Adobe’s Firefly seems to be following in the woke footsteps of Google’s failed Gemini AI image producer — generating photos of black Nazis and black and female founding fathers. In a test of the product conducted by The Post on Thursday, Firefly produced an image of two smiling black men standing in front of an American flag when prompted to create a photo of the “founding fathers of the USA.” Searches for the 1787 Constitutional Convention also produced images of both black men and white women standing in front of the historic State House in Philadelphia, Penn., and a search for “German war soldiers in World War II” yielded photos of smiling black and Asian men in military fatigues … Similar tests conducted by Semafor and the Daily Mail produced nearly identical results …

The technological revolution once promised a new era of expanded democracy and enhanced opportunity. Instead, we face today a reality that blends the worst aspects of George Orwell’s Big Brother and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World controllers … While comical for some, this seemed less to show the tech giant’s casual incompetence, but rather a deep-seated desire to reinvent reality along progressive lines. It also reflects deeply entrenched bias in Google’s development team, who appear to see it as their mission to reshape society, and even the past, to fit their predilections … Most dangerous of all, these big tech firms have become giant oligopolies with almost unlimited funds and a net worth greater than Canada, Russia, South Korea, Australia and Spain combined.

… Netanyahu understands that the ‘power structure’ in the U.S. – as in Europe – that controls much, if not most of the money shaping U.S. politics, and particularly the stance of Congress, is heavily dependent on the Israeli ‘cause’ existing, and continuing to exist, and it is not therefore the case that Israel is wholly dependent on the U.S. power structures and its ‘good will’ (as Biden pre-supposes). The ‘cause of Israel’ both gives domestic U.S. structures their political meaning, their agenda and their legitimacy. A ‘No Israel’ outcome would pull the carpet from under them, and would leave U.S. Jews experiencing existential insecurity. Netanyahu knows this – and also appreciates that the existence of Israel, per se, offers Tel Aviv a certain degree of control over U.S. politics.

… To understand present-day Germany, American conservatives should imagine a place where people like Joe Biden’s handlers have been building their progressive version of “democracy” for generations. There, any state employee or academic in a public university who expresses disagreement with the anti-fascist, woke state religion will almost inescapably lose his job and perhaps be attacked by an anti-fascist mob galvanized into action by the media. Those Germans who dare complain about the Biden-like immigration policy in their country, most explicitly the supporters of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party, will see the ruling leftist party bloc pull out all stops to ban them from expressing their views in public.

“Hitler — You knew him — What was he like?” I have been asked that question a thousand times since 1945, and nothing is more difficult to answer … Hitler’s most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic principles. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could be understood by anyone … His intellectual curiosity was limitless. He was readily familiar with the writings of the most diverse authors, and nothing was too complex for his comprehension … The universality of Hitler’s knowledge may surprise or displease those unaware of it, but it is nonetheless a historical fact: Hitler was one of the most cultivated men of this century.

A middle school in Omaha, Nebraska, has apologized to students and families after a quotation from Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler was displayed in a school hallway as the “quote of the day,” the Omaha World Herald reported Tuesday [Feb. 2021]. A staff member had written the adage, “The man who has no sense of history is like a man with no ears or eyes” on a board that was set up in an eighth grade hallway on Monday. Later that evening the school sent a message out to staff, students, and their families saying it was “extremely sorry” … The school apologized for “the insensitivity this showed to our Jewish population and to other students.” It said the school would be taking steps including teaching students that Hitler should not be quoted without context.

… After the US’ action, three countries – Iraq, Syria and Iran – expressed their anger and strong condemnation of US airstrikes in the first instance. Above all, it must be said that this action by the US is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and Syria and runs counter to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter. The US has claimed to be striking the “Iran-backed forces,” but it has caused civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria. The recklessness shown by the US in asserting its hegemony requires the international community to find ways to restrain it … To maintain its hegemony, the US is still using the simple, brutal means of economic sanctions and military strikes. With a significantly diminishing marginal effect, this is far from what’s needed to adapt to the complex and rapidly developing situation.

The Hebrew University [of Israel] has suspended Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of the Faculty of Law after a series of inflammatory statements, the university said in a statement Tuesday. The unusual move came a day after Shalhoub-Kevorkian, an outspoken critic of Israel and Zionism, told Channel 14 in an interview that Zionism should be abolished, and called into question the rapes and other atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Shalhoub-Kiborkian said … “it’s time to abolish Zionism. It can’t continue, it’s criminal. Only by abolishing Zionism can we continue.” She continued, “They [Zionists] will use any lie. They started with babies, they continued with rape, and they will continue with a million other lies. We stopped believing them, I hope the world stops believing them.”

As the U.S. navigates involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, few Americans want the country to take a more active role in solving the world’s problems, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. While an American role as the “world’s policeman” has become an increasingly contentious partisan issue, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans agree that the U.S. should not get more involved than it currently is in the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Hamas. The poll shows that 4 in 10 U.S. adults want America to broadly take a “less active” role in solving global conflicts. Only about one-quarter think the U.S. should take a more active role, and about one-third say its current role is about right.

Last week President Biden delivered a dark and angry speech meant to convince the low percentage of Americans who still feel positive about his presidency that everything is fine and will only get better if he is re-elected for a second term. … The message of Biden’s speech was that if you do not support the re-election of Joe Biden, you are an insurrectionist and hate America and democracy … Biden started his speech by comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin with Hitler, claiming that Putin is “on the march” in Europe just as Hitler was in 1941, and that just as in those days, if he is not stopped in Ukraine he will continue to rampage through the continent. It was blatant fearmongering, based on no evidence … In all, Biden’s final State of the Union before the election reveals a president and administration that is out of gas and out of ideas.

An annual “threat assessment” compiled by US intelligence agencies was released on Monday and said that Israel will likely face resistance from Hamas for years to come, another sign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of “eradicating” the Palestinian group isn’t realistic … The US threat assessment said that while Hamas isn’t going away, Netanyahu could lose his hold on power … The assessment also said that Iran had no role in Hamas’s October 7 attack and acknowledged Tehran is not seeking a nuclear weapon. “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device,” the report reads.

… For decades, this magazine and a coalition of foreign policy restrainers have warned that our reckless, irrational, and incoherent strategy toward Russia in Europe would lead to a Russia more antagonistic towards the West, and distract from other geopolitical arenas … What Americans are witnessing now, half a world away, is the result of decades of misguided policy towards Russia … The temptation to portray Russia as Europe’s next Hitler was too much for the U.S. and NATO to withstand … Those who claim that NATO’s expansion has not been a threat to Russia betray their ignorance … To expect zero repercussions from such a contradictory, benighted foreign policy is a direct consequence of the contradictions intrinsic to the liberal idealism that permeates the Washington foreign policy establishment.

Men detained by Israeli forces since the start of the war are returning to Gaza with harrowing accounts of mock executions, constant beatings and humiliating mistreatment / Palestinian men detained by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza have told Middle East Eye how they were physically tortured with dogs and electricity, subjected to mock executions, and held in humiliating and degrading conditions … Other men also described being electrocuted, attacked by dogs, doused with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and subjected to constant loud music.

The apparent ability of Israel, one of the world’s smallest countries, to shape the Middle East policies of the world’s remaining superpower has been a source of puzzlement, conjecture, and constant frustration on the part of those fighting for justice for the Palestinians and for the peoples of the region, as a whole … In the arena of foreign policy, no lobby has proved more powerful than that of the organized American Jewish community in support of Israel; what is generally referred to as the Israel Lobby and in the halls of Congress, simply as “the lobby.” Its power is all the more impressive when one realizes the lobby represents no more than a third of America’s six million Jews.

The Gaza war is bringing us an awesome display of Jewish power over the US media and political culture. It’s a display that could effectively wake Americans up to how deeply entrenched Jews are in the American power structure. Even the mainstream media is featuring images of Gazan suffering, bloodied children, and the over 10,000 Gazan deaths, mostly women and children. Even clueless White liberals must be starting to wake up about Israel … The Biden administration seems to be realizing that their blind support for Israeli violence can’t be sold to their voters, and are pleading with the Israelis for humanitarian pauses. To no avail. As always, “America’s greatest ally” thumbs its nose at America when it wishes. And why not?

CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza. Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the US and overseas say broadcasts have been skewed by management edicts and a story-approval process that has resulted in highly partial coverage of the Hamas massacre on 7 October and Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza. “The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice.”

… The hostility and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims engendered by Hollywood and US television infects not only tens of millions of Americans, but also hundreds of millions of credulous viewers worldwide. Such noxious propaganda over a period of decades inevitably has grave long-term consequences. This flood of ethnic-religious poison understandably produces deep resentment among hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims around the globe — creating a vast and growing reservoir of resentment and rage that one day will almost certainly erupt with terrible fury.

Good work, Mr. President Biden. You have managed to do what America’s enemies have not – creating widespread hatred for the United States around the globe. Your destruction of the Gaza refugee camps has inflamed antisemitism everywhere. There is widespread disgust and anger at the US government over your decision to give Israel’s new far right government carte blanche to massacre rebellious Palestinians in the open prison of the Gaza Strip. The death toll is now over 31,000 killed and at least 70,000 seriously injured, not counting the long-term effects of malnutrition and even starvation. Most victims are women and children … Americans should be ashamed of Biden. His administration, infiltrated and directed by far-right neocons, does not represent America’s values or traditions.

A new report from the Swedish police … shows that something has gone terribly wrong in Sweden. According to the latest police report, some 62,000 people in Sweden are connected to criminal gangs. To put this into perspective, consider that Sweden is a small country with only 10.4 million people. “We are talking about system-threatening crime with a large capacity for violence that silences witnesses, threatens social workers, and infiltrates authorities and political parties,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said at a recent press conference … We now have around 60 no-go zones in Sweden, with the police describing some of these as “lawless areas.”

According to the Federal Reserve, credit card delinquencies increased by 50 percent in 2023, while consumer debt grew to 17.5 trillion dollars. A recent survey by Clever Real Estate found that three in five Americans have credit card debt, and that 23 percent of Americans increase their credit card debt every month. The survey also found that 48 percent of Americans (including 59 percent of millennials) use credit cards for essential living expenses … The reliance of so many Americans on credit cards for basic necessities is one reason why many Americans are dissatisfied with the economy. The large amount of consumer debt is also a reason the Federal Reserve will not increase interest rates to anywhere near what they would be in a free market.

A portrait of Lord Balfour, the former prime minister, at the University of Cambridge has been damaged by a pro-Palestinian protester. In video posted on social media by Palestine Action, a member of the group is seen spray-painting and slashing the portrait at Trinity College. A woman can be seen defacing the work with red paint before slicing the canvas with a sharp object. Balfour was one of the chief supporters of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, cemented by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which gave British backing to the movement. A nephew of Lord Salisbury, he succeeded his uncle as prime minister in 1902 and subsequently became foreign secretary.

… Diverse documentary evidence shows that Zionists pushed for the U.S. to enter the war on Britain’s side as part of a deal to gain British support for their colonization of Palestine … In 1917 British Foreign Minister Lord Balfour issued a letter to Zionist leader Lord Rothschild. Known as the Balfour Declaration, this letter promised that Britain would “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” and “use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” … The influence of Brandeis and other Zionists in the U.S. had enabled Zionists to form an alliance with Britain, one of the world’s great powers, a remarkable achievement for a non-state group and a measure of Zionists’ by-then immense power.

It was a night of death and hunger. When it ended, at least 112 people had been killed and another 760 were injured. Israel tried to deny responsibility – the trucks hit them – but there is no denying its responsibility for what is happening now in the Gaza Strip: Israel is the occupying force there. Not only that: Dr. Mohammed Salha, the acting director of Gaza City’s Al-Awda Hospital, told The Associated Press that of the 176 wounded brought to the facility, 142 had gunshot wounds and the other 34 showed injuries from a stampede. A physician at the city’s Shifa Hospital said that most of those treated there had gunshot wounds … Even if it is proved that it was IDF soldiers who shot at this horrifying assembly and who killed and wounded hundreds of starving people, no one in Israel will be upset by it.

UN experts today condemned the violence unleashed by Israeli forces, which killed at least 112 people gathered to collect flour in Gaza last week, as a “massacre” amid conditions of inevitable starvation and destruction of the local food production system in the besieged Palestinian enclave. “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys,” the UN experts said. “Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians.” Israeli troops fired on crowds of Palestinians gathered to collect flour in the south-west of Gaza City on 29 February, killing at least 112 people and injuring some 760.

Mark Weber talks with host Peter Quinones about the enduring legacy of the World War II. The ever more obvious crisis of today’s America, Weber says, is rooted in the universalist-egalitarian outlook of President Franklin Roosevelt and the US during that war, and the policies based on that worldview in the decades since. Weber and Quinones also discuss the reality and legacy of the Reagan presidency, the delusional premises of the “affirmative action” policies that both Republican and Democratic leaders have embraced for more than half a century, and more. Runtime: 58 mins.

Syrian President Bashar Assad recently declared that there is no evidence that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust and accused the United States of funding the rise of the Hitler movement. In a video of a speech by Assad translated and published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Assad can be seen telling an audience that “there is no evidence that six million Jews were killed” during the Holocaust. “True, there were concentration camps, but what shows you that this is a politicized issue, not a humanitarian one and not a real one, is that we talk about these six million, but why don’t we talk about the 26 million Soviets who were killed in that war? Are the six million more precious?” Runtime: 1:48 mins.

The U.S. began adding $1 trillion worth of debt about every three months beginning last June, a Bank of America investment strategist Michael Hartnett first pointed out in an investment note published last week. The national debt is currently $34.48 trillion and rising. It surpassed $34 trillion for the first time in U.S. history on Jan. 4 … “The national debt is the amount of money the federal government has borrowed to cover the outstanding balance of expenses incurred over time,” the Treasury Department explains. “Simply put, the national debt is similar to a person using a credit card for purchases and not paying off the full balance each month … Last November, Moody’s Investors Service lowered the U.S. federal government’s credit ratings from “stable” to “negative” citing the national debt and growing budget deficit.

The authors of the book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy,” argued that White rural voters are the most dangerous “geodemographic” group in America on MSNBC. Professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Thomas Schaller and journalist and opinion writer Paul Waldman claimed that White rural voters in America were racist and generally anti-democracy. “They are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, geodemographic group in the country,” Schaller said. … “They’re also the most strongly White nationalist and White Christian nationalist,” Schaller said. “Fourth, they’re most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”

In the Introduction to Hitler: A Global Biography, Brendan Simms notes that more than 120,000 books and articles have been written about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich … Simms, a historian and fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and the author of eight previous books, makes three provocative revisionist claims. First, Simms argues that Hitler viewed Britain, the United States (the “Anglo-Saxon powers”), and “global capitalism,” not Soviet Russia and world communism, as Germany’s principal antagonists before and during the Second World War … Simms’ third and most controversial revisionist contention is that Hitler’s genocide of Europe’s Jews was fundamentally a reaction to the belligerency of the British and American governments, which Hitler believed were controlled by “world Jewry.”

… Brendan Simms’s [biography of Hitler] … written with passion, it grabs the reader by the elbow and propels her from the very first page towards one, ultimate conclusion. The central argument is that at the centre of Hitler’s worldview was a profound preoccupation with ‘Anglo-America’ … The US and Britain were more important reference points than has previously been acknowledged, and that Hitler’s geopolitical vision was genuinely global. The case he makes for this claim is compelling and original … Hitler got a lot of things wrong, Simms tells us, and his career was ultimately a ‘catastrophic failure’. But he was ‘exactly right’ about ‘the overwhelming power of Anglo-America’ and ‘entirely accurate’ in his conviction that the Germans were too weak to prevail against ‘the “Anglo-Saxons”, the global “master race”’.

… Two new books seek answers: Longerich’s “Hitler: A Biography” and the Cambridge historian Brendan Simms’s “Hitler: A Global Biography.” Both were underway well before the tumult of current events, but both biographers recognize that recent political trends have made their subject especially charged. “The questions that Hitler was addressing — inequality, migration, the challenge of international capitalism — they’re as salient as they were when he set out to provide his peculiarly destructive and demented answers,” Simms said. “In a very alarming and upsetting way, Hitler is actually less strange today than he was 20 or 30 years ago.”

… By the late 1930s Hitler had three separate libraries for his ever-expanding collection. At his apartment he removed a wall between two rooms and installed bookshelves. For the Berghof, his Alpine retreat near Berchtesgaden, Hitler built a second-floor study with handmade bookcases; color photographs of the finished space show an elegant setting with Oriental carpets, two globes, and bookcases fitted with glass doors and brass locks … By his own admission, Hitler was not a big fan of novels, though he once ranked Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Don Quixote (he had a special affection for the edition illustrated by Gustave Doré) among the world’s greatest works of literature.

Ghana’s parliament has passed legislation that intensifies a crackdown on the rights of LGBTQ people and those promoting lesbian, gay or other non-conventional sexual or gender identities in the West African country. The new legislation passed on Wednesday imposes a prison sentence of up to five years for the “wilful promotion, sponsorship or support of LGBTQ+ activities”. The bill still has to be validated by the president before becoming law … The legislation is widely supported in Ghana … Commonly referred to as the anti-gay bill, the sweeping legislation received sponsorship from a coalition comprising Christian, Muslim and Ghanaian traditional leaders, and passed through an unopposed voice vote … About 30 African countries currently ban homosexuality …

The US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for a massacre of civilians surrounding an aid convoy in Gaza, a motion supported by all other member states. The Israel Defense Forces has acknowledged its soldiers fired on the crowd. On Thursday, hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured by Israeli soldiers as they gathered around an aid convoy near Gaza City. As some people took aid off the trucks, the IDF claimed the same Palestinians approached Israeli soldiers nearby, saying its troops felt “endangered” and opened fire. The killing has been dubbed the “flour massacre.” More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the shooting and ensuing panic, while at least 750 others were injured. Tel Aviv has attempted to blame the Palestinians for the deaths, saying the violence was caused by the mob.

If you were a bookmaker taking bets on the position of the United States in the world today, you should take into consideration three recent events. The world’s post-World War II dominant power just lost three times internationally, once politically and twice legally. Losing three times before important international institutions is not a demonstration of hegemonic strength. The three defeats reflect how the United States, and its Middle East proxy Israel, could be losing whatever moral authority they have left. It is one thing for a country to go against the flow and to be an outlier; it is another to go against international law and to be an outlaw.

The U.S. Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war has died, according to a U.S. official. The airman was identified by police as 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell of San Antonio, Texas. Dressed in military fatigues, Bushnell filmed himself yelling “Free Palestine” before collapsing to the ground. In a livestream, Bushnell called the Israeli attack on Gaza “genocide” and said what he was doing was not as extreme as the suffering of the Palestinian people … “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’,” the post read. “The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

Leaks from within CNN reveal that for months its executives have been actively imposing an editorial line designed to reinforce Israel’s framing of events in Gaza, to the point of obscuring atrocities by the Israeli military … According to staff accounts, CNN’s pro-Israel directives come from the very top … As MEE has noted previously, the entire western press corps, not just CNN and the BBC, has failed in its basic duty to present a balanced picture of what has been going on over the past four months. It has also failed to treat Israeli claims with the scepticism they deserve, especially since Israel has a long track record of being caught out in lies and deceptions … Western media have also largely avoided characterising as “ethnic cleansing” the Israeli military’s order for Palestinians to leave their homes.

Whether reporting from the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication, under a long-standing CNN policy … It means that much of the network’s recent coverage of the war in Gaza — and its reverberations around the world — has been shaped by journalists who operate under the shadow of the country’s military censor … One member of CNN’s staff who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal said that the internal review policy has had a demonstrable impact on coverage of the Gaza war. … The CNN staff member described how the policy works in practice. “‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the person said.

French president Charles de Gaulle, the towering figure of French political life during the late 1950s and 1960s, talked about Jews and Israel during a televised news conference on Nov. 27, 1967. He spoke of “the Jews, hitherto widely dispersed, and who have remained what they had always been, in other words, an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering.” On that occasion, a few months after the “Six Day” Israel-Arab war, he also spoke prophetically about the Israel-Palestine conflict. “Now on the territories she has taken, Israel is organizing an occupation that will be accompanied by oppression, repression and expulsions, and there is now developing a resistance which she will describe as terrorism … It is obvious that the conflict is not over and that there can be no solution except by international agreement.” Runtime: 1:43 mins.

Konrad Adenauer served as Chancellor of the German Federal Republic 1949-1963. In this interview, given in 1965, he says (in English translation): “One should not underestimate the power of the Jews, even today, especially in America. Accordingly, and it has long been my view, after careful and conscientious consideration, I devoted all my effort to help bring about, as much as possible, a reconciliation between the Jewish people and the German people.”

… Americans of Jewish faith cannot visualize the extent to which their rabbis and secular leadership, operating through Organized Jewry, have totally deceived them into confusing humanitarianism with nation-building, religion and nationalism. A home could have been found in 1947 for the 285,000 survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps without ever establishing a state; just as today security for the Jews of Israel can be obtained without the continued expansionism wrought by the West Bank settlements policy or the ruthless repression of the rights of the Palestinian people.

With one phrase, controversial German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser highlighted just how far the German government is willing to go to stamp out its main opposition with a new law. “No one who donates to a right-wing extremist party should remain undetected,” warned the 53-year-old while announcing a new crackdown on bank accounts and funding for political groups, which notably is believed to include the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) … The SPD politician presented her new plan together with President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) Thomas Haldenwang and Federal Criminal Police Office head Holger Münch. Under the title “Resolutely combating right-wing extremism,” Faeser presented 13 new measures, with a special focus on targeting those who fund her party’s political rivals.

… The Federal Republic’s support of “the Jewish state” has long been unequivocal … Amid these incessant professions of fidelity, something interesting. An opinion poll conducted in November, when the death toll in Gaza was slightly more than one-third of the 29,000 recorded as I write, fewer than a third of those surveyed approved of the Scholz government’s unwavering support for the Zionist state. In my read, this may reflect a generational change in consciousness among Germans: …. The Israelis have cultivated guilt among those from whom it seeks support for so long and so assiduously we can count it fundamental to its foreign policies … The Israeli objective is to prevent others from acting responsibly in the face of its conduct. Guilt, guilt, guilt, haunted memories, constant reminders of the past in books, films, museums, memorials …

… For many Palestinians, the gathering pace of home demolitions is part of the new ultranationalist government’s broader battle for control of east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of a future independent state. The battle is waged with building permits and demolition orders … Last month, Israel demolished 39 Palestinian homes, structures and businesses in east Jerusalem, displacing over 50 people, according to the United Nations … The Israeli municipality allocates scant land for Palestinian development, the report said, while facilitating the expansion of Israeli settlements … Since 1967, the government has built 58,000 homes for Israelis in the eastern part of the city, and fewer than 600 for Palestinians … In that time, the city’s Palestinian population has soared by 400%.

Google said Thursday it would “pause” its Gemini chatbot’s image generation tool after it was widely panned for creating “diverse” images that were not historically or factually accurate — such as black Vikings, female popes and Native Americans among the Founding Fathers. Social media users had blasted Gemini as “absurdly woke” … Examples included an AI image of a black man who appeared to represent George Washington, complete with a white powdered wig and Continental Army uniform, and a Southeast Asian woman dressed in papal attire even though all 266 popes throughout history have been white men … Gemini even generated “diverse” representations of Nazi-era German soldiers, including an Asian woman and a black man decked out in 1943 military garb.

After critics slammed Google’s “woke” generative AI system, the company halted the ability of its Gemini tool to create images of people to fix what it acknowledged were “inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions.” … The problem appeared to be that, in trying to compensate for gender- and racial-representation bias in AI, the system was creating ahistorical images of people. Among the bizarre results generated by Google Gemini that users posted on social media was a racially diverse group of images depicting a “1943 German soldier” … Other historically anomalous images generated by Google Gemini included Black Vikings; a woman as the Catholic pope; women NHL players; the founder of Google depicted as Asian men; and non-white people in a scene of the U.S.’s Founding Fathers.

On the fourth day of public hearings at the International Court of Justice on the accusation that Israel has created a permanent and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, China argues that Palestinians have the right to engage in “armed struggle” against Israel. Ma Xinmin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry legal adviser, argues that “in pursuit of the right to self-determination” the Palestinian people have the right to the “use of force to resist foreign oppression and to complete the establishment of the Palestinian state.” Citing examples of “various people [who] freed themselves from colonial rule” through armed resistance, he argues that acts of violence against Israelis by Palestinians are not terrorism but rather legitimate armed struggle. Runtime: 5:00 mins.

China has backed the right of the Palestinian people to use armed force to combat Israel’s occupation of their land, calling it an “an inalienable right well founded in international law”. The comments on Thursday were made by the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, during the fourth day of public hearings held by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands … He described the Palestinian use of armed resistance as legitimate and not an act of terrorism … In his speech, Jun criticised Israeli policies, characterising them as “oppression that has severely undermined and impeded the exercises and full realisation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination”.

Now is the time for the United States, and in its wake the international community, to make a decision: Will the endless cycle of violence between Israel and the Palestinians continue, or are we going to try to put a stop to it? Will the United States continue to arm Israel and then bemoan the excessive use of these armaments, or is it finally prepared to take real steps, for the first time in its history, to change reality? … There is no point in appealing to Israel. The current government, and the one that is likely to replace it, does not and never will have the intention, courage or ability to generate change. … The issue is not just ending the war, but mainly, what will happen when it’s over.

… Nearly 50,000 American and 100,000 British soldiers deserted from the armed forces during World War II. (The British were in the war much longer.) Some fell into the arms of French or Italian women. Some became black-market pirates. Many more simply broke under the strain of battle. These men’s stories have rarely been told. During the war, newspapers largely abstained from writing about desertions. The topic was bad for morale and could be exploited by the enemy. In more recent decades the subject has been essentially taboo, as if to broach it would dent the halo around the Greatest Generation. “The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II,” by the historian and former ABC News foreign correspondent Charles Glass, thus performs a service. It’s the first book to examine at length the sensitive topic of desertions during this war …

There is growing pessimism across Europe over the war in Ukraine, with twice as many people expecting Russia to win than Kyiv, new polling has found. Only 10 per cent believe that Kyiv can win, half the number who think a Russian victory is more likely. Almost four times the number of people who believe the Ukrainians can be victorious think that Ukraine must accept a “compromise settlement” without regaining all its territory after the Russian invasion. The study, based on polling in 12 countries for the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a Berlin-based think tank, concludes that the European Union must adopt a policy “rooted in reality” making a distinction between a “negotiated peace” and a settlement on Russia’s terms.

Former President Jimmy Carter speaks from his home in Plains, Georgia, about his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. In this interview, he talks about pressure put on the American political system that results in US support of Israel. Runtime: 4:26 mins.

… Because the myth of Israel’s birth was so closely linked to the horrors of the Holocaust, to question its truth was for years as unthinkable as doubting the truth of the Holocaust itself. But today a new breed of historians is challenging much of that myth. Palestinian and other Arab scholars, Western Middle East specialists, and non-Zionist Jews such as Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, and Norman Finkelstein have already published well-documented refutations of the official version of Israel’s history. The current debunking process, however, is being carried out for the first time by Israeli Jews a younger generation of historians with impeccable credentials as Zionists, patriotic Israelis and scholars.

U.S. households are carrying a record amount of credit card debt, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank of New York report released Tuesday [Feb. 6]. The bank said the data indicates financial distress is on the rise, particularly among younger and lower-income Americans. Total household debt grew by $212 billion, rising to $17.5 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2023, the Fed’s quarterly report on household debt and credit shows. Credit card balances rose by $50 billion to hit a record $1.13 trillion … “For example, 49% of credit cardholders carry debt from month to month, up from 39% in 2021.” … Credit card delinquencies have also soared more than 50% in the past year, with the Fed’s report finding that about 6.4% of all accounts are now 90 days past due, up from 4% at the end of 2022.

Credit card debt has notched another new high. Americans now owe $1.13 trillion on their credit cards, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported Tuesday. Balances jumped 10% from a year ago, according to a separate quarterly credit industry insights report from TransUnion, with the average balance per consumer hitting $6,360, also a historic record … Meanwhile, households continue to show signs of strain — more cardholders are carrying debt from month to month or falling behind on payments. Credit card delinquency rates jumped across the board, the New York Fed and TransUnion found. Credit card delinquencies surged more than 50% in 2023, the New York Fed reported. According to TransUnion’s research, “serious delinquencies,” or those 90 days or more past due, reached the highest level since 2009.

The United States on Tuesday vetoed an Arab-backed and widely supported U.N. resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in the embattled Gaza Strip, saying it would interfere with negotiations on a deal to free hostages abducted in Israel. The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13-1 with the United Kingdom abstaining, reflecting the strong support from countries around the globe for ending the war … It was the third U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution demanding a cease-fire in Gaza …

The International Court of Justice is weighing whether Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem has led to systemic racial discrimination and apartheid, and while its ruling isn’t legally binding, experts say it will send a message across the globe. At The Hague on Monday morning, Palestinian representatives pleaded with the court. “The only solution consistent with international law is for this illegal occupation to come to an immediate, unconditional and total end,” spokesman Riyad Al-Maliki said. A panel of 15 international judges is weighing the legality of Israel’s 57-year occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state. Palestinians argue that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem violates international law.

… Recently, Biden’s government has sought $106 billion in the latest aid for arms for Israel and Ukraine, the biggest expenditure since the Vietnam War. This while the bills for the incredibly foolish war in Afghanistan keep coming in, to date $2 trillion. Now, the US in high-fever pre-election time, is lavishing billions upon Israel. Most of the world is trying to get Israel out of its lethal rampage in Gaza, but the US and its failing colonial partner, Great Britain, continue to wave the banner of empire … Biden and his aides seem to have lost all concept of money. What’s being dished out to Ukraine and Israel is green paper. This huge amount was not raised in true democratic style but by slapping these mammoth charges on the national credit card – better known as the national debt.

… Who is responsible for this tragic treatment of Palestinians? If you ponder that question, bear in mind that Israel could not possibly commit this criminal behavior without automatic, unqualified, U.S. government support year after year. Pro-Israel lobby pressure controls all major news media. Congress behaves like a committee of the Israeli parliament. No president since Dwight Eisenhower has had the courage to stand up to Israeli wrongdoing. Those who know the truth are afraid to speak out for fear of paying a heavy price – maybe loss of employment. All citizens of the United States must face the truth: Our government is complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity.

Latest edition! Back in Print! / Deluxe hardcover edition of an outstanding historian’s masterful, in-depth look at Adolf Hitler, Third Reich Germany and World War II. With full color dust jacket, photos, source notes, and index. A product of 25 years of dedicated research and unmatched scholarship, written in gripping, page-turning prose, this monumental work traces Hitler’s entire epoch-making career. In this meticulously referenced work – the crowning achievement in the career of a fiercely independent, best-selling historian – Irving demolishes the familiar propaganda image of Hitler and the Third Reich, tearing apart one historical fable after another. Sumptuously illustrated with more than a hundred photographs, including 40 in color.

On Wednesday [Feb. 14], the House passed a bill that prohibits the US from opening diplomatic relations with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and expands harsh sanctions on Syria to prevent other countries from normalizing with Syria. The Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act passed in a vote of 389-32, demonstrating broad bipartisan support for the economic war against Syria. Only 28 Democrats and four Republicans voted against the bill. The legislation now heads to the Senate. The bill was introduced as a reaction to Arab countries repairing relations with the Assad government and Syria being brought back into the Arab league … Secretary of State Antony Blinken has previously said it’s US policy to “oppose the reconstruction of Syria” as long as Assad remains in power.

Israel Defense Forces officers brought Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowed them to watch and film Palestinian prisoners being tortured, according to survivor testimonies published this week by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor … The former detainees said groups of 10-20 Israeli civilians were brought in and allowed to record torture sessions in which the men, stripped nearly naked, were beaten with metal batons, electrocuted, and had hot water poured over their heads. The ex-prisoners said some of the Israelis laughed while filming their torture.

Britain’s decline over the past 25 years has been staggeringly rapid. Almost everything is getting worse, and almost nothing is getting better. Our public and private institutions are broken, presided over by an incompetent, selfish and narcissistic ruling class. Living standards, when adjusted properly for living and property costs, are declining. Even the simplest things don’t work any longer … Free riding, crime, disorder, fraud, littering and generalised rule-bending are rife, and all too often tolerated by apathetic citizens and an indifferent state … Like a frog in boiling water, few saw the full scale of the decline coming until it was too late … Yet even in 2024, when millions now realise that Britain is on the wrong track, there is no hope of meaningful improvement … Britain is hanging on by a thread.

George Soros looks set to control radio company Audacy and its more than 220 stations nationwide, stoking fears of an ultra-progressive billionaire having a megaphone during the 2024 election. Soros Fund Management has bought up more than $400 million of the radio and podcast company’s highest-ranking debt, bankruptcy court filings show. That would make Soros’ investment firm the biggest shareholder when Audacy emerges from bankruptcy. It runs New York’s WFAN and 1010 WINS, and Los Angeles-based KROQ, bankruptcy filings show. The debt buyout has alarmed conservatives, who have railed against Soros’ multimillion dollar payouts to progressive political causes aligned with the Democratic Party.

Buried in ash after Mount Vesuvius’ cataclysmic eruption in A.D. 79, hundreds of papyrus scrolls have kept their secrets hidden for centuries. But archeologists have now been able to decipher some of the ancient text with the help of artificial intelligence. Discovered in the ruins of a villa thought to have been owned by Julius Ceasar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the Herculaneum papyri are a collection of around 1,000 scrolls that were carbonized during the eruption, along with thousands of other relics. Found by a farmworker in the 18th century, they are named after the place where they were buried, Herculaneum … Previous attempts to unlock their secrets have failed because most of the scrolls were turned into carbonized ash and broke into pieces.

Among the many great Russian writers of the 20th century, one man stands out in particular, whose works have had the greatest impact on social and political views on modern life in the country. This Nobel Prize winning philosopher is often quoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. An ideologist who had envisioned the turn from Soviet ideology (which ran the show for 70 years) to the period of national revival, he also predicted the conflict in Ukraine half a century before it occurred … In general, he was a staunch supporter of traditional values, noted the importance of the family, and encouraged population growth. As a former prisoner of the Stalin camps, he opposed repressions and oppression … His views were based on the 1,000-year history of Russian statehood and the historical strength of the Russian people.

… This relentless cult of novelty, with its assertion that art need not be good or pure, just so long as it is new, newer, and newer still, conceals an unyielding and long-sustained attempt to undermine, ridicule and uproot all moral precepts … To decorate public spaces we put up sculptures that aestheticize pure ugliness — but we no longer register surprise. And if visitors from outer space were to pick up our music over the airwaves, how could they ever guess that earthlings once had a Bach, a Beethoven and a Schubert, now abandoned as out of date and obsolete?

… Post–Gaza, apartheid Israel is unlikely ever to recover what place it enjoyed, merited or otherwise, in the community of nations. It stands among the pariahs now. The Biden regime took this risk, too, and it has also lost. Its support for the Israelis’ daily brutalities comes at great political cost, at home and abroad … When the history of America’s decline as a hegemonic power is written, the Gaza crisis is certain to figure in it as a significant marker in the nation’s descent into a morass of immorality that has already contributed to a collapse of its credibility. We come to U.S. media … Their coverage of the Gaza crisis has been so egregiously and incautiously unbalanced in Israel’s behalf that we might count their derelictions as unprecedented.

Israel will not be pressured into accepting a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, following a Washington Post report that Israel’s main ally the United States was moving plans to establish a Palestinian state. “Israel categorically rejects international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians,” said Netanyahu, in a statement published following a call with U.S. President Joe Biden. “Israel will continue to oppose unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.”

Israel’s inhumane treatment of non-Jews, as well as the often arrogant outlook of the organized Jewish community, reflect a centuries-old mindset that has roots in the Hebrew scriptures (the “Old Testament”). As Weber explains in this hard-hitting broadcast, Judaism is not just “another religion.” Its character and core values are markedly unlike those of Christianity and the other great world religions. Jews are encouraged to regard themselves as separate from the rest of humanity, and as members of a community with interests distinct from those of everyone else.

The German government has announced a package of legal measures aimed at fighting right-wing extremism. It comes after weeks of mass demonstrations against the far-right swept through German towns and cities … Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said …. “We want to break up right-wing extremist networks, cut their funding and take away their weapons.” Ms Faeser said the 13-point plan would fight right-wing extremism … Proposals include new laws that make it easier to freeze bank accounts and cut funding models for extremists. Even donors would be targeted, Ms Faeser said … Officials will also be able to ban right-wing extremist events more easily and far-right activists will be stopped from entering or leaving Germany whenever possible. Gun laws will be tightened, and it will be easier to dismiss state employees found guilty of extremism.

Remember the claims that Russia’s economy was more or less irrelevant, merely the equivalent of a small, not very impressive European country? … Seldom has the West so grossly misjudged an economy’s global significance … “The Russian economy is considerably more important than what we thought.” … And when you measure Russia’s GDP based on PPP, it’s clear that Russia’s economy is actually more like the size of Germany’s, about $4.4 trillion for Russia versus $4.6 trillion for Germany … Such commanding importance in the production of so many essential commodities means that Russia, like few other countries on the planet, is in many respects a linchpin of the globalized production chain.

There has been much written and said about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. As of this writing the video on Twitter alone has been viewed nearly 200 million times … What the US mainstream media was really worried about was that the “other side of the story” might start to ring true with the public. So they attacked the messenger. The CNN reporting on Tucker’s interview pretty much sums up the reaction across the board of the US mainstream media. Their headline read, “Tucker Carlson is in Russia to interview Putin. He’s already doing the bidding of the Kremlin.” … The massive success of the Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin demonstrates once and for all that the American people are sick to death of their mainstream media propagandists and liars.

Amid reports of growing frustration in the White House with Benjamin Netanyahu, NBC News reported on Monday that US President Joe Biden has been expressing his exasperation with the prime minister in private conversations — even calling him an “asshole” — but is not about to make any major policy changes … The president called Netanyahu an “asshole” in at least three recent instances, according to three of the anonymous sources. “He just feels like this is enough,” one of the sources told NBC, regarding Biden’s thoughts on Netanyahu’s behavior. “It has to stop.” Biden, the report also said, believes that Netanyahu wants to extend the war to stay in power. However, the sources said Biden thinks it would be counterproductive to be too critical of Netanyahu in public.

Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the Palestinians… But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel, in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media. Those who are horrified — and there are many — cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the U.S., and increasing … Critics of Israel note increasingly that Israel is self-destructing, nearing a catastrophe of its own making. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy talks of a society in “moral collapse.”

Gaza is home to some of the oldest churches and mosques in the world, but many have not escaped the widespread destruction of Israel’s military offensive. Of 117 religious sites which were reportedly damaged or destroyed between 7 October, when Israel’s campaign began, and 31 December, the BBC has verified 74 cases. Seventy-two are mosques and two are churches.

In the last months of World War II, Allied bombers from the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force conducted several major bombing raids on the eastern German city of Dresden. Beginning on the night of February 13, 1945, more than 1,200 heavy bombers dropped nearly 4,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city in four successive raids. An estimated 25,000 people were killed in the bombings and the firestorm that raged afterward. More than 75,000 dwellings were destroyed, along with unique monuments of Baroque architecture in the historic city center. With photographs.

This striking video shows the beautiful German city of Dresden before, during, and after the devastating British-American air attack of February 1945. No narration. Runtime: 7:47 mins.

The destruction of the virtually undefended German city of Dresden by bombers of the Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force, in mid-February 1945, remains one of the most controversial episodes of the Second World War … British military historian, Alexander McKee, has produced a new account of the Dresden bombing, based in part upon an examination of official records recently declassified, as well as interviews from survivors of the attack and Allied airmen who flew in the raids. McKee had doubts about the efficacy of area bombing when, as a soldier with the 1st Canadian Army, he witnessed the results of the Allied bombing of “friendly” French towns.

… Why do we hear endless repetition of the Holocaust and next to nothing about the even more murderous Soviet crimes of mass murder? The artful British were the war’s premier propagandists. They not only helped draw the US into WWII, but they also largely masked the alliance between the US and Britain with the murderous Soviet regime. In fact, the strategic goal of the British was to divert attention away from Soviet crimes by emphasizing Nazi crimes. This process continues today. The Jewish holocaust has almost become a state religion while the larger, earlier Ukrainian holocaust (or Holodomor) is slipping away down the memory hole.

… Last October, after arriving in Florida, David Irving fell ill and has been in declining health ever since. He is now back in the UK and requires round-the-clock care, a demand we’ve had to arrange privately due to constraints with NHS services. He was hospitalised for nearly two months, enduring the kind of challenges we never anticipated he would face. It is with sadness that we must accept that David is now unable to engage in his life’s work. His unwavering dedication to unveiling Real History has not only defined his career but also enriched the minds of readers worldwide.

As politicians and the Anti-Defamation League call for crackdowns on Middle East peace protesters, the ADL’s undue influence within the FBI as a trainer is finally exposed. / The Department of Justice released the Anti-Defamation League’s Basic Field Training Course. The course is mandatory for all FBI New Agent Trainees (NATs) and New Intelligence Analyst Trainees (NIATs). This release follows a decade of Freedom of Information Act requests and denials by the Department of Justice (PDF) and evasion by publicly funded content contributors. The ADL course is developed and conducted by ADL instructors. It selects materials from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Marcus Appelbaum, Museum Director of Law … resisted any public review of the curriculum …

… As the incendiaries fell, the phosphorus clung to the bodies of those below, turning them into human torches. The screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of those not yet hit. There was no need for flares to lead the second wave of bombers to their target, as the whole city had become a gigantic torch. It must have been visible to the pilots from a hundred miles away. Dresden had no defences, no anti-aircraft guns, no searchlights, nothing … The affair was a war crime at the highest level, a stain upon the name Englishman that only an apology made in full public view would suffice to obliterate.

Harrowing footage from World War Two showing the annihilation of the German city of Dresden by Allied forces has resurfaced on the anniversary of the bombings which killed up to 25,000 people. Video from 1945, shown as part of an American news report, shows the fearsome bomb attacks undertaken by the [British] RAF [air force] on the night of February 13 … At the start of the clip, with the American narrator describing the Allied attacks, British bombers are seen high above the Saxony city. Dresden is then seen at night, with the aerial view showing the terrifying sound and light of the explosions… The narrator said the Allied airmen were ‘linking up their attacks with Marshal Stalin’s army’. The bombings were also intended to cause a state of alarm and panic in the civilian population and weaken the German war effort.

… In February 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers; disembowelled her with high explosives and cremated her with incendiaries … It is with some regret that I here besmirch the nobility of our airmen, but, boys, you killed an appalling lot of women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral pyres in the parks, so I know … The “Get Tough America” policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, have earned us a name for obscene brutality.

Mass killing and terrorism were the sole objectives of the horrific World War II air attack on Dresden, which British diplomat and author Harold Nicolson called “the single greatest holocaust by war.” On February 13-14, 1945, some 2,000 British and American bombers took part in the devastating raid on an undefended city packed with women and children fleeing ad­vancing Soviet forces. One of Europe’s great cultural and ar­chitectural treasures, this beautiful German city had no importance as a military target. Here is the full story — from the perspectives of both per­petrators and victims — of the horrific firestorm raid that took the lives of tens of thousands of civilians, who were burned alive, suffocated or succumbed to poisonous fumes. Hardcover book, with dust jacket, photos, maps, source and reference notes, and index.

Immigration is expected to add 6.1 million people to the UK population by mid-2036, according to official projections that add pressure on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over a sensitive issue in the run-up to an election. The UK’s population will grow from 67 million in mid-2021 to 73.7 million in mid-2036, driven almost entirely by migration, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) forecast on Tuesday. Migration has become a dominant issue in Britain and will figure prominently in a national vote later this year where Sunak’s ruling Conservatives are forecast in opinion polls to lose power. The projected jump, over the 15-year period, also reflects a projection of 541,000 more births than deaths, the ONS said. Figures released in November showed annual net migration to the UK hit a record of 745,000 in 2022 and has stayed high since.

A majority of Germans oppose the government’s radical immigration law, which will allow up to 2.5 million foreigners to obtain German citizenship in time for the federal election in 2025. The poll, which was conducted by Insa on behalf of the Protestant News Agency, found that 51 percent of Germans are opposed to the new law, with only 32 percent supporting it … Arguably an even more devastating poll from the Security Report 2024, conducted by the Allensbach Institute, shows that the population’s overall approval of the federal government’s current refugee policy is extremely low, with 65 percent of those surveyed saying that they did not consider their policy to be correct. According to the security report, over 80 percent of those surveyed have little or no trust in the federal government’s migration policy.

… It was Reagan’s initial reaction after a commando squad blew up the US Marine barracks in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983, killing 241 Americans. We can be grateful that he changed his mind … A truck bomb carrying six tons of explosives smashed into the Marine barracks … Reagan reacted with the angry resolve that Americans expect at such moments … Soon, however, Reagan began having second thoughts. Pursuing the bombers would have meant plunging into Lebanon’s burgeoning civil war … On Feb. 7, 1984, Reagan announced that instead of sending the Marines to charge into war, he was ordering them to charge out … Reagan coolly assessed America’s self-interest rather than reacting with violent anger. An American intervention that could have turned into a long and bloody occupation never happened.

… At what point do open borders and mass illegal immigration into the US become an “invasion,” which would grant governors the authority – and obligation – to take action? By some estimates, more than six million illegal immigrants have crossed into the United States during the three years of the Biden Administration. These illegals likely mostly come from Mexico and Central America, but the fact is we have no idea how many of them may be arriving from, for example, the Middle East or other war-torn areas of the world. Last month even the New York Times wrote of the disaster on the US border that, “thousands of migrants are arriving at the border every day, trekking from the farthest reaches of the globe, from Africa to Asia to South America, driven by relentless violence, desperation and poverty.”

In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has reaped a $90 million fundraising haul, according to confidential internal documents reviewed by The Lever. Large donations flowed as the influential pro-Israel lobbying group hosted a remobilized Israeli military official … In October alone, the documents show that AIPAC received more than triple that amount — more than $40 million in pledged donations. In the following two months, donors pledged another nearly $50 million. Top benefactors on a list of 2023 donors reviewed by The Lever represent a cross-section of the U.S. elite …

… Make no mistake, a strategic bombing campaign directed at Iran sends a clear and unambiguous message: The United States is at war with the Iranian state, its people, and its armed forces. At this point, whether Biden does or does not remove Iran from his target list, Americans should still be beware. There is no shortage of bombing activists inside the beltway who are convinced that war with Iran is the only solution to Iran’s hostility to Israel. Bombing is not diplomacy, but politicians like it because it conveys the impression of substantive action. Bombing is neither a strategy nor a simple exercise in virtue signaling. Bombing is an act of war. Bombing does not contain conflict, nor does bombing deter an opponent from future action. If anything, bombing escalates tension and leads to all-out war.

US President Joe Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “bad fucking guy” amid tensions between the two leaders over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, according to a report Sunday. Politico cited White House officials on Biden’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas and the political backlash from some in his party and among voters. Some Biden administration events have been disrupted by protesters calling for a ceasefire. Biden has grown suspicious of Netanyahu as the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 massacre, finished its fourth month, and has privately called him a “bad fucking guy,” the report said … Since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, the Biden administration has fast-tracked the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of munitions to Israel, bypassing congressional review.

A French Holocaust denier arrested in Scotland was handed over to France on Friday after losing his extradition battle, a source close to the case told AFP. Vincent Reynouard was arrested in November 2022 in Scotland, where he had been living in a fishing village under a false identity. The 54-year-old private tutor was wanted by authorities in France, where he had been convicted in absentia for offences related to Holocaust denial. A French warrant for his arrest cited videos posted to the internet in which he denied Nazi crimes … Although British law does not criminalise Holocaust denial, the judge ruled that the charges against Reynouard — namely “public trivialisation of a war crime” and “public challenge to the existence of crimes against humanity” — amounted to a breach of the Communications Act.

… We hear a lot about the evils of “Holocaust denial.” But those who question the conventional version of Nazi history are only retrospective and speculative. They don’t influence events. That can’t be said for those who assisted and glorified the Soviet Union under Stalin while it was still active and thereby facilitated its enormous crimes. I don’t mean Warner Brothers. I mean Joseph Davies. I mean Walter Duranty. And I especially mean the man who inspired this movie, Franklin Roosevelt. Stalin’s victims were in part his victims too. The cynical and mendacious Roosevelt had a strange soft spot for Stalin and Communism.

Iraqi government officials on Saturday condemned U.S. airstrikes on Iran-linked targets in Iraq, saying the attacks showed that U.S. forces had become a threat to their host country — a sentiment that will likely hasten demands for the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq to leave … A spokesman for the group told the AP the targeted bases were mostly empty at the time of the U.S. attacks. The Iraqi government spokesman condemned the strikes targeting the Popular Mobilization Forces as “blatant aggression” and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty … The Iraqi government declared three days of mourning for the dead.

A massive US bombing campaign struck scores of targets in Iraq and Syria with over 100 bombs, leaving about 40 people dead, including civilians. President Joe Biden ordered the strikes as tensions in the Middle East are rapidly escalating. On Friday, US Central Command announced the “military forces struck more than 85 targets, with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from United States.” … Baghdad and Damascus issued statements blasting Washington over the strikes … The White House did not seek Congressional authorization for starting the war. Additionally, the White House admitted it could not directly link Tehran to the strike in Jordan. It does not appear that any Iranians were killed by US forces on Friday.