"Fair Play" 2023 on Netflix

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Killing the Witches: Book Review

Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

This book is just about a perfect read

St. Martin's Press released Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts on September 26, 2023. The book is 291 pages long, inclusive of an index. My copy has, strangely, no table of contents, and, unfortunately, no bibliography or endnotes. Killing the Witches is the thirteenth book in the "killing" series. The cover describes O'Reilly as the author of eighteen #1 bestsellers.

I never watched O'Reilly's Fox TV show. I'm a woman and a Catholic, and there are controversies in his career that trouble me. I mention my own feelings here because I want anyone who isn't an O'Reilly fan to know – I loved this book. It was pretty close to a perfect read. I wish there were more books like it. If you are at all interested in the Salem witch trials and their echoes, including down to the twenty-first century, and you want a reader-friendly account, buy the book right now. The rest of this review will encourage you to do just that.

Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts is a misleading title. The first 144 pages directly address the Salem witch trials. Pages 145-231 address colonial America, the Revolution, and the new United States, with a focus on the biography of Ben Franklin. In this portion of the book, the authors discuss how various Founding Fathers felt about the question of freedom of religion, and how the legacy of the Salem witch trials influenced their worldview. Pages 232-263 recount the alleged 1949 demonic possession and exorcism of 13-year-old Ronald Hunkeler of Cottage City, Maryland, and also William Peter Blatty's 1971 book The Exorcist, and the 1973 William Freidkin film of the same name. A three-page "Author's Note" relates witch hunts to contemporary cancel culture. A six-page "Afterword" describes Salem, the tourist destination, today. A six-age "Postscript" describes the final days of Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, and John Adams.

All of this has been covered in other books. What makes Killing stand out? The book's style. Killing could be read by an intelligent eighth grader. The vocabulary is basic. There are no attempts at deathless eloquence. There is no attempt to manipulate the facts to support some overarching pet theory. There's minimal editorializing. The authors allow the facts to rattle, provoke, and horrify the reader; the authors don't tell the reader how to feel or how to interpret the facts. You could read this book on a train or in the smallest room in the house. These are not put-downs; they are compliments.

Understanding Hamas Atrocities and Hamas’ Glee in Sharing Videos of Those Atrocities

 

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Understanding Hamas Atrocities and Hamas’ Glee in Sharing Videos of Those Atrocities
A 2011 book by the son of a Hamas co-founder offers unique insights

 

On October 7, 2023, Hamas mounted a surprise attack against Israeli civilians. Hamas did not focus on military sites. Hamas embarked on a grand guignol torture tour. Elderly women, young women, babies, toddlers, men, the handicapped, a wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor, were stripped, raped, paraded, mutilated, decapitated, stepped on, spat on, taunted, and burned alive. Bodies of the dead were dramatically desecrated. Women were raped next to the corpses of their friends and then executed.

 

Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro compiled video and photographic records of these atrocities against defenseless civilians. He was able to do so because the Hamas torturers were very proud of their accomplishments, and they posted video on social media. The Face of Absolute Evil can be viewed on YouTube here. If YouTube removes the video, you can see it at the Daily Wire site or at Rumble.

 

Westerners inculcated in the Judeo-Christian tradition were confused. They found all these features confusing: Hamas war crimes, those crimes' extensive documentation by Hamas criminals, and Hamas war criminals proudly sharing evidence of their atrocities via the worldwide web. Hamas' audiences, around the world, cheered these atrocities. They ululated, the sound Arab women make when celebrating. They chanted "Allahu akbar," roughly translated as "Allah is greater than other gods."

 

All these behaviors struck Western observers, not just as disgusting and evil, but also as irrational and self-destructive. The entire October 7 attack defied logic. Hamas knew it would not claim territory or achieve its stated goal, the "obliteration" of Israel. Hamas knew that Israel would strike back, with American and international support. Hamas knew that hundreds, if not thousands of Arab Muslims would perish in Israeli counterstrikes. Hamas knew that it might be inviting a nuclear war that would take the lives of millions of innocents, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

 

Social media used the word "animals" to describe the Hamas attackers. In fact, of course, Hamas attackers are human beings, and all the war crimes they committed are acts that human beings commit. Non-human animals do not, typically, devote their time to torturing their fellows, and then bragging to others about that torture. Non-human animals have better things to do with their time.

May God Grant Israel a Rapid and Complete Victory, Security, and Peace

 

The Nazis carried out the Holocaust, largely, in Nazi-occupied Poland. Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Chlemno, Sobibor, The Warsaw and Lodz Ghettos were all in Nazi-occupied Poland.

 "The German Nazis deported to Auschwitz at least 1.3 million people of more than 20 nationalities. Of that amount, 400 thousand were registered and incarcerated in the concentration camp as prisoners while 900 thousand were murdered in the gas chambers on arrival. Jews constituted 85% of all deportees and 90% of those who were murdered." source

Poland did not do this; Nazi Germany did this. But this happened on Polish soil. 

We Poles and Polonians can respond to this heavy burden of history by doing whatever we can to resist genocidal murderers, especially genocidal murderers of Jews. 

As an American, I support my country's significant support of Israel. I vote for candidates who support Israel. I reject isolationists. 

As an individual, I have little power. I can use my pip-squeak voice to speak big truths. 

There is a right side and a wrong side when it comes to conflict between Israel and Arab Muslims. Israel is the right side. Arab Muslims who attack Israel, and who commit the atrocities we see now, are on the wrong side. 

Please note that your news sources may not be covering the atrocities Arab Muslims are committing. Please do some research and discover what's really going on. This is a war carried out through the torture, murder, and desecration of the elderly, women, and children. 

Israel has a right to exist. See my piece "Coming Out as Pro-Israel on Faceook" here.

Israel's Arab Muslim opponents are not reasonable people seeking solutions to limited points of contention. They are genocidal and they are profoundly anti-Semitic. The Hamas Covenant calls for the "obliteration" of Israel and for Islam to dominate the world. See here.

It is not anti-Arab or anti-Muslim to state these basic facts. It is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim to avoid these basic facts. Israel is not a serious threat to Muslims or to Arabs. See for example this chart Muslims nations pose a far greater threat to their neighbors and to their own populations than Israel poses to them. Iran and Iraq, Civil War in Yemen and Syria, genocide in Darfur, have all taken far more Arab Muslim lives than Israel has in defending herself. 

There are more Muslims and / or Arabs on the street today celebrating the attack on Israel than took to the streets to protest the allegedly genocidal actions of China against Uighurs. 

Why? Because attacks on Israel are not about Arab rights or Muslim rights. They are about genocidal anti-Semitism.

For all these reasons this Polish American and all decent people worldwide hope and pray for a rapid and complete victory for Israel, and security and peace for Israel. 

Am Yisrael Chai!

The Sound of Murder: Broken Windows Policing Could Have Saved One Life

 

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The Sound of Murder
Broken windows policing and emphasis on family could have saved one life

 

On Saturday, September 2, 2023, I woke from sleep at four a.m. and looked out my window in search of the waning moon. Media had described the second full moon of August as a "blue moon" and a "super moon" and I hadn't yet seen it.

 

I saw some black men partying on the sidewalk around Costello Park. Lately the park has become a site of all-night parties. Men gather on the sidewalk after sunset and remain till near dawn. I'd estimate about fifteen partiers. They sit on milk crates and metal chairs that Paterson, as part of a renovation, using taxpayer dollars from wealthier towns, placed in Costello Park. The metal chairs have been dragged out of the park onto the sidewalk for the all-night parties. Eventually these chairs, one by one, are disappearing entirely.

 

Car stereos blast rap music. There are kids in this building, black kids, Hispanic kids, poor kids. I grew up poorer than these kids, but I never had to struggle for sleep against intrusive noise pollution. I never had to sleep through classes in school because there was so much noise in the street the night before. Loud street parties were just not done. In my hometown, fathers left for work before we left for school. They worked hard all day. They arrived home in worn blue uniforms stained with dirt and grease. They ate dinner, they watched TV for a short while, and then they snored in comfortable chairs till wives or kids gently roused them and ushered them to bed. These hard-working men needed sleep, and the town was quiet at night.

 

I mentioned the noise in a Facebook post. I met Merlin when I was a grad student at UC Berkeley. Merlin is handsome, witty, and charismatic. He's a PhD, polyamorist, international bon vivant, and Burning Man veteran. He lived on Grizzly Peak, 1,400 feet up in the Berkeley Hills, where even small homes cost over a million dollars. As night follows day, Merlin said that my mentioning Paterson's noise was racist. Only a white supremacist would gripe about loud and obscene rap from car stereos all night long.

 

"Noise pollution loudest in black neighborhoods" announced a 2017 headline. "This is yet another study that shows that communities of color bear a disproportionate burden of pollution … [noise pollution] makes things worse for everybody," UC Berkeley researchers reported. What does it do to children's little bodies to emerge into a world of car stereos, police sirens, screams, crashes? Noise pollution damages children's minds and bodies in all the ways described here. And the all-night partiers don't just pollute with noise. They leave trash like paper plates and plastic bottles scattered on the sidewalk around the park.

 

I didn't see the moon on September 2. I had been at the window for less than a minute. I returned to bed. I heard a crash. My nerves burst into flames; my muscles stiffened; my breath became rapid and shallow; my stomach clenched and poured out acid. I have become very familiar with this bodily response to stressful stimuli. I'm an adult and can try to quell this response with practiced prayer and meditation. I know that Paterson's majority minority children are too young to master these skills and, as a teacher, I know that they suffer in ways that I don't.

 

I investigated the apartment. I couldn't find the source of the crashing sound. I went back to bed and tried to sleep. I had to get up early the next morning to work. Sleep eluded me. Again, at work, all day, I'd be fighting to stay alert, to rein in my dyslexia and spell words correctly.  

 

In the morning light I saw the broken glass and the shattered pane. Someone had thrown a rock at my window, just after I had looked out that window in search of the moon.