Conservatively Speaking : October 2019

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Why Haven’t We Heard A Peep From Islamic Powers About China Brutalizing 1 Million Muslims?

It’s unthinkable that any other great power would get away without any backlash from either Islamic powers, Islamic civil society, or jihadist groups. And that is one of the biggest puzzles in foreign policy worth probing.

Anyone observing academia from within would know that most of the research coming out of a majority of social science departments is meaningless and irrelevant. It’s a self-referential racket that squanders money on bureaucratic nonsense and on research subjects completely dissociated with normal life and policy.

Had it not been so, right now there would be scores of scholarships and funding to find out the causality behind a single puzzling phenomenon: What explains otherwise virulent, hyper-activist, and volatile Islamic countries and jihadist groups being completely subservient to China?

It is, of course, unthinkable that India, the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, Russia, or any European Union country would get away with what China is doing without a response from Islamic countries. After all, China is routinely, systematically, and violently attacking the Islamic countries’ fellow religious practitioners.

Islamic states and civil society are not otherwise shy about showing their displeasure and have resorted on other policy priorities to collective action via proxy forces, demonstrations, and active funding of jihadist groups. China has trade and military ties with all the major Islamic states, with major investments in Pakistan, Central Asia, Iran, and the Middle East.

So how did China manage to earn the subservience, when more than 1 million Muslims are interned in Chinese concentration camps? And what does that mean for Western policy that we couldn’t manage that feat through continuous appeasement?
The West Is in Too Deep with China

China has compromised and infiltrated Western big corporates and universities. For decades since the end of the Second World War, in the West among both libertarians and conservatives, the market has been worshiped as something larger than the nation-state, and now that the market has decided China’s money is more important than Western social cohesion, the fault lines are increasingly becoming prominent.

As Jim Antle recently wrote in The American Conservative, this is the modern metaphorical version of the proverbial corporatists selling the rope to Lenin by which he plans to hang them. But China should ideally shock both liberals and leftists as well and align them with conservatives. As Matthew Walther wrote, the barbarism in China is incomparable and unprecedented but should ideally bring the left and right together. The fact that it doesn’t shows how compromised the situation is.

Walther writes:
I cannot believe I am typing this about a man who eight years ago said he would be walking on Mars by now, but Newt Gingrich is absolutely right. Our leaders are not prepared to deal with China. Not only do they lack the cunning and the willpower — they lack the requisite bargaining tools. We are in too deep, and China knows it. Any concession we could possibly demand of them will require a corresponding one that we are unable to grant.

Besides, it is not clear to me that a substantial number of Americans particularly wants to see our relations with China change. We are happy to buy cheap water bottles and Halloween decorations and licensed cartoon merchandise and mobile phones. We want our movies shown in Chinese theaters and our sports leagues to have large Chinese fan bases. From our home in this consumer paradise hell looks impossibly remote.

Very well. That’s on us to fix. But what explains the muted reaction from the Islamic world? This is an important question. While for liberals and neoconservatives every two-penny authoritarian looks like the next Adolf Hitler, only one great power that we know of is actively running concentration camps, where reportedly more than 1 million people are enslaved with no rights or freedom, women are being raped, and Mengeleian experiments are being conducted on live human subjects.

Now, as with any news this gruesome, there is always a need for caution on how much to believe and what to ignore. But no smoke can exist without some fire, and if even a quarter of the news coming out of dissidents is true, the reality is horrific.
Why Are Islamic Leaders Silent?

The strangest part is the deadly silence from Islamic leaders. Naturally, this leads to a few questions. Are the Islamic countries afraid of China more than they are of the West? Is that because they worry about losing Chinese investment, or is that because they know that if they provoke China to the point of a war, Chinese military will not follow human rights rules during engagement?

It is unlikely that Chinese military in a war situation would follow the careful “minimal-civilian-casualty” mode of warfare or counterinsurgency the West currently practices. Is that a deterrent?

From Pakistan, to Iran, to Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, all the leading Islamic powers are silent about literally millions of their fellow religious practitioners being brutalized, as are the countless jihadist groups from Indonesia to Iraq. This could mean only one thing: that the Islamic states and jihadist groups are more afraid of China than they are of anyone else.

Consider any other power — the EU, the U.S., the U.K., Russia, India, or Israel — acting like China, and imagine what the reaction would be. Where are the mass protests? Where are the flag burnings? Where are the embassy attacks? Where are the jihadist bombings of Chinese economic interests in Africa and elsewhere? That question as to why there aren’t any needs to be probed for strictly strategic reasons. What did the Chinese manage to do that we couldn’t, after billions in aid, hundreds of thousands of refugees resettled, and humanitarian wars?

For liberals, neoconservatives, or Trotskyists, and anyone else who prefers values more than interests, the answer is always more universalism and internationalism. Tyranny and despotism need to be confronted forcefully at every juncture, even to the point of overstretching militarily and financially. National conservatives and realists, for example, believe in narrow realpolitik. To them, interests matter more, and only when interests are threatened.

China’s Rise Should Trouble Liberals and Conservatives
In one current case, however, everyone should agree that the rise of China should concern both conservative-realists and liberals. Liberals should be worried about human rights in Hong Kong, which Ben Domenech chronicled here, as well as the influence of Chinese authoritarianism within Western institutions. Conservative realists should be worried that China is a growing peer rival great power with hegemonic aspirations in Asia, a growing navy, and powerful research in AI and genetics unhindered by gender-diversity nonsense.

China is a power determined to hollow out the West from within. This is something the Soviets couldn’t do due to their economic model. One shudders to think, however, how much manufacturing the Western corporate sector then would have funneled to cheap Russian labor to hollow out heartland England and America, had the autarkic Soviets been more like globally integrated state-capitalist China.

Even for the sake of academic and strategic inquiry, both liberals and conservatives should focus on trying to find the answer to the question: What is the Chinese secret strategy through which they conquered the entire Islamic world and managed to earn its submissive obedience without firing a single shot or losing a single life in futile humanitarian wars, such as the ones fought with blood and treasure, since Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/30/why-havent-we-heard-a-peep-from-islamic-powers-about-china-brutalizing-1-million-muslims/

GOP Sen. Jim Risch Offers Citizenship to Kurdish, Syrian Populations

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) is pushing a new bill that would transport many Muslims from chaotic Syria and Kurdistan into America’s schools and workplaces.

The bill creates a refugee program for Syrians and Kurds who claim to have helped U.S.-funded armed groups, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Risch is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, so his legislation may pass as soon as this week

But his bill would provide a “carve-out” in refugee law for Middle Eastern fighters, said a source. Also, the uncapped refugee inflow would include many unvetted and unidentified people because U.S. officials cannot prevent or even detect fraud in the war-torn areas occupied by hostile or corrupt warlords, said the source.

Once people are admitted as refugees, they are put on a fast-track to citizenship.

The program would import Syria’s chaotically diverse cultures and conflicts back into the United States, the official said, adding, “It is the ‘Invade the World/Invite the World’ attitude.”

The legislation reflects the politicians’ starry-eyed support for foreign groups, regardless of the cost inflicted on Americans, the official said. “They care more about Syrians than they care about Americans,” the source said.

Refugee programs are backed by business groups — including donors in the state’s dairy industry — because the refugees provide businesses with extra workers, consumers, and renters. However, nearly all refugees vote for Democrats who offer to support them with welfare and also to raise their social status by promoting diversity.

Risch’s bill is titled S.2641 and is named “Promoting American National Security and Preventing the Resurgence of ISIS Act of 2019.” It was introduced October 17.

The bill cuts a hole through current refugee law to allow many Kurds and Syrians to be flown out of the war zone into the United States, providing they claim a connection to groups who were supported or funded by the U.S. government during the last few years:

The Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall designate, as Priority 2 refugees of special humanitarian concern (1) Syrian Kurds, stateless persons who habitually resided in Syria, and other Syrians who partnered with, or worked for or directly with, the United States Government in Syria … (5) Syrian Kurds, stateless persons who habitually resided in Syria, and other Syrians who were or are employed by the United States Government in Syria, for an aggregate period of at least 1 year; and (6) citizens or nationals of Syria or Iraq, or stateless persons who habitually resided in Syria or Iraq, who provided service to United States counter-ISIS efforts for an aggregate period of at least 1 year.

…

Aliens granted status under this section as Priority 2 refugees of special humanitarian concern under the refugee resettlement priority system shall be deemed to satisfy the requirements under section 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1157) for admission to the United States.

The legislation says the refugee inflow would be exempt from the president’s decision to cap the 2020 inflow of invited refugees at 18,000.

The legislation says SDF members cannot be excluded from the fly-to-America program: “An applicant for admission to the United States may not be deemed inadmissible based on membership in, or support provided to, the Syrian Democratic Forces.”

The SDF helped U.S. forces to defeat the Islamic State army in Raqqa. They are comprised of Muslim Kurds but also some Assyrian Christians and Muslim Turkmen.

The legislation contradicts President Donald Trump’s policy of insulating Americans from the Middle East’s chaotic diversity. On October 23, 2019, Trump declared:

Across the Middle East we have seen anguish on a colossal scale. We have spent eight trillion dollars on wars in the Middle East, never really wanting to win those wars. But after all that money was spent and all those lives lost, the young men and women gravely wounded, so many, the Middle East is less safe, less stable, and less secure than before these conflicts began.

The same people pushing for these wars are often the ones demanding America open its doors to unlimited migration from war torn regions, importing the terrorism and the threat of terrorism right to our own shores, but not anymore.

My administration understands that immigration security is national security. As a candidate for president, I made clear that we needed a new approach to American foreign policy, one guided not by ideology but by experience, history and a realistic understanding of the world.

The U.S. government-funded Voice of America posted a video of the SDF:

Risch is a former governor of the state, where Trump’s “Hire American” tight labor market is forcing employers and farmers to offer higher wages for American voters.

“Workers in Idaho are leading the nation in earnings growth, thanks in part to a buoyant job market and pockets of labor shortages that are putting upward pressure on wages,” said a 2018 report in the Wall Street Journal. “In 2017, Idaho workers boasted a 5.3% increase in earnings—mostly comprised of annual wages and salaries.”

The labor shortage is a boost for people in Idaho, said a September 2019 report in MagicValley.com:

TWIN FALLS — A new construction program in Twin Falls School District could help fill the labor shortage that’s limiting growth in the area.

Joselynn Ward said she finds the hands-on nature of the course engaging. The opportunity to get ahead is encouraging her to consider a career in construction, she said.

“It’s a lot more fun than just sitting at a desk and doing paperwork,” Ward said. “Although we do take notes, we are still very hands-on.”

But more refugees will flood the labor market, slow wage raises, and boost housing prices, even as Idahoans must dig deeper for the new home they need to create and nurture families.

“The Treasure Valley is one of the hottest housing markets in the nation … For locals who want to buy their first home, that makes the hunt feel like a race against the clock — or a race whose finish line seems infinitely distant,” said a May 2019 report in the Idaho Statesman.

Rising housing costs are a big problem for the state’s poorest-paid Americans. “While housing and rental costs continue to climb around Idaho and the Treasure Valley, one recently-released report says renters’ wages are lagging behind in 80% of Idaho’s counties and seven out of eight metro areas,” said a June 2019 report by KVTB.

Corbyn’s Brother Trashes Open Borders, Brands Extinction Rebellion a Soros-Funded Globalist Scam

Piers Corbyn, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexiteer climate-sceptic elder brother, has lambasted Extinction Rebellion as a Soros-funded, EU- and UN-backed scam to transfer money from ordinary people to corporations.

Speaking to YouTube personality and former UKIP candidate Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, the physicist, weather forecaster, and former Labour councillor warned viewers that “climate policy is there to control you, not climate”.

“The political origin of [Extinction Rebllion] is the globalist supernationals, the mega-rich. They’re funded by George Soros, among others, he spent 24 million dollars on the group which set up the so-called climate strike,” Corbyn alleged.

“They are orchestrated by the mainstream media and tolerated deliberately by all the governments in the world, just about, bar very few,” he continued.

“If you and I were to have a demonstration about Yemen, the war and arms, and so forth, we would be swept off the street in half an hour, right?” he told Benjamin.

“Or if the miners’ strike had have tried to occupy London like they did, they would have had the horses against them straight away, they’d be swept away — so [Extinction Rebellion] are completely tolerated by the powers that be,” he added.

According to Corbyn, the purpose of the “climate crisis” campaign is to shake down ordinary taxpayers to “give huge amounts of money to large organisations, mega-corporations, to build wind farms, and develop more unnecessary batteries, or whatever. At the same time, there will be handouts to the banks and so forth who are otherwise going to be facing a big economic crisis” — all in the name of “combatting climate change”.

“It’s a way of handing out money to failing businesses in the West who are suffering under China and India’s competitiveness,” he claimed.

“The United Nations talks about redistribution of wealth, but if you look at it, it’s redistribution upwards, absolutely upwards. The more and more the globalists are taking power and influence under the guise of the United Nations and the European Union to redistribute wealth, it’s redistribution upwards,” he said.

He added that “the development of the Third World is being held back by climate policy” — for example, by discouraging the construction of coal-fired power stations which could provide electricity, and leaving women exposed to poisonous fumes from cooking on open fires.

Segueing into the subject of “globalist control and globalist exploitation” more generally, the veteran left-winger added that when it comes to “things like the European Union open borders… Tony Blair doesn’t want open borders to help anybody who’s coming or staying here; he wants open borders to hold down wages in Britain, and the mega-corporations want open borders to destroy the British working class and remove industry from Britain and send it to places where workers can be even more exploited. There’ll be super-exploitation of steelworkers in India or whatever [instead].”

He asserted that “the European Union, United Nations, and the climate change propaganda which we’re being subject to now are all from the same source: globalist mega-corporation world domination.”

Corbyn conceded that some climate activists may be well-intentioned, having been “brainwashed by the BBC 24/7”, but said it was “worrying… that youth these days, a lot of them are questioning nothing” — believing that even veteran left-wingers like himself must support “plastic in the sea” and be in league with Donald Trump if they do not subscribe to climate change orthodoxy and “oppose the European Union”.

On the subject of the Labour Party led by his brother Jeremy, the elder Corbyn declined to criticise its leadership directly, but suggested that he was “surrounded by people who have an agenda which is really very pro-EU, and very Remainist, and in the end would be the opposite to the trajectory which he set out to achieve when he got elected as leader” — a reference to Jeremy’s very long and well-documented pre-leadership history as a Br
In terms of his own preferred policy solutions to Britain’s energy and environmental needs, the elder Corbyn said the focus should be on research into thorium-type nuclear reactors and once again mining coal and building coal-fired power stations, which “can be made clean in the sense that all the smoke, with modern equipment, can be removed”.

Environmental movements, he suggested, should refocus their efforts on traditional causes like improving biodiversity, planting trees, and preserving hedgerows.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/10/31/corbyns-brother-trashes-open-borders-brands-extinction-rebellion-soros-funded-globalist-scam/

State Lawmaker Calls A Miscarriage ‘Just Some Mess On A Napkin’ As She Scoffs At Bill Protecting Bodies Of Aborted Babies

State Lawmaker Calls A Miscarriage ‘Just Some Mess On A Napkin’ As She Scoffs At Bill Protecting Bodies Of Aborted Babies

Democratic Pennsylvania state Rep. Wendy Ullman bashed a bill protecting the bodies of aborted babies Tuesday, calling an early miscarriage “just some mess on a napkin.”

A video the Pennsylvania Family Council originally posted shows Ullman protesting against the bill, saying, “It refers specifically to the product of conception after fertilization which covers an awful lot of territory.”

“I think we all understand the concept of the loss of a fetus, but we’re also talking about a woman who comes into a facility and is having cramps and — not to be, not to be, concrete — an early miscarriage is just some mess on a napkin,” the lawmaker said. She did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.Ullman spoke out against H.B. 1890 Tuesday, a bill that would “establish requirements for the final disposition of the remains of unborn children after their demise,” brought forward by Republican Pennsylvania state Rep. Francis Ryan. Ullman previously voted against a May bill prohibiting discriminatory abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome.
“A miscarriage, no matter how early, does not result in a ‘mess on a napkin’ but the loss of a child,” Vice President for Policy for Pennsylvania Family Institute Tom Shaheen said in a statement Thursday posted with the video on YouTube. “Each human life deserves respect, even when lost at an early stage in development.”

Shaheen added that every Pennsylvanian should be appalled by the comment.

“The remains of human beings should be treated better than medical waste. Rep. Frank Ryan’s bill is a compassionate effort to help offer some closure to many mothers and families in Pennsylvania,” added Shaheen. Ryan did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

The bill comes after family members discovered 2,246 medically preserved fetal remains in the Illinois garage of the late abortionist Ulrich Klopfer, who died on Sept. 3. Klopfer ran three abortion clinics during his lifetime and performed over 30,000 abortions since he began operating in 1974.

Klopfer’s story spurred Republican Indiana Reps. Jackie Walorski and Jim Banks to introduce similar legislation Wednesday. H.R. 4934, the Dignity for Aborted Children Act, would hold abortion providers accountable for failing to provide proper burial or cremation of aborted fetal remains.

“Every life is precious, and every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect,” Walorski said in a statement. “The sickening discovery of thousands of human fetal remains in Ulrich Klopfer’s garage was a tragic reminder of the terrible cost of abortion.”

Banks added that he is proud that Indiana leads the way to federally mandate respectful treatment of aborted babies.

“Dr. Klopfer’s crimes were unspeakably horrific and they affected me on a very deep and personal level,” Banks said in a statement. “I hope that his crimes have also awakened my Congressional colleagues to the importance of preserving the dignity of all human life — including aborted children. The legislation introduced by Rep. Walorski and I aims to achieve this in the most simple and common-sense manner.”

Banks called for a federal investigation into Klopfer’s crimes in September, telling the DCNF at the time that “we need to determine how Dr. Klopfer was able to get away with this for so long, and how we only know about it now that Dr. Klopfer is deceased.”

The Pennsylvania Family Council did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

Democratic Pennsylvania state Rep. Wendy Ullman bashed a bill protecting the bodies of aborted babies Tuesday, calling an early miscarriage “just some mess on a napkin.”

Ullman spoke out against H.B. 1890 Tuesday, a bill that would “establish requirements for the final disposition of the remains of unborn children after their demise,” brought forward by Republican Pennsylvania state Rep. Francis Ryan. Ullman previously voted against a May bill prohibiting discriminatory abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome.

A video the Pennsylvania Family Council originally posted shows Ullman protesting against the bill, saying, “It refers specifically to the product of conception after fertilization which covers an awful lot of territory.”

“I think we all understand the concept of the loss of a fetus, but we’re also talking about a woman who comes into a facility and is having cramps and — not to be, not to be, concrete — an early miscarriage is just some mess on a napkin,” the lawmaker said. She did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Pennsylvania Family Council called Ullman’s comment “one of the most insensitive comments ever uttered by a Pennsylvania State legislator.”

“A miscarriage, no matter how early, does not result in a ‘mess on a napkin’ but the loss of a child,” Vice President for Policy for Pennsylvania Family Institute Tom Shaheen said in a statement Thursday posted with the video on YouTube. “Each human life deserves respect, even when lost at an early stage in development.”

Shaheen added that every Pennsylvanian should be appalled by the comment.

“The remains of human beings should be treated better than medical waste. Rep. Frank Ryan’s bill is a compassionate effort to help offer some closure to many mothers and families in Pennsylvania,” added Shaheen. Ryan did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

The bill comes after family members discovered 2,246 medically preserved fetal remains in the Illinois garage of the late abortionist Ulrich Klopfer, who died on Sept. 3. Klopfer ran three abortion clinics during his lifetime and performed over 30,000 abortions since he began operating in 1974.

Klopfer’s story spurred Republican Indiana Reps. Jackie Walorski and Jim Banks to introduce similar legislation Wednesday. H.R. 4934, the Dignity for Aborted Children Act, would hold abortion providers accountable for failing to provide proper burial or cremation of aborted fetal remains.

“Every life is precious, and every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect,” Walorski said in a statement. “The sickening discovery of thousands of human fetal remains in Ulrich Klopfer’s garage was a tragic reminder of the terrible cost of abortion.”

Banks added that he is proud that Indiana leads the way to federally mandate respectful treatment of aborted babies.

“Dr. Klopfer’s crimes were unspeakably horrific and they affected me on a very deep and personal level,” Banks said in a statement. “I hope that his crimes have also awakened my Congressional colleagues to the importance of preserving the dignity of all human life — including aborted children. The legislation introduced by Rep. Walorski and I aims to achieve this in the most simple and common-sense manner.”

Banks called for a federal investigation into Klopfer’s crimes in September, telling the DCNF at the time that “we need to determine how Dr. Klopfer was able to get away with this for so long, and how we only know about it now that Dr. Klopfer is deceased.”

The Pennsylvania Family Council did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/31/lawmaker-miscarriage-abortion-babies/

As The Last WWII Nazi Stands Trial, The Holocaust Remembrance Torch Passes To Us

Bruno Dey’s twice-weekly, two hour sessions of questioning demonstrate to the watching world the face, and the consequences, of hatred.

Former Schutzstaffel (SS) guard Bruno Dey is on trial in Hamburg, Germany, charged as an accessory to 5,230 murders that took place in the Stutthof concentration camp between August 1944 and April 1945. Because his alleged crimes occurred when Dey was just 17, the 93-year-old is being tried in juvenile court.

Dey’s trial is part of Germany’s renewed effort to bring those complicit in Nazi genocide to justice for their crimes. Prosecutors admit he was a “small wheel in the machinery of murder,” so Dey faces six months to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Around 65,000 of the 110,000 prisoners held in Stutthof were killed there, including 28,000 Jews. They died from overwork, disease, or torture, being hung or shot, or being killed by means of injection with phenol and gasoline, or with Zyklon B gas.

Dey Has Changed His Story

During his extensive pretrial testimony, Dey admitted he was aware of the purpose of Stutthof’s gas chamber. He also claimed to have heard screams from within the gas chamber, and had witnessed bodies being transported to the crematoria. He explained he understood the Jews in the camp “hadn’t committed a crime, that they were only in [Stutthof] because they were Jews.”

Dey’s testimony in court on October 25 told an amended story. When the judge asked what he had witnessed from his position on the watchtower, Dey responded “people were led in, into the gas chamber…the door was locked.” After admitting hearing screams and banging noises from inside the chamber, Dey stated he “didn’t know that they were being gassed.” He likewise admitted only to hearing “rumors” that camp prisoners included Jews.

Dey also did much obfuscating during his first day of testimony on October 21. After apologizing to Stutthof victims, he let loose with maddening claims that he has long been haunted by “images of misery and horror,” and lamented how his trial is “‘destroying’ the autumn years of his life.”

At one point, Dey attempted to draw comparison between himself undressing for a military physical and camp prisoners being forced to undress to be inspected by guards. His self-pity shows a horrifying lack of compassion for the victims of Nazi crimes at Stutthof.
New Legal Precedent Enabled Dey’s Trial

In the aftermath of World War II, six million Jews, two-thirds of the pre-war European Jewish population, had been killed by the Nazi architects and enablers of genocide. Between 1945 and 1949, the Allies tried 199 high-ranking Third Reich officials in Nuremburg, convicting 161, and sentencing 37 to death. Allied forces had “captured millions of documents during the conquest of Germany,” allowing prosecutors to present “3,000 tons of records at the Nuremberg trial.”

Both a divided and a reunified Germany struggled to hold the remaining Nazi criminals accountable. The extensive Nazi paper trail has not prevented individuals from “deflect[ing] their responsibility for the killings.”

A breakthrough arrived in 2011, when prosecutors brought charges against 91-year-old John Demnjanjuk, a naturalized American citizen who worked during the war as a guard at the Sobibor death camp. As a guard, prosecutors argued, Demjanjuk had been an enabler of mass killings, making him an accessory to 28,000 murders.

Although he denied his guilt, Demjanjuk was convicted. The precedent established was tenuous, however, as Demjanjuk’s conviction was never entered into legal records because he died while awaiting appeal.

In 2015, 95-year-old Oskar Gröning, the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” was tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder. Gröning, who admitted he was “beyond question…morally complicit,” was convicted, and sentenced to four years in prison. Gröning nonetheless appealed his conviction, which was upheld by federal courts. He died awaiting a second appeal.
Finding Nazis Who Disappeared After the War

In the aftermath of these and a number of other successful convictions, the German Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes began looking into guards at other Nazi death camps, as well as former members of Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads that committed mass murder of Jews throughout Eastern Europe. Stutthof marks the first concentration camp where the German Central Office has focused its efforts.

In 2016, the office announced it had located eight individuals who worked at Stutthof after it was brought into the German concentration camp system in 1941. Dey is the second of these individuals to be brought up on charges.

Former Stutthof SS guard Johann Rehbogen was tried in a Münster, Germany juvenile court for accessory to murder in November 2018. The 94-year-old wept at the trial’s opening, but obstinately claimed that, while he knew of “mass cremation of corpses,” he was unaware of killings within the camp, and knew nothing of the camp’s gas chamber.

Although Rehbogen never issued an apology to Stutthof’s victims, he made a statement admitting “moral responsibility.” Because of his failing health, Rehbogen’s trial ended without resolution last December.

Given his age, Dey’s trial could likewise end without a clear conviction. More important than any precedent or prison sentence is the possibility to secure additional facts about the Nazi genocide for future generations, and to provide closure to the survivors and families who remain.

“We are giving the chance to the accused and the witnesses to tell us their stories – and not just to the media,” explained Jens Rommel, from the German Central Office. “They are telling them in a courtroom.”
American Survivor Testifies in Dey’s Case

A senior Nazi hunter at the Simon Weisenthal Center located two dozen Stutthof survivors to be co-plaintiffs in the Stutthof trials. Among them is 90-year-old American Judy Meisel. In 2017, German investigators traveled to Meisel’s Minneapolis home to record her testimony about the Stutthof guards.
While her mother remained in the chamber, Meisel ran back to her barracks, preserving her life.

Meisel was transferred from Auschwitz to Stutthof with her sister, Rachel, and mother, Mina, in summer 1944. There, two camp guards tore out her hair by hand, using it for a child’s doll. Meisel and other female prisoners were forced to undress before being beaten by a camp guard. When she was caught swallowing a note passed from the men’s camp, the camp commandant used pliers to pull out her nails.

Meisel nearly perished in Stutthof’s gas chamber. As guards led a group of Jews, which included Meisel and her mother, into the chamber on November 21, 1944, one guard yelled at Meisel to get out. While her mother remained in the chamber, Meisel ran back to her barracks, preserving her life.

With her sister, Meisel manufactured a series of incredible escapes to secure their ever-more-unlikely survival. When the girls were liberated, 16-year-old Meisel weighed just 47 pounds.

Meisel became a civil rights activist in the United States, and still speaks publicly of her experience to “inspire others to stand up to hatred, bigotry and prejudice.” Unable to travel for Rehbogen’s and Dey’s trials, her grandson, Ben Cohen, has attended both in her stead.

“I’ve realized that her story is actually my story,” Cohen told reporters. “I actually have a role to play.”
For the World, the Trials Matter

Like Cohen, we all have a role to play. The antisemitism that caused the Nazi genocide nearly 75 years ago has not retreated, but resurfaced with its dangerous offshoot of Holocaust denial. The phenomenon is taking place not just around the world, but also at home. In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 1,879 incidents of antisemitic hate across the United States.

Sunday marked the passage of one year since a white supremacist killed 11 Jewish worshipers from three different congregations which used Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to practice their faith. On April 27, a man killed one Jewish congregant and attempted to kill three others at Chabad of Poway, in California.

As of September, antisemitic hate crimes in New York City had increased by 63 percent from 2018, and included acts of vandalism as well as violence targeting Orthodox Jews. In Boca Raton, Florida, a principal was reassigned in June for informing a parent he could not prove the Holocaust was a “factual, historical event.”

In such an environment, the trials of former Nazis matter. Dey’s twice-weekly, two hour sessions of questioning demonstrate to the watching world the face, and the consequences, of hatred. They are a warning that our actions, even of complicity or silence, have consequences.

For the victims of the past, and for future generations, the world must make an example of perpetrators like Rehbogen, Dey, Göring, and Demnjanjuk. No amount of passing time can diminish the harm done by accomplices to genocide.

Many believe Dey will be the final Nazi to come under scrutiny for his wartime actions. The population of victims and perpetrators is aging. Soon, the torch will pass to the rest of us to recall the Holocaust. We must prepare to bear the heavy burden of protecting the past. To do so will require putting our politics aside and presenting a united front against Holocaust denial, and the hateful pseudoscience of antisemitism.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/31/as-the-last-wwii-nazi-stands-trial-the-holocaust-remembrance-torch-passes-to-us/

Pentagon releases video clips of U.S. forces taking ISIL compound, killing al-Baghdadi

The most dramatic video showed a massive, black plume of smoke rising from the ground after U.S. military bombs levelled Baghdadi's compound

The Pentagon on Wednesday released its first images from last weekend’s commando raid in Syria that led to the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and warned the militant group may attempt to stage a “retribution attack.”

The declassified, grainy, black-and-white aerial videos from Saturday’s raid showed U.S. special operations forces closing in on the compound and U.S. aircraft firing on militants nearby.

The most dramatic video showed a massive, black plume of smoke rising from the ground after U.S. military bombs levelled Baghdadi’s compound.

“It looks pretty much like a parking lot, with large potholes,” said Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East.

McKenzie, briefing Pentagon reporters, said the idea of destroying the compound was at least in part “to ensure that it would not be a shrine or otherwise memorable in any way.

“It’s just another piece of ground,” he said.

Baghdadi, an Iraqi jihadist who rose from obscurity to declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims as the leader of Islamic State, died by detonating a suicide vest as he fled into a dead-end tunnel as elite U.S. special forces closed in.

McKenzie said he brought two young children into the tunnel with him — not three, as had been the U.S. government estimate. Both children were believed to be under the age of 12 and both were killed, he said.

He portrayed Baghdadi as isolated at his Syrian compound, just four miles from the Turkish border, saying fighters from other militant groups nearby probably did not even know he was there. McKenzie suggested it was unlikely that Baghdadi used the Internet or had digital connections to the outside world.

“I think you’d find (he was using) probably a messenger system that allows you to put something on a floppy or on a bit of electronics and have someone physically move it somewhere,” he said.

The approximate location of the U.S. Special Operations forces raid on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s compound is seen on October 30, 2019. Department of Defense via Getty Images

McKenzie said Islamic State would likely try to stage some kind of retaliatory attack.

“We suspect they will try some form of retribution attack. And we are postured and prepared for that,” he said.

Whimpering and crying?

McKenzie did not back up or knock down Trump’s dramatic account of Baghdadi’s final moments, which the president delivered during a televised address to the nation on Sunday. Trump said Baghdadi “died a coward — crying, whimpering, screaming.”

Asked about Trump’s account, McKenzie said: “About Baghdadi’s last moments, I can tell you this: He crawled into a hole with two small children and blew himself up as his people stayed on the ground.”

“So you can deduce what kind of person he is based on that activity… I’m not able to confirm anything else about his last seconds. I just can’t confirm that one way or another.”

On Monday, Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also declined to confirm Trump’s account, saying he presumed Trump got that information from his direct conversations with members of the elite unit that conducted the operation. Milley had not yet spoken with them, he said.

U.S. special forces move towards the compound of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a raid in the Idlib region of Syria in a still image from video October 26, 2019. U.S. Department of Defense/Handout via REUTERS

McKenzie suggested the U.S. military had secured a large amount of intelligence about Islamic State’s activities during the raid.

“While the assault force was securing the remains, they also secured whatever documentation and electronics we could find, which was substantial,” McKenzie said, declining to provide further details.

McKenzie said Turkey’s incursion into Syria this month, and the U.S. pullback from the border, was not a factor in deciding the timing of the raid. Instead, McKenzie pointed to a host of other factors, including the amount of moonlight.

“We struck because the time is about right to do it then, given the totality of the intelligence and the other factors that would affect the raid force going into and coming out,” McKenzie said.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/u-s-releases-baghdadi-raid-video-warns-of-likely-retribution-attack?video_autoplay=true

Tulsi Gabbard Votes to Proceed with Partisan Impeachment Framework

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who is running for the Democrat 2020 presidential nomination, cast a yes vote in favor of the impeachment resolution against President Donald Trump the House passed on Thursday.

The resolution passed on a 232–196 vote — a tally of those opposed to the resolution included two Democrats and every Republican member.

Speculation about the long-shot candidate’s future plans has bordered on conspiracy theory mostly on the left after Gabbard’s recent announcement that she would not seek re-election to her House seat.

And whether it is Gabbard being a favorite of the Russians or the Republicans, the rumors keep swirling about her despite her leftist credentials.

New York Magazine claims Hillary Clinton’s remarks about Gabbard being groomed for a new role referred to the GOP, not Moscow:

What is very clear, however, is that Gabbard is now working hand in hand with the Republican party. This is apparent in her pattern of working closely with Republican-controlled media, like “Hill TV” — John Solomon’s propaganda outlet — and Sean Hannity. Gabbard used both forums to promote Republican talking points discrediting the impeachment process — i.e., “Most people reading through that transcript are not going to find that extremely compelling cause to throw out a president that won an election in 2016” — before eventually reversing course.

The libertarian Reason magazine joked about the Russians invading New Hampshire, where Gabbard’s campaign is picking up steam:

A new CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire and released this week shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) with 5 percent support from likely voters in the state, which is scheduled to hold the nation’s first Democratic primary on February 11. That level of support is good enough to put Gabbard in fifth place, trailing only Sen. Bernie Sanders (21 percent) of Vermont, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (18 percent) of Massachusetts, former vice president Joe Biden (15 percent) and Pete Buttigieg (10 percent), the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Tied with Gabbard at 5 percent are Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

The CNN poll is perhaps the best signal yet that Gabbard—whom Hillary Clinton nonsensically smeared as a “Russian asset” two weeks ago—is experiencing a bit of a polling bounce, especially in New Hampshire. She’s risen by 4 percentage points since the same pollsters’ July survey while Biden has fallen by 6 points and Sen. Kamala Harris of California has fallen by 9 points. Nationally, Gabbard has experienced a small but noticeable bump in her poll numbers in recent weeks too, though she continues to sit in the third tier of Democratic hopefuls.

But the most interesting thing about the new CNN poll in New Hampshire is not so much the level of Gabbard’s support, but rather who is supporting her. No, it’s not the Russians—it’s actually mostly Republicans. When you dig into the crosstabs of the poll, it shows that 59 percent of New Hampshire Republicans have a favorable view of Gabbard, while only 23 percent of the state’s Democrats do.

Reason also reported that the CNN poll moves Gabbard closer to qualifying for the November 20 Democrat debate.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/31/tulsi-gabbard-votes-to-proceed-with-partisan-impeachment-framework/

Republicans slam Pelosi over impeachment reversal after floor vote: ‘What has changed?’

Republican congressional leaders tore into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday after Democrats pushed through formal rulesfor the impeachment inquiry on the House floor, pointedly asking what changed since she declared in March that she’s opposed to the process absent a presidential offense of “overwhelming and bipartisan” concern.

“We believe in the rule of law. But unfortunately, in Nancy’s House, we do not,” House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said at a press conference after the vote on Thursday.

McCarthy referenced a March interview with The Washington Post Magazine in which Pelosi declared her opposition to impeachment, saying it’s “so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

McCarthy asked: “What has changed since March?”

Much, in fact, has happened since then. Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe ended without finding evidence of criminal collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. But the spotlight then shifted to Ukraine, after a whistleblower alleged that Trump improperly pressured the country to launch politically related investigations — thus prompting Pelosi to announce the impeachment inquiry.

The House voted largely along party lines on Thursday to approve guidelines for that process going forward, a month after launching it. But Republicans allege those leading the charge have been looking to impeach all along. And they drew close attention to Pelosi’s March warning — especially considering Pelosi even cast a rare vote on the resolution itself, voting for it.

“This is not any cause for any glee or comfort. This is something that is very solemn ... we had to gather so much information to take us to this next step," Pelosi said on the floor Thursday, explaining her current stance. "Nobody ... comes to Congress to impeach the president of the United States, unless his actions are jeopardizing our honoring our oath of office."

She voiced hope that Congress would pursue this course "in a way that brings people together that is healing rather than dividing.

But Republicans argued that while she said in March any impeachment push should be bipartisan, the only bipartisan vote Thursday was to oppose the resolution, as two Democrats broke ranks in opposition. No Republicans supported it.

“In all the hearings, there’s nothing compelling, nothing overwhelming, so the speaker should follow her own words and that bipartisan vote on that floor and end the sham that has been putting the country through this nightmare,” McCarthy said.

The tone at dueling press conferences after the vote signaled that political unity is not likely on the horizon, despite Pelosi's floor comments.

Other top Republicans also went after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is essentially leading the probe right now.

“For one man to turn this country upside down, to have this vote today, our Founding Fathers warned about this in the Federalist Papers,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said. “That a future Congress would base impeachment, at some point in time, would base it on partisan politics.”

“Sadly, today in this chamber, their worst fears have been realized,” McCaul said.

Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., another top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “Schiff is the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, the chief strategist for lying and leaking.”

And House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins, R-Ga., posed a challenge.

“Here’s my challenge to Mr. Schiff. You wanna be Ken Starr? Be Ken Starr,” Collins said, referring to the special prosecutor who led the investigation into Bill Clinton. “Come to the Judiciary Committee. Be the first witness and take every question asked of you. Starting with your own involvement of the whistleblower.”

Republicans have blasted Schiff in recent weeks over his office's prior contact with the whistleblower who filed a complaint to the agency’s inspector general about President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Schiff’s office, earlier this month, said that the whistleblower had reached out to them before filing that complaint in mid-August, giving Democrats advance warning of the accusations that would lead them to launch an impeachment inquiry days later.

“Folks, this ain't over,” Collins said. “Get ready. The cloud that is dropping will be dropping on their heads, because process matters and substance will always win out in the end, and this president has nothing to worry about.”

But on the other side of the House, Schiff and other top congressional Democrats touted the passage of the resolution and defended their handling of the probe.

“This is a solemn day in the history of our country, when the president’s misconduct has compelled us to continue to move forward with an impeachment inquiry,” Schiff said. “The founding fathers understood that a leader might take hold of the Oval Office, who would sacrifice the national security, who would fail to defend the Constitution, would place his personal and political interests above the interests of the country.”

He added: “They provided us with a mechanism to deal with it and that mechanism is called impeachment.”

Schiff went on to detail what the coming weeks would look like — including public hearings and staff counsel questioning witnesses for “lengthy periods of time,” giving both the majority and the minority 45 minutes each.

The resolution passed Thursday further directs the Intelligence Committee, in consultation with the other committees, to prepare a report on its findings to the Judiciary Committee, which would write any articles of impeachment. In response to GOP complaints about Democrats' selective leaks of opening statements and depositions, the document also authorizes the public release of testimony transcripts, with only sensitive or classified information being redacted. The resolution also allows Republican members to submit written demands for testimony and other evidence, to cross-examine witnesses, and raise objections.

Pelosi announced the Trump impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, saying at the time that "the president must be held accountable" for his "betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and the betrayal of the integrity of our elections."

The inquiry was opened after a whistleblower complaint alleged that Trump, during a July phone call, pushed Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter as military aid to the country was being withheld.

A transcript released by the White House shows Trump making that request, but he and his allies deny that military aid was clearly linked to the request or that there was any quid pro quo. Some witnesses coming before House committees as part of the impeachment proceedings have challenged that assertion.

The White House, though, has maintained the president did nothing wrong.

"Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats’ unhinged obsession with this illegitimate impeachment proceeding does not hurt President Trump; it hurts the American people," White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. "Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats have done nothing more than enshrine unacceptable violations of due process into House rules."

She added: "The Democrats want to render a verdict without giving the Administration a chance to mount a defense. That is unfair, unconstitutional, and fundamentally un-American."

Fox News' Chad Pergram, Tyler Olson, and John Roberts contributed to this report.

Brooke Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News.

Conservatively Speaking