The author, famous liberal attorney, and author (of over fifty books on law, legal history and legal/social commentary), is no fan of Trump. As of the book’s publication (2023) he had never voted for Trump but has been ostracized by many of his life long liberal friends and associates for his commentaries on the legal gambits by the Left over the past ten years. Disinvited by schools and groups that he has spoken before over the past forty years, he lays out the dangerous tactics of the Left as well as the Media and Academia.

Stating specific actions, he discusses how they create a danger to our Constitution and the rule of law. He criticizes both the far right and left throughout the book but focuses more on the Left who he says has shown that far from being the staunch defenders of freedom as they claim, has shown themselves to be acting strictly from political motives. He attacks the ACLU which he claims has lost its’ reputation and standing due to bowing to the demands of “diversity,” as well as the Democratic party. While he praises the base goodness of Merrick Garland and Jack Smith, he believes they have bent to political pressure in creating a double standard to justice. For example, how can Hillary Clinton, Sandy Berger and even Joe Biden criticize Donald Trump when their actions in the handling of secret documents while both in and out of office be considered as lesser than the documents at Trump’s house? He criticizes the raid for documents at Trumps house which was not of national importance as the FBI waited until two days after the authorization of the warrant (which was closer to a Bill of Attainment) to make sure that Trump was a thousand miles from his home.

The interview he has in the book with Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerry Baker lays out the dubious rational for the attacks on Trump according the legal and historical arguments and is a worth while read for both those legally versed and non-legally versed individuals. Unlike many attorneys, Dershowitz writes in a clear, concise manner which may very well explain his successful longevity as an author and legal commentator.

This is a short book (less than two-hundred pages) but it is clear that his defense of Trump is not based on the politics of Dershowitz but rather on his concern for the harm to the rule of law and the Constitution done by those on the Left who have made fundamental errors of judgement caused by their personal animas.  Perhaps the truth of his arguments is his personal cost caused by those who hailed him as long as he supported their views which were legally defensible.

During the sixth century B.C., exiles from the island of Samos traveled to Sparta looking for aid. As was the custom in Greece, they made a long and flowery speech justifying their need. They then waited for the Spartans to rule on their request, but one Spartan said that he did not remember the first half of the speech and did not understand the second half. The exiles stood there for a moment and then left to plan their next step.

The next day, they came back again carrying an empty grain sack. They said, “The sack needs grain.”  The chief Spartan said, “There was no need to say, “the sack.” and gave them grain.

That is why the word Laconic is brought to us from the Spartans.

Source: Impossible Histories by Hal Johnson

King Richard the Lion-Hearted insulted Duke Leopard during the Third Crusade by not allowing the duke’s banner to fly at the same level as Richard’s (who was of course a King and not a mere Duke).  Later, on Richard’s journey home, he was captured and held for ransom, which totaled thirty tons of silver.  After the ransom was paid, the duke received one-third of the ransom which he used to build walls around Vienna as protection against Ottoman raids.

Those walls were still there in 1529 when the Ottoman’s decided to besiege Vienna after capturing Hungary and most of the Balkans. The Ottoman’s defied the terrible rains and brought their siege cannons all the way from Istanbul to the walls of Vienna but were exhausted by the effort.  The Ottomans needed a quick and easy siege, but the walls were too strong and after a final attempt, the Ottomans retreated, defeated by those walls.  The Ottomans were to return in 1683 and were again defeated by those walls and the relieving Polish army led by King John Sobieski.

That ransom paid for the walls and if there had not been the walls, Vienna would have fallen to the Turks.  If it had fallen, Vienna would have been a Muslim city and Back, Mozart, Beethoven, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others would not have created the music, philosophy and science that they did.

When you throw a stone into a lake, the ripples move out and so it is with life; you never know what the results of your actions will be so act wisely.

Did you ever wonder how your life could have been different? What if you did not get that one break in your career where you were at the right place at the right time? Or you had an accident because you left the house five minutes later than normal and were in a hurry? Perhaps if you had not blown that entrance exam, you might have gotten that key grant that would have eliminated that college debt that eats at your life?

Now take those “what ifs” and look at key points in the history of humanity and think of how our lives today could have been so different. We might all be speaking Greek, or Turkish, or we might not exist as one of our grandparents died in a car accident instead of only suffering a broken leg. Few alternative histories are either beautifully written or present the reader with the “what ifs” of any particular scenario. Virtual History by Niall Ferguson is one of the few that stand out. Another is Impossible Histories by Hal Johnson. Publish in 2023, he takes us on a tour of twenty key pivots points in history and presents us with alternatives such as Alexander the Great who successful creates an empire that lasts a thousand years, the First World War which never happens because the Kaiser answered his phone before he went for a horse ride, a United States with a  President Wallace instead of Truman in which the Atomic bomb is not used and the result is a Soviet occupation of parts of Japan and most of Europe is controlled by the Soviet Union, the Third Crusade fails with the result that the Turks take Vienna in 1683 and all of Europe ends up like the Balkans, or Jimmy Carter starts a nuclear war. You cannot imagine the other alternatives.

What makes this alternative history so much better is that it does not stop with a different end to a war or siege but delves into the next step and the step after that to the point where our world is entirely different. How is that possible? It is like when you drop a stone into water and the waves continue to move out, continuing to disrupt the stillness. Exhibiting a wonderful knowledge of history and excellent insight into human nature, the author takes the reader on voyages which are both exciting and at times disturbing. Nietzsche wrote that each action we take impacts us for the rest of our lives and Johnson applies that to the entire scope of humanity.

This is a fun book that should leave you thinking not only about his subjects but also encouraging you to apply his concept to your life. Read it and enjoy!

Unfortunately, we tend to get our news via short, highly edited, and questionable “objective” snippets as we are on the run. The old legacy media media of NBC, CBS and ABC are widely ignored no matter how much is paid to the latest talking head. That is why an interview like the one linked here is so important.

Tom Holman is often presented as a hard talking, in your face individual who is doing the dirty job of cleaning up not only the prior Presidents’ mess, but also the mess of other Presidents. It seems that everyone agrees that we need to remove the worse of the worse criminal aliens from our midst, but for some reason there are short sighted politicians who fail to understand that their efforts to block Holman guarantees to make life harder to the “good” illegals that they say they are protecting; especially those who clean their pools, mow their laws and act as their nannies.  Never mind that those same illegals are the first to suffer at the hands of the “worse of the worse.”

This interview shows that there is so much more to Holman’s job than picking up criminal illegals. He and his ilk also rescue some of those 300,000 children who were somehow “lost” during the Biden administration. They also rescue women forced into prostitution by the criminal cartels, act with other agencies against money laundering, tax evasion, and more.

If you watch the interview, you may view the next interview by a talking head of Holman a bit differently.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? They may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought. Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find them of interest!

• Germany: the race to the bottom- For well over a thousand years, especially in the West, the concept of a social contract between the government and the governed has been developing. It has not always been perfect, but it has been a steady part of Western culture. Briefly it says that you the citizens agree to pay taxes and obey the laws, including if necessary, taking up arms to defend the state. In return, the state agrees to work to protect the citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic and to provide certain services (health inspections, a school system, fire, and police services, etc.). No government can stay in power without at least a minimal amount of support from its’ citizens.

Germany, like all other governments is constantly looking for new streams of revenue. One new stream is making cannabis legal. As usual, on paper it looked like a great idea; by making it legal, it should undercut the drug cartels and thus save money on policing. Additionally, it is a repeat business that is unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy. Never mind that modern day cannabis is basically a mutant of the cannabis which is not only stronger than the cannabis of Woodstock fame, but is know to cause mental problems, such as depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc., especially among the younger generation (up to the age of the mid-20s). So, a certain portion of our youth will face mental problems in their lives, that is just the cost of getting more taxes.

The problem is, in Germany for example, that the sale of cannabis is not creating the tax windfall that was expected. Why? One reason is that the underground economy offers a stronger version of cannabis than that offered by the government. This can be done by altering the amount of THC; in fact, the amount of THC in European cannabis is nearly double since 2013. The market responds as the legal cannabis has less THC and thus the underground economy is outperforming the legal product.

What is a government to do? They want their money. They could put an all-out effort into eliminating much of the underground economy but that would take time and money, and they have not been that successful in the past. The obvious solution to the government is to increase the THC, thus making the legal stronger so it can compete with the underground-economy product. Of course, the stronger the product, the more dangerous and damaging to the citizens who not only use the product but have to face individuals who are impacted by the stronger product. Given the long-term thinking (?) of the government, which should solve the problem, right? Not really, as all those who work the underground economy need to do is to up the amount of THC to maintain market share. This means in effect that the government, in its quest for dollars, is in a race to the bottom against the underground economy. It is a kind of, “if we cannot lick them, we can join them.”

The social contract is not what it used to be; we cannot count on the government to protect us from foreign and internal enemies. Does that mean I get a tax refund for the governments not only failure, but conscious decision to offer a product that is increasingly dangerous. (FT,  6/7-8, 2025, pp. 2)

In the past week, three Chinese students some of whom had entered the U.S. illegally and even voted in the 2024 election were caught and face Federal charges of attempting to bring in the U.S. a deadly fungus that can devastate crops such as wheat, barley, maize and rice.  They have been studying at the University of Michigan, and one has an advanced degree in plant pathogens. Some of the students have received funds from an institute partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Elsewhere, there is a growing concern over the purchase of U.S. farmland near U.S. military bases. Although the amount of land is only about 1% of our total farmland, it still amounts to nearly four hundred-thousand acres of land. While the recent military success of the Ukrainian forces against the Russian strategic bomber fleet has begun to bring concerns about the safety of our B-1 and B-2 strategic bombers, the Governor of Arizona recently vetoed a state bill restricting the purchase of land by Chinese nationals. Finally, the discovery of unlicensed Chinese labs in the U.S. who were working on dangerous work related to Covid-19 and were found to have genetically modified mice, has raised further questions of what are the intentions of Communist China.

The intentions are not a secret if anyone has read the 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, both retired Chinese colonels. Originally published by the People’s Liberation Army Literature & Arts Publishing House, it must have been approved by the Communist Party. They argue that generals such as Colin Powell and Schwarzkopf are more “traditional” and that they do not understand today’s war options. Further, for today’s war to be won, all available tools, including cyber and economic means, the use of media influence and legal manipulation (lawfare) must be used. They argue that the traditional boundaries of warfare must be “widened.”  For example, they write:

“The existence of boundaries is a prerequisite for differentiating objects from one another. In a world where all things are interdependent, the significance of boundaries is merely relative. The expression “to exceed limits” means to go beyond things which are called or understood to be boundaries. It does not matter whether they fall into the category of physical, spiritual, or technical, or if they are called “limits,” “defined limits,” constraints,” “border,” “rules,” ….” or even taboos.”  Speaking in terms of war, this could mean the boundary between the battlefield and what is not the battlefield, between what is a weapon and what is not, between soldier and noncombatants, between state and non-state or supra-state.”  (pp158) In other words, no boundaries, a concept of warfare (with both success and failure) that the West has attempted for a thousand years to change. In their concept of war, one need not worry about “terms of engagement,” for the gloves are off.

On the next page, they attempt to dress this up by referring to “going beyond the limits,” “surpassing all boundaries and conforming with the laws of victory when conducting warfare with combinations. Thus, we obtain a complete concept, a completely new method of warfare called “modified combined warfare that goes beyond limits.”

We currently have over a quarter of a million Chinese nationals in our universities. Those students are expected to report back to the homeland on research, ideas, and individuals. Those same universities have accepted billions of dollars from Chinese foundations and think tanks funded by the Chinese party and military.

There is an old saying, “forgive me my paranoia, for I know what I fear.”  We are an open, trusting society. Traditionally we have always thought the best of our fellow man as we were founded on Judeo-Christian ideals. It has been eighty years since we faced and defeated nations which believed that the ends justify the means. Perhaps eighty years is too long a time for us to put a threat in its’ proper perspective.

There are getting to be a number of “trigger” words, which when heard, should make you immediately be on your guard. Normally these trigger words are spoken by an individual or group who present themselves as having a plan which will make your life better. As a rule, they spring up from the Left and their mission may be to save the planet, or save some particular species, or it is to ensure “equity” which will be better for everyone. There is always an entire pantheon of causes that need to be put right. They talk a lot about what a glorious future they offer but somehow never manage to tell you the price in either economic or very personal terms. They remain true to their mission no matter the actual results, assuring themselves and their audience that success is just around the corner.

Such promises are nothing new for if we read our history, great promises of utopia were the rationale of the various five-year plans under Stalin. There were great successes as well as great failures, but the promised utopia never arrived and the millions who paid the ultimate price were swept into the dustbin of history.

More recently we have seen a great march to “net zero,” especially in Europe. Germany has spent untold billions of Euros on their particular march with the end result being that the cost of energy is among the highest in the world, industries are leaving for nations with lower energy costs, unemployment is creeping into industries which were the mainstay of the economy and finally, the air is no cleaner, in fact it is dirtier than before the great march to “net zero”.  It is as if the political leadership of Germany had just arrived from another planet and did not realize the realities of German weather. The fact that most of Germany only gets 150-200 days of sunshine is something that the planners of solar power never realized.

Learn from mistakes? Why do that when the architects of failure can always count on the mild nature of the people they rule? Spain and Portugal are recent examples of failure when both countries suffered electrical failures of a size never before experienced in the history of humanity. The result? The leaders of both nations swore to move even faster toward net zero, putting the health and well-being of the citizens ever more into a danger zone.

The quest for left of center rulers to dominate and control the lives of those they rule is never ending. The attached article focuses on the concept of “15-minute cities”, where your ability to travel freely and participate in an open society will be discouraged. Do the rulers in this situation believe that their citizens will be happier, more prosperous, more creative? That is not what they offer. They claim that such cities will be better able to withstand challenges like they faced during Covid. So, do we completely restructure civilization in the belief that we will face more Covid type challenges in the future? When will the next pandemic show up? In a year, five years, 50 years? We are expected to give up our freedoms for an event that might very well not occur in our lifetime. Given that the “scientific” leaders were so disastrous wrong about the value of masks, distancing, shutting down schools, churches and businesses, not to mention insisting that those with the highest immunity be forced to take a vaccine which could counter-act their natural immunity, why would we accept that “15 minute cities” will be any more successful than more open societies?

It is always nice to look at a project or plan and imagine the wonderful upside of success. But we must be realistic how many of those golden promises have ever been fulfilled. We need to be more willing to ask and demand answers on what are the dangers on the downside. If the downside risk is greater, or more easily achieved than the upside, perhaps we need to tread a bit more cautiously.

The War on City-Dwellers: ‘Climate Change’: Grift of the Century, Part III :: Gatestone Institute

Classic Conflicts Series, Christophere Chant Consultant Editor

I first read this book in 1997 and during this re-read, I found that it has easily stood the test of time. By this I mean that reading this one book will give the reader a solid basis in most of the key areas key to an understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the German military under Hitler, as well as a basic understanding of the various military fronts, key German military personalities and problems faced by that military.  Or to put it another way, reading this book will save the reader the time and expense of going through other books published this 1997 which deal with the same areas but add nothing new.

The book itself is divided into several parts which focus on specific areas. For example, Part I entitled, “Hitler’s War Machine” deals with Germany in the thirties, the general economy, science, and technology, etc. Part II deals with Hitler’s generals and their battles in each of the key fronts. Various generals are highlighted with a good analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. The last part deals with the Luftwaffe and its challenges from fighting on numerous fronts and the impact of the strategic bombing campaign. Surprisingly, the Kriegsmarine receives short shift and is only covered in a section of fourteen pages.

The key of course to the defeat of Hitler’s war machine was the overwhelming strength of the allied coalition. Added to this is the fact that although the Germans were operating for most of the war along interior lines (unlike the United States which fought simultaneously in theaters thousands of miles apart), their shortages of key materials and short war outlook doomed them from the start. Without a quick victory, the chances of a German victory lessened each day.

Realizing the logistical problem of the German may encourage the reader to research information on the topic. I suggest Brute Force by John Ellis (reviewed 12/28/2023), Freedoms Forge by Arthur Herman (reviewed 4/28/2025) and Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy. These excellent books will give the reader an amazing view of the power available to the modern nation’s state.

Overall, this is an excellent book which covers most of the key areas. It is more of a technical look at war, devoid of human-interest stories but written in a manner that easily holds one’s attention.

In June 1942, for the first time since the war of 1812, the United States was invaded.  Invaded in an area where few Americans had ever been, on an island that even fewer Americans had ever heard of, but it was an invasion which had to be faced. 

To mislead American forces from the main Japanese thrust in the Central Pacific, Japanese forces landed on the island of Attu, an island at the extreme end of the Aleutian Island chain.  The island that held no tactical or strategic value, was racked by one hundred mile and hour winds that thundered down from the mountains and had an average of ten days of sun a year.  Wet, cold and remote, tens of thousands of men would meet each other in mortal combat for not valid reason.

Beyond the battle however, this is a story about two men, one Japanese, one American.  The men met in a split second, one killed the other, but their lives were forever bound by their love of America and duty to their native land. 

Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi was the son of Japanese Seventh Day Adventists who studied medicine in the United States and who came to love the country.  The size, freedom, opportunity all promised all that he could wish and when he met a beautiful Japanese student, he married and began a family.  Life was not to allow him to enjoy his opportunity however, as he and his little family travelled back to Japan in a successful attempt to free one of his sisters from prostitution to which she had been sold by the family’s elder brother during the worse days of the Depression.  Then, Tatsuguchi was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army (though he was mistrusted so much that he was the only doctor in the Army who was not an officer).  Shipped to Attu with the invasion forces, Tatsuguchi was cut off from the world he loved and was subjected, as were all Japanese troops, to constant propaganda regarding the glories of Japan and his duty to the Emperor.

Dick Laird escaped the poverty of Appalachia by joining the U.S. Army where for the first time he had three meals a day, regular pay and a clean place to sleep.  He met, impregnated and left a girl but during the war, he matured, went back and married her but he still had to pay his debt and fight his battles in the Pacific.  One early morning, with a thick fog all around and in the middle of a Japanese suicide attack, Dick accidently killed a comrade and then killed Tatsuguchi.

Dick never really recovered from the battles he fought (he won the Bronze and Silver Star medals) and Tatsuguchi had left behind a diary which was circulated widely by U.S. troops even though it went against the image built up during the war which showed the Japanese are a deadly, sneaky crazy enemy who had no human feelings. 

Many years later, Dick managed to find the family of Tatsuguchi and told them how he had killed their father/husband. How both sides faced the truth and what they learned is a great story.  And, this book also brings out the sacrifices of the men of both sides who fought in one of the most hellish places on earth, in a campaign that produced the highest percentage of American to Japanese causalities until the battle of Okinawa. 

This is a fine read, both for the military historian and for more personal aspects.  Highly recommended.