This October 7 will mark the third anniversary of the horrific attacks on Israel by Hamas.

Twelve hundred people were killed, primarily Israeli citizens, which made it the deadliest day for Israel since its independence.

Additionally, 240 people were taken hostage during the attack, and those alive have since been released.

Yet, since October 7, 2023, antisemitism has significantly risen globally.  That includes increased violence and hostility toward Jewish communities.

Below is an interview from different outlets that delve into the threats against the Jews.

Clara and Julia Kuperberg’s new documentary, Hollywood and Hitler, explores the influence the Nazis exerted on American movie studios in the 1930s.  It focuses on how some American film studios cooperated with the Nazis and highlights certain groups and individuals who tried to expose them.

It is relevant today because of all the propaganda being spread by pro-Hamas groups after October 7 that has created major antisemitism abroad and here in America.

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The Despair and Hope of J. R. R. Tolkien

The novelist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) repeatedly insisted that his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings, written from 1937 to 1949, was not allegorical.

But some scholars have argued otherwise, detecting contemporary, 20th-century influences in his storytelling.

Tolkien fought at the nightmarish Battle of the Somme in World War I. He witnessed the slaughter of the youth of Europe in the trenches that lived with him the rest of his life.

In the 1930s, he despaired over both the rise of the godless Communist Soviet Union and the transformation of a once-enlightened Germany into a monstrous fascist regime.

Tolkien, a devout Catholic, was dismayed not only by the growing power of these totalitarian empires but also by the West’s urbanized industrialism and secularized modernism on the eve of World War II.

In middle age, he lived through the even greater slaughter of World War II. Adding to his concerns, he finished his novel at the height of Soviet expansionism, as the Cold War began and nuclear weapons emerged.

The catastrophic decades of the 1930s and 1940s not only shaped his overall worldview but plausibly helped inspire at least some of the most dramatic elements of his novel.

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As the 2026 midterms rapidly approach, the consensus among the commentariat is that the Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well.

This meeting of the “expert” minds is based primarily on the polls, despite their increasing tendency to underestimate GOP performance, and the fact that the president’s party usually loses seats in one or both houses of Congress in midterm elections.

But there is another factor at play this year that most of the pundit class has overlooked. The Democrats are usually flush with cash in midterm cycles and they use much of it to fund turnout and ad campaigns. But this year many of their donors deserted them.

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On the morning of 17 April 1975, the gates of Phnom Penh opened and a smiling army walked in.

People came out into the street to cheer them. That detail matters and it gets left out of most tellings.

Five years of civil war were over, the American bombers were gone, the corrupt and collapsing Lon Nol government was finished, and the young men coming down the boulevards in black pyjamas and sandals cut from tyres were, for a few hours, liberators. Some of the soldiers were fourteen years old. People handed them food.

Within hours the order went out.

Leave the city. All of it. Now.

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[TTP:  Continuing from yesterday…]

VII. Why They Got It Wrong

The lazy version of this essay says clever people were fools. That version explains nothing and flatters the reader.

These were not fools. Chomsky is one of the most formidable intellects of the last century.

Malcolm Caldwell, a Scottish academic at the School of Oriental and African Studies who defended the regime in print until the end, was by all accounts a decent man whom people liked.

Gareth Porter was a serious scholar who testified before Congress.

So what actually happened?

Three things, and none of them require anybody to be stupid or wicked.

The first is that the scepticism was earned. These men had spent a decade watching their own government lie about Southeast Asia.

The Gulf of Tonkin. The secret bombing of Cambodia itself, which the United States conducted for over four years and concealed from Congress. The body counts. The Pentagon Papers had been published in 1971 and had confirmed the pattern in the government’s own words.

A person who had learned from all that to disbelieve official atrocity narratives about communist forces in Indochina had learned it from experience.

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The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives maintains records that form a searchable database at its facility in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

This database contains some 1.4 billion records, including Social Security numbers and the firearm’s make, model, and serial numbers.

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) and 50 other members of Congress would like to know more about this registry and whether it violates the law.

It’s illegal to have a gun database. All past ATF directors have denied its existence. We all know not to trust the government here:

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