I've been pointing this out for years -- Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church saved hundreds of thousands of Jews during WWII. That is more than any other group or organization, prior to the much delayed liberation of the concentration camps at the end of the war. What records were available indicated that Hitler viewed Pius as an enemy -- and that Pius spoke out about and acted on behalf of the Jews more loudly than any other world leader.

Now there is more evidence to confirm that.

Pius XII, the wartime pontiff often condemned as "Hitler's Pope", was actually considered an enemy by the Third Reich, according to newly discovered documents.

Several letters and memos unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East-German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at Pius's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.

In one, the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentropp, the Third Reich's foreign minister, that the Catholic Church was providing assistance to Jews "both in terms of people and financially".

A report from a spy at work in the Vatican states: "Our source was told to his face by Father Robert Leibner [one of Pius's secretaries] that the greatest hope of the Church is that the Nazi system would be obliterated by the war."

La Repubblica, the newspaper that discovered the papers, said they were sent to the heads of the Stasi, after the Second World War.

The revelations they contain will help to clear the name of Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who has long been criticised for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. During the war, the British Foreign Office even described him as the "greatest moral coward of our age".

Those who have promoted the blood libel against the Pope are those who hate the Catholic Church, and wish to present it as always on the wrong side of history. They are not even above lying to do it. Will the documentary evidence that contradicts their claims stop the slander of a great and saintly pontiff?

H/T Captain's Quarters

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Posted by: Greg at 10:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As a boy, my father instilled a great sense of reverence for these men in me -- heroes who fought despite the odds being stacked against them in a society still dominated by racism. As he often told me -- "The color of a man's uniform is the only one you should see or care about."

When Charles E. McGee slid his P-51 fighter, "Kitten," onto the tail of the fleeing German FW-190 in the skies over Austria in 1944, he fired his six big machine guns and struck a blow for civil rights back home.

Walter L. McCreary did the same a few months later, when his P-51 was hit by flak on a strafing run over Hungary and the cockpit floor began to slosh with what he thought was leaking gasoline.

And so did Woodrow W. Crockett's ground crews a few months after that, when they stopped a supply train and commandeered special gas tanks so their pilots could fly without running out of fuel.

Today, members of the famed black World War II aviation cadre now called the Tuskegee Airmen will be honored in the Capitol Rotunda for their history-making feats.

In a ceremony at 1 p.m., the airmen, including McGee, McCreary and Crockett, will receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor that Congress can give to civilians. President Bush is scheduled to speak, along with Colin L. Powell, former secretary of state, who received the medal in 1991.

The achievement of men such as McGee, McCreary and Crockett was simple: They were bold in battle and capable in command -- at a time when many in the military thought blacks could be neither.

"What we accomplished hasn't always been recognized for, really, what it meant to the country," McGee said this week. "There was meaning there, you might say, in a civil rights area that preceded what we know as the civil rights movement."

Not only did they pre-date the civil rights movement, I'd argue that their accomplishments and story made it possible, given the respect they earned from bomber pilots they protected. Any honor they receive is deserved -- and I applaud this one, which is long overdue.

Posted by: Greg at 10:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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There are some valid points in this piece on apologies for slavery -- but it still does not overcome my objection to making such apologies for the actions of those long-dead.

While I applaud the efforts of Texas State Sen. Rodney Ellis and State Rep. Senfronia Thompson to pass a resolution of formal apology for slavery, their proposal does not go far enough. It may be a necessary first step, but Texas and Virginia, and the other slaveholding states, have much more to apologize for than just the institution of slavery, hideous though it was.

Particularly during the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow periods, African-Americans in the South were treated with extraordinary brutality and cruelty, from the second-class citizenship status formalized in segregation to the epidemic of lynching that swept across the South and up into the Midwest as far north as Duluth, Minn., between about 1880 and 1930. Almost 500 documented lynchings took place in Texas alone, a greater number than in any other state except Georgia and Mississippi.

These lynchings included some of the most atrocious of the so-called "spectacle lynchings," a species of mass entertainment that probably began on Feb. 1, 1893, in Paris, Texas, with the prolonged torture/murder with hot irons and a bonfire of Henry Smith, a retarded black man, before a cheering mob of 10,000 spectators. In addition to the violence directed at individuals, there were also periodic "race riots," which usually meant pogroms directed at blacks. In 1886, all blacks were completely driven out of Comanche County by vigilantes. My father, who grew up in Comanche County in the 1920s, remembers stories of signs posted on the edge of town that read, "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you here."

Those who committed these evils are, by and large, long dead. So are their victims and those with living memory of them. And while we must not forget them, we must not apologize for these events either, for such apologies constitute an admission of our moral culpability for them -- something this generation does not have.

And in a state like Texas, where Republicans today dominate, such an apology is inappropriate -- for slavery and Jim Crow were institutions supported by the Democrats, while the GOP actively opposed them. Let the Democratic party apologize for its role in institutionalizing and supporting these practices, both by its policies and its active support of the Klan.

And if any apology, acknowldgement, or condemnation does come from state government, make sure that the role of that malignant political entity is acknowledged prominently in the text, along with Republican efforts to stop and oppose them. After all, that is history as well -- a history that some would rather hide.

And personally, I think this approach -- dealing with today's issues -- is much more important. Human trafficking goes on today, and must be stopped with the full resources of every level of government.

Posted by: Greg at 10:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This book is one that has just jumped to the front of my “must-read” list.

While recovering from surgery recently, I had the good fortune to read a fine new book about political dissent in the North during the Civil War. The book, Copperheads: The Rise an Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North, by journalist-turned-academic-historian Jennifer Weber, shines the spotlight on the “Peace Democrats,” who did everything they could to obstruct the Union war effort during the Rebellion. In so doing, she corrects a number of claims that have become part of the conventional wisdom. The historical record aside, what struck me the most were the similarities between the rhetoric and actions of the Copperheads a century and a half ago and Democratic opponents of the Iraq war today.

I made a similar connection some time back – and am quite interested in learning more about the treason of the Democrat Party in the past, as we deal with its subversion in the present.

Posted by: Greg at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This book is one that has just jumped to the front of my “must-read” list.

While recovering from surgery recently, I had the good fortune to read a fine new book about political dissent in the North during the Civil War. The book, Copperheads: The Rise an Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North, by journalist-turned-academic-historian Jennifer Weber, shines the spotlight on the “Peace Democrats,” who did everything they could to obstruct the Union war effort during the Rebellion. In so doing, she corrects a number of claims that have become part of the conventional wisdom. The historical record aside, what struck me the most were the similarities between the rhetoric and actions of the Copperheads a century and a half ago and Democratic opponents of the Iraq war today.

I made a similar connection some time back – and am quite interested in learning more about the treason of the Democrat Party in the past, as we deal with its subversion in the present.

Posted by: Greg at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Was it the Portuguese?

A 16th century maritime map proves Portuguese adventurers, not British or Dutch, were the first Europeans to discover Australia, according to a new book.

The book, Beyond Capricorn, says the map, which accurately marks geographical sites along Australia's east coast in Portuguese, proves Portuguese seafarer Christopher de Mendonca led a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522 - almost 250 years before Britain's Captain James Cook.

The map is in a Los Angeles library vault.

Australian author Peter Trickett said that when he enlarged the small map he could recognise all the headlands and bays in Botany Bay in Sydney - the site where Cook claimed Australia for Britain in 1770.

"It was even so accurate that I found I could draw in the modern airport runways, to scale in the right place, without any problem at all," Trickett told Reuters.

This theory presumes, of course, that the theory put forth by David Menzies in 1421 that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He's great fleet explored the East coast of Australia (as well as the coasts of Africa and the Americas) is not correct -- and that the chart in question is based upon a copy of a copy of the charts from that expedition.

Posted by: Greg at 04:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Neat stuff -- from an organization controlled by America's foreign enemies and dedicated to the destruction of American liberty.

The songwriter, labor organizer and folk hero Joe Hill has been the subject of poems, songs, an opera, books and movies. His will, written in verse the night before a Utah firing squad executed him in 1915 and later put to music, became part of the labor movementÂ’s soundtrack. Now the original copy of that penciled will is among the unexpected historical gems unearthed from a vast collection of papers and photographs never before seen publicly that the Communist Party USA has donated to New York University.

The cache contains decades of party history including founding documents, secret code words, stacks of personal letters, smuggled directives from Moscow, Lenin buttons, photographs and stern commands about how good party members should behave (no charity work, for instance, to distract them from their revolutionary duties).

By offering such an inside view, the archives have the potential to revise assumptions on both the left and the right about one of the most contentious subjects in American history, in addition to filling out the story of progressive politics, the labor movement and the civil rights struggles.

“It is one of the most exciting collecting opportunities that has ever presented itself here,” said Michael Nash, the director of New York University’s Tamiment Library, which will announce the donation on Friday.

It should provide some great insights into the enemy within -- and may just expose which current pols are fellow-travelers with the CPUSA.

One day, no doubt, we will get a look at the archives of the party of America's domestic enemies -- the DemocrtICK Party.

Posted by: Greg at 02:03 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Ottoman Turks murdered 1.5 million Armenians in the early twentieth century, some 90 years ago. The evidence is undeniable, but Turkey continues to deny it. And so the latest fashion trend among the PC crowd has been to urge world governments to condemn the nine-decade-old genocide. This has, in turn, met with some resistance.

Can a nonbinding congressional resolution really matter? Most are ignored by everyone except the special interests they are usually directed at. Even the House's recent resolution on Iraq was dismissed by both President Bush and Democratic antiwar leader John Murtha. Yet a vote expected next month on a nonbinding House resolution describing a "genocide" in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915 has the potential to explode U.S. relations with Turkey, sway the outcome of upcoming Turkish elections and spill over into several other strategic American interests, including Iraq and Iran.

So, yes: The Armenian Genocide Resolution sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff does matter, logically or not. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul spent several days in Washington last month lobbying against it, though the Turkish-American agenda is chockablock with seemingly more important issues. Friends of Turkey in Washington, from American Jewish organizations to foreign policy satraps, are working the Hill; so is the Bush team. On the other side is the well-organized and affluent Armenian American community, 1.4 million strong, and some powerful friends -- including the new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Here is a debate that could occur only in Washington -- a bizarre mix of frivolity and moral seriousness, of constituent pandering, far-flung history and front-line foreign policy. And that's just on the American side; in Turkey there is the painful struggle of a deeply nationalist society to come to terms with its past, and in the process become more of the Western democracy it wants to be.

I'm sorry, but this is a resolution that should not be. Not because the Armenian genocide did not happen, for it undeniably did. Not because it was not serious or because we might offend an ally, because the first is false and the second is irrelevant. Rather, it is not the place of political bodies to be setting historical judgments in stone. That is what has happened in Turkey, where one can be punished for conceding that the horrors done to the Armenians by Turks ever happened -- and in France, where denying they happened is punishable by law. The problem is that by taking the matter out of the hands of historians establishes an orthodoxy that is hard to overcome as new evidence come to light -- and, indeed can make advocating against the orthodoxy a crime, silencing professionals in the field.

That the Turkish genocide committed against the Armenians happened is clearly established historical fact. That it remains a blot on the history of the Turkish people and the world cannot be denied by any honest observer. But the proper place for judging this long-ago crime is not Congress, for the events have long since passed from current events that can be remedied into the mists of history.

Posted by: Greg at 10:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Pirates!

Pirates!

Pirates!

Sorry about that, folks, but we are talking about Blackbeard's own pirate vessel, Queen Anne's Revenge! This is cool -- a three-hundred year old pirate ship.

A shipwreck off the North Carolina coast believed to be that of notorious pirate Blackbeard could be fully excavated in three years, officials working on the project said.

"That's really our target," Steve Claggett, the state archaeologist, said Friday while discussing 10 years of research that has been conducted since the shipwreck was found just off Atlantic Beach.

The ship ran aground in 1718, and some researchers believe it was a French slave ship Blackbeard captured in 1717 and renamed Queen Anne's Revenge.

Several officials said historical data and coral-covered artifacts recovered from the site — including 25 cannons, which experts said was an uncommonly large number to find on a ship in the region in the early 18th century — remove any doubt the wreckage belonged to Blackbeard.

Three university professors, including two from East Carolina University, have challenged the findings. But officials working on the excavation said Friday that the more they find, the stronger their case becomes.

"Historians have really looked at it thoroughly and don't feel that there's any possibility anything else is in there that was not recorded," said Mark Wilde-Ramsing, director of the Queen Anne's Revenge Project. "And the artifacts continue to support it."

I cannot wait to see if the artifacts recovered continue to provide support for this being the famous pirate vessel sailed by the best-known pirate of the eighteenth century.

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Posted by: Greg at 03:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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