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The 113th Congress has become wealthier than the last, with incoming freshmen bringing in a median net worth of $1,066,515 each — about $1 million more than that of the average American. While US citizens are getting poorer and increasingly applying for food stamps, the nation’s legislators are getting richer. Freshmen members of the 113th Congress have a median net worth that is about $100,000 higher than the net worth of all congressional members combined. All 535 members of Congress are worth an average $966,001 each, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

… For me, ‘Holocaust Denier’ is a label I accept. This is not because I don’t think anything bad happened to Jews at the hands of the National Socialists – for what it’s worth the real story of brutal ethnic cleansing moves me far more than any ‘Holocaust’ – and it’s certainly not because I think any such assault is right and proper. No, I deny the Holocaust because, as constituted, exploited and enforced, the Holocaust narrative is a false and abusive god, and I wish to put as much moral distance between it and myself as I can.

The UK Jewish Lobby is in a state of panic – the Holocaust Memorial Day boomerangs. If anything it turns the floodlight on the deeply problematic inclinations that are sadly inherent to Jewish political culture and collectivism … MP Ward had to issue an immediate apology following some relentless pressure mounted by the ‘non existent’ Jewish Lobby … Every year we will use this commemoration to remind Israel and its Lobby what we think of the Jewish State, its politics and its repellent operators in our midst.

… Is Holocaust Memorial Day really about remembering holocausts? I would say it’s quite the opposite … The day is all about remembering one holocaust, that of the Jews, at the expense of all the others … Sorry, but outside the Jewisphere and Liberal zone few people are much interested in a Jewcentric Holocaust Memorial Day … A more realistic and workable solution, however, is that each community should just stick to commemorating its own dead, rather than trying to foist them on the rest of the world, as if corpses were some kind of easily-transferable international moral currency.

Germany has an “everlasting responsibility for the crimes of National Socialism, for the victims of World War II and, above all, for the Holocaust,” [German Chancellor] Merkel declared in a video message Saturday. “And this must be made clear from generation to generation and it must be said with bravery and moral courage, every individual can make a contribution so that racism and anti-Semitism have no chance,” she said.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano warned against “new and persistent perils” of Holocaust denial and revisionism, including those spread on the Internet. Speaking Tuesday at a ceremony at the Quirnale, or presidential palace, to mark International Holocaust Memorial Day, Napolitano said it was necessary “to keep up our guard, to be vigilant and to react against” these dangers. Napolitano specifically mentioned the appearance of anti-Semitic extremist groups …

Jewish people are living in fear in Europe but the European Union will make sure they are not harmed, the president of the European Parliament said. “Yes, Jewish people are living in fear in Europe but this is not 1929, this is 2012,” European Parliament President Martin Schultz has said Jan. 22 during a speech about anti-Semitism which he delivered at the European Parliament during a ceremony commemorating Holocaust victims. He added that the European Union was established “on the lessons of Auschwitz” as a framework for “mutual control to avoid one member passing uncontrollably in a dangerous direction.”

A Spanish phrase about Jews set off “a whirlwind of anti-Semitic” messages on Twitter and became the second-most popular hashtag among Mexican users, according to a watchdog. “The hashtag #EsdeJudios exposes the antisemitisim of Mexican Tweeter surfers,” said a statement by the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism. The international organization said the phrase, which means “just like Jews,” was second-most popular in Mexico on Jan. 18.

Iran said on Monday it had launched a live monkey into space, seeking to show off missile systems that have alarmed the West because the technology could potentially be used to deliver a nuclear warhead … The launch was “another giant step” in space technology and biological research “which is the monopoly of a few countries”, the statement said. … “This shipment returned safely to Earth with the anticipated speed along with the live organism,” Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi told the semi-official Fars news agency. “The launch of Kavoshgar and its retrieval is the first step towards sending humans into space in the next phase.”

It’s remarkable that The Diary of Anne Frank has not been the subject for a major choral work until this thoughtful and often moving setting of selected texts (the original version premiered in London in 2005, conducted by Leonard Slatkin) by English composer James Whitbourn and librettist Melanie Challenger. Material from the ultra-famous diary has been used for an oft-performed opera/ mono-drama (by Grigori Frid), a song cycle, numerous individual songs, and of course as the basis for a famous play and movie, but never for a vocal work of this form (a kind of choral-song cycle/ cantata/tone poem) or scope (14 musical sections lasting a total of 70 minutes).

A government official has for the first time acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian origin with the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera. Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu has instructed the four health maintenance organizations to stop the practice as a matter of course. The ministry and other state agencies had previously denied knowledge or responsibility for the practice, which was first reported five years ago.

Following a TV report alleging that Ethiopian Israeli women were being given contraceptive shots against their will, Israel’s Health Ministry has ordered physicians to put a stop to the practice. The report, broadcast Dec. 8 on the “Vacuum” investigative news program on Israeli Educational Television, alleged that Ethiopian immigrants were coerced or coaxed into receiving Depo Provera, a long-term contraceptive shot that lasts three months, both by Jewish aid officials before their immigration to Israel and by health workers once in Israel.

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

Rupert Murdoch has apologized for a “grotesque, offensive” cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published in Britain’s Sunday Times. The cartoon by Gerald Scarfe depicts Netanyahu atop an incomplete brick wall with screaming Palestinians and body parts in the mortar. Netanyahu is holding what appears to be a bloody builder’s trowel and the wall’s mortar is colored red. The wording beneath reads: “Israeli Elections, Will Cementing Peace Continue?” The cartoon was published on Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday and prompted complaints that it was anti-Semitic and insensitive.

Israel is planning to demand an apology for a controversial cartoon that appeared in the British Sunday Times, Israel’s ambassador to London said Monday, while one minister mulled steps against the paper. One day after the caricature sparked outrage among Jewish groups for its depiction of a bloodthirsty Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall with the blood and bodies of Palestinians, leading Israelis joined the chorus of condemnation.

A cartoon depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall with the blood and bodies of Palestinians, published on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, led to accusations of anti-Semitism against London’s Sunday Times newspaper … Michael Salberg, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of international affairs, also slammed the cartoon, calling on The Sunday Times to apologize. “The Sunday Times has clearly lost its moral bearings, publishing a cartoon with a blatantly anti-Semitic theme and motif which is a modern day evocation of the ancient ‘blood libel’ charge leveled at Jews,” he said in an emailed statement.

A Liberal Democrat MP [Member of Parliament] faces expulsion from the party for saying ‘the Jews’ had not learned from the murder of six million in the Holocaust, in their treatment of the Palestinian people. David Ward, MP for Bradford East, wrote on his own website that he was ‘saddened’ that they ‘could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians … on a daily basis.’ He defended his comments in interviews saying they were a ‘just a statement of fact and said ‘it appears that the suffering by the Jews has not transformed their views on how others should be treated.’

A Lib-Dem MP [Member of Parliament] who accused “the Jews” in Israel of “inflicting atrocities on Palestinians” has received a letter of censure by the party. Bradford East MP David Ward later apologized, and said he had been “trying to make clear that everybody needs to learn the lessons of the Holocaust”. He had made his comments ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, on Sunday.

Silvio Berlusconi has sparked outrage among Italy’s political left by defending Mussolini at a commemoration ceremony for Nazi Holocaust victims. Speaking on the margins of the event in Milan, the former Italian prime minister said the fascist wartime leader had been wrong to follow Nazi Germany’s lead in passing anti-Jewish laws but that in other respects he was a good leader.

Sorry to burst everyone’s branding bubble, but there is a “Jewish lobby.” It happens to be pro-Israel because it’s Jewish — not the other way around. Jews don’t like hearing non-Jews use the term in public, and perhaps they shouldn’t. But as an interest group, Jews as such are ably represented (most of the time) by a close-knit network of advocacy organizations. Most of these are purely or predominantly Jewish, judging by their branding, supporters and staff.

… I’m going to try to extract from my experience certain basic sort of tactics that I think the Jewish lobby has used over the years pertaining to my particular situation … The first and major tactic that I discovered in their attack on me was their reliance on lies — just straight-up lies. There’s no other way to describe it, just telling lies. Many of the categories that I will enumerate overlap, and many of them could also come under this general rubric of telling lies. But I think that if one had to isolate a single tactic, it was a tactic of telling lies. I think they’ve elevated telling lies to a very high artistic form.

Arguing that further sanctions “are unlikely to stop Iran’s nuclear pursuits,” a group of Iran experts and senior former officials are calling on the White House to pursue realistic, “serious, sustained negotiations” with Tehran that they say are the best chance to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. The letter to President Obama, from 24 signatories whose professional careers have often been marked by dealing firsthand with the thorny Iran issue, suggests that a diplomatic deal can ease the West’s greatest fears about Iran’s nuclear program – but only if Washington revises its position in nuclear talks …

… Those familiar with the realities of nuclear negotiations know very well that Iran has both publicly and in private meetings with the P5+1 indicated its readiness to accept all the above major demands. In return Iran expects recognition of its legitimate right to enrichment under the NPT and the lifting of sanctions – but unfortunately the western powers among the P5+1 have not signed up to such a deal … It would be prudent for President Obama and the world powers to advance such a fair deal in upcoming talks and ignore attempts by warmongers to target advocates of a diplomatic solution. Promoters of further sanctions, isolation and other punitive measures aim to make war with Iran inevitable.

…. Iran has been able, in the past 30 years, to enhance its political position in the region, despite all the constraints, limitations, wars, and pressures that it faced. We had eight years of imposed war. But look at the end result: where Iraq is — the nation that waged a war against us — and where we are. Iran is evolving from a political perspective. Its position is rising. And now Iran’s role, politically speaking, is even more prominent than before … This is a war. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a military war, but there is, unfortunately, a confrontation. So people will stand with their government until they get over this problem. We have 3,000 years of written history. We have seen so many events of this sort. We have stood the test of time.

Breathless predictions that the Islamic Republic will soon be at the brink of nuclear capability, or – worse – acquire an actual nuclear bomb, are not new. For more than quarter of a century Western officials have claimed repeatedly that Iran is close to joining the nuclear club. Such a result is always declared “unacceptable” and a possible reason for military action, with “all options on the table” to prevent upsetting the Mideast strategic balance dominated by the US and Israel. And yet, those predictions have time and again come and gone. This chronicle of past predictions lends historical perspective to today’s rhetoric about Iran.

It has become a space-based myth. The Great Wall of China, frequently billed as the only man-made object visible from space, generally isn’t, at least to the unaided eye in low Earth orbit. It certainly isn’t visible from the Moon. You can, though, see a lot of other results of human activity. The visible wall theory was shaken after China’s own astronaut, Yang Liwei, said he couldn’t see the historic structure. There was even talk about rewriting textbooks that espouse the theory, a formidable task in the Earth’s most populous nation.

… In other words, the single most repressive regime in that region is also America’s closest ally … The US is not committed to spreading democracy and freedom in the US. “Freedom” and “democracy” are concepts it exploits to undermine regimes that refuse to serve its interests. Indeed, there is virtually an inverse relationship between how democratic a country is in the Muslim world and how closely allied the US is to it. Yes, all of this is obvious and not novel to point out. Still, it needs to be pointed out because of how often the US government succeeds in leading people to believe that these are its goals.

President Obama’s selection of John Kerry as the next secretary of state sends the wrong signal to America’s allies and adversaries alike. Kerry’s record in the United States Senate, where he currently chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, has included spurious attacks on the International Court of Justice, unqualified defense of Israeli occupation policies and human rights violations, and support for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, thereby raising serious questions about his commitment to international law and treaty obligations. Furthermore, his false claims about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and his repeated denials of well-documented human rights abuses by allied governments raise serious questions about his credibility.

In a meeting with Jewish leaders, Chuck Hagel, US President Obama’s defense secretary nominee, affirmed his commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge. “[Sen. Hagel] discussed his commitment to the US-Israel relationship, including his determination to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, and to sustaining the Obama administration’s unprecedented security cooperation with Israel,” a statement Tuesday from Hagel’s office said.

A number of prominent pro-Israel Jewish figures joined an ad endorsing Chuck Hagel for the U.S. defense secretary post … The pro-Hagel ad appearing Wednesday in The Hill, a Capitol Hill daily, said the former Nebraska senator would “ably continue security cooperation between the United States and the State of Israel, which has reached unprecedented levels during President Obama’s time in office.” Among the 45 signatories to the ad, which was organized by the Israel Policy Forum, were former ambassadors to Israel and a number of public figures known for their pro-Israel activism as well as involvement in Democratic politics.

Fascism is presumed to be intrinsically and violently anti-Semitic, and the fascists wanted to exterminate the Jews, right? Wrong … It was only after Italy’s fatal coupling with Nazi Germany in the late 1930s that Italian fascism became anti-Semitic, but even then it had no plans to exterminate the Jews. Until then, Italy’s 50,000 Jews were well integrated and many senior fascists were Jewish … Italian fascists were no more or less anti-Semitic or racist than Europeans in general of their day … Nor was it inevitable that Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, despite a shared hatred of capitalism and communism, should become military allies.

… One of the most widely respected Italian political theorists and sociologists in this century is Vilfredo Pareto. Indeed, so influential are his writings that “it is not possible to write the history of sociology without referring to Pareto.” Throughout all of the vicissitudes and convulsions of twentieth-century political life, Pareto remains “a scholar of universal reputation.” Pareto is additionally important for us today because he is a towering figure in one of Europe’s most distinguished, and yet widely suppressed, intellectual currents. This broad school of thought … stands in staunch opposition to rationalism, liberalism, egalitarianism, Marxism …

It’s a provocative idea — and a disturbing one. The world of 2013 looks “eerily” like the world in 1913, writes Charles Emmerson, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. Substitute the United States for the United Kingdom, and China for Germany, and the parallels are fairly clear. “The leading power of the age is in relative decline, beset by political crisis at home and by steadily eroding economic prowess,” Mr. Emmerson writes in “Eve of Disaster,” a piece in Foreign Policy magazine.

America may be one of the richest countries in the world, but its people are less healthy and more likely to die early from disease or accidents than those in any other affluent country, a damning official US report has found. Even the best-off Americans – those who have health insurance, a college education, a high income and healthy behaviour – are sicker than their peers in comparable countries, says the report by the US National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

… About Obama’s second term it is hard to be sanguine. The hopeful news is that, after four years, the U.S. economy appears to be recovering. Progress is slow, but we seem to be out of intensive care and walking the hospital halls. The perils, however, are visibly present. With its massive creation of money, the Federal Reserve is taking an immense risk that as recovery takes root, inflation may explode. And the hostility between President Obama and House Republicans likely means no big deal to constrain future deficits. Obama added $5 trillion to America’s debt bomb in his first term, and his second promises the same. This cannot go on forever. Foreign and domestic creditors will one day demand a risk premium for lending money to Uncle Sam. But it is abroad where the problems and perils seem imminent.

A former Nazi soldier is to demand compensation at the High Court claiming he was tortured by British interrogators using ‘Gestapo methods’ after the Second World War. Gerhard Menzel, 89, was arrested in Hamburg in June 1946 by British intelligence officials who suspected he was a Communist spy. He was taken to the British-run Bad Nenndorf prison near Hanover where he claims to have been tortured with thumb and shin screws seized from a Gestapo cellar. Mr Menzel says he was also punched in the face, had his hands chained behind his back for up to 16 days at a time and was drenched in iced water every half an hour.

Weber reviews the little-known story of misery and death imposed by the victors on defeated Germany in the aftermath of World War II. The Allied powers imposed an “unknown holocaust” of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, “ethnic cleansing,” and mass killing. More than 14 million Germans were expelled or forced to flee from eastern and central Europe. Some three million Germans died needlessly — about two million civilians, mostly women, children and elderly, and one million prisoners of war. Weber also highlights the Allied double standard in putting German leaders to death for policies that the Allies themselves were carrying out, sometimes on a far greater scale.

Hans Massaquoi, a former managing editor of Ebony magazine who wrote a distinctive memoir about his unusual childhood growing up black in Nazi Germany, has died … Massaquoi’s mother was a German nurse and his father was the son of a Liberian diplomat. He grew up in working class neighborhoods of the port city of Hamburg … One of his saddest moments as a child was when his homeroom teacher told him he couldn’t join the Hitler Youth.

Older adults who’ve spoken two languages since childhood have a distinct cognitive edge over their monolingual peers, according to a new study. Previous studies have shown bilingualism seems to favor the development of heightened mental skills. The new research, published in Neuroscience, provides evidence of that cognitive advantage among older, bilingual adults.

Many Nazi prisoner-of-war camps were notorious for their forced labor and deadly conditions. Yet a collection of photos that mysteriously turned up in southern France tells the story of a seemingly relaxed prison camp in Bavaria … These are scenes from daily life in a Nazi “Oflag” — short for “Offizerslager,” or prisoner-of-war camp for [Polish] officers … Prisoners performing plays, of libraries, exhibitions, athletic events and academic lectures behind the barbed wire and prison walls … “The prisoners were treated well, at least as much as that can be said under these circumstances,” explains Marion Hruschka, head of Murnau’s historical association.

… Thousands of Germans passed through the unit that became known as the London Cage, where they were beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to assume stress positions for days at a time. Some were told they were to be murdered and their bodies quietly buried. Others were threatened with unnecessary surgery carried out by people with no medical qualifications. Guards boasted that they were ‘the English Gestapo’. The London Cage was part of a network of nine ‘cages’ around Britain run by the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS), which came under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Military Intelligence.

No aspect of the American Civil War left behind a greater legacy of bitterness and acrimony than the treatment of prisoners of war. “Andersonville” still conjures up images of horror unmatched in American History. And although Northern partisans still invoke the infamous Southern camp to defame the Confederacy, the Union had its share of equally horrific camps. Prison camps on both sides produced scenes of wretched, disease-ridden and emaciated prisoners as repulsive as any to come out of the Second World War.

It’s Bibi against the world on a campaign trail that took the combative Israeli prime minister to a Jewish settlement on Tuesday. Enjoying a wide opinion poll lead before a Jan. 22 election, Benjamin Netanyahu has been lecturing the international community – vocal in its criticism of settlement expansion on occupied territory and his hints of military action against Iran – about what it should really be worried about. The right-wing candidate, known by his childhood nickname “Bibi”, has been striving in campaign appearances to strike a common chord in a country where a song titled, “The whole world is against us”, was once a hit.

Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to rebuff international demands to allow a Palestinian state with a border based on the pre-1967 Green Line, and its capital in East Jerusalem, as hardline pro-settler parties and factions are expected to make unprecedented gains in Tuesday’s election. “When they say, ‘Go back to the 67 lines,’ I stand against. When they say, ‘Don’t build in Jerusalem,’ I stand against,” the Israeli prime minister told Channel 2 in a television interview. “It’s very easy to capitulate. I could go back to the impossible-to-defend 67 lines, and divide Jerusalem, and we would get Hamas 400 metres from my home.” He would not allow that to happen under his leadership, he said.

Leading Republicans say that President Obama is not a real friend of Israel, and that his policies are harming the Jewish state. They criticize Obama for his view that Israel should halt Jewish settlement expansion in occupied Palestinian territory, and that the pre-1967 borders should be the basis of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians …But in key points, Obama’s Middle East policy is similar to that of President Ronald Reagan, whom most Republicans regard as their party’s greatest leader in living memory … If the Republican critics of Obama’s Middle East policy are honest and consistent, they must reject President Reagan’s policy as similarly dangerous, “naïve” and harmful to Israel.

… Michaeli and Hotovely’s competing visions for Israel illustrate some of the most fundamental tensions in Israel today: peace vs. security; secular vs. religious ideals; survival vs. international approval … With 50 percent of first graders now coming from either ultra-Orthodox or Arab families, in roughly a decade half of high school graduates will be exempted from serving in Israel’s army, Hotovely said – a trajectory that can’t be allowed to continue … Perhaps no issue illustrates Israel’s shift to the right more than the declining support – and hope – for a Palestinian state.

… US senators are nearly all Israeli senators. Ditto for US congressmen. Hardly any of them would dare to criticize the Israeli government on any issue, negligible as it may be. Criticizing Israel is political suicide. Not only does the Jewish lobby use its huge resources to get loyal pro-Israelis elected and re-elected, but it openly employs these resources to unseat the few elected officials who dare to criticize Israel. They almost always succeed … Jokes aside, the Israeli defense establishment is not worried by the Hagel appointment. They seem to know him as quite receptive to Israeli requests. Several Israeli generals have already come to his defense.

On Monday President Barack Obama announced that he is nominating former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska as his next Secretary of Defense. He will likely face a difficult confirmation battle … Hagel has made comments about Israel and U.S. foreign policy towards the nation which cause some to label him as anti-Semitic. In a 2006 interview, Hagel said, “The political reality is that … the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people [on Capitol Hill].” He went on, “I’m a United States senator. I support Israel. But my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States. Not to a president. Not a party. Not to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I’ll do that.”

… But the bugaboo issue – the third rail when it comes to foreign policy – is Israel. As a senator, Hagel once complained to a reporter that “the Jewish lobby” intimidates many lawmakers on Capitol Hill. And he once intoned that he was a senator from Nebraska, not a senator from Israel. These may have been impolitic remarks, but they weren’t false – either in strict substance or in spirit … An open letter from nine former U.S. ambassadors, five of them ex-ambassadors to Israel, strongly endorses Hagel for secretary of defense and rejects as ludicrous the charge that he’s anti-Semitic …

What is anti-Semitism today? In this provocative hour-and-a-half 2009 documentary, Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir travels widely in search of modern manifestations of the “oldest hatred.” In this irreverent quest, he talks with professional anti-anti-Semites, and joins a group of young Israelis on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz. His implicit point: Anti-Semitism, at least in Israel and the U.S., is more smoke than fire. Conditioned to see Nazis in every shadow and behind every corner, Shamir suggests, Jews in the U.S. and Israel often manufacture an anti-Semitism that they perversely want to find.

China has been running the world’s largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years, driving China’s ever-faster rise as the global superpower. I worry that this poses some existential threat to Western civilization. Yet the most likely result is that America and Europe linger around a few hundred more years as also-rans on the world-historical stage, nursing our anti-hereditarian political correctness to the bitter end. When I learned about Chinese eugenics this summer, I was astonished that its population policies had received so little attention. China makes no secret of its eugenic ambitions, in either its cultural history or its government policies.

Leaders really are born and not made, scientists say after finding a gene that influences whether someone is likely to rule or be ruled. After analysing DNA samples from 4,000 people, the team from University College London discovered that those with the gene were up to 25 per cent more likely to have a supervisory role at work. ‘We have identified a genotype, called rs4950, which appears to be associated with the passing of leadership ability down through generations,’ wrote lead scientist Dr Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, in the journal Leadership Quarterly.

… The notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review … “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote … Much of the Hitler myth is based on an infamous quote falsely attributed to the Führer, which extols the virtue of gun control: …

… The “Hitler took the guns” argument has long had a prominent and fairly effective role in America’s gun control debate … So did Hitler and the Nazis really take away Germans’ guns, making the Holocaust unavoidable? … In 1938, under Nazi rule, gun laws became significantly more relaxed. Rifle and shotgun possession were deregulated, and gun access for hunters, Nazi Party members, and government officials was expanded. The legal age to own a gun was lowered. Jews, however, were prohibited from owning firearms and other dangerous weapons.

A new study casts doubt on the value of current professional treatments for teens who struggle with mental disorders and thoughts of suicide. Harvard researchers report that they found that about one in every eight U.S. teens (12.1 percent) thought about suicide, and nearly one in every 20 (four percent) either made plans to kill themselves or actually attempted suicide. Most of these teens (80 percent) were being treated for various mental health issues … According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third-leading cause of death among adolescents, taking more than 4,100 lives each year.

The United States said Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi should repudiate remarks he made in 2010 calling on Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington condemns the comments made by President Morsi at a time when he led the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. In one of the 2010 videos, Morsi said Egyptian children must feed on that hatred as a form of worshipping God.

Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi described Zionists as “bloodsuckers” and descendants of apes and pigs, urged “military resistance” against Israel, and called to sever all ties with the Jewish state, in Arabic interviews that were posted on the Internet in 2010 … In the footage, described by MEMRI as “archival interviews” that were originally posted online in 2010, Morsi declares: “The Zionists have no right to the land of Palestine. There is no place for them on the land of Palestine…” Since winning Egypt’s first democratic elections last June, after the ousting of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, Morsi has significantly toned down his anti-Israel rhetoric.

In video statements in September and March 2010, Mohammed Morsi, who is now Egypt’s President, emphatically rejected negotiations with the “blood-sucking,” and “warmongering” Zionists. Runtime: 4:41 mins.

A radical British Catholic priest has been fined in Germany on charges of Holocaust denial, which is illegal in the country. The $2,400 fine against British Bishop Richard Williamson, 72, stems from an interview he gave in 2008 to the Swedish SVT broadcaster, in which he called the murder of Jews in gas chambers during the Holocaust “lies, lies, lies.” Williamson’s attorney is protesting the sentence, according to German news reports. It is the second attempt at prosecution …

An Austrian court has convicted a leading neo-Nazi and two accomplices of glorifying Nazism through a website and sentenced them to prison terms of up to nine years. Gottfried Kuessel was given a nine-year prison sentence on Thursday for being the founder of the “Alpen-Donau” website. He spent time in prison in the 1990s on conviction of trying to form a successor to the Nazi party. The two others – Felix Binder and Wilhelm Anderle – were sentenced to seven and four years respectively. The website is no longer active, but defied years of Austrian efforts to shut it down because it was housed on a U.S. server.

… Throughout American history we see many precursors for U.S. warmaking. Ever since World War I, the United States has maintained an active role in global affairs, at the cost of many thousands of American lives and many domestic freedoms … Yet much more recently than any of those antecedents to the modern war machine, a major shift took place. And that was World War II, the “Good War,” the last clear-cut and most widely celebrated military victory enjoyed by the United States, the one to which liberals unfavorably compare Bush’s adventures, and conservatives invoke as precedents for their own preferred war policies. It was in World War II that the U.S. warfare state blossomed into its modern form.

… We Americans have witnessed in the short space of eleven years a government that has metastasized, built around a fiction that the American people are somehow under serious threat from foreign enemies … Under Bush and Obama the cost and size of government have doubled, and Washington has added a massive new bureaucracy that has a primary function of monitoring the American people in the Department of Homeland Security. And to our eternal shame as a nation, it has all been done on a credit card with Asian governments picking up the tab and the US treasury printing money that has no actual backing, running up the national debt to hitherto unimaginable levels while doing grievous damage to the economy.

World War II is widely considered one of the most morally unambiguous military conflicts in history — the quintessential “Good War,” as journalist Studs Terkel once described it… At the same time, 60 years of research and reflection have gradually brought to light numerous aspects of this conflict that do not fit a straightforward pattern of black-and- white moral clarity… Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo — entire cities, tens of thousands of noncombatant civilians at a time, incinerated or blasted to bits under a steady torrent of British and American bombs. The large-scale killing of children, women and old people had now become routine facets of Allied warfare.

… The “Iranian threat” is overwhelmingly a Western obsession, shared by Arab dictators, though not Arab populations. As numerous polls have shown, although citizens of Arab countries generally dislike Iran, they do not regard it as a very serious threat. Rather, they perceive the threat to be Israel and the United States … The United States will not allow measures to place Israel’s nuclear facilities under international inspection. Nor will the U.S. release information on “the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities.”

… We believe Iran would be open to new measures regarding the transparency of its nuclear program, and would agree not to pursue any capability to enrich uranium beyond that needed to fuel atomic power plants, if its legitimate right to enrichment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was recognized and if an agreement to remove sanctions was reached … Understanding the Iranian mentality is key to grasping why the Iranians won’t put expediency above dignity. The only way to stop the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program from spinning out of control is to offer the Islamic Republic a face-saving way out.

… There is no way that a mythical nuclear-armed Iran, much less an Iran enriching uranium at well below weapons grade, poses an “existential threat” to Israel. In New York, Netanyahu made much of the Islamic Republic’s alleged irrationality … But countless senior Israeli officials — including the commander of the Israel Defense Forces, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, including even Netanyahu himself, have acknowledged, on the record, that it is highly unlikely that Iranian leaders would use nuclear weapons.

This 1943 French production is perhaps the most important anti-Masonic feature film ever made. It tells the story of a young member of the French parliament who joins a Freemason lodge at the urging of colleagues. Although made with German encouragement and support, it nonetheless reflected broad French sentiment. People recalled with outrage the notorious “Stavisky affair” of 1934, involving the fraud of a Russian-born Jewish embezzler, and the politicians’ decision to plunge the nation into needless war against Germany in 1939. After France’s “liberation,” the film’s director, producer and screenplay writer were severely punished for their role in this production. Director Jean Many (Paul Riche), a former Freemason, was sentenced to death, and executed. With English subtitles. Runtime: 51:34 mins.

… In terms of indebtedness, America is well on the way to financial ruin, with total national debt already exceeding 100 percent of GDP … Unless there is a dramatic reversal in the overall approach taken by the US government, with deep-seated entitlement reform, significant cuts in government spending and taxes, and a return to policies that advance rather than hinder economic freedom, the United States faces a bleak economic future, with devastating implications for American leadership on the world stage and the future of the free world.

… The top one percent have miscalculated. They have allowed their puppet politicians to increase the size of the recipient class too much and to increase the scope of government benefits too much … That rate is so fast that now there is no “easy fix.” With a full head of steam, the locomotive of government spending has derailed and is heading off the proverbial cliff. The U.S. dollar is following it to its ultimate devaluation … Given the power of the media and the inability of the current generation of Americans to withstand even minimal pain, the more likely new order will be one of increasing financial repression. Federal expenditures will continue to increase.

The site of former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau recorded its highest number of visitors in its 65-year history last year, attracting 1.43 million global visitors, triple the figures of the previous decade. Poland, which was controversially chosen as the co-host of 2012’s World Cup football tournament alongside Ukraine, was the source of the largest group of last year’s visitors with 446,000, with other significant numbers of visits coming from Britain, the US, Germany and Israel, amongst others.

… Auschwitz camp death records — which were hidden away for more than 40 years in the Soviet Union — cast grave doubt on these widely accepted claims. Inmate deaths at Auschwitz were carefully recorded by the camp authorities on certificates that were bound in dozens of death registry volumes. Each “death book” (Sterbebuch) contains hundreds of death certificates … Consistent with the Sterbebuch records, other German wartime documents show that a very high percentage of the Jewish inmates at Auschwitz were not able to work, and were nevertheless not killed.

… The authorities responsible for Germany’s wartime concentration camp network carried out extensive measures at Auschwitz, and other camps, to save inmates’ lives. Though for decades widely known among specialized historians, this remarkable story has been unknown to the wider public, and one extraordinary aspect of it has remained secret for decades. In 1944, during the final year of the war in Europe, the Germans installed and operated state-of-the-art high frequency facilities at Auschwitz to kill disease-bearing lice and other pests. … Deployment of “microwave” delousing facilities was just one of many conscientious measures taken by the SS authorities to save inmates’ lives.

Domestic slavery was quite common in West Africa, although the Europeans organized the trade to a much greater magnitude and value. Free black slaveowners resided in states as north as New York and as far south as Florida, extending westward into Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Missouri. According to the federal census of 1830, free blacks owned more than 10,000 slaves in Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia. The majority of black slaveowners lived in Louisiana and planted sugar cane.

A federal appeals court won’t overturn a decision that orders the deportation of a Michigan man accused of shooting Jews during World War II. John Kalymon of Troy lost his naturalized citizenship after a trial in 2007. The appeals court said Friday there’s nothing wrong with using evidence from that case to justify the retired engineer’s deportation in separate hearings. An immigration judge ordered his removal in 2011, a decision that was affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. The 91-year-old Kalymon is in poor health and has remained in Michigan during the appeals. In his 20s, Kalymon served in the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in Lviv, which once was part of Poland.

What’s behind the seemingly endless campaign to prosecute and punish “Nazi war criminals”? Weber cites specific cases to show that the decades-long effort to punish those who killed or mistreated Jews during World War II is motivated not by honest regard for justice, but to further Jewish-Zionist group interests. He also examines the widely repeated claim that “Diversity is our strength.” In the second half of this broadcast, Weber takes a closer look at the message and impact of one of the most important books of recent years, “Germany Does Away With Itself,” a work by German writer Thilo Sarrazin that has sold more than a million copies.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has prompted an outraged debate in Germany after it included a prominent German journalist’s remarks in its annual top ten list of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs. The Los Angeles-based organization, named for a celebrated Nazi-hunger and dedicated to fighting anti-Jewish bigotry, listed Jakob Augstein, a well-known editor and columnist, among 2012’s top perpetrators of the slurs … Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, said it stuck by its judgment and called on the journalist to apologize “to his readers and to the Jewish people.”

Ken Jacobson, deputy national director of the Anti-Defamation League, on Friday weighed in on the raging German dispute over the alleged anti-Semitism of Der Spiegel columnist Jakob Augstein and his attacks on Jews and Israel. Augstein’s statement about Jewish control of US foreign policy “crosses the line into anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking,“ he told The Jerusalem Post … Jacobson cited the following Augstein quote, which appeared in his column, as being contaminated with conspiratorial anti-Semitism: “With backing from the US, where the president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component, the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.”

… With rare exceptions, the only people delusional and naive enough to believe the US is serious about its “commitment-to-human-rights” rhetoric … are found in the west. In the regions where the US enthusiastically supports even the most repressive regimes provided those regimes show fealty to US dictates, the stench of this hypocrisy, of this radical dishonesty, is so potent that it cannot be evaded. But it is an extraordinary testament to the power of propaganda that one constantly finds westerners claiming with a straight face that the same country that hugs and props up the Saudis, the Bahrainis, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis and so many others is committed to undermining tyranny and spreading freedom and democracy.

If you think the big banks learned painful lessons about risk-taking during the financial crisis, think again: They’re still taking the same risks, and we don’t even know how big those risks are … Boy, banks sure do a lot of dodgy trading, and they hide their potential losses from investors. This may not come as shocking news. But it’s one of those things that we can’t hear often enough, with the momentum for reform cooling every day we get further away from the crisis. Big banks still have the capacity to blow up the financial system, and our inability to trust them makes another disaster even more likely.

… Accounting rules have proliferated as banks, and the assets and liabilities they contain, have become more complex. Yet the rules have not kept pace with changes in the financial system. Clever bankers, aided by their lawyers and accountants, can find ways around the intentions of the regulations while remaining within the letter of the law … The starting point for any solution to the recurring problems with banks is to rebuild the twin pillars of regulation that Congress built in 1933 and 1934, in the aftermath of the 1929 crash.

… So it comes as a surprise to be reminded of the story told in Hitler’s Philosophers. This forthcoming book by Yvonne Sherratt, to be published by Yale, looks at the way some academics in Germany reacted to the coming of Adolf Hitler. And what an intensely depressing story it is. Most of them, including Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest names in 20th-century philosophy, did not merely reconcile themselves to Hitler. They enthusiastically espoused Nazi ideology, and came up with all sorts of elaborate reasons to justify the purging of Jews, the persecution of dissidents, and the conquest and oppression of other nations.

US President Barack Obama on Monday confirmed the appointment of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as the new Defence Secretary, insisting he understood his duty to provide strong American leadership which has increasingly become “indispensible in a dangerous world” … In an interview with his local Nebraska newspaper the Lincoln Journal Star Monday he addressed such criticism, insisting nobody could question his “unequivocal, total support for Israel”, characterised, he claimed, by his tough stance on Iran and support for international sanctions on the regime which recent figures claim have reduced the size of its oil revenues by 45%.

With President Barack Obama reportedly primed to nominate former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to head the Pentagon early next week, the powerful Israel lobby, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), faces a major dilemma … Four former U.S. ambassadors to Israel have also backed his nomination, as has most recently Ryan Crocker, who was widely praised by neo-conservatives during his tenure as ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan … The sharpness of the neo-conservative campaign – particularly its allegations that Hagel is anti-Semitic and anti-Israel – has evoked charges of McCarthyism from his defenders, adding to the discomfort of the Israel lobby’s main organisations.

Top-ranking government officials in Jerusalem confirmed Tuesday that Israel would exercise its longstanding, constitutionally granted veto power over American policy if U.S. lawmakers confirmed retired congressman Chuck Hagel as the United States’ next Secretary of Defense.

… According to research on Google Trends, web users interest in the history of Hitler and gun control has spiked since Democrats began demanding more restrictions on high capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons. In December the keywords “Hitler gun control” spiked to a 100 rating – the rating given to Google’s peak search volume since 2004. Search volume for the same terms for the month of January so far is at 86 – a statistic based on partial data for the month. “Hitler” and “Guns” showed a 100 rating and a 99 rating for the month of January. Both series of search terms are described as “Breakout” by the Google Trends site.

Whenever a politician, or anyone else, starts talking about regulating guns, it’s a safe bet that someone will bring up how Hitler supposedly outlawed guns in Germany, which supposedly enabled him to do all the mischief he did … The gun culture is right about one thing, however. Hitler really did enact a new gun law. But it was in 1938, not 1935 – well after the Nazis already had the country in its iron grip. Furthermore, the new law in many ways loosened gun restrictions. For example, it greatly expanded the numbers who were exempt, it lowered the legal age of possession from 20 to 18, and it completely lifted restriction on all guns except handguns, as well as on ammunition.

Jews are “enemies of the Church,” the head of a radical Catholic sect said in Canada. Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, made the remark during a Dec. 28 address … Apparently speaking without a text, Fellay asked, “Who during that time was the most opposed that the Church would recognize the society? The enemies of the Church: the Jews, the Masons, the Modernists.” According to the Catholic News Service, Fellay added that Jewish leaders’ support of reforming Second Vatican Council “shows that Vatican II is their thing, not the Church’s.”

Beate Sirota Gordon, the daughter of Russian Jewish parents who at 22 almost single-handedly wrote women’s rights into the Constitution of modern Japan, and then kept silent about it for decades, only to become a feminist heroine there in recent years, died on Sunday … A civilian attached to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s army of occupation after World War II, Ms. Gordon was one of the last living members of the American team that wrote Japan’s postwar Constitution. Her work — drafting language that gave women a set of legal rights pertaining to marriage, divorce, property and inheritance that they had long been without in Japan’s feudal society — had an effect on their status that endures to this day.

… A majority also believe American power will decline rather than increase in 2013, something that has happened only once in the 15 years before when Gallup asked this question … Americans appear to expect 2013 to be a year of economic difficulty, albeit, it one in which employment may rise and inflation may stay in check. Americans overwhelmingly believe taxes will increase and there will continue to be a federal budget deficit in 2013; the country will lose power internationally, even as the world faces troubled times; and the nation will face a year of rising crime rates.

… In the spring of 1917, British and Belgian propagandists, in a concerted action with privately owned media, launched an invented story about “Corpse Factories”, where the Germans allegedly boiled down their own soldier dead to lubricants, fertiliser, pig fodder, and soap. The aim was to vilify the Germans, especially among American and Asian countries, which Great Britain wanted to drag into the war on her side. Its efficiency in mobilizing anti-German sentiments made the “Corpse Factory” the “master hoax” of World War I propaganda. Millions world-wide who still believe in its offspring, the World War II “Nazi human soap factory” legend, show its longevity.

Theodore N. Kaufman, the author of Germany Must Perish, was a Manhattan-born Jewish businessman who was also chairman of a group that called itself the “American Federation for Peace.” … Kaufman’s fervent proposal for the systematic sterilization of the entire German population was given respectful attention in the American press, including reviews in a number of newspapers. A review in the weekly Time magazine, March 24, 1941, called Kaufman’s plan a “sensational idea.” … A plan similar to Kaufman’s was issued during the war years by a prominent American anthropologist. In an article headlined “Breed War Strain Out of Germans” in the New York daily newspaper P.M.

A record number of women and racial minorities were elected to the 113th Congress, which was sworn in Thursday. Among them was the first Buddhist to join the Senate, as well as the first Hindu and the first openly bisexual woman in the House. House Democrats became the first caucus in the history of either chamber not to have a majority of white men. It was a watershed moment for the Democratic Party, which has adopted diversity as one of its chief selling points and has marketed itself as the party that looks more like a fast-changing United States.

The Iranian Christian minority in Isfahan and Tehran celebrated the New Year’s Day on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2013, during a religious ceremony in churches. Islam has called Muslims to respect the rights of religious minorities in countries with a Muslim majority, and in Iran, Muslims have had peaceful relations with Christians and Jews. Religious minorities enjoy full freedom in practice of their religious ceremonies …

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday signaled he was ready to begin repatriating African migrants, which he termed the “second stage” in the effort to clear Israel of illegal infiltrators. “We have succeeded in blocking the entry of infiltrators from Africa to Israel,” Netanyahu said at the start of a discussion he convened on the issue … “Now we are moving on to the second stage, that of repatriating the infiltrators who are already here.”

These Jews explain how their views about Israel have changed drastically over the years, and why they now reject the Zionist state’s oppressive and inhumane policies. This film underscores the increasingly skeptical attitude toward Israel and Zionism of many American Jews. Runtime: 10:05 mins.

Iranian oil revenues have fallen around 45 percent in the last nine months because of Western sanctions, a leading Iranian politician says. Gholam Reza Kateb, an MP on the national planning and budget committee, said the country’s economy as a whole was in trouble … Oil exports account for a majority of the Islamic republic’s revenue. Mr Kateb said the steep export drop was revealed in a parliament report by Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi. “On the basis of the report, oil sales are down 40% and income has dropped 45% in the last nine months,” Mr Kateb told the semi-official Isna news agency.

… Movies like “Exodus” and “Lawrence of Arabia” appeared, with the former omitting the Zionist terrorism that had led to the creation of Israel while also emphasizing historic Jewish claims to the land … The two films together largely completed the process of defining the Arab in Western popular culture … Other major Hollywood movies produced in the 1990s routinely depicting Arabs as terrorists, even if an “obedient” Arab frequently appears among the good guys, included “Rules of Engagement,” “True Lies,” and “The Siege.” 9/11 converted the disturbing or sometimes vaguely amusing Arab into the Arab as attacker, as an existential threat …

When are we finally going to admit that we have a very serious problem with this generation of young men in America? We have failed them so dramatically that it is hard to put it into words. We have raised an entire generation of young males that don’t know how to be men, and many of them feel completely lost. … Our young women vastly outperform our young men in almost every important statistical category … There is even a name for this generation of young men that does not want to grow up. It is called the “Peter Pan generation”.

The Polish film Poklosie, or Aftermath, is a dramatisation of the massacre of more than 340 Polish Jews at Jedwabne in 1941. It has caused shockwaves and soul searching throughout the country. It tells the story of a Polish man who returns to his home village and finds himself reluctantly drawn into uncovering what happened there during the Nazi occupation. He discovers that, at the instigation of the Nazis, local people – including his own father – had herded Jewish villagers into a building, burned them to death, and then taken over their houses. Opponents of the film argue it discredits Poland by creating the impression that such events were the norm in wartime.

Diamond manufacturing is a dwindling trade in Israel. The country has one of the world’s hottest diamond exchanges, but polishers and cutters of the precious stones have been replaced by cheaper workers in newer hubs like India and China. Israel wants to bring them back. To do so, it plans on recruiting a legion of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who because of their dedication to prayer and study, have been unable or unwilling to join the work force, putting a heavy weight on the economy … About a third of rough diamonds produced in the world each year pass through the Jewish state, and diamonds account for more than a fifth of the country’s industrial exports.

… Many [Israeli Jewish] residents’ resignation to what they see as the unlikeliness of a long-term solution in their lifetimes. In conversations with 30 people — most around a downtown park or inside the popular Ikea cafe — many said their focus had quickly returned to more mundane concerns about jobs, children and apartment rents. Some talked of leaving the troubled country or worried that their children might — in line with a recent poll for the newspaper Haaretz indicating that 37 percent of Israelis were considering doing so. And in the interviews here, at least half said they did not see anyone worth voting for on Jan. 22.

A senior Egyptian official who also serves as an adviser to President Mohammed Morsi on Tuesday expressed the opinion that Israel would not be around in ten years. The remark by Essam al-Erian, the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party … “There won’t be a thing called Israel anymore; only Palestine, and it’ll contain Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze, and all of the people who lived there to begin with,” he said. “Anyone who wants to stay will stay as a Palestinian citizen.”

… The Six Million figure is hammered into the public consciousness, not only in newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, and television, but also routinely in our schools … An information sheet issued by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council describes the grand Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, as a “living memorial to the six million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi fanaticism who perished in the Holocaust.” Just what is the basis for this familiar figure?

… And so we come to the truly haunting question that confronts America in these times of growing global instability — whether, as the last nation of the West, America is destined to fulfill Spengler’s vision of hegemonic zeal mixed with a push toward dictatorship. Here’s where the natural aversion to Spengler’s dogmatic determinism will likely come into play. The answer is no, America’s future is in American hands. But Spengler’s audacious work stands as a great warning to Americans bent on protecting the hallowed civic institutions established at the founding of their Republic. The era of Western cultural health is dead, and it died pretty much as Spengler predicted it would.

… Spengler, above all, has forced us to inquire into the nature of civilization and to ask ourselves by what means — if any — we can repair and preserve the long and narrow dikes that alone protect us from the vast and turbulent ocean of eternal barbarism. For that, we must always honor him.
 

Virginia gun sales surged to an apparent record high in 2012. State police statistics on gun buyers’ mandatory criminal-background checks showed that there were 432,387 gun transactions last year, a 35 percent jump from 2011. Records show that it was the largest year-to-year increase in 20 years and the third-largest increase overall since Virginia’s background check program was implemented in 1989. The state’s 2012 figures outpaced the nation as a whole, according to FBI data. A record 19.6 million transactions were conducted in the U.S. last year through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, up 20 percent from 2011.

A gun trade show in the U.S. has attracted huge crowds and posted record sales – just weeks after 20 children and six adults were shot dead in the Sandy Hook school massacre. Many vendors at the Nation’s Gun Show, held over three days in Chantilly, Virginia, struggled to keep up with demand as customers rushed to snap up assault-type rifles, handguns, ammunition and magazines. As the debate over gun control continues to rage in the U.S. in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting on December 14, some commentators said boosted sales at the trade show were down to fears such weapons may not be on the market for much longer.

A Jewish community strongly supportive of gun control plus Jewish lawmakers eager to enact new gun control laws may bring Jews into a lead role as the nation debates federal measures to rein in mass murders at its malls and schools. The new openness to legislation and other measures following the slaughter of 26 elementary school children and school staff in Newtown, Conn. — plus the killer’s mother — is welcomed by most Jewish organizations, which have long supported gun control.

… Here is the heart of the case against Senator Hagel’s nomination. Militarists in Washington, taking their cue from pro-Israel lobbyists, are trying to derail the appointment because Hagel doubts the wisdom of starting another war in the Middle East. Their evidence is his assertion, made several years ago, that: “A military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option.” Hagel is absolutely correct. Like many thoughtful Americans, including some of our country’s most seasoned diplomats, he is eager to make a real effort to engage Iran.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood produced the worst anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs this year, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The center topped its annual Top Ten Anti-Semitic/ Anti-Israel Slurs list with a quote from Mohammed Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide, who lamented “Jewish control” and ”spreading of corruption on earth,” and recommended “holy Jihad” as a remedy … The sixth and seventh slots went to Greece’s Golden Dawn party and Hungary’s Jobbik, respectively … Ranked ninth was Jakob Augstein, a German publicist who in Der Spiegel accused Netanyahu of exploiting the “Jewish lobby” in the United States and Germany’s Nazi past to “keep the world on a leash.”

… Facebook suspended the Natural News account earlier today [Dec. 27] after we posted an historical quote from Mohandas Gandhi. The quote reads: “Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” … This historical quote was apparently too much for Facebook’s censors to bear. They suspended our account and gave us a “final warning” that one more violation of their so-called “community guidelines” would result in our account being permanently deactivated.

An Austrian lawmaker accused the Vienna Philharmonic of attempting to conceal the institution’s sympathy for the country’s Nazi leadership during World War II. Harald Walser, a historian and Parliament member for the Austrian Greens, made the accusations in a recent interview for the ORF national public service broadcaster. Walser cited a listing on the Philharmonic’s official website, which describes a concert delivered on New Year’s Day of 1939 as a “sublime homage to Austria” when in fact it was a celebration of its unification with Nazi Germany in 1938. The New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic takes place each year on the morning of Jan. 1 in Vienna and is broadcast around the world …