Headlines

… More than three-fourths of Americans don’t have enough money saved to pay their bills for six months, according to survey results released Monday by Bankrate. Half of the survey respondents said they had less than three months’ worth of expenses saved up, and more than one-quarter — like Norton — have no reserves to draw on in case of emergency. Bankrate compared its survey results from this year with results from 2006, and it found that Americans are saving more now than before the recession.

… Ultimately, though, Hitlerization satisfies what appears to be an ever growing cultural desire to laugh at the Nazis. In the most charitable explanation, laughing at Hitler by transforming him from a frightening symbol of evil into an amusing punch line demythologizes him and diminishes his aura of omnipotence. At the same time, of course, it normalizes the Nazi legacy by aestheticizing, universalizing and ultimately trivializing his historical significance … But one thing seems sure: As the law of ironic Hitlerization continues to transform the Nazi dictator into a laugh-inducing staple of Internet culture, we are likely to encounter Hitler in unpredictable places on an increasingly frequent basis.

… There are a number of reasons why this narrow ideological form of Christian Zionism raises concerns … Among these are the following: It is a movement with negative consequences for Middle East peace. Christian Zionism, in its narrow ideological form, encourages political advocacy committed to preserving control over all of historic Palestine for Jewish people alone, including the West Bank and Gaza strip … This ideological approach rejects any peace process built on a negotiated settlement towards a two-state solution to the conflict … ; It is not based on traditional teaching or doctrines of the Church. Christian Zionism and its theological presuppositions are nineteenth-century innovations in Christian doctrine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is warning against shipping weapons to Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad. The German leader told Parliament on Thursday that she understands why Britain, France and the United States are considering arms deliveries to some rebel groups in Syria, who are facing strong resistance from Syrian government forces and its Hezbollah allies. But Merkel said that in her view, “the risks would be incalculable.” She did not explain why, but critics fear Western arms would only prolong the conflict without tipping the scales decisively. And Western weapons including anti-aircraft missiles could fall into the hands of Islamic extremists who might use them against Western interests someday.

… We were not born yesterday … By arming these people [in Syria] and supporting these people, the United States is committing a big mistake. By trying to dislodge [Syrian leader] Assad, whom they consider to be a dictator, it may be bringing to power forces which are much worse than Assad: a person who received a European education and who basically is somebody who observes certain rules of the game … The joint Russian-Chinese position is a reaction to the policy that the United States and its allies have been conducting for the past ten years.

The US Constitution is widely revered but little understood, says historian Mark Weber in this hour-long interview. Few Americans realize that many familiar federal government programs are, strictly speaking, not constitutional, or that the government laid out in the original Constitution was remarkably un-democratic. What’s decisive in any society is not a country’s constitution, says Weber, but rather the character, basic values and customs of its people.

During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education … In one generation, then, the numbers of those majoring I n the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent … I have wanted to believe that this discipline [English] had certain borders and limitations, and that there were essential things to know, to preserve, and to pass on. But it turns out that everything now is porous, hazy, and open to never-ending improvisation, cancellation, and rupture; the “clean slates” are endlessly forthcoming.

… The New Heretics are those few who challenge America’s faith in its “special relationship” with an extremist enclave granted nation state recognition in 1948 by a Christian-Zionist president, Harry Truman. Critics of this enclave invite condemnation as “anti-Semites,” a modern form of social excommunication. Defenders of the Zionist Faithful were forced to become more vigilant in monitoring this heresy after Israeli troops used U.S.-provided arms and munitions to kill more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza, one-third of them reportedly children.

Guilt by Association [a book by Jeff Gates] makes treason transparent, advertises the blurb on the back of this book. And if I were limited to so brief a summary, these are exactly the words I would choose! This book is a many-splendored thing, and I hope in the space of this review to be able to convey the enormous import of this book, and why you need to buy not just a copy for yourself but copies for all your loved ones and for anyone you seek to educate about the threat America’s involvement with Israel poses not just to American values, but to our national security and to our survival as a nation.

Seven out of ten workers have “checked out” at work or are “actively disengaged,” according to a recent Gallup survey. In its ongoing survey of the American workplace, Gallup found that only 30 percent of workers are “were engaged, or involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their workplace.” Although that equals the high in engagement since Gallup began studying the issue in 2000, it is overshadowed by the number of workers who aren’t committed to a performing at a high level — which Gallup says costs companies money.

… President Obama, hands down, will be regarded as the greatest con-man President in American history. The Carters, Reagans and Clintons all pale in comparison: the enormous gap between style and substance, promise and performance, peace and war, capital and labor has never been greater … For sheer span of broken promises, of systematic lies in pursuit of wars and financial manipulation in the name of peace and social justice , of consistent and bold aggrandizement of executive power over the life and death of US citizens in the name of security, Obama has set the standard of political deception and demagogy far beyond past and probable future US Presidents.

… If Barack Obama is our friend, then we really don’t need to be terribly worried about our enemies … No matter in what system or to what purpose: A monitored human being is not a free human being. And every state that systematically contravenes human rights, even in the alleged service of security, is acting criminally … Those who thought that we are on the good side and that it is others who are stomping all over human rights are now opening their eyes. A regime is ruling in the United States today that acts in totalitarian ways when it comes to its claim to total control. Soft totalitarianism is still totalitarianism.

… It is extraordinary that the most important publication in Germany has acknowledged that the German government is Washington’s puppet state … We have reached the point where we “free americans” have to learn from our German puppets that we are not free … If Germany were to throw off its amerikan overlord and depart NATO, amerikan power in Europe would collapse. If Germany and Russia were to unite in defense of truth and human rights, Europe and the world would have a new beginning.

… The book combines two stories that have little to do with each other: the rise of Helena Rubinstein and the parallel rise of the French cosmetics giant L’Oréal and its founder, Eugène Schueller. … After the Germans invaded, Mr. Schueller became an ardent Nazi collaborator, financing French fascist groups and exhorting his countrymen to work with the Germans to build a new, more powerful French state. All of this led to two postwar trials, both of which judged Mr. Schueller legally innocent but forever tarnished his image.

The Obama administration for more than two years permitted the National Security Agency to continue collecting vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans, according to secret documents obtained by the Guardian. The documents indicate that under the program, launched in 2001, a federal judge sitting on the secret surveillance panel called the Fias court would approve a bulk collection order for internet metadata “every 90 days”. A senior administration official confirmed the program, stating that it ended in 2011.

Napoleonic semaphore was the world’s first telegraph network, carrying messages across 19h-Century France faster than ever before. Now a group of enthusiastic amateurs are reviving the ingenious system. Before the web, before the computer, before the phone, even before Morse code, there was le systeme Chappe … At its most extensive, it comprised 534 stations covering more than 5,000km (3,106 miles). Messages sent from Paris could reach the outer fringes of the country in a matter of three or four hours. Before, it had taken despatch riders on horseback a similar number of days.

… The heady, short-lived uprising by hundreds of thousands of East Germans 60 years ago on Monday has never lived in history as the more famous anti-Communist revolts that followed — in Hungary and Poland in 1956, in Prague in 1968 and in Poland again in 1980-81 … More than one million people in about 700 cities, towns and villages heeded the summons to strike and demonstrate on June 17. But the revolt — the first uprising against the Soviet rule imposed on Eastern Europe after 1945 — was swiftly put down.

Sales of George Orwell’s 1984 have rocketed this week, following the news of the National Security Administration (NSA) Prism surveillance scandal in the US. As of yesterday morning, sales in the US on Amazon.com of Orwell’s dystopian classic had risen an incredible 5,771 percent, with one edition even reaching the top 100 bestselling books. On the website’s Movers and Shakers list, the novel has a current sales rank of 80, up from 12,507 just a few days ago. Two editions of the book occupy the 16th and 17th places for highest surge in sales. In the UK, 1984 is currently in 52nd place in the Amazon.co.uk bestsellers list.

Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat in Bavaria is getting a makeover, with a 17-million euro ($22.5 million) renovation project that will enlarge the historical information center now there. The Bavarian government said Tuesday that building should begin in 2015. The daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports the 1,000 square meter (11,000 square foot) center will be expanded to 2,500 square meters (27,000 square feet) in a project that will take until 2018. The center includes details on Obersalzberg — the mountain ridge where Hitler had his Eagle’s Nest retreat and Berghof home and headquarters — as well as on the Nazi regime in general.

In or around 1978, America’s character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic … It is no wonder that more and more Americans believe the game is rigged. It is no wonder that they buy houses they cannot afford and then walk away from the mortgage when they can no longer pay. Once the social contract is shredded, once the deal is off, only suckers still play by the rules.

… I’m afraid that we’re headed toward an ineffective American intervention, which is even worse …. What you are talking about means increasing our aid to the least effective of the forces opposing Assad. So at best, it’s simply damaging to our credibility. At worst, it hastens the victory of groups that are much more hostile to us than Assad ever was … It could be a disaster for us. But that is not a perspective that the average American, who doesn’t really read much about world affairs, can quite grasp. This is a country of good emotions, but poor knowledge and little sophistication about the world.

This four minute video includes clips of American blacks who demand the killing and death of “crackers” (white people), including children. Also, Noel Ignatiev, a history professor with the Massachusetts College of Art, who has called for the destruction of the white race, argues for the elimination of “whiteness.”

Germany’s enemies maintain today [1940] that Adolf Hitler is the greatest disturber of peace known to history, that he threatens every nation with sudden attack and oppression, that he has created a terrible war machine in order to bring misery and devastation everywhere. At the same time they intentionally conceal an all-important fact: they themselves drove the leader of the German people finally to draw the sword. They themselves compelled him to seek to obtain at last by the use of force that which he had been striving to gain by persuasion from the beginning: the security of his country. They did this not only by declaring war on him on Sept. 3, 1939, but also by blocking step by step for seven years the path to any peaceful discussion … A quick look at the most important events provides incontrovertible proof of this.

Scholars of the life of Gertrude Stein were startled to learn that in 1938 the prominent Jewish-American writer had spearheaded a campaign urging the Nobel committee to award its Peace Prize to Adolf Hitler … Stein’s seemingly paradoxical views about Hitler and fascism have never been a secret. As early as 1934, she told a reporter that Hitler should be awarded the Nobel peace prize.

… Sadly, Corry’s tale is part of a growing problem within the publishing industry, which is selling to the public a growing number of ‘memoirs’ about the Holocaust and World War II that should really belong on the shelves marked ‘fiction’ … Unfortunately, despite all these examples, publishers are still wilfully selling suspect memoirs based on the Holocaust and the war. In 2011, I showed how Denis Avey’s claims to have broken into Auschwitz in his book The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, were riddled with so many discrepancies that serious questions were raised about his story.

An Israeli film maker who is admittedly “obsessed” with the Holocaust is finally putting to rest the urban myth that the Nazis used the remains of Jewish bodies to create bars of soap. “Soaps,” a new film by director Eyal Ballas, 43, finds that the soap myth originated in World War I, when Germans were rumored to be turning bodies into the cleaning product.

Spying on visiting foreign dignitaries is a longstanding habit not only of the British, but of many other countries as well. Most embassies in foreign capitals are designed with windowless safe rooms, on the assumption that their host country will be doing its best to monitor all their communications. In 1985, the British government obtained injunctions attempting to gag the Guardian and Observer after they published disclosures by the renegade MI5 officer Peter Wright of wholesale British bugging … He disclosed that MI5 bugged all diplomatic conferences at Lancaster House in London throughout the 1950s and 1960s …

The US government’s secret seizure of Associated Press phone records has a “chilling effect” on newsgathering by the agency and other news organizations, AP’s top executive said Wednesday. “Some longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking with us,” AP president and chief executive Gary Pruitt said … This chilling effect on newsgathering is not just limited to AP. “Journalists from other news organizations have personally told me that it has intimidated both official and nonofficial sources from speaking to them as well.”

Like Josef Stalin before him, Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided that schoolchildren are confronted with too many versions of their country’s history. So he’s planning to provide his own … The guidelines also attempt to paint a “balanced” picture of Stalin’s rule. They describe Stalin as a modernizer who brought about Russia’s ultra-fast industrialization, laid the foundation for the Soviet Union’s scientific achievements and its victory in World War II, but also orchestrated mass purges “to liquidate a potential fifth column” and used forced labor to achieve an economic breakthrough. The soft-lens picture of Stalin is consistent with some of Putin’s utterances on the tyrant.

Instead of pursuing a clear and rational policy with regard to Syria, the US is engaging in “mass propaganda” by portraying the Syrian conflict as a fight for democracy, says former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in this recent two-minute television appearance. The pretense that the US is supporting “democracy” in this brutal sectarian war is absurd, especially considering that many of the “democratic” rebels are anti-democratic religious zealots, and are backed by two of the most non-democratic regimes in the world, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Obama administration’s policy regarding Syria is “baffling,” he also says, because it seems to have no clear or thought-out strategic basis.

… Lacking a grand strategy, Mr. Obama has become a victim of rhetorical entrapment over the course of the Arab Spring — from calling on foreign leaders to leave (with no plan to forcibly remove them) to publicly drawing red lines on the use of chemical weapons, and then being obliged to fulfill the threat. For nearly two years, the Obama administration has described the Syrian regime as having “lost all legitimacy” and “clinging to power.” And yet, it has surprisingly endured. That’s because neither assertion is really accurate. Mr. Assad still has strong support from many Syrians, including members of the Sunni urban class.

Barack Obama has just taken his first baby steps into a war in Syria that may define and destroy his presidency … All of these are acts of war. Yet under the Constitution, Congress alone authorizes war. When did Congress authorize Obama to take us to war in Syria? Where does our imperial president get his authority to draw red lines and attack countries that cross them? Have we ceased to be a republic? Has Congress become a mere spectator to presidential decisions on war and peace? … Anti-interventionists should demand a roll-call vote in Congress on whether Obama has the authority to take us into this Syrian war.

In his classic 1951 book American Diplomacy, Cold War strategist George F. Kennan rethought not only his own views but also those of American policymakers from the 1898 war with Spain to the outset of the Cold War … Another matter on which Kennan was of two minds was American democracy. Exasperation at its failings flows continually though his work, as he ascribes the failures of U.S. foreign policy to lawmakers’ deference to popular opinion. In American Diplomacy, he calls this “diplomacy by dilettantism.” … “There is, let me assure you, nothing in nature more egocentrical than the embattled democracy,” he wrote … “It soon becomes the victim of its own war propaganda.”

Is there a shortage of talented workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in America? … But the thing is, there isn’t really a STEM shortage. There are plenty of graduates of technical fields in the U.S. There is a different kind of shortage, but the American people won’t like to admit it. What there is, is a shortage of ultra-elite American-born talent, and Silicon Valley wants to hire the very best in the world. The view from Silicon Valley is that a lot of the U.S. talent, while bountiful in number, just doesn’t stack up. But Silicon Valley doesn’t want to just come out and say this, since it will sound offensive to a lot of American-born grads. So Silicon Valley argues that there’s a general STEM shortage.

It may be said without hesitation that Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together. The Jews in the Soviet Union is one of the most important books on the Russian Revolution and the early Bolshevik period ever to appear. After publication of this work with its many revelations about the role of the Jews during the Leninist period, the history of the Bolshevik October putsch will have to be rewritten, if not completely, then with substantial additions. The book title might have been even more appropriately called “The End of the Legends.”

Jews played a highly disproportionate and probably decisive role in the infant Bolshevik regime, effectively dominating the Soviet government during its early years … With the notable exception of Lenin, most of the leading Communists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews … The US ambassador in Russia warned in a dispatch to Washington: “The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution.”

We’re relentlessly told that we must “never forget” the “Six Million.” But we hear far less about the vastly greater number of victims of Lenin and Stalin, and the grim legacy of Soviet Communism. Some 20 million people perished as victims of the Soviet regime, historians acknowledge. Jews played a decisive role in founding and promoting the egalitarian-universalist ideology of Marxism, in developing the worldwide Marxist political movement, and in brutally imposing Bolshevik rule in Russia. With the notable exception of Lenin, who was one-quarter Jewish, most of the leading Marxists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews, including Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Radek.

On the anniversary of the beginning of the June 1941 “Barbarossa” campaign, host Rodney Martin and historian Mark Weber talk about the titanic struggle on the eastern front in World War II, and the view of the Second World War that prevails in the US, and why. Citing documents and other little-known evidence, Martin and Weber establish that the German strike against the Soviet Union was a preemptive attack to forestall a Soviet assault against Germany and Europe. Broadcast runtime: 106 mins.

… Free Russian and German historians are collaborating to ascertain the historical decisions and actions that led to that bloodiest of all conflicts. Wolfgang Strauss, a respected German Slavicist and political analyst, explains this clarifying historical process in “Operation Barbarossa and the Russian Historians’ Dispute,” … He examines here the research of revisionist scholars in Russia and Germany on Stalin’s role in igniting the German-Russian conflict and his efforts to expand the Soviet empire across Europe … Strauss affirms the view of German historian Ernst Nolte that Hitler’s militant anti-Communism was an understandable reaction to the looming Soviet threat to Europe and humanity.

On the morning of June 22, 1941, the world is astonished by the news that Germany, together with Finland and Romania, had struck against the Soviet Union. German minister Goebbels broadcasts to the world Hitler’s proclamation announcing the beginning of the “Barbarossa” campaign, the largest military attack in world history. And then Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop addresses a large gathering of German and foreign journalists, and reads Germany’s note to the Soviet government giving its reasons for the attack. This film clip is a portion of the German weekly newsreel, “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” of June 25, 1941. With English subtitles (not entirely accurate). Runtime: 1:30 mins.

Important evidence has come to light in recent decades that shatters the official, endlessly repeated view that Hitler, bent on world conquest, launched a treacherous surprise attack against a peaceful Soviet Union. In 1941 Soviet dictator Stalin deployed an enormous strike force on the western Soviet frontier 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 an imminent Soviet strike. Runtime: 49 minutes.

The German Bundestag today approved a resolution vowing to combat anti-Semitism and support Jewish life in Germany, and to deepen the country’s special relationship with Israel … The resolution, which specifically condemns Israel-related anti-Semitism, stresses the critical importance of education in counteracting prejudice against Jews. It calls for better education in schools and other institutions, including improved teaching about the Holocaust, expansion of existing curricula on Jewish life and German-Jewish relations, and expanded cooperation with Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, a volunteer organization that gives support to Holocaust survivors.

Europeans “need to follow the example of the Jewish people and re-establish their nation-state” to counter the growing Islamization of their countries, Dutch politician Geert Wilders said Sunday in Los Angeles. “My friends, what we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe,” Wilders, founder and leader of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, said at the “Europe’s Last Stand?” conference, organized by the American Freedom Alliance. Wilders described that Europe’s inner cities “have come to resemble Northern Africa and the Middle East” …

A dozen Jewish organizations sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressing their concern over the rise of anti-Semitism in Hungary. The May 14 letter commended Kerry for his offices’ recent human rights report that detailed the rise of the xenophobic and anti-Semitic Jobbik party and encouraged Kerry “to keep the issue of intolerance and discrimination squarely on the U.S.-Hungarian bilateral agenda.” … The letter, which also asked Kerry to raise this issue personally in any dealings he has with Hungarian officials … “We view U.S. leadership as indispensable to the advancement of human rights,” the letter continued.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened a new exhibit at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp, focused both on Jewish prewar life and a book of 4.2 million names of those murdered in the Holocaust. “The State of Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent another Holocaust,” Netanyahu said today at the ceremony, according to an e-mailed comment from his office. “We must not be complacent in the face of threats of annihilation. We must not bury our heads in the sand or allow others to do the work for us.”

Israel will send thousands of African migrants to an unidentified third country, new documents reveal. The plan aims to tackle the influx of around 60,000 African migrants who have crossed into Israel from Egypt over the last few years. … The drastic increase in non-Jewish migrants from Africa has divided Israeli society … Israel has tried to slow down the flow of migrants entering via Egypt by building a fence. The country has also offered cash to some if they leave voluntarily.

The summer solstice, 21 June, is one of the most important dates in the calendar for many followers of ancient religions, and it’s a special time for people in Greece who worship the country’s pre-Christian gods. … It’s the most important annual festival for followers of The Return of the Hellenes – a movement trying to bring back the religion, values, philosophy and way of life of ancient Greece, more than 16 centuries after it was replaced by Christianity. These people consider Greece to be a country under Christian occupation.

Researchers find that nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half receive at least two prescriptions. Mayo Clinic researchers report that antibiotics, antidepressants and painkiller opioids are the most common prescriptions given to Americans. Twenty percent of U.S. patients were also found to be on five or more prescription medications … The second most common prescription was for antidepressants — that suggests mental health is a huge issue and is something we should focus on.

He has been called the Italian Schindler, credited with helping to save 5,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Giovanni Palatucci, a wartime police official, has been honored in Israel, in New York and in Italy, where squares and promenades have been named in his honor .. But at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the tale of his heroic exploits is being removed from an exhibition after officials there learned of new evidence suggesting that, far from being a hero, he was an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator involved in the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz.

A chief doctor at a Costa Rican government-ran hospital was arrested today on suspicion of being part of an international organ trafficking network which specializes in selling kidneys to patients in Israel, according to the Attorney General’s Office. Attorney General Jorge Chavarria told the press that the arrested is Francisco Mora Palma, head of Nephrology at Calderon Guardia Hospital, one of the largest state medical centers in the country. “The patients who required the transplants were in Israeli territory, and some of the (trafficking) victims [had their kidney removed] here and others were transported to Israel. We have information that at least one person died after being operated on in Israel,” Chavarria said.

… The Congresswoman is absolutely right: what we have reported thus far is merely “the tip of the iceberg” of what the NSA is doing in spying on Americans and the world. She’s also right that when it comes to NSA spying, “there is significantly more than what is out in the media today”, and that’s exactly what we’re working to rectify. But just consider what she’s saying: as a member of Congress, she had no idea how invasive and vast the NSA’s surveillance activities are … How can anyone think that it’s remotely healthy in a democracy to have the NSA building a massive spying apparatus about which even members of Congress, including Senators on the Homeland Security Committee, are totally ignorant and find “astounding” when they learn of them?

… Interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort. Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet’s backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

In this two-minute clip from 2006, then-Senator Joe Biden refutes claims made by the Bush administration to justify the US government’s mass surveillance program. But these same points apply just as well in refuting the justifying claims made at a recent news conference by Obama, whose administration Biden now serves.

Steve Sailer has an article on the tie-in between Israeli high tech firms and the NSA spying on American citizens. It’s always seemed very suspicious that Amdocs, an Israeli firm, was responsible for billing for US phone companies, and that two Israeli firms, Narus and Verint, are involved in wiretapping AT&T and Verizon for the NSA. … Given this long list, it is certainly reasonable to think that Israel is using its connections with the NSA to mine US data for its own purposes. In fact, it would be silly to think otherwise … The assumption must be that Israel has access to American’s emails and internet usage — very useful for all kinds of reasons …

… Finally, yes, we Jews also have to admit we’re not reflexively opposed to the NSA tracking, because most of the people they’re tracking are on a jihad specifically against us. The ideologies of hatred have gone from print to pixel. It’s the ideology, not the technology, we have to hold in check. On the Internet, you can find pages for “Burn a Jew Day” and “Kill a Jew Day,” which, by the way, is July 9. When it’s your kids, your community center, your shul at risk, you tend to give the good guys a longer leash.

The war in Syria was planned years in advance, and the motive was to overthrow a regime that Israel regards as hostile, says former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. “I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria,” said Dumas in a recent interview with French television LCP. “This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and organized …” Responding to a question on the motive behind the war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Dumas said, “Very simple! With the very simple aim! To overthrow the Syrian government, because in the region, it’s important to understand, that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance. Consequently, everything that moves in the region — and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister, who told me ‘We’ll try to get on with our neighboring states, but those who don’t get along, we will take them down’.”

… Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center on children and youth issues, examined a range of available statistics to provide this portrait of the [U.S.] high school class of 2013: … 71 have experienced physical assault; 28 have been victimized sexually; 32 have experienced some form of child maltreatment; 68 will go on to a college or university; 64 have had sexual intercourse; 51 used no alcohol, cigarettes, or illicit drugs during the past 30 days; 45 get the recommended amount of physical activity; 24 were binge-drinking in the past two weeks; 22 are living in poverty; 10 are living in deep poverty.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Pundak is celebrating his hundredth birthday. Pundak was the commander of the 53rd Battalion of the Givati Brigade in the War of Independence and went on to supervise the establishment of the Armored Corps. He was also Ambassador in Tanzania and a founder of Arad. In an interview on IDF Radio, Pundak confirmed that forces under his command razed Arab villages in 1948. “My conscience is at ease with that, because if we hadn’t done so, then there would be no state by now. There would be a million more Arabs,” he said.

Hungarian prosecutors indicted a 98-year-old former police officer Tuesday for abusing Jews and assisting in their deportation to Nazi death camps during World War II. They said Laszlo Csatary was the chief of an internment camp for 12,000 Jews at a brick factory in Kosice – a Slovak city then part of Hungary – in May 1944, and that he beat them with his bare hands and a dog whip. He also allegedly refused to allow ventilation holes to be cut into the walls of a railcar crammed with 80 Jews being deported.

Among Kim Jong-un’s gifts to some of North Korea’s high-ranking officials this year were copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, according to a trusted source who serves as a DPRK official in China. To mark Kim Jong-un’s birthday on January 8th, DPRK officials ranked departmental director and above in the National Defence Committee were presented with the autobiography of Adolf Hitler … “Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in WWI, Kim Jong-un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it,” the source told us …

In this earnest eight-minute talk, Ron Paul speaks out against Obama’s policy of “escalation” and “expansion” of the US role in the Syria war. The “same language” and the “same arguments” that were used by the Bush administration to justify the US bombing, attack and invasion of Iraq in 2003, Paul says, are now being used by the Obama administration to justify further US involvement in the Syria war. “The neocons are winning this battle here at home and they’re controlling our foreign policy,” he says. US involvement in the Syria conflict, he stresses, is “not serving our interests at all.”

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapons is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny … Other experts said that while they were willing to give the U.S. intelligence community the benefit of the doubt, the Obama administration has yet to offer details of what evidence it has and how it obtained it.

Detroit said Friday it would stop making payments on about $2.5 billion in unsecured debt and ask creditors to take about ten cents on the dollar of what the city owes them in a move to avoid what bankruptcy experts have said would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr spent two hours with about 180 bond insurers, pension trustees, union representatives and other creditors outlining his plan for the city’s financial future, which includes a moratorium on some principal and interest payments, Reuters reported.

… While U.S.-funded democracy promotion is portrayed as benign, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, DNI and Freedom House have been linked to revolutions that brought down regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and nearly succeeded in Belarus … Once the most admired of nations, America is no longer so. Why not? Because of our compulsive interventions, military and political, in the internal affairs of nations that are none of our business. Defund the American Comintern, and bring the outside agitators home.

Four interesting developments have taken place recently: One is that the US is selling (i.e., giving) Israel tanker aircraft to allow it to refuel its strike aircraft no matter what the US does. … And four, the US Defense Secretary of whom so many of us hoped so much, has made it clear that he is no different from his predecessor, and on his trip to Israel has given what is effectively a “green light” for Israel to attack Iran whenever it chooses to do so, with full and complete US support. … Of course, the waging of preventive war is a war crime under international law, as is endorsing or assisting in the waging of preventive war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his two-day visit to Poland … with a stern warning about a potential Holocaust from Iran … “This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel’s 6 million Jews,” Netanyahu said, alluding to the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. “We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust.” Israel considers Iran its greatest threat because of its support of Islamic militant groups, its arsenal of long-range missiles and primarily its advanced nuclear program.

… George Orwell once said that some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them. Multiculturalism is one of those ideas. The intelligentsia burst into indignation or outrage at “gaps” or “disparities” in educational, economic or other outcomes – and denounce any cultural explanation of these group differences as “blaming the victim.” … Multiculturalism not only serves the ego interests of intellectuals, it serves the political interests of elected officials, who have every incentive to promote a sense of victimhood, and even paranoia, among groups whose votes they want, in exchange for both material and psychic support.

Half of the respondents to a survey on attitudes toward Jews in France said French Jews are closer to Israel than to their own republic. In the poll conducted last month of 1,001 French adults, 50 percent of respondents said Jews are “closer to France than Israel” and 46 percent said they were not; 4 percent said they did not know. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said Jews are “a unified group characterized by solidarity,” while 20 percent said Jews are a “diverse and divided” group. Twenty-eight percent agreed with the assertion that “Jews exercise an oversized level of influence,” while 71 percent said they “exercise a normal amount of influence.”

… As it turns out, Hitler’s love for American movies was reciprocated by Hollywood. A forthcoming book by the young historian Ben Urwand, to be published by Harvard University Press in October, presents explosive new evidence about the shocking extent of the partnership between the Nazis and major Hollywood producers … Collaboration is the only fitting word for the relationship between Hitler and Hollywood in the 1930s. Using new archival discoveries, Urwand alleges that some of the Hollywood studio heads, nearly all of whom were Jewish, cast their lot with Hitler almost from the moment he took power, and that they did so eagerly — not reluctantly. What they wanted was access to German audiences.

In spite of a basic hostility between Third Reich Germany and international Jewry, German National Socialists and Jewish Zionists shared similar views about ethnicity and nationhood, and worked together in the years 1933 through 1940-41 for what each group believed was in its own best national interest. The Hitler government vigorously promoted Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine. In collaborating with the Zionists for a mutually desirable and humane solution to a complex problem, Third Reich Germany was willing to make foreign exchange sacrifices, impair relations with Britain, and anger Arabs.

A day before his death in his beleaguered command center in central Berlin, Adolf Hitler summoned Traudl Junge, his youngest secretary, for an important task. Standing at a large table in the conference room of the cramped underground concrete bunker complex, he paused a bit before he began dictating “My Political Testament,” a declaration that would be his final words to the German people, as well as a statement for coming generations … Hitler also sought to explain why things had turned out so calamitously, and he anticipated accusations that would be made against him in the years ahead.

After the successful Allied invasions of western France, Germany gathered reserve forces and launched a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes, which collapsed by January. At the same time, Soviet forces were closing in from the east, invading Poland and East Prussia … In the first several months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but rapidly lost territory, ran out of supplies, and exhausted its options … Then came the end of the Third Reich, as the Soviets took Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, and Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 8 (May 7 on the Western Front).

The last words of Eva Braun, Hitler’s longtime mistress and wife of a few hours, charting her fear of their certain death, have been discovered / Letters written by Braun show how the sense of hope in the German camp turned to despair as the Red Army started to take control of Berlin in April 1945. On April 22, as the German forces were overwhelmed, she wrote: “We are fighting here until the last but I’m afraid the end is threatening closer and closer.” Eight days later the 33-year-old was dead, killing herself alongside her husband Adolf Hitler. The pair had been married just a few hours. The letters are thought to have been written by Braun to her friend Herta Schneider.

Twenty-one photos from defeated, war-ravaged Berlin, following the end of fighting in early May 1945. Includes several photos from Hitler’s underground bunker command center.

Adolf Hitler made his final address to the nation in a radio broadcast on Jan. 30, 1945, the twelfth anniversary of the National Socialist seizure of power. Here are the concluding sentences of that historic address, with English-language subtitles. In this talk, delivered three months before his death, he concludes with determined confidence that, in spite of setbacks, Germany and Europe will ultimately prevail against the grave threat from the East. This brief video clip, just 42 seconds in length, has garnered nearly two and a half million “hits” or “views.” It’s from a 1997 BBC documentary “The Nazis: A Warning From History.”

Hitler honors 20 young German volunteers who had shown extraordinary commitment and courage in defending the homeland against enemy forces. These final images of the German leader as he meets with Hitler Youth boys and teenagers in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin are from March 20, 1945 — six weeks before he took his life in his beleaguered command post. This is a portion of the final German wartime weekly newsreel, “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” of March 22, 1945. With English subtitles (not entirely accurate). Runtime: 1:50 mins.

… The SPLC is probably the richest poverty organization in the history of the world. From its very beginning the SPLC, thanks to Dees’s talent for crafting multi-page alarmist fundraising letters, has not only continuously operated in the black, but has steadily accumulated a mountain of surpluses augmented by a shrewdly managed investment portfolio. Today the SPLC’s net assets total more than $256 million … Besides being willing to slap the hate label onto groups that may merely interpret data differently from the SPLC, the center routinely tries to link, if only by implication, increases in the number of hate and patriot groups it tallies to actual incidents of domestic terrorism and other violence.

… People who raise money and make money selling the notion there’s a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with massed legions of haters, ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of “Mein Kampf” tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other. What is the arch-salesman of hate mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now? Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC.

… The [US] military has for years been developing offensive capabilities, giving it the power not just to defend the US but to assail its foes. Using so-called cyber-kinetic attacks, Alexander [director of the National Security Agency] and his forces now have the capability to physically destroy an adversary’s equipment and infrastructure, and potentially even to kill. Alexander — who declined to be interviewed for this article — has concluded that such cyberweapons are as crucial to 21st-century warfare as nuclear arms were in the 20th. And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s.

German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of the dreaded Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.

… This year’s presidential campaign, like its predecessors, challenges Westerners’ deep attachment to myths of the Islamic Republic’s illegitimacy and fragility. The eight candidates initially approved by the Guardian Council represented a broad spectrum of conservative and reformist views … Americans and most other Westerners have never been able to take the Islamic Republic seriously as a system — one reason successive U.S. administrations have, for three decades, bought into perennially mistaken, agenda-driven claims of the Islamic Republic’s vulnerability and impending collapse.

… No Iranian president, no matter how influential, will advocate that Iran give up its uranium-enrichment activities. The Islamic Republic has invested too much, financially and politically, in the nuclear program to give in to such maximalist demands. But a new president could bring a change in tone. While this may seem minor, it could significantly improve chances for a successful accommodation in which Iran agrees to limit its enrichment activities and allow intrusive monitoring of its nuclear program. In diplomacy, language and public behavior can play important roles in easing tensions and allowing diplomats to sell compromises to their domestic constituencies.

For the first time, half (49.9%) of American children under the age of five are of a racial or ethnic minority, according to the US Census Bureau. The agency projected that in the US, whites would become a minority in the under-five age group this year or next. The 2012 data also found that for the first time in more than a century, there were more deaths than births among white Americans. The “natural decrease” occurred several years earlier than forecast, it said. The government figures also project that in five years, minorities will make up more than half of children under 18.

Dozens of striking photos provide vivid glimpses of American life during the dynamic era from the US Civil War era to the 1920s. These vintage photographs from the US Library of Congress collection have been restored by a company that specializes in HD photo restoration.

Twitter will have to reveal the names of France-based users posting anti-Semitic messages, after a Paris court refused to consider the firm’s appeal. In January, the Paris High Court told the firm to reveal the data directly to France’s Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) and four others, if requested. The groups filed a complaint following several instances of racist tweets. Twitter blocked the posts in France, but appealed against the decision to hand over user IDs. The micro-blogging service still has not revealed any of the requested identities, and is now thinking of appealing again, said the firm’s spokeswoman.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) welcomed the issuance of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA) Internet Hate Task Force Report and Recommendations on Wednesday in Jerusalem. The report, the culmination of testimony and meetings with industry experts, academics and non-governmental organizations, offers a series of recommendations for responding to cyber-hate, including the creation of clear policies on hate speech and better enforcement of hate speech policies.

As the Supreme Court prepares to once again weigh in on the issue of affirmative action, a record-low number of Americans support such programs, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Just 45 percent of respondents said they believe affirmative action programs are still needed to counteract the effects of discrimination against minorities, while an equal 45 percent feel the programs have gone too far and should be ended because they unfairly discriminate against whites … Reasons for the trend range from the idea of “diversity fatigue” to what others believe is the effect of an African-American being elected president, as well as 20 years of anti-affirmative-action campaigns.

Vilifying Israel has become the acceptable face of anti-Semitic rhetoric, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu told the fourth annual Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem … Describing the advent of so-called modern anti-Semitism as “tragic”, he lamented its rise to prominence in Muslim society particularly across Iran and the Arab world, “where Jews and Muslims used to live for centuries in relative harmony”.

The problem of sexual assault in the military leapt to the forefront in Washington on Tuesday as the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 in 2010, and an angry President Obama and Congress demanded action. The study, based on a confidential survey sent to 108,000 active-duty service members … In a separate report made public on Tuesday, the military recorded 3,374 sexual assault reports last year, up from 3,192 in 2011, suggesting that many victims continue not to report the crimes for fear of retribution or a lack of justice under the department’s system for prosecution.

The soldiers who landed in Normandy on D-Day were greeted as liberators, but by the time American GIs were headed back home in late 1945, many French citizens viewed them in a very different light. In the port city of Le Havre, the mayor was bombarded with letters from angry residents complaining about drunkenness, jeep accidents, sexual assault — “a regime of terror,” as one put it, “imposed by bandits in uniform.” This isn’t the “greatest generation” as it has come to be depicted in popular histories. But in “What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American G.I. in World War II France,” the historian Mary Louise Roberts draws on French archives, American military records, wartime propaganda and other sources to advance a provocative argument …

Americans often think of World War II as the “good war,” but historian Mary Louise Roberts says her new book might make our understanding of that conflict “more truthful and more complex.” The book, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, tells the story of relations between American men and French women in Normandy and elsewhere … “I guess like many people I was somewhat surprised when I found out that the GIs were not impeccable soldiers. I began to look at documents in France that were only opened in January of 2005, and in many cases I was the first American to look at them.”

… Mary Louise Roberts’ book is all the more pertinent because it asks this question of the group of soldiers most likely to be idealised and least likely to be criticised: the American GIs who helped to liberate France from Nazi occupation in 1944-45. In popular mythology, the GIs who landed in Normandy in June 1944 were large, well-dressed, well-fed and handsome … While US troops entered France as part of a liberating force, ordinary French men and women would experience the GIs as yet another occupation force. US military power was capricious.

… The following are 27 quotes from Edward Snowden about U.S. government spying that should send a chill up your spine … “The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate.” … “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.” … “If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.” “Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere … I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President …”

Government surveillance and secret warrants are not new in the United States, particularly in the years since the September 11, 2001, attacks. Following are some key milestones in the history of surveillance in the country: … 2006 – In February, USA Today reports that the NSA had worked with telecommunications companies including AT&T and Sprint in its warrantless eavesdropping program. Three months later the newspaper reveals that the agency had been secretly collecting tens of millions of phone records from companies including Verizon.

After two years of civil war, support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was said to have sharply increased. NATO has been studying data that told of a sharp rise in support for Assad. The data, compiled by Western-sponsored activists and organizations, showed that a majority of Syrians were alarmed by the Al Qaida takeover of the Sunni revolt and preferred to return to Assad, Middle East Newsline reported. “The people are sick of the war and hate the jihadists more than Assad,” a Western source familiar with the data said … The data, relayed to NATO over the last month, asserted that 70 percent of Syrians support the Assad regime. Another 20 percent were deemed neutral and the remaining ten percent expressed support for the rebels.

In the last week we have been following British and French’s desperate attempts to push for a military intervention in Syria. It is far from being a secret that both British and French government are dominated by the Jewish Lobby. In Britain it is the ultra-Zionist CFI (Conservative Friends of Israel) — apparently 80% of Britain’s conservative MPs are members of the pro-Israeli Lobby. In France the situation is even more devastating, the entire political system is hijacked by the forceful CRIF. But in case anyone fails to grasp why the Jewish Lobby is pushing for an immediate intervention, Debka, an Israeli news outlet provides the answer.

Italian border authorities arrested 77-year-old Israeli citizen Gedaliah Taub on Friday on suspicion of international human organ trafficking. Taub was detained at the Rome airport after officials determined his passport was forged. Rome police told Maariv that Brazil had issued an international arrest warrant for Taub after he fled the South American country in 2009 during a leave from prison, where he was serving a nine-year sentence for organ trafficking.

The US government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidant of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War Two. A preliminary U.S. government assessment reviewed by Reuters asserts the diary could offer new insight into meetings Rosenberg had with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders, including Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering. It also includes details about the German occupation of the Soviet Union, including plans for mass killings of Jews and other Eastern Europeans.

While some individuals, both Jewish and Christian, have talked about a Jewish “return” to Palestine throughout past centuries, today’s version of Christian Zionism was largely invented in the 19th century; adherents of political Zionism, a movement to create a Jewish state, were a major factor in how and why it grew … The precursor to today’s pro-Israel lobbying groups, the “American Zionist Emergency Council” (AZEC), played a significant role in creating Christian support for Zionism … The objective was to organize a group of prominent (mainly non-Jewish) Americans in moral and political support of Zionism.

Mainline Christians are beginning to realize that “Christian Zionism” is a misnomer, a sort of faith- based oxymoron, an impossibility to those who follow Christ … Israel is a far more brutal occupier than were the Romans, of Jesus’ day, as can be witnessed to by thousands who have lived in Israeli prisons. It is our prayer that church groups like the Church of Scotland will take this next bold, but obviously correct step, and we offer suggestions from mistakes we have made.

This “must see” 32-minute documentary about Christian Zionism explains why It is a “must see” to understand why Christian Zionists (Judeo-Christians, Dispensationalists) support war in the Middle East to protect Israel. Explains how Cyrus I. Scofield’s reference Bible was used to promote Christian Zionism throughout evangelical seminaries and in evangelical churches for more than a hundred years.

“Hitler — You knew him — What was he like?” I have been asked that question a thousand times since 1945, and nothing is more difficult to answer … Hitler’s most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic principles. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could be understood by anyone … His intellectual curiosity was limitless. He was readily familiar with the writings of the most diverse authors, and nothing was too complex for his comprehension … The universality of Hitler’s knowledge may surprise or displease those unaware of it, but it is nonetheless a historical fact: Hitler was one of the most cultivated men of this century.

Besides being a great political leader and thinker, Adolf Hitler had a great interest in various artistic forms including opera, sculpture and paintings. The artistic side of the Führer has gone unnoticed in history or, at least, has not been given the attention it deserves.
 

… What kind of boy was Adolf Hitler? Many biographers have put him down as harsh-voiced, defiant, untidy; as a young ruffian who personified all that is unattractive. This simply is not true. As a youth he was quiet, well-mannered and neatly dressed … In the practice of my profession it is natural that I should have witnessed many scenes such as this one, yet none of them left me with quite the same impression. In all my career I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler.

As a social experiment, media analyst Mark Dice asks randomly selected people at a beach pier in southern California to sign a petition to keep the “Holocaust Beach Party” from being canceled due to budget cuts. The Holocaust, he explains, is a “favorite celebration of the Jewish people,” a “Jewish festival,” and a “Jewish holiday.” He urges support for the “Holocaust celebration” and the “Holocaust reenactment.” No one disputes what he says. Dice is surprised and frustrated by the ignorance of these ordinary Americans. Many Americans seem utterly unmoved by what politicians, educators and the media in the US has been telling them for years about the importance of “the Holocaust.”

On June 8, 1967, 34 American servicemen were killed and 174 were wounded during an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer, “Those men were then betrayed and left to die by our own government.” The survivors are still awaiting justice … Israel claimed the attack was “a case of mistaken identity”; that they didn’t know it was an American ship … The Navy’s chief attorney to the original 1967 military Court of Inquiry has issued a statement that orders to cover-up the incident were issued by President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

… Far more shocking was Washington’s response. Writes Bamford: ‘Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident.’ Why? Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this ‘third rail’ issue.

In testimony to Congress on Wednesday [May 15], Obama’s State Department official Wendy Sherman reiterated the administration’s policy on Iran. Since the intelligence community has concluded for some time now that Iran has not yet decided to pursue nuclear weapons, Sherman felt compelled to recite a litany of supposed Iranian transgressions to justify America’s harsh economic sanctions and overall belligerence toward the country. Every major criticism of Iran, though, is one that can also be lodged against the United States.

Dr. Mario Silva says Holocaust denial must be fought not just by Jewish groups but also by governments. / Holocaust denial is another form of anti-Semitism which is prevalent today and must be fought, Dr. Mario Silva told Arutz Sheva. Dr. Silva, chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, took part in the 4th conference of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism which was held in Jerusalem this week.

For the Jews, the term “Holocaust” does not simply denote a single catastrophic era in history, but is a grim metaphor for the meaning of Jewish history. The “Holocaust” lies at the heart of the Jewish experience of time itself. One is either anxiously awaiting persecution, experiencing persecution, recovering from it, or living in a period that is a temporary reprieve from it … Thus the “reality” of the Holocaust is inextricably part of the myth in which it is woven — and for which myth it serves as further confirmatory evidence for the timeless Jewish theme that the world is in conspiracy to annihilate them, one way or another, at least eventually.

Germany has found that it has 1.5 million fewer people than was generally assumed, following the first census since reunification in 1990. The new data revealed a population of 80.2 million, the federal statistics office Destatis said … The total number of foreigners is 6.2 million – 1.1 million fewer than had been assumed. They make up 7.7% of the total population. The number of residents from a non-German background is 15 million – about 19% of the total. Hamburg has the highest proportion of ethnically non-German residents, at 27.5%. The figure for the capital, Berlin, is 23.9%.

… A new book has revealed the dark side of Europe’s liberation after the Second World War. Professor Mary Louise Roberts, from the University of Wisconsin, said within months of D-Day ordinary French women came to fear their American ‘liberators’. She tells how, by the summer of 1944, large numbers of women in Normandy filed complaints about rapes by US soldiers. And their arrival prompted a wave of crime all over France, with American soldiers caught committing robberies and petty thefts … The locals of Le Havre were shocked by the soldiers’ behaviour and wrote letters of protest to their mayor.

… An explosive new book published by an American academic sensationally debunks that myth. In What Soldiers Do, Professor Mary Louise Roberts of the University of Wisconsin argues that American GIs committed rape thousands of times during the War … Throughout the summer of 1944, from the moment they had pushed back the Germans during the D-Day landings in June, the Americans unleashed throughout northern France, in the words of Professor Roberts, a ‘tsunami of male lust’. ‘Normandy women launched a wave of rape accusations against American soldiers,’ Roberts writes …

… The Jewish state has now largely alienated its former friends and supporters in Europe. Its all-important American patron and protector suffers from budgetary bloat, political constipation, diplomatic enervation, and strategic myopia … Israel is now known around the world for the Kafkaesque tyranny of its checkpoint army in the Occupied Territories, its periodic maiming and slaughter of Lebanese and Gazan civilians, its blatant racial and religious bigotry, the zealotry and scofflaw behavior of its settlers, its theology of ethnic cleansing, and its exclusionary religious dogmatism … Official America’s passionate attachment to Israel has become a very salient part of U.S. political pathology.

… We are in the midst of a horrifying economic decline that is the result of decades of very bad decisions … At the same time that we have been running up all of this debt, our economic infrastructure and our ability to produce wealth has been absolutely gutted. Since 2001, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities and millions of good jobs have been shipped overseas. Our share of global GDP declined from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed is at a record low, and the percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at a record high.

One country, two religions and three very telling pictures: The empty pews at churches just yards from an overcrowded mosque. Two photos show Sunday morning services in churches in East London. The third shows worshippers gathered for Friday midday prayers outside a nearby mosque / … What these pictures suggest is that, on current trends, Christianity in this country is becoming a religion of the past, and Islam is one of the future. … It is estimated that in just 20 years, there will be more active Muslims in this country than churchgoers – an idea which even half a century ago would have been utterly unthinkable.

… Their emblem might be a lavish new movie of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Two of the main characters, as Fitzgerald wrote, “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess.” The “mess” left by George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq is a sectarian war, the bombs of 7/7 and now a man waving a bloody meat cleaver in Woolwich. Bush has retreated back into his Mickey Mouse “presidential library and museum,” and Tony Blair into his jackdaw travels and his money. Their “mess” is a crime of epic proportions, wrote Von Sponeck …

… Now comes a poll about perceptions of the war which, notwithstanding the above, shows public perception wildly at odds with reality. By common consent the war cost at the very, very least, 100,000 Iraqi lives and the figure may well be several times that. Yet the poll, by ComRes shows the following in establishing public perceptions of the Iraqi death toll since the invasion of Iraq in 2003: Two-thirds (66 per cent) of the public estimate that 20,000 or fewer civilians and combatants have died as a consequence of the war in Iraq since 2003.

It was a fleeting moment of friendship across the battlelines which now stands as testament to the unwavering spirit of human kinship that not even savage warfare could extinguish. But newly discovered letters sent from the trenches of the Western Front have cast new light on the famous Christmas Day truce of 1914, when the guns of First World War fell silent and sworn enemies put hostilities aside to play a game of football … The Christmas Day truce saw more than 100,000 British and German soldiers lower their guns and leave the trenches to exchange gifts and play football in the mud of No Man’s Land.

… That atrocities were committed by the Allies against Germans and non-combatant civilians on both the Eastern and Western fronts is not often acknowledged. In large measure this reflects the fact that “victors write the history.” … POWs, whether Germans or Axis allies, were often shot out of hand, or shortly after they had been questioned. At Feodosiya, on the Black Sea, wounded soldiers were drenched with water and then left on the beaches to freeze to death … When the Red Army invaded German territory in late 1944, civilians who had been unable to flee before their advance were condemned to undergo a regime of ferocious brutality. At such towns as Goldap, Gumbinnen, and Nemmersdorf, even children were raped before being murdered by Russian soldiers.

The Anti-Defamation League received a $7.5 million grant to launch a global anti-Semitism index. In a statement Thursday announcing the grant [from an anonymous or undisclosed source], which will be paid over three years, the ADL said it would “significantly expand” the organization’s polling on global anti-Semitism. … In its first year, the project will poll and measure anti-Semitic attitudes in 50 countries. More countries will be added as time goes on, the ADL said in a statement. Pollsters will conduct face-to-face, telephone or online surveys in the native language of each country.

… Adolf Hitler was a formidable political organizer who took over a miniscule Bavarian debating club and turned it into the largest political party in Germany … When he became Chancellor, Hitler proved a formidable statesman, transforming Germany with a virtually bloodless revolution and recovering German lands and pride through a series of deft foreign policy triumphs until the British and French started a World War to stop him … Stolfi points out again and again that Hitler refused to behave like a politician. Hitler never compromised on basic principles … This book is even more remarkable because it is the work of a mainstream military historian.

The “standard” biographies of Adolf Hitler are inadequate and fundamentally flawed, says American historian Russell Stolfi in a remarkable new book, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny. The mass media and even supposedly scholarly works portray the German leader as a monstrous, criminal demagogue who was driven by irrational hatred and lust for power. In fact, contends Stolfi, Hitler was a prophetic, messianic and visionary figure, who should be understood along with such personalities as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Mohammed and Jesus.

… Kennedy always remained convinced of what he believed to be the Jews’ corrupt, malignant, and profound influence in American culture and politics. “The Democratic [party] policy of the United States is a Jewish production,” Kennedy told a British reporter near the end of 1939 …
 

… Tens of thousands of tons of material are involved. It is estimated that over a million separate items must be handled, and that they are, very likely, practically all the scientific, industrial and military secrets of Nazi Germany. One Washington official has called it “the greatest single source of this type of material in the world, the first orderly exploitation of an entire country’s brain-power.” … This one war secret alone, many American steel men believe, will revolutionize dozens of our metal fabrication industries. In textiles the war secrets collection has produced so many revelations that American textile men are a little dizzy … Army Air Force experts declare publicly that in rocket power and guided missiles the Nazis were ahead of us by at least ten years.

The neoconservatives are already in hot pursuit of Human Smoke [by Nicholson Baker] … Where, then, lies Baker’s offense? Rather than write a standard historical narrative, he presents on each page a separate fact, often taken from contemporary newspaper accounts. A number of these facts show Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in less than a favorable light, and this has proved too much not only for Pryce-Jones but for John Lukacs as well … Franklin Roosevelt rivaled his British counterpart in his disregard for the rules of civilized warfare.

A side of Winston Churchill’s character rarely glimpsed – that of the vengeful, rather than magnanimous, war leader – has emerged in hitherto secret government documents. They reveal that he wanted to take the unprecedented step of sending Adolf Hitler to the electric chair, had he been captured, and was also content to see Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi starve to death during a hunger strike in 1943.

A new book released in Germany claims that former US President John F. Kennedy was an admirer of Adolf Hitler, and believed the Nazi leader would become “one of the most important personalities that ever lived.” The book – “John F. Kennedy Among the Germans” – contains excerpts from the late American leader’s diaries and letters from 1937 to 1945, a period in which he visited Germany three times. The 20-year-old Kennedy, traveling with two fellow Harvard undergrads, was “very taken” with the Nazis, according to Der Spiegel.

… President Obama is to be commended for resisting neocon and liberal interventionist clamors to get us into yet another open-ended war. For we have no vital interest in Assad’s overthrow … As the Sykes-Picot borders disappear and the nations created by the mapmakers of Paris in 1919-1920 disintegrate, a Muslim Thirty Years’ War may be breaking out in the thrice-promised land. It is not, and it should not become, America’s war.

A ten-minute visit and talk with Patrick Buchanan in his library at his home in northern Virginia. The well-known columnist, television commentator and author speaks about Churchill, Hitler and World War II. He shows books he consulted when he was writing his detailed dissident study, “Churchill, Hitler and the `Unnecessary War’.” He also shows his personal copy of Mein Kampf, which he bought when he was eleven years old, and describes Hitler’s “Table Talks” as “fascinating.”

… In his powerful new book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, veteran politician and author Pat Buchanan challenges many historic taboos by claiming that Winston Churchill plunged Britain and its empire, including Canada, into wars whose outcomes were disastrous for all concerned. Other writers, me included, have made the same point for decades, but Buchanan has marshalled a formidable array of facts and historians to support his case … Buchanan’s book strips away lingering war propaganda and shows the cynicism, lust for power and foolishness of the “saintly” Allied war leaders and their “good” war.

… On a recent visit to the USA I picked up two new books that are going to make a lot of people in Britain very angry … We were told that the 1939-45 war was a good war, fought to overthrow a wicked tyrant, that the war in Iraq would be the same, and that those who opposed it were like the discredited appeasers of 1938 … The two books … are Patrick Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler And The Unnecessary War and Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke … Many believe the 1939-45 war was fought to save the Jews from Hitler. No facts support this fond belief. If the war saved any Jews, it was by accident.

Much of the sinister reputation of the Spanish Inquisition, promoted even in major motion pictures, is undeserved. Oxford University lecturer Reginald Trevor Davies, a specialist of Spanish history, confirms this in an article published in the 1957 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica … Edward Peters, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Pennsylvania, has detailed the development and impact of the Inquisition as historical myth.

Are gadgets making us dumber? Two new studies suggest they might be. One found that people who are interrupted by technology score 20 percent lower on a standard cognition test. A second demonstrated that some students, even when on their best behavior, can’t concentrate on homework for more than two minutes without distracting themselves by using social media or writing an email … “Multitasking while doing academic work, which is very, very common among young people, leads to spottier, shallower, less flexible learning,” Paul warned in a recent column.

Dozens of photos of American presidents and other prominent US politicians meeting with major Jewish and Israeli leaders over the years, from President Truman to the present.

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) announced Thursday it was considering taking legal action against the Norwegian publishers of a cartoon depicting religious circumcision, after its President Moshe Kantor denounced the etching for recalling “one by one all the major historical anti-Semitic motifs, the type of which incited attacks and even the mass murder of Jews in the past”. The cartoon, which featured in the daily Dagbladet Tuesday, showed a child being stabbed in the head by a visibly Jewish religious figure carrying a devil’s pitchfork, while another character is positioned cutting off a toe as a mother holds a religious tome dripping in blood.

A top secret list of top Nazi figures to be assassinated ahead of the D-Day landings has been released by the National Archives. The memo titled ‘Assassination Priorities for Overlord’ written by British political officer Charles Peake in 1944 contains names of senior Gestapo officers in France and logistics experts thought vital to German troops. Included on the list are field marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt, Gen Carl Heinrich von Stülpnagel, and members of the Vichy regime.

A recently declassified Foreign Office letter from the Second World War describes a late night drinking session between wartime leaders Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. The memorandum was written by Sir Alexander Cadogan and was part of a highly sensitive document that has only just been declassified. Cadogan also described how Churchill liked to engage his guests at mealtimes with, “irreverent and irresponsible discourse.”

… Riots that began in Husby have spread across Stockholm over the last four nights in scenes reminiscent of London in 2011 and Paris in 2005 – outbursts with their roots in segregation, neglect and poverty … Some 15 percent of the population is foreign born, the highest in the Nordic region … Sweden received 43,900 asylum seekers in 2012, a nearly 50 percent jump from 2011 and the second highest on record. Nearly half were from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. Many native Swedes worry welfare could become unaffordable if the trend continues … The riots appeared organized. Cars were set alight near pedestrian bridges, and youths hurled stones when police and emergency services arrived at the scene.

Who knew tea kettles resembling infamous dictators could be so popular? That’s right, the now-notorious Michael Graves Design Bells and Whistles Tea Kettle, which sparked a social media uproar after a Reddit user noticed it resembled Adolf Hitler, appears to have sold out on J.C. Penney’s website. Or maybe it’s just been pulled … Shoppers looking for the product, now dubbed the “Hitler tea kettle” by the internet, will have to head to J.C. Penney stores. Or to eBay where one just sold for $199, spotted by New York Magazine. (The kettle is normally priced at $40). The billboard ad, which sparked the controversy, has also been removed, according to CBS Los Angeles.

In the early morning hours of July 4, 1984, the offices of the Institute for Historical Review in Torrance, southern California, were destroyed in a devastating arson attack … For a long time the perpetrators’ identity remained a mystery. It was only 18 years later that responsibility for the attack was publicly and authoritatively established … Based on its investigation of the crime, the report notes, in December 1984 the Torrance Police Department submitted the case to the District Attorney’s office for criminal complaints against Irv Rubin, Earl Krugel, Michael Canale and Danny Nichols on arson and conspiracy charges. But no arrest was ever made.

This booklet documents the background and criminal activities of Jewish Zionist terrorist groups, and especially the Jewish Defense League. Particular emphasis is given here to terror — including murder — against “thought criminals” who question the Holocaust story that six million Jews were systematically killed during the Second World War … This terror campaign culminated in a devastating arson attack on the Institute’s offices and warehouse in Torrance on July 4, 1984 — the anniversary of American independence. Damage in the attack, carried out in the early morning hours of the 4th, was estimated at $400,000.

Fifty years ago this May, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened a series of unprecedented hearings investigating the clandestine activities of foreign agents active in the United States. The investigation focused most intensively on the operatives and financing of key Israel lobbying organizations such as the American Zionist Council, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the American Section of the quasi-governmental Jerusalem-based Jewish Agency. Thanks to a secret memo only declassified in 2010, the public may now know what fears motivated the hearings.

The Federation of French-speaking Students in Belgium (FEF), a body boasting some 120,000 students in the country, has called for “a freezing of relations with Israeli universities.” According to Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir, the move was initiated by the University of Louvain (UCL) … The FEF, therefore, believes that “it’s now time to cut ties with Israeli places of learning, whether they be based around student exchanges or research.” The boycott motion was approved by 85 percent of those able to vote”. Six percent voted against, and nine percent abstained.

Muslim leaders from around the world have taken part in an unprecedented trip to Germany and Poland to see and hear for themselves about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust. The eleven imams, sheiks and religious teachers from nine countries … “The main aim is to get Muslims who are leaders all over the world, particularly in the Middle East, to acknowledge the reality of what happened here and to be able to teach it to the people that they lead,” said trip organiser Rabbi Jack Bemporad, who is executive director of the US-based Center for Interreligious Understanding.

A fund for Jewish victims of Nazi crimes says it has reached an agreement with the German government for Berlin to provide some $1 billion in homecare for victims. A spokeswoman for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany said Tuesday that about 56,000 survivors in about 46 different countries will receive financial support under the agreement for a four-year-period from 2014-2017. Hillary Kessler-Godin, speaking by phone from the fund’s New York office, said the amount of financial aid for each person will depend on individual needs and circumstances.