The Washington, D.C., transit system has rejected an innocuous IHR advertisement that simply proclaims “History Matters!,” absurdly claiming it violates guidelines that prohibit ads “intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions,” and that “are intended to influence public policy.” ... “By any rational standard,” says IHR director Mark Weber, “the guidelines cited by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority [WMATA] do not reasonably apply to this ad. If Washington Metro sees fit to ban a 'History Matters!' display, it can justify banning anything.”
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IHR NEWS AND VIEWS
In this 45-minute talk, given at an IHR meeting, Weber reviews Donald Trump’s foreign policy record. Trump’s actual policies as president, Weber shows, have been a drastic betrayal of pledges he made before taking office. For example, Trump repeatedly spoke against US military involvement in the Syria conflict, especially without specific Congressional authorization. But as President he has stepped up the US role in the war, even ordering a missile strike against a Syria air base – a violation of both US law and international law. For President Trump, Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. Consistent with that, he threatens war against Iran. Weber recalls President Eisenhower’s foreign policy record and outlook during the 1950s, and shows how they contrast sharply with those of President Trump.
Several times each week we distribute by e-mail a timely “IHR News and Comment” roundup of news, analysis and commentary items. To subscribe, enter your email below:
At a special IHR meeting on Oct. 1, 2016, three seasoned specialists provide informed perspective, each from a different angle, on aspects of Jewish-Zionist power. Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor who has written extensively on the Jewish role in history and contemporary life, takes a close look at Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election campaign. Gilad Atzmon, who was born in Israel and now lives in Britain, reviews the Jewish role in Capitalism, Marxism, Communism, and other major intellectual-political trends in modern history. Mark Weber reviews the lives and careers of both MacDonald and Atzmon in his introductions of those two speakers. In his own address Weber provides an overview of Jewish-Zionist power and its enormous impact on American society and the world.
... What’s crucial in determining the really important policies and long-term trends of a nation are rarely individual politicians, whatever they may promise, or whatever their fans may hope or believe -- but rather the goals and agenda of those who hold real power. Serious politics is about power ... During this year’s election campaign, the two major presidential candidates, along with all other prominent U.S. politicians, have made very clear, time and again, their loyalty and devotion to Jewish-Zionist power. And that means that, no matter who wins on election day, there will not be -- and there cannot be -- any substantive shift in this country’s power alignment, and therefore no real change in basic direction or policy.
Regardless of whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins on Election Day, U.S. support for Israel and its policies of oppression will continue, says American historian Mark Weber in this interview with Iran’s Qods News Agency. That’s because both presidential candidates in this year’s bitter U.S. election campaign are entirely submissive to what the Weber calls “Jewish-Zionist power.” Here are the interview questions and Weber’s answers.
These days everyone is talking about Donald Trump, the clear Republican Party front-runner in this year’s presidential election campaign ... At our March 19 IHR meeting, the Trump phenomenon, and what it means for our future, was the focus of well-presented talks by several speakers, and a lively exchange of views during an open discussion session. This gathering – the first IHR event of the new year – brought together 40-50 men and women who also enjoyed food, drink and good fellowship. ... As we’ve reported, 2015 was an exceptionally active year for us, with productive visits to Britain, Sweden, Turkey and Mexico ... During 2015 I conducted dozens of broadcast interviews with US and overseas media, appearing as a guest on radio and television broadcasts to talk about topical and historical issues.
In the weeks since our last update newsletter of mid-July [2015] ... I’ve conducted about twenty broadcast interviews, most of them with global television broadcasters that reach vast numbers of viewers ... In August I visited Istanbul, where I was the guest of a retired professor and former UNESCO official. During my week-long stay in the Turkish metropolis, I met with writers, scholars and human rights activists. One result was a lengthy interview with a journalist for a major Istanbul daily paper ... This four-part interview, with photos, appeared on two consecutive days’ issues on the front page, and continuing on inside pages ... In the weeks since our last newsletter, we’ve organized three IHR meetings here in southern California.
... Unless and until we can break through the historical blackout, now supported even by public policy, and enable the peoples of the world to know the facts concerning international relations during the last quarter of a century, there can be no real hope for the peace, security and prosperity which the present triumphs of science and technology could make possible. The well-being of the human race, if not its very survival, is very literally dependent on the triumph of revisionism.
… Roosevelt was not the first or the last American president to lie to the people. But rarely has a major American political figure given a speech as loaded with brazen falsehood as Franklin Roosevelt did in his Navy Day address of October 27, 1941 … Roosevelt went on to reveal that he also had in his possession "another document made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a detailed plan to abolish all existing religions -- Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike" which Germany will impose "on a dominated world, if Hitler wins."
American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? ... The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere -- among those who support Israel but don't really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel - and Zionism - often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
In a remarkable but under-reported address, Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that the “immense” and “outsized” Jewish role in the US mass media and cultural life has been the single most important factor in shaping American attitudes over the past century, and in driving major cultural- political changes. “Jewish heritage has shaped who we are – all of us - as much or more than any other factor in the last 223 years. And that’s a fact," Biden told a gathering of Jewish leaders in Washington, DC.
Nine-Eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the 9/11 catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president in recent decades had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people.
The Balfour Declaration may be the most extraordinary document produced by any government in world history. It took the form of a letter from the government of the largest empire the world has even known to an international financier of the banking house of Rothschild who had been made a peer of the realm … Malcolm's belief in the Balfour Declaration as a means of bringing the United States into the war was confirmed by Samuel Landman, secretary to the Zionist leaders Weizmann and Sokolow, and later secretary of the World Zionist Organization.
... The measures taken by the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1942 aimed not only at furthering the Soviet war effort, but also at harming the German enemy even at the cost of huge losses of life among Soviet civilians. The Soviet scorched-earth strategy included the deportation of millions of men, women and children; the resettlement and reestablishment of thousands of factories; the withdrawal of almost the entire railway rolling stock; the annihilation of raw material depots; the removal of most of the agricultural machinery, cattle and grain stocks; the systematic destruction, burning and blowing up of the immovable infrastructure, inventories of all kinds, factory buildings, mines, residential areas, public buildings, public records, and even cultural monuments; and the intentional starvation of the civilian population which remained behind to face German occupation.
During the past half year [Jan.-June 2015], we’ve been exceptionally busy and productive. In April and May, I addressed important meetings of traditionalists, nationalists and “identitarians” in Britain, Sweden and Mexico ... The largest of the three recent meetings I addressed was the “International Identitarian Congress” in Guadalajara, Mexico. More than 200 men and women gathered at a spacious hacienda for presentations by speakers from Argentina, Spain, Germany, Italy, Britain, Mexico and the US. I gave two well-received talks at this impressively organized gathering ... I've conducted more interviews in recent months with US and overseas media, appearing many times as a guest on radio and television broadcasts to talk about topical and historical issues.
This past year [2014] has been a particularly busy and productive one for us. For one thing, we have revived and expanded our book distribution and publishing operations ... During the past year we organized nine IHR meetings ... In London, Budapest and Paris, I met with activists, writers, and publishers ... Throughout the past year, we continued to broaden our outreach and strengthen our impact, not only here in the US, but overseas as well ... Dozens of IHR talks, interviews and lectures have been made into independently produced videos that are available online.
... The ever more obvious symptoms of social decay are inevitable in a nation as unhealthy as today’s America. We understand that a nation guided by false principles, wishful thinking and unrealistic notions about society and history cannot and will not survive ... On this anniversary of American independence, it is altogether fitting that we recall the sacrifices and the outlook of the men who acted boldly out of principle, and risked everything in following the dictate of their conscience.
How accurate is this hallowed portrayal of America's role in World War II? As we shall see, it does not hold up under close examination ... The three Allied leaders accomplished what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany, Italy and Japan of conspiring to achieve: world domination ... Presidential deception to justify war did not start with George W. Bush. Americans who express admiration for the US role in World War II, and for Franklin Roosevelt's presidential leadership, have little moral right to complain when presidents follow his example and lead the country into war by breaking the law, subverting the Constitution, and lying to the people.
This recorded address by Adolf Hitler was distributed on 50,000 phonograph discs during Germany’s fiercely contested national parliament election campaign of July 1932, in which his National Socialist movement emerged as the country’s largest party. This “Appeal to the Nation” is similar in content and tone to many other speeches he gave in 1932, which for Germans was a year of mass unemployment, economic paralysis, and a broken, unresponsive political system. Translation of the complete text, with a foreword by Mark Weber. This historic address is particularly interesting during this 2016 US presidential election campaign, with media commentators claiming that Donald Trump’s appeal and campaign style is similar to that of the German leader.
A man who made headlines during the 1990s as a controversial Jewish "Holocaust denier" has broken 18 years of silence to speak publicly for the first time about the challenges, achievements and mishaps of that era, and his secretive career since then. David Cole - now 45 years old - was in good form as he addressed a spirited, well-attended IHR meeting ... His lively, articulate presentation was packed with colorful anecdotes, humorous asides and eye-opening insights ... He adopted a new identity ("David Stein") and in 1998 began a career as a filmmaker, Republican Party activist and conservative commentator.
We’ve successfully fought back a malicious campaign by an “Israel first” politician that shut down our credit card processing for nearly three months. Earlier this year a New York state legislator with a well-documented record of bigotry and support for Zionist terrorism launched a public campaign to shut down credit card processing by the IHR and several other organizations he calls “hate groups.” MasterCard, a global credit card company, backed this campaign. After considerable effort, we were finally able to restore our credit card processing on Dec. 11, 2013. To everyone whose backing enabled us to carry on during this difficult period, or who sent messages of support, Thank You!
Writers, filmmakers and scholars from the US, France, Italy and other countries, together with Iranian cinema specialists, journalists, officials and others, gathered in north Tehran for a four-day “Hollywoodism” conference to critically examine the often harmful social-political impact of the US film industry, and to discuss how to counter it ... During this visit I gained a greater understanding of this ancient but vibrant nation of 75 million, which Israel and its allies in the US have demonized and threatened with military attack.
At an IHR meeting in southern California, three seasoned speakers provided informed perspective on Iran and Iranian society, the threats of war by Israel and the US, the impact of the US-organized sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic, and the prospects for military conflict. Paul Sheldon Foote, a California professor with years of experience in the Middle East, and Art Olivier, a filmmaker and former mayor in southern California, joined IHR director Mark Weber at the spirited gathering.
... Even many of those who readily acknowledge the tremendous influence of American film and television seem not to fully comprehend the formidable scope of the power behind Hollywood, or the outlook and agenda of those who wield that power ... Hollywood, together with the rest of the Jewish-Zionist dominated US media, sensationalizes and distorts current events, systematically falsifies history, promotes debased “entertainment” and perverse cultural standards, and makes possible the Jewish-Zionist hold on American political life ...
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, based in Los Angeles, is one of the most influential Jewish organizations in the world ... Although it claims to promote "tolerance," and makes a pretense of concern for humanity, the Center's real agenda is a narrowly Jewish-Zionist one. The Wiesenthal Center is a staunch supporter of Israel and its Jewish supremacist regime. It fervently defends Israel’s policies of oppression, occupation, dispossession, and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews.
... In Andernach about 50,000 [German] prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement ... I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty.
Over the centuries, hostility against Jews has repeatedly erupted in terrible violence. Again and again, Jews have been driven out of countries where they’d been living. Why does anti-Semitism exist? And why has rage against Jews broken out, again and again, in the most varied nations, eras and cultures? ... Anti-Semitism is not a mysterious “disease.” As Herzl and Weizmann suggested, and as history shows, what is often called anti-Semitism is the natural and understandable attitude of people toward a minority with particularist loyalties that wields greatly disproportionate power for its own interests, rather than for the common good.
Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War to free the slaves. While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad.
... I’m going to try to extract from my experience certain basic sort of tactics that I think the Jewish lobby has used over the years pertaining to my particular situation ... The first and major tactic that I discovered in their attack on me was their reliance on lies -- just straight-up lies. There’s no other way to describe it, just telling lies. Many of the categories that I will enumerate overlap, and many of them could also come under this general rubric of telling lies. But I think that if one had to isolate a single tactic, it was a tactic of telling lies. I think they’ve elevated telling lies to a very high artistic form.
... How did America come to war against Germany, the heart of Europe? Could not Roosevelt have acted as a great peacemaker by mediating the Danzig conflict in 1939, instead of instigating the Poles against Germany? ... The American President could very possibly have saved the peace in 1939. Instead, he fed the American people inventions about a hypothetical German plot to take over the United States and the whole world.
Revisionism as applied to World War II and its origins (as also for previous wars) has the general function of bringing historical truth to an American and a world public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda ... Revisionism brings to the artificial frenzy of daily events and day-to-day propaganda, the cool but in the last analysis glorious light of historical truth. Such truth is almost desperately needed in today's world.
… That atrocities were committed by the Allies against Germans and non-combatant civilians on both the Eastern and Western fronts is not often acknowledged. In large measure this reflects the fact that "victors write the history." … POWs, whether Germans or Axis allies, were often shot out of hand, or shortly after they had been questioned ... When the Red Army invaded German territory in late 1944, civilians who had been unable to flee before their advance were condemned to undergo a regime of ferocious brutality. At such towns as Goldap, Gumbinnen, and Nemmersdorf, even children were raped before being murdered by Russian soldiers.
... As long as the power of what Desmond Tutu calls “the very powerful” Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system and the American media, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace. That’s why no task is more important or pressing than to identify, counter and break this power.
Among the highlights of my nine-day visit to Iran was a guest appearance on an influential prime-time public affairs television show, a memorable meeting with the nation’s President, and a well-received lecture of more than two hours on “The Zionist Lobby in America," given to a gathering of several hundred university students.
... Fascism was touted by Mussolini as a unique combination of thought and action, yet fascism was still seeking an ideology after the Second World War was over. The roots of fascism are many and complex. The fascist leadership, notably Mussolini, admitted the multi-faceted influences of liberalism, marxism, syndicalism, risorgimento, socialism, catholicism and nationalism on their ideology.
To deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression, both the US and German governments launched innovative and ambitious programs. Although President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” measures helped only marginally, the Third Reich’s much more focused and comprehensive policies proved remarkably effective. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was flourishing. And while Roosevelt’s record in dealing with the Depression is pretty well known, the remarkable story of how Hitler tackled the crisis is not widely understood or appreciated.
... During his lifetime he made a mark not only as a pioneering global aviator, but also as a prize-winning author, environmentalist and anti-war activist. Given the scarcity of truly heroic Americans during the past century, he towers as a man of exemplary accomplishment and courage. He deserves to be remembered today not only as an authentic American hero, but also because much of what he wrote and said is relevant in our own age. Indeed, some of his remarks have proven to be prophetic.
… In August 1941 Hitler permitted a Red Cross delegation to visit the camp for Soviet POWs in Hammerstadt. It is these contacts that resulted in an appeal to the Soviet government, requesting that it should send food parcels for our officers and men. We are prepared to fulfill and comply with the norms of the Geneva convention, Moscow said in its reply, but sending food in the given situation and under fascist control is the same as making presents to the enemy … How great was Stalin's hatred for those who had found themselves behind enemy lines. It made no difference: who, where, how and why? Even the dead were considered to be criminals.
"The Sound of Music" is perhaps the most popular American musical picture ever produced. But whatever its merits as entertainment, the film's presentation of history is deceitful. In particular, its portrayal of the 1938 union or Anschluss of Austria with the German Reich is a gross distortion of historical reality.
... America today is a society in denial. The country's political, cultural and intellectual leadership -- both liberal and conservative -- denies social reality and ignores the historical record, and therefore inevitably betrays the interests of the people, leading America down a path that means ever greater anxiety and ever more rapid decline ... The crying need in our nation today is candor, courage and truthfulness -- not childish slogans, simplistic nostrums, or wishful thinking about a mythologized past or a utopian future -- presented by media personalities who are little more than entertainers.
Fraudulent quotations attributed to Hitler and other Third Reich leaders have been widely circulated for years. Such quotes are often used by polemicists -- of both the left and the right -- to discredit their ideological adversaries by showing that Nazis held similar views. Here's a look at a few of the many remarks falsely attributed to Hitler and other top Nazis.
Websense company, a major US supplier of web content filtering software, says that the Institute for Historical Review promotes "racism and hate," and blocks access to the IHR website, on the basis of an unfair standard that deceives the public and its own customers. In a letter to the IHR, Websense Senior Legal Counsel Eric Proul makes clear that the company has no objective basis for its claim that the IHR promotes "racism and hate."
... In 1940, an obscure cypher clerk at the American Embassy in London came across documents which, in his judgment and that of many reputable historians subsequently, proved conclusively that Roosevelt both directly and through his agents was engaged in activities designed to foment a war and eventually to compel American participation in it. I was that cypher clerk ... The new basic law of nations requires only one clause, very simply: "It pays to be on the winning side."
This essay focuses on Roosevelt's secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. It deals particularly with his efforts to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany in 1938 and 1939. Franklin Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war that had already engulfed Europe, he bears a grave responsibility for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time. This paper relies heavily on a little-known collection of secret Polish documents that fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in September 1939. These revealing documents also confirm the crucial role of Jewish power and influence on US foreign policy during these years.
... If I'm known for anything as a historian, apart from being a pain in the neck, it's because I uncover things. And uncovering things does not necessarily mean you go into the archives and see something and say: "Look at this, this is something quite extraordinary." If you go into the archives long enough, ten or twenty years, you become what I would call a "gap-ologist" ... Now what a scandalous statement that is! Here's the one country, Germany, trying to prevent anwar and the other country -- Roosevelt, neutral -- trying to fan the flames of anti-German feeling to fuel the war. Yet it is the Germans who are called the criminals, and the Americans who do the prosecuting.
Video based on interview with Mark Weber by Daniel Davis, host of the "Beyond 50" radio show. The United States, says Weber, has changed from a republic focused on its own prosperity and well-being to a globally intrusive military power. This worldwide military presence reflects an entrenched American view that the US is a social-political model for all nations, and therefore has a right, based on perceived moral superiority, to intervene everywhere. He traces the evolution of this outlook from the fateful Spanish-American War of 1898, and the false pretexts and promises used since then to justify wars. Going to war to fight "evil" or "terrorism," says Weber, is a recipe for endless strife and conflict.
... We hear a lot about terrible crimes committed by Germans during World War II, but we hear very little about crimes committed against Germans. Germany's defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, "ethnic cleansing," and mass killing.
Germany's enemies maintain today [1940] that Adolf Hitler is the greatest disturber of peace known to history, that he threatens every nation with sudden attack and oppression, that he has created a terrible war machine in order to bring misery and devastation everywhere. At the same time they intentionally conceal an all-important fact: they themselves drove the leader of the German people finally to draw the sword. They themselves compelled him to seek to obtain at last by the use of force that which he had been striving to gain by persuasion from the beginning: the security of his country ... A quick look at the most important events provides incontrovertible proof of this.
The news that I would be addressing the Institute of Historical Review came to some people as, well, news. It was mentioned in the Jewish newspaper Forward and on the Zionist Wall Street Journal OnLine. The editors of two conservative magazines called and wrote me to express their concern that I might damage my reputation, such as it is, by speaking to "Holocaust deniers." ... In short, the Holocaust has become a device for exempting Jews from normal human obligations. It has authorized them to bully and blackmail, to extort and oppress. This is all quite irrational, because even if six million Jews were murdered during World War II, the survivors are not entitled to commit the slightest injustice.
... A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to any country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish community ... Zionist Jews and their non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double standard. Jewish-Zionist organizations, along with their non-Jewish allies, support one social-political ideology for Israel and the world Jewish community, and a completely different one for the United States and other non-Jewish countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is evil and bad for non-Jews, while at the same time they vigorously support ethnic nationalism -- that is, Zionism -- for Jews.
Jews played a highly disproportionate and probably decisive role in the infant Bolshevik regime, effectively dominating the Soviet government during its early years ... With the notable exception of Lenin, most of the leading Communists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews ... The US ambassador in Russia warned in a dispatch to Washington: "The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution."
America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives ... General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."
.. By supporting Israel and its policies, the United States betrays not only its own national interests, but the principles it claims to embody and defend. The only country in the world that has a nuclear weapons arsenal, that occupies territory of its neighbors, and which is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions - is Israel. In fact, if the United States were to hold Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq, Serbia, and other countries, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and American troops would seize Israel's leaders and punish them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By Tomislav Sunic
So if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack? Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush's decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America's Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush -- who was already fervently committed to Israel -- resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel's chief regional enemies.
NEWS AND COMMENT
... Now, Americans’ right to boycott is under attack once again — thanks to a vicious anti-boycott bill making its way through the Senate. In particular, it appears to target the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS is an international movement calling on individuals, institutions, and governments to boycott Israeli products until it ends its occupation of Palestinian lands. The boycott is explicitly nonviolent and is supported by activists, celebrities, faith-based groups, and political and social justice organizations around the world. The proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act would make it a felony for Americans to support BDS, with a penalty of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison. Unfortunately, the bill enjoys bipartisan support ...
... The United States generally shields Israel from UN criticism. That leaves the most recent peaceful Palestinian-led tactic — BDS, or the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, which was initiated twelve years ago. It seeks to build an international boycott of Israel, its private and public emissaries, and its products ... BDS’s advances worry Israel and its most uncritical U.S. supporters. Benjamin Netanyahu has called the movement an “existential threat.” Early this year AIPAC (America’s main pro-Israel lobby) has actually helped draft a bill (S. 720), The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which mandates civil and criminal penalties for participating in an anti-Israel boycott.
The history of the Statue of Liberty became the focus of a back-and-forth between Stephen Miller, an aide to President Donald Trump, and CNN's Jim Acosta during the White House Press Briefing on Wednesday. The broadcast journalist had argued that the President's support of a bill that would place new limits on legal immigration did not jibe with the spirit embodied by the monument, as expressed by the Emma Lazarus poem that has become synonymous with Lady Liberty ...The poem was engraved onto a plaque placed on the pedestal in 1903 — nearly two decades after the statue was unveiled ... Emma Lazarus was tapped to write the famous sonnet “The New Colossus” for a Statue of Liberty fundraiser ... inspired by her work with Russian Jews detained by immigration officials on Ward Island ...
... In reality, Dunkirk is a nationalist masterpiece. The Anglo-American Nolan (his father is English, his mother American) is an English nationalist, a reactionary elitist slightly to the left of Viscount Castlereagh and slightly to the right of the Duke of Wellington. ... In reality, Dunkirk is probably the least anti-Fascist British WWII movie ever. Nolan never mentions “the Germans,” much less “the Nazis.” They are just “the enemy.” Branagh, star of a film about a shameless war of English aggression in Europe, Henry V, is there to remind you that, no matter what the current ideological justifications, going over to the Low Countries to kick the Continentals around is just something the English periodically do.
By three to one, British people think the British Empire is something to be proud of rather than ashamed of – they also tend to think it left its colonies better off, and a third would like it to still exist / Britain has long found it difficult to evaluate its former empire. Imperial nostalgia on television has been shamed by historians, and modern prime ministers have expressed ‘deep sorrow’ for Britain’s role in slavery – but they have also called on British people to celebrate the legacy of the Empire. Among the British public, feelings tend to be positive. A new YouGov survey finds that most think the British Empire is more something to be proud of (59 percent) rather than ashamed of (19 percent), while 23 percent don't know.
“1944” (out now on DVD and Digital) is yet another film that reminds us that the Pearl Harbor to D-Day to Hiroshima/Nagasaki narrative we all know barely scratches the surface of the story of World War II ... The movie follows Estonian troops fighting on both sides from July’s battle of the Tannenberg Line to the Red Army’s occupation of the Sorve peninsula at the end of November. It’s a Civil War tale, with neighbors and brothers fighting against each other for a cause that neither really supports. The movie was made by Estonian director Elmo Nüganen and it now stands as the country’s biggest domestic box office success.
For seven months in 1944, Estonian, Latvian and German Waffen SS troops fiercely defended the strategically important Narva Isthmus against Soviet forces. This wartime newsreel shows Estonian and Latvian infantrymen in combat, artillery and rocket launchers in action, flaks guns firing at Soviet aircraft, tanks moving up for deployment, and captured Soviet prisoners. (Latvian-language narration. Runtime: 3:18 mins.) Some 124,000 Waffen SS men fought against 200,000 Soviet troops in this northern sector of the Eastern Front. The Soviets had about 100 tanks, against 32 for the defenders, and 800 combat aircraft, against 137 for the defenders. Casualties were heavy, with 68,000 for the defenders (including 14,000 dead or missing), and 480,000 on the Soviet side (including 100,000 dead or missing).
In this cogent presentation Dena Takruri tells about Israel’s large, sprawling “separation wall.” Israel says it built this wall for security reasons -- to keep Palestinians from the occupied West Bank out of Israel. So why does 85 percent of the wall run inside the West Bank, rather than on the border with Israel? Takruri also explains how the wall has affected Palestinian communities. Runtime: 3:52 mins.
Federal authorities believe the 18-year-old man accused of making more than 100 threats to Jewish institutions earlier this year was paid by someone to make some of those threats, recently unsealed court documents reveal. The man advertised his bomb threat "services" through a major so-called "Dark Web" marketplace recently shutdown by the Justice Department, according to court records. Michael Kadar, a dual American-Israeli citizen, was arrested in March and later charged for his alleged involvement in the wave of bomb and active shooter threats that rattled Jewish community centers, schools and other institutions across the United States and abroad.
Tony Blair should be tried as a war criminal over the Iraq War, according to a third of Britons surveyed in a new poll. Carried out on the same day that the High Court blocked a bid by a former chief of the Iraqi Army’s staff to bring a private prosecution against the former prime minister, the YouGov survey asked 3,264 adults representative of the population in Britain to pick one of five statements that best summed up their views about him in respect of the Iraq War. A third – 33 per cent – of those taking part in the survey chose “Mr Blair knowingly misled Parliament and the public and should be tried as a war criminal”. The number of respondents who said Mr Blair should be tried as a war criminal was higher among those aged above 65, with 42 per cent choosing that answer compared with only 26 per cent of those aged 18 to 24.
Britain’s High Court has blocked a bid by an Iraqi ex-general to prosecute former Prime Minister Tony Blair for invading Iraq in 2003. Gen. Abdulwaheed Shannan Al Rabbat’s case centered around the concept that a “crime of aggression” would be recognized under English law. But the High Court said that while the concept exists under international law, it does not exist in domestic law right now. The former army general’s lawyers said in a statement Monday that the judgment “sets a dangerous precedent in times of global insecurity,” and called on Parliament to enact a law making accountability clear in the future. The United States and Britain were part of a coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003, following accusations that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction.
... Among its conclusions the [official British 'Chilcot'] report says that there was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein; that the British “chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted”; that military action “was not a last resort” ... It illuminates once more, but very clearly, the yawning gulf between what [prime minister Tony] Blair was saying publicly in the year before the war to Parliament, and even to his own Cabinet, and what he was saying in private to Bush ... What Blair knew well was that the Bush administration was determined to destroy Saddam, whether he possessed weapons of mass destruction or not. The purpose of the war was regime change for its own sake, even if in defiance of international law and the United Nations.
The left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center has come under fire for its labeling of a Christian nonprofit organization -- dedicated to defending "religious freedom, sanctity of life, and marriage and family" -- as a hate group. But the Alliance Defending Freedom isn't the only conservative, traditional-value organization the SPLC smears as a hate group. Fox News found at least six other groups that are conservative and explicitly nonviolent but branded as hate organizations by the SPLC ... The organization's list also includes many conservative groups that -- while socially controversial -- are peaceful organizations that say they do not advocate hate or violence.
A new King's College London study suggests that genes account for nearly 50 per cent of the differences between whether children are socially mobile or not. One of the best predictors of children's educational attainment is their parents' educational level and in the past this association was thought to be environmental, rather than influenced by genes. Parents with higher levels of educational achievement, for example, are thought to access greater academic and social resources, enabling them to pass on better opportunities for their children than less educated parents. This new King's study, published today in Psychological Science, is the first to find substantial genetic influence on children's social mobility, which could have important implications for reducing educational inequality.
A US clothing company has come under fire after T-shirts appeared online featuring swastikas in a move aimed at reclaiming the symbol as one of "love". The attempt to rebrand the Nazi emblem as a symbol of "peace" was criticised on social media as the public refused to support the campaign. Days after the design appeared, it was replaced with an "anti-swastika" print. The swastika is an ancient symbol said to have represented good fortune in almost every culture in the world ... “The swastika is coming back, together with peace, together with love, together with respect, together with Freedom," the company said in a video posted on Facebook ...
In the Western world the swastika is synonymous with fascism, but it goes back thousands of years and has been used as a symbol of good fortune in almost every culture in the world ... By the beginning of the 20th Century there was a huge fad for the swastika as a benign good luck symbol. In his book The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? US graphic design writer Steven Heller shows how it was enthusiastically adopted in the West as an architectural motif, on advertising and product design ... “Coca-Cola used it. Carlsberg used it on their beer bottles. The Boy Scouts adopted it and the Girls' Club of America called their magazine Swastika ...,” he says. It was used by American military units during World War One, and it could be seen on RAF planes as late as 1939.
The police charged far-right extremist leader Marian Magát with Holocaust denial, referring to his comments on a social network. If he is found guilty, he may spend up to eight years in prison, the public-service broadcaster RTVS reported. Despite the accusations, Magát still wants to run for the government post in Žilina Region in the November regional elections. Magát is one of the founders of Vzdor (Resistance) Kysuce, which the Interior Ministry classifies as an extremist group. In last year’s general election he unsuccessfully ran on the slate of People’s Party – Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), led by Marian Kotleba ... Magát does not conceal his anti-semitism or admiration of Adolf Hitler, whom he has described as peacemaker and a person with his heart on the right place.
... Just like changes in economic conditions, changes in the global status and power of nations are not always immediately apparent, especially to the politicians and the generals who yield that power and to the journalists who cover them ... From that perspective, there is an eerie resemblance between the resistance of officials, lawmakers and pundits in London 1949 and that of their contemporary counterparts in Washington 2017 to adjust their nation’s foreign policies to the changing global balance of power ... The neoconservatives and liberal internationalists who bash President Trump’s foreign policies seem to give a bad name to the term Chutzpah. They not only fail to recognize that Washington’s global power has eroded, they also refuse to admit that they were responsible in large part for these changes.
Today marks the 72nd anniversary of U.S. President Harry Truman’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bombing of Nagasaki took place three days later [August 9] in 1945. Some 90,000-166,000 individuals were killed in Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bombing killed 39,000-80,000 human beings ... There isn’t much to be said about those unspeakable atrocities against civilians that hasn’t been said many times before. The US government never needed atomic bombs to commit mass murder, but it dropped them anyway. (Remember this when judging the official US moralistic stance toward Iran.) ... Conservatives, ironically, were among the earliest critics of Truman’s mass murder. It’s also worth noting that the top military leaders of the day opposed the use of atomic bombs.
The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate ... The fact that Japan had 68 cities destroyed in the summer of 1945 poses a serious challenge for people who want to make the bombing of Hiroshima the cause of Japan’s surrender. The question is: If they surrendered because a city was destroyed, why didn’t they surrender when those other 66 cities were destroyed? ... The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive – it foreclosed both of Japan’s options – while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.
In this quick-paced, hour-long session, Mark Weber speaks on the calamitous course of US foreign policy over the past century, the deceitful, two-faced agenda of influential Jewish-Zionist groups such as the ADL, President Trump’s erratic and confusing foreign policy, and more. In this “Daily Kenn” broadcast, July 26, 2017, the IHR director is the guest of host Kenn Gividen – 2004 Libertarian candidate for governor in Indiana -- and co-host Charles Edward Lincoln. Weber also talks about the harmful consequences the US-USSR alliance during World War II, and of the “Judeo-centric” view of history that prevails in today’s America. In his dissection of the “big lie” claim that Hitler tried to “take over the world,” Weber cites the work of such historians as Patrick J. Buchanan.
... “Dunkirk,” then, is that rare creation in 2017: a film with no R-rated imagery, no pornographic language, no torrid love scenes, no PC jargon, no ideological manipulation of the past. Rather, it thrusts us back to 1940, to a more heroic time when there were real heroes who defended their country not because they wanted glory, but because it was their duty. “Dunkirk” stands out like an anomaly amongst current cinema: it reminds us of who we once were as a people and the deeds we once achieved, and of an English (and Western) culture and way of life, a civilization, quickly disappearing. And, at times, it seems to ask us if we will ever again possess that courage and that faith.
Two Chinese tourists were arrested in Berlin for making Hitler salutes outside the German parliament on Saturday. Criminal proceedings have been started against the middle-aged men for using symbols from a banned organisation. The pair have been released on bail of 500 euros ($600) each. Germany has strict laws on hate speech and symbols linked to Hitler and the Nazis. The men - aged 36 and 49 - could face a fine or a prison sentence of up to three years, according to police. The same charges are most commonly used to prosecute members of the far right. A police spokeswoman told AFP news agency that the men could leave the country during the investigation and that if a fine is handed down, the bail money they had already paid would probably cover it.
President Trump seems to be impatiently racing toward at least one disastrous war. Maybe two. The big question is who will be first? North Korea or Iran? ... Iran, which along with North Korea and Russia will face new sanctions imposed by Congress and expected to be signed into law by Trump, is also in President Trump’s crosshairs. He was reportedly furious over his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s certifying that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear deal – even though Iran was in compliance – and he seems determined to push a confrontation ... Although Trump’s bombastic rhetoric on Iran and North Korea has been pretty consistent, the American people voted Trump because he was seen as the less likely of the two candidates to get the US into a major war.
... North Korea is not the only potential adversary with whom our relations are rapidly deteriorating. After Congress voted overwhelmingly for new sanctions on Russia last week, and Trump agreed to sign the bill that strips him of authority to lift the sanctions without Hill approval, Russia abandoned its hopes for a rapprochement with Trump's America ... While wary of a war with North Korea, Washington seems to be salivating for a war with Iran. Indeed, Trump's threat to declare Iran in violation of the nuclear arms deal suggests a confrontation is coming ... Among the reasons Trump routed his Republican rivals in 2016 is that he seemed to share an American desire to look homeward. Yet, today, our relations with China and Russia are as bad as they have been in decades, while there is open talk of war with Iran and North Korea.
... The president has many faults and is a lousy judge of character. But he was absolutely right to read the riot act to the military brass for daring to ask for a very large troop and budget increase for the stalemated Afghan War that has cost $1 trillion to date. Of course, the unfortunate generals are not really to blame. They have been forced by the last three presidents to fight a pointless war at the top of the world that lacks any strategy, reason or purpose – and with limited forces ... Sixteen years later, the US is still chasing shadows in the Hindu Kush Mountains, rightly known to history as ‘Graveyard of Empires.’
... The basis for Netanyahu’s diplomatic activism is his assessment that America is growing weaker and gradually withdrawing from the Middle East ... This is Netanyahu’s message: Anyone who wants to support Israel must accept it as it is, with the occupation and the settlements. Anyone who accepts Israel only in the pre-1967 lines, like the European Union, is “crazy” and not wanted here ... The main thing is for Germany to keep giving Israel the submarines that lend force to Netanyahu’s intensifying threats against Iran (“anyone who threatens our existence puts his own existence at risk,” “threaten destruction to anyone who threatens to destroy us”). And Germany’s support can always be bolstered with more Holocaust memorial ceremonies, as Netanyahu did this week in France and Hungary.
... The networks were to explode small incendiary bombs in American installations in Egypt, presumably to set off a chain of mutual recriminations to spoil the budding Eisenhower-Nasser courtship. After completing their sabotage of American installations, the same networks next were to bomb public places in Cairo and Alexandria ... Members of the Israeli sabotage network took firebombs to the Cairo railway station and to movie theaters in Cairo and Alexandria ... The 1954 Israeli plot and cover-up that set in motion events leading up to the 1956 Suez War became known as the "Haessek Habish" (Ugly Affair) ... Few American journalists know, or will admit to knowing, about this first detected instigation by the Israel Defense Forces and intelligence agencies of anti-American incidents in preparation for an attack by Israel on its Arab neighbors.
Some European countries, namely Italy, Germany, France and the UK, are facing the so-called "substitution of nations," where the national ethnical majority is disappearing physically and biologically, and is being substituted by migrants, according to a recent report. Sputnik Italy discussed the issue with Daniele Scalea, the author of the report. The recent report of the Italian-based Machiavelli Center of Political and Strategic Studies (Centro studi politici e strategici Machiavelli), "How immigration is changing Italian demographics" has revealed that a number of European countries are facing the "biological and physical extinction" of their national ethnicities. Ethnic majorities in such countries as Italy, Germany, France and the UK, are gradually turning into ethnic minorities, while being "substituted" by incoming migrants.
Ernst Zundel, a far-right activist who rose to notoriety over decades of public neo-Nazi activity in Canada and the U.S. before being deported back to his native Germany on Holocaust denial charges, has died. He was 78 ... Born in Germany in 1939, Zundel emigrated to Canada in 1958 ... After leaving Canada, he moved to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee ... In 2003 he was deported back to Canada for alleged immigration violations. After he arrived in Toronto, he was arrested and held in detention ... He was deported to Germany, where he was being sought for Holocaust denial ... Zundel, who portrayed himself as a peaceful campaigner being denied the right to free speech, was convicted in Mannheim in 2007 of 14 counts of inciting hatred for engaging in years of anti-Semitic activities and sentenced to five years in prison.
Ernst Zundel, a German-born publisher and author, was held for seven years behind bars, first in Canada and then in Germany, for his peaceful expression of non-conformist views. From February 2003 to March 2010, he was the western world’s most prominent “prisoner of conscience.” He is known worldwide as a publicist, organizer and defender of free speech, and as author countless booklets, newsletters and essays. He has been a major figure in the Holocaust revisionist movement.
The weekly news magazine Der Spiegel has decided to omit a controversial book from its bestseller list. Der Spiegel's deputy chief editor Susanne Beyer explained in a statement on Tuesday [July 25] that Rolf Peter Sieferle's collection of essays, "Finis Germania," (Latin, translating as The End of Germany), a book she had previously described as expressing "far-right views, anti-Semitism and historical revisionism," should not be further promoted through the magazine. A week ago, "Finis Germania" was listed as the sixth bestselling nonfiction book in the printed version of Der Spiegel. However, the book, criticized for its far-right conspiracy theories, was not to be found in the current issue's ranking.
There’s a group of artists who most of the general public has yet to know exist. These are highly skilled painters, sculptors, and draftsmen trained in ateliers or academies who are not embarrassed to utter the word “beautiful” at a time when that word is generally scorned by the contemporary art establishment ... These artists value quality over quantity, sincerity over cynicism, intrinsic value over marketing hype, and the Western tradition of fine art over the avant garde fixation on newness. In an ironic twist of history, these traditional artists are perhaps the most radical and marginalized group of artists living today ... This resurgence is happening now after more than one hundred years of deskilling that led to the deterioration of visual art standards, which started when all of the “-isms” arose, such as modernism, postmodernism, and so forth.
These are difficult times across Europe ... Foremost among such deep rumblings are the anxieties of the European publics on matters to do with immigration, identity and Islam ... While politicians talk about immigration solely in terms of the benefits it brings — and clearly it does bring some — the public are understandably concerned that the downsides of migration are not merely ignored but actively covered up ... Europeans are united in a sense that the uncontrolled movement of people into their continent, especially illegally, brings significant problems. Another is they disapprove of the way the EU has dealt with these challenges, and are willing to withdraw support from it and bring matters like borders back to a national level of control if the EU does tackle the issue properly.
.. .. Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally. But was it worth it? Her answer - and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s - is a resounding No. They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It's not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger ... They feel, in a word that leaps out time and time again, 'betrayed' ... "Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today." ... “Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,” wrote an ex-Durham Light Infantryman, “and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.”
... The extraordinary fact is that Germany no longer exists anymore as the nation-state of the Germans — as the political expression of the German people. The very notion of the German nation was deconstructed long before the Muslim invasion started ... These are the results of years and years of re-education after the horrors of National Socialism. First the Germans were obliged to see themselves as “Europeans.” Then their country became a land of nowhere, a culturally and historically undefined entity, open for everybody, governed by a political class which already substituted “Europeanism” with “universalism.” As a German, I am forced to contemplate the possibility that maybe it is too late — and there is no way back.
[ Text of address given in Stockholm, April 2015 ] ... In spite of its relative economic prosperity, Europe today is in greater danger than ever before in its history. Far worse than the consequences of military defeat, a terrible war, or a devastating plague, Europe is threatened with cultural, ethnic and racial extinction ... The current malaise of the West is the entirely predictable result of policies based on the premises about life and society of the prevailing egalitarian-individualist ideology ... We must not permit intimidation, malicious smears or threats to keep us from affirming what is true, and doing what is right, strengthened by the confidence that future generations will respect us, and history will vindicate us.
The cameras shudder as blinding light flashes across the earth. Deformed white clouds balloon and mutate from the force of the nuclear test explosions. These are some of the images captured in raw footage of bomb tests carried out by the United States between 1945 and 1962 in Nevada and the Marshall Islands. For the first time, the footage is available in an online archive after some of about 10,000 nuclear testing films were restored, scrutinized and declassified in a project by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The bulk of the videos, some only seconds long and others just over seven minutes, had been stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
... William J. Perry is 89 now, at the tail end of one of his generation’s most illustrious careers in national security ... The former U.S. secretary of Defense, a trained mathematician who served or advised nearly every administration since Eisenhower ... has set out on an urgent pilgrimage ... Nukes are suddenly — insanely, by Perry’s estimate — once again a contemporary nightmare, and an emphatically ascendant one ... “Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War,” Perry said in an interview in his Stanford office, “and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.” It is a turn of events that has an old man newly obsessed with a question: Why isn’t everyone as terrified as he is?
... I believe that we are now on the verge of a new nuclear arms race, and that we are drifting back to a Cold War mentality. Moreover, I believe that the risk of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War — and yet our public is blissfully unaware of the new nuclear dangers they face ... I believe that it is time to take a deep breath and ask what we really should be doing on this issue that affects the very survival of our civilization. We should not accept that diplomacy is incapable of reducing the present antagonism between the U.S. and Russia, any more than we accepted that it was impossible to use diplomacy with Iran. We have many common interests with Russia. Even as we confront Moscow on disputed issues, we must work together on others such as preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
... Among Russians, there are signs that people are starting to see him more as an "effective manager" and a symbol of Soviet-Russian power. According to a poll by the state-backed VTsIOM polling agency, the results of which were published on July 20, "more than half of Russians (62 percent) agree with the view that plaques, busts, [and] paintings that talk about the success of Stalin should be put in public places ... Seventy-seven percent of respondents aged 18-24 years supported such Stalin memorials, while 63 percent of respondents 60 years and older favored them ... Russia’s attitude toward Stalin is reflected by Russian state propaganda and pro-Kremlin public figures.
... Trust in political institutions – including the electoral process itself - are at an all-time low ... Societies the world over are experiencing a strong backlash to a system of government that has largely been the hallmark of developed nations for generations ... The level of public trust in democratic institutions in the US has been plummeting for decades. According to a survey carried out in 2015 by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organisation in Washington DC that investigates demographic trends, only 19 percent of people trust the government to do the right thing “always or most of the time.” In 1958, when the American National Election Study asked the same question, 73 percent of people did.
The claim: The US has the highest taxes in the world. Reality Check verdict: The total amount of tax raised by the United States as a proportion of the size of its economy is not the highest in the world. It also does not have the highest rates of taxes on households. By one measure, it does have the highest rate of corporation tax. / At a rally in Ohio on Tuesday, President Trump claimed that the US had the highest taxes in the world ... The US is clearly not at the top of this list based on figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 2015, the US tax take came in at 26.4 percent of GDP, well below countries such as Italy at 43.3 percent, France at 45.5 percent, and Denmark at 46.6 percent. So, for overall tax, the US is certainly not the highest.
... In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost. This is what most Americans have avoided confronting ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Ever since then, Americans from all walks of life have blindly thanked the troops for their “service” in Iraq, without giving any thought to exactly what such “service” consisted of. ... The troops in Iraq were never fighting to defend our rights and freedoms. They were fighting for a regime change ... Rather sad and pathetic, I’d say, considering 4,500 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq and more than $1 trillion in U.S. taxpayer money were spent on the invasion and occupation. I wonder how many Americans realize that U.S. troops are now back in Iraq, helping to fortify the Iran-aligned Islamic regime they installed and protected for eight years?
... We invaded Iraq because a powerful group of pro-Israel ideologues — the neoconservatives — who had mustered forces in Washington over the previous two decades and at last had come into the White House were able to sell a vision of transforming the Middle East that was pure wishful hokum but that they believed: that if Arab countries were converted by force into democracies, the people would embrace the change and would also accept Israel as a great neighbor ... The evidence for this causation is at every hand ... America needs to come to terms with the extent to which it allowed rightwing Zionists to dominate discussions of going to war. This matter is now at the heart of the Republican embrace of the war on Iran. There is simply no other constituency in our country for that war besides rightwing Zionists.
Britain’s National Archives released records Thursday showing then prime minister Winston Churchill’s attempts to cover up a Nazi plot to collaborate with members of the British royal family. The elaborate plan to install the Duke of Windsor as king, should the Nazis successfully invade Britain, involved luring the abdicated king out of neutral Portugal to Spain to offer him a deal. Former king Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 over his marriage to US divorcee Wallis Simpson. He was known to have Nazi sympathies. Nazi telegrams detailing the plot were found after the war in German archives ... Top secret documents, made available Thursday by the National Archives at Kew, showed how Churchill tried to stall the publication of the plot after World War II as he was worried about how the royal couple would be perceived.
The proprietor of the Daily Mail [newspaper] sent a series of supportive and congratulatory telegrams to Nazi Germany's leaders, including Hitler, just months before the second world war, papers released today reveal. Intercepted messages from Lord Rothermere to Berlin are among the first papers to be released from Foreign Office intelligence files ... “Our two great Nordic countries should pursue resolutely a policy of appeasement for, whatever anyone may say, our two great countries should be the leaders of the world," he told Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister, on July 7 1939. Ten days earlier, Rothermere had written to Hitler: "My Dear Führer, I have watched with understanding and interest the progress of your great and superhuman work in regenerating your country."
Non-governmental organizations, civil libertarians, and business leaders warn that Ukraine appears to be sliding toward an increasingly nationalistic, anti-Semitic era characterized by hooliganism, threats, and, in some cases, outright violence to Jews. The precise degree of the culture’s drift toward a nationalism bordering on fascism -- with a strong anti-Jewish drift -- is difficult to determine ... The Simon Wiesenthal Center has complained about the growing anti-Semitism in Ukraine, and filed several protests in recent months over the direction this nation of 42.5 million souls appears to be taking ... Concern over rising anti-Jewish bigotry in Ukraine escalated further with the news the Ukrainian capital of Kiev intended to name city streets after Ukrainian nationalists Stefan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych.
... Most Americans today do not fully grasp the fragility of their status as “the leader of the free world.” Indeed, Washington has been standing astride the globe as a superpower for so long that most of its leaders have almost no understanding of the delicate design of their country’s global power built so carefully by two post-World War II presidents ... By the time President Trump took his oath of office, negative, long-term trends had already started to limit the influence of any American leader on the world stage. These included a declining share of the global economy, an erosion of U.S. technological primacy, an inability to apply its overwhelming military power in a way that achieved expected policy goals on an ever more recalcitrant planet, and a generation of increasingly independent national leaders, whether in Europe, Asia, or Latin America.
As German forces advanced into the Soviet Union in 1941, many people welcomed the troops as liberators from Bolshevik tyranny. The welcome was especially warm in the Baltic countries, western Belarus and western Ukraine. As this four-minute video (no narration) shows, grateful people express appreciation for the troops who brought freedom from harsh Soviet rule, and restored ancient rights. German soldiers, as well as troops of German-allied nations, often helped local people repair homes and buildings, fix damaged infrastructure, and re-open churches that the Bolsheviks had shut down or destroyed.
Glimpses of life of Russians, and people of other Soviet nationalities, under German occupation during World War II, are shown. Included are scenes of people showing appreciation for German troops and administration, and for restoring freedoms that the Soviets had taken away. Runtime: 4:01 mins. With music, but no narration. Also shown are soldiers of the German-sponsored, anti-Stalinist “Russian Liberation Army.” In addition to the many former Soviet citizens who served in military units that fought with Germany and its allies against the Red Army were many others who served as volunteer “Hiwis.”
... Even though the Germans were the foe, more often than not, they treated us better than Stalin’s Reds. My dad was picked up by the Germans after being left for dead by Stalin’s troops, and was taken to one of their field hospitals. When he felt strong enough he left with the help of peasants and made his way home ... For many in the West it may seem hard to believe, but Nazi occupation, despite reprisals, was better than being under Stalin. Because, for the first time, farmers could work the land free of the disastrous Bolshevik collective system, bumper crops were harvested. The Germans organized efficient food distribution. At last there was no starvation in the land.
... When all other parties to the deal and the IAEA agree that the deal is working as intended, it isn’t credible to assert that Iran isn’t complying without simply making things up. Trump wants his advisers in the White House to do just that. The trouble here isn’t just that Trump is desperate to find a way to renege on the deal, but that he wants to do so when the deal is doing exactly what it is supposed to do ... Tillerson couldn’t “make sure” allies were “on board” with what Trump wanted because they see no reason to deny that Iranian compliance is happening when they all know that it is. Unlike Trump, they judge the deal on its merits, and they see no benefit in sabotaging it. Trump gave Tillerson an absurd, impossible job, and then faults him for failing to deliver on it.
Donald Trump’s disdain for the truth does not prevent reality from repeatedly bumping up against his policies ... As for what was probably Barack Obama’s leading foreign policy accomplishment — the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to restrict Iran’s nuclear program — the reality that Trump rejects is that the accord is working as intended to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon and that Iran is complying with its obligations under the agreement, as verified by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency ... The Trump White House already has violated not only the spirit but the letter of the JCPOA by openly and explicitly discouraging other countries, as it did at the G-20 summit meeting, from conducting normal business with Iran.
With two years of successful implementation in the books, Washington should be celebrating the anniversary of a historic Iran nuclear deal. Instead, President Trump is violating the pact and prompting its demise. With each passing day, it becomes less plausible that his violations are mistakes rather than malicious ... Considering, too, that the U.S. has the positive obligation to “agree on steps to ensure Iran’s access in areas of trade, technology, finance, and energy,” Trump’s private urging to foreign countries to withdraw business ties with Iran puts the U.S. in irrefutable breach of the JCPOA. No one can any longer remain agnostic or in denial as to this basic fact ... So far, though, the effect of Trump’s policy is to isolate only the United States.
... Trump also made a terrible mistake when, during the NATO summit in May, he tried to persuade European allies to stop their trade and financial transactions with Iran. By doing this, the United States accomplished the dubious feat of being the first power to violate the Iran nuclear deal. For instance, in the accord, the United States and European Union pledge to “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran inconsistent with their commitments not to undermine the successful implementation of this [agreement].” They also agreed on “steps to ensure Iran’s access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy.”
A group of retired U.S. generals and admirals urged the Trump administration Tuesday to maintain the framework of the Iran nuclear deal, saying the agreement is critical to national security and has successfully blocked the Islamic Republic’s path to a nuclear weapon. In an open letter to President Donald Trump, 38 former flag officers from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines said that the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) has achieved its aims over the two years since it was signed by the Obama administration, Iran and five world powers ... Despite reservations about Iran’s connection to terrorist groups, the retired officers argued that establishing regular diplomatic talks with Tehran could help reduce that suspicion and prevent war.