No one will come away unmoved by the book, and no one will be able to put it down. … There is no way of reading Alive without a heightened sense of one’s own life and its value.

The book is not only an extraordinary survival saga, but it has tremendously moving stories involving family, friendship, love, and sacrifice. It is a sort of reverse Lord of the Flies, where the cooperation among the survivors was extremely impressive, and it also contained deeply spiritual and religious elements despite its horrors.

Over the years I’ve read other books on the subject, including several written by the survivors. I’ve watched several documentaries as well. In 1993 an American movie came out on the subject, and although I was looking forward to it immensely I was sharply disappointed. It just didn’t ring true, plus it left out or truncated very important parts of the story, in particular involving the astounding trek by two of the young men who survived the initial crash.

So when I heard recently that there was a newer movie, made in 2023 in the Spanish language, and using previously-unknown Uruguayan and Argentinian actors, I was extremely eager to see it. I had to wait till I was in a certain mood, because the story is a grueling one even to watch, and from the trailer I could see it was very realistically as well as poetically done:

And so I watched the film, and I have mixed feelings about it. I would recommend it, although you need to be prepared for a harrowing journey. Compared to the previous movie it’s better. But compared to the book it simply doesn’t work for me. That surprised me, and I’ve been pondering why I found it ultimately very inferior to the book that some of the survivors thought was already inadequate.

For one thing, I think a book has the ability to give so much more background on the entire situation and the people in it, which deepens the story and its significance. Just to take one example, in the book you learn a great deal about a woman who was one of the initial survivors, Liliana Methol. But in the film she’s almost an afterthought and somewhat of a cipher. There just isn’t enough time to render each person in his or her fullness.

Plus, there are an enormous number of characters, and the actors (who look a great deal like the real life people they are representing) somewhat resemble each other, especially as the movie goes on and many become bearded and all become thinner (the actors were forced to lose weight as the film went on, for the sake of realism). It wasn’t that easy to tell them apart, and I knew a great deal about the characters already.

Films with big casts need to pay particular attention to this potential problem. I think that, for example, The Great Escape (a film favorite of mine although of a very different type), which also had a very big cast, dealt with the numbers more successfully because the protagonists were from different countries, and there were many stars in the cast and that helped the viewers remember who’s who. That movie was also about a half hour longer than Society of the Snow, and although both movies are long they both move along quite quickly because there’s so much to tell. But The Great Escape has more time in which to tell it.

In the book Alive, there’s a great deal of emphasis also on the stories of the families searching for their lost relatives; many did not give up hope, and their tales are especially moving and make the eventual reunions even more poignant and deeply felt. There was virtually none of that in the movie; you merely see reunions with parents and girlfriends which are generic because we don’t have much of the backstory.

There are many exchanges and scenes in the book that seem naturally cinematic, and some are left out of the movie. I don’t know why; it wouldn’t take much to have included them. Instead, there are repetitive scenes of the suffering endured by the survivors and their decline – as well as a tremendous emphasis on the most sensationalistic part of their story, the fact that in order to survive they very reluctantly decided they must eat the bodies of those who had died (and the living made a pact to allow the others to eat them if they died before rescue came), Any movie about this incident must deal with that fact, but I think that after a while this particular movie could have left out some of the redundancy and gone for some more of the background stories.

Most of all, I was surprised that the movie seemed to leave out or gloss over one of the most salient characteristics of the group, which is that they were Catholics and mostly believers, and that their specifically Catholic beliefs helped them endure. That is, many of them explicitly likened their eating the flesh of their dead companions to the Eucharist, although they were well aware of the differences. Instead, in the movie there was a vaguer spirituality that was emphasized. Even the part where, after the survivors returned to civilization and priests told them they would not be condemned by the Church for what they did in extremis – that entire aspect was left out. Instead, there was an almost-throwaway scene in a church at the beginning of the film, with a priest talking about the Host while some of the young men pass notes among them. Unless you already know the plot, you could easily miss its significance.

This omission and de-emphasis seems to me to be a deliberate lessening of the religious message and slant of the entire event, a trend toward the universal rather than the specific. But the specific can have a universal message, and I felt the omission keenly although I’m neither Catholic nor Christian.

The movie caused me to get out my old copy of Alive and start re-reading it. In the introduction, the author writes:

When I returned in October 1973 to show [the survivors] the manuscript of this book, some of them were disappointed by my presentation of their story. They felt that the faith and friendship which inspired them in the cordillera do not emerge from these pages. It was never my intention to underestimate these qualities, but perhaps it would be beyond the skill of any writer to express their own appreciation of what they lived through.

I think that’s an honest assessment; it’s an impossible task. Nevertheless I think that Piers Paul Read came as close to accomplishing it as anyone could. For me, he certainly came closer than any movie could.

The post I watched the movie “Society of the Snow,” about the 1972 Andes plane crash and survival appeared first on The New Neo.

The attacking Ottoman Army, significantly outnumbered Constantinople’s defenders …

The fall of Constantinople and of the Byzantine Empire was a watershed moment of the Late Middle Ages, marking the effective end of the Roman Empire, a state which began in roughly 27 BC and had lasted nearly 1,500 years. For many modern historians, the fall of Constantinople marks the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the early modern period. The city’s fall also stood as a turning point in military history. Since ancient times, cities and castles had depended upon ramparts and walls to repel invaders. The walls of Constantinople, especially the Theodosian walls, protected Constantinople from attack for 800 years and were noted as some of the most advanced defensive systems in the world at the time. However, these fortifications were overcome by Ottoman infantry with the support of gunpowder, specifically from cannons and bombards, heralding a change in siege warfare.

But I first learned about this as a child through a rather silly song, popular in 1953. I was exceedingly young, but popular music nevertheless still seeped down to me, and the song was very catchy:

“Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” is a 1953 novelty song, with lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat Simon. It was written on the 500th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. The lyrics humorously refer to the official renaming of the city of Constantinople to Istanbul. The song’s original release, performed by The Four Lads, was certified as a gold record.

The lyrics can be found here, and they treat the whole thing like a light joke. Back in 1953 it must have seemed that way to most of the Western world. But who’s laughing now? An excerpt:

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit night
(Oh) every gal in Constantinople
(Oh) lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
(Oh) so if you’ve a date in Constantinople
(Oh) she’ll be waiting in Istanbul …

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can’t go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’

Actually, it’s everybody’s business these days – and by “it” we’re not talking about Constantinople/Istanbul per se. We’re talking about the Muslim world versus the Christian world (and the Jews, of course). We’re talking about various kinds of conquest and not just the military kind – perhaps not even primarily the military kind. The siege involves the human mind, and it’s been going on far longer than two months. The main fronts are academia, the press, and politics.

NOTE: Here’s the original song:

The post “You can’t go back” – the fall of Constantinopole appeared first on The New Neo.

The day of the killings, one of the first statements of authorities was that the perps had written “Hate crime” on the weapons they used, and that they were teenagers who had committed suicide afterward in their car. This immediately made me think “Columbine.”

Now, for those who only vaguely remember Columbine – did it have to do with school bullying, as the early reporting (erroneously, it turns out) said? – the connection may seem obscure. But for those who have delved into it more deeply, the connection is obvious. Harris and Kelbold were extremely hate-filled and nihilistic, their hatred went in many directions, they meant to kill a great many more people than they ended up killing, and they were also suicidal. They shot themselves in the school library.

I’ve written a great deal about the Columbine killers; you can find a list of posts here. I have also written about what I call “dark duos,” which is the synergistic effect that sometimes occurs when two people (usually young men) with psychopathic and depressive tendencies get together. Here is a relevant post about dark duos.

The Islamic Center killers seem to have been another dark duo. That was my sense from the start, and nothing I’ve seen so far has convinced me otherwise.

But there are some elements of this crime that make it an updated version of an old story. The two met online in some sort of chatroom or discussion board; that’s a relatively new phenomenon for such killers, as far as I know, but quite appropriate for the current young generation, many of whom seem to live their emotional lives online and get their viewpoints there.

Another thing I noticed immediately – and which is very unusual – is that one of the perpetrators was given the first name “Cain.” That particular spelling of the name, which is the name of the first murderer in the Bible, is very uncommon and to me it would tend to indicate something unusual or tone deaf in a parent. Even if it’s a family surname, it’s very odd to spell it that way as a first name. Names can help shape a person’s identity, and although I think it would be ridiculous to put too much emphasis on this element, it still strikes me as highly negative.

When I read a bit more about the killers, I wrote in my draft notes: “I bet online radicalization of a groyper type.” And that also turns out to have been correct.

For example:

Investigators said they recovered a manifesto, as well as writings outlining religious and racial beliefs “of how the world they envision should look,” according to FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily.

“These subjects did not discriminate in who they hated, and let me be very clear to anyone who thinks they can end the world through violence: They’re sorely mistaken,” Remily said. “The FBI, our law enforcement partners and our community are much stronger than you think.”

Mark Remily of the FBI said during a news conference that authorities have uncovered writings by the suspects. Authorities declined to specify what ideologies or views were expressed by the shooters, only that they met online and shared a “broad hatred” toward different religions and races.

There was no specific threat against the Islamic center, which is the largest mosque in San Diego, but authorities found that the suspects engaged in “generalized hate rhetoric,” [San Diego Police Department Chief Scott] Wahl said.

That’s the way it’s been covered. But it’s not exactly the case. I will get to that in a moment. First, about the suicides, which they apparently livestreamed:

San Diego mosque killer Caleb Vasquez urged his accomplice to shoot him in the head in a twisted exchange captured on a livestream broadcast after the pair murdered three people.

Vasquez, 18, is seen in the passenger seat of the white BMW he and 17-year-old Cain Clark used to flee the Islamic Center of San Diego, in footage captured by a camera the pair placed on the car’s dashcam while the vehicle was stopped.

Vasquez grabs the barrel of Clark’s rifle and brings it to his own forehead at multiple points in the livestream clip. The video, circulating on social media, did not have audio.

Finally, the camera turns to include only Clark — sitting in the driver’s seat — who uses his pistol to shoot Vasquez in the head twice and then turn the gun on himself.

About their manifesto:

The teenage San Diego mosque gunmen appear to have left behind a shocking, hate-filled manifesto, which praised Adolf Hitler and a slew of mass murderers, before the attack, The California Post has learned.

Authorities are investigating whether 17-year-old Cain Clark and 19-year-old Caleb Vasquez wrote the nihilistic missive before killing three people and then each other, according to law enforcement sources.

The document espouses a desire to spark a race war and bring about the end of civilization.

That is very much the Columbine impulse; they wanted a huge conflagration to follow. Also, it is somewhat similar to the Manson “Helter Skelter” motive, which was to spark a race war in a convoluted fantasy of what would follow the Tate and LaBianca murders.

I said that the San Diego Islamic Center killers seemed to hate just about everyone, and this is true. But there was one hatred they placed about all others: Jews. That fact is not being widely reported, as far as I can see. One would think that, because their targets were Muslims, hatred of Muslims would be their paramount motive. But no; it was Jew-hatred.

There’s coverage of that fact in some Jewish publications [emphasis mine]:

The shooters’ deepest resentment seemed reserved for Jewish people.

The manifesto listed previous antisemitic shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue and Chabad of Poway among the teens’ many sources of inspiration, calling the assailant in the latter incident a “saint.” It called the Jews “the children of Satan.” It denied the Holocaust as a “complete fabrication.” Vazquez called Adolf Hitler his hero; in his section, Clark wrote out the Fourteen Words, a neo-Nazi declaration.

“Everyone has their own idea of who is to blame for all the wrong in the world” Vazquez wrote in a section titled “The Universal Enemy.”

He printed his answer to the question four times in a row in all capital letters: “It’s the Jews.” …

Atomwaffen members are part of a network of mostly online extremist groups that subscribe to “accelerationism,” the idea that forcing societal collapse through an all-out race war is the only way to restore white supremacy and save civilization. The idea is propounded by a white nationalist named James Mason, author of a book called Siege that both shooters cited.

“Though officially I was not a part of any groups or organizations there are many I support, I would even go so far as to say I did it for Atomwaffen Division, Terrorgram, The Base, and North Korea,” Vazquez wrote….

Whereas the shooters were unsparing toward Jews in the manifesto, with Vazquez calling them the “most evil creature in the world,” they espoused mixed feelings about Muslims in the document before they killed three. “I don’t hate Muslims, at least not really,” Vazquez wrote. “What I hate is the religion of Islam itself and them invading my country.”

He added that Islam “is completely contradictory to both Western morals and values and Christianity.”

But he wrote only three paragraphs about Islam and Muslims — about one page — before the section ends with the word “unfinished” in brackets.

Clark appeared more committed to the eradication of Islam in his writing. Muslims and Jews, he said, “must be isolated and exterminated.” Yet he, like Vazquez, wrote several pages denigrating Jewish people.

The shooters did not state why they ultimately targeted a mosque. Vazquez wrote their plan was to “cause as much death and destruction” as fast as possible with a “diverse” selection of targets.

Here’s more, from the Times of Israel; they also hated women [my emphasis]:

The writings, some of which were circulating online in the days after the attack, glorified other terrorists and included hateful rhetoric toward Jews, Muslims, LGBT people, African-Americans, and both the political left and right.

They were also vitriolically sexist, asserting that “after the Jew the most evil creature in this world is the woman.” At least one of the shooters identified as an “incel,” a term used by men online to refer to their failure to have sex with women.

In a lengthy manifesto, which police said they believed to be authentic, the shooter declared Jews “the universal enemy,” responsible for war, famine, child abuse and various social ills, and wrote that the only solution is “to just kill them all.”

The document heaped praise on Adolf Hitler, yet denied the Holocaust.

It also bore the trademarks of more recent antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming that Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes were religiously motivated, and fixating on supposed Jewish hatred for “goyim,” or non-Jews. ...

The shooters expressed beliefs that white people are being eliminated, explicitly citing the “Great Replacement” theory that Jews are facilitating mass migration to the West in order to wipe out white people.

Muslims were described as one such “invading” force, who must be “exterminated.”

So they blame the influx of Muslims on – the Jew.

Why have I gone into this in such detail? It’s simple: I see all of that online at many sites, and have for many years. It’s easy to find, not difficult at all, and almost mainstream these days. Fuentes didn’t invent it, nor did Carlson or Owens, but it’s the stuff they and others spew every single day. Of course some people saying this sort of thing are bots, and some are people in countries such as Pakistan. But I am convinced, and have been for quite some time, that many are Americans – especially young ones. There are more men than women, but there are women too (without the incel part).

Jew-hatred is like an entry drug to a whole world of nihilistic hatred. Which comes first, the philosophy or the rage? I don’t know the answer, and maybe it’s a meaningless question. But I think it’s far more widespread in this generation in the West than in previous ones in my lifetime. And that is very very dangerous to all of us.

[NOTE: RIP to the victims.]

The post The San Diego Islamic Center shooters: another dark duo appeared first on The New Neo.

Katy Tur: What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government? They come from you, our creator and heavenly father. Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?

McKay Coppins: I actually think that that idea is not wholly uncommon. I mean, the idea that we have certain inalienable rights that come from god can be read in a fairly benign way, which is basically that we have innate human rights, that our constitution and our government, our democratic government are meant to codify. Right. That idea is not totally abnormal.

Good to know it’s not “totally abnormal” (Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic). Tur is 42 years old and Coppins is 39. Do they know anything about the text of the Declaration of Independence? Back in the ancient times of my own youthful education, we were required to memorize a couple of paragraphs, including the relevant passage “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

It reminds me that it was often Obama;s habit to leave out the “Creator” part (from 2010):

At a Democratic fundraiser on Monday night, President Obama once again misquoted the Declaration of Independence’s most famous sentence and once again omitted its reference to our “Creator.” According to the text of his remarks published on the official White House website, he said: “[W]hat makes this place [America] special is not something physical. It has to do with this idea that was started by 13 colonies that decided to throw off the yoke of an empire, and said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”

The first time that something happens and is met with publicity and criticism, it could well be an accident or part of the learning curve — like the first time one bows down to foreign royalty when other U.S. presidents haven’t; or the first time one issues a public apology abroad for past (real or imagined) American sins in a way that other presidents haven’t. But the second time, the assumption must be that it’s probably deliberate — and that makes it all the more appalling. Other presidents didn’t deliberately misquote the Declaration, and they didn’t leave out (or rewrite) the words about our rights being endowed by our Creator.

NOTE Some of what is going on with Tur et al. is that she suffers from a lack of cultural literacy (see this).

NOTE II: I know I’ve already written a lot about the abominable Kristof article, but here’s a link to a good essay about it, by Judge Roy K. Altman.

The post Our brilliant and knowledgeable journalists appeared first on The New Neo.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presents itself as an innocuous Muslim civil rights group—a reputation it reinforces with litigation and claims of anti-Muslim bigotry. But the group finds itself under increasing scrutiny for alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas. Last November, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated CAIR a terrorist organization. The following month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis followed suit, citing CAIR’s being listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorism financing case.

But as other states move to sideline CAIR, California is embracing this alleged terror front. CAIR-CA, the organization’s largest statewide affiliate, is flush with taxpayer cash. In the last five years, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has rubberstamped at least $41 million in funding to the group. The vast majority of that money, it turns out, comes from the federal government. These federal dollars are flowing into CAIR-CA’s coffers even after it was the target of a recent Department of Justice investigation.

The article goes on to describe the evidence that CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood front. I’ve read about it before and find the argument quite compelling. I remember first hearing about CAIR after 9/11, raising the “Islamophobia” charge in order to somehow turn the whole thing into a defense of Muslims in the US.

More:

“You can’t look at what CAIR is doing today in isolation,” Burns said. “The government established the fact [during the trial] that a conspiracy existed among these organizations, including CAIR, to support Hamas, and that acts were taken in furtherance of that conspiracy. . . . CAIR’s role was to operate an entity out of Washington, D.C. that would serve to defend the interests of the rest of the network—against scrutiny from the media, against scrutiny from law enforcement. . . . In my opinion, the executive director, Nihad Awad, and other components of CAIR that were a part of this original infrastructure, are still operating CAIR in furtherance of an agenda to support Hamas.” …

One would think that CAIR’s ties to an Islamist terror group would make government agencies pause before providing it with public funds. But under Governor Gavin Newsom, California’s state government has seemingly never met a “marginalized group” it did not want to shower with other people’s money. CAIR-CA is rolling in tax dollars.

NOTE: I seem to be writing a lot about California today.

The post Gavin Newsom gave taxpayer money to CAIR appeared first on The New Neo.

But in all I’ve read on this, I haven’t seen anyone emphasize what’s so especially disingenuous about Carlson’s apology. As Churchill might say, he’s re-ratting. Remember this? It wasn’t so very long ago that the story came out, either; just three years (2023, prior to the 2024 election in which Tucker campaigned for Trump):

The latest filings in the case suggest Mr Carlson expressed his dislike of the outgoing US president two days before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to derail lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”

“I hate him passionately,” he added.

Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air.

“That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”

Fancy, fancy, FANCY that. And all that time, Tucker had been pretending to like Trump – and then later in 2024 he campaigned for him.

Have people forgotten this? I’m puzzled; why are so many taking his apology seriously? I can understand why the left would, because it suits their purposes. But the right? I remember the revelation of Tucker’s hatred for Trump while at Fox because it surprised me at the time, and I filed it away as “Tucker Carlson is not ever ever to be trusted.” We discovered then that all that time he’d been pretending to be for Trump he really wasn’t.

Then again, which was the actual pretense? Was he just pretending to like Trump while at Fox, or were the emails the pretense and he was just pretending to hate him when he wrote them? And then later, during the 2024 election, what was Tucker pretending? Was he just supporting Trump then in order to get supposed influence over Vance or Trump? Or had he changed his mind once more and liked Trump again?

And now what is Carlson pretending? One thing I don’t think he’s pretending now is his hatred of Jews and Israel. I think it’s very sincere. His brother Buckley is quite his equal in that, as well:

But here I am, writing about Carlson again. Why? First of all, I think that he’s a fascinating case. And secondly, although I also think he has less influence on the right than his traffic would indicate, and that he’s following trends as much as he’s creating them, I think it works in both directions and that he does indeed have some influence in spreading the hyper-Buchananesque word and that his message does find traction, especially with young men.

I’ve written several previous pieces on Tucker’s transformation (see this list). But I want to add one more event that might have fostered it: the death of his father in March of 2025. Dick Carlson was a strong and colorful figure with a life of achievement, but among other things he was a “Christian Zionist,” a group that Tucker said in November of 2025 that he “dislikes more than anybody” and which he called “a heresy” It may be that, with his father’s death, Tucker finally felt free to more fully reveal his sentiments about Christian Zionists and Israel and Jews.

The post Tucker Carlson’s apology for having supported Trump appeared first on The New Neo.

Twenty-two Sri Lankan monks returning from Thailand were arrested on Sunday at the main international airport in Sri Lanka with a record 242 pounds of powerful cannabis, officials said.

A Sri Lanka Customs spokesman said the group, returning home after a four-day vacation in the Thai capital, had Kush — a potent strain of cannabis — hidden in their luggage.

“Each carried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage,” the spokesman said, adding that the monks had been handed over to police. …

The monks were mostly young students from temples across Sri Lanka and had been on a holiday sponsored by a businessman.

I didn’t know monks went on vacation, much less on a vacation sponsored by a businessman – although perhaps these were actually student monks. Then again, this seems to have been something of a working vacation.

However, had I been keeping up with recent monk events, I probably wouldn’t have been quite as surprised by the drug bust:

In 2022, every single monk at a Buddhist temple in central Thailand was defrocked after they tested positive for methamphetamine. The monks were sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation.

In 2017, police said a Buddhist monk was arrested in Myanmar after authorities found more than 4 million meth pills in his car and in his monastery.

Meth surprises me even more than cannabis. But both go against the monks’ general prohibition on the use of any intoxicants.

The post Monk bust appeared first on The New Neo.

For example, there’s his recent trip to Algeria. It’s pretty shocking, and has caused me to think that Leo is even more to the left than his predecessor Francis, and that’s saying something:

In 1955, Algeria had over 1 million Catholics and 140,000 Jews. Today [April 17], as Pope Leo visits Algeria, there are some 8,000 Catholics in Algeria and there are fewer than 200 Jews. 99% of the population of what was one of the old territories of Christianity are Sunni Muslims.

Was Islam so popular that all the Christians and Jews decided to convert? They were persecuted, murdered, tortured and driven out by Islamic violence in our lifetimes.

Christians and Jews had lived in Algeria since Roman times. Now they’re gone.

And the perpetrators of the genocide are being praised by Pope Leo XIV.

One small quibble – I’m not sure I would call it a “genocide.” The reason is that it involved only the country of Algeria – although the effort was indeed part of a similar occurrence in other Arab and North African Muslim countries, and the impulse was and remains genocidal. So perhaps the word does apply after all, although I think in general the word is way overused.

More from the article:

Alongside paying tribute to the 19 Martyrs of Algeria, beatified in 2018, priests, monks and nuns, including 7 beheaded monks and 2 nuns murdered on the way to mass, by Islamic terrorists who later received amnesty for their crimes from the Algerian government, Pope Leo also paid tribute to the Jihadis at their memorial.

Pope Leo visited Algeria’s so-called Martyrs’ Monument, “Maqam Echahid,” located above the El Mujahid or Jihadi Museum, erected by former Islamic-Socialist terrorist dictator Houari Boumédiène who had headed the ALN, one of whose specialties was the “Smile of Kabylie” in which the tongue was pulled through a slit throat, and which was responsible for the Oran Massacre of Christians and Jews that ethnically cleansing a formerly non-Muslim city. …

Pope Leo XIV visited the Jihadi site and in his remarks claimed that “our presence here at this monument pays tribute to this history of Algeria and to the very spirit of a people who fought for the independence, dignity and sovereignty of this nation.”

Praising the Arab Muslim terrorists who had set out to eliminate Christianity from Algeria, the pontiff declared that “they lost their lives but in doing so, they gave them up for the love of their own people. May their example sustain the people of Algeria and all of us on our journey, for true freedom is not merely inherited, it is chosen anew every day.”

The “love of their own people” was based on a fervent hatred of all non-Muslims, acted out through horrible atrocities, including the deliberate murder of children.

Not collateral damage; deliberate.

Is this an example on the Pope’s part of extreme forgiveness, or of mere politics, or of fearful appeasement in hopes that more Catholics aren’t hurt by Muslims? Why was this trip even necessary, and what does the Pope think he’s accomplishing?

Rather than address what had actually happened, Pope Leo insisted on pretending that there was nothing religious about Christian clergy being massacred by Muslim terrorists, contending that “In the face of hatred and violence, they remained faithful to charity even to the point of sacrificing themselves alongside many other men and women, Christians and Muslims.” …

Visiting the Great Mosque of Algiers, erected by former terrorist dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had provided amnesty to all members of the Armed Islamic Group, the Jihadist group responsible for the murder of Christian clergy, including nuns and a bishop, Pope Leo praised the gargantuan monstrosity as a “place of prayer” from which “we can learn to respect one another, live in harmony and build a world of peace.”

Perhaps a case of extreme wishful thinking – or overwhelming belief in the power of prayer to do good and change minds?

In one of his recent statements about Pope Leo, Trump said something very interesting, something relevant that I think reflects on the difference between the “things that are Caesar’s and the things that are God’s.” It was this [emphasis mine]:

The president added that he’s “sure the pope is a great guy,” yet he suggested Pope Leo XIV was naive about geopolitics.

“The pope has to understand that this is the real world,” Trump said.

Also , from Melanie Phillips [emphasis mine]:

On several occasions, [the Pope has] expressed sorrow over the victims of repeated such massacres in Nigeria and called on the authorities to protect all citizens. But he’s never called out the Islamic world for the attempt by Islamists to exterminate Christianity itself.

While the pope attacks America for waging war against Islamists, he fails to attack Islamists for their persecution and murder of Christians. He said instead last year that people should be “a little less fearful” of Islam, and this week that “Islam is a religion of peace we can learn from.”

On his visit to Algeria, immediately after the row with Trump, he appeared to promote an alliance between Muslims and Christians by signing the “Golden Book” ceremonial guestbook in the great mosque in Algiers and declaring it “a space proper to God.”

He also praised Algeria’s “rich diversity” and spoke about the importance of reciprocal respect and respecting the dignity of every person.

He thus totally ignored Algeria’s repression of Christians. The 2026 Open Doors World Watch List says that 47 churches of the Protestant Church of Algeria have been closed by the authorities, and the list puts the country in 20th place for Christian persecution around the world.

The pope said before his Algeria trip that his aim was to build “bridges between the Christian world and the Muslim world.” But building bridges between sheep and wolves merely provides the wolves with an easier way to tear the sheep to pieces.

I can’t argue with that.

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The first is that yes, the guy is a leftist or at least left-leaning, based on earlier tweets he wrote and/or retweeted as a cardinal, which involve politics (see also this).

The second is in some way even more troubling – at least to me. The Pope seems to have gotten his scriptural context wrong. Watch this video, which explains it quite well I think. It’s not long, I’ve cued it up for a 3-and-1/2-minute segment that is the relevant part:

How could the Pope make such an error? Was he a “journalist” for the New York Times in his earlier life? No, not that and not much of anything else except growing up Catholic and answering an early calling to be a priest. The Pope’s quote was from Isaiah, a book of what Christians call the Old Testament and Jews call the Tanakh. There are differences between the two books that aren’t especially relevant to this discussion. But here’s the King James Version of the chapter, and I don’t see any way to interpret it as Pope Leo did.

Either Leo hasn’t really studied the text, or he’s distorting it to make an anti-Trump antiwar point. I’ll leave it at that.

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I don’t expect popes to be cheerleaders in most wars. I expect them to talk about praying for peace and that sort of thing. But I was shocked when Pope Leo (the first American pope) said this the other day:

“Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Leo said. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.'”

I am certainly no historian of the Catholic Church, but has any other pope ever said anything remotely like this? As far as I know, Catholic priests are often chaplains to the military, and they lead soldiers in wartime in prayer and there is no assertion that God doesn’t hear the prayers of those soldiers. There is also Catholic Just War theory, and plenty of Biblical precedent:

The Old Testament contains numerous examples of divinely sanctioned warfare. In Exodus 15:3, God is described as “a man of war,” affirming that war, under certain conditions, is not inherently evil. Judges and kings of Israel often led battles under divine mandate, as seen in the campaigns of Joshua (cf. Joshua 6) and David (cf. 2 Kings 5:19). Judas Machabeus led a successful war for freedom against the Seleucid Antiochus Epiphanes, a type of antichrist. God’s people suffered many martyrs (see 2 Machabees 6 & 7) but they also had angels fighting on their side (see 2 Machabees 3:24-26; 5:2-4). …

Church history is littered with saints who also served as soldiers; notable among them are as St. Sebastian, St. George, Bl. Charlemagne, St. Ferdinand III, and most famously, St. Joan of Arc.

These scriptural passages and saintly exemplars illustrate a foundational principle: War is not intrinsically immoral, but its morality depends on context, authority, and intention.

The passage to which Pope Leo seems to be referring is in Isaiah and here’s the context:

Dr. Marcus Peter writes that the Holy Father “might have been evoking Isaiah 1:15” when he said those words. The pastor of my church, in his homily on Palm Sunday, offered the same opinion.

But Isaiah did not say that God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.

In Isaiah Chapter One, the prophet is chastising Israel. He says Israel has become a “Sinful nation, people laden with wickedness, evil offspring, corrupt children!” (1:4). Then he says, “When you spread out your hands, I will close my eyes to you; Though you pray the more, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood!” (1:15).

Dr. Peter notes that the language in the official Vatican text is clear. “The Italian original reads, “non ascolta la preghiera di chi fa la guerra,” which closely means that God does not hear the prayer of those who make or wage war.”

Isaiah is saying, however, that God does not hear the prayers of the wicked, the evil, or the corrupt. And not everyone who wages war is evil, wicked or corrupt. I don’t think George Washington, our Founding Fathers, or Abraham Lincoln were evil, wicked or corrupt. And President Roosevelt cannot be considered evil or wicked for declaring war on a country that attacked the U.S. and on another country that was out to conquer the world.

The Pope also criticized Trump’s “a whole civilization will die” threat, either not understanding it (as I wrote about here) or perhaps considering words as awful as deeds. Nor has Pope Leo (and I include when he was Cardinal Prevost) ever had a word to say about Iran’s constant “Death to America” threats, over the near-half-century of the mullahtocracy’s existence. At least, I couldn’t find any such statement by him.

So it’s unsurprising that Trump took issue with what the Pope said, although I actually think this is one of those times when Trump would have done better to have ignored it.

The Pope also said he’s not afraid of Trump. The statement implies that this involves some sort of bravery. But of course Trump isn’t going to send out a hit man to harm the Pope. Then again, Pope Leo might well be afraid of Iran, or Muslim terrorists. After all, look at what happened to Pope John Paul II:

In 1979, The New York Times reported that Agca, whom it called “the self-confessed killer of an Istanbul newspaperman” … had described the Pope [John Paul II] as “the masked leader of the crusades” and threatened to shoot him if he did not cancel his planned visit to Turkey, which went ahead in late November 1979. The paper also said (on 28 November 1979) that the killing would be in revenge for the then still ongoing attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which had begun on 20 November, and which he blamed on the United States or Israel.

It’s a long and very convoluted story; you can find it at the link if you’re interested. It was a conspiracy, but only Agca fired and severely injured the Pope, who nevertheless later forgave him.

Back to the present – I’ve also seen quite a bit of talk in the comment sections of blogs on the right from people saying that of course it was David Axelrod’s visit that sparked Pope Leo’s comments critical of Trump. Some of them add that Axelrod is Jewish, which makes this one of those “the Jews are behind it” charges. But I doubt very much that the Pope is motivated by Axelrod or by Jews, whatever online commenters may think.

I don’t know what Pope Leo and David Axelrod discussed when they met, but they’re both from Chicago and they seem to share political worldviews anyway. My guess is that at least a portion of their discussion may have had something to do with Axelrod’s daughter. I’m speaking of this:

[Axelrod’s] first child, a daughter … was diagnosed with epilepsy at seven months of age. Axelrod describes Lauren as having had brutal seizures, requiring a constantly changing regimen of medications for some time. This left her developmentally disabled, but nevertheless mainstreamed in school. For a few years after high school, the family struggled to find programs that would keep her happy and fulfilled, but were able to place her in Misericordia, a large dormitory-style group home in 2002, where she leads an active life. As of 2021, Axelrod advocates for a flexible, mixed approach to group homes that support environments for people like his daughter, in contrast to the common approach of exclusively moving toward smaller group homes.

And of Misericordia:

Misericordia Home is a not-for-profit developmental home for persons with mild to profound developmental disabilities in Chicago, Illinois. It is run by the Sisters of Mercy and operated under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Axelrod’s daughter is now in her mid-forties and she’s been in that Catholic-run home for most of her adult life. Maybe Axelrod wanted to thank Pope Leo. Not everything is about politics.

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