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… As they say in America, “California is the future.” And the future means endless referendums, paralysis and insolvency … Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election; special interests manipulate the people into voting for ever-lower taxes and higher government spending, sometimes even supporting self-destructive wars … The modern West sees democracy and human rights as the pinnacle of human development. It is a belief premised on an absolute faith … History does not bode well for the American way. Indeed, faith-based ideological hubris may soon drive democracy over the cliff.

America’s insistence that its form of social-political organization is or should the model for the world is arrogant and dangerous hubris, says Eric Li, a Chinese investor and political scientist who was born in Shanghai, and studied in the USA. In this provocative, clearly presented 21- minute talk, he rejects the constantly repeated claim that the mass democratic system that prevails in the US and western Europe is a universally valid model. The Chinese system works much better than the US model, he contends, at least for China. China’s social-political system, he says, has proven to be long term-oriented, pragmatic, meritocratic, and highly adaptable despite the one-party rule.

… Like capitalism itself, America has always been predicated on continuous expansion. It is our national identity, our economic model, the principle that gives our history its shape. It’s also the way we’ve always solved our problems. Our freedom, our Constitution, our democratic spirit, our sense of common history and destiny, all the things that supposedly bind and define us — all have been made possible by endless growth, and all are at risk of disappearing along with it. We crossed an ocean, conquered a continent, and kept right on going. (No wonder we fantasize about colonizing the stars.) But now we’re hitting a wall, and we haven’t got the slightest notion what to do about it.

America’s ever more obvious cultural disintegration and social paralysis, and its erosion of national identity and purpose, are not minor or temporary problems, but are symptoms of a deep-rooted social-political illness and a systemic failure of the country’s democratic-capitalist System. In large measure, this sickness is the predictable, inevitable consequence of America’s basic ideology of “pursuit of happiness” individualism. This ideology, laid out in the US Declaration of Independence, greatly encouraged this country’s astonishing dynamism, growth, inventiveness and prosperity, especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But the core outlook that once contributed to this country’s development is incapable of sustaining a stable and healthy society.

In Slovenia, there have been controversial celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the “Domobranci,” the country’s Home Guard during World War II. The Domobranci pledged allegiance to the Nazis towards the end of the war. One of the speakers at a ceremonies in the village of Rovte was leader of the right-wing opposition and former prime minister, Janez Jansa. It was the first time a mainstream party had attended a remembrance ceremony for the Domobranci.

… In the US, the flag taken into battle by the Confederate states in the Civil War is politically charged — not a week goes by without its appearance sparking upset … African Americans, especially older ones, are traumatised when they see the flag, says Salim Khalfani, who has lived in Richmond for nearly 40 years … After the war, the flag was primarily used for commemorative purposes at graves, memorial services and soldier reunions, but from the perspective of African Americans, the history and heritage that they see is hate, suppression and white supremacy, says Goldfield …

… These [44] stooges of AIPAC have signed a letter in their words “urging President Obama to increase the pressure on Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.” I denounce every one of these members of Congress as irresponsible liars, because Iran has no nuclear weapons program to dismantle. Every person in this list should be removed from office for taking on AIPAC’s hard line on Iran. They are irresponsible not only in lying but in acting with haste.

Haaretz [newspaper, in Israel] reported today that there are more than 6,800 arms exporters working in Israel. As of the end of 2012, there were “6,684 individuals dealing with security exports in 1,006 companies and 312 independent businesses. The Israeli Defence Export Controls Agency issued 1,900 marketing permits and 8,716 export permits.” Apparently some 6,684 Israelis are making a living selling death around the world. They are serving an industry that produces more than 150,000 jobs.

President Richard Nixon is heard in the last set of his White House tapes making anti-Semitic statements in discussions with visitors to the Oval Office and by telephone … In a phone discussion in mid-April [1973] with Henry Kissinger, a Jew who at the time was the national security adviser, Nixon expresses concerns that Jews would torpedo an upcoming U.S.-Soviet summit … He continued: “They put the Jewish interest above America’s interest, and it’s about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he’s an American first and a Jew second.” … Nixon accused the Jews of holding American foreign policy “hostage to Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union,” and added that “the American people are not going to let them destroy our foreign policy — never!”

… With the secret taping system on autopilot — seven microphones planted in wall sconces and the president’s desk — Nixon largely forgot about it, and let loose with the raw, gossipy, conniving and too-clever words that ultimately toppled his presidency and forever changed the way Americans think about their presidents and their government … In the tapes, Americans began to see their presidents as “less glorious, less heroic, less romantic — either more like us, or more like people we don’t like,” says presidential historian Julian Zelizer of Princeton University.

… The U.S. government for decades has supported violent regimes in the Middle East and North Africa: from Saudi Arabia’s corrupt and brutal monarchy, to the Egyptian military dictatorship, to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to Israel’s unconscionable occupation of Palestine. American administrations, Republican and Democrat, have directly inflicted death and suffering on people in the Muslim world — through the 1990s economic sanctions on Iraq, for example … The best way to dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of terrorism is to dramatically change U.S. foreign policy — from imperial intervention to strict nonintervention.

… Iran’s leaders need not be paranoid to see themselves as a principal target of external meddling in Syria. While there seem to be as many interests being pursued – as there are rag-tag groups pursuing them – Tehran is not likely to see the common interests of Israel and the U.S. as very complicated. Both appear determined to exploit the chaotic duel among the thugs in Syria as an opportunity to deal a blow to Hezbollah and Hamas in Israel’s near-frontier and to isolate Iran still further, and perhaps even advance Israel’s ultimate aim of “regime change” in Tehran.

… To pave the way for a new chapter in Iran’s relations with the West, Rohani has already proved his wisdom by his choice of foreign minister. Mohammad-Javad Zarif, Iran’s former ambassador to the UN, has already been labeled as “Tehran’s leading connoisseur of the U.S. political elite.” All this undoubtedly presents the most suited prerequisite towards the aim of alleviating the multi-level liability that sanctions constitute. But at the end, it is the responsibility of those who have imposed the sanctions to initiate the process of their removal. The ball is now in the West’s court. It would truly be the “height of irresponsibility” if one missed this opportunity offered by the Iranian people who have already paid dearly for an utterly miscalculated transatlantic “coercive diplomacy.”

Every time a liberal sees someone behaving badly they sigh and say, “They just need education,” but the solution to America’s problems is less education, not more. If we got over this myth that everyone needs infinite academia, we would have less unemployment, more manufacturing, a stronger economy, less student debt, and less school tax. The economy would be stronger and we would all be happier … When everybody’s special, nobody is. Getting everyone into college means you have to dumb down the curriculum until it is nothing but meaningless drivel that has no application in the real world.

Excerpts of an interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad featured in a new documentary. The interview, made on Feb. 20, 2013, was conducted in English but later overdubbed in German for broadcast on the ARD television network. In this clip, Mr. Assad’s remarks can be heard in the original English.

A court in Chicago has rejected a case against the National Bank of Hungary and Hungarian state railways MAV filed by Holocaust survivors and their heirs seeking compensation for property of victims of the Holocaust, the National Development Ministry said on Saturday. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said the plaintiffs must first seek legal recourse in Hungary, before they do so in the United States. The court did not accept the plaintiffs’ arguments that Hungarian courts are not independent and could not ensure a just procedure. It said the claim was based on “pure speculation”, the ministry said in a statement.

Barack Obama’s plans for air strikes against Syria were thrown into disarray on Thursday night after the British parliament unexpectedly rejected a motion designed to pave the way to authorising the UK’s participation in military action. The White House was forced to consider the unpalatable option of taking unilateral action against the regime of Bashar al- Assad … Although Britain’s support was not a prerequisite for US action, the Obama administration was left exposed without the backing of its most loyal ally, which has taken part in every major US military offensive in recent years.

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’.”

… While a U.S.-led attack appears increasingly likely, the legal underpinnings for lethal action remain ambiguous. Congress won’t formally declare war. The last time it did that was 1941, when America entered World War II … All of which add to the complications now confronting the White House. “The president and his close advisers talk a lot about international law,” Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said in an interview Monday, “so I don’t see how the president can ignore that now without seeming to be hypocritical.” The Obama administration, though, has already shown a willingness to dance around legal restraints.

More than 100 lawmakers, including 21 Democrats, have signed a letter that says President Obama would violate the Constitution by striking Syria without first getting authorization from Congress. A total of 140 lawmakers had signed the letter as of Thursday, highlighting bipartisan interest and growing momentum in ensuring a role for Congress in any decision to use force in Syria. The letter has yet to be sent to the White House. “Engaging our military in Syria when no direct threat to the United States exists and without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution,” states the letter …

… In 2008, President Obama, when he was a candidate for President, had this question- and- answer exchange with the Boston Globe: … “OBAMA: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” … Given that not even the most ardent interventionists for Syria contend that the bombing is necessary for US national security, how can a military attack on Syria without Congressional approval possibly be reconciled with that position? … As is so often the case, there is a much starker debate between candidate Obama and President Obama than there is between the leadership of both political parties in Washington …

In a sometimes passionate debate in the British House of Commons, MP George Galloway speaks with fervor against cooperation with the US in launching a military attack against Syria. “Who are you to decide that you will launch a war?,” he rhetorically asks.

Jewish groups in Vancouver say they are considering suing TransLink for accepting controversial political advertisements showing the “disappearance of Palestine due to Israeli occupation over the past 66 years.” On Tuesday, a group called the Palestine Awareness Coalition announced the launch of 15 bus posters and a large mural in a central Vancouver SkyTrain station, that depict the territory of Palestine steadily shrinking into the state of Israel in a succession of dated maps … Jewish leaders including Mitchell Gropper, chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, called the ads a provocative attack on Jewish people that will incite hatred.

… It costs $59,712 per year to attend Williams [College]. For what? Politically correct hysteria, buckets of medical waste that are mistaken as art works, and conferences like “The Queerness of Childhood.” … The gassy, mephitic, overinflated travesty that is the higher education establishment cannot go on forever. Therefore it won’t. A collateral benefit will be the eclipse of these exercises in pathology masquerading as scholarship. It’s not just Williams, or Bowdoin. The disease is endemic. That is the problem. But it is also the reason it won’t prevail.

… The remarkable thing about the Beetle is not just the sheer number of sales, but the fact that a car developed from an idea of Adolf Hitler’s was to become as loved by Californian surf dudes, college kids and free lovin’ hippies as it was desired by fervent Nazis. Herbie – the anthropomorphic star of six Hollywood movies beginning with The Love Bug in 1968 – was the same car German families had saved up for before Hitler’s invasion of Poland dashed their hopes. Ultimately, the sheer quality, along with the affordability, reliability, economy and distinct look and feel of the Beetle, ensured its success.

The Mercedes-Benz 540K cabriolet is an absolute rarity, with fewer than 200 manufactured before 1939. Now, one of the huge, eight-cylinder convertibles has turned up in the US state of North Carolina … The owners believe that during World War II the convertible belonged to Hermann Göring, one of the leading members of the Nazi party. Göring was the commander-in-chief of WWII Germany’s Luftwaffe, or air force … It seems the vehicle was confiscated by the US Army near Hitler’s residence in the Bavarian Alps just days before the war ended. US Army Colonel John A. Heintges subsequently used it as his own private vehicle.

More white people died in the United States last year than were born, a surprising slump coming more than a decade before the Census Bureau says that the ranks of white Americans will likely drop with every passing year. Population estimates for 2012 released Thursday show what’s known as a natural decrease … Although the percentage is small, several demographers said they are not aware of another time in U.S. history — not even during the Depression or wars — when there was such shrinkage among the dominant racial group. No other group showed a similar falloff.

… Who deputized the United States to walk the streets of the world pistol-whipping bad actors. Where does our imperial president come off drawing “red lines” and ordering nations not to cross them? Neither the Security Council nor Congress nor NATO nor the Arab League has authorized war on Syria. Who made Barack Obama the Wyatt Earp of the Global Village? … Why did the United States so swiftly dismiss Assad’s offer to have U.N. inspectors — already in Damascus investigating old charges he or the rebels used poison gas — go to the site of the latest incident? Do we not want to know the truth?

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has finally found something that Americans like even less than Congress: the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Syria. Only nine percent of respondents said that the Obama administration should intervene militarily in Syria; a RealClearPolitics poll average finds Congress has a 15 percent approval rating, making the country’s most hated political body almost twice as popular … This is the lowest support for intervention since the poll began tracking opinion on the issue. The survey also found that 60 percent oppose intervention outright, with the rest, perhaps sagely, saying that they don’t know.

… The Obama administration has ruled that Assad allowed UN chemical weapons inspectors into Syria, and to celebrate their arrival unleashed a chemical weapons attack mostly against women and children only 15 kilometers away from the inspectors’ hotel. If you don’t believe it, you subscribe to a conspiracy theory. Evidence? Who cares about evidence? Assad’s offer of access for the inspectors came ”too late” … If this all looks like Iraq 2.0 that’s because it is. Time to fix the facts around the policy – all over again. Time for weapons of mass deception – all over again.

After initially insisting that Syria give United Nations investigators unimpeded access to the site of an alleged nerve gas attack, the administration of President Barack Obama reversed its position on Sunday and tried unsuccessfully to get the U.N. to call off its investigation … The sudden reversal and overt hostility toward the U.N. investigation, which coincides with indications that the administration is planning a major military strike against Syria in the coming days, suggests that the administration sees the U.N. as hindering its plans for an attack.

Even as racial barriers have tumbled and the nation has grown wealthier and better educated, the economic disparities separating blacks and whites remain as wide as they were when marchers assembled on the Mall in 1963. When it comes to household income and wealth, the gaps between blacks and whites have widened. On other measures, the gaps are roughly the same as they were four decades ago. The poverty rate for blacks, for instance, continues to be about three times that of whites.

Israel has been forced to issue a formal apology to Japan over offensive comments posted on Facebook by its head of online public diplomacy. The apology followed a complaint by the Japanese ambassador to Israel, Hideo Sato, after senior government official Daniel Seaman disparaged commemorations for the victims of the 1945 atomic bombs, causing a wave of protests in Japan. “I am sick of the Japanese, ‘Human Rights’ and ‘Peace’ groups the world over holding their annual self-righteous commemorations for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims,” Seaman wrote on his Facebook page. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the consequence of Japanese aggression. You reap what you sow.”

… The classified documents, which Spiegel has seen, demonstrate how systematically the Americans target other countries and institutions like the European Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and the United Nations. They show how the NSA infiltrated the Europeans’ internal computer network between New York and Washington, used US embassies abroad to intercept communications and eavesdropped on video conferences of UN diplomats. The surveillance is intensive and well-organized — and it has little or nothing to do with counter-terrorism.

The U.S. National Security Agency has bugged the United Nations’ New York headquarters, Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly said on Sunday in a report on U.S. spying that could further strain relations between Washington and its allies. Citing secret U.S. documents obtained by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel said the files showed how the United States systematically spied on other states and institutions. Der Spiegel said the European Union and the U.N.’s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), were among those targeted by U.S. intelligence agents.

Holocaust deniers and other groups that spout hate won’t be able to sell their merchandise through MasterCard Worldwide, according to Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who is applauding a decision by the credit card giant to stop doing business with such zany entities. Hikind (D-Borough Park-Midwood) recently met top executives of MasterCard to thank them for their addressing what he called “this deeply hurtful issue.” Last month, it was discovered that eight organizations were selling racist, anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial products, including books and videos, via websites through credit card sales.

The U.S. Department of Education has exonerated two more UC [University of California] campuses — Irvine and Santa Cruz — of allegations that they fostered anti-Semitic climates by allowing protests against Israeli policies and other incidents that Jewish students contended amounted to illegal harassment. UC Berkeley announced Tuesday similar findings that ended an investigation by the department’s Office for Civil Rights into complaints by Jewish students. Related probes at UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz also finished with findings that the schools were not at fault, officials said …

The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned. In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality and about the same share (49%) say that “a lot more” remains to be done. Blacks are much more downbeat than whites about the pace of progress toward a color-blind society. They are also more likely to say that blacks are treated less fairly than whites by police, the courts, public schools and other key community institutions.

… Israel has a vested interest in making the terrorist threat appear more real than it actually is and also to present itself as the only reliable partner of the United States in the war against global terror. It also profits substantially as its companies and former security officers have exploited their “real experience” credentials to entrench themselves in U.S. homeland security at all levels. With the aid of the domestic Israel Lobby, Tel Aviv has become adept at selling a product, which includes the false depiction of Israel as the victim in the Middle East.

US forces readied to strike Syria on Tuesday, as the West insisted its goal was not regime change but to punish the Assad government for unleashing chemical warfare on civilians. The White House said there was “no doubt” that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces were to blame for an attack which killed hundreds of Syrians last week, and promised to provide declassified evidence this week to prove it. With military action seen as a near certainty and expected within days, Syria vehemently vowed to defend itself with what it dubbed “surprise” measures, while allies Russia and Iran warned that the use of force would have dire consequences.

As many as 50,000 stray dogs roam the streets and vacant homes of bankrupt Detroit, replacing residents, menacing humans who remain and overwhelming the city’s ability to find them homes or peaceful deaths. Dens of as many as 20 canines have been found in boarded-up homes in the community of about 700,000 that once pulsed with 1.8 million people … Arrington said when she visited Detroit in October, “It was almost post-apocalyptic, where there are no businesses, nothing except people in houses and dogs running around.”

Massive protests are expected tomorrow as disgraced historian and ‘Holocaust denier’ David Irving is set to give a lecture at a secret location in the city. The event is causing a stir among anti-fascist organisations who are desperately searching for information on the whereabouts of the lecture in order to assemble and protest. However, Mr Irving told MM that all they are doing is ‘protesting the truth’ and that they should ‘get a life’ … Mr Irving rejected the notion that he was a holocaust denier but Labour Councillor Howard Balkind believes that this is his just a form of manipulation.

Inner beauty was the theme of the second annual Miss Holocaust Survivor beauty contest, as 14 finalists aged 70 to 94 walked down the runway and told their courageous stories Thursday evening in Haifa. Shoshana Kolmer, 94, who survived Auschwitz and a four-day death march in the snow, was crowned winner of the contest. Kolmer’s message to the audience was to “study the Shoah [Holocaust] and never forget it,” adding that it is important to “pass on the information to the next generation so they never forget there was a Holocaust.”

… Based on my personal experience, Rowhani is a polite and open character. Unlike outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he surrounds himself with very skillful and experienced diplomats. But there should be no doubt that he is a man of the regime – a realist and moderate member of the Islamic Republic’s political elite – not a representative of the opposition. And, of course, he backs Iran’s nuclear program … It would be the height of irresponsibility not to seize the unexpected opportunity created by Rowhani’s election with all the strength, good faith, and creativity we can muster.

… The warmongering elements [in the US] are apparently concerned about reduction of problems and are clearly doing their utmost to resort to any pretext in order to intensify the crisis with Iran. The important point is that decision-makers in Europe and the United States should come to grips with the real nature and goals of warmongers. On this basis, they should not allow a warmongering and tension-seeking agenda – which aims to put unjust pressures which have no place in international law on the Iranian nation – to prevent them from taking advantage of opportunities which can be used to find solutions to existing problems.

The Obama administration is lining up to repeat, in its dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran under Hassan Rohani’s presidency, many of America’s past mistakes in nuclear diplomacy with Tehran … If the West wants to deal with Iran on the basis of international law, if it wants to resolve the nuclear issue on the basis of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, recognizing Iran’s right to enrich uranium under international safeguards, Rohani is an ideal interlocutor.

… Olson’s new book, Those Angry Days, shines the spotlight on the national debate [1940-1941] over whether to go to war in Europe. President Franklin Roosevelt led the interventionist charge, while aviator Charles Lindbergh became an unofficial leader of the isolationist movement. Because of Lindbergh’s fervent isolationism, history has sometimes remembered him as a Nazi sympathizer, but Olson says that accusation is not quite accurate … “This major isolationist organization … America First was founded by a bunch of Yale students — Yale law students and Yale undergraduates — and among them were young men who went on to have incredibly illustrious careers.”

… In truth, Roosevelt was doing everything he could to involve the United States into the war. Knowing that Congress would never declare war without an attack on the United States, he attempted to induce a German attack on American ships. When that failed, he turned to the Pacific for a “backdoor” to war, with policies designed to corner, maneuver, manipulate, and humiliate the Japanese rulers into firing the first shot.

A delegation of 23 teachers from across the United Kingdom took part in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ten-day teacher training program at Yad Vashem last week. The program, which began on August 2 and ended on Sunday, was designed to “offer teachers the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the history of the Holocaust in order to develop their skills to effectively deliver Holocaust education in their classrooms.” … Lectures focused on topics such as theological responses to the Holocaust, the “Final Solution” and everyday life in the Warsaw Ghetto, among others.

Lurid falsehood and outright lies are routinely promoted, even by supposedly reputable media, as part of the seemingly endless campaign of “Holocaust Remembrance.” A recent item in Canada’s most prestigious daily newspaper about the wartime German concentration camp of Buchenwald is a good example. Specific falsehoods are cited, and discredited. Such historical deceit is a routine part of the relentless “Holocaust” campaign, which plays such an important role in our society because it’s an expression of Jewish-Zionist power, and is meant to further Jewish-Zionist interests.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton left a voicemail for a lobbyist in which she brazenly begs for a “contribution.” It’s a not-so-subtle reminder of how legalized bribery is the standard operating procedure in Washington. Until money is taken out of politics, this kind of corruption will only get worse and worse. Host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

The conviction and lynching of Leo Frank a century ago galvanized the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, the centenary of Frank’s murder trial is galvanizing neo-Nazis. A slew of anti-Semitic websites, some professionally designed and purporting to be balanced online archives with URLs … are seeking to attract curious researchers and to revise history … Leo Frank was convicted of the murder of 13-yearold Mary Phagan in Atlanta in 1913. Two years later, after his death sentence was reduced to life in prison, a group of men kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him. Frank has been a Jewish cause célèbre ever since, with many journalists and scholars questioning his guilt.

… While America’s achievements may inspire awe, America’s culture, suffused with feminist and Hollywood values, evokes revulsion. Millions of Muslims are willing to die to keep America and American values out of their societies. How many Americans are willing to fight and die over there to force them on Arab peoples? … Millions of Muslims are willing to fight to drive us out of their part of the world. How many Americans are willing to send our sons to die for secular democracy and American values in their part of the world?

Has John Kerry no shame? … Any other “statesman” involved in any other dispute who told an occupied people that if they didn’t make peace their occupiers would steal even more of their land, would be regarded as an outcast, a fellow thief, a potential criminal … Israel has been running rings around cowardly US administrations for decades, ignoring Washington’s squirming embarrassment every time it went for another land grab on someone else’s property.

A world league table today revealed the countries which view the most pornography. The global leaders in porn are the U.S, taking a 60 per cent share of global internet pornography. Two thirds of all U.S porn sites are hosted in California with the country hosting a total of 4.2 million domains containing porn. Meanwhile, the famously liberal Netherlands host over a quarter of the porn, with 1.8 million domains carrying an astonishing 187 million pages of porn.

The era of CIA-supported coups dawned in dramatic fashion: An American general flies to Iran and meets with “old friends”; days later, the Shah orders Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh to step down. When the Iranian military hesitates, millions of dollars are funneled into Tehran to buy off Mossadegh’s supporters and finance street protests. The military, recognizing that the balance of power has shifted, seizes the prime minister, who will live the rest of his life under house arrest. It was, as one CIA history puts it, “an American operation from beginning to end,” and one of many U.S.-backed coups to take place around the world during the second half of the 20th century.

Iranian distrust of the United States is rooted in a legacy of arrogant, belligerent US policy. During World War II, British and Soviet military forces invaded neutral Iran. The country’s leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi, trustingly appealed to President Franklin Roosevelt, who had solemnly proclaimed devotion to the principles of freedom and respect for national sovereignty. But Roosevelt rejected the plea and sought to justify the aggression, which he backed to help the Soviet Union against Germany and to support British imperial interests. And twelve years later, US and British officials, acting through the CIA, organized the violent overthrew of Iran’s democratically elected government in a coup that cost hundreds of lives.

Sixty years ago this Monday, on August 19, 1953, modern Iranian history took a critical turn when a U.S.- and British-backed coup overthrew the country’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The event’s reverberations have haunted its orchestrators over the years, contributing to the anti-Americanism that accompanied the Shah’s ouster in early 1979.. It has taken almost six decades for the U.S. intelligence community to acknowledge openly that it was behind the controversial overthrow. Published here today — and on the website of the National Security Archive, which obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act — is a brief excerpt from The Battle for Iran, an internal report prepared in the mid-1970s by an in-house CIA historian.

A new study led by Tel Aviv University researchers finds that the Holocaust education trips Israeli high school students take to Poland every year can trigger mental health problems. About a third of the psychiatric professionals surveyed in this pilot study said they had treated teenagers for psychological problems arising from the Holocaust education trips. While most of the teenagers were treated for less severe symptoms such as anxiety, adjustment, and mood disorders, reports also cited hospitalization, post-traumatic- stress disorder, and psychosis.

… A total of around 4,000 German cities, towns and communities honored Hitler during the twelve years of Nazi rule. Most, however, removed his name immediately after Nazi Germany collapsed … Other towns, though, have elected to keep the Führer on the books. Lanskroun, for example, a once-German town that is now located in the Czech Republic chose not to revoke honorary citizenship for Hitler in 2007 with the mayor saying at the time: “It simply reflects the times back then.” In 2008, the Bavarian town of Nittendorf-Etterzhausen likewise declined to remove the Nazi leader, though the justification smacked more of denial than nuance.

The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow. On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.

Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently declassified CIA documents on the United States’ role in the controversial operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq’s ouster has long been public knowledge, but today’s posting includes what is believed to be the CIA’s first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup. The explicit reference to the CIA’s role appears in a copy of an internal history, The Battle for Iran, dating from the mid-1970s.

Sixty years ago this week, on Aug. 19, 1953, the United States, in collaboration with Britain, successfully staged a coup in Iran to overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh that a newly declassified CIA document reveals was designed to preserve the control of Western companies over Iran’s rich oil fields … Tragically, the coup that overthrew Mossadegh also crushed Iran’s brief experiment in democracy and ushered in six decades of brutal dictatorship followed by religious oppression and regional instability. If Iran is a problem, as the United States persistently and loudly insists, it is a problem of our making.

The Eisenhower White House in 1953 planned, directed and financed the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, according to the CIA agent who coordinated and carried out the top-secret mission in that country. In an exclusive interest with The Times, Kermit Roosevelt, former Central Intelligence Agency bureau chief in the Mideast, detailed for the first time the role of the CIA in the coup that led to the return of the pro-Western Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power.

A noted British historian discusses how World War Two is still an “raw open wound” for many Europeans, and it was not a simple clash between the forces of “good” and “evil.” Keith Lowe, author of “Savage Continent,” also says that in many ways World War II was a European civil war. In this lecture, given in April 2013 in Erfurt, Germany, Lowe also says that mainstream historians have often inflated figures of victims for political purposes. Runtime: 50 mins.

… The American public has long thought of the Allied effort in World War II as a “great crusade” that pitted good and decency against Nazi evil. Even after all these years, it is likely that the last thing the public wants to learn is that vast and unspeakable wrongs were committed by both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during the war and its aftermath. It flies in the face of that reluctance for MacDonogh to tell “the brutal history” at great length [in his book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation]. That willingness is commendable for its intellectual bravery.

… So what’s the policy option? Acknowledge the failure. Fold the cards. Try something different. Whatever the problems roiling the Middle East, weapons sales won’t fix them. Nor will proxy wars. Nor will the further commitment of U.S. troops. Egypt today offers Washington the opportunity to demilitarize U.S. policy toward this region. Such a change is long overdue. Terminating further assistance to Egypt’s army will mark a necessary first step. Wisdom lies in allowing others to determine their own destiny so that we may pursue our own.

American presidential candidates routinely debase themselves in an eager scramble for Jewish money and votes, as this 2011 RT television report shows.

As Israel and the Jewish-Zionist lobby in the US press for war against Iran, awareness is growing everywhere about the realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the harmful impact of Israel’s policies, and the crucial role of the Jewish lobby in setting US foreign policy. A bold statement by travel guru Rick Steves (“I’ve been duped”) about deceitful US media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a stern warning by German author Günter Grass about the danger to world peace posed by Israel, are just two recent signs that attitudes are changing, even in countries that have been subjected to decades of relentless pro-Zionist propaganda.

The growing influence on the American right of Ayn Rand, the libertarian right’s answer to Scientology’s novelist-philosopher L. Ron Hubbard, is a wonder to behold. When she died in 1982, Alissa Rosenbaum – the original name of the Russian-born novelist – was the leader of a marginal cult, the Objectivists, who had long been cast out of the mainstream American right … What should we conclude from the fact that Ayn Rand’s works are admired by 21st century American rightists like Paul Ryan who have forgotten, if they ever knew about, sophisticated conservative intellectuals like Chambers and Buckley?

… A history of Europe in the years directly following World War II, when many European cities were in ruins, millions of people were displaced, and vengeance killings were common, as was rape. The book [Savage Continent, by Keith Lowe] has just won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History from the English branch of PEN, and its narrative flies in the face of what we are used to hearing about that period … “… [In the US, the war has been] seen as … the good war … Things seemed nice and clear-cut then. Now all of this is, of course, a big myth. Things weren’t clear-cut … But it’s nice for us; it’s cozy for us to remember it this way, because it makes us feel good about who we are and who we’ve become.”

… In Britain we remember the great crusade against the Nazis as our finest hour. But as the historian Keith Lowe shows in an extraordinary, disturbing and powerful new book, Savage Continent, it is time we thought again about the way the war ended. For millions of people across the Continent, he argues, VE Day marked not the end of a bad dream, but the beginning of a new nightmare … In Prague, captured German soldiers were ‘beaten, doused in petrol and burned to death’. In the city’s sports stadium, Russian and Czech soldiers gang-raped German women.

Germany’s defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era that, in many ways, was worse than the destruction wrought by war. In a sobering and courageous new book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the ruined and prostrate Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or starvation.

Prior to the Nixon administration, the United States had never employed its veto power in the U.N. Security Council … Since then [1972, to June 2005], the United States has cast its veto a total of 39 times to shield Israel from Security Council draft resolutions that condemned, deplored, denounced, demanded, affirmed, endorsed, called on and urged Israel to obey the world body.

… Determination to compel Iran’s surrender prompts ever more assiduous efforts by America and its partners to coerce other states into helping them press Tehran. In the process, Western powers violate basic principles of the rules-based regimes governing key dimensions of international security and global commerce. This dynamic makes negotiating plausible solutions with Tehran, on the nuclear issue and other challenges, virtually impossible. It also makes U.S. foreign policy the biggest source of political risk in the global economy. More broadly, hegemonic assertions by America and a few European partners are increasingly at odds with the realities of relative clout in world affairs.

… Ten years ago, anti-interventionists warned that a plunge into the Islamic world would produce what it was designed to prevent. We could create more terrorists than we would kill. For the root of 9/11 was Islamic hatred of America’s perceived domination and a fanatic determination to drive us out of their world. They were over here because we were over there. And if we went over there in even greater force, even more Muslims would rise up to expel us from what is, after all, their neighborhood, not ours. So the anti-interventionists argued … After 58,000 dead we left Vietnam. How many Americans have the Vietnamese killed since we left?

Between 1939 and 1945, shortwave radio transmitters near Berlin broadcast Nazi propaganda in many languages around the world, including Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and Persian programs in Iran … These radio broadcasts suggest that Nazi Arabic-language propaganda helped introduce radical anti-Semitism into the Middle East, where it found common ground with anti-Jewish currents in Islam … An Allied victory, the Nazis warned, would mean Jewish domination of the Arab world and the success of Zionism.

Among the Lufthansa passengers arriving in Berlin on April 5, 1939, was a cheerful, outgoing, dark-haired man in his late 30s. Though evidently a foreigner, he had a good command of the German language and confidently found his way through the crowds at the airport and into the bustling capital of the Third Reich. Yûnus Bahrî, Iraqi journalist and independence activist, had visited Berlin several times before … He was now embarked on quite a different mission: to launch and run Radio Berlin’s first-ever Arabic language service.

In a campaign to improve its image abroad, the Israeli government plans to provide scholarships to hundreds of students at its seven universities in exchange for their making pro-Israel Facebook posts and tweets to foreign audiences. The students making the posts will not reveal online that they are funded by the Israeli government … Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which will oversee the programme, confirmed its launch and wrote that its aim was to “strengthen Israeli public diplomacy and make it fit the changes in the means of information consumption”. The government’s hand is to be invisible to the foreign audiences.

… Roosevelt was not the first or the last American president to lie to the people. But rarely has a major American political figure given a speech as loaded with brazen falsehood as Franklin Roosevelt did in his Navy Day address of October 27, 1941 … Roosevelt went on to reveal that he also had in his possession “another document made in Germany by Hitler’s government. It is a detailed plan to abolish all existing religions — Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike” which Germany will impose “on a dominated world, if Hitler wins.”

… Our moral and cultural elites have put Putin on notice: Get in step with us on homosexual rights — or we may just boycott your Sochi games. What this reveals is the distance America has traveled, morally and culturally, in a few short years, and our amnesia about who we Americans once were, and what it is we once believed. Only yesterday, homosexual sodomy, which Thomas Jefferson said should be treated like rape, was outlawed in many states and same-sex marriage was regarded as an absurdity … When the Socialist regime of Francois Hollande enacted a law endorsing same-sex marriage, a million Frenchmen marched in protest in Paris. Is America on Hollande’s side, or the side of the protesters? …

Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler would be 132 years old today, were he still alive. He was twice awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism during several combat tours in Central America. He took part in World War I, the Banana Wars, and the Boxer rebellion in China. Consequently he became quite the anti-war activist in his older age … If Butler were around today, engagements like Iraq would have him simply astounded … The irony would not be lost on Butler, who toured the U.S. in 1933 giving a speech he called “War is a racket.”

Most of the actual fighting during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front between the Soviet Union and Germany and her allies. The last stages of the war in the East are vividly described by the German journalist and historian, Juergen Thorwald. In Defeat in the East, Thorwald traces the military debacle of the Third Reich and shows what happened to the civilian

The comment by the general who, until recently, ran America’s military command in the Middle East was startling in its bluntness. “I paid a military-security price every day as the commander of CENTCOM because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel,” James Mattis told an elite audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colo., on May 20 … Mattis is not the first general to voice concern about the impact of Israeli policies and U.S. support for Israel on American security interests.

… This cozy arrangement is now being challenged by the rapid rise of China’s military and economic power. Just this week, a Chinese military aircraft that overflew waters near Japan’s Okinawa, provoked an uproar in Japan … The naming of Caroline Kennedy, a major Obama supporter and donor, as ambassador to Japan is hardly the right person in these troubled times. Japan has to cast off its cross of shame over having been defeated in the 1940’s and renew its national spirit.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the second-ranked Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, is leading fellow Democrats on a tour of Israel funded by AIPAC’s educational affiliate … Such tours, funded by the American Israel Education Foundation, the educational affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, routinely take place during the August recess every off-election year, and Hoyer, the minority whip, has led a number of them. They are designed to introduce freshmen to Israel-related issues.

… With the death of its Marxist-Leninist ideology, Russia is moving back toward its religious and Orthodox roots. Secretly baptized at birth by his mother, Putin has embraced this. Increasingly, religious Russians look on America, with our Hollywood values and celebrations of homosexuality, as a sick society, a focus of cultural and moral evil in the world. Much of the Islamic world that once admired America has reached the same conclusion. Yet the [Washington] Post is demanding that our government stand with “the persecuted rock band” of young women who desecrated with obscene acts the high altar of Moscow’s most sacred cathedral.

The so-called “peace talks” initiated by John Kerry between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are meaningless theatrics that are part of a stratagem concealing and obscuring the real intentions of the US and Israel in the Middle East … The so-called “Israeli settlements” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are categorically rejected by the United Nations as illegal. They are a brazen violation of international law. Israel’s settlements in the West Bank have unanimously been identified as a war crime under the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by all of the International Criminal Court’s judges.

A number of people from the former Soviet Union [FSU] wishing to immigrate to Israel could be subjected to DNA testing to prove their Jewishness, the Prime Minister’s Office said Sunday … The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that many Jews from the FSU who were born out-of-wedlock can be required to bring DNA confirmation of Jewish heritage in order to be allowed to immigrate as a Jew. … The issue cuts to the heart of Israel’s Law of Return, which allows anybody with a Jewish parent, grandparent or spouse to move to Israel and be eligible for citizenship.

Defining “Jew” has never been simple. Is he someone who practices Judaism, the Jewish religion, or is he identified by his ancestry? While many Americans assume that Jews are essentially a religious group, Jews themselves take for granted that their community is much more ethnic-national than it is religious. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as Israel’s prime minister, frankly regards Jews as members of a racial group. Speaking to a gathering of nearly a thousand Jews in southern California, he said: “If Israel had not come into existence after World War II then I am certain the Jewish race wouldn’t have survived.”

… The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] goes after anti-Semitism with a fist, it goes after Israeli racism with a sigh. As a matter of fact, the ADL and the entire American Jewish establishment should suspend their campaigns against anti-Semitism indefinitely and take a look at what’s going on in Israel. When the Jewish state is this riddled with racism, its advocates abroad should be a little less outraged over the offenses of gentiles. They should be a little more humble — and a lot less hypocritical.

Germany will never be neutral when it comes to Israel, Chancellor Angela Merkel told a Jewish newspaper … “That means that we’ll never be neutral and that Israel can be sure of our support when it comes to ensuring its security,” she said. “That’s why I also said that Germany’s support for Israel’s security is part of our national ethos, our raison d’être.” In the interview Merkel, who is believed likely to win her third term as chancellor next month, repeated her past criticisms of Israel’s settlement policies, but also blasted anti-Zionism.

A 99-year-old Nazi war crimes suspect, Hungarian Laszlo Csatary, has died while awaiting trial, his lawyer said … Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, said they were “deeply disappointed” at Csatary’s death ahead of his possible trial in Hungary.

A collection of Hitler-themed wines isn’t going down easy for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. On Thursday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement calling on Italian wine distributors to boycott Vini Lunardelli, an Italian-based company that sells wines with artwork of Adolf Hitler on the bottles’ labels.

A funny thing happened between Hong Kong and Russia: Edward Snowden, teller of National Security Agency secrets and American dissident at large, started to become a conservative hero … The 30-year-old Snowden is enjoying a surge of unlikely support from the right. Republican members of Congress are calling him a whistleblower, not a traitor. Columnists from right-wing websites are getting an earful from readers who say he’s a hero. In the last two major polls on the subject, more than half of Republicans and independents insist Snowden is a whistleblower, with less than 40 percent saying otherwise.

A headline in a major Egyptian state newspaper this week referred to the proposed U.S. envoy to Egypt as the “Ambassador of Death.” Posters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, a center of pro-government rallies, depict President Barack Obama with a beard and turban, exclaiming his “support for terrorism … Egypt’s state and privately owned media outlets, already no strangers to demonizing the U.S., have embarked on a particularly critical campaign. The latest salvos have targeted Robert Ford, the likely nominee for American ambassador to a country that is pivotal to U.S. foreign policy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that at least 80 percent of the members of the first Soviet government were Jewish. “I thought about something just now: The decision to nationalize this library was made by the first Soviet government, whose composition was 80-85 percent Jewish,” Putin said June 13 during a visit to Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center … According to the official transcription of Putin’s speech at the museum, he went on to say that the politicians on the predominantly Jewish Soviet government “were guided by false ideological considerations” …

… Thus the Soviet Jews obtained a weighty share of state, industrial, and economic power at all levels of government in the USSR … It can’t be denied that History elevated many Soviet Jews into the ranks of the arbiters of the fate of all Russians … From the astonishing disclosure in 1990 we learned that the famous mobile gas chambers were invented, as it turns out, not by Hitler during the World War II, but in the Soviet NKVD in 1937 by Isai Davidovich Berg, the head of the administrative and maintenance section of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast (sure, he was not alone in that enterprise, but he organized the whole business).

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.”

… Today, as government at all levels consumes nearly 40 percent of gross domestic product, as the deficit is growing three times as fast as the GDP, as China continues to grow at four times the U.S. rate, we need to ask ourselves: What should we fight for? Whom shall we defend? What can we afford in the way of national defense? … After 35 years, how long should the United States, whose middle class has not seen a rise in real income since 1977, borrow from China to pay Egyptians and Israelis $5 billion a year not to fight each other? Through a mindless adherence to policies that date to a long-dead past, America is forfeiting her future.

The powerhouse Israel lobby group wants more sanctions on Iran and the continuation of U.S. military aid towards Egypt — and Congress has obliged. Over the past week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has seen its legislative priorities on U.S. policy in the Middle East sail through Congress. As Iran prepared to welcome in a new president more amenable to negotiations with the West over its nuclear energy program, AIPAC and its Congressional allies were walking overtime to scuttle any potential diplomatic progress … The House vote lined up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy: ratchet up sanctions, prepare for war and deride those who think that Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president, presents a diplomatic opportunity.

… The effort to dismiss Iran’s elections as unimportant — despite millions of Iranians’ willingness to come out and vote for Rowhani — and forge ahead with sanctions stem largely from efforts backed by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) … Can there be any doubt about wherefrom this hawkish push emanates? Supporters of the new sanctions, almost to a woman, cited Israel’s security. Not only is AIPAC directly involved with this and a handful of other efforts that many judge would stymie diplomacy, but other right-wing pro-Israel groups … relentlessly press for tougher measures while making no hint that they foresee any sort of avenue for diplomacy at all.

An AIPAC-backed letter urging President Obama to exert greater pressure on Iran to end its suspected nuclear weapons program and to seek avenues to diplomatic resolution garnered the signatures of 76 senators … The American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbied for the letter signed by more than three-fourths of the 100 senators.

… Maybe some other members simply look on sanctions [against Iran] as an alternative to war. But in addition to overlooking what it takes to make sanctions support a negotiation rather than undermining it, this approach also overlooks the view of pro-war people that sanctions and failed negotiations are boxes to be checked before going to war … Many members of Congress go along with all this to stay in good graces with the elements in question, and because expressions of hostility to Iran win votes while anything that might look as being soft on Iran risks losing votes … In short, many members of Congress are, for these sorts of political reasons, knowingly acting against their declared purpose, and in so doing also acting against U.S. interests. They ought to be ashamed for doing so.

The New York Jewish lobby has unfairly blackened the name of World War II pope Pius XII in the interests of a modern political agenda and needs to be challenged, former Australian deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer has charged. Pius has been criticised for not doing enough to protect Jews during the Holocaust, but Mr Fischer argues in a book launched in Melbourne on Friday that he did save Jews “and gets zero credit”. Mr Fischer, Australian ambassador to the Holy See for three years from 2008, told Fairfax Media the Jewish lobby needed momentum and profile and had become increasingly shrill in condemning Pius XII.

The persistent myth of the Vatican’s indifference to the fate of Europe’s Jews during the Second World War had its origin in the 1960s … Responding to these accusations, Pope Paul VI opened the wartime records in the Vatican archives to study by four Jesuit historians, permitting them to select documents for publication. The American among them, Robert A. Graham, sorted out a great number that were eventually published in a series of volumes. These weighty documents clearly show that well before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, Secretary of State Pacelli, the future Pope, was deeply involved in promoting the welfare of Europe’s Jews.

… Christian Zionism as a modern theological and political movement embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism. It has become deeply detrimental to a just peace between Palestine and Israel … It is my contention after more than ten years of postgraduate research that Christian Zionism is the largest, most controversial and most destructive lobby within Christianity. It bears primary responsibility for perpetuating tensions in the Middle East, justifying Israel’s apartheid colonialist agenda and for undermining the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

These rare colour photographs of Adolf Hitler spent a decade languishing beneath the ground. His personal photographer Hugo Jaeger — who was granted unprecedented access to the Führer to document his every move between 1936 and 1945 — hid his colour slides after the fall of Nazi Germany for fear of being persecuted. Jaeger, who was one of the first photographers to use colour film before the end of the war years, buried the slides in metal jars to try and conceal his links to the Nazis, but returned to retrieve his handiwork in 1955.

Iran’s President Hassan Rohani says his country is ready to engage in “serious negotiations” with Western nations over the country’s disputed nuclear program. Rohani was speaking in Tehran in his first news conference since officially taking office. “We are ready, in all seriousness and without wasting time, to engage in serious negotiations,” he said. “If the other side is also serious, I’m confident that through dialogue the concerns of both sides will be removed in the near future.” Rohani, a relative moderate, added that “constructive interaction” could lead to a “win-win” in the nuclear standoff between Tehran and the West.

… Rouhani, in his first news conference since his inauguration Sunday, said Iran would not respond to threats. The new Iranian president said Iran was prepared to enter serious nuclear talks with the West, including with the United States, but would not respond to pressure tactics … “Unfortunately, the war-mongering lobby in the U.S. is opposed to constructive [talks] and only protects the interests of the foreign regime [Israel], and often receives orders from that regime,” Rouhani told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday. “The interests of the lobby and the foreign regime have been imposed on the American lawmakers. We see that they even ignore U.S. interests.”

… Unlike the Shah’s Iran, Mubarak’s Egypt, or Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, the Islamic Republic doesn’t operate in service of the United States or any other foreign power. It has endured decades of U.S.-instigated military, clandestine, and economic pressure, yet still produced better results at alleviating poverty, boosting health and education outcomes, and improving the social status of women than either the Shah’s regime or any of its neighbors, including American allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

… Unlike the countries in the Arab world, Iran is a cohesive, fairly effective and fairly modern state, with considerable technical and scientific infrastructure. It considers itself worthy of being treated as a regional power. And Israel doesn’t want that. Period. It prefers, understandably, weak rivals. So Israel works overtime to scare Americans to death about Iran. Credit AIPAC for effectiveness — it has Congress eating out of its hand. … Given the enormity of the human, financial, and political cost of the Iraq War, one might wish that our elected representatives would be more careful about being sent down down a very similar path a mere decade later.

The dramatic television series is titled “Khaybar,” which is the name of the Jewish community in the Arabian Peninsula conquered by the Prophet Muhammad in 628 CE … The term “Khaybar” is also a symbol of the Jews’ ultimate defeat by the Muslims … Following are excerpts from three episodes of the antisemitic Arab TV series “Khaybar,” which aired on Dubai TV on June 7, 10, and 18, 20.

The number of New York students passing state reading and math exams dropped drastically this year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards. In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department … Striking gaps in achievement between black and Hispanic students and their counterparts persisted.

In a remarkable but under-reported address, Vice President Joe Biden recently acknowledged that the “immense” and “outsized” Jewish role in the US mass media and cultural life has been the single most important factor in shaping American attitudes over the past century, and in driving major cultural- political changes. “Jewish heritage has shaped who we are – all of us – as much or more than any other factor in the last 223 years. And that’s a fact,” Biden told a gathering of Jewish leaders on May 21, 2013, in Washington, DC.

Vice President Joe Biden is praising Jewish leaders for helping change American attitudes about gay marriage and other issues. Biden says culture and arts change people’s attitudes. He cites social media and the old NBC TV series “Will and Grace” as examples of what helped changed attitudes on gay marriage. Biden says, quote, “Think — behind of all that, I bet you 85 percent of those changes, whether it’s in Hollywood or social media, are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the industry.” Biden says the influence is immense and that those changes have been for the good.

… After months of delay, the U.S. Senate is set to vote on the most comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 27 years. And Jewish groups across the country are acting together in a way characteristic of the community on few issues besides Israel … The Senate vote — and the even harder struggle that will follow in the Republican-controlled House — represents the fulfillment of a sustained campaign by the Jewish community for immigration reform, which has built momentum over the past decade.

… Many of the great leaders of American journalism were born into Jewish families, and their ascendancy represented a time of unique power and prestige for newspapers and the civic values they championed … The Sulzberger family, which still runs and largely controls the New York Times, descends from prominent Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews dating back to America’s Revolutionary War period … Jews, however they are defined, have developed and run some of the most influential journalism enterprises in America, leaving a legacy of creativity, professional commitment, intellectual pursuit and civic leadership.

… In my day, those seeking justice and freedom used to defect from the East Bloc to the United States and Britain. Now, ironically, we see a major defector, Ed Snowden, fleeing to Russia. While the corporate-owned US news networks sugarcoat or obscure the NSA and Afghanistan War scandals, it’s left to Russian TV (RT) to tell Americans the facts. Who would have thought? We journalists used to mock Pravda and Trud as party mouthpieces. Today, it’s the party line all the time from the big US networks, online news, and newspapers.”

The US frequently refuses extradition requests where, unlike with Snowden, it involves serious crimes and there is an extradition treaty / President Obama today canceled a long-scheduled summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in part because the US president is upset that Russia defied his personal directive to hand over Edward Snowden despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the two nations. That means that US media outlets will spend the next 24 hours or so channeling the government’s views (excuse the redundancy) by denouncing the Russian evil of refusing extradition. When doing so, very few, if any, establishment media accounts will mention any of these cases …

Several analysts in Russian newspapers see the decision by US President Barack Obama to cancel his visit to Moscow next month as a sign that ties between the White House and the Kremlin are set to deteriorate further … According to one commentator, problems between Washington and Moscow have now become ”strategic and long-term”, while another writes that the US has ”struck Russia off its priority list”.

A judge in Geneva sentenced a Swiss blogger on Tuesday to six months in jail for denying the Holocaust and inciting hate. The 55-year-old man, who was not named, directed his comments against all Jews and had denied the Holocaust in 50 articles published between January 2010 and May of this year, according to the news site 20min.ch. The sentence was delivered on Tuesday.

On July 10, 2013, the Iranian reformist daily Shargh published an article by Jewish Central Committee of Tehran head Haroun Yeshaya, focusing mainly on criticism of the most recent instance of Holocaust denial by Iran’s outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad … “… In his last days in office, the president denied the Holocaust, called it a myth, insisted on it … and said, ‘[My] raising of the topic of the Holocaust shattered the spinal column of the capitalist order’ – and I perceive his statements as [a manifestation] of] his view of political and self-aggrandizement …”

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is routinely maligned as a short-sighted leader for his policy of “appeasement” with German leader Hitler. His decision in 1938 to agree to turn over to Germany the ethnically German Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, and declaring that the agreement with Hitler meant “peace for our time,” is widely considered to have been foolish. In this well-organized 90-minute debate on July 5, 2013, four British historians – two on each side – debate whether Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was the best one for Britain in 1938.

Germany’s liberal-democratic “Weimar Republic” (1919-1933) is often praised for its daring, avant-garde cultural life and leftist, “progressive” political system. But for the vast majority of Germans it was an era of corruption, humiliating treatment by foreign powers, and cultural decadence, culminating in economic ruin and mass unemployment. In this lively hour-long podcast, host Rodney Martin and historian Mark Weber provide informed perspective on this fascinating era, and they draw parallels with American society today. Weber cites facts and data to show the heavily Jewish role in Weimar Germany’s economy, mass media, cultural life, and politics.

In a move stirring lively debate on the limits of free speech, online and storefront booksellers have pulled a book glorifying Hitler from their shelves. The Czech-language book published by the Czech publishing house Guidemedia, entitled “100 dokumentů o vzniku války” (100 Documents About the Outbreak of the War), contains Czech translations of international treaties and diplomatic correspondence that, according to the publisher’s note, show: “England was decided in advance to use violence to cross the path of the Leader, whose genial art of statesmanship has managed to remove the worst Versailles crimes without any bloodshed and any interference with the English interests.”

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in the Japanese city of Hiroshima for a memorial to mark the 68th anniversary of the first atomic bomb ever used in an attack, by the United States near the conclusion of World War II. Survivors, relatives, and antinuclear activists assembled in Hiroshima’s peace park near the epicenter of the 1945 blast, which killed as many as 140,000 people. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that as the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons, it was Japan’s duty to work to eliminate such weapons. Three days after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands more people.

August 6 marks 68 years since the United States committed what is arguably the single gravest act of terrorism that the world has ever known. Terrorism means the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, and targeted they were … Why, then, on this anniversary, do we not acknowledge our responsibility as the nation that first created these weapons, has been the only country to use them, and is still in possession of the biggest repository of such weapons of mass destruction on earth? Is it not unwise, as well as wrong, for Aug. 6 to pass, as it generally does, without any widespread discussion of our culpability for the vast death in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the “patriotic” political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90%) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.

… David Irving said on Wednesday he would push ahead with his controversial trip to Germany, despite calls to ban him from every hotel in Berlin. He told The Local he had been “inundated with offers” of accommodation in the city since the German Hotel Association said its members would not allow him to stay. The British writer, who was banned from Germany for ten years in 1993, said he would also take a 30-strong group on a tour of Poland’s concentration camps as part of the trip in September … They also plan to go to Hitler’s former eastern Europe headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair in northern Poland, and Himmler’s former headquarters Hochwald, which is also in the country.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani has called on Western governments to stop using the language of sanctions to address the Islamic Republic. “I say candidly that if you want a proper response, speak to Iran not with the language of sanctions but with the language of respect,” Rohani said in his inauguration ceremony … “I make it clear here that Iran has never been at war with the world,” he said, adding that the Islamic Republic will concentrate its efforts on “reining in warmongers.” “The Islamic Republic seeks peace and stability in the region. Iran is the harbor of stability in this tumultuous region. We do not seek to change borders and governments,” noted Rohani.

You wouldn’t know that the United States was the globe’s sole superpower from the administration decision to close a score of embassies and consulates in response to possible terrorist attacks. American facilities already stand apart because they usually are fortresses, disrupting entire neighborhoods. Now Washington says it is unable to defend what are among many cities’ most secure buildings … Reports of threats from a movement said to be on the run caused the world’s dominant military power to cower in fear. Caution is a virtue, but announcing to everyone on earth that Washington is unable to defend its global presence is a sign of weakness. More fundamentally, the frenetic closures demonstrate the underlying failure of U.S. anti-terrorism policy.

Male Holocaust survivors have a longer life expectancy compared to those who didn’t experience the Holocaust, according to a recent study conducted at the University of Haifa jointly with Leiden University. The results have just been published in PLOS One. This is the first study to examine data on the entire Jewish Polish population that immigrated to Israel before and after World War II, using the population-wide official database of the National Insurance Institute of Israel.

Detroit’s population fell by 25 percent in the last decade. And of those that stuck around, nearly half of them are functionally illiterate, a new report finds. According to estimates by The National Institute for Literacy, roughly 47 percent of adults in Detroit, Michigan — 200,000 total — are “functionally illiterate,” meaning they have trouble with reading, speaking, writing and computational skills. Even more surprisingly, the Detroit Regional Workforce finds half of that illiterate population has obtained a high school degree.

About 14 percent of U.S. adults won’t be reading this article … About one in seven can’t read it. They’re illiterate. Statistics released by the U.S. Education Department this week [Jan. 2009] show that some 32 million U.S. adults lack basic prose literacy skill. That means they can’t read a newspaper or the instruction on a bottle of pills … “The crisis of adult literacy is getting worse, and investment in education and support programs is critical,” said David C. Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, in response to the finding … A separate study released last month named Minneapolis and Seattle as the most literate cities.

Anyone that thinks that the U.S. economy can keep going along like this is absolutely crazy. We are in the terminal phase of an unprecedented debt spiral which has allowed us to live far, far beyond our means for the last several decades. Unfortunately, all debt spirals eventually end, and they usually do so in a very disorderly manner. The chart that you are about to see is one of my favorite economic charts. It compares the growth of U.S. GDP to the growth of total debt in the United States … In particular, our debt has absolutely exploded as a percentage of GDP since the financial crisis of 2008 …

‘Welkom in Orania’ proclaims a mural, painted in white, blue and orange. But this South African town, in the remote Northern Cape province, does not extend its welcome to everyone … Orania, one of the last outposts of racial segregation, is a whites-only enclave. Around 1,000 people live in the rural community, established in 1991 during the last years of apartheid. Built on 8,000 hectares of private farmland along the Orange River in the desolate region of Karoo, it has schools, a museum and even its own currency, the Ora. All the residents are Afrikaners – descendants of white migrants of Dutch and German heritage – who make up about seven per cent of South Africa’s population.

Attempts to brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation are not only futile, but fly in the face of the facts of this movement and its history. Like all genuine resistance movements, the Lebanese resistance, led by Hezbollah, was born as a reaction to occupation. And like all successful resistance movements, it draws its strength from the backing of the overwhelming majority of the occupied people. Indeed Hezbollah is the product of not one but two occupations: those of Palestine and Lebanon. Today it is seen by most people in Lebanon not only as the force that ended Israeli occupation of most of the invaded Lebanese territories, but as the shield that defends Lebanon from future Israeli invasion and occupation.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them … One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices – 545 human beings out of the 235 million – are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country … Don’t you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

Ukrainians dressed in Nazi SS uniform trudge through trenches and fire model rifles in a reconstruction of a key battle against the Soviets during World War II … The scenes were part of commemorations last week of soldiers many Ukrainian nationalists – along with a smattering of hardcore ultra-rightists – hail as heroes. The men they are honoring belonged to the SS Galician division, a Nazi military unit made up mostly of Ukrainians, which fought Soviet troops during World War II. More than 20 years since gaining independence from the Soviet Union, Ukraine remains painfully divided over the legacy of World War II and the actions of Ukrainian nationalist fighters, who are honored as heroes by some and condemned as traitors by others.

In Kolomyya, Ukraine, young men join the Waffen SS division “Galicia” for combat in the pan-European struggle against Soviet Communism. In Estonia, new volunteers join Waffen SS units to defend their homeland and Europe. From “Deutsche Wochenschau” weekly newsreels of June 9 and June 2, 1943. German-language narration. Runtime: 2:00 mins.

… Our middle class is falling further and further behind in comparison to the rest of the world. We keep hearing that America is number one. Well, when it comes to middle-class wealth, we’re number 27 … As the chart below shows, there are 26 other countries with a median wealth higher than ours (and the relative reduction of U.S. median wealth has done nothing to make our economy more sustainable).

After spending two decades recovering almost 800,000 soldiers in Eastern Europe and Russia, Germany will open its last war cemetery in Russia on Saturday. The work isn’t over, though, as the war graves commission has located a further 400,000 dead. / … The Volksbund says it expects to recover a further 150,000 war dead in the east and southeast of Europe by 2017. and that it will be building and refurbishing more cemeteries in places including the Balkans. And it knows the approximate locations of a further 250,000 dead, most of them in hard-to-access areas like swamps, or small burial sites with just a handful of graves.

… In the United States, Britain, and other Western countries, there has been much self-congratulation about how “we” won the Second World War. Yet, it was on the Eastern Front that the outcome of the war was decided. Had the best of Hitler’s forces not been fighting the Soviets, it is unlikely that there would have been any Allied victory in 1945, or anytime foreseeable thereafter … The Soviet Union proved to be a far more resilient opponent than predicted … Even through the last weeks of the war, German regular troops and officers were, on average, superior to their opponents in the East and the West. The Wehrmacht was simply overwhelmed by the forces of the Soviet Union and her Western Allies.

Russian senators are drafting a bill on prohibiting the glorification of Nazi crimes and the usage of any Nazi or similar symbols and gestures in the country. Violation of the law will be punishable by a fine from 300,000 rubles (about US $9,500), corrective labor, or up to two years in jail … The bill will define what Nazism, Nazi rehabilitation and criminals are. It will also clarify what symbols and gestures are considered Nazi “or similar” and, therefore, cannot be used within the country.

… President Assad and his government retain — this is borne out by polling data, by other evidence — they retain the support of significant parts of Syrian society. I would estimate that at least half of Syrian society continues to support the Assad government … and that’s probably increasing … It is a delusion for the United States or other Western countries to think that if somehow you were able to bring down the Assad government, that what replaces it is some secular liberal democracy that wants to be aligned, in its foreign policy, with the West. That’s an absolute fantasy.

In the years-long campaign to tie a web of sanctions around Iran and stall its nuclear program, the European Union may just have met its biggest obstacle: its own law courts … Last month, Bank Mellat won another case, at Britain’s Supreme Court. Its judges, too, ruled the British government was wrong to have imposed sanctions on the lender but they also took their argument a step further than the EU court in Luxembourg. Having had access to evidence under British rules allowing for a secret court session, the judges ruled that measures against the bank were “arbitrary” and “irrational” – exposing the possibility that even secret evidence governments may share with the courts might not be enough to justify sanctions.

A growing movement has emerged on college campus calling for divestment from companies that support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It is part of broader international campaign initiated by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its occupation of territories seized in the 1967 war … In California, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement has been particularly strong on state university campuses — including Berkeley, San Diego and Irvine, where it has received endorsements from their student governments.

… Obama’s legacy hopes lie not in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington this week, but in what is happening in Iran – the inauguration of the president who replaces Mahmoud Ahmadinejad … U.S. intelligence agencies have never retracted their declarations of 2007 and 2011 that Iran has made no decision to build a bomb … Obama can, however, defeat the War Party coalition. He should congratulate Rouhani on his inauguration, declare his readiness for direct talks with Tehran, and appoint as negotiators national security hawks who want no war with Iran, but no Iranian atom bomb either. History beckons. Obama should seize the moment.

… Iran has long declared that it does not seek a nuclear weapon, and the US intelligence assessment has long been that Iran hasn’t decided to pursue a bomb. The country is clearly pursuing nuclear enrichment, which it is permitted to do under existing nuclear treaties … Iran is a relatively modern, somewhat democratic country … It is a large country filled with highly educated, modernity-seeking young people. That this population should be treated as America’s permanent enemy seems one of the more bizarre fixations of Capitol Hill. That important figures in Congress — and Feinstein is highly respected on both sides of the aisle — are finally challenging this idée fixe is long overdue and extraordinarily welcome.

… Unless and until we can break through the historical blackout, now supported even by public policy, and enable the peoples of the world to know the facts concerning international relations during the last quarter of a century, there can be no real hope for the peace, security and prosperity which the present triumphs of science and technology could make possible. The well-being of the human race, if not its very survival, is very literally dependent on the triumph of revisionism.

The US has labelled Russia’s decision to grant asylum to fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden as “extremely disappointing”. The White House is reconsidering a meeting scheduled for next month between President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The US wants Mr. Snowden extradited and tried for leaking secrets. Mr. Snowden, who left a Moscow airport transit zone for the first time since June, thanked Russia for its action.

… In our town, the 911 dispatch system recently went down for 15 hours, and no one seemed to give a damn. When the system is running, the average wait is 58 minutes … So Detroit files for bankruptcy. What does this mean? Pay close attention because it may be coming to you soon, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia. In 2011, Moody’s calculated the unfunded liabilities for Illinois’s three largest state-run pension plans to be $133 billion. (It is expected to be even larger this year.) That’s the size of six Detroit bankruptcies — give or take a few hundred million.

The malignant cancer cells oozing from the petri dish of progressive policy known as the City of Detroit are soon to metastasize throughout the body politic. The disease, which has been described by Mark Steyn as the “malign alliance between a corrupt political class, rapacious public-sector unions, and an ever more swollen army of welfare dependents,” will first lay low other formerly great American cities. Newark, Oakland, Cleveland and Los Angeles initially come to mind. But the same fate awaits nearly every other large municipality ruled for generations by so-called progressive thinkers.

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.” So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret. At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates. The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it.

The Pentagon has concluded that the time has come to prepare for war with China, and in a manner well beyond crafting the sort of contingency plans that are expected for wide a range of possible confrontations. It is a momentous conclusion that will shape the United States’ defense systems, force posture, and overall strategy for dealing with the economically and militarily resurgent China. Thus far, however, the military’s assessment of and preparations for the threat posed by China have not received the high level of review from elected civilian officials that such developments require.

… Far more dangerous than ciphers like Power is the continued drive by Israel and its friends in congress to jump start a war with Iran, a process which is proceeding underneath the radar. Former CIA senior analyst Paul Pillar describes it as “A prolonged campaign to keep us scared about what is depicted as an inexorable Iranian march toward acquiring nuclear weapons.” … War with Iran would be different, however. It would be no cakewalk, would unleash a new wave of global terrorism, and would upend a slowly recovering world economy. It would be a catastrophe not only for Iran but also for the United States, but it is what Israel wants and in Washington Israel and its many friends nearly always win the policy debate.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Opposition Chairwoman Shelly Yachimonvich are joining forces for the first time to launch the Knesset Lobby for Strengthening the Jewish People … “The lobby’s goal – strengthening the Jewish people and the connection between Israel and the Diaspora, forming a Jewish identity among the young generation and deepening Jewish tradition.”

Four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend … Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy “poor.”

Germany is to open its first museum dedicated to bomber offensives of World War II that will lay bare how the Allies attacked civilian areas. Only now, with survivors of the bombing raids well into old age, have the German authorities felt able to portray themselves as victims as well as aggressors in a war narrative dominated by Nazi atrocities such as the Holocaust … “The myth in Britain has been that we bombed military targets and Germans bombed civilian populations, but it is almost exactly the reverse,” said Professor Overy, author of The Air War and Bomber Command. “The Germans tried to bomb military targets and by mid-1941 the British had given up on that idea and wanted to flatten city centres,” he said.

Marine Corps General James Mattis, who retired May 22 as chief of the U.S. Central Command, in charge of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said in a speech at the prestigious Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last Saturday (July 20) that America needs to work “with a sense of urgency” to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because resentment of U.S. support for Israel hurts America militarily throughout the region … And then this bombshell: “I paid a military-security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel.”

The Waffen-SS is widely seen as one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust, but not in the pages of Der Landser, a weekly German pulp magazine … That jarring view of history, in a magazine published by one of Germany’s largest news media companies and available for download on Amazon and Apple iTunes, has come under fire from a prominent American Jewish group. Acting on what it said were several recent complaints, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles invoked German laws against Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denials in asking Berlin last week to shut down Der Landser.

The Czech police suspect two men of denying, challenging, approving and justifying genocide by publishing a book of selected speeches of Adolf Hitler, police spokeswoman Petra Vedrova told CTK Friday. The book, Adolf Hitler: Projevy (Speeches), appeared in Czech bookshops last year. The publisher, Pavel Kamas, told CTK that he and his aide Lukas Beer, who wrote the preface and some comments, are the suspects in focus of the police. Kamas previously said the book’s goal is to offer Hitler’s hitherto practically unaccessible speeches to readers as a chance for them to make their own opinion. Vedrova said the two men are suspected of misdemeanor and their trial may start within two weeks.

It was a typical day in the life of the mainstream U.S. news media. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu went on American TV and threatened war on Iran for its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon, while being spared any inconvenient questions about Israel’s very real – and rogue – nuclear arsenal. / … An “objective” interview or article would have included at least some reference to Israel’s nuclear arsenal and the question of whether Israel has the unilateral right to wage war (or even threaten war) against another country, with the particular irony that Israel is accusing Iran of pursuing a course that Israel has already taken … In the real world of U.S. journalism, “objectivity” means following the bias of the powers-that-be and framing issues within the conventional wisdom.

The Austrian government is scrambling to explain how it failed to notice a castle it recently sold holds a bell honoring Adolf Hitler. The swastika-embossed bell, which tolls every hour in rural Wolfpassing village, dates to 1939 and was mounted by Nazis who supported Hitler’s annexation of Austria one year earlier. An inscription on the bell describes Hitler as “the unifier and Fuhrer of all Germans” and says he freed the “Ostmark” — Nazi jargon for Austria — “from the yoke of suppression by foreign elements and brought it home into the Great German Reich.” Despite the Nazi sympathies on the bell, no one complained until the government sold the castle — with all its historical trappings …

MK Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, predicted on Tuesday that peace with the Palestinian Authority will never be possible because of its leadership. Speaking at a meeting of the newly founded Knesset Lobby to Combat Anti-Semitism which is headed by MK Shimon Ohayon (Yisrael Beytenu), Lieberman reminded participants that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is a Holocaust denier, whose doctoral dissertation was entitled “The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement.” “There cannot be true peace or a diplomatic process with someone who denies the Holocaust,” said Lieberman.

Italy’s dubious relationship with far-right politics is in the spotlight again with news that an unabashed neo-Nazi doctor has been reported to the country’s health ministry. Dr Gianantonio Valli, who has 1,400 health service patients on his books in the village of Cuveglio, near Varese [Lombardy], keeps a bust of Hitler in his library and subjects patients to swathes of racist propaganda in the waiting room. The holocaust-denying medic, whose surgery posters warn of the “scourge of immigration”, a “third-world invasion “, and the “globalism led by the Jewish lobby,” has apparently been able to practise for years in the extremely conservative Varese area, near the Swiss boarder, without causing outrage.