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Trump’s Iran Sanctions Are an Obvious Prelude to War
Conn Hallinan - Foreign Policy in Focus
… Has the Trump administration already made a decision to go to war with Iran, similar to the determination of the Bush administration to invade Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks? … Other developments suggest the administration is already putting in place a plan that will lead from economic sanctions to bombing runs. For starters, there’s the close coordination between the White House and Tel Aviv … Each of these moves seems calculated to set the stage for a direct confrontation with Iran involving some combination of the U.S., Israel, and the two most aggressive members of the GCC, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) … It would be impossible to “win” a war against Iran without resorting to a ground invasion … If war comes, Americans will find themselves in the middle of an unwinnable conflict …
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Most Americans Say Racism is a Major Problem, New Poll Finds
The Hill (Washington, DC)
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that racism is still a major problem in American society and politics, according to a new NBC News-SurveyMonkey poll. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed said racism remains a major problem, while 30 percent said racism exists but is not a major public issue. Three percent said racism once existed but is no longer a problem, and one percent said racism has never been a crucial problem. The poll also shows that nearly half of Americans think that race relations are getting worse in the country. Forty-five percent of respondents said that race relations in the U.S. are worsening, while 41 percent of respondents said that too little attention is paid to race and racial issues. Nearly a third of those surveyed, 30 percent, said they think race relations is the biggest source of divide in America …
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Stop Kicking Sand in Kim’s Face
Eric Margolis
… Speaking of de-nuclearization, why does North Korea not demand that the US get rid of its nuclear weapons based in South Korea, Okinawa, Guam and with the Seventh Fleet? Many are targeted on North Korea. US nuclear weapons are based on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Others are secretly based in Japan. Why not demand the US pull out all its 28,500 troops in South Korea and some 2,000 military technicians at air bases? Conclusively halt those spring and fall military maneuvers that raise the threat of war. End the trade embargo of North Korea that amounts to high level economic warfare. Establish normal diplomatic relations. Pyongyang has not even begun to raise these issues. Smiles and hugs are premature.
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New Book Alleges Anne Frank Was Betrayed by Jewish Collaborator
Ynet News (Israel)
Anne Frank and her family were captured by Nazis after being betrayed by a Jewish woman, alleged a new book attempting to uncover the mystery of the Frank family being found in a secret annex of an Amsterdam building in 1944. The Guardian newspaper reported Friday that according to the book — titled “The Backyard of the Secret Annex” — Dutch-Jewish collaborator Ans van Dijk reported their hiding place. Van Dijk was executed after the Second World War for her collusion with the Nazis, after confessing to giving up 145 Jews, including her own brother and his family.
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A far-right race baiter who works as a columnist for a respected weekly British current affairs magazine wrote a piece sympathizing with the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany. Thursday’s column by Taki Theodoracopulos, a Greek writer who lives in London and New York, appeared in The Spectator. In the column, Taki, as he is known, asks readers to feel sorry for the 76,000 Germans, reserve troops who had “not trained in combat,” as they fought against 150,000 British, American and Canadian troops in Normandy on D-Day … Taki runs his own online publication, Taki’s Magazine, described as a libertarian webzine of “politics and culture” but which often dabbles in sympathy for the far right.
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The Truth About D-Day
Taki Theodoracopulos - The Spectator (Britain)
… The scene is eerie and chilling, and 74 years on my heart goes out to those defenders. There are ghosts all around us. I try to put myself in the place of the very young, or old, Wehrmacht soldiers inside the bunker as they face the 6,700 or so ships that loom suddenly on the horizon. There is no time to think as naval heavy guns unleash projectiles weighing as much as two tonnes, and let up only as the landing boats are approaching. The odds are overwhelming … It might sound strange me writing in The Spectator from a German perspective, but fair’s fair. I asked my companions which side they’d choose, and all of them agreed that the attacking forces had a better chance of survival than the defenders. Spielberg and his ilk have shown the landing parties to be sitting ducks, but this is real history, not Hollywood bullshit.
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Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London whose membership in the Labour Party has exposed the British political party to allegations of anti-Semitism, said he would leave it. Livingstone has been suspended since 2016 over his repeated claims that Adolf Hitler was a supporter of Zionism. “I am loyal to the Labour Party and to Jeremy Corbyn,” he said in a statement to the BBC, naming the man who has been the party’s leader since 2015. “However, any further disciplinary action against me may drag on for months or even years, distracting attention from Jeremy’s policies. I am therefore, with great sadness, leaving the Labour Party.” … Speaking in April 2016, Livingstone said: “When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
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The Strange, Little-Known Story of Third Reich-Zionist Cooperation
Mark Weber – Podcast
In spite of a basic hostility between Third Reich Germany and international Jewry, German National Socialists and Jewish Zionists shared similar views about ethnicity and nationhood, and worked together in the years 1933 through 1940-41 for what each group believed was in its own best national interest. The Hitler government vigorously promoted Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine. In collaborating with the Zionists for a mutually desirable and humane solution to a complex problem, Third Reich Germany was willing to make foreign exchange sacrifices, impair relations with Britain, and anger Arabs.
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The special prosecutor’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election offers an unsettling journey for anyone steeped in Russian Jewry, and the transition from the repression of the former Soviet Union to the relative freedoms of the Russian Federation. Of ten billionaires with Kremlin ties who funneled political contributions to Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders, at least five are Jewish … The list goes on — we explore some of the names below. But first: What was going on in the Soviet Union as it headed towards collapse in the late 1980s that led to the proliferation of Jewish names among its powerful business leaders? … Most of all, said Levin, it was chaos. Massive sectors of the economy were up for grabs. At times, there seemed to be no controlling authority.
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A teacher in a Catholic high school in Buenos Aires repeated anti-Semitic stereotypes and said Hitler did “good things” in a lesson caught on camera. History teacher Denise Yanet Evequoz told her students that Hitler was demonized when the United States entered World War II, and seemed to justify why Europe was “always anti-Semitic.” … The class was recorded by a student and the video since Monday has gone viral. The head of the school, Alberto Coronel, told reporters Wednesday that Evequoz was relieved of her teaching duties but did not clarify whether or not she was fired or if she will be … According to school authorities Evequoz defended her statements and did not apologize for the remarks, which have been reported to the Education Ministry.
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What George Washington Can Teach Donald Trump
Doug Bandow
… The American government should emphasize the interests of its own people. Not to the exclusion of other peoples — the national government should operate within a moral framework, its actions constrained by the requirements of justice and prudence. But the Founders created the government to protect and advance the interests of the American people first and foremost. A policy that does not do so is unsustainable and ultimately dangerous. The Founders were not demigods. But they did exhibit unusual wisdom — as did George Washington, who demonstrated unique character in stepping away from power, and whose farewell address offers lessons that our leaders today would do well to follow.
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Republicans vs Democrats in Launching Wars: A Look at the Record
Sputnik News (Russia)
… According to the research conducted by Sputnik, since the turn of the 20th century — out of eight US presidents none have managed to stay away from initiating military aggression … The bottom line is that the Democrats have been closely trailing the Republicans in warmongering stakes … The end of the Cold War did not bring respite to US war mongering. The country has been at war almost continuously since then, and American forces are actively engaged not only in the highly visible conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen but also in Niger and Somalia as well as Jordan, Thailand and beyond. Regardless of who sat in the White House there was hardly a presidential term in US history when the country was not at war.
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Robert Baden-Powell: the `Mildly Fascist’ Founder of the Boy Scouts
J. R. Gritz - The Atlantic
… Baden-Powell was equally enthusiastic about the fascism that began spreading through Europe after World War I. He visited Italy in 1933 and wrote admiringly about the “boy-man” Benito Mussolini who had absorbed his country’s Boy Scouts into a thriving new nationalist youth movement … If Baden-Powell had had his way, the Boy Scouts might have formed close ties with the Hitler Youth. In 1937, he told the Scouts’ international commissioner that the Nazis were “most anxious that the Scouts should come into closer touch with the youth movement in Germany.” … He continued to admire Hitler’s values, writing in a 1939 diary entry that Mein Kampf was “a wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc.”
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NY Times Editorial Board Upholds Myth of US 'Neutrality' in the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Adam Johnson – FAIR
The fact that the United States favors Israel in its decades-long “conflict” with the Palestinians is not a subjective or abstract question; it’s a well-established empirical fact. The US gives over $3 billion a year in military aid to Israel (more than the US spends on aid for the last seven countries it’s bombed combine), and defends it from sanction almost uniformly at the UN Security Council. Israel’s support from the US Congress borders on sycophantic … None of these simple, clear-as-day facts however, seem to be known — or at least acknowledged — by those who make up the New York Times editorial board … It’s difficult to imagine any of the seemingly knowledgeable and healthy adults at the Times editorial board actually thinking the US has been “neutral” in its dealings with Israel and Palestine.
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To Understand Iran, Try History, Not Hysteria
Brett Wilkins
… Yet for all the US aggression, provocation and demonization against Iran, the country has not initiated a war in modern history. Meanwhile, the US has attacked, invaded or occupied dozens of nations over the past century, killing millions of men, women and children …There is really only one entity that stands to benefit from dismantling the Iran nuclear deal and a potential regime-change war against Iran, and that is Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has privately boasted about his power to manipulate America, has been pushing Washington away from cooperation and toward confrontation with Iran for more than a decade.
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The Secret Dossier of Finnish Marshal Mannerheim: On the Diplomatic Prelude of World War II
Toomas Varrak - Perceptions / Center for Strategic Research
… Perhaps the most startling allegation of his study is that on 15 October 1939 a British-Soviet secret agreement was signed about military cooperation against Germany … The agreement entitled the Soviets to occupy Finland, the Baltic countries and a part of Sweden and Norway … In Stalin’s letter, he had declared that all Finnish territory, including the islands, would be conquered by no later than 15 May 1940. In his reply, Churchill presented a detailed plan of the co-ordinated actions of Britain, France and the Soviet Union against Germany. For setting up the Northern front, British marines were to land on agreed regions of Norway and occupy Denmark on the nights of 14 and 15 May. The hostilities towards Germany were to start with a simultaneous attack from four different directions.
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Startling Revelations About World War II, From 'Finland in the Eye of the Storm'
Pro Karelia (Finland)
… The book changes the historiography of the war times in a significant way … It is based on the contents of the so-called file S-32 of Marshal Mannerheim … On the 15th of October 1939 an agreement was signed between Stalin and Churchill (the allied forces). The core of it was the plan to destroy Germany both militarily and economically … Stalin played simultaneously an ally of Germany and the western allies. His goal was to get the western allies and Germany to wear themselves down in their fighting against each other. After this he would conquer a weakened Europe.
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Finland in the Eye of the Storm
Erkki Hautamäki
[From Chapter 10:] … According to the information in Document S-32, the most important agreement of WWII was signed in Moscow on October 15, 1939 — between the Soviet Union, England and France. Mannerheim kept the content of that agreement secret in his S-32 document … The operational plans for this war were apparently signed by the minister of the [British] Admiralty, Churchill, on February 8, 1940 in London … With this agreement Churchill and the Western Powers allowed the Soviet Union to bring all of the small adjoining countries under its control … At the same time Churchill granted himself the right to interfere with the sovereignty of many neutral countries (Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Norway, Sweden, Greece, etc.).
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Nearly 554,000 people were living on America’s streets last year, according to a government survey. That’s the first increase since 2010, driven, experts say, by a surge in the homeless in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities. Homelessness has been a serious problem for Los Angeles for years, but as the housing crisis intensifies, it seems to have gotten worse. Some say it’s time to cut municipal funding for the homeless, but others want to help.
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To Understand Putin, You Must Understand Russian History
Ala Creciun Graff - Baltimore Sun
… In November, at the Livadia Palace, near Yalta, Crimea, Mr. Putin unveiled a monument to Russia’s Tsar Alexander III, who ruled from 1881 to his death in 1894. The monument is as symbolic as its location … Among historians, Alexander has a controversial reputation. He was a nationalist who held anti-Semitic views, but he also presided over Russia’s economic boom during the 1880s … Much like Alexander, Mr. Putin wants to see this nation stand “not only on economic and military might, but on traditions; a great nation should preserve its native character.” Praising Alexander III’s rule as “a time of national revival, veritable rebirth of Russian art, literature, music, education and science” … As Mr. Putin summed up Alexander’s rule, this will be “a time of return to our roots and historical legacy.”
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Connecticut’s school districts will soon be required to teach students about the Holocaust. Lawmakers passed the legislation and the governor said on Thursday morning that he has signed it, citing an increase in hate crimes and the lack of knowledge millennials have about the Holocaust … Gov. Dannel Malloy said in a statement … “We are simply not doing enough to teach our young people the extreme and deadly mistakes of the past. Holocaust and genocide awareness are not just essential curriculum, but critical.” While the state Department of Education had made an optional course on genocide available to districts, legislators said many have not used it. The legislation requires local and regional school boards to include the topic in their social studies curriculum beginning with the 2018-19 school year.
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Trump Signs Holocaust Property Law That Angers Poland
Associated Press
U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an act that Jewish groups praise as helpful in their efforts to reclaim lost property in Poland but which the Polish government says is discriminatory. The White House says Trump signed the “Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today” — or JUST — Act. It requires the State Department to report to Congress on what steps dozens of countries in Europe have taken to compensate Holocaust survivors or their heirs for assets seized under Nazi German and Communist rule … “This position of the (U.S.) Congress is not good because it wants some privileges for the Jews, for the Jewish community, but not for the Poles. I think that the Poles who live in the U.S. may feel hurt by that,” Czaputowicz told The Associated Press.
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Eastern European Laws on World War II History Spark Congressional Reaction
E. Tamkin - Foreign Policy
What countries in Eastern Europe might have once assumed were domestic debates over World War II history are spilling over into major international disputes and causing problems for their relations with the United States. Last month, more than 50 members of Congress sent a letter to the State Department that expressed concerns about “state-sponsored Holocaust distortion and denial.” The lawmakers note that both Poland and Ukraine recently passed laws relating to World War II history and claim these are connected to rising incidents of anti-Semitism. The April 23 letter has drawn ire and sparked debate in Poland, Ukraine, and certain academic and political circles in the United States … At issue for lawmakers are pieces of legislation passed in Poland and Ukraine relating to World War II history.
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Issued by the “Supreme Headquarters” of Allied forces in Europe, this secret World War II “guidance” letter instructs US and other Allied military officials to make “every effort” to suppress information about Allied use of “white phosphorus bombs as anti-personnel weapons.” Such use is contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, the document notes, and is therefore a war crime. Other aspects of Allied policy that must be kept secret are cited. The paper was issued in the aftermath of the infamous British-American fire-bombing of Dresden, which even British leader Winston Churchill in a secret memo called an act of “terror and wanton destruction.”
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In a secret wartime memorandum, Winston Churchill told his advisers that he wanted to “drench” Germany with poison gas. Churchill’s July 1944 memo to his chief of staff Gen. Hastings Ismay was reproduced in the August-September 1985 issue of American Heritage magazine … Churchill’s directive bluntly stated: “I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay to use poison gas … One really must not be bound within silly conventions of the mind whether they be those that ruled in the last war or those in reverse which rule in this.”
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Dresden Was a Civilian Town With No Military Significance. Why Did We Burn its People?
Dominic Selwood - The Telegraph (Britain)
… From 13 to 15 February 1945, British (and some American) heavy bombers dropped 2,400 tons of high explosives and 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs onto the ancient cathedral city of Dresden. In just a few hours, around 25,000 to 35,000 civilians were blown up or incinerated … Churchill wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland”. In another letter he called it “terror bombing”. His aim was to demoralise the Germans to catalyse regime change. … Records show that the first intentional “area bombing” of civilians in the Second World War took place at Monchengladbach on 11 May 1940 at Churchill’s orders …
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Vivid Color Film of 1943 Firebombing of Hamburg
Feuerwehr Hamburg - Video
Remarkable color film, with graphic images — made by firefighter Hans Brunswig — of the devastating summer 1943 bombing of Hamburg. In this ferocious aerial attack, some 3,000 British and American aircraft dropped 9,000 tons of bombs, killing 42,600 civilians and wounding 37,000. Many were burned to death or killed by poisonous carbon monoxide gas. Only about half the dead bodies could be identified. This “firestorm” bombing — the first ever– incinerated eight square miles of the city with flames of up to 800 degrees Celsius fanned by winds of 150 mph. More than 250,000 homes and houses were destroyed, as well as 24 hospitals, 277 schools and 58 churches. Runtime: 6:06 mins.
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Rudy Giuliani pushed for regime change in Iran on Saturday, saying President Donald Trump is “as committed to regime change as we are.” It’s “the only way to peace in the Middle East” and “more important than an Israeli-Palestinian deal,” Giuliani, Trump’s newest attorney in the ongoing Russia probe and a former mayor of New York City, told reporters after giving a speech to the Iran Freedom Convention for Democracy and Human Rights in Washington … As a congressman, Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, wrote in a Fox news op-ed “Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.” His predecessor at State, Rex Tillerson, also voiced explicit support for regime change, telling CNN, “we always support a peaceful transition of power.”
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… In a recent speech to the MeK – a violent Islamist-Marxist cult that spent two decades on the US terror watch list – [Trump advisor Rudy] Giuliani promised that the Trump Administration had made “regime change” a priority for Iran. He even told the members of that organization – an organization that has killed dozens of Americans – that Trump would put them in charge of Iran! … Giuliani’s claims were confirmed late last week, when the Washington Free Beacon published a three-page policy paper being circulated among National Security Council officials containing plans to spark regime change in Iran … Unleashing terrorists on Iran to overthrow its government is not only illegal and immoral: it’s also incredibly stupid.
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Israel Nudges Trump Towards War With Iran
Robert W. Merry – The American Conservative
Donald Trump has put America on a path to war in the Middle East. Future historians will look back on his decision to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, and related actions, as a folly akin to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The consequences could be equally catastrophic …In other words, Netanyahu wanted the United States to get rid of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the interest of Israeli security — and now wants us to risk another war to take care of the fallout from that destabilizing misadventure … With Israel killing Iranians, a retaliatory response is inevitable, which is what Netanyahu wants. In this dangerous escalation of tensions, Trump has positioned his country on the side of Israel and against Iran; this will encourage further provocations by Netanyahu.
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Regime Change in Iran is Goal of Trump’s Sanctions, Tough U.S. Terms, Experts Say
Guy Taylor - The Washington Times
President Trump says he hopes “maximum pressure” sanctions will coerce Iran into accepting a better and stronger nuclear deal, but with Tehran unlikely to accept concessions being demanded by the White House, many are beginning to suggest that the administration’s actual goal is regime change. National Security Adviser John R. Bolton long argued for overthrowing Iran’s theocratic government prior to joining the administration a few weeks ago … Longtime regional observers see little success in overturning the regime in Tehran … Mr. Trump’s critics are even more certain that the ultimate White House aim is not to negotiate with the Iranian regime but to overthrow it, saying if the U.S. was serious about Iran’s nuclear programs and regional adventurism, it would have stayed in the deal, not tried to blow it up.
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US Media Debates Best Way to Dominate Iran
Gregory Shupak - FAIR
The debate in the New York Times and Washington Post over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran deal, revolves around which tactics America should use to dominate Iran. At one end of the spectrum of acceptable opinion is the view that President Trump was correct to withdraw from the deal because it supposedly failed to handcuff Iran to a sufficient degree. At the other is the far more common perspective, which is that Trump should have remained in the deal because it is an effective tool for controlling Iran … Commentators who differed on Trump’s decision nevertheless shared the premise of those in favor of taking the US out of the deal, which is that Iran belongs under imperial stewardship.
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Trump’s War Against Iran
Eric Margolis
Israel launched waves of air attacks and ground shelling on a score of alleged Iranian military positions in Syria this week. Was this a big step forward in the plan by Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally Donald Trump to provoke a major war with Iran? It certainly looks so … Many of the same war party crowd that engineered the 2003 US invasion of Iraq are now running the Trump administration. Their goal is to cripple Iran and leave the Mideast to joint Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli control. Recall President George W. Bush’s assertion that once he had crushed Iraq the next targets of US military intervention would be Lebanon, Syria, Iran and then Pakistan. Invading Iran would not be easy.
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A Reply to Jordan Peterson: Discussing the 'Jewish Question'
Kevin MacDonald
Celebrity intellectual Jordan Peterson has written a blog post, “on the So-Called ‘Jewish Question’,” the inner quotes indicating he doesn’t think this is a real issue — something that only “reactionary conspiracy theorists” would propose … Peterson’s analysis is inadequate to account for important aspects of Jewish achievement and involvement in the cultures of the West. I have often said that it would not matter that Jews are an elite if they had the same interests as the traditional peoples and cultures of the societies they live in … Peterson’s analysis is inadequate fundamentally because it ignores Jewish perceptions of their identity and how these perceptions intersect with Jewish involvement with the left in diaspora societies.
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The Spanish Inquisition and the Jewish Question
Brian Chalmers -- The Journal of Historical Review
It is nearly impossible to dig into any chapter of Jewish history without uncovering lessons for our own age. Spain during the 15th and 16th centuries is a particularly striking example. Even today, our view of this period, and particularly of the Spanish Inquisition, colors our attitudes regarding relations between Jews and non-Jews. The Inquisition is considered one of Jewish history’s darkest chapters — and one of Christian history’s most shameful.
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The Vexing 'Jewish Question'
Goldwin Smith (1894)
…. Those who maintain that there is nothing in the character, habits, or disposition of the Jew to provoke antipathy have to bring the charge of fanatical prejudice not only against the Russians or against Christendom, but against mankind … Critics of Judaism are accused of bigotry of race, as well as of bigotry of religion. The accusation comes strangely from those who style themselves the Chosen People, make race a religion, and treat all races except their own as Gentiles and unclean … We have given up the fancy that the Jew is accursed. We must cease to believe that he is sacred.
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Suicide Became The Second Leading Cause Of Death For Young People In 2016. We Don't Know Why
Fortune
The number of young Americans and adolescents contemplating or attempting suicide rose sharply between 2008 and 2015, according to an analysis of hospital data published in the journal Pediatrics. The troubling increase disproportionately affects girls, and suicidal thoughts and attempts are more likely to occur during the school year … “Increases were noted across all age groups, with consistent seasonal patterns that persisted over the study period.” …Young Americans aged 15 to 17 experienced the most significant increases, as did girls, and suicidal thoughts and attempts peaked in the spring and fall while declining in the summer. It’s unclear exactly why more teens are contemplating suicide and self-harm. But the new study adds to evidence that mental health problems are taking a bigger and bigger toll on adolescents.
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Undemocratic From the River to the Sea: Israel at 70
Gideon Levy - Haaretz (Israel)
… On Israel’s 70th birthday, the time has come to recognize that Israel is a binational state under whose control two peoples live, equal in size. It maintains separate governing systems for them: a democratic one for Jews, discrimination for Israeli Arabs and dictatorship for Palestinians … On its 70th anniversary, Israel being called a democracy when fewer than half its subjects live in freedom is nothing but a propaganda trick that has worked to a greater extent than one would have thought. It’s not only Israelis who deny and repress this reality. It’s more convenient for the Western world, too, to look at Israel’s more enlightened side, to ignore its dark side and continue to call it a democracy … Two peoples and two systems of rights. That’s was apartheid looks like, even if it hides behind excuses …
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Israel: A Grim Balance Sheet
Mark Weber
… Contrary to claims made by American and Israeli political leaders, US support for Israel has never been in America’s authentic national interest, nor has it been based on a commitment to democracy and freedom … In spite of its impressive military arsenal, and virtually unlimited support from the United States, Israel’s long-term prospects are not good … Although Israel is a formidable military power, it is an aberrant, crisis-prone state, artificially kept alive with outside support, and based on an unworkable ideology.
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According to new research done in Poland, two-thirds of the local Jews who hid in the country from the Nazis lost their lives due to the actions of their non-Jewish neighbors. The figure comes from a two-volume work of 1,600 pages that historians from the Warsaw-based Center for Research on Holocaust of Jews have compiled over the past five years. It covers nine out of Poland’s 13 regions, the Tok FM radio station reported Sunday. Arriving amid a polarizing debate in Poland over a law that limits rhetoric on Polish complicity in the Holocaust, the study suggests Poles bore partial responsibility for hundreds of thousands of deaths of Jews in the Holocaust — a figure that is significantly higher than previous estimates.
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Poland Blames Jews for the Crimes of Communism
The Independent (Britain)
… Now [1999] officials are grappling with the question of how to bring to account those Communist officials who organised systematic human rights abuses including judicially-sanctioned torture and murder. Polish officials are now seeking the extradition of two alleged Communist-era criminals: Helena Brus, a former military prosecutor, now living in Oxford, and Salomon Morel, one-time commander of a Soviet detention camp, now living in Tel Aviv … For Maria Fieldorf-Czarska, who is daughter of the hanged General Fieldorf and is pressing for Mrs Brus’s extradition, Poland has said sorry to Jews too many times. Now it is their turn to apologise to Poland, she claims.
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The US Has a Long History of Lying to Start Wars
D. Ryan - RT News
… Before Syria’s war began, American journalists were busy praising the “educated” and “informed” Assad and marveling at the “phenomenal” levels of peace and religious diversity within Syria … In the 1960s, American military leaders devised plans to bomb US cities and blame Cuban leader Fidel Castro in order to manufacture public and international support for a war. The plan was codenamed Operation Northwoods and what it advocated was nothing short of horrendous. The American military suggested sinking boatloads of Cuban refugees, hijacking planes and bombing Miami. The goal was to convince Americans that Castro had unleashed a reign of terror upon them.
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Remember the Maine?: Fraudulent Pretexts for US Wars
Jeremy Kuzmarov – History News Network
… Many wars in U.S. history have been fought on fraudulent pretexts, with the government stage-managing events that provided a rationale for intervention … The most famous case of the US going to war under fraudulent pretexts is the Spanish-American Cuban War after the McKinley administration charged the Spanish with sinking an American battleship, the Maine, near Havana harbor following an explosion on deck. It is likely the explosion however was caused by a fire, not the Spanish, and sunk on its own.
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How the Spanish-American War Made the US a Global Power
K. Mizokami - The National Interest
The end of the Second World War is often considered the defining moment when the United States became a global power. In fact, it was another war forty years earlier, a war that ended with America having an empire of its own stretching thousands of miles beyond its continental borders. The Spanish-American War [of 1898], which lasted five months, catapulted the United States from provincial to global power … As a result of the war the United States annexed the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, and occupied Cuba until 1903 … The Spanish-American War upset the old order and set the stage for a new one.
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Trump and Netanyahu May Not Want War With Iran, But They May Fall Into One Anyway
Patrick Cockburn - The Independent (Britain)
… In reporting these three wars I was always struck by the degree to which the US and its allies were hobbled by an unhealthy belief in their own propaganda … Netanyahu has always played up the Iranian threat. Since the early 1990s, he has warned that Iran is about to acquire a nuclear arsenal unless it is stopped forthwith. As prime minister, he has long been speaking of launching an Israeli strike against Iran, but he has been very cautious about actually doing so. Diplomats wonder if this is still the case … Israel has always been particularly keen to have an enemy in common with the US … If the US really wants to reduce Iranian influence and that of its allies in the region, there is a much better and more effective way doing so: this is to end the wars which have enabled Iran and many other players to spread their influence.
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Tech Industry Enlists Southern Poverty Law Center to Ferret Out 'Hate'
The Washington Times
The Southern Poverty Law Center has plenty of critics bemoaning its fall from venerable civil-rights champion to leftist fundraising machine, but apparently not in the tech industry. The Alabama-based legal group has watched its influence soar as the go-to consultant on “hate” for top tech firms, including Amazon, Spotify, Lyft and Google-owned YouTube, in the aftermath of the August white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those alliances have both astounded and alarmed conservatives who fear that the center’s hotly contested “hate map” is being wielded to deny platforms to mainstream right-of-center groups and viewpoints. Jim Campbell, senior attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, has already seen it happen.
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On May 8, President Donald Trump announced US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, colloquially known as “the Iran nuclear deal.” While that decision has come under criticism for being both a really bad idea and a severe betrayal of trust, both of which are true, it’s worth noting that the US withdrawal is also a breach of treaty obligations, and that such obligations are, per the US Constitution and co-equal with it, “the Supreme Law of the Land.” … Under Article 25 of the UN Charter, “members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.” On July 20, 2015, the members of that body, including the United States, unanimously endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in UN Security Council Resolution 2231.
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… A problem for the US is that Trump has made the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama the issue on which he will test the limits of US power which he had pledged to expand. But the agreement is internationally popular and is seen to be working effectively in denying Iran the ability to develop a nuclear device. The US is therefore becoming self-isolated, with full support only from Israel and Saudi Arabia, in the first weeks of a crisis that could go on for years … If the European leaders now go along with sanctioning Iran, there will be even less reason for Trump to take their views seriously in future … They either have to accept that they have less influence and a reduced role in the world or make a serious attempt to preserve the nuclear accord.
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Is GOP Mideast Policy 'Bought and Paid For' By Likudist Republican Group?
Jim Lobe and Eli Clifton
Mega-billionaire and the Trump campaign’s single biggest donor Sheldon Adelson has pledged to contribute $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) Super PAC to defend the Republican majority in the House of Representatives in the 2018 election cycle. Having already influenced Trump’s policy on the Middle East, what more does Adelson expect to receive in return for his investment? … Add another half million dollars contributed so far this year by Bernard Marcus, the Trump campaign’s second biggest donor in 2016, and members of the RJC board of directors currently account for 56% of all donations to the CLF for the current cycle … Do the contributions from this billionaire trio connected to the RJC — Marcus and Adelson serve on the board and Singer has in the past — come with any quid pro quo connected to U.S. Mideast policy?
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… A few words about Iran: Iran is a long-term victim of US-Israeli belligerence and aggression. The broken nuclear deal is just the latest addition to the 65 year-long litany of hostility and abuse … Washington has followed the same basic blueprint in over 50 countries since the end of World War II. Regime change is just the way Washington does business … Now let’s look at Washington’s record. Since the end of World War II, the United States has: One. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected. Two. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries. Three. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. Four. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries. Five. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
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Germans Rally For and Against Imprisoned 'Nazi Grandma'
Deutsche Welle (Germany)
Hundreds of far-right protesters in northwest Germany have demonstrated for the “Nazi Grandma” to be released from jail. The demonstration was met with opposition from about 600 counter-protesters. Several hundred right-wing sympathizers in the western German city of Bielefeld on Thursday demonstrated for the release of a notorious Holocaust denier who has been in prison since Monday. Dubbed the “Nazi Grandma,” 89-year-old Ursula Haverbeck is serving a two-year sentence for incitement relating to her multiple assertions that Auschwitz was a work camp and was never used for mass extermination. Police said about 450 protesters from the far-right Die Rechte party participated and some 600 counter-protesters also showed up.
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Sweden on Thursday said it wants as many young people as possible to visit Holocaust memorial sites to tackle anti-Semitism in the Nordic nation, where neo-Nazi activities have been intensifying in recent years. The government said it would invest 15 million kronor (1.4 million euros) on projects over three years to raise awareness about Nazi crimes against Jews, Roma communities and other groups … The Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism will receive 12.8 million kronor to organise trips to Holocaust remembrance sites, and the Living History Forum, a public authority, is to offer educational tools and resources. Sweden, which boasts a long tradition of welcoming refugees and persecuted groups, is experiencing a creeping rise in neo-Nazi activities in the public and on social media.
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Western Leaders Betrayed Palestinians 70 Years Ago. There Is No Sign That’s About To Change
Jonathan Cook
… For more than a month, Israel has been working to manage western perceptions of the protests in ways designed to discredit the outpouring of anger from Palestinians. In a message all too readily accepted by some western audiences, Israel has presented the protests as a “security threat”. Israeli officials have even argued before the country’s high court that the protesters lack any rights – that army snipers are entitled to shoot them, even if facing no danger – because Israel is supposedly in a “state of war” with Gaza, defending itself … Israel has been crafting a dishonest counter-narrative ever since the [1948] Nakba, myths that historians scouring the archives have slowly exploded … Israel is not defending its borders but the walls of cages it has built to safeguard the continuing theft of Palestinian land and preserve Jewish privilege.
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There is a Cost to Trump. We are Seeing it Now in Gaza
Jonathan Steele - The Guardian (Britain)
… The Israeli government argues that the crowds of mostly young Palestinians at the Gaza fence offer a lethal threat to peaceful Israelis. The claim is as ludicrous as it is cynical. Even if one or two protesters broke through the fence they would have nowhere to go except into the arms of the Israeli security forces, who could easily detain them … Normal police methods of arrest and trial would be perfectly adequate to handle the issue. Yet instead, Israeli snipers used live ammunition against demonstrators, wounding thousands in the legs but also killing dozens … Offers by Hamas to declare a ceasefire or truce with Israel in return for an end to the embargo have been spurned. The result is the hopelessness that encourages young Palestinians to risk their lives at the border fence.
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Israel at 70: A Troubled Hour of Power
Patrick J. Buchanan
For Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister save only founding father David Ben-Gurion, it has been a week of triumph … While Israel launched some 100 strikes on Syria in recent years, Syrian President Bashar Assad has survived and, with the aid of Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, won his civil war … Republican leaders often say that we cannot permit “any daylight” between the U.S. position and that of Israel. But can the country that decried for decades the panicked reaction of an Ohio National Guard that shot and killed four students at Kent State University sit silent as scores of unarmed protesters are shot to death and thousands are wounded by Israeli troops in Gaza? Bibi and Israel appear to be on a winning streak. It is difficult to see how, over the long run, it can be sustained.
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The Dark Side of Israeli Independence
Brett Wilkins
On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. Each May 15, Palestinians solemnly commemorate Nakba Day. Nakba means catastrophe, and that’s precisely what Israel’s independence has been for the more than 700,000 Arabs and their five million refugee descendants forced from their homes and into exile, often by horrific violence, to make way for the Jewish state … Zionists and their apologist allies – some with their own competing religious agenda – have aggressively sought to erase the Nakba from memory. This is accomplished by denying Israeli crimes and by tarring critics with allegations of anti-Semitism … Enabled and emboldened, Israel now marks 70 years of statehood and over half a century of illegal occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
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What Israel Fears Most
Eli Massey - The Progressive
… On May 15, the seventieth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba – a day of mourning to mark the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 — it’s time to put to rest the tired canard that the greatest obstacle to peace is Palestinian violence. Though you wouldn’t know it from mainstream reporting, Palestinians have been resisting nonviolently since they were under British colonial rule … While it’s true that some Palestinians have thrown stones, molotov cocktails, and burned tires, no Israelis have been reported killed or injured. And though Hamas has endorsed the protest, it began as a civil society initiative, organized by independent activists, despite Israel’s claims to the contrary.
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Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan appeared to liken Palestinians killed in ongoing border protests to Nazi casualties in World War II when he tweeted about the death toll in Gaza. Erdan said the number of Palestinians killed at Monday’s protest “doesn’t indicate anything – just as the number of Nazis who died in the world war doesn’t make Nazism something you can explain or understand.” The sixth week of the Great Return March protests has been the most deadly, with 55 fatalities reported so far on Monday [May 14]. Erdan placed the blame for the deaths solely on Hamas, which is in power in Gaza. “All responsibility for the bloodshed lies with the leaders of Hamas, who, with Nazi anger, endlessly shed blood to erase from people’s memories their own failures in the management of the Gaza Strip. Here it is, the truth.” he said.
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A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem
Michelle Goldberg - The New York Times
… Much of the world condemned the killings in Gaza. Yet the United States, Israel’s most important patron, has given it a free hand to do with the Palestinians what it will. Indeed, by moving the embassy to Jerusalem in the first place, Trump sent the implicit message that the U.S. government has given up any pretense of neutrality … Trump has empowered what’s worst in Israel, and as long as he is president, it may be that Israel can kill Palestinians, demolish their homes and appropriate their land with impunity. But some day, Trump will be gone. With hope for a two-state solution nearly dead, current trends suggest that a Jewish minority will come to rule over a largely disenfranchised Muslim majority in all the land under Israel’s control.
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Trump’s Jerusalem Horror Show
Frank Rich -- New York Magazine
… Trump was sending a message with the horror show he orchestrated in Jerusalem. But the message had nothing to do with his administration’s purported goal of seeking peace in the Middle East — a cause that has been set back indefinitely by his provocative relocation of the American embassy. Trump’s message, per usual, was for his own selfish political aims. It was targeted at his base, whose most loyal members are right-wing Evangelicals … For this segment of Trump’s base, bigotry (including against Roman Catholics, in Hagee’s case) is a Godly virtue and anti-Semitism is not inconsistent with Zionism. Israel is the presumed site of the Second Coming, after which everyone who refuses to give themselves up to Christ will be subjected to another Holocaust.
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A far-right activist has been jailed for stirring up racial hatred after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) initially declined to prosecute him. Jeremy Bedford-Turner, 48, of Lincoln, called for his “soldiers” to liberate England from “Jewish control” in a speech at London’s Cenotaph in 2015. The Army veteran was handed a year-long jail term at Southwark Crown Court … Sentencing Bedford-Turner, of Rudgard Lane, Judge David Tomlinson described his 15-minute speech as “poisonous” and “sinister”. In the speech, which was made at a rally against a Jewish neighbourhood watch group on 4 July, Bedford-Turner said “let’s free England from Jewish control. Let’s liberate this land” … Bedford-Turner, who speaks Pashtu and Arabic, bowed and saluted about 35 supporters who gave him a standing ovation as he was led to the cells.
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London Forum Organizer Jez Turner Sentenced to 12 Months in Prison for Speech on 'Jewish Control'
Heritage & Destiny (Britain)
After a three-day trial, London Forum founder Jez Turner was convicted and sentenced today [May 14] to twelve months imprisonment for offences against Britain’s notorious race laws. Mr Turner’s ‘offence’ dated back to 2015 when he spoke at a demonstration in Whitehall against the special Jewish police force known as Shomrim. This racially exclusive police force had already attracted opposition from several senior police officers … The Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service had at first not thought to prosecute him for the 2015 speech, but relentless pressure was exerted by the ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ and the Community Security Trust, an ultra-Zionist lobby group … Mr Turner’s barrister Adrian Davies gave a brilliant summing up of the defence case last Friday …
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Nearly everyone loses by President Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) relating to Iran’s nuclear energy program … Failure of JCPOA definitely means that war is the only likely outcome if Tel Aviv and Washington continue in their absurd insistence that the Iranians constitute a major threat both to the region and the world … The decision to end the agreement is based on American domestic political considerations rather than any real analysis of what the intelligence community has been reporting. Deep-pocketed Iran-hating billionaires named Sheldon Adelson, Rebekah Mercer and Paul Singer are now prepared to throw tens of millions of dollars at Trump’s Republican Party to help it win in November’s midterm elections.
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… Trump’s [May 8] speech explaining his decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran … So, what were the lies Trump told? Lie # One. “The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror.” The United States has long known that its ally, Saudi Arabia, and not its enemy, Iran, is the leading state sponsor of terror. All recent attempts to link Iran to terrorism have failed … Lie # Two. “The Iranian regime . . . supports . . . the Taliban and Al Qaeda.” … Lie # Four. “No action taken by the regime has been more dangerous than its pursuit of nuclear weapons – and the means of delivering them.” Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons … No one – not the United States, not Israel, not the International Atomic Energy Agency – ever really believed Iran was developing nuclear weapons.
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Are Pro-Israel Neocons Now Steering US Middle East Policy?
Patrick J. Buchanan
Brushing aside the anguished pleas of our NATO allies, President Trump Tuesday contemptuously trashed the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions … Who is cheering Trump’s trashing of the treaty? The neocons who sought his political extinction in 2016, the royals of the Gulf, Bibi Netanyahu, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC had warned Iranians that the Americans were duplicitous … We appear to be at the beginning of a new war, and how it ends we know not. But for Bibi and National Security Adviser John Bolton, the end has always been clear — the smashing of Iran and regime change … Is the foreign policy that America Firsters voted for being replaced by the Middle East agenda of Bibi and the neoconservatives? So it would appear.
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France has condemned as “unacceptable” a US move to re-impose sanctions on companies trading with Iran. The action from Washington followed President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of a landmark deal that sought to curb Iran’s nuclear programme. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said European companies should not have to pay for the US decision. The US says firms have six months to halt business and cannot enter into new contracts or they will face sanctions … Equally forceful was his colleague, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, who said Europe had to defend its “economic sovereignty”. “Do we want to be vassals deferring with a curtsy and a bow to decisions made by the US so that the US polices the world economy?”
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Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator who now chairs the US Republican Jewish Coalition, brokered a $30 million donation by Sheldon Adelson to GOP efforts to keep their House of Representatives majority. The casino magnate’s donation last week to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a political action committee aligned with the House GOP, was three times larger than the amount he gave in 2016, Politico reported Thursday … Adelson, a major giver to Jewish and pro-Israel causes, is also a leading backer of Republicans. He was among the biggest givers to Trump’s campaign and his inauguration … Trump has made good on two of Adelson’s main requests: moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
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Why Campaign Finance Laws Are a Joke
Gregory Krieg - CNN
If campaign cash is speech, then billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is going to have an awful lot to say about the outcome of the 2018 midterms. According to a Politico report, the Republican mega donor is giving $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC dedicated to electing GOP House members. … But it is precisely that — to advocates of campaign finance reform, in particular — that makes the account so galling … This, as the familiar refrain goes, is why people hate politics. And, more to the point, why they’re on solid ground in distrusting major political institutions. Democrats will, of course, rail against this latest development and use the news to further rile up their base. This despite the fact that, yes, many of them have also used super PACs in similar ways.
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… What is emerging is a new bi-polar world, with the United States and Israel on one side, and the rest of the world on the other. This new alignment of forces, this shift in power relationships in the world, is strikingly reflected in the United Nations, where, time and time again, votes on issues in both the General Assembly and the Security Council pit the United States and Israel on one side, and virtually the entire rest of the world on the other … The US-Israel alliance is, rather, a consequence, a result, of the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political and cultural life. Awareness of this fact is growing everywhere.
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America’s 'Gender College Degree Gap' is Growing
M. J. Perry - American Enterprise Institute
Now that we’re at the beginning of this year’s college graduation season, I thought it would be a good time to show the updated chart above of the huge (and growing) “gender college degree gap” for this year’s College Class of 2018. Based on Department of Education estimates, women will earn a disproportionate share of college degrees at every level of higher education in 2018 for the 12th straight year (since 2007 when women first earned a majority of doctoral degrees). Overall, women in the Class of 2018 will earn 141 college degrees at all levels for every 100 men … Over the next decade, the gender disparity for college degrees is expected to increase …
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Fears Grow as Israel and Iran Edge Closer to Major Conflict
The Guardian (Britain)
Israel and Iran have been urged to step back from the brink after their most serious direct confrontation, with Israeli missiles being fired over war-torn Syria in a “wide-scale” retaliatory attack many fear could drag the foes into a spiraling war. Hostilities erupted after Donald Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that the US was pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, a move that infuriated Tehran and raised tensions across the Middle East. Already roiling from civil wars in Syria and Yemen, in recent months the region has seen Israel and Iran increasingly warn of an impending conflict. Both the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres and the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini appealed for restraint.
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More than 50 people, including eight children, have been killed by the Israeli military in Palestinian protests that erupted today along the Gaza border as the U.S. opened its new embassy in Jerusalem, Palestinian authorities said. The deaths and injuries to over 2,400 people came mostly from gunfire by Israeli forces as Palestinians amassed at the border in far greater numbers than in other recent demonstrations. The crowds had swelled to tens of thousands by the time a U.S. ceremony to open its new embassy started about 50 miles away in the Arnona neighborhood of Jerusalem.
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians are protesting the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and Israeli army forces have killed 55 protesters, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry also says some 2,770 people have been hurt in demonstrations and clashes. More than 35,000 people are protesting along the Gaza border, the Israel Defense Forces say. The army says it killed three protesters who were trying to set a bomb next to the security fence in Rafah. It’s the most deaths in one day the area has seen since the summer of 2014, when more than 2,000 Palestinians died. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called it a “massacre,” and asked for a new partner to step forward and replace the U.S. in brokering talks with Israel. The White House is blaming the deaths on the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
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Congress Moves to Give the President Unlimited War Powers
Rand Paul - The American Conservative
… For some time now, Congress has abdicated its responsibility to declare war. The status quo is that we are at war anywhere and anytime the president says so. So Congress — in a very Congress way of doing things — has a “solution.” Instead of reclaiming its constitutional authority, it instead intends to codify the unacceptable, unconstitutional status quo. It is clear upon reading the AUMF, put forward by Senators Tim Kaine and Bob Corker, that it gives nearly unlimited power to this or any other president to be at war whenever he or she wants, with minimal justification and no prior specific authority … Handing war-making power from Congress to the executive branch is not an exercise in congressional power. It is the final and full abandonment of that power. It is wrong, it is unconstitutional, and it should be stopped.
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… In withdrawing from the agreement, Trump outrages the European corporations hoping to profit from massive new opportunities. He annoys Russia and China, but their dealings are less susceptible to U.S. obstruction. He annoys India, another top Iranian trade partner … Much of the world thinks: “That air-head of a U.S. president is breaking with the entire world in order to cater to that lying Netanyahu’s bellicose anti-Iran (regime change) agenda. This is not good for free trade or world peace.” Tehran will benefit from global sympathy, viewed (again) as a victim of U.S. bullying. What Trump does on Iran could crack the Atlantic alliance. That would be one positive result.
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What Iran Really Wants
Paul R. Pillar - The National Interest
… The notion that Washington can simply dictate the terms of any agreement to Iran, or should even contemplate a new round of regime change by attacking Tehran, reveals how detached from reality the Iran debate has become … Iran did not start the wars in Iraq, Syria or Yemen … It had nothing to do with the war that led to the fifty-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory … Besides keeping a regional rival down, the Israeli positing of Iran as an all-encompassing bête noire serves to discourage any wavering of the United States away from Israel as a regional partner, to distract attention from topics Israel would rather not discuss and to place blame for all the region’s ills in a capital hundreds of miles from Israel. The extraordinary role of Israel in American politics means that this line has been a major determinant of current U.S. policy toward Iran.
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Dear Occupiers, Sorry If We Hurt Your Feelings
Gideon Levy - Haaretz (Israel)
It’s hard to imagine a more unfounded, bizarre and insane scenario than this: The leader of the Palestinian people is forced to apologize to the Jewish people. The one who was robbed apologizes to the robbers, the victim apologizes to the rapist, the dead to the killer. After all, the occupiers are so sensitive – and their feelings, and only theirs, must be taken into account. A nation that hasn’t stopped occupying, destroying and killing, and has never considered apologizing for anything – anything – gets its victims to apologize for one measly sentence by their leader … Israel holds a magic card, the lottery of the century: the horror of anti-Semitism. The value of this card is on a dizzying rise, especially now as the Holocaust recedes and anti-Semitism is being replaced in many countries by criticism of Israel. Playing this lucky card covers everything.
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If you’re an Orthodox Jew with a mortgage from Quicken Loans, you might be in trouble. Agudath Israel of America, a major haredi Orthodox organization, issued a Jewish legal ruling last month prohibiting Jews from taking out loans from the Detroit-based company because it is majority-owned by Jews. Quicken Loans, which claims to be America’s largest mortgage lender, also owns Rocket Mortgage, the online mortgage agency. Jewish law, known as halacha, forbids Jews from charging interest to other Jews. So Jews are allowed to own mortgage agencies — and lend to non-Jewish customers — but they are not allowed to sell fellow Jews a 30-year fixed rate (or anything else).
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Growing Up Orthodox, I Was Taught To Fear Black People
Moshe Schulman - Forward (New York)
Raised in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Monsey, New York, I was trained to distrust anyone who wasn’t “chosen.” Even though I was a good boy, who studied lots of Torah and kept the Sabbath, I was frightened of anyone who didn’t have the same skin color, didn’t dress like me, or didn’t believe in Judaism … The racism in my community wasn’t exclusive to one particular group; however, the backward commentary tended to disparage African Americans … My rabbis told me black people were vilda chaya — wild animals … My neighbors were scared of African Americans and in turn, that convinced me to be scared of them, too. They called the police if they saw a black person walking down the street … To my rabbis and community, outsiders represented the depths of non-Jewishness they wanted me to avoid.
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Death From on High
Charles Lutton – Institute for Historical Review
One of the most controversial campaigns of the Second World War was the bombing offensive against Germany. British, and to a lesser extent American, air commanders believed that Germany could be defeated by bombing alone. Max Hastings, a distinguished British war correspondent, has written a masterful history of the British Bomber Command … Bomber Command launched a massive series of assaults against the Ruhr, Hamburg, and Berlin during 1943 and early 1944. Thousands of acres were burned and hundreds of thousands of Germans were killed. The RAF lost over 4,100 bombers. Yet German arms production increased … An Associated Press dispatch reported that the “Allied air chiefs” had begun “deliberate terror bombing of German population centers …”
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Allied WW2 Bombing of Germany: Less Effective Than Thought
John Kenneth Galbraith - The Guardian (Britain)
The bombing of Germany, both by the British and ourselves [America], had far less effect than was thought. The German arms industry continued to expand its output until autumn 1944, despite the heaviest air attacks … The most disappointing of the attacks was on the airplane plants. Production was taken away from Göring, who was expansively incompetent, and put in the Speer ministry, which was much better. This more than offset the damage done by the bombers … The British bombed at night and went for the central cities, because that was all they could find. Naturally, working-class areas were the most damaged … American strategy involved daylight raids; we aimed for the plants themselves. The problem was targeting. In a large number of cases, we couldn’t hit them.
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Blundering Into Iran
Philip M. Giraldi
… The mounting Iran hysteria evident in the U.S. media and as reflected in Beltway groupthink has largely been generated by allies in the region, most notably Saudi Arabia and Israel, who nurture their own aspirations for regional political and military supremacy. There are no actual American vital interests at stake and it is past time to pause and take a step backwards to consider what those interests actually are in a region that has seen nothing but U.S. missteps since 2003. Countering an assumed Iranian threat that is no threat at all and triggering a catastrophic war would be a major mistake that would lead to a breakdown in the current political alignment of the entire Middle East. And it would be costly for the United States.
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Israel v Iran: Are They Heading for a War?
Jonathan Marcus - BBC News
These are the first skirmishes in a potential war between Israel and Iran that promises a fearful level of destruction – even by the standards of the modern Middle East. It could spread across Syria and Lebanon. Israeli cities would be hit, as might strategic targets in Iran. In its initial stages, it would be Israeli air power against the long-range missile forces of Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. It is a conflict that needs to be averted, and the time to do it is now. However Israel and Iran remain on a collision course. Israel has long been wary of Iran’s growing influence in the region … Iran’s strong support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad – along with Russian air power – ensured his survival and now Tehran is seeking to cash in on the strategic benefits.
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The Real War for Syria is Taking Place in Its Skies
Jonathan Cook
The hidden battle in Syria – the one that rarely appears on our television screens – has been raging for years between Israel and a coalition comprising the Syrian government, Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah … The prize is control over Syrian territory but the battlefield is Syria’s skies. According to United Nations figures, the Israeli military violated Syrian airspace more than 750 times in the four-month period leading up to last October, with its warplanes and drones spending some 3,200 hours over the country. On average, more than six Israeli aircraft entered Syrian airspace each day in that period. Powerful rocket strikes reported on two sites in Syria on Sunday were widely attributed to Israel. Since war broke out in Syria just over seven years ago, Israeli fighter jets are believed to have carried out hundreds of offensive missions.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Vladimir Putin that Iran is out to destroy his country, pressing his appeal for Russian help to keep Tehran from using Syria as a launching pad to attack the Jewish state … After attending a military parade in Moscow commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, the Israeli leader warned that seven decades after the Holocaust, “there is a country in the Middle East, Iran, which calls for the destruction of another six million Jews.” The visit comes a day after a new strike targeting Iranian forces in Syria that the government in Damascus said was carried out by Israel. The risk of a direct clash between the Jewish state and the Islamic Republic has been rising … Putin described the situation in the Middle East as “very tense” …
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Netanyahu Tells Putin: Iran Wants to Carry Out Another Holocaust
S. Winer - The Times of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that Iran is seeking to commit another Holocaust by exterminating six million more Jews amid spiraling tensions between Jerusalem and Tehran. … Netanyahu had earlier attended Russia’s annual Victory Day Parade, which this year marked 73 years since the Red Army defeat of Nazi Germany … “We in Israel don’t forget for a moment the tremendous sacrifice by the Russian people and the sacrifice of the Red Army in defeating the Nazi monster,” Netanyahu said. “We don’t forget the great lesson of the need to face murderous ideology in time. It is hard to believe, but 73 years after the Holocaust there is a country in the Middle East, Iran, that is calling for the destruction of six million Jews.”
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U.S., Israel Coordinated Closely in Lead Up to Iran Deal Withdrawal, High-Level Official Confirms
The Times of Israel
A senior State Department official said Wednesday that the US and Israel worked closely together leading up to US President Donald Trump’s decision to quit the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program. “Throughout the entire process in recent months and in particularly the past two weeks, we consulted with Israel and we wanted to make sure we coordinate closely with them,” Andrew Peek, deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq, was quoted as saying by Hebrew media.
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Is Trump Starting a War with Iran?
Jacob Heilbrunn - The National Interest
… None of Trump’s actions or rhetoric should come as much of a surprise. Despite his talk about America First, Trump has always been first and foremost a hawk. And throughout, Trump has made his disdain for the accord and hawkishness about Iran plain. “Horrible” and “insane” are a few of the terms that he has employed to describe the deal … Meanwhile, tensions with Europe are going to rise dramatically. Trump’s new ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, issued what amounted to a diktat on Twitter today: “As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” The Europeans will try to maintain the accord, but their chances of success are slender indeed.
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Legislation that would require Holocaust and genocide education in Connecticut high schools starting with the coming school year unanimously passed the state legislature. The Connecticut House of Representatives on Monday voted 147-0 in favor of the bill. It had unanimously passed the Senate on April 24. The bill will now go to Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy for his signature. The legislation requires local and regional school boards to include the Holocaust and other genocides in their social studies curriculum beginning with the 2018-19 school year … In March, the Kentucky legislature passed similar legislation. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and California are other states that require some measure of Holocaust and genocide education.
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Trump’s Obnoxious Nuclear Deal Announcement
Daniel Larison - The American Conservative
… Trump’s statement on the withdrawal was filled with the usual false and discredited assertions about the agreement that its opponents have been using for years … The dishonesty of Trump’s statement began with the opening sentence: “Today, I want to update the world on our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.” Iran isn’t pursuing a nuclear weapon, it definitely hasn’t been pursuing one for at least 15 years, and it cannot pursue one so long as it complies with the requirements of the JCPOA. Iran has been complying with the terms of the deal from the start. Trump could not cite a single Iranian violation of the agreement to justify U.S. withdrawal because it doesn’t exist … Trump’s announcement was especially obnoxious because it is a prelude to more aggressive policies against Iran across the board.
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Follow the Money: Three Billionaires Paved Way for Trump’s Iran Deal Withdrawal
Eli Clifton - LobeLog
… Today’s unpopular announcement may have been exactly what two of Trump’s biggest donors, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, and what one of his biggest inaugural supporters, Paul Singer, paid for when they threw their financial weight behind Trump. Marcus and Adelson, who are also board members of the Likudist Republican Jewish Coalition, have already received substantial returns on their investment: total alignment by the U.S. behind Israel … Between them, the three billionaires account for over $40 million in pro-Trump political money … Trump and the GOP are deeply indebted to anti-Iran deal billionaires who aren’t afraid to advocate for policies that push the country closer to another war in the Middle East.
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President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is a result of a lobbying effort by American Jewish billionaires and recycled, cooked-up intelligence touted by the Israeli PM, journalist Max Blumenthal told RT … Israeli lobbies within the US greatly contributed to Trump’s decision to take a more hawkish stance on Iran in line with Israel’s own, Blumenthal said. “This triad of likudic billionaires – [Home Deport co-founder] Bernard Marcus, [casino magnate] Sheldon Adelson and [hedge fund billionaire] Paul Signer – contributed over $40 million to pro-Trump Super PACs, and also contributed enormous amount of money to Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Tom Cotton, the senator that shaped Trump’s Iran policy,” the journalist pointed out.
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Licenses for Boeing Co and Airbus to sell passenger jets to Iran will be revoked, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Trump said he would reimpose U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, which were lifted under the agreement he had harshly criticized … IranAir had ordered 200 passenger aircraft – 100 from Airbus SE, 80 from Boeing and 20 from Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR. All the deals are dependent on U.S. licenses because of the heavy use of American parts in commercial planes. Boeing agreed in December 2016 to sell 80 aircraft, worth $17 billion at list prices, to IranAir under an agreement between Tehran and major world powers to reopen trade in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear activities.
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Trump’s Act of American Hubris
Craig Murray
… There is one very significant US deal in the pipeline, for sale of Boeing aircraft, worth $18 billion dollars. It will now be cancelled. Which brings us to the crux of the argument. Can America make its will hold? … At a time when US share of the world economy and world trade is steadily shrinking, this encouragement to European and Asian companies to firewall and minimise contact with the US is most unlikely to be long term beneficial to the US … In short, if the US fails to prevent Europe and Asia’s burgeoning trade with Iran – and I think they will fail – this moment will be seen by historians as a key marker in US decline as a world power.
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People Voted for Trump Because They Were Anxious, Not Poor
O. Khazan – The Atlantic
… Less-educated whites were President Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters. But why, exactly? … These why-did-people-vote-for-Trump studies … dispel the fiction – to use another 2016 meme – that the majority of Trump supporters are disenfranchised victims of capitalism’s cruelties. At the same time, deep-seated psychological resentment is harder for policy makers to address than an overly meager disability check. You can teach out-of-work coal miners to code, but you may not be able to convince them to embrace changing racial and gender norms. You can offer universal basic incomes, but that won’t ameliorate resentment of demographic changes. In other words, it’s now pretty clear that many Trump supporters feel threatened, frustrated, and marginalized — not on an economic, but on an existential level.
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German authorities claim they have apprehended a notorious elderly neo-Nazi and taken her to prison to begin serving her sentence for Holocaust denial. Police and prosecutors told the dpa news agency Ursula Haverbeck, an 89-year-old grandmother, was picked up at her home in the town of Vlotho in central Germany. Haverbeck was convicted of incitement last year in Verden state court and sentenced to two years in prison for denying the Holocaust, a crime in Germany. She was supposed to report to prison last week but vanished, prompting a search for her. It was not immediately clear when she returned home.
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Poland’s Holocaust Law Triggers Tide of Abuse Against Auschwitz Museum
The Guardian (Britain)
Officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum have described how they were subjected to a wave of “hate, fake news and manipulations” as a result of the controversy surrounding a contentious Holocaust speech law passed by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party earlier this year. The campaign of disinformation and abuse at the hands of Polish nationalists has raised concerns about pressure being exerted on official guides at the site in southern Poland, after the home of one foreign guide was attacked and supporters of a convicted antisemite filmed themselves repeatedly hectoring their guide during a visit to the camp last month.
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Protesters held banners reading “Down with capitalism” and “Father of all dictators” at Saturday’s unveiling of a statue of Karl Marx in the German city of Trier, reflecting the polarising legacy of the philosopher in his birthplace and beyond. The bronze sculpture, which towers over five metres (16 feet) high including the plinth, is a gift from China to mark Saturday’s 200th birthday of the founder of Communism. Marx spent the first 17 years of his life in Trier, a small town on the Moselle River in Germany’s far west. Many see the post-World War Two division of Germany and the erection of the Berlin Wall to divide the Communist east from the capitalist West as a result of his ideas, but Trier mayor Wolfram Leibe said historical controversies should be acknowledged.
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Netanyahu Claims 'Iran Lied' About Its Nuclear Program, But Israel Has Been Lying for Decades
Gideon Levy - Haaretz (Israel)
… When Benjamin Netanyahu proved with file folders that Iran lied about its nuclear program, not one person thought Israel was the last country on earth that should have had the nerve to complain about this. After all, how has Israel acted on this very same issue for decades? … Israel doesn’t sign conventions, it doesn’t allow inspections and it lies. It mocks and winks – 60 years of continuous nuclear lies. In fact, it has never said a single true word about its nuclear program … Netanyahu tried to shock the world by proving that Iran lied. But if the world had been shocked by Tehran’s lies, it would have had to be shocked by Jerusalem’s lies as well. For when it comes to nuclear lies, there’s no difference between them. In fact, Israel’s lie is bigger.
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Iran Nuclear Deal: What Now After Trump’s Decision to Pull Out?
Jonathan Marcus - BBC News
With a stroke of his pen US President Donald Trump has jeopardised the one agreement – good or bad – that seeks to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions … He has put US diplomacy on a collision course with some of Washington’s closest allies. And some fear that he may have brought a new and catastrophic regional war in the Middle East that much closer … The inconvenient truth for Donald Trump is that, as far as it goes, the nuclear deal was working … Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the major cheer-leader urging Mr Trump to abandon the nuclear deal. … We are living in extraordinary times and this decision – some 18 months or so in office – perhaps marks the start of the real Donald Trump foreign policy: one that many critics would say is based upon raw emotion, a gut-feeling, but certainly not on empirical fact.
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Wake Up to Trump, Distraction and War With Iran
Ralph Nader
… Both Trump and Netanyahu paint Iran as the most dangerous terrorist state in the world. Really? It wasn’t the Iranian regime that illegally cost over one million Iraqi civilian lives and blew that country apart … So who is the aggressor here? Unlike Israel’s many invasions and military incursions, Iran, a poor country, has not invaded any country for over 250 years. Iraq’s dictator invaded Iran in 1980, with U.S. backing, costing Iran an estimated 500,000 lives. No country, save the U.S. Empire, has the chutzpah that Netanyahu possesses because he knows the U.S. government and the mass media will embrace his expanding push for U.S. militarism in the Middle East.
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Israel’s Nuclear Chutzpah
Eric Margolis
… Standing in front of props of data files and cd’s, Netanyahu claimed Israel’s renowned Mossad spy agency had stolen a small mountain of secret Iranian nuclear data from a warehouse in Tehran. The never-understated Netanyahu claimed that the purloined material proved that Iran was lying about having halted its covert nuclear program and must not be trusted … Netanyahu repeatedly warned the world about Iran’s alleged nuclear arsenal while making no mention at all of Israel’s own large, secret nuclear arsenal, which is believed to comprise of over 100 warheads, perhaps even several hundred, that can be delivered by aircraft, missiles and submarines … Listening to Netanyahu accuse Iran of hiding secret nuclear facilities was pure pot calling the kettle black.
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Almost two-thirds of Americans – 63 percent — believe that the US should not withdraw from the agreement made with Iran to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons. Only 29 percent believe the US should withdraw, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS … The strongest proponents of withdrawing from the treaty are Republicans (51% say the US should withdraw), conservatives (47%) and those who approve of the job Trump is doing as President (46%). Support for remaining in the agreement comes even as a strong majority of 62% says they believe Iran has violated the terms of the agreement.
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In Pittsburgh, Allegedly 'Racist' Statue of American Songwriter Stephen Foster Is Removed
Associated Press
A 118-year-old statue of the “Oh! Susanna” songwriter was removed from a Pittsburgh park Thursday [April 26] after criticism that the work is demeaning because it includes a slave sitting at his feet, plucking a banjo. In October, the Pittsburgh Art Commission voted to take the Stephen Foster sculpture out of Schenley Plaza and find it a new home. For now, it will remain in a storage lot, out of the public view … Critics have long decried the statue as racist … A statue honoring an African-American woman will be put up in its place … Foster, a Pittsburgh native, is often called the father of American music and was known for enduring tunes from the 1800s. His songs include “Camptown Races,” ″My Old Kentucky Home,” ″Beautiful Dreamer” and “Old Folks at Home” (Swanee Song).
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It's Nature, Not Nurture: Personality Lies in Genes, Twins Study Shows
The Telegraph (Britain)
Genes play a greater role in determining key personality traits like social skills and learning ability than the way we are brought up by our parents, researchers claimed. The findings contradict the existing belief among psychologists that the environment we grow up in plays a larger role than genetics in shaping our personality. Researchers from Edinburgh University studied more than 800 sets of identical and non-identical twins to learn whether genetics or upbringing has a greater effect on how successful people are in life … Genetics were most influential on people’s sense of self-control, and also affected their social and learning abilities and their sense of purpose.
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Trump Team Hired Israeli Spy Firm for 'Dirty Ops' on Iran Arms Deal
The Observer / The Guardian (Britain)
Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal. People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal. The extraordinary revelations come days before Trump’s 12 May deadline to either scrap or continue to abide by the international deal limiting Iran’s nuclear programme.
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Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials
Ronan Farrow - The New Yorker
… The e-mail appears to be part of an undercover campaign by an Israeli private-intelligence firm to discredit Obama officials who had been leading proponents of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The campaign was first reported, on Saturday, by the British newspaper the Observer. However, sources familiar with the effort and pages of documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that there is more to understand. Two of those sources told me on Sunday that the operation was carried out by Black Cube — a firm that was also employed by Harvey Weinstein, and that offers its clients access to operatives from “Israel’s élite military and governmental intelligence units,” including the Mossad … The campaign is strikingly similar to an operation that Black Cube ran on behalf of Harvey Weinstein …
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Sixty-five percent of the eighth graders in American public schools in 2017 were not proficient in reading and 67 percent were not proficient in mathematics, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress test results released by the U.S. Department of Education. The results are far worse for students enrolled in some urban districts. Among the 27 large urban districts for which the Department of Education published 2017 NAEP test scores, the Detroit public schools had the lowest percentage of students who scored proficient or better in math and the lowest percentage who scored proficient or better in reading.
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Educational Fraud is Rampant
Walter E. Williams
Earlier this month, the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka The Nation’s Report Card, was released. It’s not a pretty story. Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math … It’s grossly dishonest for the education establishment and politicians to boast about unprecedented graduation rates when the high school diplomas, for the most part, do not represent academic achievement … Colleges are admitting youngsters who have not mastered what used to be considered a ninth-grade level of proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic. Very often, when they graduate from college, they still can’t master even a 12th-grade level of academic proficiency.
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Most US Eighth-Graders Still Below Proficiency, New 'Report Card' Shows
The Washington Times
… Lost in the hubbub over this year’s high-profile K-12 walkouts was the release last month of a comprehensive 2016-17 study showing that student test scores continue to stagnate even though education spending has climbed for decades. The Nation’s Report Card, a study released every two years by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, found most students below proficiency in math and reading, in keeping with what the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Michael J. Petrilli described as a “lost decade” of educational progress. The Education Department released a graph showing that fourth-grade reading scores virtually unchanged since 1990 even as per-pupil spending in constant dollars rose during that time from about $8,800 per pupil to nearly $12,000.
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The Bipartisan Pandering To Jewish Interests
Philip Giraldi
Most Americans are certainly unaware of the many provisions benefitting Israeli and broader Jewish interests that are inserted into U.S. government legislation and procedural guidelines … The State Department also has a Special Envoy to Identify and Combat Anti-Semitism, which “advances U.S. foreign policy on Anti-Semitism,” whatever that is supposed to mean … The pandering to Jewish interests is widespread in the federal government and is bipartisan … Indeed, in the past year there has been a virtual flood of legislation that has been favorable to Israel and some Jewish-related issues even though there is no actual interest in play for other Americans. On the contrary, much of the legislation actually denies to citizens and residents the Constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of association.
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Fact Check: Trump's Oft-Told Tale of US Payout to Iran
Associated Press
President Donald Trump likes to tell a story about the U.S. paying out billions of dollars to Iran as part of the multinational deal freezing its nuclear program and easing sanctions against it. What he doesn’t say is that most of that money was Iran’s to begin with. The rest relates to an old debt the U.S. had with Iran. The numbers and some details change in his retelling — dating back to the 2016 campaign — but his bottom line is always the same: The Obama administration was hoodwinked into giving Iran all that money, some of it in a huge and hidden bundle of cash.
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The End of US National Interest
John H. Johns and Trita Parsi
… Trump appears to be completely unaware of the concept of national interest. Foreign policy, like real estate development, is transactional to him … Trump’s emphasis on what he terms “America First” is anything but that. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy is putting whoever pays the most first — not America — all the while reversing the long-term trend toward management of conflict through international institutions. The damage Trump is inflicting on U.S. security and global standing may well prove irreparable. If U.S. foreign policy become wholly transactional and the U.S. military is for rent, neither leadership nor security is achievable.
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The Iran Nuclear Agreement: Listen to the Voices of Experience
Paul Pillar – The National Interest
Donald Trump appears poised to make one of the most damaging moves yet of his presidency: to pull out of the multilateral agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that severely restricts Iran’s nuclear program and closes all pathways to a possible Iranian nuclear weapon. Iran is adhering — as inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have repeatedly certified — to its obligations under the agreement. Despite this record, Trump’s administration already has been violating U.S. obligations, by withholding licenses for commercial transactions permitted under the accord and by actively discouraging other countries from conducting normal commerce with Iran. Trump has been chomping at the bit to withdraw from the JCPOA altogether.
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Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed
A. Johnson - LobeLog
A survey by FAIR of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war … None of the top 100 newspapers questioned the US’s legal or moral right to bomb Syria, and all accepted US government claims to be neutral arbiters of “international law.” … The total lack of editorial board dissent is consistent with major papers’ tradition of uniform acceptance of US military action. The most influential paper in the country, the New York Times, has not opposed a single US war … in the past 30 years.
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Russia’s Putin on Iran, the US and Israel
RT News - Video
Russian President Putin talks with journalists about Iran, the US, the American national character, US history, and Israeli security concerns. With English-language voice-over. Runtime: 10:56 mins.
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An Israeli airstrike on the western Syrian city of Hama on Sunday killed two dozen Iranian soldiers and targeted arms recently delivered from Iran, said three U.S. officials, and is the latest sign that Israel and Iran are moving closer to open warfare. “On the list of the potentials for most likely live hostility around the world, the battle between Israel and Iran in Syria is at the top of the list right now,” said one senior U.S. official. Three U.S. officials say Israeli F-15s hit Hama after Iran delivered weapons to a base that houses Iran’s 47th Brigade, including surface-to-air missiles. In addition to killing two dozen troops, including officers, the strike wounded three dozen others. Israel is increasingly wary of Iran’s influence in neighboring Syria, the three U.S. officials say.
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Are Iran and Israel Headed for Their First Direct War?
Thomas L. Friedman – The New York Times
Ever since the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran and Israel have been fighting each other in the shadows — through proxies, assassination squads and cyber-virus attacks, but never as rival armies meeting on the field of battle. That may be about to change, and if it does, it will have vast implications for Syria, Lebanon and the whole Middle East … While the Israeli Army spokesman refused to confirm or deny the Israeli raid, Iran’s government unusually highlighted it — and Iran’s casualties — and vowed to take revenge … So now the whole neighborhood is holding its breath: Will there be a Round 3? … These are momentous days for both countries. One thing I know for sure. The status quo is not sustainable.
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Is Iran Really a Nuclear Threat?
M. Gadzo – Al Jazeera
“Iran is moving ‘very quickly’ towards production of a nuclear bomb and could have a weapon within two years,” the United Press International reported. The quote was published in a 1984 article headlined “‘Ayatollah’ bomb in production for Iran,” but it might as well have been published today. For more than three decades Western politicians and the press have been claiming that Iran is a nuclear threat. Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres echoed this claim numerous times in the 1990s, warning that Iran would build an atomic bomb by the next decade. In the fall of 2012, Netanyahu declared at the United Nations General Assembly meeting – with his infamous bomb cartoon — that Iran would be able to build a nuclear weapon by June 2013.
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Most Americans Support Iran Nuclear Deal, New Poll Shows
Haaretz (Israel)
A majority of Americans want the Trump administration to keep the Iran nuclear deal, according to a public opinion poll released Wednesday by Morning Consult and Politico. The poll, which included online interviews with close to 2,000 Americans registered to vote, showed that 56 percent of them expressed support for the deal, while 26 percent expressed opposition to it. The pollsters described these numbers as a “record high” in support of the deal, and a “record low” in opposition to it. The question about the Iran deal was one of dozens of questions on politics and policy included in the survey. The pollsters had included such a question in previous polls ever since 2015, and at no point since then did a similar percentage of respondents express support for the deal.
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It’s the US, Not Iran, That Has 'Consistently Violated’ Nuclear Deal, Says Iran Foreign Minister
Video
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says in a video released on Thursday that the U.S. has “consistently violated” the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord, and that the agreement will not be renegotiated. Arguing it is Iran — and not the U.S. or Europe — that has “serious grievances” and “much to demand” in terms of diplomatic concessions, Zarif noted that his nation “has not invaded anyone in centuries, but we have been invaded, most recently [in 1980] by Saddam Hussein, who was then backed by the U.S. and its regional allies.” Zarif also accused the U.S. of repeatedly violating the nuclear agreement “by bullying others to prevent businesses from returning to Iran.” He added: “Bluster or threats won’t get the US a new deal, particularly as it is not honoring the deal it has already made.”
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Steven Spielberg Urges Mandatory Holocaust Education in US
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
At a panel discussion over the weekend marking 25 years since the release of Schindler’s List, director Steven Spielberg said that every public high school in the United States should be required to teach the Holocaust. “It’s not a prerequisite to graduate high school, as it should be,” Spielberg said during the panel discussion held after a special screening of his 1993 film at the Tribeca Film Festival. “It should be part of the social science, social studies curriculum in every public high school in this country.” The director was responding to a question about a recent study that showed that 41 percent of Americans – and two thirds of millennials – didn’t know what Auschwitz was. The poll, released by the Claims Conference earlier this month, showed that a whopping 22 percent of millennials hadn’t even heard of the Holocaust.
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How Comic Books Taught America About the Holocaust
New York Post
Before high schools taught about the Holocaust, before there were dedicated museums and before “Schindler’s List,” kids learned about the horrors of Hitler from comic-book superheroes. At a time when most adults considered such fare brain-rotting junk and the topic of genocide too taboo to discuss openly, the largely Jewish comic book industry was quietly educating a new generation about the Nazis’ atrocities … Now this often-ignored legacy has been pulled out from the plastic sleeves of history in “We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust,” a collection of comic-book stories about the Holocaust and interviews with some of the biggest names in the business … “The comics industry is filled with Jews. Almost all of the artists and writers were Lower East Side kids who as teenagers got into comics,” he said.
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Film Director Loach Should Be Denied Doctorate For Allegedly 'Anti-Semitic' Comments, Says Belgian PM
The Guardian (Britain)
Belgium’s prime minister has criticised one of the country’s leading universities over its plan to honour the film director Ken Loach, following complaints that it has overlooked alleged antisemitism. In a speech at Brussels Grand Synagogue to mark the 70th anniversary of Israel’s foundation, Charles Michel said on Wednesday night that Loach’s comments about Israel and its policy towards Palestinians justified the withdrawal of the honour. “No accommodation with antisemitism can be tolerated, whatever its form. And that also goes for my own alma mater,” Michel said. Michel, 42, studied law at the Free University of Brussels. It has stood by plans to award Loach an honorary doctorate on Thursday after the celebrated 81-year-old director denied accusations that his long-time support for Palestinians was in any way antisemitic.
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Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has apologised for remarks he made about Jewish people and the Holocaust. In a statement issued by his office on Friday he described the Holocaust as the “most heinous crime in history”. Earlier this week, Mr Abbas told a meeting in the West Bank that the Nazi mass murder of European Jews was the result of their financial activities, not anti-Semitism. His comments were condemned in Israel and around the world. “If people were offended by my statement … especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologise to them,” Mr Abbas’s statement added. “I would like to assure everyone that it was not my intention to do so, and to reiterate my full respect for the Jewish faith, as well as other monotheistic faiths.”
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The analysis of the recent exchanges between French President Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump suggest that Washington is most likely about to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran that was signed by the U.S. and five other governments in July 2015. The decision will likely be made public before the deadline on re-ratifying the agreement, which is May 12 … The ability of Israel and its Lobby to dominate U.S. foreign policy formulation in certain areas is thereby exposed for what it is: sheer manipulation of our system of government by a small group dedicated to the interests of a foreign government using money and the political access that money buys to achieve that objective.
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America’s European allies are drawing a sharply different collective conclusion from the U.S. about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dramatic presentation Monday of “evidence” he says demonstrates Iran lied about its nuclear program. And European diplomats suspect the Israeli leader’s presentation, during which he urged President Donald Trump to scrap the nuclear accord signed in 2015 between Tehran and six foreign powers, was choreographed with the White House. Netanyahu did not directly accuse Iran of violating the accord, but his aim, say analysts, was to counter the intense lobbying of Trump by the Europeans, who say the deal shouldn’t be discarded.
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Smut Night at the Press Dinner
Patrick J. Buchanan
Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, billed as a celebration of the First Amendment and a tribute to journalists who “speak truth to power,” has to be the worst advertisement in memory for our national press corps. Comedian Michelle Wolf, the guest speaker, recited one filthy joke after another at the expense of President Trump and his people … The evening has become less a celebration of the First Amendment than a celebration of the press themselves, how wonderful they are and how indispensable they are to our democracy. Yet in the eyes of tens of millions of their countrymen, they are seen not as “speaking truth to power,” but as using their immense power over American communications to punish their enemies, advance their own agendas, and, today, bring down a president.
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President Donald Trump proclaimed May Jewish Heritage Month. In a statement issued Monday by the White House, Trump said that “Jewish Americans have helped guide the moral character of our Nation.” … He added: “Through their actions, they have made the world a better place.” Trump also wrote that the “contributions of the Jewish people to American society are innumerable, strengthening our Nation and making it more prosperous,” … Trump also said that the American Jewish community “is a shining example of how enshrining freedom of religion and protecting the rights of minorities can strengthen a nation. Through their rich culture and heritage, the Jewish people have triumphed over adversity and enhanced our country.”
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Hundreds of people in the Ukrainian city of Lviv attended a nationalist march featuring Nazi symbols that commemorated a Waffen SS unit with many local volunteers. Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, condemned the march Saturday honoring the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, or the 1st Galician … The march was held on the 75th anniversary of the 1st Galician’s establishment under Nazi auspices. It was organized by an umbrella of nationalist organizations known as the National Corps of Lviv Region, the Zaxid news site reported. In addition to the Waffen SS symbols, dozens of participants at the march carried posters featuring the 1st Galician’s symbol.
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Contemporary film report on a mass rally in Lviv (Lemberg), Ukraine, July 18, 1943, for the newly formed SS Division “Galicia.” Ukrainian-language narration. Runtime: 2:27 mins. Ceremonies begin with an outdoor religious service. Ukrainians greet the German Governor, Otto Wächter, who then addresses the large, joyful crowd. Taking part in the parade are many young men who have volunteered for service in the new military formation, as well as young women in traditional dress. Many carry the symbol of the “Galicia” Division, a yellow stylized lion on a blue background – the Ukrainian national colors.
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Stalin is Century's Bloodiest Figure
Eric Margolis
… At least 40 million victims, not including 20 million war dead. Kaganovitch and many senior OGPU officers (later, NKVD) were Jewish. The predominance of Jews among Bolshevik leaders and the frightful crimes and cruelty inflicted by Stalin’s Cheka on Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland led the victims of Red Terror to blame the Jewish people for both communism and their suffering. As a direct result, during the subsequent Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, the region’s innocent Jews became the target of ferocious revenge by Ukrainians, Balts and Poles.
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An activist lawyer was taken away in handcuffs and held behind bars for 18 hours because he asked challenging questions and distributed flyers at a conference on the Holocaust. Bruce Leichty was arrested March 17 at a conference on “Mennonites and Holocaust” at Bethel College in Kansas, for which he had properly registered. Leichty, who lives and practices law in California, is a lifelong Mennonite. He served as immigration counsel to recently deceased Holocaust revisionists Ingrid Rimland Zundel, herself a former Mennonite, and her husband, Ernst Zundel. “I did nothing wrong and committed no crime,” says Leichty. “I did not disrupt the conference in any way, and I was peaceable in all my interactions.”
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Palestinian Leader Abbas Says Jews’ Behavior, Not Anti-Semitism, Caused the Holocaust
The Times of Israel
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday said that the Holocaust was not caused by anti-Semitism, but by the “social behavior” of the Jews, including money-lending. In a long and rambling at speech in Ramallah at a rare session of the Palestinian National Council, Abbas touched on a number of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories during what he called a “history lesson,” as he sought to prove the 3,000 year-old Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is false.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Accuses Iran of Cheating on Nuclear Agreement
The Guardian (Britain)
Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of continuing to hide and expand its nuclear weapons knowhow after a 2015 agreement with global powers, presenting what the Israeli prime minister claimed was “new and conclusive proof” of violations. Netanyahu presented a series of slides and photographs of documents that he said were drawn from a half-ton cache obtained by Israeli intelligence “a few weeks ago” … However, key documents highlighted by Netanyahu had previously been seen by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as early as 2005 and made public by the agency in 2011.
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Netanyahu Accuses Iran of Hiding Nuclear Weapons Activity
Deutsche Welle (Germany)
In a televised presentation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of moving nuclear weapons to a secret location / … Netanyahu has presented what he claimed was proof that Iran had broken the terms of the nuclear deal signed in 2015 with major world powers … Middle East analyst Daniel Gerlach told DW that most of the information Netanyahu was referring to was from before the Iran deal was concluded, and said some of the information presented by the prime minister had previously been contradicted by the IAEA and Netanyahu’s own intelligence services … The EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini issued a statement after the presentation saying Netanyahu’s allegations did not appear to show that Iran was currently violating the terms of the deal.
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What’s Changed After Netanyahu’s Presentation?
Jonathan Marcus – BBC News
So what has changed, if anything, in the wake of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s theatrical presentation of Israel’s claimed seizure of a trove of documents from Iran’s secret nuclear archive? The purpose and timing of Mr Netanyahu’s presentation was clear: to discredit the Iran nuclear deal, and to influence one man – Donald Trump … What Mr Netanyahu gave was essentially a history lesson. He did not show any convincing evidence that Iran is in breach of the 2015 agreement. And this could prove crucial. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the global nuclear watchdog monitoring the deal – has given Iran a clean bill of health on several occasions. It is, apparently, upholding its end of the agreement to the letter.
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Trump Just 'More Explicit' About Long-Held US Desire for 'Regime Change' in Iran, Says Iranian Foreign Minister
J. Queally - Common Dreams
As President Trump threatens to rip up the nuclear agreement between the U.S., Iran and other major powers, the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday that the United States has “never abandoned the idea of regime change” for his country and the only major difference now is that the Trump administration has just become “more explicit about stating it.” … Zarif then reminded viewers that it was the U.S. who backed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980’s, even supplying ingredients and condoning the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqis. “People should not forget history,” he said … He also condemned the ongoing U.S.-backed, Saudi-led assault on Yemen. And ultimately called for “respect” from the U.S. administration if it hopes for a better bilateral relationship to arrive.
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The Last Multilateralist
Patrick J. Buchanan
… His visit was hailed and his views cheered, but on reflection, the ideas of Emmanuel Macron seem to be less about tomorrow than yesterday … The United States would seem an odd place to go about venting on “aggressive nationalisms that deny our history.” … General Washington, at whose Mount Vernon home Macron dined, was a nationalist who fought for six years to sever America’s ties to the nation under which he was born. How does Macron think Andrew Jackson acquired Florida from Spain, Sam Houston acquired Texas from Mexico, and Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor acquired the Southwest? By bartering? … Was not the Zionist movement that resurrected Israel in 1948, and, in 1967, captured the West Bank, and then annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, a manifestation of aggressive nationalism?
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A candidate of Germany’s right-wing nationalist party has said the country should “be proud of” its soldiers in both world wars and people should no longer “reproach” Germans for World War Two. Alexander Gauland’s words have been met with some scorn … A video emerged of Alexander Gauland, a candidate for the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party … He said “no other people” in Europe had dealt as clearly as the Germans with a “wrong” past, and the twelve years when the Nazi party ruled Germany (1933-1945) “no longer affect our identity”. “We have the right to take back our country and our history,” he said. “If the French are rightly proud of their emperor and the Britons of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars,” he said.