Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War is an account of a daring rescue mission that occurred on the precipice of World War II. It tells the story of Waitstill & Martha Sharp, a Unitarian minister and his wife from Wellesley, Massachusetts, who left their children behind in the care of their parish and boldly committed to multiple life-threatening missions in Europe. Over two dangerous years they helped to save hundreds of imperiled political dissidents and Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi occupation across Europe.
Tom Hanks: voice of Waitstill Sharp
Trump Has Putin over a Barrel
Senator John McCain said on a Sunday talk show that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.”
..But with energy prices falling, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has essentially been in a recession over the past four years. With oil at $50 a barrel or less, Russian budgets plunge deeper into debt. It’s even doubtful the Russians have enough money to upgrade their military-energy industrial complex.
.. Through crafty media relations and his own bravado, a deluded Putin struggles to maintain the illusion that Russia is a strong economic power. But it ain’t so. Not even close.
.. He said, “if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive.”
.. But in an absolutely key part of the speech, he took direct aim at Vladimir Putin’s energy bullying. Trump said, “We are committed to securing your access to alternative sources of energy so Poland and its neighbors are never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy.” Italics are all mine.
.. Trump wants America to achieve energy dominance. He withdrew from the costly Paris climate accord, which would have severely damaged the American economy. He directed the EPA to rescind the Obama Clean Power Plan, which would have led to skyrocketing electricity rates. He fast-tracked the Keystone XL pipeline. He reopened the door for a modernized American coal industry. He’s overturning all the Obama obstacles to hydraulic fracturing, which his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton would have dramatically increased. And he has opened the floodgates wide to energy exports.
.. Right now, U.S. oil reserves are almost in parity with those of Saudi Arabia. We have the second-most coal reserves in the world. There are enough U.S. gas reserves to last us a century. We have already passed Russia as the world’s top natural-gas producer. We are the world’s top producer of oil and petroleum hydrocarbons. And exports of liquified national gas are surging, with the Energy Department rapidly approving new LNG projects and other export terminals.
.. Trump made it clear that America’s energy dominance will be used to help our friends across Europe. No longer will our allies have to rely on Russian Gazprom supplies with inflated, prosperity-killing prices.
.. the businessman president fully intends to destroy Russia’s energy-market share. And as that takes hold, Russia’s gas-station economy will sink further.
.. And as that takes hold, bully-boy Putin will have to think twice about Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics. He’ll have to think twice about his anti-American policies in the Middle East and North Korea.
Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg Elections A British Right-Wing Firebrand Gets a Reality Check in America
Farage, grinning broadly and never apologizing, has been attacked for wanting to deny some health care to immigrants and for putting up candidates who do things like decrying aid to “Bongo-Bongo land.” Here, surrounded by reporters and American conservatives, he is at unusually high risk for an international incident.
.. Jan Helfeld. Showing up at CPAC means risking an encounter with Helfeld, a minarchist who has been dubbed “the Socratic assassin” and (less kindly) “the libertarian Borat” for his meek-yet-torturous interviews about whether all government action is violence.
.. The American trip .. is supposed to connect UKIP with strategists who don’t know about it. “There are things like data mining where you’re much further advanced than we are,” says Farage. The conservative movement in America is stewing with ideas, compared to the U.K. “You’ve got think tanks; you’ve got policy development. Almost all of our commercial law is made in Brussels.”
.. When Britain’s leading Conservatives have made news in America, it’s been for hiring Obama campaign veterans for their own races, or for criticizing the Republicans who made foreign policy trips to London.
.. Farage said in a 2010 speech addressed to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. “If you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they’re left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.”
.. In a Jan. 14 Fox News appearance, Farage said that Europe was riddled with “no-go zones,” and that “wherever you look you see this blind eye being turned and you see the growth of ghettos where the police and all the normal agents of the law have withdrawn and that is where Sharia Law has come in.” Just five days later, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal spoke in London and warned of immigrants trying to colonize Europe.
.. “Farage gave an amazing speech at the embassy,” recalls Breitbart News’s Steve Bannon. (“The embassy” is the nickname for the house Breitbart News rents in Washington.) “I had Schlapp on one side, [Senator Jeff] Sessions on one side, and Laura Ingraham on the other, and they were blown away. The dinner ends, and Schlapp asks, ‘Is there any way you can come to CPAC?’”
.. “We’ve done it by picking up votes across the spectrum, but in particular we’ve done it by picking up votes from people who run their own businesses, who get up early in the morning, who work hard, and who find themselves, in our modern corporatist economy—I say that, instead of our modern capitalist economy—looking for champions,”
.. He acts on the belief that he doesn’t owe anything to the media. They’ve never been nice to him, and that’s still the case.”
.. “We have all, in the west, mistakenly—and I think in a very cowardly manner—we have pursued a policy of multiculturalism. We have pursued a policy of encouraging division in our lives, when we should have pursued a policy of coming together.”
Donald Trump’s Insult to History
Europe’s dismay could only have deepened when Congress seemed to cheer Mr. Trump on. Republicans, who once prided themselves as stewards of national security, have shown little concern about the way Mr. Trump treated NATO members or the links between Mr. Trump’s aides and Russia. In a statement, Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gushed over Mr. Trump’s trip to Europe and the Middle East, saying it was “executed to near perfection.”
.. These new stresses in the alliance come at a bad time.
- Europe has been battered by the Greek financial crisis;
- the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey, Hungary and Poland;
- Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union;
- and the flow of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.
Mr. Putin, always eager to expand Russian influence, has exploited every weakness and crisis, along with instigating a few of his own.
- Russia invaded Ukraine and has
- interfered in electoral campaigns in the United States, France and Germany.
- Mr. Putin has meddled in the Baltic States,
- cultivated far-right-wing allies in Hungary and
- wooed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on NATO’s eastern flank.
- He is now courting Italy with a savvy ambassador to Rome and financing for anti-establishment parties.
There are some bright spots.
- One is that Ms. Merkel seems committed to playing a lead role as the United States pulls back; another is
- France’s election of President Emmanuel Macron, who has demonstrated a willingness to work in partnership with Ms. Merkel. The two won’t always see eye-to-eye, but
- Germany needs France and Mr. Macron is a good fit.
.. Mr. Macron gave Mr. Putin full honors but did not mince words on Russia’s destructive role in the Syrian conflict, in Ukraine and in its dissemination of fake news.