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Did We Provoke Putin's War in Ukraine?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Putin did exactly what he had warned us he would do. Whatever the character of the Russian president, now being hotly debated here in the USA, he has established his credibility. When Putin warns that he will do something, he does it … Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin. He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago. Nor is he “irrational,” as some pundits rail. He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both. Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist, and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.
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The Neocons' Primary War Tactic: Branding Opponents of U.S. Intervention as Traitors
Glenn Greenwald
… The most fanatical war-hungry neocons, who shaped Bush/Cheney militarism, have become the most popular pundits and thought leaders in American liberalism. They have not changed in the slightest — they are employing the same tactics they have always invoked, and for the same causes — but they have correctly perceived that their agenda is better served by migrating back to the Democratic Party which originally spawned their bloodthirsty ideology … The corporate media outlets consumed most voraciously by liberals are filled to the brim with war-loving neocons … The other, related attribute that binds them together is the way neocons smear anyone who opposes their plots to involve the U.S. in new wars as traitors, on the side of whichever Bad Leader they want (others) to fight.
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Russian President’s `Declaration of War’ Address
Vladmir Putin (Feb. 24. Full text)
… We are talking about what causes us particular concern and anxiety, about those fundamental threats that year after year, step by step, are rudely and unceremoniously created by irresponsible politicians in the West in relation to our country. I mean the expansion of the Nato bloc to the east, bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders … All that I have said is the most egregious, but by no means the only examples of disregard for international law. In this series, and promises to our country not to expand Nato by one inch to the east … The leading Nato countries, in order to achieve their own goals, support extreme nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine in everything, who, in turn, will never forgive the Crimeans and Sevastopol residents for their free choice: reunification with Russia.
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Attacking Ukraine, Putin Calls for ‘Denazification’ of the Country
The Times of Israel / Agencies
As Russian troops launched their attack on Ukraine on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the “special military operation” would seek the “denazification” of its sovereign neighbor. “Its goal is to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide … for the last eight years. And for this we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” Putin said during an address on state television. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish. It was not clear what exactly the Russian leader was referring to in his claims of Nazism. Russian media has repeatedly sought to portray Ukraine as being aligned with Nazism … Meanwhile, Ukraine’s official Twitter account shared a caricature of Putin being groomed by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, apparently implying the Russian leader had similar dreams of domination.
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In Dark Remarks on Ukraine, Putin Telegraphed a Trajectory Toward War
T. Prince - RFE/RL
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke in an address aired before dawn on February 24 in which he said Moscow would press for the “demilitarization” of Ukraine and hinted that the Kremlin may be out for regime change … Putin essentially told his nation that Ukraine did not have the right to exist, bending history to claim it was created on historically Russian land by Soviet leaders desperate to hold on to power. He lashed out at the neighboring country for tearing down monuments to those very Soviet leaders, cynically deriding Ukrainians as “grateful descendants” of Lenin. He then segued into one of his most ominous statements in his speech … Putin asserted that Russia has no plans to occupy Ukraine. But he said Moscow would press for its “demilitarization” and hinted strongly that the Kremlin may be out for regime change.
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Putin’s Speech Laid Out a Dark Vision of Russian History
Kristaps Andrejson - Foreign Policy
Over his many years as the leader of Russia, President Vladimir Putin has dedicated a lot of time and effort to controlling history … It was no surprise, then, that the first part of Putin’s major televised speech on Monday was full of historical grievance … From all this, Putin’s vision of history is clear — if viciously wrong. A great Russia once existed, of which Ukraine was but a part. The bad communists, like Lenin and Khrushchev and their successor Mikhail Gorbachev, divided up that great Russia in an artificial way, creating divisions where none existed before … The things that are left out of Putin’s version are too numerous to recount, from tsarist oppression to the Holodomor, when Ukrainians were starved by Soviet policy, to the very existence of the Baltic states.
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Ukraine’s Strange Leader: He Created a TV Show in Which He Was President, and Then Won the Office
Video - An0maly
An intriguing take on one of the most bizarre political careers ever. Volodymyr Zelensky was an actor who played the role of a charming character in a television series who became President of Ukraine. On the basis of that popular entertainment broadcast, he then founded a political party and launched a campaign that got him elected President of the country. Is this how modern democracy works? Runtime: 6:58 mins.
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Why Isn’t America Listening to the Advice on NATO Expansion of its Foremost 20th Century Expert on Russia?
Robert Bridge – RT News
The US diplomat George Kennan, an astute observer of Soviet Russia under Stalin, offered his observations later in life on the question of NATO expansion. The tragedy of our times is that those views are being ignored … Had the West taken the advice of one of its leading statesmen with regards to reckless military expansion toward Russia, the world would be a more peaceful and predictable place today … In 1997, with Washington elves hard at work on a NATO membership drive for Central Europe, particularly those countries that once formed the core of the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact, Kennan pulled the alarm. Writing in the pages of the New York Times, he warned that ongoing NATO expansion toward Russia “would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”
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What George Kennan Can Teach Us About US-Russia Relations
Geoffrey Roberts - Responsible Statecraft
George F. Kennan has contradictory claims to historical fame. Lauded in the 1940s as the architect of the policy to contain Soviet expansionism by the adroit deployment of countervailing power, in the 1950s he became the foremost advocate of détente with Russia. Then, after the USSR’s collapse in 1991, Kennan became a persistent critic of NATO expansion to Russia’s borders, calling it the “the greatest mistake of the entire post-Cold War period.” Scholars have long been intrigued by Kennan’s about-face and the story of his journey from Cold War hawk to dovish peacemaker may provide lessons for contemporary American-Russian relations.
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George Kennan and the Twisted Course of US Foreign Policy
Mark Weber – Podcast
George F. Kennan, an outstanding twentieth-century American diplomat and scholar, played an important role in implementing and shaping US foreign policy, and earned well-deserved praise as a historian. He was a consistent advocate of a “realist” US foreign policy — laid down by Washington, Jefferson, and other founders — based on a prudent regard for US interests, and especially the long-term interests of the American people. In 1947-48, Kennan joined with State Department chief George C. Marshall and other high-ranking US officials in opposing US support for the Zionist takeover of Palestine.
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Washington Should Threaten War Only if it Is Willing To Go to War: And Ukraine Does Not Justify War
Doug Bandow
… The fundamental question is whether the US should fight for Ukraine … In Ukraine the US would be fighting at a geographic disadvantage and, as noted earlier, doing so almost alone. The only European government that has responded to the Ukrainian crisis with much apparent military enthusiasm is the United Kingdom. Certainly not France or Germany … What makes this claim so bizarre is that countries have been ignoring international law, invading other states, and changing borders for years. Among those which have attacked other nations or forcibly changed borders since World War II are Russia, China, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Israel, Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia, India, and, of course, the US (multiple times!). None of these instances of military coercion destroyed the international system or triggered world war.
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Putin’s Move on Donestk, Lugansk is Illegal But Falls Short of New ‘Invasion’
Anatol Lieven - Responsible Statecraft
… The real question however is what Russia does next. In itself, this Russian action changes nothing in practical terms. These areas of the Donbas have been separate from Ukraine, with Russian backing, since 2014, and intermittent fighting has been ongoing since then. Western sanctions are already in place to punish Russia for this … A Russian seizure of the whole of Ukraine, as imagined by Washington, seems inherently unlikely. An occupation of Russian-speaking areas of eastern and southern Ukraine is much more plausible. It may also be, however, that Russia will content itself with inflicting a limited local defeat on Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, by way of illustrating NATO’s inability to help Ukraine, followed perhaps by a pause to see what the West does next.
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Putin Explains Russia’s View of the Ukraine Crisis
Video - C-SPAN
Russian President Vladimir Putin explains his government’s view of the origins and development of the Ukraine crisis, and why he decided to recognize the “sovereignty” of the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk “republics” in eastern Ukraine. In this hour-long television address, Putin presents his view of the background to the current conflict between the US and Russia. The borders of modern-day Ukraine, he stresses, were made by Lenin and other Soviet leaders with no regard for historical or ethnic-cultural realities, or for the long-term consequences of their decisions. He also speaks about the anti-Russian hostility of NATO and how US and NATO policies threaten vital Russian security interests.
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Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis
John Mearsheimer – Video
An illuminating look at the origins and likely impact of the Ukraine crisis by an outstanding American specialist of international relations. His lecture is particularly relevant now, in light of the dramatic and still-developing stand-off between the US and Russia. John Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago, reviews the causes of the long-simmering dispute, and looks how best to end it. Any lasting resolution requires an understanding of its underlying causes. In response to a question, he notes that Germans across the political spectrum are unwilling to take a hard or principled stand on this or any issue.
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Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II
Review by David Gordon - Mises Institute
… It is wrong to think of Operation Barbarossa as an unprovoked German assault. After the Germans invaded Russia on June 22, 1941, both Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt did everything within their power to aid Stalin … As the war continued, the pattern of American and British subservience to the Soviets continued, and McMeekin shows how again and again Roosevelt and Churchill ignored the dictates of national interest to aid Stalin … Stalin’s War is a magnificent book and everyone interested in the causes and consequences of World War II — and what reasonable person could not be? — should read it.
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Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II
Sean McMeekin – Book Available from IHR
This sweeping new look at World War II is a magnificent work of scholarly synthesis, packed with eye-opening facts, keen observations and shrewd insights. As American historian McMeekin explains in this overdue reassessment, it was Stalin, not Hitler, who was the central animating figure of World War II. McMeekin details the belligerent character of the Soviet regime, and especially Stalin’s aggressive policies of 1939-1941 and his ambitious plans for the future. The misguided wartime views and lavishly pro-Soviet policies of President Roosevelt and other high-ranking US officials, the author shows, were based on ignorance or delusional naiveté about the Stalinist regime, and driven by an utterly unrealistic vision of the postwar world.
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Why Hitler Struck Against Soviet Russia
Mark Weber – Video
Important evidence has come to light in recent decades that shatters the familiar, endlessly repeated view that Hitler, bent on world conquest, launched a treacherous surprise attack against a peaceful Soviet Union. By June 1941 Soviet dictator Stalin had built the world’s largest military machine, and had deployed an enormous strike force in readiness for a massive attack against Germany that would roll on to overwhelm central and western Europe. Hitler’s “Barbarossa” attack, say a growing number of historians in Russia, Germany and other countries, was actually a preventive war to forestall a Soviet strike. This 50-minute video received more than 220,000 “views” before it was “restricted” by YouTube in late 2017.
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The Irony of America’s ‘Woke’ Foreign Policy
James Carden - Asia Times
… The result is that the US is now engaged in a global Cold War Culture War against any and all states that refuse to get with the woke program. This culture war, which I first described in the conservative journal American Affairs nearly four years ago, is being waged by those who “believe that their political inclinations are not simply correct but also universal, and that they should be spread, as one longtime neoconservative has advised, ‘at gunpoint if need be.’ They are ardent defenders of pluralism at home, yet they are the most vocal advocates for a kind of liberal cultural monism abroad.” … Perhaps the best chance of defeating the unholy alliance of militarists and woke liberals is the rising generation of Republican politicians who may imbue America First with the best anti-imperial traditions of the nation.
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Israel: A Refuge For Swindlers
Andrew Joyce
“Most of the Jews are thieves.” Thus said the founding father of Israel, David Ben Gurion, when he heard about Jewish soldiers carrying Persian rugs from freshly looted Arab properties during the Arab-Israeli war. If he were around today, I don’t think Ben Gurion would find any reason to radically change his opinion, and he probably wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Israel has become a hub of international fraud … International fraud of all kinds is an Israeli specialty.
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US Jewish Leaders Warn of Growing Antisemitism, Say They Helped Fight Amnesty Report
The Times of Israel
The leaders of the American Jewish community’s umbrella organization have warned of rising antisemitism in the United States, growing beyond online rhetoric and increasingly taking the form of physical attacks on Jews — from low-level assaults on the streets of New York to high-profile incidents like the hostage-taking at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, last month. At the same time, there is growing awareness about the threat posed by antisemitism among US officials and a greater willingness to take steps to protect Jewish institutions, they said.
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A newly discovered document from March 1991 shows US, UK, French, and German officials discussing a pledge made to Moscow that NATO would not expand to Poland and beyond. Its publication by the German magazine Der Spiegel on Friday comes as expansion of the US-led bloc has led to a military standoff in Eastern Europe. The minutes of a March 6, 1991, meeting in Bonn between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany contain multiple references to “2+4” talks on German unification in which the Western officials made it “clear” to the Soviet Union that NATO would not push into territory east of Germany.
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Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis
Stephen M. Walt - Foreign Policy
The situation in Ukraine is bad and getting worse … A real war is now a distinct possibility, which would have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved, especially Ukraine’s citizens. The great tragedy is this entire affair was avoidable. Had the United States and its European allies not succumbed to hubris, wishful thinking, and liberal idealism and relied instead on realism’s core insights, the present crisis would not have occurred … The world is paying a high price for relying on a flawed theory of world politics … Ukraine should take the initiative and announce it intends to operate as a neutral country that will not join any military alliance. It should formally pledge not to become a member of NATO or join the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization.
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An Unwinnable War in Ukraine Has No Upside for Putin, But Threats Have the West Lining Up to Listen
Patrick Cockburn - CounterPunch
… Another compelling reason why a Russian invasion was never going to take place was that there was no upside in it for President Vladimir Putin. By invading he would have launched an unwinnable war and Russia would have had to endure heavy sanctions. But, by way of contrast, he has every reason to threaten an invasion aimed at extracting concessions, elevating Russia’s status and making the expansion of Western influence in Ukraine a more risky business. In the last few weeks, the benefits to Russia from its sabre-rattling must have far exceeded the Kremlin’s expectations … The new Cold War, like the old one in Soviet times, enables governments of all stripes to posture as defenders of the people against foreign threats. Political leaders become statesmen, however bad they may smell.
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The Unicultural Edge: China’s `Racism’
Steve Sailer - Taki's Magazine
A formerly secret 2013 Pentagon report, The Strategic Consequences of Chinese Racism: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States, argues “China is a racist superpower.” It makes for eye-opening reading on how both the Chinese people and the American deep state think … This 254-page report on how America should expose and exploit China’s deep-seated racism to win the competition for global influence … The Chinese are not subtle about their sense of racial and cultural superiority … “Virulent racism and eugenics heavily inform Chinese perceptions of the world. United States decision-makers must recognize that China is a racist state, much closer to Nazi Germany than to the values upheld in the West” … “The Chinese see multiculturalism as a sickness that has overtaken the United States, and a component of U.S. decline.”
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China’s development banks provided $23 billion in financing for infrastructure projects in sub-Saharan Africa from 2007 to 2020, more than double the amount lent by such banks in the United States, Germany, Japan and France combined, a new study showed. The Center for Global Development think tank said a review of 535 public-private infrastructure deals funded in the region in those years showed that China’s investments dwarfed those of other governments and multilateral development banks … It noted that the main U.S. development finance agency, now known as the U.S. International Development Finance Corp, lent just $1.9 billion for infrastructure in the region during that period, less than a tenth of what China provided.
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Tens of thousands of Czechs gathered at rallies in the aftermath of the British-organized World War II assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German official in the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate. This “Akualita” newsreel report — with Czech-language narration and German subtitles — shows rallies organized to show loyalty to the German Reich. Runtime: 11:19 mins. The film report begins with scenes from a large evening gathering in Prague on June 2, 1942, which concludes with the crowd singing the Czech national hymn. Similar rallies in Plzen, Brno and Tabor are shown. Protectorate ministers address the rallies, calling for renewed loyalty to the government, the Reich, “our Czech homeland,” and the “new Europe.”
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US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday called Israel’s creation the “greatest political achievement of the 20th century”, in a speech to the Israeli parliament. Leading a delegation of seven Democrats, including Ro Khanna, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee, Pelosi told Israeli lawmakers that Washington’s support for Israel remained “ironclad”, as she warned against the threat of a nuclear Iran. “I am very proud that America is Israel’s oldest ally,” she told the Israeli Knesset. “The US remains ironclad, I keep using that word, in our support of Israel’s security and its regional stability.”
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Close to 100 local Jewish federations and Jewish community relations councils are urging the Senate to confirm Deborah Lipstadt as antisemitism monitor … “This latest, horrific attack makes clear that the Senate must expeditiously confirm this position so that America’s diplomatic corps has an able leader to combat the global threat of antisemitism,” the organizations said in a letter sent Monday that was initiated by the Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group … The position of antisemitism monitor tracks antisemitism overseas and consults with governments about how to stem it.
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… What the US media will not report is that this entire crisis – and the threat of a serious war – has all been brought about by US interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine, specifically the US-backed coup that overthrew an elected government in 2014. Every bit of unrest in Ukraine proceeded from that single foolish and immoral act by the Obama Administration … The Biden Administration is at present shell-shocked that the Russian government did not back down over plans to expand NATO to Ukraine. Russia understandably views NATO membership for Ukraine — with its Article 5 guarantees – to be an unacceptable threat considering the ongoing border disputes. This is not our fight, yet Biden’s foreign policy team has decided it’s a great time to kick the hornet’s nest.
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Whoopi Gets a Whipping
Philip Giraldi
… Whoopi was immediately attacked by a host of the usual suspects, including both the US Holocaust Museum and also the always vigilant “Fighting Hate” Anti-Defamation League (ADL) … If proof were needed that we are in an age of “newspeak” and “thought crimes” when it comes to anything Jewish related that might even vaguely be considered non-adorational or evasive, Whoopi would be a prime bit of evidence … We Americans are in deep kimchi when a tiny percentage of our country’s citizenry can dictate limits for what it is possible to say or write regarding disputed historical events and a foreign country … Jewish power is such in the United States and Europe that it believes it is invincible and that by shouting holocaust and anti-Semitism one can shut down any and all criticism.
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ADL Admits it Doesn’t Know What It’s Been Fighting
Jared Taylor - American Renaissance
The Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, was founded in 1913 to fight antisemitism and racism, but after battling racism for 109 years, it just admitted that it doesn’t even know what it is. It wants the public to help it find out … Earlier this month, the ADL changed its definition again. But it’s so unsure of itself, it calls this an “interim definition.” … And I thought racism was supposed to be all about “hate.” Where’s the “hate” in preferring your own kind? … And the whole state of Israel is “racist.” You can’t immigrate unless you’re Jewish, and Israel can’t skip out of ADL definition of racism by saying Jewishness is a religion and not a race or ethnicity. Albert Einstein was an atheist, but no one ever said he wasn’t Jewish. The ADL says Israel must remain Jewish – preference for Jews — so by its own definition, Israel is a racist country.
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RAF Pilots Buried With Full Honors by German Soldiers on British Soil
Video – Dark Skies
In spite of the death, destruction and hatreds of World War II, soldiers of various countries sometimes showed remarkable chivalry and respect toward their foes, most notably by British and German servicemen, and especially during conflict’s early years. Particular respect was given by and to fighter pilots. Many downed pilots were buried with military honors by men of opposing forces. Such was the case of two Royal Air Force pilots who lost their lives while carrying out a raid over Jersey in the Channel Islands. (During World War II, the Islands, including Jersey and Guernsey, were occupied by German forces.) The two British pilots were buried in 1943 with full honors by the German garrison. Hundreds of local British residents joined in the ceremony. Runtime: 9:18 mins.
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Inside the Woke Indoctrination Machine
A. Gutmann, P. Rossi - The Wall Street Journal
Last spring we exposed how two elite independent schools in New York had become corrupted by a divisive obsession with race, helping start the national movement against critical race theory. Schools apply this theory under the guise of diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] programming. Until now, however, neither of us fully grasped the dangers of this ideology or the true motives of its practitioners. The goal of DEI isn’t only to teach students about slavery or encourage courageous conversations about race, it is to transform schools totally and reshape society radically … Perfectionism, punctuality, urgency, niceness, worship of the written word, progress, objectivity, rigor, individualism, capitalism and liberalism are some of the characteristics of white-supremacy culture in need of elimination.
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The CIA has a secret, undisclosed data repository that includes information collected about Americans, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee said. While neither the agency nor lawmakers would disclose specifics about the data, the senators alleged the CIA had long hidden details about the program from the public and Congress. Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico sent a letter to top intelligence officials calling for more details about the program to be declassified. Large parts of the letter, which was sent in April 2021 and declassified Thursday, and documents released by the CIA were blacked out. Wyden and Heinrich said the program operated “outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection.”
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Washington Ignores Amnesty Israel ‘Apartheid’ Report at its Peril
Trita Parsi - Responsible Statecraft
By blatantly ignoring the findings of human rights abuses against Palestinians as the United States did this week upon the release of a seminal report by Amnesty International, Washington is ultimately emboldening bad behavior while further entrenching itself in Middle East security crises … The Israeli government has presented no counter argument to these findings, except false accusations of antisemitism. The 274-page report has also further embarrassed the United States, which also rejected Amnesty’s report … The United States loses further credibility on human rights when it applies it selectively … Israel’s de facto annexation of Palestinian territory and elimination of any viable two-state solution is partly the result of decades of American deference to Israel …
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Guilt By Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War
Jeff Gates - Book Available from IHR
A stunning look at the entrenched corruption of the American political system, which has enabled a secretive “Israel First” alliance to take control of US political life. Through the media, in academic life, in popular culture and in politics, this underhanded group has taken control of US foreign policy, and has been able to deceive the public into waging war for the Zionist state. Author Jeff Gates is an attorney and adviser on financial policy who served for seven years as counsel to the US Senate Committee on Finance. Packed with information, this readable book includes illustrations, source references, and an index. Former Congressman Paul Findley praised it as “magnificent, timely and persuasive” in revealing how “stealth, deceit and cunning helped create today’s perilous situation in the Middle East.”
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A Bulgarian nationalist MEP gave a Nazi salute in the chamber of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, after he spoke during a debate on the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. Angel Dzhambazki of the Bulgarian nationalist VMRO party is seen extending his right arm in front of him before exiting the chamber in a video of the debate. VMRO is in the euroskeptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament. “We will never allow you to tell us what to say and do. Long live Orban and Fidesz, long live Kaczynski and PiS, long live Bulgaria and our nation-state,” Dzhambazki said during the debate. “Long live the Europe of nations,” he concluded.
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Stress Test for a Fading Superpower
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Now, U.S. hegemony is being everywhere challenged — in Eastern Europe, the Near East, Southeast Asia, East Asia. And the challenges arise from autocrats united in their resolve to reduce the power and the presence of the United States in their part of the world. All of America’s adversaries have something in common: They want us out of their neighborhood … Bottom line: The balance of power is constantly shifting. And in this new century, it has been shifting in favor of America’s adversaries, all of whom wish to see us diminished … Meanwhile, America has run up a national debt larger than the entire U.S. economy. Its trade deficits are at record levels. Its borders are being overrun by migrants from all over the world. And its disposition to intervene, engage and fight for democracy has rarely been lower.
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Is Old Music Killing New Music?
Ted Gioia - The Atlantic
Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm … The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs. The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high just three years ago. The mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted toward older music … I encountered this phenomenon myself recently … Some people — especially Baby Boomers — tell me that this decline in the popularity of new music is simply the result of lousy new songs. Music used to be better, or so they say. The old songs had better melodies, more interesting harmonies, and demonstrated genuine musicianship …
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Mark Weber, Director of the Institute for Historical Review, and Lawrence Davidson, former lecturer at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, discuss the failure of the Biden administration to return to compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration for leaving the agreement, and pledged that he would return to compliance with it. Instead, the Biden administration has continued Trump’s sanctions policies. Weber and Davidson appear on this “News Review” segment of Iran’s English-language Press TV television service in the aftermath of remarks by Iran’s president, who criticized the Biden administration for sticking with the sanctions policies of its predecessor. Runtime: 11:46 mins.
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Apocalypse 1945: The Destruction of Dresden
Book available from IHR
Mass killing and terrorism were the sole objectives of the horrific World War II air attack on Dresden, which British diplomat and author Harold Nicolson called “the single greatest holocaust by war.” On February 13-14, 1945, some 2,000 British and American bombers took part in the devastating raid on an undefended city packed with women and children fleeing advancing Soviet forces. One of Europe’s great cultural and architectural treasures, this beautiful German city had no importance as a military target. Here is the full story — from the perspectives of both perpetrators and victims — of the horrific firestorm raid that took the lives of tens of thousands of civilians, who were burned alive, suffocated or succumbed to poisonous fumes. Hardcover book, with dust jacket, photos, maps, source and reference notes, and index.
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The Bombing of Dresden
Video - German History Archive
This striking video shows the beautiful German city of Dresden before, during, and after the devastating British-American air attack of February 1945. No narration. Runtime: 7:47 mins.
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Remembering Dresden: 70 Years After the Firebombing
Alan Taylor – The Atlantic
In the last months of World War II, Allied bombers from the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force conducted several major bombing raids on the eastern German city of Dresden. Beginning on the night of February 13, 1945, more than 1,200 heavy bombers dropped nearly 4,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city in four successive raids. An estimated 25,000 people were killed in the bombings and the firestorm that raged afterward. More than 75,000 dwellings were destroyed, along with unique monuments of Baroque architecture in the historic city center. With photographs.
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The Blood of Dresden
Kurt Vonnegut
… In February 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers; disembowelled her with high explosives and cremated her with incendiaries … It is with some regret that I here besmirch the nobility of our airmen, but, boys, you killed an appalling lot of women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral pyres in the parks, so I know … The “Get Tough America” policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, have earned us a name for obscene brutality.
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Amnesty International accused Israel on Tuesday of subjecting Palestinians to a system of apartheid founded on policies of “segregation, dispossession and exclusion” that it said amounted to crimes against humanity. The London-based rights group said its findings were based on research and legal analysis in a 211-page report into Israeli seizure of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer of people and denial of citizenship. Israel and its top ally the United States rejected the report, the second by an international rights group in less than a year to accuse it of pursuing a policy of apartheid, a word originally used to describe South Africa’s racist policy of white minority rule and segregation in the 20th century.
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Amnesty Apartheid Report: Why Israel Fully Deserves Its Place as a Pariah State
David Hearst - Middle East Eye
… Amnesty’s report marks a turning point in the world’s perception of the regime to which over seven million Palestinians are being subjected … From its onset Jewish demography was the driver of legislation and policymaking. Amnesty documents how a Jewish majority state was built on the back of expulsion, expropriation, dispossession and segregation. It shows how a Jewish supremacist state is not a modern aberration … Establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony was and is the whole point of a “Jewish state” … Amnesty robs the supporters of Israel of their identity as liberals of the western world. It forces them to choose between their Zionism and their liberal values, and they choose Zionism almost every time. There are a few noble exceptions but very few.
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America is Reaping What It Sowed in Ukraine
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J. S. Davies
So what are Americans to believe about the rising tensions over Ukraine? The United States and Russia both claim their escalations are defensive, responding to threats and escalations by the other side, but the resulting spiral of escalation can only make war more likely. Ukrainian President Zelensky is warning that “panic” by U.S. and Western leaders is already causing economic destabilization in Ukraine. U.S. allies do not all support the current U.S. policy. Germany is wisely refusing to funnel more weapons into Ukraine, in keeping with its long-standing policy of not sending weapons into conflict zones … After decades of U.S. military disasters based on such one-sided narratives, Americans should know better by now.
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Army Whistleblower: Mossad Set Up a Laptop Stand at Mall Near Army Base to Spy on American Troops
Patrick Howley
Operatives for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, set up a laptop kiosk at a shopping mall near a U.S. Army base to sell laptops rigged with spyware to U.S. military servicemembers, a former Army intelligence analyst tells Big League Politics. And he said the U.S. military found out about it but kept it quiet. Cody R., former Army intelligence analyst who served in Afghanistan, vowed to put his hand on the Bible and swear to the following story about how the “Israeli government has a mistrust in everyone, including its allies.”
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Biden `Antisemitism Envoy’ Nominee, Deborah Lipstadt, Faces GOP Criticism at Confirmation Hearing
The Times of Israel
US President Joe Biden’s nominee for special envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt vowed to speak out against antisemitism, regardless of the political affiliation of its origin, as she came under attack from Republican lawmakers during her Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday for old tweets in which she sounded off against racism in the GOP … Lipstadt is best known to the wider public for her appearance in a landmark British legal case in which she fought a libel suit brought by Holocaust denier David Irving. That experience was portrayed by superstar actor Rachel Weisz in the Hollywood feature film “Denial.” … A diverse array of Jewish organizations were quick to laud the nomination … Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan also welcomed her nomination.
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Life Under Fire: The Wages of Apostasy
David Irving – Institute for Historical Review
… For two years now, in country after country, I have been conducting this international Campaign for Real History. During this period, in country after country, I’ve come up against an international campaign against real history — an international campaign full of lies, an international campaign to suppress the truth … There is, in fact, an international force out there with an influence that transcends frontiers. Day after day, country after country, month after month, I come up against this international force … Journalists come to me, again and again, and ask me: “Mr. Irving, are you anti-Semitic?” And I reply, “Not yet.” For two years now, I have been the target of this worldwide campaign — in Germany, France, Spain, South Africa, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and England.
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Hitler’s War
David Irving – Book available from IHR
Latest edition! Back in Print! / Deluxe hardcover edition of an outstanding historian’s masterful, in-depth look at Adolf Hitler, Third Reich Germany and World War II. With full color dust jacket, photos, source notes, and index. A product of 25 years of dedicated research and unmatched scholarship, written in gripping, page-turning prose, this monumental work traces Hitler’s entire epoch-making career. In this meticulously referenced work – the crowning achievement in the career of a fiercely independent, best-selling historian – Irving demolishes the familiar propaganda image of Hitler and the Third Reich, tearing apart one historical fable after another. Sumptuously illustrated with more than a hundred photographs, including 40 in color.
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ADL Updates Definition of Racism, Again, Following Whoopi Goldberg Controversy
Washington Examiner
The Anti-Defamation League updated its definition of racism Wednesday after its CEO and national director, Jonathan Greenblatt, appeared on The View the day before to speak with Whoopi Goldberg. Racism is now defined by the ADL as something that “occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.” This is only an interim definition and is subject to change, according to the ADL, whose mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Several years ago, the ADL changed its definition of racism to the following: “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”
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The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that claims to have a non-partisan agenda against hatred and discrimination but is actually a partisan, far-left outfit that regularly smears conservatives, changed its definition of “racism” in 2020 to exclude white people. The update borrows the language of critical race theory, suggesting that only “people of color” can be victims of racism, and that a system that prioritizes people who aren’t white is not racist … By September 2020, after a summer of violence and looting brought about by Black Lives Matter and Antifa, the old definition of racism was removed … The ADL’s new definition also appears to endorse, or at least not oppose, racial hierarchies in general — just racial hierarchies that benefit white people. It implies that a racial hierarchy that left white people at a disadvantage would not be racist.
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There’s No Place in Our Schools for ADL’s ‘No Place For Hate’
Kathryn Shihadah - If Americans Knew
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in anti-bias education” and “a relentless advocate for vulnerable communities of all kinds.” The organization claims that it is “viewed as having unquestioned credibility.” As a self-identified watchdog for the world, this private institution has worked its way into schools, communities, and various levels of government … Does the Anti-Defamation League practice what it preaches? … In its efforts to protect Israel from criticism – despite that country’s long record of human rights violations and racism (more below) – the ADL has worked against various movements whose efforts actually lined up with the ADL’s own (non-Israel) proclaimed mission of bringing justice and equality to all … The ADL’s self-contradiction and duplicity are most visible when it is held to its own standards.
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In our modern era, there are surely few organizations that so terrify powerful Americans as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, a central organ of the organized Jewish community … In effect, the ADL seems to have long operated as our country’s privatized secret political police, monitoring and enforcing its ideological doctrines on behalf of Jewish groups much as the Stasi did for the Communist rulers of East Germany … Once I began reading the 500 pages of The Leo Frank Case: The Lynching of a Guilty Man I was tremendously impressed by the quality of the historical analysis … The case they [the authors] made for Frank’s guilt seemed absolutely overwhelming.
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Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has fired five employees, four of them from its Arabic desk, following a damning audit on antisemitism in the workplace. The audit, based on a two-month investigation, found isolated cases of antisemitism but no systemic problem … At issue were virulent antisemitic statements made by staff on and off the job, as well as failures in recruiting staff and inviting a variety of guest speakers. Deutsche Welle is a public, state-owned broadcaster funded by federal taxes. It provides programming worldwide in 30 languages … One of Germany’s biggest media conglomerates, the Axel Springer company, established “corporate principles” in 1967 that includes “support [for] the Jewish people and the right of existence of the State of Israel.”
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Are Americans Finally Tiring of War?
Newsweek
… With Russia and Ukraine now potentially on the verge of major war, again most Americans have little appetite for shedding blood on behalf of a putative partner. A recent poll by YouGov, commissioned by the Charles Koch Institute, found that only 27 percent of Americans think the United States should go to war in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Four times as many respondents wanted less rather than more U.S. military engagement around the world. Politicians have gotten the message … Twenty years of what have rightly been dubbed “endless wars” have soured citizens of all political persuasions on the idea that American arms and soldiers are the solution for what ails other countries. Supermajorities of both Democrats and Republicans think America’s focus should be on its domestic problems, however they might be defined.
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US Prep Schools Held Student Exchanges With Elite Nazi Academies
H. Roche – The Conversation
In the summer of 1935, the Nazi government hijacked a student exchange program between leading American and German schools … By 1935, officials in charge of the Third Reich’s new elite schools, the National Political Education Institutes, or Napolas, had plans to appropriate the exchange program to promote National Socialist aims … The schools educated boys aged 10 to 19, training them as future leaders … By 1938, 18 American prep schools were taking part in the Napola exchanges … Many leading American prep schools took part in the Napola exchange program each year following 1935 … Between 1936 and 1938, 15 American pupils each year learned at the Nazi elite schools for 10 months, while 30 Napola pupils spent five months each at the American schools.
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British Girls in the Third Reich: 'We Had the Time of Our Lives'
Der Spiegel (Germany)
In the 1930s, many English families sent their daughters to finishing school in Nazi Germany. Rachel Johnson, sister of the London mayor, interviewed several for her most recent book. / … They said: “We had the best time of our lives.” They felt fantastic being in Germany during the Third Reich. “It was the highlight of my life,” one told me. To them, it was a rich experience, because England was very stuffy at that time — lots of unemployment, terrible food and nasty weather. In Bavaria they had the crisp mountain air, a healthy life, the opera, the mountains and handsome Germans in uniform. They couldn’t believe their luck! No chaperons, no parents. They had everything, including sex.
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War Mania Leads White House to Condemn US Senator as Russian Propagandist
J. Lauria – Consortium News
The extent to which the White House will not tolerate any dissent against its war messaging on Russia was revealed when President Joe Biden’s press secretary on Wednesday condemned a sitting member of the United States Senate as a Russian propagandist for simply questioning the drive to war over Ukraine … Psaki added: “That applies to Senator Hawley, but it also applies to others who may be parroting the talking points of Russian propagandist leaders.” The word “others” is ominous. It can be taken to mean any other member of the U.S. Congress, U.S. independent media or ordinary Americans … Smearing government critics as agents of a foreign power is the oldest trick in the book.
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Israeli laws, policies and practices against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories amount to apartheid, Amnesty International says. A new report alleges that the Israeli state maintains “an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis”. Apartheid is considered a crime against humanity under international law. Israel says it “absolutely rejects all the false allegations” in the report … Officially all Israeli citizens have equal rights, regardless of religion or race. But Amnesty’s report concludes that Israel “considers and treats Palestinians as an inferior non-Jewish racial group”.
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Amnesty International’s Apartheid Report: The Walls Protecting Israel Are Finally Crumbling
Jonathan Cook - Middle East Eye
The walls protecting Israel are quickly crumbling … Now, the one speaking up is Amnesty International – an organisation widely viewed as the most authoritative arbiter of what constitutes human rights violations. Over the past year, all have reached the same conclusion: Israel is an apartheid state. According to Amnesty’s new report published on Tuesday: “Israel’s system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination against Palestinians, as a racial group, in all areas under its control amounts to a system of apartheid.” … In short, Israel’s racism is not an add-on or temporary. It is hard-baked into the very idea of a Jewish state.
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`Democracy in Israel’
Norman Dacey – Booklet available from IHR
Noted economist and bestselling author (How to Avoid Probate) Norman Dacey blows the whistle on the claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East” in this concise but thorough analysis of Israel’s very undemocratic institutions and practices. Dacey demonstrates systematic suppression of the Palestinians; second-class status for Christians and other non-Jews; inequality of women; the plight of the half-Jewish mamzerim (illegitimate in Israeli law even if their parents are married!); discrimination against black and Oriental Jews; police state powers; and many other features of Israeli law and Israeli policy that give the lie to the fiction that the Zionist state is a democracy.
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She may not have meant to, but this week Whoopi Goldberg waded into a charged discourse that has polarized the Jewish community – and those who seek to discriminate against them – for centuries … Jews have long debated whether they are a “race” or something else … Goldberg also stumbled into an ongoing debate within and beyond the Jewish community: Are Jews “white people”? … [Whoopi Goldberg] was not born Jewish, but who adopted a Jewish stage name because of what she has described as her positive feelings toward Jews and Jewish culture, not for religious reasons … [she] was born Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City to a Baptist clergyman father and a nurse mother.
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Who Are The Jews?
T. Jackson - American Renaissance
Shelves of books have been written about Jewish history and identity, but many ancient accounts have been impossible to verify independently. Now, advances in DNA analysis have added much greater precision to our understanding of Jewish origins, and can be used to test many of the oral traditions Jews have passed on for millennia. Jon Entine’s Abraham’s Children is a good summary of recent work in this field, and covers several other areas of genetic research, most notably Jewish diseases and Jewish intelligence … Defects aside, the strongest impression Abraham’s Children leaves is one common to books about Jews: that they have clung to their identity with astonishing tenacity. Military defeat, exile, persecution, and forced conversion have not quenched a fierce loyalty to the ways of their ancestors.
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Popular Histories Have Influenced World Leaders, Sometimes For the Better
Robert Brent Toplin - HNN
… No historian, however, has made a more significant impact on an American president’s thoughts and actions than Barbara Tuchman. President John F. Kennedy drew important lessons from one of her books when seeking a peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis [1962] … Tuchman did not view historical outcomes as inevitable. She believed many situations could have turned out differently – and for the better – if leaders examined their options seriously and considered the long-term consequences of their decisions. That idea was a principal theme in The Guns of August, published in 1962, which made a profound impression on President John F. Kennedy. Tuchman’s book dealt with the first month of World War I, when European nations plunged into war.
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America’s national debt just hit another sobering milestone. Total public debt outstanding is now above $30 trillion, according to Treasury Department data published Tuesday … It’s impossible to know how much debt is too much, and economists remain divided over how big of a problem this really is … “It doesn’t mean a short-term crisis, but it does mean we are going to be poorer in the long term,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management. Interest costs alone are projected to surpass $5 trillion over the next ten years, and will amount to nearly half of all federal revenue by 2051, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an organization focused on raising awareness to the fiscal challenge.
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Amnesty International said Tuesday that Israel has maintained “a system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians going all the way back to its establishment in 1948, one that meets the international definition of apartheid. With the release of a 278-page report compiled over a period of four years, the London-based rights group joins Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group B’Tselem in accusing Israel of apartheid — both within its borders and in the occupied territories … “Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while restricting the rights of Palestinians and preventing Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes,” Amnesty said.
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Mel Mermelstein, who survived Auschwitz and successfully took on a group of Holocaust deniers in court, has died. He was 95. Mermelstein died from COVID-19 complications at his California home on Friday, his daughter Edie Mermelstein told the New York Times. His death took place one day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1944, when Mermelstein was 17 years old, he and his family were moved from their hometown – which was a part of Hungary at the time – to the Nazi German concentration camp, per the newspaper. By the end of the Holocaust, Mermelstein was the only living member of his family.
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History and 'Memory’: Evidence of 'Holocaust Witness' Mermelstein
Theodore J. O'Keefe – Institute for Historical Review
In September 1991 the Institute for Historical Review prevailed in a lawsuit brought by Mel Mermelstein, a southern California businessman and self-professed eyewitness to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. This victory closed more than ten years of wrangling in two legal cases … In the second case, Mermelstein brought an $11 million suit for defamation (libel) because of an IHR Newsletter item by Bradley Smith that called him a “demonstrable fraud,” a “vainglorious prevaricator,” and a “false-tale spinner.” On Sept. 19, 1991, Mermelstein was obliged to drop what remained of his suit after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge dismissed a substantial portion of it.
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IHR Scores Stunning Victory in Mermelstein Case
Institute for Historical Review
The Institute for Historical Review has won a resounding victory in its ten-year-old legal battle with California businessman and Holocaust personality Mel Mermelstein … Victory in the case (No. C629224) caps an acrimonious legal clash that has attracted nationwide media attention. Mermelstein’s long-standing campaign to shut down the IHR was sensationalized, for example, in a made-for-television movie, “Never Forget,” broadcast nationwide last April 8 [1990] on the TNT cable television network. Veteran actor Leonard Nimoy played the former Auschwitz and Buchenwald camp inmate, who was portrayed as a man of courage, rectitude and integrity.
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Romanian Political Figure Praises Corneliu Codreanu, `Antisemitic Fascist’ Leader, on Primetime TV
JTA
A Romanian political hopeful who could become honorary president of the country’s fourth-largest political party praised an antisemitic 1930s fascist leader during a primetime TV interview on Monday night, drawing sharp condemnation from Jewish and other groups. Speaking on Antena 3 news channel, Calin Georgescu, a sustainability expert formerly affiliated with the United Nations, said Corneliu Zelea Codreanu “fought for the morality of the human being.” An interviewer had asked Georgescu why he put Codreanu on a list of national “heroes” in a 2020 Facebook video which garnered over 700,000 views. Codreanu led the fiercely antisemitic Legionnaire Movement …
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Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended from a US talk show after saying the Holocaust involved “two groups of white people”. ABC News said Goldberg would be off-air for two weeks after her “wrong and hurtful comments”. The actress and TV personality said on ABC’s “The View” that the Nazi genocide of the Jews was “not about race.” She apologised but then caused further offence while attempting to explain her remarks on a late-night show. In a note to staff on Tuesday night, ABC News president Kim Godwin wrote: … “The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.” … “Just last week I noted that the culture at ABC News is one that is driven, kind, inclusive, respectful, and transparent. Whoopi’s comments do not align with those values.”
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Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended from “The View” for two weeks over comments she made on Monday’s show about the Holocaust. “Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments … ,” ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement … On Monday, while discussing a Tennessee school district banning the graphic novel “Maus,” Goldberg said, “If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn’t about race.” Goldberg said instead it was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and that both groups of people were white. The longtime host of the talk show apologized on Monday night, saying on Twitter she had spoken to the head of the Anti-Defamation League about her comments.
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Whoopi Goldberg has offered an apology after facing criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, the U.S. Holocaust Museum and other Jewish organizations for her remarks on the latest episode of “The View,” in which she stated that the Holocaust was “not about race.” “On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.’ I should have said it is about both,” Goldberg wrote in a statement shared on her social media. “The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.” Earlier on Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, responded to “The View” co-hosts comments on Twitter, calling her remarks “dangerous.”
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Hollywood's Agenda, and the Power Behind It
Mark Weber
… Even many of those who readily acknowledge the tremendous influence of American film and television seem not to fully comprehend the formidable scope of the power behind Hollywood, or the outlook and agenda of those who wield that power … Hollywood, together with the rest of the Jewish-Zionist dominated US media, sensationalizes and distorts current events, systematically falsifies history, promotes debased “entertainment” and perverse cultural standards, and makes possible the Jewish-Zionist hold on American political life …
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Israel’s Founding Father Called for Villages to Be ‘Wiped Out,’ Confirming Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
B. Spliet - Libertarian Institute
… These comments are testimony of the well-documented ethnic cleansing of Palestine during Israel’s foundational war. In fact, the ‘wiping out’ of Arab forces and the “expulsion” of the Palestinians was officially sanctioned policy during the conflict … From the very beginning, political Zionism implied the “transfer” of the indigenous population to other countries … As Ben-Gurion said in a speech a few days after the publication of the UN partition plan, “there are 40% non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state. This composition is not a solid basis for a Jewish state. […] Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state.” And thus, the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine was born.
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‘Tantura’ Director: Israelis Have Been Lied to for Years About Alleged 1948 Massacre
R. Ghert-Zand - The Times of Israel
In the late 1990s, an Israeli researcher named Teddy Katz produced a master’s degree thesis for the University of Haifa that claimed Israel committed mass murder against non-combatants in the Arab village of Tantura in 1948. The massacre, he said, was perpetrated by troops of the IDF’s Alexandroni Brigade in the early stages of Israel’s War of Independence. He based his work on 140 hours of audio-taped interviews he conducted with 135 witnesses to the event — half Jewish, half Arab. … Schwarz digitized and listened to all 140 hours of the taped testimonies. The filmmaker told The Times of Israel that he is convinced that Israeli soldiers killed between 200 and 250 male residents of Tantura following the battle to take the prosperous and strategic village on the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa.
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US Should Leave the Balkans Be
Doug Bandow
Foreign policy is a dangerous instrument in the hands of modern liberals. Indeed, few people are as fearsome as one filled with good intentions wielding military power. One result, nearly three decades ago, was the unloved artificial state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now Serbian leader Milorad Dodik is moving to dismantle the tripartite nation. Dodik denounced what amounts to a Western colony, ruled by a European governor with the inflated title of high representative, as a “failed country” and Western “experiment” that “does not work.” This threat to their dubious handiwork left disbelieving US and European diplomats near hysteria.
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U.S. National Debt Tops $30 Trillion as Borrowing Surged Amid Pandemic
The New York Times
America’s gross national debt topped $30 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, an ominous fiscal milestone that underscores the fragile nature of the country’s long-term economic health as it grapples with soaring prices and the prospect of higher interest rates. The breach of that threshold, which was revealed in new Treasury figures, arrived years earlier than previously projected as a result of trillions in federal spending that the United States has deployed to combat the pandemic … The borrowing binge, which many economists viewed as necessary to help the United States recover from the pandemic, has left the nation with a debt burden so large that the government would need to spend an amount larger than America’s entire annual economy in order to pay it off.
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Israel Blasts Amnesty UK for ‘Antisemitic’ Report Accusing It of Apartheid
The Times of Israel
A day before Amnesty International UK was set to release a report accusing Israel of apartheid, Israel called it “false, biased, and antisemitic” and accused the organization of endangering the safety of Jews around the world. “Amnesty’s report effectively serves as a green light … to harm not only Israel, but Jews around the world,” read a statement Monday from the Foreign Ministry spokesman’s office. The ministry called on Amnesty UK not to release the report. The statement said that the organization “uses double standards and demonization in order to delegitimize Israel. These are the exact components from which modern antisemitism is made. “Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism,” it said.
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Neville Chamberlain: Unsung Hero of WWII
L. Reader - HNN
… The new Netflix film, Munich: The Edge of War, suggests that historical perceptions of Chamberlain require revision … Far from quailing at the massing jackbooted Nazi hordes, Chamberlain was the architect of British rearmament. In 1936, while Chancellor of the Exchequer, he began a vast, costly modernization of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force (RAF) and continued this policy when he became Prime Minister a year later. In his book Britain At Bay (2020), the historian Alan Allport argues that the British prime minster was pursuing a two-pronged diplomatic strategy in which appeasement and rearmament were complementary processes … The crucial point is that Chamberlain did not shy from conflict. He simply wanted it to occur at the most advantageous moment for the country he led.
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Hitler Answers Roosevelt
Booklet Available from IHR
This booklet includes the text of a widely publicized letter by President Franklin Roosevelt in which he called on the German Chancellor to promise not to attack 31 countries, as well as a specially prepared translation of the address by Hitler in response. Of the many speeches made by Hitler during his lifetime, this is certainly one of the most important. It was also very probably the most eagerly anticipated address of the time, with many millions of people around the world listening to it live on radio or reading of it the next day in newspapers. The historic April 1939 exchange between Roosevelt and Hitler is important in helping to better understand the foreign policy outlook and goals of those two influential twentieth-century leaders, and how very differently each viewed recent history and his own country’s role in the world.
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Why Germany Isn't Sending Weapons to Ukraine
Jenny Hill - BBC News
Germany’s refusal to send weapons to Ukraine has puzzled and angered some allies. But the reasons why Europe’s most powerful country is standing back are historical and complex … To visit the memorial at Seelow Heights is to understand how deeply entrenched this country’s history remains in the minds of many Germans – and how the horrors of the 20th Century still influence its foreign policy today. It is one of the reasons Germany has refused to send weapons to Ukraine, prompting a furious response from politicians there. This is, by and large, a nation of pacifists … There’s another reason for Germany’s reluctance – many here simply don’t believe that sending weapons will solve the crisis.
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Putin Has Ensured Fortress Russia Can Withstand a Long Siege
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard – The Telegraph
Fortress Russia can withstand a very long financial siege by the diminished West, and probably longer than the weakest links in the Atlantic alliance care to endure. Vladimir Putin is an order of magnitude less vulnerable to sanctions than he was after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 … Tim Ash from BlueBay Asset Management says the Kremlin has been methodically constructing a fortress economy able to resist almost anything thrown at it. The budget is in balance. Public debt is below 20 percent of GDP. A system of dynamic stabilizers helps the economy roll with the punches … Russia has eliminated its critical dependency on food imports. It is again self-sufficient in all but beef. Mr Granville says Russia is today a “net foreign creditor to the outside world” with $638bn of foreign reserves, greater than its external debt of $476 billion.
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Mussolini's Unnatural Alliance
Srdja Trifkovic - Chronicles
… Revisiting Mussolini’s legacy is necessary not only because he is too facilely branded together with Hitler, but also for the sake of linguistic hygiene and mental discipline. It is necessary because the word “fascist” — which he coined in 1919 — is still used as an abusive term a century later, arguably with greater frequency and less responsibility than ever before … In pursuit of his relatively limited objectives Mussolini was frequently erratic and inconsistent. He eventually limited his options to the point where he played a subordinate role to Hitler, whose long-term goals were dangerously open-ended, but who displayed skill and — until June 1941 — considerable rationality in their pursuit.
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Italian Fascism: An Interpretation
James Whisker
… Fascism was touted by Mussolini as a unique combination of thought and action, yet fascism was still seeking an ideology after the Second World War was over. The roots of fascism are many and complex. The fascist leadership, notably Mussolini, admitted the multi-faceted influences of liberalism, marxism, syndicalism, risorgimento, socialism, catholicism and nationalism on their ideology … Italian fascism was the first application of what would become a generic ideology encompassing, or allegedly encompassing, movements of the political right in every nation of Western Europe, the United States, the British Commonwealth nations and even Japan.
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Hitler’s Second Seat of Power at Obersalzberg
DW (Germany)
Nestled in the Bavarian Alps, not far from Lake Königssee, Obersalzberg lies at an altitude of around 1,000 meters, above Berchtesgaden, a town situated close to the Austrian border. The view is spectacular here — Adolf Hitler thought so too, as he picked this place for his holiday home long before he became Reich chancellor of Germany in 1933 … The summer residence became the Führer’s second seat of government alongside Berlin … A luxury hotel and a documentation center were therefore built at the historic site to channel tourist and political interest … It is not only the spectacular views, but also the “Führer” myth that draws people to Obersalzberg in droves. Most recently, there were around 170,000 visitors a year.