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The Anti-Semitic Con
Paul Edwards - CounterPunch
… In terms of influence, there can be no serious denial that Israel exerts by far the most powerful suasion of any foreign power on America … The reason it’s officially denied is that Israel’s Congressional whores know that not to do so violates their deal. Not to back Israel unquestioningly terminates it, and the loss of that money means loss of office … to say nothing of the beating they’d take in the press and on their reputations. The great mass of Americans won’t admit what many can’t help but know because they, too, fear being attacked for such bold honesty. They are equally vulnerable to rough handling from the same source: the massively powerful Israel Lobby, a unified phalanx of militant American Zionists … The Israel Lobby – financed by vast American Zionist wealth – potent as it is, could not leverage our politics if its tactics were exposed, and it knows it.
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Despite Brexit Woes, Theresa May is a Hero to Many British Jews
C. Liphshiz - JTA
… For many British Jews, one thing is certain: If May goes, her departure will mean goodbye to one of the friendliest prime ministers that the Jewish community has had in the kingdom’s history … Under May, the United Kingdom has taken unprecedented positions in favor of the Jewish people and Israel … May has even clashed with the Foreign Office over Israel, imposing her own policies and successfully “diluting its institutional hostility toward Israel,” said Jonathan Hoffman, a North London-based blogger and former vice chair of the Zionist Federation of Britain. Diverging from the Foreign Office’s attempts to appear impartial on the Balfour Declaration – a seminal document in the history of Zionism – May embraced it openly during the statement’s centennial anniversary in 2017.
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The Volkssturm: Last-Ditch Militia of the Third Reich
Blaine Taylor – Warfare History Network
On October 18, 1944 — the 131st anniversary of the Battle of the Nations’ victory over Napoleon in 1813 — Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler stepped up to a microphone to make a national radio address announcing the formation of the Nazi Party-controlled Volkssturm [VS], or People’s Militia … The average age of those who served (the national oath-taking was conducted on November 12, 1944) was between 45 and 52 … Of those men who were called up, most were white-collar workers … VS casualty rates were sometimes as high as 70 to 80 percent, while other units panicked and fled. In the East, some 650,000 VS men saw action … In the West, some 150,000 VS men served and had helped to man the West Wall fortifications, as well as hold the Upper Rhine …
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During the final months of World War II in Europe, beleaguered Germany adopted ever more desperate measures to resist the Soviet-American takeover of their nation and Europe. As this colorized footage shows, that included the formation of a national militia or home guard – the “Volkssturm” – which called up all still-available able-bodied men to defend the homeland. Civilians, including women and Hitler Youth teenagers, were also trained and armed. Many fought with the anti-tank “Panzerfaust,” an early RPG. Many Volkssturm men played an important role in defending the German capital against the Soviets. Runtime: 4:52 mins. No narration.
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Wartime newsreel report on the German militia (“Volkssturm”), which deployed all remaining able-bodied men to defend the homeland during the final months of World World War II in Europe. Czech-language narration, with German subtitles. Runtime: 2:47 mins.
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We Were Smeared by the SPLC
Kristen Waggoner - The Wall Street Journal.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s co-founder, president and legal director have all departed amid a scandal over publicly unspecified workplace conduct, reportedly involving racial prejudice and sexual harassment. But the SPLC’s work itself is scandalous. The group falsely maligns ideological opponents in an effort to crush them rather than debate their ideas honestly. I know, because in 2016 the SPLC branded my organization, the religious-liberty nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, a “hate group.” … The SPLC has become partisan, unreliable — and lucrative. It’s ironic that a nonprofit with “Poverty” in its name has amassed a war chest of more than $500 million, $120 million of which is held in offshore accounts
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The Deep State Campaign for War With Russia
David Gordon – Mises Institute
Stephen Cohen, a renowned authority on Russia, raises a question that applies more widely than the current confrontation between Russia and the United States, vital though it is that we understand that conflict. The question is this: what is the basis for our beliefs about world affairs? We have a picture of the world, but does this picture accurately depict reality, or is it, rather, the product of propaganda? … We cannot here investigate in detail all of the accusations against Putin … Cohen argues that Putin, far from being an aggressive expansionist intent on undermining America, was until recently pro-Western in his orientation Only after he became convinced that America intended to continue a policy of encirclement did he adopt a more militant course of action …
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Racists in Congress Fought Statehood for Hawaii
S. M. Davenport - The Conversation
Sixty years ago, Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation making Hawaii America’s 50th state. The Hawaii admission act followed a centuries-old tradition in which American territories – acquired through war, conquest and purchase – became fully integrated states of the union. But Hawaii was not an ordinary United States territory and would be unlike any other American state … Hawaii would become the first state with a majority of people of Asian descent. Many had been ineligible for U.S. citizenship only a few years earlier, before the end of racial restrictions to naturalization … The base of opposition to statehood in Congress was Southern Democrats. To them, Hawaii was a dangerous portent of an interracial future.
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The Pro-Israel Push to Purge US Campus Critics
Katherine Franke - The New York Review of Books
There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campus across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe … New policies adopted by the US and Israeli governments are intended to eliminate any rigorous discussion of Israeli–Palestinian politics in university settings.
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The Weakness of Democracy
Steve Hochstadt
… Nearly three-quarters of voters in Latin America are dissatisfied with democracy, according to a survey in 18 countries by Latinobarómetro, the highest number since 1995 … A survey by the Pew Research Center at the end of 2018 offers some insight into the fundamental weakness of American democracy. A wide bipartisan majority of 73% think the gap between rich and poor will grow over the next 30 years. Two-thirds think the partisan political divide will get wider, and 59% believe the environment will be worse. Only 16% believe that Social Security will continue to provide benefits at current levels when they retire, and 42% think there will be no benefits at all. Nearly half say that the average family’s standard of living will decline, and only 20% believe it will improve.
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Is Democracy the Answer to the World's Problems?
Edward Lozansky
… For what it is worth, some of the American Founding Fathers had a poor opinion of democracies. John Adams: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.” James Madison: “Democracies … have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” But Mr. Friedman [of the New York Times], following George W. Bush, tells us that “democracies are much less prone to war” than nondemocracies. Really? How many countries has the U.S. bombed or invaded in the past three decades compared with the “principal disturbers of the peace,” Russia, China or Iran? Democracies are more peaceful? What would Serbs, Somalis, Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Yemenis or Syrians say to that — and maybe soon Venezuelans and Iranians?
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Why Do So Many People Believe Adolf Hitler Escaped? New Book Demolishes Wild Conspiracy Theories
G. Walters - The Mail on Sunday
… Claims that Hitler did not die in a Berlin bunker but instead escaped might seem far-fetched. Yet fantasies such as this one … are now believed by millions all around the world. Indeed, there is a plethora of TV shows and popular books dealing with this piece of seeming historical fact … Fortunately, an incisive new book by Luke Daly-Groves [Hitler’s Death: The Case Against Conspiracy] has come to the aid of those determined to tell the truth with a brilliant demolition of the conspiracists. By combing through hundreds of British and American secret intelligence files, Daly-Groves has built up a formidable case to demonstrate that Hitler did, in fact, kill himself in his bunker on April 30, 1945, and that claims he flew out of Berlin to spend his twilight years in Argentina are pure hogwash.
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Hitler’s Testament: Historic Final Statement
Institute for Historical Review
A day before his death in his beleaguered command center in central Berlin, Adolf Hitler summoned Traudl Junge, his youngest secretary, for an important task. Standing at a large table in the conference room of the cramped underground concrete bunker complex, he paused a bit before he began dictating “My Political Testament,” a declaration that would be his final words to the German people, as well as a statement for coming generations … Hitler also sought to explain why things had turned out so calamitously, and he anticipated accusations that would be made against him in the years ahead.
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Republicans are planning a multimillion-dollar offensive aimed at fracturing the Democratic Party’s decades-long stranglehold on the Jewish vote. Spearheading the push is the Republican Jewish Coalition, which receives substantial funding from casino mogul and GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson. On Friday morning, the group’s board members — many of them prominent Republican Party donors — gathered in a conference room at Adelson’s Venetian resort, where they were briefed on plans for a $10 million-plus blitz geared toward attracting Jewish support for President Donald Trump. The investment, people familiar with the early discussions said, will far surpass what the group spent in past presidential elections.
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Walt Whitman, Mass Media and Jewish Power
Linh Dinh - Unz Review
… My biggest thought crime was penning “Blacks, Jews and You,” in which I discussed racial differences, black crime, Jewish power and, most heretically, mocked the official Holocaust narrative. I stand by every word … If you have any negative assessment of Jews, you’ve come down with an evil trope, and must seek help immediately, but if you’re seething with genocidal thoughts against whites or non-swishy men, you’re finally woke! … Counting Seneca, Aquinas, Chaucer, Luther, Marlowe, Bacon, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Diderot, Hawthorne, Kant, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Dostoevsky, Eliot, Pound, Celine and Solzhenitsyn, many of the best minds in Western civilization have been afflicted with this unfortunate trope [of anti-Semitism], so one must conclude that Western civilization is gravely diseased …
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The Coming Bankruptcy of the American Empire
Hunter DeRensis
… The American empire is internally flawed, a fact that anti-imperialists both left and right should appreciate. The United States’ national debt is approaching $22 trillion with a current federal budget deficit of over $800 billion. As Senator Rand Paul often points out, bankruptcy is the Sword of Damocles hanging perilously close to Uncle Sam’s neck. Outside of a handful of libertarian gadflies in Congress such as Paul, there is no serious political movement to curb the country’s wayward spending. It would take some upset of multiple times greater magnitude than Donald Trump’s 2016 victory to alter this course … Not only are our undeclared wars illegal, counterintuitive, and destabilizing to foreign regions, they’re financially destabilizing for us as well.
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The 350,000 Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are caught between a rock and hard place, as Israel works ever harder to remove them from the holy city in which they were born, analysts and residents warn … “Israel wants Palestinians in Jerusalem to understand that they are trapped, that they are being strangled, in the hope they will conclude that life is better outside the city,” said Amneh Badran, a politics professor at Jerusalem’s Al Quds university … The goal, he added, was to shore up a permanent three-quarters Jewish majority … Today, Palestinians comprise about 40 per cent of the total population of this artificially enlarged Jerusalem. Israel has therefore been aggressively pursuing a twin-pronged approach, according to analysts.
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Permanence and Political Correctness
Greg Weiner - Law and Liberty
The recent news that New Jersey legislators are demanding that Huckleberry Finn, a redemptive tale of interracial friendship, be removed from public school curricula on grounds of racial vulgarity provides a sobering reminder that political correctness is about more than free speech. It is about the divide between permanence and progress … Political correctness rightly understood, by contrast, regards today’s standards as de facto superior to yesterday’s because today’s are steps on the road of progress … Progress cannot tolerate the traditional because it is a barrier to the future. The goalposts must move. Today’s champions of purity of thought and speech will themselves be excommunicated from the church of progress tomorrow … The politically correct today will be intolerable tomorrow.
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Israeli Annexation of the Golan Heights: Myth and Reality
Jerome Slater - LobeLog
Benjamin Netanyahu, now supported by Donald Trump, has recently claimed that Israel has the right to permanently hold the Golan Heights … International law aside, the premise that Israel seized the Golan Heights only in defense against Syrian aggression is quite unpersuasive … For many years, Israeli historians, journalists, and even retired generals who participated in the conflicts have said that Israel initiated or deliberately provoked most of the clashes to gradually seize control of the contested areas. Indeed, in a startling 1976 interview, Moshe Dayan, the head of the Israeli army during that period, admitted that Israel instigated more than 80 percent of the clashes with the Syrians to create pretexts for seizing more territory and diverting the waters of the Jordan River away from Syria.
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Millennials for Socialism
Walter E. Williams
… Last year marked the 40th anniversary of nearly 1,000 Americans perishing in a mass suicide/ murder in the jungles of Guyana. Just as Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez see socialism as mankind’s salvation, so, too, did Rev. Jim Jones, who told his followers, “God is Socialism, and I am Principle Socialism, and that’s what makes me God.” Perhaps the most disastrous failing of our educational system and the news media is that people are neither required nor encouraged to test ideas against facts. The promises of socialism sound wonderful and caring, but in reality, wherever it has been tried it has been a true disaster.
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Sexualization of Girls in The Media is Harmful
Catharine Paddock, PhD - Medical News Today
The American Psychological Association (APA) suggests that the proliferation of sexual images of girls and young women in the media is harming their self-image and development. An APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls examined research papers covering the effect of all kinds of media content including television, music videos, magazines, video games, the Internet, movies, and music lyrics. They also looked at the way products are sold and advertised to young girls … “We have ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development,” said Dr Eileen Zurbriggen, Chair of the APA Task Force.
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Sheriff’s Office Renames Bloodhound After Complaints That Original Name Was 'Nazi' General
K. Davis – WJ
Hours after introducing the newest bloodhound member of their law enforcement team, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Florida was met with opposition to the puppy’s name. On April 5, the LCSO proudly introduced Rommel, a ten-week old bloodhound preparing to enter training to learn his role as a police dog. While viewers loved the dog’s long ears and sandy colored face and seemed to be supportive of the addition of another dog to the team, some viewers found the dog’s name to be offensive because the name Rommel has ties to a Nazi general from World War II … Commenters were referring to Erwin Rommel, who was a Nazi general during World War II. Later that day, the LCSO posted an update on the dog, explaining that his name had been changed to Scout.
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Lithuania has moved to blacklist Holocaust denier David Irving to prevent him from entering the Baltic EU state should he try to do so later this year, the country’s top diplomat said on Tuesday. “Holocaust denial and praising Adolf Hitler is a crime in Lithuania. Persons who spread these ideas are not welcome in our country,” Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told AFP. The minister said he would request the migration department to officially blacklist Irving, who could attempt to enter Lithuania later this year. The controversial British historian, who was jailed in Austria in 2006 for denying the Holocaust, said he planned to visit neighboring Poland this year.
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How Do You Justify a $750 Billion Pentagon Budget?
William J. Astore
… Throughout my life, the US “defense” establishment has consistently inflated the dangers presented by foreign powers, which brings me to the current Pentagon budget for 2020, which may reach $750 billion. How to justify such an immense sum? A large dollop of threat inflation might help … Today, faced with a debilitating national debt of $22 trillion and infrastructure that’s aptly described as “crumbling,” you’d think US leaders would finally seek a peace dividend to lower our debt and rebuild our roads, bridges, dams, and related infrastructure. But the Complex (including Congress, of course) is addicted to war and weapons spending … A $750 billion military budget sucking up more than sixty percent of discretionary spending by the federal government.
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Nineteenth Century 'Humiliation' Haunts China-U.S. Trade Talks
The New York Times
When President Trump’s trade team presented Chinese officials with a list of bold economic demands in Beijing last May, one of China’s state-controlled news outlets, Global Times, panned the request and blared a curious headline: “Is it now 1840?” Five months later, China’s national news agency, Xinhua, accused Vice President Mike Pence of lacking knowledge of China’s past after he complained that Beijing was merely paying lip service to opening its economy. Behind the pushback is a long and painful history of China surrendering to Western powers, with origins in what the Chinese news media refers to as a “century of humiliation” that began with the “unequal treaties” of the 19th century after the first Opium War.
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… There is barely a politician in Washington seeking election who has not at some point declared an “unbreakable bond” between the United States and Israel, or claimed the two uphold “shared values”. Few, it seems, have any idea what values Israel really represents … A recent poll found that 51 percent [of Israeli Jews] believe Jews have a divine right to the land of Israel, and slightly more – 56 percent – believe that Jews are a “chosen people” … The greater emphasis in Israel on a religious definition of Jewishness means that Palestinians now face not only the cold structural violence designed by Israel’s secular founders, but additionally a hot-tempered, Biblically sanctioned hostility from religious extremists.
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Why Judaism Isn't Like Other Religions (And Why That's Important)
Mark Weber - Video
Judaism is not just another religion. Its core values are markedly unlike those of Christianity and the other great faiths. A central message of the Hebrew scriptures is that Jews are a divinely “chosen” people — a unique community distinct from the rest of humanity. Some recent news items reconfirm this point, which is important for an understanding of the reality of cultural and political life in the United States, the US relationship with Israel, and the issue of war and peace in the Middle East and in the world. Runtime: 48 mins.
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Trump’s Unrealistic Approach to the Middle East
Paul R. Pillar - The National Interest
… The Trump administration’s policy toward the Middle East is one of the clearest examples of this kind of non-realist approach. The policy is based on an extremely rigid divide between, on one side, arch-foe Iran (and those, such as the Syrian regime, having a positive relationship with Iran) and, on the other side, regional rivals of Iran including Israel and some major Sunni Arab states. Toward the designated foe, U.S. policy has consisted of nothing but unrelenting and escalating hostility … Israel has been the Middle Eastern “friend” enjoying the most bipartisan coddling — a story that began well before Trump but has reached new extremes of accommodation under Trump.
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No Holds Barred: Trump’s Love Affair With Israel and the Jewish People
Shmuley Boteach - The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
… The president of the United States – and just two hours later the vice president – spoke at the Republican Jewish Coalition [April 6] and vowed their unalloyed support of the Jewish people and Israel, and their determination to fight enemies of the Jewish people to the bone. Hearing the most powerful man on Earth acknowledge the rise of Jew-hatred all over the globe, and his declaration of war against it, helped to greatly assuage Jewish feelings of isolation and abandonment … Easily the most pro-Israel president in history – and someone who brought the America-Israel relationship to unimaginable heights … He must be given credit for striking the tyrant Assad, pushing back against Iranian genocidal aspirations and, most of all, standing with the Jewish people while the rest of the world once again falls prey to the world’s oldest hatred.
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Throughout his remarks to a group of Jewish Republicans on Saturday, President Donald Trump seemed to address the Jewish Americans in the audience as if they were Israelis, Business Insider reports. The mischaracterization occurred multiple times throughout the speech. First, in referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the president said “your prime minister,” implying that the gathered American Jews in attendance were beholden to Netanyahu, as if Israeli citizens, rather than to Trump himself, as American citizens and residents, which they are. Later in the speech, Trump further conflated those in the audience, again speaking as if they were, in fact, a group of visiting Israeli Jews, with personal affiliations with Israel as opposed to the United States.
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Eight Years of Corrosive Lies About Syria
M. B. Dougherty - National Review
… The CIA began the U.S. mission in the Syrian Civil War years before ISIS came into being, and a full year before President Obama began talking up his red lines and proposing a congressional vote to authorize intervention in Syria. Another fact, I do know: We were told that we were arming “moderate rebels,” but these moderate rebels fought side by side with Al Nusra. And Al Nusra fighters were often known to be using weapons brought in by the CIA or the Department of Defense to fight this war in which we weren’t intervening. We also funded a group called Nour al-Din al-Zenki, until its members showed up on YouTube beheading a child, at which point the “moderate” label no longer quite fit.
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Netanyahu Isn’t The Problem. The Israeli People Are
Gideon Levy - Haaretz (Israel)
… Simply put, the people are the problem. Netanyahu has voters. There are those who vote for his kind … There are those who believe they are the chosen people and therefore deserve everything. There are those who think that after the Holocaust, they are permitted to do anything. There are those who believe that Israel is tops in the world in every field, that international law doesn’t apply to it, and that no one can tell it what to do. There are those who think Israelis are victims – always victims, the only victims – and that the whole world is against us … The problem is the atmosphere, the spirit of the times, the values and outlooks that have become ingrained here during decades of Zionism. Netanyahu did not sow them and they will not be uprooted when he goes. Racism and xenophobia are deeply entrenched here, far more deeply than any Netanyahu.
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Israeli politician Benny Gantz raised the specter of dual loyalty of Jews in other nations when he said yesterday [March 25], “If there is one Jew in danger, anywhere in the world, then our mission is unfinished.” / … Gantz (and most Israelis) believe it is the duty of Israel to engage anyone, anywhere, in order to save Jews. Conclusion: Israel does not recognize the sovereignty of other nations; or, at least, sees that sovereignty as imperfect, as it considers its right to violate it in the case of Jews. Conclusion: Israel risks Jews not living there by perpetually raising the specter of Jews holding “dual nationality.” … He explicitly says that Israel owes loyalty to those non-citizens – and implicitly, that they owe loyalty to it.
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What Monroe Doctrine?
Philip Giraldi
… In the case of Venezuela, where Trump has dangerously demanded that Russia withdraw the hundred or so advisors that it sent to help stabilize the country, the supposition that the United States has exclusive extra-territorial rights is largely based on nineteenth and early twentieth century unilaterally declared “doctrines.” The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 de facto established the United States as the hegemon-presumptive for the entire Western Hemisphere, stretching from the Arctic Circle in the north to Patagonia in the south … In 1898, Washington became explicitly imperialist when it defeated Spain and acquired effective control over Cuba, a number of Caribbean Islands and the Philippines. This led to a series of more than thirty interventions by the US military in the Caribbean and Central America …
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The US Becomes an Imperial Power: 1898 and the Great Debate Over Overseas Expansion
John Ries and Mark Weber – Institute for Historical Review
Until the 1890s, America followed its traditional foreign policy of non-interventionism. The year 1898 was a landmark in the transition of the United States from a republic to an imperial power. Today, as Americans debate the merits of new military intervention in foreign lands, many of the arguments for and against such actions echo those made nearly a century ago, but with some interesting differences.
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The U.S. government has denied entry to Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS movement, which urges boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel on security and settlement policies in the West Bank. Barghouti was at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel on Wednesday [April 10] when airline staff informed him that he wouldn’t be flying despite holding valid travel documents, according to the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group that arranged the trip. He was told that U.S. immigration officials had ordered the U.S. consul in Tel Aviv to deny him permission to enter the United States … He has a master’s degree from Columbia University, and spent a decade in the U.S. in the 1980s.
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'Nazi': The Slur That Everyone Loves
Donald Jeffries
… Although the Nazis themselves have been gone for more than half a century, the term “Nazi” itself has a universal appeal, and a staying power that appears to be immortal. When someone is called a “Nazi” now, those affixing the label don’t mean a literal member of the National Socialist Party. They mean, instead, whatever they want it to mean. It is the slur that fits all sizes; leftists routinely paint anyone who doesn’t believe in 57 genders with it, and conservatives use it almost as freely … Donald Trump, Jr. and right-wing author Dinesh D’Souza both compare today’s liberals to actual Nazis. … There is a whole school of thought out there that holds that it’s perfectly fine to “punch a Nazi.” … In Hollywood, Nazis never died.
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Israel Was Behind Coup Against Egypt’s Morsi, Israeli General Says
Middle East Monitor
Israel worked to overthrow Egypt’s first democratically elected President, Mohamed Morsi, and to orchestrate a coup against him in 2013, Israeli army Brigadier General, Aryeh Eldad, wrote in a local paper. The writer said in an article in Maariv newspaper that “the outbreak of the January revolution coincided with the Israeli security assessment that President-elect Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood man, intended to cancel the peace agreement with Israel and send more Egyptian military forces to the Sinai Peninsula.” “At that stage, Israel was quick and willing to activate its diplomatic tools, and perhaps even greater means, to bring Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to power in Egypt, and convince the then US administration under President Barack Obama not to oppose this move.”
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IRGC Designation: More From the War-With-Iran Playbook
Daniel R. DePetris and Richard Sokolsky
The decision by the Trump administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization marks another dangerous step in the relentless campaign Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton are waging to provoke a U.S.-Iranian military conflict and topple the regime in Tehran. Their success will depend on whether they can manipulate a distracted, ill-informed, impulsive, and erratic president into acting against his own instincts to avoid another regime-change campaign in the Middle East that could drag the United States into a messy and open-ended conflict.
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Greek Government Appoints Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism and 'Holocaust Denial'
Greek City Times
Greece’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Wednesday the appointment of a Special Secretary to combat Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. The Ministry announced that Dr. Efstathios C. Lianos Liantis, Special Secretary of Religious and Cultural Diplomacy, was appointed Special Secretary for Anti-Semitism and Anti-Defamation of the Holocaust … This is the first time a special envoy is appointed on the issue of anti-Semitism. Dr. Lianos is also a founding member of the Holocaust Museum of Greece, and the head of the Greek delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the international, intergovernmental organisation against anti-Semitism.
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Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, said he believes flaws in American capitalism have created destructive and self-reinforcing gaps in education, social mobility, assets and income — and the result could be another revolution. Writing in a new essay, the Bridgewater Associates co-chairman points to statistics showing the bottom 60 percent of income-earners in the U.S. keep falling further behind the top 40 percent … Health among the poor is declining overall, and American men earning the least probably will die ten years earlier than those making the most. While Dalio, 69, previously has focused on inequality and warned about the dangers of populism, his 18-page treatise goes into more detail about the “existential threats” they present to American society.
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Israel’s Election: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Jonathan Cook
… [Benny] Gantz, who heads the Blue & White party, hardly emerges spotless, either. He has steeped himself in dubious military glory with ads showing footage of the devastation in Gaza that he presided over, a bombing spree that killed more than 500 children. The video bragged about his sending the enclave “back to the Stone Age”. Blue & White, which includes two other high-powered generals, is the Israeli security establishment’s effort to oust Netanyahu, who is seen as having squandered international goodwill with his public intransigence on peacemaking … This time, there are no left-leaning parties in the running. This is a straightforward slugging match between the right wing (Gantz) and the even more right wing (Netanyahu).
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The US Can Be 'Easily Manipulated,' Boasts Israeli Leader Netanyahu in Secretly Recorded Talk
Common Dreams / Al Jazeera
A tape shows Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, discussing ways to undermine the Oslo Accords and calling the United States “easy” to manipulate. The video was filmed in 2001, apparently without Netanyahu’s knowledge, during a meeting with Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. It aired on Friday night [July 16, 2010] on Israel’s Channel 10, and several translations have been posted online … Netanyahu – who did not hold political office when the recording was made – was dismissive of the United States, calling it easily manipulated. “I know what America is,” Netanyahu said. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.” Netanyahu also spoke extensively about undermining the Oslo Accords, the agreement signed in 1993 …
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Already Deep in the Politics of Hate
Patrick J. Buchanan
… If this is the level of discourse from Beto and Bernie, two of the leading candidates for the nomination, two years from Election Day, 2020 looks to be one of the ugliest campaigns in American history. And what does it say about democracy if this is the character of politics at the highest level in the world’s leading democracy? … Trump’s actions and words last week do seem to portend tougher action on illegal immigration, but one need not look to Nazi Germany for precedents. They may be found in our own history. The 1924 immigration act restricted legal immigration into the U.S. and imposed ethnic quotas. That was American, not Nazi, law and was enforced by Presidents Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.
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Pres. Trump Says He Made Snap Decision on Golan After 'Quickie' History Briefing With Kushner, Friedman and Greenblatt
The Times of Israel
President Donald Trump said Saturday that his decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights was made swiftly after a “quickie” history lesson. Trump last month signed a proclamation recognizing Israel’s de-facto annexation of the plateau, upending decades of US policy. The move drew some international condemnation and Israeli praise. The president told the Republican National Coalition’s annual convention in Las Vegas that he decided on recognizing Israel’s hold on the territory after getting a rushed briefing from senior White House aide Jared Kushner — his son-in-law — ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and negotiator Jason Greenblatt. He said the three had phoned him about an unrelated matter when he brought up the Golan, but did not say when the conversation took place.
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Pres. Trump Brags He Blew Off Calls From World Leaders to Please Adelson Donors
P. Weiss – Mondoweiss
Donald Trump yesterday bragged that he had blown off calls from world leaders before announcing that he was moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in December 2017. Moving the embassy, he said, pleased his largest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson: “the most important thing I think that’s ever happened in their life.” Trump spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition yesterday in Las Vegas, Nevada, and said he had bucked pressure that had stopped other US presidents … The Adelsons and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman were in attendance. Back in 2015 Donald Trump said that Sheldon Adelson would make a “perfect little puppet” of Marco Rubio if Adelson funded Rubio’s campaign. Since then Trump and the Republican Party have gotten over 100 million dollars from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, and Trump fulfilled the prediction.
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Seattle is Dying
KOMO News – Video
A sober, eye-opening report on the social disintegration of Seattle, once one of America’s most admired cities. In this hour-long broadcast, Eric Johnson of KOMO television news looks at the corrosive impact of widespread drug use and a failure to enforce laws. Homelessness has spread dramatically. Seattle has one of the highest crime rates of any major US city, with theft and burglary especially rampant. Addicts and homeless people break the law with virtual impunity. Seattle has become “embarrassing,” people say. Possible positive measures are highlighted.
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Trump and Russia: No Reds Under Our Beds After All
Eric Margolis
… It’s so laughably ironic that while the witch hunt sought a non-existent Kremlin master manipulator, the real foreign string-puller was sitting in the White House Oval office chortling away: Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, behind him, the moneybags patron of Trump and Netanyahu, American billionaire gambling mogul, Sheldon Adelson, the godfather of Greater Israel. The three amigos had just pulled off one of the most outrageous violations of international law by blessing Israel’s annexation of the highly strategic Golan Heights that Israel had seized in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. This usurpation was so egregious that all 14 members of the UN Security Council condemned it. Even usually wimpy Canada blasted the US.
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Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington
Philip Giraldi
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has just completed its annual summit in Washington. It claims that 18,000 supporters attended the event, which concluded with a day of lobbying Congress by the attendees. Numerous American politicians addressed the gathering, and it is completely reasonable to observe that the meeting constituted the most powerful gathering of people dedicated to promoting the interests of a foreign nation ever witnessed in any country in the history of the world.
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China Takes on U.S. Over Venezuela After Russia Sends Troops: It’s Not Your ‘Backyard’
T. O'Connor - Newsweek
China has defended Russia’s recent deployment of troops to Venezuela amid U.S. statements suggesting Moscow and Beijing had no right to support a Latin American government disavowed by Washington. The U.S. has attempted to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by supporting opposition-controlled National Assembly head Juan Guaidó, who declared himself acting president earlier this year in a political challenge to the country’s socialist leader. While Washington has secured support from a number of allies, Beijing and Moscow were among those backing Maduro. Over the weekend, Russian troops were seen disembarking military aircraft at Caracas’s international airport to attend what a diplomatic source as described as “bilateral consultations” …
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Trump Should Close NATO Membership Rolls
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Are we not in enough quarrels already that could lead to new wars — with Iran in the Gulf, China in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia in the Baltic and Black Sea, Venezuela in our own hemisphere — in addition to Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia where we are already fighting? .. Bringing Ukraine into NATO would be an even greater manifestation of madness than bringing in Georgia … Putin’s Russia, once hopeful about a new relationship under Trump, appears to be giving up on the Americans and shifting toward China. Last week, 100 Russian troops arrived in Caracas. Whereupon, The Wall Street Journal lost it: Get them out of our “backyard.” The Monroe Doctrine demands it. Yet, who has been moving into Russia’s front yard for 20 years?
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Five German Firms Each Give $1.1 Million to Holocaust Memorial
Associated Press
Five well-known German companies, including the country’s only publicly traded soccer club, are donating one million euros ($1.1 million) each to Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial for the development of a facility to preserve, catalog and store Holocaust-related artifacts. Borussia Dortmund managing director Carsten Cramer said Tuesday that the club thought the project important to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as well as fighting anti-Semitism today. Daimler, railway operator Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Bank and Volkswagen are also donating to the construction of the “Shoah Heritage Collections Campus,” which is scheduled to open in 2021.
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The U.S. State Department is offering to pay up to a million dollars each for two projects “that counter the rise of anti-Semitism” in Europe and Central Asia. The State Department uses a new definition of anti-Semitism that includes criticisms of Israel. The projects will be funded through two State Department offices: the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitism envoy position was created through 2004 legislation over the objection of the State Department. All four such envoys have been Israel partisans.
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A large group of Polish nationalists took over a major square in downtown Manhattan on Sunday, protesting U.S. legislation that seeks to compensate Holocaust survivors whose property was seized during World War II. The marchers were draped in Polish flags and carried signs opposing bill SS47, which became law in May 2018. The law calls for the return of property “wrongfully seized or transferred” or “the provision of comparable substitute property or the payment of equitable compensation” for Holocaust survivors and the families of victims. But bystanders and anti-fascist activists reported that the protesters were not only condemning S447, but also carrying anti-Semitic placards and repeating Holocaust-denial conspiracy theories.
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US Grovels to Israel: Washington Approves Territorial Theft
Robert Fisk - The Independent (Britain)
Is there any other country on Earth with which America would dare collude on such a scale? … There’s only one special relationship that matters right now – and we all know what that is. Having given its blessing to all Jerusalem as Israeli property and having now handed Golan to Israel as a possession – for “to annex” means “to take possession”, does it not? – Donald Trump has undermined the entire foundation of “land for peace” enshrined in Security Council Resolution 242 … The media, in its grovelling, cowardly, craven obeisance to Israel – and its absolute fear of being cast into the accusatory hell of “antisemitism” – has a lot to answer for … By recognising Israel’s annexation of Golan, Trump merely recognised that Israel has annexed America.
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When President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem last year, effectively sabotaging any hope of establishing a viable Palestinian state, he tore up the international rulebook. Last week, he trampled all over its remaining tattered pages … Mr Trump, meanwhile, has made no secret of his disdain for international law. This month, his officials barred entry to the US to staff from the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, who are investigating US war crimes in Afghanistan … Israel’s right can now plausibly argue: “If Mr Trump has consented to our illegal seizure of the Golan, why not also our theft of the West Bank?”
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The United States is an economic powerhouse. As the largest economy in the world, the U.S. produced $20.5 trillion worth of goods and services — known as its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — in 2018. That’s impressive when you consider that the total GDP for the entire world was about $80 trillion in 2017. In fact, every U.S. state has a GDP that makes it as powerful, economically, as a foreign nation. California is the state with the highest GDP in the country. Its $2.97 trillion economy is on par with Britain, which has a GDP of $2.81 trillion. The UK needed 14.5 million workers — 75 percent more than California used — to produce the same economic output. On its own, California is the fifth-largest economy in the world. The GDP of Texas ($1.78 trillion) is equivalent to the economy of Canada ($1.73 trillion) …
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Must the West Beg the World for Forgiveness?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Behind this demand for an apology from Spain and the Church is a view of history familiar to Americans, and rooted in clashing concepts about who we are, and were. Have the Western peoples who conquered and changed much of the world been, on balance, a blessing to mankind or a curse? … Are the West’s crimes of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, racism, slavery and maltreatment of minorities of color so sweeping, hateful and shameful they cancel out the good done? Is the white race, as Susan Sontag wrote, “the cancer of human history”? … Query: Can peoples who are ashamed of their nation’s past do great things in its future? Or is a deep-seated national guilt, such as that which afflicts many Germans today, a permanent incapacitating feature of a nation’s existence?
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US Presses Iraqi Leaders to Let US Troops Stay
J. Ditz - Antiwar.com
Iraqi parliament speaker Mohammed al-Balbousi was at the Pentagon Wednesday to listen to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who is trying to sell him, and by extension the rest of parliament, on keeping US troops in Iraq. That’s going to be a tough sell. The Iraqis declared the ISIS War over in 2017, and politicians started asking questions about the pullout process. That the Pentagon’s stance is troops are staying and that they never asked Iraq about it isn’t sitting well. Indeed, a lot of the political opposition to an enduring US presence is of America’s own making, with the administration having made enemies of virtually every big Shi’ite bloc by insinuating they are all secretly in league with Iran, and Trump saying the US might as well stay in Iraq just to “keep an eye on Iran.”
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Iraq: How We Were Lied Into War
Eric Margolis
Sixteen years ago, the US and Britain committed a crime of historic proportion, the invasion and destruction of Iraq … I watched with disgust and dismay as the US and Britain launched massive broadsides of lies against Iraq and those few, like myself, who insisted Baghdad had no nuclear weapons. Almost the entire US and British media were compelled to act as mouthpieces for the George Bush/ Tony Blair war against Iraq, trumpeting egregious lies designed to whip up war fever. Our media, supposedly the tribune of democracy, became lie factories, putting even the old Soviet media to shame … No one in the US or Britain ever faced trial for war-mongering and killing vast numbers of people. The lying media escaped well-deserved censure.
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Long-Classified Memo Surfaces Warning of ‘Perfect Storm’ From Invading Iraq
The Wall Street Journal
As President George W. Bush pressed the case for war in Iraq in the summer of 2002, top State Department officials warned that an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein could spark internal Iraqi chaos, Middle East upheaval, and threats to U.S. interests, according to formerly classified documents released this week. “An effort to overthrow the regime in Baghdad could unravel if we’re not careful, intersecting to create a ’perfect storm’ for American interests,” three veteran diplomats with long experience in the Arab world wrote in a July 29, 2002, memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell. The White House ultimately ignored their warnings, and the Bush administration invaded without detailed plans for post-war Iraq.
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War for Oil Revisited Once Again: Why It Is Both Fallacious and Popular
Stephen J. Sniegoski
The belief that America went to war with Iraq for oil and that the war was promoted by the oil companies never seems to die even though it lacks much in the way of empirical evidence … There is considerable counter-evidence … to show that oil companies were not only not involved in driving the United States into war but actually opposed this undertaking. The oil companies certainly wanted to have access to Iraqi oil but they wanted to do this in peaceful ways. Thus the oil companies were pushing for an end to sanctions against Iraq … Also, blaming the oil companies as the driving force for the war on Iraq is much safer than the neoconservative explanation.