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… Is the real problem that Washington can’t trust others, or rather that other states can’t trust it? Even before Deceitful Donald showed up, the United States had amassed a pretty good record of reneging on promises and commitments … Under these conditions, why would any sensible government take America’s word for anything? Why would any halfway smart adversary make substantial concessions to the United States in exchange for U.S. promises, assurances, or pledges? … A larger percent of people around the world have confidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin will “do the right thing in world affairs” than the current U.S. president. When you’re trailing those two ruthless operators, it’s time to start asking why nobody trusts you.

… President Donald Trump’s explicit pledges to avoid expanded engagement in Asia and the Middle East while also fixing the relationship with Russia are by now lost down the memory hole … Pundits see the process whereby all new presidents turn into hawks as evidence of the pervasiveness of the Deep State in US foreign policy, but as the Deep State operates largely in the open in the United States, it might also be referred to as the Establishment consensus … The United States is also in violation of international law because it remains in Syria without the permission of the recognized and legitimate Syrian government … The US has also been illegally working to overthrow the legitimate Syrian government, acting in collusion with groups of so-called rebels, some of whom are actually drawn from internationally recognized terrorist groups …

… The democracy worshippers of the West cannot compete with the authoritarians in meeting the crisis of our time because they do not see what is happening to the West as a crisis. They see us as on a steady march into a brave new world, where democracy, diversity and equality will be everywhere celebrated … U.S. elites may babble on about “diversity,” about how much better a country we will be in 2042 when white European Christians are just another minority and we have become a “gorgeous mosaic” of every race, tribe, creed and culture on earth. To Hungarians, such a future entails the death of the nation. To Hungarians, millions of African, Arab and Islamic peoples settling in their lands means the annihilation of the historic nation they love, the nation that came into being to preserve the Hungarian people.

For seven decades, “never forget” has been a rallying cry of the Holocaust remembrance movement. But a survey released Thursday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, found that many adults lack basic knowledge of what happened — and this lack of knowledge is more pronounced among millennials, whom the survey defined as people ages 18 to 34 … Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. And 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force … Despite the gaps in the respondents’ knowledge, the study found an overwhelming consensus — 93 percent — that all students should learn about the Holocaust at school.

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

… In the film, two black veterans of the 761st “recalled” their role in liberating Dachau, ramming their tanks against the camp gates and encountering enemy machine gun fire from a burning barn. Also in the film, two elderly Jews who had been inmates in Buchenwald “recounted” their liberation by black GIs … Actually, this “moving reunion” is a staged fraud … No black troops participated in the liberation of either Buchenwald or Dachau … In spite of the 1993 revelations, the US Holocaust Museum — a federal government center operated by the taxpayer-funded United States Holocaust Memorial Council — has continued to propagate this fraud.

… How long can this country, with its shrinking share of global GDP, sustain its expanding commitments to confront and fight all over the world? … How long can we sustain a worldwide empire of dependencies? How many wars of this century — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen — turned out to have been worth the blood shed and the treasure lost? And what have all the “color-coded revolutions” we have instigated to advance “democracy” done for America? … It has fallen to 15.1 percent today.” … We are hugely overextended today. And conservatives have no higher duty than to seek to bring U.S. war guarantees into conformity with U.S. vital interests and U.S. power.

An Israeli general has confirmed that when snipers stationed along Israel’s boundary with Gaza shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders. In a radio interview, Brigadier-General (Reserve) Zvika Fogel describes how a sniper identifies the “small body” of a child and is given authorization to shoot. Fogel’s statements could be used as evidence of intent if Israeli leaders are ever tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court … In this chilling statement, in which a general talks about snipers targeting the “small body of a child,” Fogel makes crystal clear that this policy is premeditated and deliberate.

Forty Palestinians have been killed and 5,511 were wounded in the mass protests along the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel since March 30, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Tuesday. The protests have been held every Friday since then. The information on the casualties is broken down by date, nature of the injury, gender and age, as well as where the person was treated. Of the injured, 2,596 people were hospitalized in government hospitals, 773 in nongovernment hospitals and the rest were treated in the field. Of those in government hospitals, 1,499 were hit by live ammunition, 107 by sponge-tipped bullets, 408 suffered gas inhalation, and 582 suffered other injuries; 2,142 were adults and 454 were minors.

On 20 April 1968, Enoch Powell delivered one of the most divisive speeches ever made by a British politician. By permitting mass immigration, he said the country was ‘heaping up its own funeral pyre’. Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was explosive and career-defining. How far was his shadow cast? … Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet by Edward Heath, although he received strong support from the public, with dockers and meat packers marching in support of him.

Fifty years ago this month, the British conservative Enoch Powell gave his “Rivers of Blood” speech about immigration, which has become as legendary as it is infamous. A classics professor who once aspired to become viceroy of the British Raj, Powell was one of postwar Britain’s most intelligent conservatives … Many white Britons still mutter that “Enoch was right” behind closed doors whenever the subject of immigration comes up — which it does whenever people talk politics today. But how right was Enoch? He was spot-on about demography … No parallel exists for such rapid demographic transformation in the history of Britain or any other European state. Powell was not entirely wrong about the politicizing of race.

… Before the phrase “bad for the Jews” came into currency, the Yiddish phrase a shanda fur di goyim –- a scandal in the eyes of Gentiles -– illustrated the plight of a minority community working to show itself in the best light before punitive external scrutiny. Lately, we’ve been inundated with stories about high-profile Jews behaving badly … Trump has a tendency to surround himself with badly behaved Jews. Trump’s Jews hew uncomfortably close to ugly stereotypes, from Cohen to Broidy to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, with his slumlord deals and increasingly shady international reputation. Then there’s financiers like Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin, the latter of whom was memorably photographed holding a sheet of money, a visual shanda to all who care about income inequality in this country.

The recent missile attack on Syria, in response to alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians by the Assad regime, revealed the scope of Donald Trump’s lawlessness. The attack, launched by the United States, Britain and France, was an open violation of international law and the United Nations Charter, which is the centerpiece of the “rules-based” order that the United States claims to defend … The attack also violated the US Constitution, which lodges the power to make war in the Congress and not the executive branch. Congress has provided no authority for the invasion of Syria … This is precisely what the founders of the country sought to protect against by giving Congress the power to declare war.

The air and missile strikes that the United States and its British and French allies launched against Syrian government targets are reprehensible for so many reasons. First, Washington’s action is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. Except in cases of responding to an attack on the United States, that document gives Congress, not the president, the authority to decide whether to involve the republic in combat. Punishing a foreign regime for an alleged outrage against its own citizens does not qualify, and arguments to the contrary are either disingenuous or historically illiterate. Second, there is not even certainty that Bashar al-Assad’s government was the guilty party for the chemical attack that triggered the Western response.

A former head of Britain’s Special Forces has challenged [prime minister] Theresa May’s claim that President Assad was behind the chemical attack in Douma. Major General Jonathan Shaw said: ‘Why would Assad use chemical weapons at this time? He’s won the war. That’s not just my opinion, it is shared by senior commanders in the US military. There is no rationale behind Assad’s involvement whatsoever. He’s convinced the rebels to leave occupied areas in buses. He’s gained their territory. So why would he be bothering gassing them?’ … The ex-SAS and Parachute Regiment commander added: ‘The jihadists and the various opposition groups who’ve been fighting against Assad have much greater motivation to launch a chemical weapons attack and make it look like Assad was responsible.’

… Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. He has now become the top Mideast villain, the man we love to hate. As a veteran Mideast watcher, I find all this hard to swallow. Compared to other brutal Mideast leaders, Assad is pretty weak tea. The US/ British propaganda effort to paint Assad in blackest colors is having a difficult time … Saudi rulers are reverently treated by the US media and government in spite of leading the world in executions … Israel, the largest recipient of US aid, holds close to 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners, among them 400 children, and is gunning down Palestinian demonstrators on the Gaza border … Any Arab or Iranian leader who sought an independent policy or refused the tutelage of London and then Washington was delegitimized, excoriated, and demonized.

… At the same time, Trump declared “mission accomplished,” but he never really defined what the mission was supposed to be beyond punishing Assad. The highly moralistic language that Trump employed was straight out of the toolkit of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush on the eve of their respective Iraq wars. Such moralism was part of a longer history of American demonization of foreign adversaries that often undermined its own foreign policy aims … The truth is that Russia’s and Iran’s promotion, to use Trump’s term, of Assad has worked. Their influence in Syria is at its apogee, much to the distress of Israel. The western strikes have more to do with dramaturgy than military strategy. This probably should not come as much of a surprise.

During the bombing of Baghdad in January 1991 I went with other journalists on a government-organised trip to what they claimed was the remains of a baby milk plant at Abu Ghraib which the US had just destroyed, saying that it was really a biological warfare facility … It took years for the official version of the bombing to fall apart. … Proof came slowly, long after public interest had waned … The story of the Abu Ghraib baby milk factory is worth retelling because it underlines – in the wake of the US, British and French air strikes on alleged Syrian BW sites on 14 April – the need for permanent scepticism towards claims by governments that they know what is happening on the ground in Syria or anywhere else.

… [Prof. Bryan] Caplan’s bold and provocative conclusion in “The Case Against Education” is based on a raft of statistics, which he presents ad nauseam throughout the book. His argument hinges on the idea that the main value of education, and particularly more-advanced degrees, comes not from helping prepare us to be better citizens, thinkers and workers but from what’s known as “educational signaling”: Education and degrees help ratify preexisting traits such as persistence, intelligence and conformity to social norms.

On Thursday, actress Natalie Portman set the Jewish world on fire. Portman, an Israeli citizen who was born in Jerusalem and moved to the United States at the age of three, was set to receive the Genesis Prize in Israel in June. The prize has been dubbed the “Jewish Nobel” and is given in partnership with the prime minister’s office and the Jewish Agency. But the Genesis Prize Foundation announced that this year’s ceremony was being canceled after Portman informed them that “[r]ecent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel,” and that “she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony.”

A letter written by Hitler’s favourite composer Richard Wagner warning about “corrosive” Jewish influence on culture has been auctioned in Jerusalem. The letter sold for $34,000. In the April 1869 letter, the anti-Semitic composer tells French philosopher Edouard Schuré that the French know “very little” about Jews. … In the letter, Wagner wrote that Jewish assimilation into French society meant that it was harder to see that “corroding influence of the Jewish spirit on modern culture”. The composer was also the author of an infamous anti-Semitic pamphlet entitled “Judaism in music”, written in 1850. In 1869 it was republished under his name.

The U.S. is officially fighting wars in seven countries, including Libya and Niger, according to an unclassified White House report sent to Congress this week and obtained by the New York Times. Known officially as the “Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Military Force and Related National Security Operations,” the document is part of a new requirement … Though President Donald Trump campaigned on a more isolationist foreign policy platform, he’s largely expanded or reinvigorated his predecessor’s conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger. The report gives the clearest indication to date of America’s most pressing military conflicts under Trump, largely detailing an uptick in direct and indirect combat, as well as “advise and assist” operations across all regions.

… Looking back, the invasion of Iraq marked the turning point for the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon powers – the US and the UK – on the world stage. The fraudulent justification for the war and the failure of those who launched it to get their way against relatively puny opponents turned a conflict which was meant to be a show of strength into a demonstration of weakness. Foreign intervention in Libya and Syria in 2011 produced similar calamities. If we are on the edge of a fresh crisis in the Middle East, centering on Iran, then the US is in a much weaker position than it was pre-Trump. Domestically divided and short of allies, it can no longer control the rules of the game as it once did … Whatever the outcome of a confrontation between the US and Iran, it is not going to “Make America Great Again”.

… The real lesson of the Bolton appointment has less to do with Bolton himself and more about what it says about the U.S. foreign-policy establishment … Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to “normalize” this appointment or suggest that it shouldn’t concern you. Rather, I’m suggesting that if you are worried about Bolton, you should ask yourself the following question: What sort of political system allows someone with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous war, never expresses a moment’s regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again? So by all means worry. But the real problem isn’t Bolton — it’s a system that permits people like him to screw up and move up again and again.

… Whether Bolton is consciously putting Israel’s interests first or whether he believes they are identical to American interests doesn’t really matter. The outcome is the same … While many are horrified by Bolton’s hyper-nationalism, his callous militarism, and his open contempt for diplomacy and international law — qualities that also fairly describe the prevailing mood in Israel today — his “stellar” pro-Israel record is rarely discussed. Bolton’s appointment exposes how detrimentally uncritical and silent Washington is on Israeli policies. If the media were doing their job, they would highlight Israel’s role in Bolton’s political career and the fact that American and Israeli interests are not, and probably should never be, identical.

… Finally, I took it upon myself to read Hitler’s magnum opus, Mein Kampf, and see what I could pick up about him for myself … Reading the book and putting this material together has given me a better handle on what Hitler believed … The quotes are from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s words. Hitler had a biocentric worldview. His perspective on life was first of all referenced in Nature … Man is not separate from or above Nature but rather a part of Nature …Hitler held up the Greek ideal of an education that promotes a noble soul, physical beauty, and a brilliant mind. He called for an emphasis on the development of firm character, especially self-confidence, willpower and determination, and a sense of responsibility … Hitler believed that Jews stand in the way of all that must be achieved.

A notorious Waffen SS division is celebrated with an exhibition of swastikas, Nazi attire and pictures in Lvov, Ukraine, but for some Western journalists, the greater concern is how the Russian media will cover it. As neo-Nazi extremists prepared to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday on April 20 across Germany, Ukraine’s far-right set up an open-air exhibition in the city of Lvov to mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of the 1st Galician Division, a notoriously cruel SS fighting force made up predominantly of Ukrainian volunteers. Dressed in Nazi uniforms of the era, local right-wing extremists organized a display of photographs rarely seen in public before. Nazi-made weapons, vehicles, ammunition, and personal items pertaining to the Galician Division were also exhibited.

Last week Donald Trump willfully violated the Constitution as even he once understood it, despite being warned against doing so by dozens of members of Congress. Hours before the president ordered the U.S. military to strike three targets in Syria, 88 members of Congress sent him a letter to remind him of his legal obligations. Strikes “when no direct threat to the United States exists” and “without Congressional authorization” would violate the Constitution’s separation of powers, they declared … Insofar as Democratic candidates cling to the hawkish approach of their failed 2016 standard-bearer, they are giving away votes in 2018 and setting up the U.S. for more imprudent wars. 

We are practitioners and professors of international law. Under international law, military strikes by the United States of America and its allies against the Syrian Arab Republic, unless conducted in self-defense or with United Nations Security Council approval, are illegal and constitute acts of aggression. The unlawful killing of any human being without legal justification, under every legal system, is murder. And an act of violence committed by one government against another government, without lawful justification, amounts to the crime of aggression: the supreme international crime … We must point out that for the last several years, as is now common knowledge, the United States has armed rebels/insurgents to overthrow the current government of Syria. This is illegal under international law.

… While it’s an artistic achievement and grand entertainment, “Darkest Hour” is badly flawed history … “Darkest Hour” reinforces the widespread belief that Churchill’s speeches played a crucial role in sustaining British morale. A scholar who has carefully looked into the matter has found that this view is largely a myth … “Darkest Hour” reinforces the widely held impression, which Churchill himself encouraged, that an honorable or lasting peace with Hitler was simply not possible. But as he himself later acknowledged, that’s simply not true … The British leader’s famous “We shall never surrender” speech was little more than “sublime nonsense,” says British historian John Charmley. 

… Considered as history, “Darkest Hour,” written by Anthony McCarten (“The Theory of Everything”), offers the public a few new insights and details about the practice of statecraft in a time of crisis … Like “The King’s Speech,” Mr. Wright’s film is a serviceable enough historical drama. But like “Dunkirk,” it falls back on an idealized notion of the English character that feels, in present circumstances, less nostalgic than downright reactionary, and as empty as those ubiquitous “Keep Calm and Carry On” internet memes. Rather than invite the audience to think about the difficulties of democratic governance at a time of peril, the filmmakers promote passivity and hero-worship, offering not so much a Great Man Theory as a great man fetish.

Gary Oldham’s performance of Winston Churchill is capturing the imaginations of film fans as well as awards voters. The rendition of the British Prime Minister’s most rousing speech in new film Darkest Hour is reportedly generating spontaneous standing ovations around the world since its release last week. Churchill’s “magnificent oration” which saw him famously call to “fight on the beaches” in 1940 arrives towards the end of Joe Wright’s film with producer Eric Fellner telling The Telegraph that Working Title Films has received reports of “extraordinary” applause … Fellner added that he believes the film may tap into “a zeitgeist where people are fascinated by and feeling a need for leadership” in a post-Brexit Britain.

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

In 1945, the Jewish Agency, the pre-state Israeli government headed by David Ben-Gurion, created a vast clandestine arms-purchasing-and-smuggling network throughout the United States. The operation was placed under the aegis of the Haganah, the underground forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, and involved hundreds of Americans from every walk of life … One group, who remained anonymous and rarely talked about, were men who were tough, streetwise, unafraid, and had access to ready cash: Jewish gangsters … In his autobiography, West Coast mobster Mickey Cohen claimed that after meeting Haganah and Irgun emissaries, he became so absorbed with Israel that he pushed aside much of his own activities and did nothing but try to help Israel in its war.

… The Israeli public has got used to the occupation. They believe that this is a normal situation, that the occupation can go on forever. But the occupation is not a natural situation, and some day it will come to an end … If anyone thought that the democratic world would stand up and condemn Israel, they were sadly wrong. Reactions were feeble, at most. What was revealed was the incredible hold the Israeli government and its Zionist organization has over the world’s political establishments and communication outlets. With few exceptions the atrocious news was not published at all, or as minor items.

For weeks, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have insisted that there is “no alternative explanation” to Russian government responsibility for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last month. But in fact the British government is well aware that such an alternative explanation does exist … That lends further credibility to a possible explanation that someone with a personal grudge against Sergei Skripal carried out the poisoning … Neither the British government nor the Russian government is apparently eager to acknowledge that alternative explanation. The British don’t want it discussed, because they are determined to use the Salisbury poisoning to push their anti-Russian agenda …

Donald Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border is only the latest in a long history of U.S. militarization of its national boundaries. In fact, America’s southern border — which has shifted multiple times with U.S. expansion — was arguably formed through violence. Texas and American militias used force to establish that border in the 1830s and 1840s, capturing modern-day states like California, Texas, and all of the American southwest from Mexico … There was no concerted effort to keep Mexicans from migrating to the United States until the Mexican Revolution broke out in the 1910s.

Viktor Orban’s landslide win in Hungary’s parliamentary elections on Sunday [April 7] has handed him a fresh mandate and four more years to torment Brussels with his anti-immigration policies and Euroskeptic rhetoric. Orban’s victory is a huge win for anti-EU parties across Europe and a humiliation and headache for Brussels. The Hungarian leader has been a thorn in Brussels’ side in recent years, with his staunchly anti-migration stance perhaps the biggest bone of contention … Former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder added his voice to the Western chorus of anger over Orban’s win, tweeting that European leaders who care about liberalism should impose “real costs” on Hungary. This puts a rather interesting spin on liberalism and democracy.

… Whatever Trump says, America is not coming out of Syria. We are going deeper in. Trump’s commitment to extricate us from these bankrupting and blood-soaked Middle East wars and to seek a new rapprochement with Russia is “inoperative.” The War Party that Trump routed in the primaries is capturing and crafting his foreign policy … And when did Congress authorize U.S. acts of war against Syria, its air force or political leadership? When did Congress authorize the killing of the president of Syria whose country has not attacked us? … The assumption of the War Party seems to be that if we launch larger and more lethal strikes in Syria, inflicting casualties on Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah and the Syrian army, they will yield to our demands. But where is the evidence for this?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday voiced his “total support” for US-led air strikes against Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons. “A year ago I gave Israel’s total support for (US) President Donald Trump’s decision to mobilise against the use of chemical weapons,” he said, referring to American strikes against the Syrian regime in April 2017 after a sarin gas attack on a rebel-held town. “Israel’s support remains unchanged,” Netanyahu said. “This morning the United States, France and the United Kingdom showed that their commitment is not limited to declarations of principles,” he added in a statement.

Proposed legislation, if passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, would grant money raised through donations to American schools as part of the Holocaust Education Assistance Program. A draft of the “Never Again Education Act” calls Holocaust education “a national imperative to educate students in the United States so that they may explore the lessons that the Holocaust provides for all people, sensitize communities to the circumstances that gave rise to the Holocaust, and help youth be less susceptible to the falsehood of Holocaust denial and distortion and to the destructive messages of hate that arise from Holocaust denial and distortion.”

… The book was Dr Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. It’s a Sunday Times and international bestseller that has been devoured with particular enthusiasm by young men. It has been both praised and criticised for its core message of the value of individual responsibility and accountability, as well as for Peterson’s controversial views … The book itself is a mix of science, psychology, and quaint advice, like “stand up straight”, and “tell the truth”. That, along with his hugely popular YouTube videos (50 million views and counting), a viral Channel 4 interview, and a public row over the use of gender-neutral pronouns, have propelled him spectacularly into the limelight.

German diplomat Felix Klein has been appointed as the country’s first anti-Semitism Commissioner. He will take over his newly created post in the next few days, ‘Welt am Sonnatg’ newspaper reported citing government sources. Klein had been proposed by the Central Council of Jews and other Jewish organizations for the office. Born in Darmstadt in 1968, Klein was is currently the Special Representative of the German Foreign Office for Relations with Jewish Organizations and Anti-Semitism Issues … The World Jewish Congress welcomed the German government’s appointment of Dr. Felix Klein … “Germany has proven its seriousness and vigilance in eradicating the hostilities facing its Jewish community, by endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism last year, among other actions,” Singer added.

Ready for a world in which a $50 DNA test can predict your odds of earning a PhD or forecast which toddler gets into a selective preschool? Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist, says that’s exactly what’s coming. For decades genetic researchers have sought the hereditary factors behind intelligence, with little luck. But now gene studies have finally gotten big enough — and hence powerful enough — to zero in on genetic differences linked to IQ … Plomin outlined the DNA IQ test scenario in January in a paper titled “The New Genetics of Intelligence” … Several educators contacted by MIT Technology Review reacted with alarm to the new developments, saying DNA tests should not be used to evaluate children’s academic prospects.

Over the weekend, President Trump celebrated firing more than 100 missiles into Syria by Tweeting, “Mission Accomplished!” … There is much about the US attack on Syria that reminds us of Iraq … Where is Congress? It was disgraceful to see Speaker Paul Ryan telling the President he needs no Congressional authorization to attack Syria. All Members of Congress take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and the Constitution says that only Congress can declare war. Does that oath mean nothing these days? President Trump will come to regret the day he let the neocons take over his foreign policy. Their track record is abysmal. His attack on Syria was clearly illegal, and should his party lose the House in November he may find his new fair-weather friends in the Democratic Party quickly turning foul.

… In addition to our disaster in Iraq, we have now been at war in Afghanistan for 17 years, seemingly permanent, forever wars that have cost us trillions of dollars and caused many thousands of Americans to be killed or maimed. What a waste … Most of the time, a military solution is the worst solution … Almost everything we have done in the Middle East over the last many years has been wrong. There has been fighting going on there for several thousand years. Throughout history, other wars have been started over incidents or information that turned out to be false or greatly exaggerated. We do not need nor can we afford to get into another trillion dollar war in the Middle East without first making sure it is absolutely in America’s interest to do so and that it will not make the Middle East even more messed up and chaotic than it already is.

… This is the moment when every American citizen must ask themselves, what exactly is our interest in a Syria war? Will American security, or indeed, security in the West, be improved with military escalation in Syria? Clearly, the evidence of years prior when turmoil in Syria created waves of migrants entering Europe at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s behest has proved otherwise. A strong body of evidence from recent history demonstrates that war will only create more refugees, more chaos, more radicalism and more opportunities for terrorism … Another war in the Middle East will not enhance American prosperity but will only damage it. It will significantly increase American national debt and detract valuable resources away from investing in crucial infrastructure that will be necessary to maintain economic competitiveness.

Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and pro-family organizations have a common adversary, one that is virulent and relentless. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a powerful progressive advocacy group that says its primary mission is to fight hatred, teach tolerance, and seek justice … The SPLC now works to advance the agenda of the cultural left. Ironically, given the deeply Christian character of the civil rights movement, the SPLC now equates traditional Christian and pro-family organizations with hate groups … The SPLC’s aim is not just to shame its targeted groups; it’s to destroy them … Posing as a moral watchdog gives the organization considerable power. The media quote it all the time.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is assisting YouTube in policing content on their platform, The Daily Caller has learned. The left-wing nonprofit — which has more recently come under fire for labeling legitimate conservative organizations as “hate groups” — is one of the more than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies in YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program, a source with knowledge of the arrangement told TheDC. The SPLC and other program members help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos … A handful of YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers,” including the Anti-Defamation League and No Hate Speech — a European organization focused on combatting intolerance — have gone public with their participation in the program.

YouTube has blocked 28 countries from watching a video of two journalists exposing the Israeli occupation. Presenter of Empire Files Abby Martin interviewed author Max Blumenthal, who also criticised violence from Israel’s military against Palestinian protestors. The programme was broadcast on Latin American network teleSUR English. YouTube, owned by Google, says that the internet platform banned the video in 28 countries because it violates “local laws”. Most of the countries YouTube has blocked from seeing the video are European. Elsewhere, YouTube has added a warning to the video and blocked all interactive features …

In this guest appearance with host Joe Rogan, journalist Abby Martin describes the harsh reality of Israel’s oppressive treatment of Palestinians. Her emphatic description, which is based on an eye-opening visit to the occupied Palestinian territories, is delivered in strong, passionate language. Runtime: 25:10 mins. Abby Martin, who was born and raised in California, stresses that US backing has enabled Israel to carry out brutal and illegal policies that, in any other context, would be emphatically condemned.

Media coverage of Israel’s massacre of Palestinian protesters during the first weekend of multiweek demonstrations in Gaza offered textbook examples of how syntax and word choice shape, and even distort, representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if the facts are accurately stated, the ways in which sentences are constructed, and the extent to which details are contextualized, can subtly lead readers astray … There is no parity between a milling, overwhelming nonviolent crowd of 30,000 demonstrators, and heavily armed soldiers manning fortified positions, let alone army snipers picking off their targets from a comfortable distance. Moreover, an army of occupation and an occupied people do not “clash.” One tries to crush; the other tries to resist, or at least to remain steadfast.

Behind President Donald Trump’s bluster and threats over Syria, powerful forces are pushing the US towards war with Russia and Syria: the neocons and the military industrial complex. For a candidate who once proposed a normal relationship with Russia, just peace in the Mideast, and an end to America’s foreign wars Donald Trump is now hurtling towards a full-scale war with Russia and a new disaster in the Mideast … While Trump fulminates about the alleged use of toxic gas in Syria, US B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers are flattening villages in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen … Israel’s government plans to fragment Syria, just as was done with Iraq. This would eliminate the only remaining credible Arab state opposing Israel’s domination of the region and, equally important, allow Israel to begin expropriating chunks of Syria …

Why do so many people in politics and the media want to start wars? … Any fool can kill a man in a second and ruin a city in a week. But it takes long years of nurture to raise a child to adulthood, and centuries to build a civilisation. Yet I look around me and see the mouths of intelligent people opened wide, yelling for an attack on Syria, when the only certain outcome of that will be blood and screams and ruins, and the deaths of innocents in ‘collateral damage’. What good will this do? … Perhaps worse, by creating an unending river of migrants through the Middle East and the Mediterranean, I suspect they have ruined Europe for good … When Saddam Hussein was our ally against Iran back in 1988, he undoubtedly used poison gas against Kurds in Halabja. And in September 1988 the Foreign Office declined to get outraged …

… Why risk war with Russia in Syria, when, by our own inaction during this seven-year civil war, we have shown we have no vital interest there? … While the outcome of Syria’s civil war may mean everything to Assad, and much to Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel, it means comparatively little to a USA 5,000 miles away. We cannot forever fight other peoples’ wars without ending up on the same ash heap of history as the other world powers before us … All over this city [Washington, DC], and across the Middle East, there are people who wish to conscript U.S. wealth and power to advance their goals and achieve their visions. Having let them succeed so often has diminished us as a superpower from what we were at the end of the Cold War. This should stop, and the nation knows it.

Before he became US President, Donald Trump stated on multiple occasions that the United States should NOT bomb Syria. What happened to the Trump of 2013-2014? Where did that guy go? Here are 17 tweets from 2013 to 2014, where Trump shows that he clearly understands that the Deep State is frothing at the mouth to destroy Syria. Unfortunately, as POTUS, Trump has been swallowed up by the very swamp he promised to drain.

There is a vast industry in the United States that wants a hot war with Syria and Iran as well as increased confrontation with Russia and China … Anyone could see there was something not quite right about this latest “chemical attack,” supposedly implemented by Bashar al-Assad just as his troops are about to finish off the last rebels near Damascus. But Donald Trump apparently could not appreciate that the Syrian government had no motive to use chemical weapons, while the rebels, who control the space where the attack supposedly took place, have every reason to motivate an international coalition to attack the Syrian Army … “Fake news” had won out again, in spite of a complete lack of evidence or credibility. This is completely crazy. There is something very wrong with what is going on currently in the United States.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a speech at Israel’s annual Holocaust commemorations on Wednesday [April 11] to call for action against Syria following a suspected poison gas attack. The United States has threatened air strikes against Syria over the use of chemical weapons that Syria and its ally Russia deny … Netanyahu also invoked the lessons of World War Two and the Holocaust to call for action against Iran, criticising the nuclear deal Tehran signed with six world powers. “The lack of willingness among the powers of the West to stand firm in the face of the tyrannical regime, their lack of willingness to pay the price of stopping aggression at an early stage, led to humanity paying a much greater price later on,” he said.

Hungary will continue its anti-immigrant stance and will pursue a vision of the EU as a union of nations instead of the “United States of Europe,” PM Viktor Orban said after his party’s parliamentary elections victory. Orban believes the re-election triumph has given him a “strong mandate” to tackle the problems that concern Hungarians the most, he said on Tuesday. “The Hungarian people have defined the most important issues: these are the questions of immigration and national sovereignty,” the prime minister said. “It is entirely clear … from the election result that Hungarians have decided that only they can decide with whom they want to live in Hungary, and the government will stick to this position.” Orban’s Fidesz party won by a large majority – 134 of the 199 seats in parliament – gaining over 67 percent of the votes in Sunday’s parliamentary election.

The Zionist Organization of America said Tuesday its president recently convinced Qatari officials to drop a much-touted, four-part documentary series on the Al Jazeera network about American pro-Israel advocacy groups. A statement from the organization on Tuesday said the “viciously anti-Semitic” project would not air thanks to the “numerous, exhaustive, and round​-​the​-​clock meetings” between its president, Morton Klein, Qatar’s emir, and other top Doha officials. The Doha-based Al Jazeera network billed its four-part docuseries “The Lobby” as an “investigation of how such groups secure support for Israel in Congress and how they have been drawn into Israel’s covert campaign to defeat BDS, the movement to boycott, divest, and impose sanctions on Israel.”

Two Holocaust survivors and a Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighter have filed a lawsuit against the publisher of books praising Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in a civil case that the plaintiffs’ lawyers said on Monday is the first of its kind in Poland. The lawsuit against Katmar, a publisher based in the Baltic port city of Gdansk, focuses on two pro-Nazi propaganda books by Belgian Nazi collaborator and SS officer Leon Degrelle … Degrelle led Belgium’s far-right Rex Party before the war, and then became a Nazi SS officer decorated by Hitler … Katmar representative Andrzej Ryba flatly denied having any far-right sympathies or wrongdoing, insisting that the books offer insight into the Nazi mentality and are therefore of historic interest … He also said that he made his condemnation of Nazi ideology clear in a publisher’s note.

… The things everyone must know about the latest Gaza massacre — and its rapidly ensuing cover-up — are as simple and uncontroversial as they are abhorrent. One: Israel’s killings were premeditated. Before the first demonstrators set foot anywhere in the vicinity of Gaza’s border with Israel, the “most moral army in the world” had openly declared its violent intentions toward any Palestinian reckless enough to challenge Israel’s crippling siege … Five: Israel commits its crimes because the U.S. lets it … Six: Mainstream media, and Jewish organizations, assist in the cover-up. The proliferation of apologetics in mainstream media for Israel’s deadly violence has been so instantaneous, and so nauseating, that I will only sample the field briefly … Major Jewish organizations have been just as sycophantic, most of them looking the other way …

The White House published a proclamation by U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday honoring the memory of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, stating that March 27 is recognized as “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” An event is scheduled to take place on Tuesday afternoon in the Oval office with Chabad-Lubavitch representatives. The date marks the Jewish calendar birthday of the Rebbe on 11 Nissan, which fell on Tuesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also marked the day, posting on Facebook a link to a Hebrew article describing his relationship and interactions with the Rebbe.

If things proceed normally, the President will proclaim … “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” Despite the innocuous name, this day honors the memory of a religious leader whose lesser-known teachings help fuel some of the most violent attacks against Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers. The leader being honored on this day is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, charismatic head of a mystical/ fundamentalist version of Judaism. Every year since 1978, a Presidential Proclamation … has declared Schneerson’s birthday an official national day of observance … [His teachings have included:] “Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.” …”The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.” …

… The only place on earth that Donald Trump is beloved, admired, adored, and appreciated is Israel. The only place that Benjamin Netanyahu is admired, adored, beloved is the United States. If this is not shared values, what is shared values? … The first very deep-rooted value [among Israeli Jews], let’s face it, is the value that we are the chosen people. Secularists and religious will claim so. Even if they don’t admit it, they feel so. The implementation is very simple … International law, wonderful thing, it doesn’t apply on us. It applies on any other place on earth, but not on Israel because we are the chosen people … The second very deep-rooted value is obviously the value of “we the victims,” not only the biggest victims, but the only victims around.

Belgian Holocaust denier Siegfried Verbeke was sentenced to six months in prison after a criminal court in Mechelen found him guilty for proclaiming negationist theories. The 74-year-old Verbele has been already sentenced several times for negationism in Belgium and in surrounding countries. This time he sent a DVD to the Holocaust Museum in which he dismissed the historical facts about killing Jews in gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau as ‘’unbelievable.’’ He was given the maximum sentence of six months in prison and a hefty fine of eight thousand euros … In August 2005 Verbeke was arrested on arrival at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport because an international arrest warrant from Germany ran against him because of Holocaust denial. He was arrested and disappeared behind the bars until May 2006, when he was released.

The Brussels Free University (ULB) has decided to honor British film director Ken Loach despite protests by Belgian Jewish organisations citing his “obsessive hatred of Israel.” The Jewish organisations, which include the David Susskind Jewish Community Center (CCLJ), the Union of Belgian Jewish Deportees and the Union of Jewish Students, accuse Loach of being unable to denounce anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. They point to an ambiguous response he gave in an interview last September on the Holocaust … Brussels university defended his decision to award Loach with a doctorate honoris causa by saying that the film director had issued a statement formally denying any credit to the revisionist theses.

Gerd Honsik, an Austrian author who was considered a leading ideologue in Europe’s neo-Nazi movement, has died at 76. The Austria Press Agency reports Honsik died Saturday at his home in Hungary. APA cited “multiple independent sources” in its report Monday. Honsik was convicted of taking part in far-right attacks in Vienna in the 1960s and later joined the since-banned Austrian far-right party NDP. Over the following decades he was repeatedly convicted of Holocaust denial and incitement by publishing anti-Semitic and racist books and pamphlets. Honsik, who sometimes used the pseudonym Endsik — alluding to the Nazi quest for final victory or ‘Endsieg’ — was last released in 2011 having served a prison term in Spain for claiming that the Holocaust was a fabrication.

On March 30, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers shot 773 unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, killing 17 and wounding 1,400. Twenty remain in critical condition. The protesters were marching to demand the internationally mandated right of return of refugees to their cities and villages in what now constitutes Israel. The Israeli leaders who ordered the massacre were in clear violation of international law. They should be prosecuted for war crimes. The use of deadly force against the peaceful protesters was premeditated. The IDF deployed 100 snipers to the border fence between Gaza and Israel, where 30,000 to 40,000 Palestinians had gathered for the Great March of Return.

… A video from the first day of the march shows a protester being shot in the back by an Israeli sniper as he walks away from the fence separating Gaza from Israel. In other footage, Palestinians are killed or wounded as they pray, walk empty-handed towards the border fence, or simply hold up a Palestinian flag. All who get within 300 yards are labelled “instigators” by the Israeli army, whose soldiers have orders to shoot them … The sheer scale of the casualties on the first day of the protest a week ago is striking, with as many as 16 killed and 1,415 injured, of whom 758 were hit by live fire according to Gaza health officials … So far, Israel has faced little criticism from an international media uninterested in the Gaza story, or else is happy to go along with Israel’s interpretation of events.

Israel’s abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian children in military detention was under the spotlight in Westminster yesterday [Feb. 7], as MPs urged it to end the “torture” of minors. Israeli authorities were also charged with war crimes, over the imprisonment of both children and adults from the occupied Palestinian territory inside Israel’s pre-1967 lines, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Westminster Hall debate on “Military detention of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities” was initiated by Labour MP Sarah Champion, and attracted cross-party participation.

I was disappointed to hear President Trump so quickly reverse his position on removing U.S. troops from Syria … The problem is the neoconservatives who dominate Washington foreign policy continue to push a whopper of a canard: They insist that extremist groups rise to fill a vacuum in the Middle East whenever U.S. troops leave. However, the truth is these radical groups arise precisely because of our entering the region, not leaving it! … The U.S. Central Command commander, Gen. Joseph Votel, said we must stay in Syria to “stabilize” parts of the country occupied by U.S. forces and “consolidate … our gains.” But what gives us the right to “stabilize” and “consolidate” foreign territory we have no legal right to occupy? To keep us safe, Trump needs to tell our troops to “just come home.”

An exposé of the well-organized efforts – some public, often covert — by Israeli agencies and Zionist partisans to influence what people see, and don’t see, in the Internet, including on YouTube, and Wikipedia. This extensive campaign includes outright propaganda, suppression of viewpoints regarded as hostile to Jewish-Zionist interests, and systematic slanting of supposedly objective sources of information. This video report is based on the article, “How Israel and its Partisans Work to Censor the Internet,” by Alison Weir. Runtime: 14:15 mins.

… Concerns regarding foreign meddling in the nation’s pivotal vote shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering it was not that long ago when the US interfered in Russia’s internal matters, influencing the outcome of the 1996 presidential election … To some the fact of US interference in foreign politics may come as an eye-opening revelation, but definitely not to former CIA director James Woolsey, who just recently admitted that American meddles in other countries “only for a very good cause in the interests of democracy.” … The US attempts at steering the political processes abroad were neither limited to Russia alone nor did they begin in the 1990s … The “impressive” record of forcing their political agenda on foreign governments by the US reveals a list of numerous cases, which include but are not limited to the following …

US president Donald Trump signed yet another massive government spending bill – $1.3 trillion – on March 23, after threatening a veto … Why did he sign it? For the military spending. Because, he says, “for the last eight years, deep defense cuts have undermined our national security,” and we just can’t have that. Deep cuts? In what universe? In every year since 2010, the US has spent more than half again as much on its military as in 2003 – two years into the Afghanistan war and the year that it invaded Iraq … Not only is Trump wrong about what actually happened, he’s wrong about what the effect would have been if things had happened that way … The US armed forces are far too big, far too powerful, and far too expensive to bear any plausible relation to defense.

… Reflecting, now, on my wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – and on my country’s other conflicts – Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc. – is both difficult and cathartic … In each war, in every case, there’s been a tremendous chasm between the comforting fables we’re told to believe, and the reality of the American military’s role in the Greater Middle East. / … Never, in any tangible sense, did we act in vital American interests or make the world a safer place. In that broader, global sense, we were told the U.S. was a force for good, an “indispensable nation,” a bringer of liberty. In reality, we were a counterproductive force for chaos, the armed wing of an increasing rogue, though ostensibly democratic, regime in Washington. 

… The British government’s subservience to Jewish and Israeli interests is nearly as enthusiastic as in the United States, though it is driven by the same sorts of things – Jewish money and Jewish power, particularly in the media … Characteristically, no one in the U.S. mainstream media, which is generally supportive of Bibi’s complaints, is noting that the proposed Polish legislation is not too dissimilar to any number of existing anti-free speech laws criminalizing holocaust denial in Europe or criticism of Israel in the United States. Nor is it different than some laws in Israel, including the criminalization of anyone who speaks or writes in support of BDS. As usual, there is one standard for Jewish issues and Israelis and a quite different standard for everyone else.

A letter penned by Prince Charles in 1986 blamed the “influx of foreign Jews” for tension in the Middle East, and asked the U.S. president to stand up to the “Jewish lobby,” reported the Daily Mail. Prince Charles has come under fire for the letter, with some calling the usage of the phrase “Jewish lobby” anti-Semitic … The letter’s text reads, “I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally and it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause great problems. I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated? Surely some U.S. president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in U.S.? I must be naive, I suppose!”

… This [‘fascist’ outlook] arose from the memory of comradeship in the trenches [of the First World War], uniting all classes in face of the machine-guns which struck down all irrespective of social class. It arose from his “socialist imperialism”; its dynamic thrust came from his synthesis of economic ideas; its method of government was inspired by Lloyd George’s inner cabinet, a government of action which had won the war of 1914-18 and which Mosley would transform into “a machinery of government” to solve the problems left by that war.

Unique color footage of a march in London of the British Union of Fascists, including their  leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, on May 7, 1939. This was to promote a speech by  Mosley calling for peace, and warning against the growing political and media agitation for war. Runtime: 3:28 mins.

Buckingham Palace says it is “disappointed” footage showing the Queen performing a Nazi salute as a child has been released [July 2015]. The Sun has published the film, which shows the Queen aged about seven, with her mother, sister and uncle … The black and white footage, which lasts about 17 seconds, shows the Queen playing with a dog on the lawn in the gardens of Balmoral, the Sun says. The Queen Mother then raises her arm in the style of a Nazi salute and, after glancing towards her mother, the Queen mimics the gesture. Prince Edward, the future Edward VIII, is also seen raising his arm. The footage is thought to have been shot in 1933 or 1934, when Hitler was rising to prominence as Fuhrer in Germany but the circumstances in which it was shot are unclear.

Remarkable film footage from an April 1936 British “Gaumont” newsreel of the funeral ceremony in London honoring German ambassador Leopold von Hoesch. With high-ranking British officials attending, British Grenadier Guards escort the swastika-draped coffin of the diplomat, who had died in the British capital. Runtime: 1:39 mins.

… Who can argue with Xi’s success? China is at peace and militarily secure. Over the past five years, China’s economy has expanded 50 percent to $13.1 trillion, making it the world’s second biggest economy. While the US has spent over $2 trillion waging war in Afghanistan and the Mideast, China has been pouring the profits it has made into developing its worldwide trade and delivery systems. In just over a generation, China went from third world status to joining the modern world – and may well soon lead it. Sixty-eight million people have been raised from abject poverty; whole new cities created from rice paddies … Xi Jinping has vowed to keep building China’s military and economic strength so that it can never again be dominated by foreign powers – namely the United States and Japan.

The Anti-Defamation League is reporting a 57 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. last year, the highest tally that the Jewish civil rights group has counted in more than two decades, according to data it released Tuesday. The New York City-based organization found 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents last year, up from 1,267 in 2016. That’s the highest total since 1994, and the largest single-year increase since the group began collecting this data in 1979 … ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the “alarming” increase appears to be fueled by emboldened far-right extremists as well as the “divisive state of our national discourse.” … Greenblatt also acknowledged that heightened awareness of the problem likely led to increased reporting of anti-Semitic incidents.

… It’s permissible to discuss the power of every other group, from the Black Muslims to the Christian Right, but the much greater power of the Jewish Establishment is off-limits. That, in fact, is the chief measure of its power … Explicitly “Jewish” organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League enforce a dual standard. What is permitted to Israel is forbidden to America. This is not just thoughtless inconsistency. These organizations consciously support one set of principles here — equal rights for all, ethnic neutrality, separation of church and state — and their precise opposites in Israel, where Jewish ancestry and religion enjoy privilege.

The charge of ‘antisemitsm’ has become a noise — a whiny repetitive background disturbance. We have learned to live with it, to accept that some people are just inherently upset and there is nothing we can do to change them or to help them out. In Britain various Zionist organisations and media outlets dedicate themselves to threatening the British public. They torment the biggest political party in Europe and its leaders by tossing about their accusations of ‘antisemitism.’ They crudely interfere with freedom of speech and the basic liberty to choose to oppose Israel and its tribal lobby. Miraculously, it seems the Brits have become inured to the endless racket … In any case, it is clear that despite their persistent slander of Corbyn, he is more popular than ever.

A proposal to outlaw circumcision has been introduced by four parties in Iceland’s parliament. While this law might partly target Muslims, it is yet another negative development for Jews in Europe — even if the proposal does not pass … In 2011, Iceland’s parliament was the first one in Western Europe to recognize a Palestinian state … Many cases of antisemitism in Iceland over the centuries have been described by Vilhjalmur Orn Vilhjalmsson, an expert on the country’s attitude toward the Jews … If the prohibition of male circumcision in Iceland passes parliament, it may have far more consequences for Jews in Europe than just for its tiny Jewish community. This could be a precedent for other countries who are waiting to see what happens in Iceland.

… Ever since WWII, such views were taboo in Europe, confined to the far-right fringes. Today they are openly expressed by mainstream political leaders in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, part of a global populist surge in the face of globalization and mass migration. … In Poland, xenophobic language is also on the rise … An official tapped to create a major new history museum in Warsaw has condemned the postwar tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany — where top Nazis were judged — as “the greatest judicial farce in the history of Europe.” Arkadiusz Karbowiak said the Nuremberg trials were only “possible because of the serious role of Jews” in their organization, and called them “the place where the official religion of the Holocaust was created.”

… The Nuremberg enterprise violated ancient and fundamental principles of justice. The victorious Allies acted as prosecutor, judge and executioner of the German leaders. The charges were created especially for the occasion, and were applied only to the vanquished. Defeated, starving, prostrate Germany was, however, in no position to oppose whatever the Allied occupation powers demanded. As even some leading Allied figures privately acknowledged at the time, the Nuremberg trials were organized not to dispense impartial justice, but for political purposes.

This year is the 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson’s pulling America into World War I. Many people celebrate this centenary of America’s emergence as a world power. But at a time when the Trump administration is bombing or rattling sabers at half a dozen nations and many Democrats are clamoring to bloody Russia, it is worth reviewing how World War I turned out so much worse than the experts and politicians promised … Have today’s policymakers learned anything from the debacle a century ago? Wilson continues to be invoked by politicians who believe America can achieve great things by warring abroad. The bellicosity of both Republican and Democratic leaders is a reminder that Wilson also failed to make democracy safe for the world.

… Over the last century, the Prager lynching has served as a cautionary tale about the dangers of war hysteria … In early 1918, as American troops began to fight and die in the bloody trenches of Europe, pressure built up at home to silence dissent. George Creel, who headed up President Wilson’s war propaganda agency, promised to “weld” American pro-war sentiment into “one white-hot mass instinct.” Clamor grew for a Sedition Act — passed after Prager’s lynching — that would make opposing the war illegal. In small towns throughout Illinois, local superpatriots accosted suspected “pro-Germans” on the street. They made them kiss the American flag. They made them sing patriotic songs. And in Robert Prager’s case, they went further, stringing him up on a hackberry tree on the edge of town.

There are no World War I veterans left alive in the US, but a century after the conflict that reshaped the world, ground has broken on a new monument in Washington, DC, to the 4.5 million Americans who served. The US entered the war in 1917 – almost three years after European powers had been bludgeoning themselves to near destruction. Some 53,000 US soldiers were killed in combat, according to the defence department, while 64,000 died off the battlefield, including deaths from the influenza epidemic … Despite its profound impact on what became the “American Century”, World War I remains a marginal war for many in the US. “The Great War” was overtaken in the national consciousness by the Great Depression and World War II, says Edwin Fountain, vice-chairman of the WWI Centennial Commission.

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

This 48-page booklet debunks the often-repeated lie that Hitler disarmed the German people and seized their guns. Shows that Hitler actually restored many firearms rights taken away by the previous liberal government. With the complete texts, in English translation and original German, of the relevant firearms laws and ordinances.

Facebook is defending its decision to shut down the page of a major Palestinian news outlet, describing the action as a move against “hate speech.” On Saturday, the social media giant closed without warning the page of the Safa Palestinian Press Agency, which had 1.3 million followers, as well as Safa’s account on the photo sharing site Instagram … By referring to “hate speech” and “incitement” as justifications to silence journalists, Facebook has adopted the framework of Israel, which routinely uses such broad and ill-defined terms to describe virtually all criticism of its violent military occupation over Palestinians or of its state ideology, Zionism … The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald has previously written and spoken about Facebook’s collusion with Israel and the United States to silence voices they don’t like.

“NO to anti-semitism”, “NO to Holocaust Denial”: black placards fill Parliament Square on Monday evening, as a crowd of over 500 gather to protest against anti-semitism. But there are other banners too. “Jews for Jez”, “Jeremy is not an anti-semite”, and “Stop Smearing Labour”. Among lively debates are moments of grim tension … The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council organised this rally, and urged Labour MPs – meeting tonight – to stand up to their leader, calling him, “ideologically fixed within a far-left worldview that is instinctively hostile to mainstream Jewish communities”.

Jewish power, as I define it, is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power. For the last few days the Brits have been shown a spectacular display of that power and the manner in which it is mobilised. Without any attempt to hide their behaviour, a bunch of Jewish leaders have chosen to slander Europe’s biggest party and its popular leader in the name of ‘Jewish sensitivities.’ This blitz attack was sparked by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to a mural back in 2012 … The clumsy British media didn’t do its homework and failed to actually examine the mural … British Jewish leadership is panicking. It has declared open war against a mainstream British political party. This is far from a reasonable move and if it is intended to oppose antisemitsm, its effect will inevitably be the opposite.

On Monday, the Monmouth University Polling Institute released the results of a survey that found that “a large bipartisan majority … feel that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a ‘Deep State’ of unelected government officials …” According to the survey:”… six-in-ten Americans (60%) feel that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy … The survey appears to confirm that democracy in the United States is largely a sham … The data suggest that representative democracy is a largely a fraud, that congressmen and senators are mostly sock-puppets who do the bidding of wealthy powerbrokers, and that the entire system is impervious to the will of the people. These are pretty damning results and a clear indication of how corrupt the system really is.

… More than three-in-four of 803 American respondents, or 77 percent, said they believe that major traditional television and newspaper media outlets report “fake news,” according to a Monmouth University poll released Monday, marking a sharp increase in distrust of those news organizations from a year ago, when 63 percent registered concerns about the spread of misinformation. Among those, 31 percent said they believe those media outlets spread “fake news” regularly, and 46 percent said it happens occasionally … Americans also are increasingly wary of the motivations behind allegedly misleading coverage, with 42 percent of respondents saying they believe that major outlets disseminate misinformation to push a political agenda.

… 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.”

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced an excruciatingly delicate task. Although he had promised — and campaigned on — a policy of American neutrality in World War II the year before, Roosevelt ached to help the Allies … How, exactly, could he about-face and sell the war to his people? In October of that year, he masterfully managed the feat. In his nationally-broadcast Navy Day address, Roosevelt made an extraordinary claim … The map — presented as clear evidence of the Nazis’ hostile aspirations in what was (under the century old Monroe doctrine) still considered “America’s backyard” — had its intended effect. Although the Germans vehemently denied the map’s existence, the American people largely rallied behind what could now be pitched as a preemptive war of self-defense. 

… If you look over Israel’s history, you find that the massacre has been a ready tool in the Israeli war-chest; and Israelis have not been prosecuted for carrying them out. Indeed, a couple of those responsible later became prime minister! Here, largely from my own memory, is a rapidly-assembled list of massacres, defined by Webster’s as the killing of a “number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty” (and yes, a couple precede the birth of the state).

It is has been a very bad week for those claiming Israel has the most moral army in the world. Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying … A half-century of occupation has not only corrupted generations of teenage Israeli soldiers who have been allowed to lord it over Palestinians. It has also needed an industry of lies and self-deceptions to make sure the consciences of Israelis are never clouded by a moment of doubt – that maybe their army is not so moral after all.

… So what is Netanyahu’s “vision” for the future? … It seems that Bibi’s answer is “Don’t look, just go on!” … But doing nothing is no real answer. In the end, Israel will have to decide: make peace with the Palestinian people (and the entire Arab and Muslim world), or annex all the occupied territories without conferring citizenship on the Arab population. Ergo: an official apartheid state, which may turn in the course of generations into an Arab-majority bi-national state, the nightmare of almost all Jewish Israelis. There is, of course, another vision, which nobody mentions: waiting for an opportunity to implement another Naqba, expel the entire Palestinian people from Palestine. However, such an opportunity seems unlikely to present itself a second time.

… America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people. So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line. The Jewish State is portrayed as always endangered and struggling to survive … There is no net gain for the United States in continuing the lopsided and essentially immoral relationship with the self-styled Jewish State. There is no enhancement of American national security, quite the contrary, and there remains only the sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands. 

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is leading a Congressional delegation visit to Israel and Jordan focusing on global and regional security and cooperation issues: “There is no greater political accomplishment in the 20th Century than the establishment of the State of Israel,” said Leader Pelosi. “Our delegation is pleased to be able to extend the congratulations of the American people to the people of Israel as we celebrate the 70th anniversary of Jewish state this spring.”

Democrats are almost as likely to sympathize with the Palestinians as they are with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian peace conflict, while support for the Jewish state among Republicans is nearly three times higher than Democrats, according to a poll released Tuesday. Twenty-seven percent of Democrats told the Pew Research Center they sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians, compared to 25% who said their sympathies lie with the Palestinians. Among Republicans, those numbers were 79 percent and six percent, respectively. The survey said the partisan divide in support for Israel was “wider than at any point since 1978,” when 49 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians.

A spike in violent crime in London saw more murders committed in the city in February and March than there were in New York, figures show. So far in 2018, the Met Police has investigated 46 murders, compared with 50 in the US city. But, while New York’s murder rate decreased from the end of January, London’s rose markedly from that point. Ex-Met Police Ch Supt Leroy Logan says it is proof that “London’s violent traits have become a virus”. Statistics from the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Metropolitan Police, reported in the Sunday Times and obtained by the BBC, highlight narrowing murder rates between the two cities, which have similar population sizes.

This list ranks 194 countries by per capita murder rate, with Honduras and El Salvador at the top. The United States is near the middle, at 99. The murder rate in the USA is higher than in Saudi Arabia, China, Bangladesh, Iran, Morocco and India.

… These Mexican immigrants had been caught in the snare of Operation Wetback, the biggest mass deportation of undocumented workers in United States history. As many as 1.3 million people may have been swept up in the Eisenhower-era campaign with a racist name, which was designed to root out undocumented Mexicans from American society. The short-lived operation [1954-1955] used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants — some of them American citizens … Mass deportations of Mexican immigrants from the U.S. date to the Great Depression, when the federal government began a wave of deportations rather than include Mexican-born workers in New Deal welfare programs … The U.S. deported over 1 million Mexican nationals, 60 percent of whom were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, during the 1930s.

A new poll shows that only one in ten African-Americans thinks the United States has achieved all the goals of the civil rights movement, nearly 50 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Friday shows that a majority of African-Americans believe there has been little or no progress on a range of civil rights issues, including fair coverage by the media, political representation and equal economic opportunities … Thirty percent of Americans — 35 percent of whites and just eight percent of blacks — said all or most of the goals of the civil rights movement have been achieved, according to the poll … Seventy-nine percent of African-Americans said blacks continue to face disadvantages to getting ahead in the United States …

Israel’s leading demographics expert on Tuesday defended military figures indicating the number of Arabs will soon equal that of Jews in Israel and the Palestinian territories — figures that had sparked outrage from right-wing lawmakers in the Knesset. Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, said the numbers of Arabs and Jews are nearly equal .. Advocates of a two-state solution have long warned the country risks losing its Jewish majority if a Palestinian state is not established alongside it. Short of that, they warn, Israel will be faced with a daunting choice between becoming a binational state or one in which Arabs and other minorities do not have equal rights.

… Higher Palestinian birth rates have been eroding the Jewish majority ever since while various schemes to force or pay Palestinians to leave have mostly failed. Israeli officials’ ultimate fear in this demographic war is that the world will judge a minority of Israelis ruling over a majority of Palestinians as a new form of apartheid … Israel has stepped up home demolitions, torn up roads, denied Palestinians electricity and water, encouraged settler violence and conducted military and live fire training on Palestinian land. The aim, said B’Tselem, is to avoid international censure as Israel makes “life unbearable to force them to leave, as if by free choice”. These are the “moderates” in the government.

A Labour council candidate accused of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial has been suspended by the party and dropped for the forthcoming election. It was confirmed Roy Smart had been dropped from running for local office in St. James Ward, Tunbridge Wells in May, after it became apparent he had shared allegedly anti-Semitic material online. Articles shared by Roy Smart included a Holocaust denial post in 2015, which lists countries where questioning the Shoah is illegal, before saying “the truth doesn’t need laws to protect it.” In the text of the article, called ‘Holocaust deprogramming course”, it says “free yourself from a lifetime of Holo-brainwashing about ‘six million’ Jews ‘gassed’ in ‘gas chambers’ disguised as shower rooms”.

A French court upheld the Holocaust denial conviction of the far-right activist Jean-Marie Le Pen, while a different tribunal acquitted another prominent racist of hate incitement charges. The Paris-based Court of Cassation’s ruled Tuesday [March 27] against Le Pen, founder of the far-right National Front party. He was convicted multiple times for incitement to racist hatred against Jews over his 2015 statement that the Holocaust was “a detail” of World War II. Downplaying or denying genocides is illegal in France. Le Pen must pay more than $30,000 in fines for the remark, Le Monde reported. He was expelled from the National Front by its current leader, his daughter Marine Le Pen.

… The United States of America is waging several wars with dubious legal sanction in domestic or international law. The U.S. military stands astride the Greater Mideast region on behalf of an increasingly rogue-like regime in Washington, D.C. Worse still, this isn’t a Donald Trump problem, per se. No, three successive administrations – Democratic and Republican – have widened the scope of a global “war” on a tactic (terror), on the basis of two at best vague, and at worst extralegal, congressional authorizations for the use of force (AUMF). Indeed, the US is veritably addicted to waging undeclared, unwinnable wars with unconvincing legal sanction … The USA flouts international law when it suits American interests and stretches domestic authorizations to their breaking point in the name of perpetual, doomed warfare.

… Other than Mattis, President Donald Trump seems to be creating a war cabinet … Yet Iran appears not to want a war. U.N. inspectors routinely confirm that Iran is strictly abiding by the terms of the nuclear deal … What would be the result of Trump’s trashing of the nuclear deal? First would be the isolation of the United States. China and Russia would not abrogate the deal but would welcome Iran into their camp. England, France and Germany would have to choose between the deal and the U.S. … What would the Dow Jones average look like after an attack on Iran? Trump was nominated because he promised to keep us out of stupid wars like those into which folks like John Bolton and the Bush Republicans plunged us.

John Bolton, while serving as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, went behind his boss’s back to supply Israel with crucial information on American plans at the UN and redirect U.S. policy. That’s according to Israel’s former UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, and former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who spoke to The Daily Beast on Tuesday. Bolton’s past, especially his controversial tenure at the UN, has come under fresh examination since President Trump named him to be his next national security advisor … In her 2011 autobiography, Rice said she learned “several years later” that “Bolton had been sharing information with the Israelis through their U.N. ambassador without permission to do so.” …

… Liberia, on Africa’s west coast, was established as a home for freed slaves returning to the continent, escaping from unthinkable misery in the United States. Perhaps, then, it is unsurprising that when the constitution was created, a clause was put in restricting citizenship to just those of African descent, creating “a refuge and a haven for freed men of colour”. Hundreds of years later, Liberia’s new president, the former footballer George Weah, described the rule as “unnecessary, racist and inappropriate” … The pronouncement has sent shockwaves through some parts of Liberia … Despite its wealth of natural resources, Liberia is ranked 225 out of 228 countries when it comes to average income per person, at just $900 per year for 2017.

A prisoner of war who played in goal for the Welsh team in a concentration camp football league has returned to its site to bury the ghosts of his past. Ron Jones, 96, was held in E715 – a prisoner of war camp alongside the main Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland – after being captured by German troops during World War II … During the week prisoners were employed at forced labour camps, but on their rest day they were allowed to play football on a field just outside the camp – with armed German guards watching from the sidelines … Ron said returning to the death camp stirred up strong memories. ‘There was the humiliation and the lack of food but on the whole life wasn’t too bad.’ ‘The Germans, contrary to what a lot of people think, were pretty good to us on the whole.’

Jean-Claude Pressac’s book, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, is the first serious and detailed response to the revisionist critique of the generally accepted Auschwitz extermination story … His book features hundreds of valuable illustrations, including many good-quality reproductions of previously unpublished original diagrams and documents that simply cannot be reconciled with the generally accepted Holocaust extermination story. Reproduced on the following pages are a few of these illustrations, which were selected from Pressac’s book by Mark Weber, who also provided the captions.

Since the end of World War II, authoritative claims about the character and scope of killings at the Auschwitz concentration camp have changed drastically. One particularly striking change concerns the various “official” estimates of the number of victims — a number that since 1945 has been steadily declining … Compared to the recently “authoritative” figure of approximately one million Auschwitz deaths, Meyer has reduced the number of Jewish victims there by at least 450,000.