spain made great names for themselves.
One such pirate was named Sinan the Great Jew (see his picture below), who after losing everything his family had built up in Spain for 1,450 years, pledged his seafaring skills in the Mediterranean Sea to the Ottoman sultan. All Sinan wanted were ships and crews to get revenge on the Spanish, and in turn he gave all of his loot to the Ottoman Empire. Sinan lived a long life and never felt satisfied that he had made the Spanish truly pay for their crimes.
So in this 1490s mix of cruelty and ethnic refugees and revenge is Christopher Columbus, who has always been suspected of being a refugee Jew, simply for the timing of his trip and the fact that his ships (Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria) were overwhelmingly crewed by Jewish refugee sailors.
In recent decades, an attack on Christopher Columbus by the political Left has centered on his taking of slaves among the Caribbean Indian tribes, and the fact that he was “white” and somehow treading on someone else’s land. Leftists fail to explain that literally everyone in the entire world took and sold slaves back then, including the Caribbean Indians, including the Africans, including the Arabs, inculding the Turks, and that the entire history of humanity is one migration after another.
So the question is, will the fact that Columbus is now proven to have been a Jew, and himself a refugee from oppression and persecution, somehow change the perception of Columbus? Will his story now be told as no longer the oppressor, but the fleeing oppressed?
It is tough to say why Columbus’ religion and refugee status should have any real impact on how he is taught in history books today. Yes, the Italians who have been so proud of him will probably now disavow him.
A big irony is that Jews like Columbus and Sinan only existed because the Italian Romans fought, enslaved, persecuted, and ethnically cleansed the Jews from their homeland in Judea/Israel starting in the year 67 CE and ending around the year 135 CE. Massive quantities of Jewish slaves were brought into Italy, where they slowly and surely rebuilt themselves into Jewish religious communities and kept their religion and culture going.
Despite being ethnically cleansed from their homeland and enslaved by the Italians, the Jews regrouped and saved themselves by migrating to northern Italy, Spain, and France, reaching soaring heights in science and business, only to be expelled by greedy Spanish thieves who had a recent war to pay off. Spain remains the ass backwards sh*thole of Europe today.
Columbus still has a holiday named after him here in America. I wonder if Iran, Hamas and Hiz’b’alla, and the political Left will try to do in his name, now that he is a known Jew. Or will the Left stick up for him, because he was an oppressed refugee? Guess it is still complicated being Columbus.

Sinan the Great Jew, expelled from Spain for his religion, he became a lifelong pirate specializing in taking Spanish ships
You are a Zionist, so am I, the Irish especially
Whether you think you are a Zionist, or not, you absolutely surely are one if you love your country. And it turns out you are in good company, because literally everyone else around the world is also a Zionist, albeit in shades of grey that suit each person and nation. The Irish are especially Zionist, they who have been exhibiting intense nationalistic pride and fervor lately in defense of their homeland.
The Scots, on the other hand, are nowhere near being Zionist, as they have completely given up on their own nation and turned it over to people who violently hate them. How sad; pathetic, really. They of Highlander and Claymore fame have no self pride, no sense of their own fantastic history. The irony here is that the nation that once dominated Scotland so brutally, England, is right behind them, also swirling down the “diversity” toilet bowl and throwing national pride and defense of homeland over the side of the boat filled with foreign invaders who hate them.
What is Zionism, this strange sounding word? Why call nationalism Zionism? Good question!
Zion is the ancient Biblical word for Israel, and in its most essential form Zionism is just simple old nationalism for Zion, which is simply a national pride in and defense of one’s homeland. Here it is Zion (Israel, Jerusalem, the Holy Land), but you can have nationalist feelings like Russiaism, Francism, Chinism, Brazilism etc. All the same thing about different places.
Generally speaking, that is all Zionism is, and literally everyone around the planet has some degree of national pride in their own country, whether they are from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Russia, France, or especially Japan and China. Thus, it follows that everyone has their own form of Zionism, though they might call it something different than that exact word. It is really simple:
Zionism = nationalism = universally felt love of and pride in one’s own country. Everyone feels it, everyone is it, everyone is Zionist. Everyone, especially the Irish. Go Irish!
The fact that Israelis are also proud of their nation and devoted to its defense like everyone else around the world is devoted to their own country is no surprise or deviation from the international norm. Israeli nationalism is no different than anyone else’s nationalism, except that Israel’s nationalism, called Zionism since the 1850s, is recorded throughout the Bible and begins about 3,500 years ago. That is a pretty old claim on a piece of real estate! Especially when we think of the Franks claiming what ended up becoming France only a thousand years ago, at most.
Recently I saw a video of some goofball lout yelling at participants in a pro-Israel rally, “Zionism isn’t even a part of Judaism,” he said over and over.
Really? I don’t think he is right about this.
If anything, the historical and Biblically commanded devotion of Jews to living in and militarily controlling Zion AKA The Holy Land AKA Israel AKA Judea is one of the most fundamental tenets of Judaism. In the very beginning of the Bible, and repeated again and again throughout the Bible with different characters, God promises to Abraham that his Jewish descendants will inherit Israel. So strongly did Jews feel their Zionistic nationalism 1,960 years ago, that they ended up in a war (year 67 CE) with the world’s leading superpower, Rome. And then again, seventy years later (year 131 CE) the Jews rose up and duked it out with the Romans again. And then again in the 1940s with the British Empire, and now again with the Islamic Empire.
So yeah, Jews are super nationalistic and Zionism is fundamentally a part of Judaism. Always has been, always will be.
True, there are Jews who say they are not Zionists, but hey, there are chickensh*t traitors in every group, people looking for what they think is the easiest way out of whatever situation they find themselves in. Those Jews decrying Zionism and Israel are, no surprise, the least involved, least devoted, least Jewish Jews you can find anywhere. So for them, attacking the most visibly Jewish thing, Israel and Jewish nationalism, is their way of trying to disassociate from being Jewish. After all the hell that Jews go through for simply being Jewish, I can’t say I blame them for wanting to check out.
Interesting, then, that Christian America has SO MANY PLACES named Zion!
In the Bible, Zion was always the Promised Land, and to America’s European founders, America was the new Promised Land. And so they named thousands of places in America and across America after Biblical places, including Hebron, Zion, Jerusalem, etc.
America has a Zion National Park, and my area of central Pennsylvania has a ton of places named Zion (see some of the photos I took below).
The point is, when a person opposes Zionism they are opposing just one country’s nationalism. Now why would any person oppose just one country’s nationalism, and not everyone else’s? I mean, I don’t think I have met anyone who loved French nationalism who did not also grudgingly recognize German nationalism and pride. Lots of us Americans are nationalists for America, but we understand why others feel strongly about their own country. Right?
So why are only the Jews being singled out for attack and de-nationing among an entire planet filled with people and nations? Why is only Jewish nationalism such a terrible thing?
I think we all know why. Zionism is being singled out because the same evil envious loser people who always hate Jews have simply found another way to show that they hate Jews. And so Zionism is attacked by people who themselves have tremendous Zionism for their own country.
Oh, the irony of people claiming that Zionism is a “colonial settler ideology,” when Zionism is simply the 3,500-year-old unbroken Biblical and modern history of Jews living in their ancient homeland, Judea/Israel/Zion. Jews cannot possibly be strangers or colonists in their own homeland, and so it is richly ironic that it is the land-stealing Islamic imperialists and Arab and Turkish colonialists who oppose the Jews. Across the planet, jihadi imperialism has spread Islam (Two Billion People total) by force and violence far beyond the Arabian Peninsula, and yet these same colonists covet this tiny little sliver of land held by the smallest of peoples, the Jews (Ten Million People total).
The Han Chinese ethnic group numbers somewhere close to a billion people, in one of the largest nations on the planet, and yet they maintain a sincere fear of being replaced, and so the Han Chinese maintain one of the most aggressive, largest militaries on the planet, and they are in a constant state of imperial expansion.
If we have to render unto Caeser what is Caeser’s, and if the Han Chinese get to keep testing everyone else’s boundaries, and if political and jihadi Islam never stops trying to take over other people’s lands, can’t we just let the tiny Jews enjoy their tiny little Zion, their ancient Promised Land? Is that really too much to ask? I don’t think so. You yourself don’t want to give up your own Zion, either, wherever that happens to be.
Every human being is a Zionist for their own Zion, whether that Zion is actually in Zion or is in France or China or Russia, America, or Italy.
“Peace” protestors don’t want peace
All of the so-called “peace” protestor people don’t actually want peace, they want endless conflict that gives them something to live for. They thrive on conflict, and so they actually work to promote conflict, even while they say the opposite.
The so-called “peace” protestor people started out back in World War I, as a mix of anti-America communists and socialists trying to hurt America, along with well meaning Mennonite non-violent resistors who nonetheless did their duty as medics and orderlies when called upon. But by World War II, the so-called “peace movement” had swelled to include pacifist Quakers (who were being taken over by leftists by the 1950s and then fully by anti-America hippies in the 1970s), communists, socialists, and generally disaffected liberals who said nothing about communist Russia’s misdeeds, but rather heaped increasing scorn upon the capitalist United States. The so-called “peace” people are really just America haters, not lovers of peace.
Today’s so-called “peaceniks” argue for “conflict resolution” conditions that, contrary to stated aims, are guaranteed to cause conflicts to fester and continue, not end decisively. And that is because these people are not interested in actual peace, which means the absence of conflict.
Rather, they want outcomes that are consistently against the interests of democratically run countries and against people there living in peace. And that is a hard thing to sell, the national suicide-by-peace thing. They know it, but they absolutely live for it, because the adrenaline rush of living for something so impossibly majestic and messianic is positively hypnotic.
Despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which really started in 2014 when Ukraine declared full soverignty from Russia and claimed eastern regions that have overwhelming Russian citizenry, and which has resulted in catatstrophic environmental and human death and physical damage beyond belief, note that the so-called “peace” people are really nowhere to be seen. No campus riots, no shutting down bridges or highways. Pretty quiet. Same goes for China’s many brutal militaristic adventures, and Cuba+Venezuela+Nicaragua non-democratic authoritarianism.
Same goes for the UN and its anti democracy allies lowering flags to half-mast out of respect to Iran’s Butcher of Tehran, Ebrahim Raisi, who without due process or rule of law was personally responsible for thousands of political dissidents being tortured to death or executed by slow hanging for many years. Actual Iranians living in Iran have been partying since Raisi’s chopper went down and burst into flames.
But when it comes to ten million underdog Jews (worldwide) defending themselves against two BILLION bullying Muslims (worldwide) attacking them everywhere across the planet, why… stop the press, turn college campuses and streets and bridges upside down, and call out the law on those troublesome Jews.
So now, the so-called International Criminal Court and the so-called International Court of Justice are issuing their own anti peace demands and ridiculous arrest warrants for Israeli leaders who are in the middle of defending the sole democracy in the entire region from hordes of very non-democratic and very Medieval barbarians at every corner of the New Jersey-sized country.
Never mind that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Convention (neither is America), and thus not subject to these self-appointed kangaroo courts’ purported jurisdiction. What is important here is that the so-called “peace” people have been trying to dislodge Benjamin Netanyahu by any means possible for years, and thereby greatly diminish Israel’s ability to defend itself. Like him or not, Netanyahu has proven to be a very tough and reliable defender of Jewish survival in a hostile world, while most of his would-be opponents are desperate to be international media darlings and… people of “peace” at any cost.
The so-called “peace” people want to force on Israel, and on the world, a so-called “palestinian” country beyond the one that already exists in the nation called Jordan (80% of the original Palestine Mandate, 75% of the population identifies as “palestinian”), which they say will bring utopian peace and happiness and an absence of suffering and conflict to the region. It’s always for some mystical “peace” or “for the children” with these people.
By pushing this idea of another “palestinian” state, the peace people are incentivizing Hamas and the other Islamic terror groups to keep on committing attacks on Israeli civilians and holding out for everything, instead of accepting what is reasonable. The “peace” people’s intervention and resulting continuation of this conflict, and their constant encouragement of so-called palestinians to remain defiant and demand everything, as opposed to settling for something, has left the Abraham Accords in tatters. So much for peace from the peaceniks!
If there is one thing we have all learned since October 7th, 2023, it is that the decades of genocidal indoctrination have turned the Muslims living in Gaza and nearby areas into gleeful bloodthirsty murderers. So if Hamas’ October 7th child raping and baby burning massacre were indeed bizarrely rewarded with a formal state from which Hamas could continue to launch more massacres and random rocket attacks, they would do so.
In other words, the so-called “peace” people will get their desired conflict continuation, so that they can continue to wring their hands and write sanctimonious op-eds and pass endless judgment upon people and situations they themselves would never find themselves in (because brave men guard them day and night), and basically feel all mission-driven and holier-than-thou.
And we know that all of the Islamic actors in control of the ICJ, ICC and UN are using these institutions to try to damage Israel. After all, there is no actual Muslim pro-Israel/ pro Jewish/ pro peace peace movement; because that would be actual peace, which we know the self proclaimed peace people both Muslim and non do not really want.
The adrenaline rush and personal meaning high that “peace loving” enabling white liberals get from conflict continuation must be a lot stronger than heroin. Heroin users are satisfied to shoot up and then fall down in a corner somewhere and sleep off their haze, whereas the so-called “peaceful” white liberals keep pouring gasoline on the conflict fire that threatens to consume the entire world.

Self-anointed peaceniks and judgmental hypocrites, the AFSC never misses an opportunity to lie about Israel. What is the alternative to a ground invasion of Gaza by Israel? Should Israeli citizens shoot random bombs onto the heads of random Gazans in retaliation for the October 7th massacre? Note that AFSC makes zero mention of the massacre. Because the AFSC does not believe in peace, it hates Jews

Notice how AFSC fails to mention that Hamas is the sole cause of all of Gaza’s problems, including the theft of daily international aid deliveries. No mention of Israeli hostages, no mention of daily Israeli victims of Gaza rockets. AFSC is just “Israel is bad Israel is bad” all the time. The AFSC people do not want peace, they want dead Jews
Lawfare, lawfare shalt thou pursue …?
Lawfare is everywhere this week. It is being used so much by so many people in so many places around the world you would think it must be a Biblical commandment. But we know lawfare is wrong, it is evil, it is unjust. Lawfare is the height of corruption, because it grossly misuses the justice system to achieve grossly unjust results.
Lawfare is a conjunction of law and warfare. It is the use of law and the criminal justice legal system to make war on a political opponent. Lawfare is the purposeful mis-use of the criminal justice and legal system to achieve political outcomes that the voters will not provide and that are not actually warranted.
Until the two sham “impeachment” hoaxes against President Trump (the second attempt wasn’t even close to a real impeachment, especially because the Chief Justice did not preside over the process), I don’t think America had ever really seen lawfare. The original model for using lawfare was established back in the old Soviet Union (“Show me the man and I will give you the crime“) and then in post-World War II Eastern Europe, when the communists of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia falsely accused their political opponents of all kinds of nonsense crimes and then jailed or executed them. Russia has used lawfare continuously up until recent days when political opposition leader Navalny was jailed, and died in jail.
This model is what the current crop of lawfare is based on.
As rare as it was in Western Civilization, political lawfare is now all the rage in America and Europe. It is a reflection of how little political leaders respect the law, how little they fear the voters, how sleepy the voters are, and how focused the leaders are on concentrating their power, at any cost to society. Think about how horrible it is to see a good person political candidate or an already elected leader locked up in jail just so they pose no threat to the power of the current strongman or corrupt political system. Well, that is not just happening in some third-rate country at the end of the world, like Venezuela, it is happening in Brazil, and it is actually happening here in the land of the free, America.
President Trump is the one being unfairly dumped on the most, like Neo in The Matrix movie, where the endless Agent Smiths endlessly attack him and try to overwhelm him. Trump is being hounded by endless ridiculous civil suits and totally fake criminal persecutions on made-up nonsense charges using unprecedented novel interpretations of rarely used laws. No fair minded person can look at these unprecedented lawsuits against Trump and say “Yeah, this has happened before, and this is normal, right and just.”
Phony and corrupt lawfare cases are under way against Republicans (people guilty of simply engaging in political activity the Democrat Party does not like, or politicking while Republican) in key swing states Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, etc. Some of this lawfare is so bad, so evil, like where the FBI created the fake militia group they used to falsely threaten a governor, that at least one case has spawned its own movie.
So successful and easy is the lawfare model that other countries and even the United Nations are starting to use it. Now, a radical Muslim (Kamil Khan of the ICC) and the son of Nazis (German leader Olaf Scholz) have ganged up to arrest the elected leader of Israel. Yes, the International Criminal Court is issuing warrants for the arrest of Israeli leaders (Jews) for the “crime” of resisting Muslim genocide of the Jewish People, and for the crime of self defense while Jewish.
Spain is also now openly advocating for the destruction of Israel, 468 years after expelling all of its Jews.
You think Gaza is a killing field? OK, maybe it is. But if Hamas stops shooting rockets into Israel from schools, and stops shooting guns from hospitals, and stops using family homes as military bases, then there will be very, very little collateral damage. But Hamas is causing civilian casualties, and blaming it on Israel. That is not an Israeli crime, that is a Hamas crime, and it is a fiercely evil corruption of law to turn these facts upside down.
Not to mention that all of the Muslim nations have continued to rack up huge human rights violations with no accountability, no ICC, no arrest warrants, no protests anywhere for that matter. Kurdistan is huge, and the Kurds deserve their sovereignty, and Kurdistan is a real issue, but not one Gaza protestor knows or cares where Kurdistan is or what the plight of the Kurds is.
You can’t make this stuff up if you tried. Sadly, this isn’t imaginary fiction, it is fact, it is actually happening right now. And it tracks right with the past, where in the 1930s and 1940s Muslim leaders worked closely with Germany’s Adolf Hitler to murder as many Jewish civilians as possible, including Jews living in Muslim countries. We are talking about civilians, not combatants, just regular people with the “wrong” religion.
Their crime was breathing while Jewish. And so is Netanyahu’s “crime” this week the same thing. Very similar to President Trump’s “crime” of campaigning to Make America Great Again.

Kurdistan is a real political place, with a long history, and a unique Kurdish People who live there and speak Kurdish. They have been fighting Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey militarily and through lawfare for their independence since 1920. Where are the ICC warrants for the Turkish leaders committing war crimes against the Kurds? Where are the American student protests?

Two Israeli soldiers hold the Kurdistan flag, because they know that just eighty years ago the Jews were in the same vulnerable position the Kurds are in today. Natural friends. Turkey and Syria use lawfare to artificially steal Kurdish homeland, while Iran and Iraq just keep trying to genocide them all

Kurds and Jews are natural allies in their defense against Muslim Arabs who want to genocide both groups using lawfare as the justification
Some wonderful people gone
Jokes abound about aging, and quite a few are about those friends and family members who do not age with us, but who leave us all as we continue our own trajectory. Well, I am now definitely in the “aging” category and I am increasingly surrounded by people I enjoy and love who suddenly depart from this life. Recently two people here in Pennsylvania have left us all, and moved on to the spirit world, who I would like to mention. And it’s no joke, this dying thing. No matter what age a person is when they depart this life for the next, there is nothing funny about it.
Except maybe the last day on earth of European-Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, whose wild and often debauched Marxist Bohemian lifestyle made for intriguing movies and books. While some or maybe even a lot of the facts of Frida’s life may be funny depending upon the person considering them, her actual physical departure from this planet really is funny. I think.
After Frida died relatively young from cancer, or whatever it is that eventually afflicts the heavily debauched, her friends had her corpse dressed beautifully in her most customary colorful and flamboyant way, and prepared themselves all for a formal cremation send-off party in whatever crematory was present in Mexico City at the time. Her friends gathered in the crematory room while Frida’s corpse was ceremoniously loaded into the burn chamber, and as the roaring natural gas flames came to life, they all raised their glasses and toasted Frida.
And then the room erupted in gasps, cries, and people running for the exits, because suddenly Frida’s corpse stiffly bent at the waist, sat up, and made a wicked grin as her abundant hair caught on fire and created a demonic flaming halo around her yet untouched face. She wasn’t actually gone!
Yes, this was all her body’s muscular reaction to the sudden burst of 2,000-degree heat enveloping it, but apparently if you knew Frida, you kind of didn’t expect her to just die, you know, lie still and never move again. And indeed, she had lived up to all the hype about her, even while lying quite dead in the cremation chamber. I think this true story is funny, even though I did not know Frida and was not present at her cremation.
What is not funny and yet is not unexpected is the recent departure of Jim Brett, of Lenhartsville, PA, which for our geographically challenged readers is just north of I-78 and just south of Blue Mountain in Berks County, PA. Still confused where Lenhartsville, PA, is? OK, yes, it is the equivalent of East Succotash, PA, Nowheresville, PA, etc., and it is just about next to Hawk Mountain, the internationally famous sanctuary devoted to conserving birds of prey, especially on their annual migration south. There, solved this location question for you.
Hawk Mountain started as a simple land purchase to keep the shotgunners from standing on Blue Mountain’s highest Tuscarora sandstone boulder ridgetop and mindlessly swatting down out of the sky nearly every raptor that flew by on its way to South America. And in short order, more land purchases were added to what is now called the Kittatinny Ridge migration corridor. Hawk Mountain eventually became an educational organization and a destination for birders.
In the 1930s, birds of prey (hawks, owls, eagles, kites, vultures) were considered pestilential nuisances to farmers’ chickens and the rabbits and pheasants hunters enjoyed pursuing. In time, around the 1930s, raptors gradually became understood by some Americans as an important part of a healthy and properly functioning ecosystem, just as balanced populations of wolves, bears, mountain lions, bobcats and fishers have been subsequently understood today.
Hawk Mountain is now the world’s oldest continuously functioning conservation organization, but from 1934 to 1966 it was kind of a hidden gem, a hole in the wall of Blue Mountain that only certain initiates knew about or appreciated. It became much better known and more widely appreciated and much visited after Jim Brett became its second “curator,” as the chief executive position there is uniquely called.
As its leader, Jim Brett elevated Hawk Mountain to international status, built lots of buildings, hired lots of staff, attracted a lot of visitors, raised a lot of money, and he became a leading voice in bird conservation around our little blue and green planet.
On the outside, Jim Brett was a colorful Irishman, full of naughty jokes and a singular ability to imbibe liberally (often of his own make) and then hold forth to a captivated audience about biological and ecological science. But because Jim’s mother was Jewish, he had a separate interest in Israel, which, because it sits on a physical crossroads, is a lot like Blue Mountain. Israel is a birding Mecca.
A “sh*t ton” as Jim would say of raptors, storks, and other incredible and rare bird populations migrate through Israel, and Jim made their conservation from one end of their migration to the other one of his life’s missions. His Jewish half worked well with the Israelis, and his Irish half worked very well with the surrounding populations. One of his crowning achievements was working with Yossi Leshem to resolve bird strikes on Israeli fighter jets.
By finding ways to greatly reduce large rare birds being suddenly introduced to fighter jets at 1,000 mph, Yossi Leshem & Co. were able to save the lives of said rare birds, said giant titanium war eagles, and unsaid but implied young fighter pilots. It really was one of the great wild birds-living-with-modern-humans conservation success stories.
I met Jim Brett in 1998, when I had started working at PA DCNR in Harrisburg (having fled the corrupt and destructive US EPA in Washington DC). He was giving a presentation at an environmental and conservation education conference in Harrisburg, PA, and as the DCNR director of said polysyllabic educational field, it was my duty to both speak and to listen. Jim was standing up on the stage showing ancient stone tool artifacts and explaining the nexus between primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles and the conservation or decimation of wildlife. I was hooked immediately.
Jim and I maintained a close personal and professional relationship until Fall, 2009, when I ran in a congressional primary (I was prompted to run by the devoutly corrupt and evil Manchurian Candidate Barack Hussein Obama, then president for nine months). My expressing my long quietly held political views educated not just Jim, but a sh*t ton of my “friends” and fellow conservationists alike about my true self. Gasp. Turned out that Jim did not know how conservative I was, and I did not know how liberal Jim was, and despite my desire to remain close, Jim had a hard time with it.
After 2009, our relationship involved less and less personal time, and fewer phone calls. I still have a generous gift that Jim gave me, which I occasionally take out and look at, admire, and then put it back in its safe place.
Jim and I stayed in touch through mutual friends for many years, including those who went on his African safaris he led. I can still recall Jim describing the funeral rite for a young son of a Maasai tribal leader, which he witnessed some time in the 1980s, I think: The boy’s body was ritually washed and then slathered in lamb fat, then put in the chieftain’s hut. The entire village was then evacuated and moved to an entirely new location, where a new settlement would be constructed. After the hyenas had entered the old village and consumed the boy’s body, the entire place was torched and left to become natural ecosystem thereafter.
Jim’s bright blue eyes flashed as he told this story, as indeed one would expect from someone so in tune with the endless hidden vibrations of our magical natural world. Though I know his spirit is now soaring with the majestic raptors, I doubt Jim’s liver will ever go the way of the hyena, Frida, or any mortal flesh for that matter. His official obituaries are here and here.
A second loss is someone I knew less closely, but with whom I shared a great deal in common and with whom I filled my buck tag this season: Phil Benner of Liberty, PA.
Until he unexpectedly died of Covid several days ago, the incredibly physically fit Phil Benner was a devoted father, a devoted husband, a devoted brother, a devoted uncle, a devoted son. He was a hard working small business owner, a risk-taking entrepreneur, and a pastor who saw God and felt Him deeply in the natural world around him, including the leaves rustling in the winter tree branches, and the quiet tinklebell sound of a small mountain stream’s clear waters falling over boulders. He appreciated everything and took nothing for granted.
Not only will I miss Phil Benner, the world will miss Phil Benner, because the world needs a billion more gentle, charitable, loving, devoted, kind, tolerant, peaceful Phil Benners. His loss is huge.

Phil Benner and his son Nate with a large bodied six point buck taken in Pine Creek Valley in late November, 2023
Decolonize Islamic Imperialism
All this mindless jibber jabber about “decolonization” in the Middle East. Please. Spare us. The biggest colonizers in the Middle East are the people implementing Islamic imperialism there. And there is no bigger symbol of Islamic imperialism than the golden dome in Jerusalem, built on top of the indigenous Jewish temple.
You want to end colonization, occupation, and imperialism? Send all of the so-called “Palestinians” back to Turkey, where they came from, and send all the Muslims back to the Arabian Peninsula, where they came from. These people are not indigenous to Israel, they are interlopers, thieves, colonizers, occupiers, imperialists.
For those hard of understanding how chronology works, the first things, the things and people and events and religions and nations that exist first, are those whose stuff appears first in the timeline. In Jerusalem, the capitol of the Jewish People for the past 3,500 years since King David selected the site, a certain golden dome is built on top of the indigenous Jewish temple. This much more recent addition to Jerusalem is the ultimate symbol of imperialism and colonization by people who do not belong there. But they have no problem claiming other people’s stuff as their own.
All the nudniks and uneducated fools blocking traffic and yelling bigoted slogans against Jews and America should take a few moments to ponder their irony. They are actually advocating for the very colonization and imperialism they say they are against. No wonder most Americans think you are idiots.
Hanukka’s message to Americans
While Christmas is the national holiday of America, Hanukka is the other big holiday happening now. Today is the last day, and it is worth taking note of the meaning this religious holiday can and should have for all freedom-loving Americans.
Let us reflect upon what the message of Hanukka is and should be for Americans, because God knows, we are all in need of inspiration right now. Especially as we daily recognize ever more just how rogue and turned against us citizens our own federal government has become.
Hanukka is the commemoration of an unbelievably heroic and unlikely war outcome 2,300 years ago by a band of ferociously patriotic religious Jews battling against one of the regional superpowers of their time. In short, when Alexander the Great died, his Greek empire was divided into large parts, each run by one of Alexander’s generals. Seleucus was one of those generals, and while his life was a whirlwind of cloak and dagger politics, leading massed battles, and shifting political alliances, he ended up founding one of the regional empires. The Seleucid Empire included all kinds of remote areas and sleepy places and small peoples that the Greeks did not really care about, including the nation of Judea and its natives, the Israelites/Judeans/ Jews.
But the powerful Greek Seleucids ended up caring very much about the relatively small and highly religious Judeans, because most of the Jews would only go so far in pledging their loyalty to the Greeks, due to religious differences. While in general the Greeks had a very broad and inclusive view of culture, what was then called the pan-Hellenic, and while the Jews could go along with a lot of cultural differences so long as their religion was not compromised, the Greeks did require a basic fealty to their most important values. And those polytheistic values strongly antagonized the Jews’ monotheism.
It must be said that the resulting civil war was as much between religious Jews and Hellenized Jews as it was between religious Jews and the Greeks. Essentially it was the Orthodox Jews vs. the assimilated and very liberal Jews and their protectors, the Greeks. This fact obviously has great implications for the tensions between religious Jews today and their more liberal and religiously distant brethren.
An armed showdown began when the Seleucids erected their own statues and began sacrificing pigs in the Jews’ Great Temple. You know, the same large hill whereupon another uninvited, rogue, imperialistic and colonizing symbol has been erected, namely the golden dome of the rock. And so a Jewish priest names Mattathias (essentially Matthew in today’s English, a name familiar to Christians) picked up a sword, killed some bad guys with some gutsy moves, and started a Jewish rebellion against an overwhelmingly superior military force.
The Greeks and their liberal Jewish allies responded with force, and the Orthodox Jews fled their homes in Jerusalem to the Judean Hills, where they eked out a meagre existence in caves and remote washes where the Greek patrols did not go. Using hit-and-run guerilla war tactics over several years, Mattathias and his sons’ troops eventually wore down the Greek resolve, to the point where headlong massed battles resulted in smaller forces of Jews utterly annihilating their opponents.
Following the final battle, when the Jewish “Maccabees” returned in force to Jerusalem, they found the Great Temple ransacked and wrecked. Despite a great desolation upon the land, as a result of this terrible civil war, the religious Jews were able to scrape together enough pure olive oil to re-light the gold Menorah in the Great Temple while they also pulled the religious service back together, too. That fact about the olive oil has become kind of a materialistic Christmasized silver and blue tinsel fairy tale about a miracle, and thus great emphasis has been placed on the “miracle of the oil.”
Truth is, this “miracle of the oil” is almost a Monty Python sketch of what really happened, because the true miracle of Hanukka was that the tiny force of true believer Orthodox Jews was able to defeat a much more powerful but spiritually flaccid enemy. Where have we seen this same kind of scenario play out elsewhere in history? Hmmm, my fellow Americans?
The message of Hanukka is that no dark, evil force can defeat goodness and righteousness. This is the true miracle of this holiday, that a small band of humans, led either by George Washington or Mattathias the Priest, can defeat hordes of knuckle dragging barbarians. This is a message of inspiration that all Americans need right now, because we are now facing a terrible plague of evil, moral rot, and sadistic cruelty emanating from the present interloper rulers of our nation’s capital. Many people predict America is heading for a civil war, or at least an armed contest between the central government of Washington, DC, and the rest of the country. Hopefully, our election system is not so corrupted that we can vote our way out of this mess.
Don’t worry, Americans, because if you call upon God and are willing to sacrifice and take risks, like the Orthodox Jewish Maccabees did 2,300 years ago, then you can, we can, miraculously re-take the America that is ours from those who have risen up to steal it and make us all subjects and slaves to their evil power.
My fellow Americans, take heart from the history of Hanukka that you, too, can be successful against what look like overwhelming odds.

The light of freedom shines bright, including in our hearts and our spirit to fight for what is right
Hanuka 2023, every USA conservative is a Jew
The past seven years have seen increasingly aggressive censorship and violence against American conservatives, especially on college campuses. Since the October 7th Hamas massacre of Israelis, American Jews find themselves under violent attack, especially on college campuses. Conservatives and American Jews don’t often occupy the same space, but now they do, and they should support each other.
Historically, Jews have been the canary in the coalmine for civilizational health. Countries where Jews have enjoyed freedom have done exceedingly well, and countries that murdered, robbed, raped, and expelled their Jews have fallen by the wayside. The proofs for this assertion are legion, and they include ancient Rome (what is Italy today?), 15th century Spain (what is Spain today?), modern Germany, Soviet Russia, and almost every single Muslim country today. And yes, modern Germany is rapidly swirling down the toilet. England is swaying wildly on the fence, and America is not far behind.
Western civilization is failing, and one of the victims, the beleaguered Jew, is the most prominent symbol of the evil forces that are tearing our western nations apart.
As a result of Hamas’ October 7th massacre of Israelis and their still unending rocket barrages on Israeli civilians, and then Israel’s just response to that blitzkrieg, the world has been engulfed by a mostly Islamic movement to dehumanize Jews and delegitimize Israel and Western Civilization. A bunch of white sadists and envious losers have joined in the pro-Hamas, pro-genocide, pro-Apartheid marches.
In case you have not been paying attention, Jewish-owned restaurants in Australia, Britain, Canada, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have been targeted by violent mobs chanting about Israel and killing Jews. This same effort has also engulfed nearly every single American university, where conservatives and free speech have been aggressively banned for the past seven years. It has been interesting to see this intersection of Jew haters against freedom of speech, because their actions have shined a bright light on the plight of all American conservatives.
Turns out, American conservatives share the same fox hole as American Jews. Both are subject to unfair and unconstitutional vilification, dehumanization, and suppression of their basic human rights by the very people who claim to be the most tolerant, most open minded, most caring. Ahem.
The other day three major university presidents (UPenn, MIT, Harvard) sat before Congress and each testified that people calling for the genocide of Jews on their college campuses was not necessarily against their college policies. What a disgrace. It was shocking to see these cookie cutter leftist women presidents smirking and being coy while playing their word games. Had the words black, Hispanic, gay, transgender, lesbian, Muslim etc. been substituted for the word Jew in this policy discussion, well my gosh, of course that would have violated their college policies against hate, bullying, and harassment.
But not Jews. Nope. With Jews, these very sophisticated and exclusive women leaders had to judge the “context” in which the calls for genocide happened. Was the Jewish student actually being genocided on MIT or Harvard’s campus, like hanging from a lamp post with a rope around his neck? Well, that would certainly violate their school policy against hate, harassment, and bullying. But up until that physical violence, why, calls for genocide against Jews is just free speech, they said.
University presidents who never gave a hoot about free speech, but who rather inflicted un-American McCarthy-esque speech codes against their ideological opponents are suddenly all for free speech when it comes to calling for massacring the Jews. And this strange thing has naturally and refreshingly caused quite a backlash.
What is happening here is that the Jew is the breakwater for the American conservative, who has been illegally pounded into dust for years by the same racist , Stalinist, Hitlerite Diversity-Iniquity-Equity university/ media/ government people as were testifying before Congress the other day.
If America can agree that treating Jews differently and much worse than everyone else is wrong, then I think we are also about to agree that the evil Stalinist Diversity-Inclusivity-Equity critical race theory nonsense that put both Jews and conservatives on the chopping block was a huge un-American mistake. It is time for this nonsense to end, and for the rule of law and constitution to return.
Tonight is the first night of Hanuka, a 2,300-year-old Jewish festival that is about religious freedom in Israel earned by the edge of the sword. There is nothing joyful or miraculous or oily about Hanuka. This holiday was and still is only about the need to fight like hell with everything you have if you want to survive. The ancient Jews prevailed militarily against the enemies of all that is good, in the land of Israel, and this is what is celebrated this week.
Sounds like a good message to American conservatives and Jews alike: Fight back against the evil that is engulfing America, including the college campuses that are supposed to be beacons for learning, or you will lose everything. Firing these three evil university presidents at UPenn, MIT, and Harvard will be a good step forward.