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On this date in 1950, Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government. Not (yet) as internationally recognizable as Rudolf Slansky,* the Communist General Secretary in Horakova’s time who would run afoul of Stalin and die on the same gallows two years later, Horakova (English Wikipedia page | Czech | the detailed French) is a potent symbol domestically of her country’s Cold War nightmare. Lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods — her life’s work, rather overshadowed by an end that...

Mainstream media mavens in New York City, Washington, D.C., and other major cities on the U.S. East Coast blanketed by smoke from Canada’s wildfires went into overdrive saying the event was unprecedented and provided further proof that catastrophic climate change is occurring. Whether they were ignorant of the facts and believed what they said or are so far in the bag on climate alarmism they couldn’t let the facts get in the way of another story hyping the purported climate crisis, they were wrong or lying on every count. Wildfires happen every year throughout the United States and Canada --...

Road to MoscowBill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow By Fedora SummaryDuring the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton’s student protests and Moscow trip generated much controversy, but few answers. While Clinton’s government files from that era seemingly remain unavailable even today, there is at least more information available than in 1992. The public record reveals that Clinton’s social network and views on Vietnam were influenced by a pattern of contact between Communist agents and sympathizers and Clinton’s academic and political associates. This pattern is documented here through an analysis of Clinton’s antiwar activity up through the time he left Oxford...

The Bard tells us, rightly, that the past is prologue. But until America's greatest military intelligence success -- and failure -- becomes common knowledge Americans will remain intellectual sitting ducks, herded hither and yon, hoping to build a sheltering future on shaky misinformation. I'm talking about the Venona Code intercepts: The 3000 encrypted communications between Soviet spies operating in this country and their masters in Moscow, which American and British code breakers began deciphering in 1946. These KGB messages revealed that the Soviets had agents at the highest levels of the executive and legislative branches of our government -- and...

Old Glory by Stuart Hamblen

Bent on destroying Israel, and gripped by vicious anti-Semitism, Baghdad ‘pauperized’ its Jews and forced them to leave for the nascent Jewish state in 1951-2. It believed Israel would collapse under the strain. But the immigrants ultimately helped Israel thrive, and it was Iraq that suffered After Adolf Hitler’s defeat in May 1945, many Nazis melted away from the Reich, smuggled out by such organizations as the infamous Odessa group and the lesser-known Catholic lay network Intermarium, as well as the CIA and KGB. They ensured the continuation of the Nazi legacy in the postwar Arab world. Egypt was a...

Ernesto Davila Marin was in elementary school when rebellion interrupted class. As he left the schoolhouse that October day, black smoke rose from the town center where nationalists had set Jayuya ablaze, shooting police officers and declaring the independent republic of Puerto Rico from a rooftop. In the struggle for sovereignty from American colonial rule, Puerto Rican independence fighters staged uprisings in nearly a dozen cities that day in 1950 and later attempted to assassinate President Harry S. Truman. They held the central mountain city for three days until U.S. Air Force bombers buzzed over the emerald peaks packed with...

Gotta get my hearing checked. When I heard this song on Oldies radio, I thought they were saying something other than painter.

Bush, Roh have testy exchange at summit By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer President Bush's talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun ended on a sour note Friday not over the war in Iraq, but rather the Korean conflict that ended with a truce more than five decades ago. As Bush began to wind down his stay at the Asia-Pacific summit, Roh challenged him to make a declaration to end the Korean War. That conflict ended in a truce in 1953, not a peace treaty, so the two sides technically remain at war. The awkward exchange occurred during the first...

Los Angeles is such a complicated metropolis of disparate neighborhoods that it's hard to imagine a single event truly changing the place. Well, there is perhaps one: the retirement of Vin Scully. Dodgers fans (and surely many of the team's executives) released a collective sigh of relief when their sainted announcer said last week that he would return next year for his 67th season. But tempering that excitement was a warning by the 87-year-old game caller that next season will also likely be his last. More than a year out from the day that fans knew would arrive but still...

A sweet moment with Vin Scully at his news conference Saturday to discuss returning to broadcast the Dodgers next year, suddenly took a dramatic turn to unwanted melancholy. It was a turn everyone knew would come one day. But still, hearing it from Scully took the air out of the room: Scully expects next year will be his last as the Dodgers’ broadcaster.

It is a common notion that the number of priests has plummeted in this country. Many speak of the halcyon days when there were four and five priests per parish, and the seminaries were packed. And while some of these memories are accurate, they are drawn from a time in this country that was very brief.The fact is, the number of priests per parish spiked sharply after 1950 and has now leveled back to the levels of 1950 and before.Note the graph at the upper right from the Center for Research in the Apostolate (CARA). It depicts the number of...

The attack surprised South Korean President Syngman Rhee and General Douglas MacArthur, who lived in Tokyo and was busy there presiding over Occupied Japan. Many things are quite different now but in other respects remain similar.I had hoped to write an article earlier for publication at 4:00 A.M. Korean time today, when the North Korean attack began. Four days without the Internet delayed the writing and now it's too late to post it when I had wanted to. An article at NK News titled The day South Korea faced the merciless reality of extinction provides a good summary of what happened on...

When I was a child, back in the Parenting Stone Age (a.k.a. the Parentocentric Era), your parents were the most important people in the family. They paid the bills, bought your clothes, prepared the food you ate, took care of you when you were sick, drove you to where you needed to be, tucked you in, and kissed you good night. They were essential. Your parents acted like they were bigger than you were too, like they knew what they were doing and didn't need your help making decisions. In fact, your opinion really didn't matter much. When they spoke...

After 63 years, U.S. Postal Service delivers calendar The 1950 Pennsylvania Railroad calendar never made it to James W. Flanagan, general manager of The Scranton Times. He would never need it: he died in December 1949. But on Friday, 63 years after his death, the U.S. Postal Service made a delivery. A mail carrier, with no explanation of where the package had been the last 63 years, handed it to Chris O'Hora at The Times-Tribune's front desk. The calendar, rolled in a long tube, soon made its way to the office of Bobby Lynett, a publisher of The Times-Tribune and...

Would you rather live in the America of 1950 or the America of 2012? Has the United States changed for the better over the last 62 years? Many fondly remember the 1950s and the 1960s as the "golden age" of America. We emerged from World War II as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. During that time period, just about anyone that wanted to get a job could find a job and the U.S. middle class expanded rapidly. Back in 1950, America was still considered to be a "land of opportunity" and the economy was growing...

Is Kim Jong-il building a new type of weapon? On Monday Seoul announced that the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety had detected unusually high levels of xenon gas near the North Korea border on May 14. The concentration of xenon was eight times higher than normal, and the presence of the gas is indicative of nuclear activities. Because the wind was blowing south at the time, the source of the gas could not have been one of South Korea's nuclear plants. The xenon might have originated in China or Russia, but the most likely place was the land of unexplained...

Robin Roberts, the Hall of Fame right-hander who won 286 games and pitched the Philadelphia Phillies’ 1950 Whiz Kids team to the National League pennant, died Thursday at his home in Temple Terrace, Fla. He was 83.

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