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Trump’s Venezuela Fiasco
Ron Paul
… Why did Trump declare that the Venezuelan president was no longer the president? According to the State Department, the Administration was acting to help enforce the Venezuelan constitution. If only they were so eager to enforce our own Constitution! It’s ironic that a president who has spent the first two years in office fighting charges that a foreign country meddled in the US elections would turn around and not only meddle in foreign elections but actually demand the right to name a foreign country’s president! … Regime change has long been US policy for Venezuela .. It is tragically comical that President Trump has named convicted criminal Elliot Abrams as his point person to “restore democracy” in Venezuela.
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Venezuela: None of Our Business
Thomas L. Knapp
… How Venezuelans choose to conduct their political affairs never has been and is not now the business of the US government. One need support neither Maduro nor Guaido to reach this conclusion. It’s simply not up to Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, or any other American politician to run Venezuela. Unfortunately, US administrations since the 1950s seem to have lost or mis-filed the above memo. Usually in the name of anti-communism, though in reality mostly for the benefit of American oil companies, the US has continuously intervened to ensure “friendly” regimes in Caracas.
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End All Interventionism, Not Just in Venezuela
Jacob G. Hornberger – FFF
… The massive death and destruction from U.S. interventionism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East isn’t even over with, and yet interventionist dead-enders are now shifting their sights to Venezuela … Obviously, the dead-enders are hoping that Americans forget the unmitigated disasters that interventionism has produced on this side of the world, such as in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, and others. The time has come for the American people to raise their sights to a higher level, one that involves not only rejecting more interventionism in Venezuela, but one that rejects interventionism entirely.
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Another Israeli Terrorist Vies To Be Prime Minister
J. Ofir - Mondoweiss
Israeli history is filled with terrorists who became Prime Minister. While pre-state Jewish terror leaders of the Irgun and Stern Gang, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, are often noted as the obvious examples, master-ethnic-cleanser David Ben-Gurion should also be remembered as such … Now comes another candidate: Benjamin (‘Benny’) Gantz. Gantz, former Israeli army Chief of Staff (2011-2015), is challenging Benjamin Netanyahu for the Prime Minister post in the upcoming April elections, and doing it from the supposed ‘left’ … Gantz launched his campaign under the party “Hosen L’Israel” (“Israel’s Resilience”), with a series of unbelievably violent and bellicose videos … The video contains the repeated slogan “only the strong wins” and ends like all of the clips with the slogan “Gantz – Israel before everything”.
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On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Honor Six Million Murdered Jews by Showing Solidarity With Jews Alive Today
Abraham Cooper (Simon Wiesenthal Center) - Fox News
… On Holocaust Remembrance Day we must ask: How can Hitler, who devoted his life to fanning the flames of anti-Semitism and murdering Jews, have so underestimated the resurgent hatred for the Jewish people? And why has this ancient and poisonous hatred survived and grown in our own lifetimes? … So how should Americans respond this International Holocaust Remembrance Day? Take your kids to a museum that tells the story of the Holocaust if you can – now or in the next few months … Read “The Diary of Anne Frank” together … And finally, we should all heed the words British Prime Minister Theresa May wrote this week in the Book of Commitment at the Holocaust Educational Trust in her country to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day …
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The President’s 'Holocaust Remembrance Day' Message
Pres. Donald Trump
… On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we hold in our hearts the memory of every man, woman, and child who was abused, tortured, or murdered during the Holocaust … Any denial or indifference to the horror of this chapter in the history of humankind diminishes all men and women everywhere and invites repetition of this great evil. We remain committed to the post-Holocaust imperative, “Never Again.” “Never Again” means not only remembering — in a profound and lasting way — the evils of the Holocaust, but it also means remembering the individual men and women in this Nation, and throughout the world, who have devoted their lives to the preservation and security of the Jewish people and to the betterment of all mankind.
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Review: The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917-1919
Payvand News of Iran
One of the little known calamities of World War One, and one which I only strayed across account of fairly recently, where I read a mention of between nine and eleven million Persians (approximately half the then population of Persia) dying, was the widespread famine that hit Persia (Iran) at the end of World War One. Apart from the odd mention in other books and articles, the only significant study of this event is this book [The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917-1919] … In this book, Mohammad Gholi Majd argues that Persia was the greatest victim of World War One and also the victim of possibly the worst genocide of the twentieth century … It wasn’t genocide, it was simply that the British focus was on the war and all else, including the fate of Persian peasants, was secondary.
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Britain’s Role in WWI Famine That Killed Millions of Iranians
Press TV (Iran)
The deadly famine in Iran, which was caused by the British presence in the country during World War I, is ignored by almost all recent history books. Dr. Mohammad Gholi Majd’s “The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia 1917-1919” is perhaps the only book that extensively documents the genocide. According to the book, the widespread famine coupled with a disease epidemic killed around 8-10 million Iranian between 1917 and 1919, nearly half of the country’s population back then. Majd, who has a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University, writes in his book that after invading Iran at the beginning of 1916, the British used all means of transportation for war supplies to the front-lines.
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Afghanistan: America’s Shameful War
Eric Margolis
… The United States, champion of freedom and self-determination, is now in its 18th year of colonial war in Afghanistan. This miserable, stalemated conflict is America’s longest and most shameful war. So far it has cost over $1 trillion and killed no one knows how many Afghans. This conflict began in 2001 on a lie: namely that Afghanistan was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US … Washington, which has done as much as the former Soviet invaders to ravage Afghanistan, has no clear idea what to do next. President Trump announced withdrawal of some of the 14,000 US troops (and large numbers of mercenaries) from Afghanistan. But then the pro-war neocons at State and the Pentagon sought to veto the president’s statement.
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Pull US Troops Out of Syria Now, Not Later
Jacob G. Hornberger
In December, President Trump announced that he was finally ordering an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria. Almost immediately, under pressure from the interventionist crowd, including the national-security branch of the U.S. government, Trump reversed course and announced that he intended to delay the pullout by another four months … The U.S. government has no business being in Syria. It never has had any business being in Syria. Those 2,000 U.S. troops don’t belong in Syria … Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment have used ISIS to justify the stationing of those 2000 troops in Syria. But it’s been a lie from the beginning. The real reason those troops are there is to attempt to achieve regime change in Syria, just like they got regime change in Iraq.
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Russia said on Wednesday that Israel should stop carrying out what Moscow called arbitrary air strikes on Syria, days after the Israeli air force targeted what Israel said were Iranian forces there. Israel has repeatedly attacked what it describes as Iranian targets in Syria and those of allied militia, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describes the effort as an open-ended campaign to push back arch-foe Tehran. The strikes have long caused friction between Israel and Russia, which apart from Iran is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s other major foreign backer.
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Damascus has threatened to exercise its legitimate right for self-defense against Israeli aggression and target Tel Aviv airport in a mirror response, unless the Security Council puts an end to IDF [Israeli military] intrusions into Syrian airspace. Apparently fed up with years of Israeli impunity in the Syrian skies and regular strikes carried out in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport, Syria has threatened to retaliate in explicit terms. “Isn’t time now for the UN Security Council to stop the Israeli repeated aggressions on the Syrian Arab Republic territories?” Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari wondered Tuesday. “Or is it required to draw the attention of the war-makers in this Council by exercising our legitimate right to defend ourself and respond to the Israeli aggression on Damascus International Civil Airport in the same way on Tel Aviv Airport?”
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Israel’s Continuing Aggression Against Syria
Dr. Bashar Ja'afari, Syria UN Representative
… Yesterday, the Israeli occupation forces once again committed a series of aggression using missiles targeting the Syrian Arab Republic territories from above Lebanese territories – it was mentioned by my colleague, the representative of Lebanon in great detail. They attacked us from above the Lebanese territories, from the occupied Palestinian territories, and from the Sea of Galilee in the occupied Syrian Golan. This was a gross violation of international law, of the UN Charter, and of the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions … Isn’t it high time for this Council to take the necessary measures to stop the repeated Israeli aggression against the territories of my country?
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Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in twelve believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found. The poll of more than 2,000 people was carried out by Opinion Matters for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT). Meanwhile, people have gathered across the country to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. More than 11,000 activities took place, including a national commemorative ceremony in Westminster. In the survey, 45 percent of those polled said they did not know how many people were killed in the Holocaust, while one in five (19%) believed fewer than two million Jews were murdered.
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The Secular Religion of 'The Holocaust'
Robert Faurisson
The religion of “the Holocaust” is a secular one: it belongs to the lay world; it is profane; in actuality, it has at its disposal the secular arm, that is a temporal authority with dreaded power. It has its dogma, its commandments, its decrees, its prophets and its high priests. As one revisionist has observed, it has its circle of saints, male and female, amongst whom, for example, Saint Anne (Frank), Saint Simon (Wiesenthal) and Saint Elie (Wiesel). It has its holy places, its rituals and its pilgrimages. It has its sacred (and macabre) buildings and its relics …
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Two Walls: Congress Prefers the Israeli Version
Philip Giraldi
… Many of the Democrats who are currently criticizing the southern border wall on moral grounds have failed to apply the same standard to another infamous wall, that which is being built by Israel … The Israeli wall is at many points larger and more intimidating than that planned by Trump, and it is also designed to physically and economically devastate the Palestinian population adjacent to it … So, for many in Washington a legal and relatively apolitical wall by the United States to protect its border is a horrible prospect while the Israeli version built on someone else’s land with the intention to damage the local Arab population as much as possible is perfectly fine. The reality is that America’s Establishment, which is dominated by veneration of Israel for a number of reasons, is completely hypocritical …
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Iran: A Lie That May Lead to War
Paul Pillar
On the first work day of the new year, President Trump held a cabinet meeting that was open to the press and consisted mostly of a rambling monologue by the president about border walls and assorted other topics. Toward the end of the proceedings, Trump castigated anew the “horrible Iran nuclear deal” and asserted that the agreement “in eight years, gives Iran the legal right to have nuclear weapons.” No analysis or research by fact checkers is needed to see the bald-faced nature of that lie. The text of the nuclear deal — formally, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — explicitly says the opposite … Trump’s falsehood continues a long campaign of misrepresentation by those who have opposed the JCPOA for reasons unrelated to nuclear proliferation.
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The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently paid out millions of dollars to a target of its “anti-hate” campaigns, has been sued by a lawyer who claims SPLC paid for stolen documents in an attempt to get him fired and destroy his future work prospects … The latest case was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by Baltimore lawyer Glen K. Allen against SPLC, and Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok, who have been associated with the group. The lawsuit alleges: “Motivated by lucrative fundraising aims and employing fundraising techniques decried across the political spectrum as deceptive, the SPLC’s avowed goal, under the leadership of Beirich, Potok, and others, is to destroy, through public shaming, loss of employment, loss of reputation and other severe harms, groups and persons the SPLC broadly defines as its political enemies.”
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Fake Crimes: The SPLC
Carol M. Swain, PhD - First Things
Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and pro-family organizations have a common adversary, one that is virulent and relentless. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a powerful progressive advocacy group that says its primary mission is to fight hatred, teach tolerance, and seek justice … The SPLC now works to advance the agenda of the cultural left. Ironically, given the deeply Christian character of the civil rights movement, the SPLC now equates traditional Christian and pro-family organizations with hate groups … The SPLC’s aim is not just to shame its targeted groups; it’s to destroy them … Posing as a moral watchdog gives the organization considerable power. The media quote it all the time.
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American-Born Iran TV Anchor Says US Jailed Her as a Warning
Associated Press
A prominent American-born anchorwoman for Iran’s state television says she believes the U.S. government jailed her because of her work as journalist and her beliefs, and as a warning to her to “watch your step.” Marzieh Hashemi spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday, a day after being released from custody. She was not charged with a crime but was detained for ten days as a material witness in a grand jury investigation in Washington. Details of the investigation are under seal, and Hashemi said she could not provide details. But she said it is not related to terrorism and has to do with her job and the fact that she lives in Iran.
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Study Finds 50-Year History of Anti-Palestinian Bias in Mainstream News Reporting
Kathryn Shihadah - If Americans Knew
A recent media study based on analysis of 50 years of data found that major U.S. newspapers have provided consistently skewed, pro-Israel reporting on Israel-Palestine. The study, conducted by 4161Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, is the largest of its kind. Using computer analysis, researchers evaluated the headlines of five influential U.S. newspapers: the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, from 1967 to 2017 … Over the half-century period in question, headlines mentioned Israel four times more frequently than Palestine. The study revealed other discrepancies in coverage of Israel and Palestine/Palestinians as well … The study also found Palestinians marginalized as sources of news and information.
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`Hitler’s Zipper’: Germany’s Powerful WWII Machine Gun
A. Blumberg - Warfare History Network
The MG 42, possibly the best machine gun ever created, originated as a replacement for the German Army’s standard machine gun, the MG 34, which first came into service in 1936 … More than 400,000 units were produced … The German Army formulated an effective machine gun doctrine and tactics. Unlike their American, British, Commonwealth, and Soviet adversaries, the Germans in World War II employed machine guns as their major infantry support weapons. The Allies used automatic weapons to support rifle-armed infantry … Generally, German machine gun doctrine, both for defense and attack, stressed five basic points: surprise, fire and movement, coordination of firepower, conservation of ammunition, and alternate positions.
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Crew members of a US B-17 bomber during a raid over Germany in World War II are startled when they encounter a German jet fighter for the first time. The Messerschmitt Me 262 was the world’s first operational turbojet fighter aircraft. It was deployed during the final months of the war in Europe, but too late and in numbers too small to significantly alter the outcome. Runtime: 1:23 mins.
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Americans Killed in Syria Show Cost in Blood of Delaying President Trump’s Directive to Withdraw
Daniel L. Davis - USA Today
U.S. military forces are designed to defend Americans from actual or imminent attack. They are not for “posturing,” sending signals or defending the interests of other countries or groups — and our troops are not supposed to sacrifice their lives to separate one fighting force from another in a civil war … Having troops on the ground in permanent wars overseas does nothing to prevent terrorists from attacking us here, but it does engender animosity and come at great cost. The only thing we accomplish by refusing to withdraw from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan is to dissipate our troops’ ability to defend against potentially existential threats that could arise elsewhere — or unnecessarily spill their blood, as was the case last week. It’s time to bring our troops home.
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Media Worried US Won’t Occupy Syria Forever
G. Shupak - FAIR
In December, President Donald Trump said that he planned to withdraw the US troops from Syria, which number between 2,000 and 4,000. Trump’s claim was widely condemned in corporate media, demonstrating the commentariat’s shared belief in American benevolence toward other peoples, in Washington’s alleged right and duty to decide other countries’ fates, and in the forever war the US supposedly has to wage in the Middle East … What the authors are suggesting is that the US should maintain an illegal presence in Syria until the Syrian government has been overthrown and replaced with one that has partnerships to which the US assents … Much of the coverage complained that the US pulling out of Syria would be bad for Israel, in that Iran will likely retain influence in Syria.
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Banned by Facebook for Telling the Truth
Israel Shamir
… Even in the grim days of Stalin and McCarthy the authorities exercised less mind control than does Mr Zuckerberg and his ilk. And not only for politics. They want to draw and implement their agenda on all topics disregarding our views … FB [Facebook] bans for posting links to the sites they do not like. I have been banned for posting a link to Unz.com. Links to RT and Sputnik are removed, too. Last week, FB removed and banned 500 accounts with 850,000 followers for publishing links to RT and Sputnik … And now for Israel and Jews. This is a major cause of FB bans. It is next to impossible to refer to Israel on Facebook – without being banned … It is paramount to save social networks from Zuckerberg diktat. It should be a public facility, protected by law …
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… Today’s social engineers are pikers compared to the sanctimonious, hypocritical megalomaniacs who in early 1919 sought to reorder the globe to their fantasies. In doing so, they planted the seeds of World War II a generation later, as well as innumerable smaller conflicts in succeeding decades … The haughty, sanctimonious, and ignorant [US President] Wilson would turn out to be uniquely pernicious. His realpolitik counterparts wearied of his claim to speak for humanity … And Wilson’s hallowed League of Nations would be used to enforce the victors’ peace in the years ahead … Yet a century later, voices continue to insist that Washington engage in additional military interventions, line-drawing, and global social engineering. Hopefully political leaders will eventually learn from the disastrous experience of 1919.
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Was American Intervention in World War I Justified?
Paul Gottfried
Burton Yale Pines’s work, America’s Greatest Blunder: The Fateful Decision to Enter World War One, is … a comprehensive case for why the U.S. should have stayed out of World War I. Pines also shows (if further proof is needed) that from the outset the American government took sides in the European conflict and flubbed every opportunity to make peace between the warring blocs … Pines demonstrates that conventional accounts of the German danger faced by the U.S. in 1917 have been inaccurate. Germany posed absolutely no “military or security threat” to the U.S., when Wilson dragged the U.S. into war in the spring of 1917 … It was the Central Powers, never the Allies, who from 1916 on were looking to end the war with a negotiated peace and which grabbed at the proposed (insincere) American efforts to mediate.
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Neither War Nor Peace: A New Look at the Aftermath of World War I
M. MacMillan – The New York Times
… Robert Gerwarth, a professor of modern history at University College Dublin [in his new book, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End], looks at the turbulent five-or-so years especially in the center of Europe, between 1918, when World War I ended, and 1923, when peace seemed to come to the Middle East. His account is both important and timely, and obliges us to reconsider a period and a battle front that has too often been neglected by historians … The pressures of the war led to the disintegration of empires — the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman — that had endured for centuries, setting off a scramble for territory and control. Even stable societies buckled. Gerwarth counts 27 violent conflicts in Europe, from civil wars to coups, between 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, and 1920 alone.
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… Most Americans — whether they call themselves conservative or liberal — like to regard World War II as “the good war,” a morally unambiguous conflict between Good and Evil … The hubris of Clinton’s portrayal of history is not merely an affront against historical truth, it is dangerous because it sanctions potentially even more calamitous military adventures in the future. After all, if the United States was as righteous and as successful as the President says it was in “saving the world” in two world wars, why would anyone oppose similar world-saving crusades in the future?
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Most Israelis Don’t Want Non-Jewish Migrants, Even If They Are Highly Skilled
The Times of Israel
The majority of Israelis don’t support non-Jewish immigration to the country, even when the immigrants are highly trained or have advanced degrees, according to a new Pew Research Center report released on Tuesday. The Pew poll found that 51 percent of Israelis oppose high-skilled immigration of foreigners moving to the country with a bachelor’s degree or higher. The Pew poll focused on immigration of those not entitled to Israeli citizenship under the law of return, which applies to anybody with at least one Jewish grandparent. Out of the twelve economically advanced countries surveyed, only Israel and Italy had the majority of the population oppose high-skilled immigration. In contrast, most of the other countries surveyed supported high-skilled immigration. In the US, 78 percent of the public supports high-skilled immigration.
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Bases, Bases, Everywhere ... Except in the Pentagon’s Report
Nick Turse - Tomgram
… Officially, the Department of Defense (DoD) maintains 4,775 “sites,” spread across all 50 states, eight U.S. territories, and 45 foreign countries. A total of 514 of these outposts are located overseas … According to David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, there could be hundreds of similar off-the-books bases around the world … The Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition notes that the United States possesses up to 95 percent of the world’s foreign military bases, while countries like France, Russia, and the United Kingdom have perhaps 10-20 foreign outposts each. China has just one. The Department of Defense even boasts that its “locations” include 164 countries.
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In sworn testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.” The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive … In the leaked discussion thread, a Google site reliability engineer hinted at the existence of more search blacklists, according to the source. “We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said the employee.
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An anti-immigration group sued leaders of the Southern Poverty Law Center on Wednesday, claiming their inclusion on the SPLC’s list of hate groups is a racket that violates a RICO law. In their suit, filed in federal district court in Washington, DC, the Center for Immigration Studies claims their criticism of illegal immigrants does not meet the SPLC’s own definition of a hate group, but they label them so anyway. The suit also claims that by including them on the hate-group list, the SPLC sought to “‘wreck’ and ‘destroy’ CIS by ruining it financially.” “SPLC and its leaders have every right to oppose our work on immigration, but they do not have the right to label us a hate group and suggest we are racists,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of CIS, said in a statement announcing the suit.
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YouTube Secretly Using SPLC To Police Videos
P. Hasson - Daily Caller
The Southern Poverty Law Center is assisting YouTube in policing content on their platform, The Daily Caller has learned. The left-wing nonprofit — which has more recently come under fire for labeling legitimate conservative organizations as “hate groups” — is one of the more than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies in YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program, a source with knowledge of the arrangement told TheDC. The SPLC and other program members help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos … A handful of YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers,” including the Anti-Defamation League and No Hate Speech — a European organization focused on combatting intolerance — have gone public with their participation in the program.
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Jews and Nazis
Ron Unz
… During most of the 1930s, these other Zionists had formed an important economic partnership with Nazi Germany, based upon an obvious commonality of interests. After all, Hitler regarded Germany’s one percent Jewish population as a disruptive and potentially dangerous element which he wanted gone, and the Middle East seemed as good a destination for them as any other. Meanwhile, the Zionists had very similar objectives, and the creation of their new national homeland in Palestine obviously required both Jewish immigrants and Jewish financial investment. After Hitler had been named Chancellor in 1933, outraged Jews worldwide had quickly launched an economic boycott, hoping to bring Germany to its knees, with London’s Daily Express famously running the banner headline “Judea Declares War on Germany.”
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A national politics correspondent for Newsweek, Nina Burleigh, tweeted that Israeli- and Jewish-linked organizations — along with Israel itself — are on “the third rail of American journalism.” The phrase “third rail” refers to the untouchable rail on mass transit systems, suggesting negative stories about Jews and Israel are too hot to handle … Kendzior asserted that “the press seems particularly reluctant to pursue these [stories]. Which is not surprising since those who do write about them are threatened.” By whom, she did not say. “Interesting thread,” Burleigh replied. “To answer your final question, Israel, mossad, Chabad and black cube … you’re hitting the third rail of American journalism, Sarah.”
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Democratic Voters Are Becoming Far More Militaristic and Pro-War Than Republicans
Glenn Greenwald - The Intercept
… While official Washington united in opposition, new polling data from Morning Consult/Politico shows that a large plurality of Americans support Trump’s Syria withdrawal announcement: 49 percent support to 33 percent opposition … What is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents overwhelming favor their removal … While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year on whether the U.S. should continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining.
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Israel Military Finally Acknowledges That Israel Supplied Weapons to Syrian Rebels
The Times of Israel
Outgoing IDF [Israel Defense Forces] Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot this weekend acknowledged for the first time that Israel had indeed provided weaponry to Syrian rebel groups in the Golan Heights during the country’s seven-year civil war. Until Sunday, Israel would say officially only that it had given humanitarian aid to Syrian opposition groups across the border, while denying or refusing to comment on reports that it had supplied them with arms as well … In his media appearances, Eisenkot acknowledged that the IDF carried out hundreds of raids in Syria — in some interviews, the number given is 200, in others its 400 — and dropped 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets in 2018 alone.
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At Age 70, Time to Rethink NATO
Patrick J. Buchanan
… The time is ripe for a strategic review of these war guarantees to fight a nuclear-armed Russia in defense of countries across the length of Europe that few could find on a map. Apparently, President Donald Trump, on trips to Europe, raised questions as to whether these war guarantees comport with vital U.S. interests and whether they could pass a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. The shock of our establishment that Trump even raised this issue in front of Europeans suggests that the establishment, frozen in the realities of yesterday, ought to be made to justify these sweeping war guarantees … America is now burdened with the duty to defend Europe from the Atlantic to the Baltic, even as we face a far greater threat in China, with an economy and population ten times that of Russia.
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My Patient, Hitler: A Memoir of Hitler’s Jewish Physician
Dr. Eduard Bloch
… What kind of boy was Adolf Hitler? Many biographers have put him down as harsh-voiced, defiant, untidy; as a young ruffian who personified all that is unattractive. This simply is not true. As a youth he was quiet, well-mannered and neatly dressed … In the practice of my profession it is natural that I should have witnessed many scenes such as this one, yet none of them left me with quite the same impression. In all my career I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler.
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'Tell Me How This Ends': America’s Muddled Involvement With Syria
Charles Glass - Harper’s
… The result of US meddling in Syria was failure on all counts. It did not depose Assad, who looks like he is set to hold on to power for years. It did not expel Iran and Russia, whose influence and footprints in Syria expanded. It did not break the Syria–Hezbollah alliance. Nor did it ameliorate civilian suffering, as refugees either stay in exile squalor or return to demolished homes. It had the unintended consequence of turning Turkey from a traditional ally into a regional adversary. Syrian conspiracy theorists claim the US goal was to destroy Syria, as it did Iraq, to protect Israel. Only if that were true could the United States be said to have achieved any objective.
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The Pentagon was not the only party pressing Donald Trump to keep troops in Syria last year. It turns out the Israeli government and its supporters in Washington were working very hard to get the Trump administration to use America’s military presence there to support an Israeli campaign of airstrikes aimed at threatening war with Iran. The Israeli strategy was aimed at dividing Russia from Iran and thus putting pressure on Tehran to withdraw its military personnel from Syria … The story of the Israel lobby’s latest attempt to capture American policy, recounted here for the first time, reveals just how far Israel was able to reach into the Trump administration before the president personally intervened.
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House Passes Bill to Force Trump to Nominate 'Anti-Semitism' Head Who Would Monitor Criticism of Israel
Alison Weir
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 411-1 for a bill that would force President Trump to nominate an anti-Semitism envoy, a position that has been vacant since he took office. The definition of anti-Semitism the position uses includes certain criticisms of Israel. The bipartisan bill upgrades the current position of Anti-Semitism Envoy to an ambassador rank, which requires the job to be filled within 90 days. The law states that the Special Envoy shall “serve as the primary advisor to, and coordinate efforts across, the U.S. government relating to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incitement in foreign countries.”
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French Court Sentences Alain Soral to Prison for Remarks on Jews
B. Cohen - Algemeiner
One of France’s most vocal anti-semites, Alain Soral, was sentenced to a year in prison by a criminal court in Paris on Thursday, after he was found guilty of inciting racial hatred in an article that described Jews as “manipulative, domineering and hateful.” The offending article was published last March on Soral’s playfully-titled Égalité et Réconciliation (“Equality and Reconciliation”) website — an online home for antisemitic, extreme nationalist and anti-capitalist activists and writers .. Ilana Soskin — a lawyer for the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) — said her organization would continue to pursue Soral, a serial offender, “as soon as he makes anti-Jewish remarks,” …
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The Moral Travesty of Israel Seeking Arab, Iranian Money for Alleged Mistreatment of Jews
Ramzy Baroud
… Israel, believe it or not, is demanding that seven Arab countries and Iran pay $250 billion as compensation for what it claims was the forceful exodus of Jews from Arab countries during the late 1940s. The events that Israel is citing allegedly occurred at a time when Zionist Jewish militias were actively uprooting nearly one million Palestinian Arabs and systematically destroying their homes, villages and towns throughout Palestine … For Israel to be seeking compensation from Arab countries and Iran is a moral travesty, especially as Palestinians refugees continue to languish in refugee camps across Palestine and the Middle East.
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… Ethnic Russians were much less loyal to the Soviet regime in their encounters with the German occupiers than historians have believed up to now. This is the story told by UiO [University of Oslo] researcher Johannes Due Enstad, who has recently published a book about the German occupation of Northwest Russia during World War 2 … According to Enstad, this German agricultural policy was the main reason why the positive attitude to the occupants lasted as long as it did … “Many sources interviewed after the war tell us that, in a material sense too, they were better off during the German occupation than during the years after the Germans were chased into retreat,” says Enstad. Another reason for the relative popularity of the occupiers was their policy on religion … Many priests openly supported the occupants and prayed for a German victory in their sermons.
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Fragile Loyalties: Soviet Russians Between Hitler and Stalin
Johannes Due Enstad - University of Oslo (Norway)
… My book is the first (in English) to focus on the occupation experience of a mostly rural Russian population … Many in northwest Russia despised the Bolshevik regime for reasons grounded in their own personal experience, as even Soviet authorities had to admit. Another reason many Russians were ready to support or tolerate the German occupation regime has to do with German agricultural policy … German authorities in northwest Russia allowed de-collectivization to go ahead, later institutionalizing it by decreeing a “New Agrarian Order” in spring 1942. Peasants naturally welcomed de-collectivization. In some places, tears of joy and “spontaneous cheers for the Führer” were observed … People in the countryside “began to live a life both freer and more affluent than under Soviet power.”
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Flight From Hell
Michael Kirilov
… Even though the Germans were the foe, more often than not, they treated us better than Stalin’s Reds. My dad was picked up by the Germans after being left for dead by Stalin’s troops, and was taken to one of their field hospitals. When he felt strong enough he left with the help of peasants and made his way home … For many in the West it may seem hard to believe, but Nazi occupation, despite reprisals, was better than being under Stalin. Because, for the first time, farmers could work the land free of the disastrous Bolshevik collective system, bumper crops were harvested. The Germans organized efficient food distribution. At last there was no starvation in the land.
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As German forces advanced into the Soviet Union in 1941, many people welcomed the troops as liberators from Bolshevik tyranny. The welcome was especially warm in the Baltic countries, western Belarus and western Ukraine. As this four-minute video (no narration) shows, grateful people express appreciation for the troops who brought freedom from harsh Soviet rule, and restored ancient rights. German soldiers, as well as troops of German-allied nations, often helped local people repair homes and buildings, fix damaged infrastructure, and re-open churches that the Bolsheviks had shut down or destroyed.
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Glimpses of life of Russians, and people of other Soviet nationalities, under German occupation during World War II, are shown. Included are scenes of people showing appreciation for German troops and administration, and for restoring freedoms that the Soviets had taken away. Runtime: 4:01 mins. With music, but no narration. Also shown are soldiers of the German-sponsored, anti-Stalinist “Russian Liberation Army.” In addition to the many former Soviet citizens who served in military units that fought with Germany and its allies against the Red Army were many others who served as volunteer “Hiwis.”
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Volunteers Join Anti-Soviet 'Russian Liberation Army'
Video – Wartime newsreel
Former Soviet General Andrei Vlasov takes command of new units of volunteers of the German-sponsored, anti-Stalinist “Russian Liberation Army.” Portion of German weekly newsreel, “Deutsche Wochenschau,” March 16, 1945. German narration, with French subtitles.
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Soviet Scorched Earth Warfare: Facts and Consequences
Walter N. Sanning – Institute for Historical Review
… The measures taken by the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1942 aimed not only at furthering the Soviet war effort, but also at harming the German enemy even at the cost of huge losses of life among Soviet civilians. The Soviet scorched-earth strategy included the deportation of millions of men, women and children; the resettlement and reestablishment of thousands of factories; the withdrawal of almost the entire railway rolling stock; the annihilation of raw material depots; the removal of most of the agricultural machinery, cattle and grain stocks; the systematic destruction, burning and blowing up of the immovable infrastructure … and the intentional starvation of the civilian population which remained behind to face German occupation.
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Iran has called on the US to release one of its journalists who, it says, was illegally arrested by the FBI while making a family visit. American-born reporter Marzieh Hashemi was reportedly taken into custody upon landing in St Louis on Sunday and subjected to “inhumane” conditions. Ms Hashemi’s reported arrest came after Iran detained at least four Americans, some on espionage charges. The FBI declined to comment on the situation in an email to the BBC. Ms Hashemi, 59, is reportedly now in Washington DC following her arrest at St Louis Lambert International Airport … Ms Hashemi’s employer, the English-language state broadcaster Press TV, issued a lengthy statement expressing “strong protest” at Ms Hashemi’s situation.
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Zionist Corruption of US Politics, Danger of a New Middle East War, and More
Mark Weber with Marzieh Hashemi - Video
Mark Weber talks about the power and influence of the Jewish lobby in the US, Zionist corruption of the American political system, US-Iran relations, the danger of war between the US and Iran, and more. Marzieh Hashemi, an American-born journalist who lives in Iran, conducts this 15-minute interview with the IHR director in the lobby of the Azadi hotel in Tehran, Feb. 2013. Hashemi is also a documentary film maker and a host/ presenter for Iran’s English-language Press TV.
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According to Marco Rubio, the first bill the 2019 U.S. Senate will take up is one that is focused on Israel … The four-part bill, designated S.1, is composed of measures on behalf of Israel that Congress tried and failed to pass in 2018. Some were pioneered by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee … This would give Israel $33 billion over the next ten years in addition to the $5.5 billion enacted in last year’s defense spending bill. This is reportedly the largest military aid package in U.S. history … Another component of the bill is the “Combatting BDS Act of 2019.” This allows state and local governments to prohibit contracting with any entity that participates in BDS, the boycott of Israel over Israel’s violations of human rights and international law. Many groups and individuals oppose the bill on the ground that it violates freedom of speech.
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Marco Rubio’s Israel Anti-Boycott Law is an Attack on Free Speech
J. Mathis - The Week
These are divisive times. But Americans should be able to agree on at least one issue: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) shouldn’t be the arbiter of what political expression is or isn’t allowed in America. Rubio is leading the effort to pass the “Combatting BDS Act,” a law that would give the federal imprimatur to state and local governments that pass laws against giving government contracts to individuals and companies that boycott the State of Israel in opposition to its policies regarding the Palestinian territories … He wants to punish Americans not for doing the wrong thing, but for thinking the wrong thoughts.
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The U.S. Has Been in a Constant State of National Emergency Since 1979. Here’s Why
Olivia B. Waxman - Time
… In fact, not only are national emergencies more common than most Americans probably realize, they can also go on for decades — and whether or not Trump declares an emergency for the wall, the nation is already subject to dozens of emergency declarations that are ongoing today … Thirty-one of the national emergencies declared via the National Emergencies Act since 1976 are technically still in effect, having never been formally ended, according to CNN. Just as presidents have declared war without Congressional approval, even after the War Powers Resolution was passed in that same mid-1970s era, presidents have exercised their right to declare an emergency without much practical worry about being checked.
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Return of the Neocons
Stephen Wertheim - New York Review of Books
… Today, neoconservatives are riding high once more, in the White House, on Capitol Hill, in the most prominent organs of opinion. The Weekly Standard may have shuttered, but anti-Trump neocons enjoy increasing influence in the center of the Republican and Democratic parties, and in publications like The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Others, meanwhile — call them neo-neoconservatives, or post-neoconservatives — are busy making policy in the Trump administration … This is fundamentally not a vision of restraint and withdrawal — or “isolationism,” as critics deride it. Trump wants to take things from the world and assert America’s dominance over it. In the name of opposing globalism, Trump has upheld one pillar after another of the neocon policy agenda.
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What Trump Means by 'America First'
Dennis Ross - The Wall Street Journal
… Since President Trump has made “America First” his calling card, one might assume that Lindbergh & Co. are the antecedents of his foreign policy. But they’re not. “Belligerent isolationists,” a group identified by diplomatic historian Manfred Jones in his 1966 classic, “Isolationism in America, 1935-41,” are Mr. Trump’s true forerunners. More than isolationists, these thinkers and politicians from the first half of the 20th century were unilateralists, reflecting a traditional impulse in American thinking. They did not want the U.S. encumbered … Mr. Trump is a 21st–century belligerent isolationist. He believes multinational institutions and agreements do nothing for America … The belligerent isolationist measures costs and benefits narrowly and in the short term. It is all tactics and no strategy …
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… During his lifetime he made a mark not only as a pioneering global aviator, but also as a prize-winning author, environmentalist and anti-war activist. Given the scarcity of truly heroic Americans during the past century, he towers as a man of exemplary accomplishment and courage. He deserves to be remembered today not only as an authentic American hero, but also because much of what he wrote and said is relevant in our own age. Indeed, some of his remarks have proven to be prophetic.
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Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson has been stripped of his honorary titles after repeating comments about race and intelligence. In a TV programme, the pioneer in DNA studies made a reference to a view that genes cause a difference on average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said the 90-year-old scientist’s remarks were “unsubstantiated and reckless”. Dr Watson had made similar claims in 2007 and subsequently apologised. He shared the Nobel in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick for their 1953 discovery of the DNA’s double helix structure … Cold Spring Harbor said it was now stripping him of those titles after he said his views had not changed in the documentary American Masters: Decoding Watson, aired on US public broadcaster PBS earlier this month.
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Censorship Is Seeping Into Our Schools
Marjorie Cohn - Truthdig
In a return to the bad old days of McCarthyism, Bahia Amawi, a US citizen of Palestinian descent, lost her Texas elementary school job after refusing to pledge in writing that she would not participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Earlier this month, Amawi sued the school district that fired her. The BDS movement against Israel has become a hot-button issue in the closing month of 2018. A bipartisan group of senators tried to attach the Israel Anti-Boycott Act to the unanimous spending bill that Trump almost signed to avoid the current government shutdown.
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When Jewish Leaders Decide to Harass College Kids — To 'Support' Israel
J. Nathan-Kazis - Forward
… In 2015, the Jewish community’s strategy shifted. Leaders who favored aggressive confrontation with perceived enemies, particularly critics of Israel, won out. Jewish and pro-Israel groups both in the U.S. and Israel used significant resources to direct hard-line, often secretive tactics against their targets. In recent months, the Forward has reported on how this strategy played out: An online blacklist called Canary Mission, which went live in 2015, targeted college students critical of Israel. Professional pro-Israel operatives posed online as college students. Pro-Israel campus groups hired top-tier professional Washington, D.C. political consultants and sent them to work on college campuses. An Israeli spy firm pitched U.S. Jewish donors with a proposal to covertly undermine the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.
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No, This is Not JFK’s Democratic Party
Patrick J. Buchanan
… While the Democratic Party is celebrating a diversity that insists that the more women, persons of color and gays in leadership ranks, and the fewer white males, the stronger and better the party, has all of America embraced this as an ideal? Is there no limit to the ideological, political, religious, racial and ethnic diversity a party and nation can tolerate before it comes apart? Are Democrats inviting an eventual Balkanization of their party and country? … While racial and ethnic voting is not new, it appears much more intense … This is not JFK’s party anymore. That party is long dead.
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Jewish Involvement in Contemporary Refugee and Migrant Organizations
Andrew Joyce – The Occidental Observer
… Jews are nothing short of prolific in influential senior roles in contemporary refugee, asylum, and pro-migration organizations. Significantly, Jews occupy the leadership of all four of the largest and most influential (and nominally secular) organizations active in America today … The practical realities of this problem are such that anti-immigration politics lacking anti-Semitic elements are doomed to failure. Jews are demonstrably providing the leadership, organisational capacity, money, and legal aggression that is driving the mass migration machine. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. The names and groups here can be checked and rechecked – they aren’t going to disappear, and the percentages won’t change.
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Orthodox Rabbi Denounces Role of Jews in Promoting 'Irresponsible' Third World Migration to Europe
Video
An orthodox Jewish rabbi condemns large-scale “third world” immigration to Europe, and the well-organized campaign behind it. In this video presentation, Rabbi David Bar-Hayim calls this mass migration a “historical act of folly.” Resistance to the radical ethnic–cultural transformation of white nations is understandable and justified, he says. The rabbi also acknowledges the prominent role played by “many Jews” in this effort, which he says is fueling anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe and the US. However, the rabbi says, the Jewish activists who promote these “irresponsible immigration policies” do not represent traditional or “true” Judaism. This video is produced by an orthodox Jewish organization based in Jerusalem. Runtime: 23 mins.
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Remember the Maine?: Fraudulent Pretexts for US Wars
Jeremy Kuzmarov – HNN
… 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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Nonintervention: America’s Founding Foreign Policy
Jacob G. Hornberger - FFF
… The great turning point with respect to foreign policy came in 1898 in the Spanish-American War, which, insofar as the United States was concerned, involved a combination of interventionism and empire … The intervention constituted an abandonment of the founding foreign policy of nonintervention that Adams had summarized a half-century before in his Fourth of July speech to Congress. The U.S. government had decided to intervene in the Spanish-American War to slay the monster of the Spanish Empire … The goal of the U.S. government was to replace the Spanish Empire as the owner and controller of its colonies … America had turned towards both empire and intervention, which made it easier for Woodrow Wilson to convince Americans to intervene in World War I twenty years later.
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How Hitler Honoured British Troops and Nurses for Saving the lives of German Sailors
Daily Mail (Britain)
The British military hospital personnel who saved 50 foreign servicemen in Gibraltar were honoured by the dictator they would be warring with in a matter of months. Adolf Hitler awarded German Red Crosses emblazoned with the Nazi swastika to those who treated 55 of his wounded sailors injured in the Spanish Civil War. The Deutschland ship was hit by two bombs off Ibiza when it was targeted by Republicans in 1937 as they resisted Spanish dictator General Franco. The UK Army personnel saved all but five, inspiring high praise from the Fuhrer himself … The Germans awarded Red Cross medals to 37 Brits, 20 of whom were awarded the Ladies Cross.
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Israel inaugurated a new highway in the occupied West Bank on Thursday that features a large concrete wall segregating Israeli and Palestinian traffic. One side of Route 4370 — located northeast of Jerusalem — will be open to Israeli vehicles only, while the other half will only be open to Palestinian traffic. Critics have branded it an “apartheid” highway, saying it is part of a segregated road system that benefits Jewish settlers … The Palestinian Authority said in a statement that the “apartheid” road “poses a challenge to the credibility of the international community.” … Israel captured east Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 war, territories the Palestinians want to be part of their future state. The Palestinians and most of the international community consider Israeli settlements to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
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American Legion Joins VFW in Calling for Congressional Investigation of Israel's Attack on USS Liberty
Ralph Lopez
Due to the persistence of surviving crew members and the continual emergence of new revelations, the national veteran’s group American Legion has passed Resolution 40 calling for Congress to “publicly, impartially, and thoroughly” investigate the attack by Israel on an American ship in 1967, in which 34 American sailors were killed and hundreds of others were wounded. The resolution comes despite a veil of government secrecy which keeps key documents on the attack classified more than 50 years later. The attack, which surviving crew members to a man say was deliberate … Although the American Legion leadership has fought hard over the years to prevent the Liberty survivors’ resolution from passing, the rank and file has overwhelmingly supported the veterans, and passed the resolution thunderously on a voice vote.
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A recent poll in Russia has revealed a very surprising fact – despite the ongoing campaign to immortalize the memory of the victims, almost half of young Russians claim that they have never heard of the Stalinist repressions. The poll was conducted jointly by the government-run public opinion research center VTSIOM and the Gulag museum that has been operating in Russia since 2001. The research showed that while Russians in general were well informed about the horrible repressions that took place in the country in the first half of the 20th century, the picture was strikingly different for younger people.
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Zionist Group Urges Croatia to Ban 'Denial' Book
The Times of Israel
A Jewish human rights group urged Croatian authorities on Wednesday to ban a book that denies crimes committed by Croatia’s World War II pro-Nazi regime. Chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement that a book titled “the Jasenovac Lie Revealed” is being promoted in a Catholic church in Zagreb on January 16. The book, published by the right-wing Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp, has multiple authors … The book says that Jasenovac was a labor camp for enemies of the regime, and that the real death camp was established by the victorious Yugoslav Communists after the war where Ustashas were killed.
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In 2018, Israel’s Mask Finally Came Off
Gideon Levy - Middle East Eye
2018 wasn’t a good year for Israel. It was even worse for Palestinians, of course … Apartheid has been in place in the [occupied Palestinian] territories for a long time, and now it will be on the law books, too. Those who deny Israeli apartheid – the pro-Zionist propagandists who claim that unlike in South Africa, in Israel there are no racialist laws or legislatively institutionalised discrimination – will no longer be able to disseminate their baseless arguments. Some of the laws passed this year, and those in the legislative pipeline, undermine the claim that Israel is an egalitarian democracy. Yet, such legislation also has a positive side: these laws and the ones to come will strip away the disguise, and one of the longest masquerades in history will finally end. Israel will no longer be able to continue defining itself as a democracy …
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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Middle East allies Tuesday to confront “significant threats” posed by Iran and jihadists as he visited a region shaken by Washington’s surprise decision to withdraw from Syria … Sustaining a regional coalition to counter Iran, the main enemy of US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel, is a major focus of Pompeo’s tour of eight Arab capitals in as many days. “The counter Iran revolution is a coalition as effective today as it was yesterday and I’m very hopeful that it will continue to be effective and even more effective tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll see in the coming days and weeks we are redoubling all our diplomatic and commercial efforts to put real pressure on Iran.”
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I’m starting to wonder whether President Trump has any power over US foreign policy at all. Many people believe that the US president is just a figurehead, with actual foreign policy firmly in the hands of the deep state. Trump’s latest dramatic U-turn on pulling troops from Syria certainly feeds such theories … Will President Trump stand by and watch this coup taking place under his nose? Does he realize how his credibility suffers when he boldly announces a US withdrawal and the does a U-turn days later? Has he noticed recent polls showing that the majority of the American people agree with him? Why is he so intimidated by the neocons?
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The US will work with allies to “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says. Mr Pompeo warned there would be no US reconstruction aid for areas controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad until Iran and its proxies had left. He also criticised ex-President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, saying he had made “dire misjudgements”. Mr Pompeo was speaking in Cairo three weeks after President Donald Trump said US troops were pulling out of Syria. The announcement had shocked US allies and sparked strong criticism in Washington.
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An Iran Policy of Regime Change in All But Name
Daniel Larison - The American Conservative
Mike Pompeo removes any doubt about the purpose of the administration’s Iran policy of regime change in all but name: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that “the sanctions on Iran have an ultimate goal” of “creating an outcome where the Iranian people could have better lives than they have today under this tyrannical regime”. In other words, the sanctions are intended to create so much misery and upheaval that they cause the regime to collapse. That means there is nothing that the Iranian government could do short of abolishing its current political system that would satisfy the administration so that they would agree to lift the sanctions that they illegitimately reimposed last year. We know Iran’s government isn’t going to do that. Contrary to what Pompeo claims here, this wouldn’t lead to “an outcome where the Iranian people could have better lives.”
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Third Reich Economic Policy, 1933-1938
Wilhelm Bauer
The basis for all government intervention in business in [Third Reich] Germany is to be found in the National-Socialist conception of the relation between business and the State … Business is subordinated to the State … The supreme value is the nation, which we call in German Volksgemeinschaft, the community of the nation … This means that the State is not concerned with economic conditions as long as they do not conflict with the welfare of the nation. The principle of private initiative has been maintained. However, where it seems necessary to bring business into line with the welfare of the nation, the State will not hesitate to intervene and direct business into the desired channels. In Germany, contrary to the usual belief, we have no “planned economy”, but rather a “directed” economy …
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James Watson Talks About Race, Again
A. Harmon - The New York Times
It has been more than a decade since James D. Watson, a founder of modern genetics, landed in a kind of professional exile by suggesting that black people are intrinsically less intelligent than whites. In 2007, Dr. Watson, who shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, told a British journalist that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really.” … Offered the chance recently to recast a tarnished legacy, Dr. Watson has chosen to reaffirm it, this time on camera. In a new documentary, “American Masters: Decoding Watson,” to be broadcast on P.B.S. on Wednesday night, he is asked whether his views about the relationship between race and intelligence have changed. “No,” Dr. Watson said.
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President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned a group of Turkish youth on Saturday [Dec. 22] that “Jews in Israel” beat Palestinian women and children, and that Turkey will confront them. “The Jews in Israel kick people when they’re lying on the ground. In fact, Jews kick not only men, but also women and children … as Muslims, we will confront these people if they have courage to deal with us. We’ll teach them a lesson,” Erdoğan said at a meeting of the Turkey Youth Foundation, just three months before national elections. Bottom of Form
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Israel will demand $250 billion in compensation from seven Arab countries and Iran for assets left by Jews forced to flee after the creation of the State of Israel, in an effort to correct the “historic injustice” of the pogroms. The specific demands are being finalized for the first two of the eight countries, according to Hadashot TV news, which reported that Israel would seek $35 billion from Tunisia and $15 billion from Libya. Compensation will also be sought from Morocco, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Yemen and Iran … Compensation, if it were received, would not be allocated to individual Jewish families, but would be distributed through a special Israeli state fund, according to the report.
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Glen Allen’s Lawsuit Against the SPLC
Kevin Macdonald - Occidental Observer
Glen Allen, an attorney from Baltimore, is doing what I wish I had been able to do a long time ago: sue the SPLC. His case is much stronger and much more sympathy-inducing than mine would have been. Basically, the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] got Allen fired from his job with the city of Baltimore where he was in charge of writing appeals in cases where Baltimore lost in the lower courts. All it took was a simple phone call alleging that he has ideas that are unacceptable to the powers that be. In particular, he is accused of having supported William Pierce’s National Alliance in the past. As the notorious Heidi Beirich (a defendant in the case) stated in an interview, she “watched Allen ‘like a hawk’ because he had ‘the worst ideas ever created.’”
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As 2018 draws to a close, it ends as it began: with another shutdown of the Republican-controlled government over immigration … Meanwhile, Congress members, who take home much higher salaries than average federal employees, are exempt from withheld pay. “Next time we have a gov shutdown, Congressional salaries should be furloughed as well,” tweeted Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “It’s completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines & then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision. Have some integrity.” The average Congress member makes $174,000 annually (minority and majority leaders make $193,400). And, according to Quartz, the median net worth of representatives is $900,000 and senators is $3.2 million …
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More than six percent of the new Congress is Jewish, with 34 Jews among the total of 535 lawmakers in the US House of Representatives and Senate. Jews make up two percent of the US population, so Congress as a whole is more than thrice as Jewish as the country in general, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center on religion in the new Congress, which was inaugurated Thursday. The number is even larger in the Senate, where eight, or eight percent, of the 100 members are Jewish. This Congress has four more Jews than its predecessor, which had 30 Jewish members. But it’s far from the most Jewish Congress ever. That was the 1993 Congress, which boasted 51 Jews — nearly ten percent of the total.
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The Israel lobby has been busy taking a wide variety of government officials and opinion makers on fully expense paid trips to Israel this month. The trips cost in the range of $10,000 per person. Six newly elected House members are on a five-day visit to Israel, a delegation of northern California “progressive leaders” are on a week-long trip, media commentator Tara Setmayer has just returned from such a trip, and a delegation of southern California progressive leaders returned from their trip earlier this month. The House participants include liberals and conservatives, Jewish representatives and Christian fundamentalists, Trump supporters and Trump opponents …
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US network CBS has broadcast an interview with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi despite a request by the Egyptian government not to air the program. During the station’s “60 Minutes” investigative news show, el-Sisi told host Scott Pelly that his country was engaged in military cooperation with Israel in Sinai, and denied the detention of political prisoners in Egypt. Before the airing of the interview on Sunday, CBS had said the information given by el-Sisi was “not the kind of news his government wanted broadcast” … Under Sisi, Egypt has quietly cooperated with Israel on security in Egypt’s Sinai … Acknowledging such cooperation with Israel can be a sensitive and potentially damaging topic in Egypt.
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Indian Prime Minister Modi Renames Islands to Honor Nationalist Who Teamed Up With Hitler and the Japanese in World War Two
Daily Mail (Britain)
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has renamed a series of islands in memory of a Indian separatist who worked with the Nazis to bring about the end of British rule in the country. Three of the country’s island territories in the Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal will be renamed after freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose – who made friends with Adolf Hitler in his bid for Indian independence. Modi announced the renaming of Ross, Neil and Havelock Islands in a visit to the region on Sunday … ‘When it comes to heroes of the freedom struggle, we take the name of Bose with pride and that is why the government has issued a notification changing the islands names,’ Mr Modi said in a speech on the weekend.
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NBC News Contributor Quits, Accuses Network of Being 'Defender of Washington and the System'
Fox News
Longtime military analyst William Arkin has stepped down from his role at NBC News with a scathing letter criticizing the current state of journalism as well as President Donald Trump. Arkin, a U.S. Army veteran who has worked for NBC as a reporter and commentator over the course of three decades, wrote a 2,228-word internal memo … “I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum reporting.” Arkin went on to accuse NBC and much of the news media of becoming a “defender of Washington and the system,” and how his network’s reporting shifted after the 2016 election. “I thought that the mission was to break through the machine of perpetual war acceptance and conventional wisdom to challenge Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness” …
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Lawsuit Claims SPLC Abetted Theft, Spread Lies to Destroy Lawyer for 'Thought Crime'
T. O’Neil - PJ Media
In December 2018, a Baltimore lawyer filed a devastating lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and two of its employees. The SPLC targeted Glen Keith Allen over his former ties to the National Alliance (NA), a white nationalist group. In doing so, the liberal group allegedly violated laws and legal codes of conduct by receiving and then paying for stolen documents in violation of confidentiality agreements. The group went after Allen with the intent of getting him fired by the city of Baltimore and permanently destroying his future prospects. Allen’s suit claims that the SPLC should have its 501c3 tax-exempt status revoked, that it owes him restitution for racketeering, and that it should pay $6.5 million in damages.
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… There is strong evidence that the U.S. planned to overthrow Syria in 2001; the U.S. Embassy in Damascus issued a detailed strategy to destabilize Syria in 2006 – long before the so-called “Arab Spring” – and that our focus has consistently been on toppling the duly elected, constitutional and UN-recognized government of Syria … During a five-hour drive across liberated Syria this September, I spoke with many people, from desert shepherds, to nuns and Muslim religious. There were palpable expressions of joy that the Syrian armed forces had liberated them from the terrorists. That was coupled with broad-based, unequivocal support for President Bashar al Assad and the Syrian Armed Forces. This disastrous war would never have occurred without American planning and execution.
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Syria War Was Planned In Advance, Because Syria is Anti-Israel, Says Ex-French Foreign Minister Dumas
LCP Television (France)
The war in Syria was planned years in advance, and the motive was to overthrow a regime that Israel regards as hostile, says former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. “I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria,” he says in this interview with French television LCP. “This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and organized …” Responding to a question on the motive behind the war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Dumas explains: “Very simple! With the very simple aim! To overthrow the Syrian government, because in the region, it’s important to understand, that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance. Consequently, everything that moves in the region — and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister …”
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US Caught Faking it in Syria
Thomas S. Harrington - CounterPunch
… You see, the US strategic goal in Syria is not as your faithful mainstream media servants (led by that redoubtable channeler of Neo-Con smokescreens at the NYT Michael Gordon) might have you believe to save the Syrian people from the ravages of the long-standing Assad dictatorship, but rather to heighten the level of internecine conflict in that country to the point where it will not be able to serve as a regional bulwark against Israeli regional hegemony for at least another generation. How do we know? Because important protagonists in the Israelo-American policy planning elite have advertised the fact with a surprising degree of clarity in documents and public statements issued over the last several decades. The key here is learning to listen to what our cultural training has not prepared us to hear.
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In 1941, British and Soviet Troops Invaded Iran
Sebastian Roblin
… Though the Shah remained neutral when World War II broke out, London remained suspicious of his cordial relations with Berlin … Not only did the United Kingdom relie upon the eight million barrels of oil annually that the Abadan oil refinery produced … In July and August 1941, London issued ultimatums demanding the Shah expel the Germans. He refused … Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had agreed to secure Iran by force. Though the United States was not yet a belligerent in World War II, Churchill green-lit the invasion with Pres. Franklin Roosevelt … Finally on Aug. 29 [1941] the Shah agreed to a ceasefire … The British and Soviets commandeered much of Iran’s grain supplies for their own troops, causing hyperinflation and some starvation … The Allies invaded a neutral country to secure vital oil fields and supply lines.
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The United States Is on Track To Spend More on Debt Than on National Defense
The Western Journal
The financial health of the federal government has been deteriorating for decades. Unable to break free from our bipartisan addiction to deficit spending, the national debt has continued to rise relentlessly. This has brought us within sight of a grim milestone: the day when the interest that Americans have to pay on the national debt exceeds what we pay for national defense. According to The Wall Street Journal article, “U.S. on a Court to Spend More on Debt Than Defense,” we will reach that baleful milestone in only five years. The figures are startling. In 2023, military spending is projected to be more than $700 billion. Yet in that same year the annual interest that taxpayers will pay on the national debt will be even higher.
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The One Reason America Can't Police the World Anymore: Washington Is Broke
Doug Bandow - The National Interest
… The so-called “defense” budget is the price of America’s aggressive foreign policy. Playing global gendarme — is not cheap. Although Americans should be prepared to pay any price necessary for their defense, not so with remaking the globe. Sending Americans to fight and die for tasks of peripheral importance always was foolish. Even if America once felt wealthy enough to squander its financial resources in such pursuits, those days have ended. Washington is effectively bankrupt, with massive unfunded liabilities. Its fiscal future will only worsen as Baby Boomers continue to retire … To stabilize Washington’s finances, all programs need to be addressed. However, military outlays deserve an especially thorough review.
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Staying in Syria No Longer Makes Sense
Daniel L. Davis - The National Interest
… If the president does indeed order the withdrawal of the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, his actions would result in a clear reduction of strategic risk to the United States and improve our security. It remains to be seen, however, whether Trump makes good on this plan. There are others in government and military circles that do not want to leave Syria. Trump’s instinct to redeploy all military personnel from Syria, however, is solid and it’s not the first time he has publicly said so … There is no threat to American security at risk in Syria. Yet the troops continue to operate on the territory of a sovereign country, daily risking their lives, without Congressional authorization. President Trump is right to say our troops should withdraw from Syria.
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Trump is Right to Withdraw Troops From Syria
Danny Sjursen
… The United States Armed Forces lack a sufficient legal foundation for the intervention, regularly find their mission sets enlarged, and have yet to receive a distinct exit strategy … What exactly is the legal – domestic and international – foundation for the U.S. military presence there? Well, there really isn’t one. Domestically, the American people, and Congress, have little stomach for a new war in Syria … The U.S. military presence in Syria, and its swollen mission set present several major (even existential risks) to American interests and safety … If the “war on terror” has demonstrated anything, it is that the longer the U.S. military stays on the ground, the more likely the outbreak of a prolonged nationalist/ Islamist insurgency that may stretch far beyond ISIS to the broader Sunni population.
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Israel’s Netanyahu 'Got Almost Everything He Wanted' From Trump Administration, Senior Official Says
Ynet (Israel)
Israel got “almost everything it asked for” when U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo granted “seven out of eight” requests made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Brasília on Tuesday, according to a senior source in Jerusalem. The prime minister told the press ahead of the meeting … [that] the main topics of discussion was to be with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Iranian attempts to establish a military presence in the war-torn country. The source added that Netanyahu came out of the meeting with Pompeo feeling that Israel has the ability to influence certain aspects of U.S. policy, and the two countries are now working on plans to make the American troop pull-out as non-disruptive for Israeli security as possible.
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Labor Union Official in UK Under Fire for Saying 'Israel Exaggerates the Holocaust for Political Ends'
The Jewish Chronicle (Britain)
One of Britain’s largest unions has recommended an official be expelled for antisemitism, after he accused Israel of “inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust”. In a December 19 hearing, GMB Scotland found language used by Peter Gregson, a shop steward for NHS Lothian, to be “antisemitic and racist in nature”, adding that his claims regarding the Shoah were “simply unacceptable”. His words were in a petition he started calling on Labour to disregard the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which was the subject of a huge row between the party and its Jewish supporters over the summer. In response, Mr Gregson issued a press release saying that Israel is a “racist endeavour”, and it “tends to exaggerate the importance of the Holocaust for its own political ends”.
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US and Israel Formally Leave UNESCO
The Times of Israel
As the new year began, Israel officially left the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, despite recent efforts by the agency’s head to combat its politicization and alleged anti-Israel bias … The US departure also took effect at the same time. “UNESCO is a body that continually rewrites history, including by erasing the Jewish connection to Jerusalem,” Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told The Times of Israel … In October 2017, mere days after the US administration announced its withdrawal from UNESCO due to, among other things, its alleged obsession with Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that he was following the US lead … Jerusalem and Washington ignored strenuous efforts by the agency’s new director-general, Audrey Azoulay, to get both countries to reconsider …
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Lebanese Boy Praised for Refusing to Play Israelis in Chess Tournament
The Times of Israel
An eight-year-old Lebanese chess player has been hailed as a hero in his country — including by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah — for refusing to play against Israeli opponents at a tournament in Spain. The boy, Mark Abou Deeb, said during an interview last week with the Lebanese OTV channel that he had refused to play against Israelis “because Israel is the enemy,” according to footage documented and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. … Abou Deeb competed in November in the World Cadet Chess Championships in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain in the under-8 open category.
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How the War Party Lost the Middle East
Patrick J. Buchanan
“Assad must go, Obama says.” So read the headline in The Washington Post, Aug. 18, 2011 … France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s David Cameron signed on to the Obama ultimatum: Assad must go! Seven years and 500,000 dead Syrians later, it is Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron who are gone. Assad still rules in Damascus, and the 2,000 Americans in Syria are coming home. Soon, says President Donald Trump … How has all this invading, bombing and killing made the Middle East a better place or Americans more secure? … In his decision to leave Syria and withdraw half of the 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, Trump enraged our foreign policy elites, though millions of Americans cannot get out of there soon enough.
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Trump Scores, Breaks Generals’ 50-Year War Record
Gareth Porter - The American Conservative
The mainstream media has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as impulsive, blindsiding his own national security team. But detailed, published accounts of the policy process over the course of the year tell a very different story. They show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria … Mattis and Dunford were consciously exploiting Trump’s defensiveness about a timeline to press ahead with their own strategy unless and until Trump publicly called them on it. That is what finally happened some weeks after Trump’s six month deadline had passed.
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'Will They Forgive Me? No': Ex-Soviet Spy Viktor Suvorov Speaks Out
L. Harding - The Guardian (Britain)
… Viktor Suvorov is a literary pen-name: he was born Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun in Soviet Ukraine; his father a military officer, his mother a nurse … In 1970, he was recruited by the GRU … From his new home in the UK, Suvorov wrote one of the most influential books of the perestroika era, Icebreaker. When it was published in 1988, his argument was heretical: that Stalin had been secretly plotting an offensive against Hitler’s Germany, and would have invaded in September 1941, or at the latest by 1942. Stalin, he wrote, wanted Hitler to destroy democracy in Europe, in the manner of an icebreaker, thereby clearing the way for world communism. The book undermined the idea that the USSR was an innocent party, dragged into the second world war. Russian liberals supported Suvorov’s thesis; it now has broad acceptance among historians.
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Russian Specialist Lays Bare Stalin’s Plan To Conquer Europe
Joseph Bishop – Institute for Historical Review
… In `Icebreaker’ Suvorov takes a close look at the origins and development of World War II in Europe, and in particular the background to Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa” attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 … Above all, this book details the vast Soviet preparations for an invasion of Europe in the summer of 1941 with the goal of Sovietizing central and western Europe. Suvorov is not alone in his view. It is also affirmed by a number of non-Russian historians … A central tenet of Soviet ideology was that the Soviet Union, as the world’s first Marxist state and bulwark of “workers’ power,” would eventually liberate all of humanity from the yoke of capitalism and fascism.
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Hitler’s 'Barbarossa' Proclamation of June 22, 1941
Institute for Historical Review
… The moment has now come when to continue as a mere observer would not only be a sin of omission but a crime against the German people — yes, even against the whole of Europe. Today something like 160 Russian divisions are standing at our frontier … The task of this front, therefore, is not merely the protection of individual countries, but the safeguarding of Europe, and thereby the salvation of all. I therefore decided today to once again lay the fate and future of the German Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers. May the Lord God help us especially in this fight!
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Iraqi lawmakers have demanded US forces leave the country in the wake of a surprise visit by Donald Trump, which politicians denounced as arrogant and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Politicians from both blocs of Iraq’s divided Parliament called for a vote to expel U.S. troops and promised to schedule an extraordinary session to debate the matter. “Parliament must clearly and urgently express its view about the ongoing American violations of Iraqi sovereignty,” said Salam al-Shimiri, a lawmaker loyal to the populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr … Containing foreign influence has become a hot-button issue in a year that saw al-Sadr supporters win the largest share of votes in May elections. Al-Sadr has called for curbing U.S. and Iranian involvement in Iraqi affairs. U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq as part of the coalition against the Islamic State group.
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Four members of a Jewish sect have been charged with kidnapping a young brother and sister in New York state. Prosecutors say the men belong to the ultra-Orthodox Lev Tahor group, which is based in Guatemala. They are accused of abducting a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother from the village of Woodridge, which is north of New York City. The men planned to take the pair back to Guatemala after their mother fled the sect six weeks earlier. The woman had reportedly feared for her children’s safety and felt the group, which was founded by her father, was becoming more extreme under the leadership of her brother. Its teachings reportedly include that women must be veiled from head to toe in black tunics.