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… The Saudis have for years been abducting dissidents abroad and returning them to the Kingdom to be secretly killed … The key point is that European authorities turned a completely blind eye to the abductions in that BBC report, even when performed on European soil and involving physical force. The Saudi regime was really doing very little different in the Khashoggi case … It is of course extraordinary that Saudi war crimes in Yemen, its military suppression of democracy in Bahrain, its frequent executions of dissidents, human rights defenders, and Shia religious figures, even its arrests of feminists, have had little impact in the West. But the horrible murder of Khashoggi has caught the public imagination and forced western politicians to at least pretend to want to do something about the Saudis whose wealth they crave.

Saudi Arabia told the U.K. about their plan of abducting Khashoggi three weeks before the incident took place. The MI6 warned them against carrying out the said operation. The murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi was about to disclose details of Saudi Arabia’s use of chemical weapons in Yemen when he was killed, as reported by the Sunday Express, a source close to him told the media outlet Friday. This revelation was made as different intelligence sources disclosed that the U.K. was made aware of the entire plot by Saudi Arabia three weeks before the incident took place on Oct. 2. Intercepts by GCHQ of internal communications by the kingdom’s General Intelligence Directorate revealed orders by a “member of the royal circle” to abduct the troublesome journalist and take him back to Saudi Arabia.

Did the events depicted in the Bible really take place, and did the people mentioned really exist? In their popular book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, archeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman refuted the biblical portrayal of the exodus from Egypt. In their new [2007] book David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, they have some surprising things to say about two key biblical figures, David and Solomon … In their book, Finkelstein and Silberman claim that the kingdoms of David and Solomon did not exist as they were described in the Bible.

… With the coming of the Zionists to Palestine, a frantic archeological search started. The country was combed for real, scientific proof that the Biblical story was not just a bunch of myths, but real honest-to-God history … From the beginning of the effort to this very day, not a single piece of evidence of the ancient history was found. Not a single indication that the exodus from Egypt, the basis of Jewish history, ever happened … Even if one would like to believe that the Bible only exaggerates real events, the fact is that not even a tiny mention of the exodus, the conquest of Canaan or King David has been found. They just did not happen.

When the Jewish Telegraphic Agency launched the Overseas News Agency in 1940, JTA’s new subsidiary promised to report the facts and to “indulge in no propaganda, preach no theory or philosophy.” But before ONA was a year old, according to a new book, it had partnered with Britain’s foreign intelligence agency to spread fake news aimed at discrediting Hitler and enlisting the United States’ help with the war in Europe … The deal went as follows: British intelligence agreed to fund the JTA subsidiary in exchange for ONA press credentials for its spies and the right to use the outlet to spread fake stories in the U.S. and international press. Besides The New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post and others ran its stories.

… A new book suggests that a misinformation campaign launched by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was a pivotal part of British Intelligence’s plan to thwart the Nazi war machine. The Overseas News Agency was founded in 1940 as part of JTA. While ONA was designed as a straightforward news outlet, within its first year of existence the British Foreign Intelligence Agency commissioned it to produce fabricated stories … The goal of the assignment was to manipulate American sentiments by painting Britain as strong in the war effort and smearing Adolf Hitler and the Nazis as unhinged. Stories under the ONA masthead were designed to push the then-neutral United States to join World War II.

On Oct. 27, 1941, FDR, locked in mortal combat with an America First Committee that was resisting his drive to war, played his trump. On Navy Day, at the Mayflower Hotel, FDR declared: “I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government — by planners of the New World Order … It is a map of South America … as Hitler proposes to reorganize it … This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well.” … The Nazi plans for eradicating Christianity were never found. And the map? A forgery by British agent Ivar Bryce, who worked under Churchill’s man William Stephenson, who had been given his mission: provoke America to go to war with Germany.

… In 1940, an obscure cypher clerk at the American Embassy in London came across documents which, in his judgment and that of many reputable historians subsequently, proved conclusively that Roosevelt both directly and through his agents was engaged in activities designed to foment a war and eventually to compel American participation in it. I was that cypher clerk … The new basic law of nations requires only one clause, very simply: “It pays to be on the winning side.”

… More interesting perhaps is the tale of the White Helmets, who have just been given the 2019 Elie Wiesel Award by the National Holocaust Museum … So, the National Holocaust Museum, which is taxpayer funded, has given an apparently prestigious award to a terrorist group, something which could have been discerned with even a little fact checking. And the museum also might have been sensitive to how the White Helmets have been used in support of Israeli propaganda vis-à-vis Syria. Perhaps, while they are at it, the museum’s board just might also want to check out Elie Wiesel, for whom the award is named. Wiesel, who was a chronicler of Jewish victimhood while persistently refusing to acknowledge what Israel was doing to the Palestinians, notoriously mixed fact and fiction in his best-selling holocaust memoir Night.

… The trouble here is that in its central, most crucial scene, [Elie Wiesel’s book] Night isn’t historically true, and at least two other important episodes are almost certainly fiction … Wiesel made things up, in a way that his many subsequent detractors could identify as not untypical of his modus operandi: grasping with deft assurance what people important to his future would want to hear and, by the same token, would not want to hear … In Wiesel’s eyes, as in the eyes of his disciples, Night assumed a level of sacrosanctity, next in importance to the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai … Although the Nobel committee extolled him as a “messenger to mankind” it is difficult to find examples of Wiesel sending any message on behalf of those victimized by the policies of the United States, and virtually impossible when it comes to victims of Israel.

Is there a more contemptible poseur and windbag than Elie Wiesel? I suppose there may be. But not, surely, a poseur and windbag who receives (and takes as his due) such grotesque deference on moral questions … This claim is a cheap lie and is known by Wiesel to be a lie. It is furthermore an utterly discredited lie, and one that Israeli officialdom no longer cares to repeat. Israeli and Jewish historians have exposed it time and again: … And of course the lie is a Big Lie, because Expulsion-Denial lies at the root of the entire problem and helps poison the situation to this day.

The 193-member United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday allowed the Palestinians to act more like a full U.N. member state during meetings in 2019 when they will chair the group of 77 developing nations. The United States, Israel and Australia voted against the move, which won 146 votes in favour. There were 15 abstentions and 29 countries didn’t vote. “We cannot support efforts by the Palestinians to enhance their status outside of direct negotiations. The United States does not recognise that there is a Palestinian state,” U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Cohen told the General Assembly. The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognised internationally.

Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella revealed excerpts from tens of thousands of documents about World War II that shed light on the Nazi influence on the country and the Nazi war criminals who hid there. In a short documentary released Tuesday, the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations, or DAIA, released some images from the documents, including one that shows 15,000 people gathered in Buenos Aires at a sports venue, Luna Park, for a rally supporting Hitler on April 10, 1938. The documents are expected to clarify the help that Argentina, which stayed neutral for much of World War II before joining the Allies, provided to Nazi war criminals. The country was a postwar refuge for Nazis including Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in the northern area of Buenos Aires in 1960, and former SS captain Erich Priebke.

In our modern era, there are surely few organizations that so terrify powerful Americans as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, a central organ of the organized Jewish community … In effect, the ADL seems to have long operated as our country’s privatized secret political police, monitoring and enforcing its ideological doctrines on behalf of Jewish groups much as the Stasi did for the Communist rulers of East Germany … Once I began reading the 500 pages of The Leo Frank Case: The Lynching of a Guilty Man I was tremendously impressed by the quality of the historical analysis … The case they [the authors] made for Frank’s guilt seemed absolutely overwhelming.

In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel’s policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments. Under great political pressure, Smith later dropped the charges.

… Contrary to what the author intended, this revealing book by a high-ranking ADL official serves as valuable exposé of the moral character of a man who sanctions violence against political opponents, who spits on the First Amendment, uses illegal methods to obtain information about adversaries, and who served as an agent for a foreign spy agency. Over the years, I have read several tracts and articles designed to discredit the Anti-Defamation League. None was able to persuade me of the illicit nature of this organization; it took the memoir of Arnold Forster to do that.

… I was in politics for fifteen years, and I think you should start with the assumption: never trust a politician … When people finally learn the truth, they turn against those who have been lying to them. And I think that if the movement of which you people are the cutting edge can retain dispassion in the face of outrages, setbacks and humiliations, the truth can ultimately prevail. You are doing something worse than criticizing the government of the United States; you’re threatening the security of the state of Israel. And the Jewish community is dedicated to preserve that state, and to destroy those who speak against it. Good luck!

… Equally disappointing has been how several well-known Israeli policymakers are opining about what has been dubbed the Khashoggi affair. For instance, according to The Jerusalem Post, Eran Lerman of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies and a former deputy national security council head, reportedly said, “It is certainly not in our interests to see the status of the Saudi government diminished in Washington.” … If The Jerusalem Post article correctly reflects their statements, their conclusion that Jamal’s murder is somehow “bad for Israel” is not only outrageous but underscores how Israel’s desire to form a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia against Iran has become nothing more than a mirage in the desert.

Israeli Ambassador to Paris Aliza Bin-Noun, demanded that French television channel France 2 reconsider airing a news report about Palestinians who were wounded by the IDF, calling it “unbalanced” and asserting that it will cause incitement against Jews in the country. The French media was outraged at Bin-Noun’s request and protested it via various media channels. It was seen as an Israeli attempt to censor and undermine freedom of speech. The report titled: “Gaza’s disabled teens,” was aired on an investigating television show on the prestigious France 2 channel. It discussed the stories of several young Palestinians who had lost their legs after being shot by IDF snipers and who spoke of their broken dreams … Directly after the article promo was aired, protest stirred among French Jewry.

An Israel court has ordered two New Zealand women to pay damages for harming the “artistic welfare” of three Israeli teenagers after the pop star Lorde cancelled a planned performance in Tel Aviv. Judge Mirit Fohrer ruled that Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab of New Zealand must pay damages to Israeli teenagers Shoshana Steinbach, Ayelet Wertzel and Ahuva Frogel totalling more than NZ$18,000 for writing a letter urging the singer to cancel her concert in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Post reports. It is believed to be the first effective use of a 2011 Israeli law allowing civil lawsuits of anyone who encourages a boycott of Israel. The Israeli teenagers claimed their “artistic welfare” was damaged because of the cancellation and that they suffered “damage to their good name as Israelis and Jews”.

Moscow has repeatedly criticized the US military campaign in Syria, which has not been authorized by either the United Nations or Damascus. Speaking at a regular briefing on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the United States has occupied the southern part of Syria. “The situation in the northeast of Syria, where the US side is still trying to flirt with separatist-minded Kurdish groups, is concerning, as well as in the south of the country near Al-Tanf, where there is a de facto undisguised occupation by US forces of the territory of the sovereign Syrian state,” she said. The spokeswoman further stated that the militants who had found a “safe haven, a shelter in the 55-kilometer exclusive zone,” established by the US, were extorting $2,000 dollars per person from civilians who wanted to leave the area.

The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division has provided dozens of loans over the past two decades to fund the establishment of unauthorized Jewish outposts and farms across the West Bank, an investigation by Haaretz has revealed. Documents obtained by Haaretz show a pattern in which settlers have established farms and unauthorized outposts over the past 20 years with loans from the Settlement Division — financed entirely through taxpayers’ money and frequently secured by liens on agricultural equipment or livestock. The World Zionist Organization refused to respond for this article.

The Jewish Forward reports that a hugely popular pro-Israel speaker and writer, Hen Mazzig, has been secretly working directly for the Israeli government. It appears that his actions may have violated U.S. espionage laws. A pro-Israel organization lists Mazzig among “The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2018.” According to the Forward, Mazzig’s op-eds “have been published in nearly every Israeli and American Jewish publication (including the Forward), and his speeches to students across North America and Europe, have garnered him legions of fans, including more than 18,000 Twitter followers.”

The European Parliament expressed on October 25 its concern at the increasing normalisation of fascism, racism and xenophobia and called on EU member states to ban neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups. In a resolution passed with 355 votes to 90 and 39 abstentions, MEPs denounce that the lack of serious action against these groups has enabled the current xenophobic surge in Europe … They also urge national authorities to “effectively ban neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups and any other foundation or association that exalts and glorifies Nazism and fascism”.

The granddaughter of Italy’s Nazi ally fascist dictator Benito Mussolini unleashed a storm of protest from the Jewish community with a tweeted threat to sue anyone who posted “pictures or phrases” that were “offensive” regarding her grandfather. Alessandra Mussolini, a longtime right-wing politician and currently an Italian member of the European Parliament, posted the tweet on October 17. Italian Jews and others took to social media to protest. An article in the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore called it a “surreal tweet” that forgot “the ban on apology for fascism enshrined in our legal system.”

Trump’s liberal critics have compared him to Hitler since before the election, but a former Bush Sr. aide took a step further off a rhetorical cliff, tweeting several ways the Nazi leader compares favorably to Trump. In a tweet, former Bush official Bruce Bartlett listed several ways in which Trump compared unfavorably to Adolph (sic) Hitler: military service, marital fidelity, even penning one’s own iconic book … Bartlett’s tweet is deliberately outrageous, but very much in line with the rhetorical fallout of constantly comparing the sitting US president to Hitler. After all, where do you go from Hitler? Two Hitlers? After helping draft the Reagan tax cuts, Bartlett served as a senior policy analyst and later a Treasury Department official under George H. W. Bush.

… Why is our prestige press consumed by the murder of a Saudi dissident not one in a thousand Americans had ever heard of? Answer: Khashoggi had become a contributing columnist to the [Washington] Post. He was a journalist, an untouchable. The Post and U.S. media are going to teach the House of Saud a lesson: You don’t mess with the American press! Moreover, the preplanned murder implicating the crown prince … is a terrific story. Still, what ought not be overlooked here is the political agenda of our establishment media in driving this story as hard as they have for the last three weeks. Our Beltway elite can smell the blood in the water. They sense that Khashoggi’s murder can be used to discredit the Trump presidency, expose the amorality of his foreign policy and sever his ties to patriotic elements of his Middle American constituency.

… What whole mess reveals is just how wise our Founding Fathers were to warn us against entangling alliances. For too many decades the US has been in an unhealthy relationship with the Saudi kingdom, providing the Saudis with a US security guarantee in exchange for “cheap” oil and the laundering of oil profits through the US military-industrial complex by the purchase of billions of dollars in weapons. This entangling relationship with Saudi Arabia should end. It is unfortunate that the tens of thousands of civilians dead from Yemen to Syria due to Saudi aggression don’t matter as much as the murder of one establishment journalist like Khashoggi, but as one Clinton flack once said, we should not let this current crisis go to waste.

… Trump’s approach has been part of his administration’s tribalist approach to policy in the Middle East, in which Saudi Arabia serves as one of the supposed good guys on the U.S. side of the line and, on the other side of the line, its cross-gulf rival Iran is depicted as the source of all evil in the region. The approach involves the shameless application of double standards. Imagine how the administration would have reacted if Iran had done anything like what occurred in that Saudi consulate in Istanbul … The shameless application of double standards has become familiar to observers of domestic U.S. politics. Hardly a day goes by anymore without Trump’s partisans providing cover or excuses for the president’s latest outrageous exclamation or act, which would deservedly torpedo most political careers.

… There are striking and instructive parallels between US and British policy towards Iran in the lead up to the revolution and towards Saudi Arabia in 2015-18. In both periods, there was a self-destructive belief that an increasingly unstable hereditary monarchy was a safe bet as a regional ally as well as being a vastly profitable market for arms … As long ago as Dec. 2, 2015, the German federal intelligence agency, the BND, published a memo predicting that “the current cautious diplomatic stance of senior members of the Saudi royal family will be replaced by an impulsive intervention policy.” It went on to say that the concentration of so much power in the hands of Prince Mohammed bin Salman “harbours a latent risk that … he may overreach.”

Very few Americans know who Sheldon Adelson is and fewer still appreciate that, as America’s leading political donor, when he speaks the Republican Party listens. By virtue of his largesse, he has been able to direct GOP policy in the Middle East in favor of Israel … Money talks. He is worth an estimated $35 billion. His fortune came from casinos both in the US and in China … In America’s corrupt political culture, a monster like Sheldon Adelson can buy both a White House and Congress on behalf of a foreign government for a paltry $150 million or so … For those who think it would be different if the Democrats were in charge, think again. The Democrats have their own Adelson. His name is Haim Saban, an Israeli-American media magnate who has said he is a “one issue guy and my issue is Israel.” He is also the largest individual contributor to the Democratic Party.

A New York City gala held by the Friends of the Israel Defence Forces (FIDF) yesterday evening [Oct. 17] raised $32 million for members of Israel’s occupation forces. The event was attended by 1,200 US business people and philanthropists as well as key figures from the Israeli establishment … FIDF has a long history of fundraising for Israel’s occupation forces, the proceeds of which it then spends on “educational, cultural, recreational, and social services” for Israeli soldiers. It operates 20 offices across the United States and Panama, according to its own website. Support for the army from US organisations and the US government has been a cornerstone of Israel’s ability to continue its now 50-year-old occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades … Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium- range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe … “This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute … Nato ministers issued a joint statement saying the INF agreement “has been crucial to Euro-Atlantic security and we remain fully committed to the preservation of this landmark arms control treaty”.

European leaders have urged the United States not to abandon a landmark Cold War-era agreement prohibiting the U.S. and Russia from possessing ground-launched tactical nuclear missiles; but, they have tempered their reaction to President Donald Trump’s threat to do so by supporting his call for the Kremlin to be more transparent about its new missiles. The U.S. leader’s announcement of his plan to withdraw from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 has prompted a flurry of disapproval in Europe with predictions that quitting the pact will trigger an arms race and return Europe to the danger of a hair-trigger nuclear exchange.

… Above all the United States, which is in the forefront of the accusatory critics, should permit itself to be reminded of the great extent to which, for years, it violated Swiss neutrality. From 1943 onwards American war planes flew at will over the neutral country, sometimes in flight formations, in attacks on targets in the German Reich. Time and again they also carried out offensive operations against Swiss territory. Thus, on April 1, 1944, Schaffhausen was the victim of an intense American air attack, with considerable losses and heavy destruction of property.

Robert Faurisson, a former French academic who was convicted several times for claiming there was no systematic mass killings of Jews by Nazi Germany, has died aged 89 in his hometown of Vichy, central France … A former professor of French literature at the University of Lyon, Faurisson maintained that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were the “biggest lie of the 20th century”, saying deported Jews died instead of disease and malnutrition. He also contested the authenticity of the diary of Anne Frank, the Dutch girl who managed to hide with her family from the Nazis for years before being caught and sent to concentration camps. After France passed a law in 1990 making Holocaust denial a crime, Faurisson was repeatedly prosecuted and fined for his writings. He was dismissed from his academic post in 1991.

Robert Faurisson, the first Frenchman to be convicted of Holocaust denial, has died at the age of 89. Over several decades he became his country’s most notorious revisionist, having contested Anne Frank’s Diary’s authenticity and defended French wartime leader Philippe Petain for collaborating with Nazi Germany … Faurisson was convicted numerous times from 1981 to 2016 repeating his revisionist comments and writings … Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the far-right National Front party, said he had fought for free expression. “Faurisson is a symbol of the way free speech has been criminalised in this county,” Mr Le Pen said in a statement after his death was announced. “The State went through great lengths to silence Faurisson for decades.” France passed memorial laws which outlaw Holocaust denial in 1990.

… Those who challenge the Western world’s most important social-political taboo — on the Second World War treatment of the Jews — are routinely punished for their apostasy. France’s Fabius-Gayssot law of July 13, 1990, makes it a crime to “contest” the “crimes against humanity” as defined by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal of 1945-46 … Faurisson and Le Pen are hardly the only ones whom Jewish groups and French officials have targeted for expressing skepticism of the officially sanctioned version of 20th century history. Other victims include Philippe Costa, Alain Guionnet and Fabrice Robert. Between July 1990 and January 1993 alone, the Fabius-Gayssot law had already been applied 27 times.

On the subject of the Nazi gas chambers, Jean-Marie Le Pen recently stated: “If you take a thousand-page book on the Second World War, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or fifteen lines, and that’s called a detail.” He might have brought up some even harder hitting and more precise arguments, and referred to Eisenhower, Churchill, de Gaulle, Elie Wiesel, René Rémond, Daniel Goldhagen, and even the text of the Nuremberg Tribunal judgment. … In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi “gas chambers,” a “genocide” of the Jews, or of “six million” Jewish victims of the war.

Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that America’s global dominance is coming to an end, with the U.S. itself accelerating that process with a string of mistakes “typical of an empire.” The Russian president, speaking at the Valdai forum in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, criticized the U.S. for implementing sanctions against Russia and other nations, arguing that doing so undermined trust in the dollar as the world’s universal currency … The demise of the United States’ global hegemony has been a recurring theme in Putin’s speeches over recent years … At a panel session, Putin upbraided the U.S. for its military interventions in the Middle East, saying they had arisen from a dangerous American monopoly on world power. “Thank God, this situation of a unipolar world, of a monopoly, is coming to an end,” Putin said. “It’s practically already over.”

After watching the Saudis behead and even reportedly crucify critics and opponents for decades, suddenly Washington’s great and good are outraged by a single murder. The victim was a Saudi columnist from that nation’s elite who was noted for his moderate, cautious views, who was also linked to the former Saudi intelligence chief, Turki al-Faisal. But even gentle criticism of the royal government, and particularly its strongman, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS), caused Khashoggi to be murdered and cut up into pieces in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, to where he was lured last week and from whence he never emerged alive … Equally important, the Saudis and Emiratis are now closely allied to Israel’s far right government. Israel has been a door-opener for the Saudis and Gulf Emirates in Washington’s political circles.

… Far more critical to the future of our civilization is the ongoing invasion of the West from the Third World … It also now appears that the U.S. elections, not three weeks away, may be affected by another immigration crisis on the U.S. border. As of Thursday, a caravan of 4,000 refugees without visas had crossed from Honduras into Guatemala and was heading toward Mexico. By Election Day, it will either have been stopped, or it will be here. And this caravan is a portent of things to come. … If Donald Trump was elected on any one issue, it was immigration and his promises to secure the border, build the wall and halt the invasion. How he deals with the impending crisis of the migrant caravan may affect both the fate of his party in November and his presidency in 2020.

Russia and Iran have agreed on a mechanism to spare Iran the impact of what are intended by the US to be crippling sanctions on its oil industry from next month, an Israeli Foreign Ministry document reportedly warns. The mechanism provides for Iran to export crude oil to Russia across the Caspian Sea. The oil will then be refined at Russian refineries, and from there it will be exported worldwide, the “secret” Israeli document states, according to a report on Hadashot TV news on Sunday. In return, Moscow will provide Iran with unspecified trade and service benefits. The goal of the mechanism, the reported Israeli document makes clear, is to enable Iran to bypass the US sanctions on its oil industry that are set to come into force on November 4.

Until recently the United States viewed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, as a major threat to regional stability in the Middle East. Barack Obama made it a mission to roll back ISIS’s territorial and propagandistic gain, and Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to “kick ISIS’s ass.” The United States expended considerable effort, both military and political, in a campaign to defeat the terror group in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Syria. But there is also no doubt that the bulk of the effort came from Iran, not the United States. Without Iranian involvement, ISIS would still have a formidable presence in both Iraq and Syria … For Iran the ISIS phenomenon is not limited to Iraq.

It’s time to rethink America’s relationship with the Saudi Kingdom. It is no surprise to most Americans that we help arm, train, equip and otherwise prop up the government of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have long bought and paid for many politicians, and for an image of moderate pro-Americanism as part of the face they show the world … The fate of Khashoggi might come as a shock to many Americans, but it’s nothing new. A U.N. report reveals that over “3,000 allegations of torture were formally recorded” against Saudi Arabia between 2009 to 2015 … It’s a fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest sponsor of radical Islam on the planet, and no other nation is even close.

The disappearance and apparent assassination of Jamal Khashoggi have disrupted the Saudi government’s charm offensive in the United States. Think tanks are returning Saudi money. Defense contractors are worried about the end of lucrative arms deals. Sen. Marco Rubio says “no more business as usual.” The otherwise friendly editorial page of the Washington Post is calling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “a murderer.” But one thing is unlikely to change as a result of a brazen killing of a regime critic: the Trump administration’s warmongering policy toward Iran. The emerging damage control story — that Khashoggi died during “an interrogation that went wrong” — is designed to protect the strategic alliance that seeks to confront the Islamic Republic, say Iran experts.

The Khashoggi affair has weakened President Trump’s campaign to impose stringent economic sanctions on Iran aimed at reducing its influence or forcing regime change. Saudi Arabia is America’s main ally in the Arab world, so when its credibility is damaged so is that of the US … Mr Trump can scarcely back away from his confrontation with Iran because he has made it the principle test case for making America great again; or, in other words, the unilateral exercise of US power. Saudi Arabia and Israel are exceptions, but few other countries have a genuine interest in Mr Trump succeeding here even if they do not care much about what happens to Iran.

Just ten states have laws requiring grade school Holocaust education, but a Lake Oswego, Oregon, high school student is hoping to make her state the 11th … There are ten states where Holocaust education is mandatory: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, according to Rhonda Fink-Whitman, who helped spearhead the law in Pennsylvania and now coordinates a nationwide effort through her Facebook group “Campaign to Make Holocaust Education Mandatory in All 50 States.” The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Fink-Whitman said she was surprised to learn teachers weren’t required to teach about the Holocaust in her home state of Pennsylvania.

… Andy Pearce of University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education is not surprised Perl is disillusioned. His research team, in the world’s largest ever study of its kind, interviewed over 8,000 pupils aged 11-18 in England, where the Holocaust is the only compulsory subject in the national history curriculum. He was shocked to discover that “after 25-30 years Holocaust education is failing to make an impact.” … The recent decision to build a striking new national Holocaust memorial next to the Houses of Parliament in London was described by the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission as a “sacred duty” and announced by a government press release as a “permanent statement of our British values.”

Leaping into their lovers’ arms or canoodling on steps in the street, scores of women in Nazi Europe eloped with their German occupiers. A compilation of photographs, many of which were found among the belongings of German prisoners of war, shows scantily clad women partying with Nazi officers while some even posed in the German SS uniform. Other images show women drinking in coffee shops, playing in the snow or frolicking in grass meadows with their German lovers … Despite more than two million Frenchmen being held in prisoner-of-war camps, the birth rate boomed in 1942 with an estimated 200,000 children born to Franco-German couples … Some of the women simply fell in love and married their German beau. Whilst for others, having relations with a Nazi soldier had a lot to offer in a practical sense.

Norway’s government has officially apologised to Norwegian women targeted for reprisals by the authorities for having relationships with members of the German occupying forces during the Second World War. Between 30,000 to 50,000 Norwegians, labelled “German girls”, had sexual relations with German soldiers during the occupation, according to conservative estimates from Norway’s Centre for Holocaust and Minorities Studies. Many of the woman were subject to reprisals by officials after the 1945 liberation of Norway, including illegal arrests and detentions, job dismissals and even being stripped of their nationality … Historian Kare Olsen said he was unaware of any similar apology in other European countries where women suffered after their involvement with soldiers during German occupation.

Close to two out of three Europeans aren’t convinced life would be any worse without the European Union, according to a new survey published Thursday. The survey, commissioned by Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based think tank, found that 64 percent of the nearly 11,000 respondents weren’t sure their lives would be worse without the EU. Almost half (49 percent) reckon the bloc is “irrelevant.” Younger respondents, however, have a more positive view of the EU, with 41 percent of under 35-year-olds thinking life would be worse if there were no Union. “Without change and reform, the EU will remain irrelevant to a majority of its citizens,” Pascal Lamy, trustee of Friends of Europe and a former European trade commissioner, said about the findings of the study …

… As for Saudi Arabia, members of Congress are said to be readying sanctions to impose on the Saudi regime if it is proven Khashoggi was killed on royal orders. However, which would be a greater violation of human rights: the sanctioned killing of a political enemy of the regime or 10,000 dead Yemenis, including women and children, and millions facing malnutrition and starvation in a Saudi war of aggression being fought with the complicity and cooperation of the United States? Rather than resist Congress’ proposed sanctions, President Trump might take this opportunity to begin a long withdrawal from decades of entanglement in Mideast wars that have availed us nothing and cost us greatly.

Over the past week or so, Saudi Arabia has gotten more U.S. mainstream media coverage than at any time in decades. But conspicuously missing has been any reporting on the kingdom’s growing friendship with Israel — a de facto alliance that may help explain why Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thought he could get away with ordering the murder of the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi … By contrast, the British media had started to report on the budding Israel-Saudi Arabia relationship. In November 2017, the BBC said that “to all intents and purposes, Saudi Arabia and Israel are de facto allies against Iran’s rising influence in the region.”

… Politicians and journalists learned long ago that it was better to cultivate Israel’s friends than it was to support actual American interests. They also discovered to speak the truth about the Jewish State often would prove to be a death sentence career-wise … Maintaining “overwhelming support” for Israel requires doing whatever is necessary, be it fair or foul, and many Jews and Jewish organizations worldwide, like Engel, are prepared to place alleged Israeli interests ahead of those of the countries where they actually reside. In America, Jewish groups and individuals have succeeded in buying politicians and using their money and control over much of the media to corrupt the entire political system to benefit Israel … It is time for government to do what is best for Americans, not for Israelis.

… Who is responsible for this tragic treatment of Palestinians? If you ponder that question, bear in mind that Israel could not possibly commit this criminal behavior without automatic, unqualified, U.S. government support year after year. Pro-Israel lobby pressure controls all major news media. Congress behaves like a committee of the Israeli parliament. No president since Dwight Eisenhower has had the courage to stand up to Israeli wrongdoing. Those who know the truth are afraid to speak out for fear of paying a heavy price – maybe loss of employment. All citizens of the United States must face the truth: Our government is complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity.

An American student of Palestinian descent detained in Israel’s airport for nearly a fortnight has become an unexpected cause celebre. Lara Alqasem was refused entry under legislation passed last year against boycott activists, and Israeli courts are now deciding whether allowing her to study human rights at an Israeli university threatens public order. Usually those held at the border are swiftly deported, but Ms Alqasem appealed against the decision, becoming in the process an improbable “prisoner of conscience” for the boycott cause … Israel’s universities are worried that the academic boycott has highlighted their long-term complicity in Israel’s occupation and is gradually eroding their international standing.

… Bethlehem is the most heavily Christian city in Palestine. Its Arab Christian mayor, Vera Baboun, describes her hometown the “capital of Christmas” and says that between Bethlehem proper and the surrounding Bethlehem governate, there are upward of 38,000 Christian residents. Christmas celebrations there form an integral part of city life … The existence of Palestinian Christians, and the difficulties they face under Israeli occupation in their homeland, is a blind spot for American Christians. Evangelicals in particular are often strong supporters of Israel and suspicious of Muslims but don’t seem to realize that those aren’t the only groups at play in the region.

The proponents of a new bill say some school across the country are still segregated by race. The Strength in Diversity Act would promote diversity in schools by authorizing $120 million in grant money to support new and expand current voluntary community-driven programs. Supporters of the bill say many students’ educations are diminished by barriers of economic segregation and racial isolation. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy says a lack of diversity in schools is shameful. “We essentially are a segregated state,” said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).

… America is racist, but so is every other country and person, for racism, at core, is merely an extension and manifestation of innate self-love. One loves oneself, family, then nation, which is made up of those that share one’s language, above all, as well as culture and history, if not also a physical similarity. Loving oneself and kind doesn’t mean having a right to violate anybody else, obviously, and if one favors another race over one’s own, then that, too, is racism. No one is color blind … Very few, though, dare to even whisper about Jewish power … Like blacks with slavery, Jews use the Holocaust to silence all critics. Thus immuned, they can continue to slaughter Palestinians, wreck more Muslim countries, push refugees into Europe and fragment societies. If you push back, you’re a gas chamber loving Nazi.

The federal budget deficit has surged to $779 billion in fiscal 2018, its highest level in six years as President Donald Trump’s tax cuts caused the government to borrow more heavily in order to cover its spending. The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit climbed $113 billion from fiscal 2017. Debt will likely worsen in the coming years with the Trump administration expecting the deficit to top $1 trillion in 2019, nearly matching the $1.1 trillion imbalance from 2012. The deficit worsened because tax revenues are not keeping pace with government spending … Tax revenues were essentially flat in fiscal 2018, while spending increased 3.2 percent as Congress gave more funds for military and domestic programs. Revenues generally tumbled after December when Trump signed into law $1.5 trillion of tax cuts over the next decade.

September marked a decade since the bursting of the housing bubble, which was followed by the stock market meltdown and the government bailout of the big banks and Wall Street … Today credit card debt is over a trillion dollars, student loan debt is at 1.5 trillion dollars, there is a bubble in auto loans, and there is even a new housing bubble. But the biggest part of the everything bubble is the government bubble. Federal debt is over 21 trillion dollars and expanding by tens of thousands of dollars per second … The Fed will be unsuccessful in keeping the everything bubble from exploding. When the bubble bursts, America will experience an economic crisis much greater than the 2008 meltdown or the Great Depression.

… The ability of a relatively small number of agitated and energetic Jews to police the acceptable boundaries of historical narratives may have enormous consequences for our larger society, deterring scholars from objectively reporting historical facts and preventing students from discovering them … A cohesive, organized group generally possesses huge advantages over a teeming mass of atomized individuals … Traditional Jewish religious doctrine seems to consider Jews as being in a state of permanent hostility with all non-Jews, and the use of dishonest propaganda is an almost inevitable aspect of such conflict.

In this edgy skit, a gutsy young Israeli woman who personifies “the Holocaust” (“Shoah”) visits the country’s central Holocaust memorial center to call on Israel’s Jews to gratefully acknowledge that she has been very good for the Jewish state. The “Shoah,” she reminds them, has served as justification for Israel’s wars, its nuclear weapons arsenal, and its imposed “ghetto of three million” Palestinians. Concept, script and performance by Natali Cohen Vaxberg. With English subtitles. Runtime: 7:58 mins.

In a groundbreaking case, Israel has detained an American graduate student at its international airport for the past week, accusing her of supporting a Palestinian-led boycott campaign against the Jewish state. The case highlights Israel’s concerns about the boycott movement and the great efforts it has made to stop it. The grassroots campaign has made significant inroads in recent years, particularly among university students and millennials. Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old U.S. citizen with Palestinian grandparents, landed at Ben-Gurion Airport last Tuesday [Oct. 2] with a valid student visa. But she was barred from entering the country and ordered deported, based on suspicions she is a boycott supporter. An Israeli court has ordered that she remain in custody while she appeals.

An American student who was barred from Israel under a law against pro-Palestinian boycotters filed an appeal on Sunday [Oct. 14] with the country’s supreme court, which suspended her deportation pending a discussion of the case. Lara Alqasem, 22, flew to Israel on October 2, on a study visa. She was refused entry by security officials who cited her role as president of a small local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Florida … Alqasem’s case has touched off debate in Israel over whether democratic values have been compromised by a 2017 law that bars the entry of foreigners who publicly support anti-Israel boycotts, and if a hard line against the student will ultimately harm the country’s image.

… A Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015. The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point, disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending. (Luckily, the researchers downloaded and stored the documents.) … Skidmore got involved last spring when he heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, refer to a report which indicated the Army had $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments, or spending, in fiscal 2015.

Two federal government agencies, the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), may have accumulated as much as $21 trillion in undocumented expenses between 1998 and 2015. Independent news sources, including RT and USAWatchdog, reported this finding based on an investigation conducted by Mark Skidmore, a professor of economics at Michigan State University. Skidmore began to research the alleged irregularities in DoD and HUD spending after hearing Catherine Austin Fitts, who was assistant secretary of HUD during the George H. W. Bush administration, say that the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) had found $6.5 trillion worth of military spending that the Department of Defense could not account for.

Michigan State University economics professor Mark Skidmore made an astounding discovery about the finances and budgets of the U.S. federal government … He and a team of graduate students discovered $21 trillion missing in the federal budget going back to 1998. Dr. Skidmore, who specializes in public finance, explains, “We know from official government sources that indicate $21 trillion is, in some way, unaccounted for. Furthermore, if we come back to the Constitution, all spending needs to be authorized by Congress. It looks to me, and I think I can conclude with a high degree of certainty, there is money flowing in, as well as out, that is unaccounted for.” … In one example, Skidmore found a huge transfer from the Treasury Department to the Army that, again, was not authorized.

Benjamin Netanyahu is no stranger to the American spotlight. A career Israeli politician who attended school in the United States, he specializes in the kind of rhetoric that his American counterparts revel in – a kind of narcissism that’s more used car salesman than educator … In his 1995 campaign autobiography, “Fighting Terrorism,” Netanyahu, preparing to run for the office of prime minister of Israel, asserted that Iran was “three to five years” away from having a nuclear bomb. Bibi repeated this claim several times over the next 20-plus years … The American people should not tolerate this continued intrusion into their affairs by an outsider whose previous lies, prevarications and provocations helped get the United States entangled in one war, all the while advocating for our involvement in another.

A wide-ranging report into the relationship between President Donald Trump and Sheldon Adelson says that Trump intervened on the GOP mega-donor’s behalf in the Jewish billionaire’s quest to open a casino in Japan. The report published Wednesday by news site ProPublica and public radio station WNYC said that Trump told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he should strongly consider allowing Adelson to open a casino in the country … Abe also met with Adelson during his visit in February 2017, a month after Trump assumed office. Since then Abe has advanced legislation that would allow casinos to open in Japan … Adelson, the Las Vegas-based casino magnate and one of the wealthiest men in the world, spent $20 million to help elect Trump … His oft-stated rationale for backing Trump is the president’s Israel policy …

…Those who are in the drivers’ seat of the Israel promotion process are what some would describe as the Israel Lobby but which I would prefer to call a subset of the Jewish Lobby, which in itself is supported by something I would designate Jewish Power, an aggregate of Jewish money, control over key aspects of the media and entertainment industries plus easy access to corrupted politicians desirous of positive press and campaign donations. This penetration and control of the public discourse has resulted in the creation of what I would refer to as the official “Israel narrative” … Unfortunately the role of Washington as Israel’s obedient poodle has our once great country moving in the wrong direction. This has all been brought about by Jewish Power, and it is time to wake up to that fact and address it squarely.

Forbes published its 2018 roster of America’s wealthiest this week, and five members of the tribe made the top ten list. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leads the Jewish pack at number 4, with a net worth of $61 billion. He is followed by software giant Oracle’s Larry Ellison at #5 with $58.4 billion and Google co-founder Larry Page at #6 with $53.8 billion. Fellow co-founder Sergey Brin falls a bit behind with $52.4 billion, leaving him at #9. Finally, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg closes out the top ten with a respectable $51.8 billion.

… Most of us are much readier to concede the corrupting influence of the relatively small power of individuals than we are the rottenness of vastly more powerful institutions and structures. We blame the school teacher or the politician for abusing his or her power, while showing a reluctance to do the same about either the education or political systems in which they have to operate … Real power in our societies derives from that which is necessarily hard to see – structures, ideology and narratives – not individuals … The current neoliberal elite who effectively rule the planet have reached as close to absolute power as any elite in human history. And because they have near-absolute power, they have a near-absolute control of the official narratives about our societies and our “enemies”, those who stand in their way to global domination.

At this London Forum meeting, American historian Mark Weber looks at the astonishing power and influence of the “Jewish lobby,” and explains why the task of identifying and countering Jewish-Zionist power is vitally important. More than a hundred men and women attended this April 11, 2015, gathering at the Grosvenor Hotel in the English capital. Organizer Jez Turner introduces Weber. Video runtime: 33 mins.

… Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show that Washington is borrowing a lot money — we’re talking off-the-charts borrowing by historical peacetime standards. According to the CBO, in just a few years the US will be paying more in interest to pay down the national debt than on the military or Medicare … When Donald Trump campaigned for president, he promised to balance the budget and to chop down the debt. But once President Obama was out and President Trump was in, that’s not what happened … Today, the US debt sits at $21 trillion … The US now has the tenth highest debt-to-GDP ratio, sandwiched between Bhutan and Jamaica. And the US is carrying its heaviest debt load since World War II, when the country increased spending to finance the war.

The Volkswagen Beetle — the curvy car developed at Adolf Hitler’s direction that became an improbable symbol of the hippie counterculture of the 1960s — is set to become a thing of the past. Volkswagen said this week that it will end production of the vehicle in July … The original Beetle was designed for Hitler in the 1930s. At the time, only wealthy Germans could afford to buy cars, and it was supposed to make automobile ownership accessible to all. Hitler spoke at the dedication of the gigantic factory where the Beetle was built, and took a ride in a convertible version. The car’s simple design and air-cooled engine eliminated the need for a more complicated water-cooled system and helped make it a postwar hit. Its success led to the establishment of Volkswagen, which is now Europe’s largest carmaker by far.

… The Volkswagen Beetle, meanwhile, with its friendly styling by the Austrian designer Erwin Komenda, and innovative engineering by Ferdinand Porsche, became the best-selling car of all time … Although the car had been on the drawing board since 1934, following a meeting between Hitler and Porsche, the Volkswagen failed to get into production before the war. The idea had been for a small saloon that could carry a German family of five flat-out at 100 kph along the country’s new autobahns. It was to have cost 990 Reich Marks, which represented 31 weeks’ pay for the average German worker in 1936 …

The Volkswagen, or “People’s Car,” that so many millions have known for more than half a century had its genesis in Nazi Germany. Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, who designed the Volkswagen, had to share the concept with none other than Adolf Hitler … Porsche and Hitler met in May 1934 to discuss plans for the “People’s Car.” Porsche outlined the specs he had in mind … Hitler added specs according to his own vision: the car was to be a four-seater, get 100 kilometers per seven liters of gasoline, and maintain 100 kilometers per hour. Porsche proposed that the car be priced at around 1,550 marks ($620 at 1934 exchange rate). Hitler limited the price of the Volkswagen to 900 marks and gave Porsche only ten months to build a prototype. Beating out other proposals, Porsche and his design team began building three prototypes in a garage at his home near Stuttgart.

… The cult of the Holocaust retains a unique, court-enforced prohibition against any investigation that might cast a doubt on its sacred dogma … Ron Unz, this kamikaze of critical mind from California, has stepped on the third rail knowingly, in full awareness of the consequences. He did not stop at doubting the established mantra, he also published and made available to readers and internet users some more important books on the subject … Whether the Holocaust narrative is based on sterling facts or on exaggerations, it is good to reject it. Even if the ‘deniers’ are factually wrong (let us presume it for the sake of argument), they are still right with their conclusions. And Ron Unz had made an important contribution for the benefit of mankind by his publication.

… Homelessness has increased in other thriving West Coast cities that are destinations for young, well-educated workers, like San Francisco and Seattle, where the blame has also largely fallen on rapidly rising costs and evictions. Exact numbers are always hard to come by but 553,742 people were homeless on a single night across the US in 2017 … Declines in 30 states were overshadowed by big surges elsewhere … Los Angeles, where the situation has been described as unprecedented, had more than 50,000 people without homes, behind only New York City, which had some 75,000 … Homelessness, in Portland and beyond, seems to be more visible than ever. Residents are growing frustrated with the smell of urine, human faeces and abandoned objects littering public spaces and, sometimes, their own doorsteps.

A bill that was passed by the U.S. Senate in early August and is currently under consideration by the House would mandate that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) work closely with the Israel Space Agency (ISA) despite the fact that such cooperation in the past was used by Israel to steal U.S. state secrets. The provision is tucked within the bill titled the “United States-Israel Security Authorization Act of 2018,” which would also provide Israel with $38 billion in U.S. military aid over a ten-year period, the largest military aid package in U.S. history. MintPress News previously reported that this massive aid package translates into approximately $23,000 every year for every Israeli family.

A clear majority of Israelis oppose accepting refugees from war-torn countries into Israel, according to a new poll released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Institute. The poll included respondents from 18 different countries, and among the Israelis surveyed by it, 57 percent were against accepting refugees – more than in any other country included in the survey … Among Israelis, 37 percent of the respondents said they support the idea. Only one other country included in the survey, Hungary, had a lower level of support for accepting refugees … In the United States, 66 percent of those surveyed by Pew said they support taking refugees into the country, while 29 percent said they oppose … The highest levels of support for accepting refugees were measured in Spain (86 percent), Germany (82 percent) and Sweden (81 percent).

Three years after a record 1.3 million migrants sought asylum in Europe, a majority of people in several European countries say they support taking in refugees who are fleeing violence and war, according to a Pew Research Center survey. However, most people in these countries disapprove of the way the European Union has dealt with the refugee issue. About three-quarters or more of adults in Spain, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom support taking in refugees from countries where people are fleeing violence and war, according to a global survey conducted in the spring of 2018 that included ten EU countries.

Scott Kelly, a retired American astronaut with multiple space flights under his belt, apologized Sunday after quoting Winston Churchill and calling the 20th century British prime minister “one of the greatest leaders of modern times.” “Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill. My apologies. I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support. My point was we need to come together as one nation. We are all Americans. That should transcend partisan politics,” Kelly wrote on Twitter … Some Twitter users reacted to Kelly offering an apology, telling him he overreacted to what appeared to be a wave of online trolls.

The well-entrenched idealization of Churchill is part and parcel of a drastically misleading view of the Second World War that Americans have been fed for decades. One common deceit is to give the impression that Hitler sought war against Britain and France, and that Germany aggressively attacked those two countries … Churchill’s enduringly stellar image is all the more remarkable considering that his views on a range of issues were, by today’s standards, hopelessly backward and politically incorrect … Along with most Britons (and Americans) of his era, he was also an unabashed racist.

Our aim is to “starve the whole population — men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission,” said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians … After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles. As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation.”

More and more cities across the United States are celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus Day, a counter-holiday honoring the history and contributions of Native Americans … Columbus Day — named for Italian explorer Christopher Columbus — officially became a federal holiday in 1937, “in order to place Catholic Italians, like Christopher Columbus, into American history.” But activists argue that memorializing Columbus, who was credited for opening up the Americas for European colonization, ignores the erasure of Native American history … Dozens of U.S. cities have either scrapped Columbus Day and adopted Indigenous Peoples Day or Native American Day … At least seven states don’t recognize Columbus Day at all: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Oregon, Minnesota, South Dakota and Vermont.

Many Americans will celebrate Monday [Oct. 8] as Columbus Day, a federal holiday that marks the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s Spanish-led expedition arriving in the Americas, or as Indigenous Peoples Day, to acknowledge those who were displaced by European settlement in North America. Others, however, will wait for Tuesday [Oct. 9] to celebrate something else: Leif Erikson Day, a celebration of the Viking explorer credited with reaching the continent around the year 1000, nearly 500 years before Columbus did. But, while it may sound only fair to share the credit for exploration, the movement to recognize Erikson also has a dark back story, as Leif Erikson Day’s history is connected to nativist backlash against immigration to the United States.

The US military practice of placing nuclear weapons in five other countries (no other nuclear power does this) is a legal and political embarrassment for US diplomacy. That’s why all the governments involved refuse to “confirm or deny” the practice of “nuclear sharing,” or the locations of the B61 free-fall gravity bombs in question. Expert analysts and observers agree that the United States currently deploys 150-to-180 of these nuclear weapons at bases in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey and Belgium. The authors of the January 2018 report “Building a Safe, Secure, and Credible NATO Nuclear Posture” take for granted the open secret that nuclear sharing is ongoing even though all six countries are signatory parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

… It is difficult to imagine how the United States might avoid a new war in the Middle East given the recent statements that have come out of Washington, and, given that the Russians are also active in the region, a rapid and massive escalation of something that starts out as a minor incident should not be ruled out. President Donald Trump set the tone when he harangued the United Nations last Tuesday, warning that the United States would go it alone in defense of its perceived interests, with no regard for international bodies that exist to limit armed conflict and punish those who commit war crimes … The emotional description [by Trump] of disrespecting “neighbors, borders and sovereign rights” fits the U.S. and Israel to a “T” rather than Iran.

Mein Kampf and intersectional feminism aren’t usually lumped together in many people’s minds, but if linked with the right language and buzzwords, left-wing academic publications apparently will accept the combination as scholarship. That’s the conclusion reached by a trio of self-declared “left-wing academics” who ran a research project exposing what they call higher education’s burgeoning field of “grievance studies.” Led by Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University in Oregon, they submitted what they called “intentionally broken” papers to leading publications on gender, race and sexuality. By August, seven of their papers had been accepted for publication, they said.

Something has gone wrong in the university — especially in certain fields within the humanities. Scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances has become firmly established, if not fully dominant, within these fields, and their scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview. This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous. For many, this problem has been growing increasingly obvious, but strong evidence has been lacking. For this reason, the three of us just spent a year working inside the scholarship we see as an intrinsic part of this problem … We undertook this project to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research.

Reactions to an elaborate academic-journal hoax, dubbed “Sokal Squared” by one observer, came fast and furious on Wednesday. Some scholars applauded the hoax for unmasking what they called academe’s leftist, victim-obsessed ideological slant and low publishing standards. Others said it had proved nothing beyond the bad faith and dishonesty of its authors. Three scholars … spent ten months writing 20 hoax papers that illustrate and parody what they call “grievance studies,” and submitted them to “the best journals in the relevant fields.” Of the 20, seven papers were accepted, four were published online, and three were in process … Time will tell, the trio said, but they think the mega-hoax will effectively snuff out their academic futures.

… The historians’ new role is to tell the inequality narrative of the oppressed and the oppressor through the lens of class, gender, and race. Matthew A. Sears, associate professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick believes that ancient Greek sculptures epitomise racism and white supremacy … These new histories have gradually replaced the traditional canon of historical subjects which once upon a time formed the basis of an undergraduate degree in history in Australia … Since the 1960s, universities have been leading their students fairly and squarely down a path of un-education, unlearning and enlightenment, and they should be called to account. Now these students, filled with an ideological fervor and driven by social justice, are leading the rest of society down the same path, whether society wants it or not.

How a society views the past not only reflects its current prevailing values and outlook, but also profoundly influences the way its people will shape the future … The Montreal Congress reflects the currently fashionable “victimization” mania in which blacks, homosexuals, Jews, feminists and others vie for preferential “victim status.” Behind this vogue is the notion that this coveted status confers a kind of nobility or moral stature on the members of the oppressed group. Furthermore, a hierarchy of victimization attributes the greatest measure of moral authority to those who have been most “victimized.”

… In The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, [Robert] Gerwarth gives us a smart, rational, intellectually rigorous, and penetrating work that illuminates today’s formidable challenges in the Middle East and the Ukraine … The utopian platitude “the war to end war” — genuinely accepted if not firmly believed by a considerable number of individuals — was, and is, specious. The violent upheavals and virulent slaughter, principally in central Europe before the 1918 Armistice and following the Treaty of Versailles roughly through 1923, question the plausibility of the utopian future hoped for by many … Robert Gerwarth has given us a superlative work, eminently readable, with which to do so.

… The First World War, as it is conventionally understood, did not really cease in 1918. This is the argument put forth by Robert Gerwarth in his provocative new book, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923. The Armistice settled very little. In 1919, an Austrian newspaper ran an editorial on the condition of Europe that ran under the title “War in Peace”. It was no exaggeration. From Finland to Turkey, civil wars, revolution, and ethnic strife raged, killing millions … “Between 1917 and 1920 alone, Europe experienced no fewer than 17 violent transfers of political power, many of them accompanied by latent or open civil wars.” … This was no just peace: it was extortion compounded by humiliation. Gerwarth further suggests that all the talk from the Allies about “democracy” and “self-determination” was little more than hollow cant.

The Pew Research Center has released the results of the latest survey in its annual series of public-opinion polls tracking attitudes in 25 foreign countries. Donald Trump’s numbers are bad. On the central question of whether people have confidence in a leader “to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” 27 percent of respondents worldwide expressed confidence in Trump, and 70 percent no confidence … A conspicuous exception to this pattern is opinion in Israel, where, in what is nearly the complete opposite from opinion in the rest of the world, Trump gets a positive rating of 69 percent. (He scored 56 percent positive in Israel last year.) This is probably good news from the perspective of those who are most concerned about what they regard as Israel’s interests, as distinct from those focused on U.S. interests.

In response to a U.N. court order that the U.S. lift sanctions on Iran, the Trump administration said Wednesday it was terminating a decades-old treaty affirming friendly relations between the two countries. The move is a largely symbolic gesture that highlights deteriorating relations between Washington and Tehran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said withdrawing from the 1955 Treaty of Amity was long overdue, and followed Iran “groundlessly” bringing a complaint with the International Court of Justice challenging U.S. sanctions on the basis that they were a violation of the pact. Meanwhile, national security adviser John Bolton said the administration also was pulling out of an amendment to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that Iran or others, notably the Palestinians, could use to sue the U.S. at The Hague-based tribunal.

There is a very real possibility that Donald Trump will start a new war in the Middle East. If that’s not his intention, then his administration is doing a damn good job of faking it … These tensions are about to get worse. In early November, the administration will hit countries doing business with Iran with a new round of harsh sanctions. The likelihood that this pressure will explode into military conflict is rising dramatically … War would not in any conceivable scenario lead to the establishment of a popular, democratic, and pro-Western government in Iran. With war would come chaos … If reasoned statements won’t work, maybe congressional action will. On September 26, eight senators, led by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced legislation to prevent Trump from launching an unconstitutional war with Iran.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, based in Los Angeles, is one of the most influential Jewish organizations in the world … Although it claims to promote “tolerance,” and makes a pretense of concern for humanity, the Center’s real agenda is a narrowly Jewish-Zionist one. The Wiesenthal Center is a staunch supporter of Israel and its Jewish supremacist regime. It fervently defends Israel’s policies of oppression, occupation, dispossession, and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews … It applauds Israel’s “security fence,” a hideous barrier that is part of a long-term Zionist effort to seize land of non-Jews, and which the International Court of Justice says is illegal.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel continued her 24-hour visit to Israel on Thursday with a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, and said Germany bore an “everlasting responsibility” to remember the tragedy and oppose anti-Semitism … “From this comes the everlasting responsibility of Germany to remember this crime and to oppose anti-Semitism, xenophobia, hatred and violence.” Later on Thursday, Merkel was meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, and will also receive an honorary doctorate from Haifa University. Merkel, who is accompanied by much of her cabinet, a large business delegation and her new czar for combating anti-Semitism, arrived in Israel on Wednesday night …

A meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in New York on Wednesday evening further confirmed the latter’s commitment to battling all forms of antisemitism. The conversation took place at a reception hosted by Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress … The chancellor briefed Netanyahu on the steps taken by the Austrian government and parliament to reflect their appreciation of the Jewish community, the memory of the Holocaust and the struggle against antisemitism, including the closure of the journal Die Aula, which is associated with the far-right Freedom Party of Austria. The chancellor said Austria is committed to fighting antisemitism, not only in its own country but throughout Europe …

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the Holocaust cannot be used “as a justification for an apartheid policy in Palestine.” Zarif, speaking to CBS’s “Face the Nation” was asked about a recent statement from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said that “for a Holocaust denying country that is threatening Israel to compare the United States or its leader to Nazis is among the most outrageous things I have ever heard.” Zarif responded by first acknowledging the Holocaust, but then saying it was no excuse for Israel to mistreat Palestinians.

Malaysia’s avowedly anti-Semitic Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad arrived in London early Sunday morning for the second leg of an international visit, following his trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly … The Daily Mail reported that at no point was the Malaysian premier challenged over his virulently anti-Semitic views and statements … The Jewish community condemned the welcome Mohamad has received from such prestigious institutions. “It is utterly appalling that at a time when anti-Semitism is so raw, a man who is proud to be an anti-Semite is being courted,” Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, told the Daily Mail.

Israelis have an extremely positive view of US President Donald Trump and his administration, and are largely isolated in this outlook in the international community, a survey by the Pew Research Center shows. The poll of America’s standing in 25 countries, published Monday, shows 82 percent of Jewish Israelis have confidence in Trump’s handling of global affairs (69% among Israelis overall) while 94% of Jewish Israelis have a favorable view of the US in general (83% overall). Israeli approval of the US and its president was not widely shared in other countries surveyed, where ratings were generally at historic lows: Views of Washington are dim — and falling — in many nations which are key allies of the US, including Germany (30% favorability), Canada (39%) and France (38%).

Perhaps it is Donald Trump’s business background that leads him to believe that if you inflict enough economic pain on someone they will ultimately surrender and agree to do whatever you want. Though that approach might well work in New York real estate, it is not a certain path to success in international relations … Iran has been sanctioned even through it complied with an international agreement on its nuclear program and new sanctions were even piled on top of the old sanctions. And in about five weeks the US will be sanctioning anyone who buys oil from Iran, reportedly with no exceptions allowed … It should be noted that sanctions earn a lot of ill-will and generally accomplish nothing … Someday, when the US begins to lose its grip on the world economy all of those places being sanctioned will line up to get their revenge and it won’t be pretty.

History may one day rule this was the fateful geopolitical moment when the European Union clinched its PhD on foreign policy. Last week, EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, announced at the UN a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) to deal with the Trump administration’s sanctions on Iran after the US unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal … This single initiative means Brussels is attempting to position itself as a serious geopolitical player, openly defying the US and essentially nullifying the Iran demonization campaign launched by the White House, CIA and State Department … The EU-3 will set up a multinational, state-backed, financial mechanism to help European companies conduct business with Iran in euros – and thus away from US financial enforcers.

… The role of Jews in the Russian Revolution, and by extension Communism writ large, has always been a sensitive subject because antisemitic voices often painted Soviet Communism as a Jewish plot, or “Jewish Bolshevism.” … Half of the top contenders in the Central Committee of the Communist Party to take power after Lenin’s health declined in 1922 – Lev Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev – were Jewish. Yakov Sverdlov, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from November 1917 to his death in 1919, was Jewish … In a twisted irony, some of these Bolsheviks who had played a prominent role executing others, such as NKVD Director Genrikh Yagoda, were themselves executed.

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 [2013] 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 and supported the arrest and repression of Jews, Russian Orthodox Christians, Muslims and members of other faiths. They grouped everyone into the same category.”

… Lenin’s deputies Lev Kamenev (originally Rozenfeld) and Grigory Zinoviev (born Hirsch Apfelbaum) and his treasurer Grigori Sokolnikov (Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant) were all Jews, as were Karl Radek (Sobelsohn), co-writer of the Soviet Constitution, Maxim Litvinov (Meir Henoch Wallach-Finkelstein), foreign minister of the USSR … Most proverbially, a Jew – Yakov Sverdlov – oversaw the nighttime execution of Czar Nikolai, Empress Alexandra, and their five children. Jewish revolutionaries were prominent beyond Russia as well … In Poland, two of the three Stalinists who led its transition to communism – Hilary Minc, who collectivized its economy, and Jakub Berman, who headed its secret police – were Jews. The revolution, in short, was so crowded with Jews that one had to wonder whether “the Jews” were inherently revolutionary.

… The leader of the Revolution and the founder of the USSR, was many parts Jewish, through his mother. The facts came to light only after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Communist Party archives recently opened … The grandfather of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov — he began to take the pseudonym Lenin when he was around 30 — was born Sril Moiseyevich (Israel Moses) Blank in Odessa in the early 1800s. Like so many ambitious young men in the Tsarist empire, while studying medicine in his early twenties he converted to Russian Orthodoxy and changed his first name and patronymic to Alexander Dimitreyevich. He travelled widely in Europe after qualifying as a doctor and he married the daughter of a wealthy German merchant …

… Over the past quarter-century, U.S. foreign policy has been in the hands of a loose alliance of liberal interventionists and hawkish neoconservatives. Both groups firmly embrace American exceptionalism, see the United States as the indispensable power that must exert active leadership all over the world, favor overwhelming military supremacy, and endorse the broad goal of spreading liberal values (democracy, human rights, rule of law, markets) to every corner of the world … Unfortunately, the foreign policy to which these elites were committed has been a dismal failure … America’s foreign-policy elites once thought the wind was at their backs and that spreading U.S. ideals would be relatively easy; today, these same ideals are under siege and the liberal world order they sought to expand is on life-support.

… Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the 1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of corporate dictatorship. This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new “groupthink”, as Parry called it, dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies … There is a striking similarity with the BBC’s coverage of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lawless invasion of Iraq in 2003, which left a million dead and many more dispossessed … So much of the mainstream has descended to this level. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters is the “perception.”

… Overall, U.S. policy was not just a failure, but a disaster. Washington managed to do little more than raise expectations among Assad’s opponents, prolonging the war and increasing its toll … Finally, Washington reinforced its well-earned reputation for being not just careless but irresponsible in attacking countries without considering what was likely to follow … These operations are illegal under both U.S. and international law. Congress never authorized an American invasion of Syria to oust its legally legitimate (however hostile) government. Nor was any action authorized to prevent the operation of an alliance between Damascus and other legally legitimate governments, including Iran … Both the Obama and Trump administrations were living in a fantasy world when it came to Syria.

For years, US presidents have regaled the UN General Assembly with rosy and ridiculous rhetoric about America allegedly doing great things for world peace … This year, however, the assembly burst out in laughter at President Trump’s vain claims of greatness. It’s about time too. American claims have always been wildly overblown. This year’s disbelieving reaction among delegates was not only appropriate. It also shows that the world openly views US claims as ridiculously disconnected from reality … He called for the world to “choose peace and freedom over domination” – that from a leader of a nation that has waged scores of wars in flagrant violation of international law during the seven decades since the UN was established following the Second World War.

Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson is reportedly spending at least $55 million during the upcoming midterm elections in order to keep Republicans in control of Congress … Adelson has become the most influential donor in the Republican Party during U.S. President Donald Trump’s time in office. According to the report, Adelson’s total spending on behalf of the Republicans in the 2016 and 2018 election combined, will surpass $100 million, probably making him the largest single donor in American politics today … Adelson, according to the NYT report, has enjoyed a “direct line to the President” since Trump entered the White House. The report also stated that Adelson “has used his access to push the president to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and, more recently, cut aid to the Palestinians.”

… Billionaire investor Seth Klarman is so worried about Trump he’s given up on his traditional favorite, the Republican Party. “Mr. Klarman is now giving almost exclusively to Democrats — and donating far more money than he ever has” … That’s not the whole story. Israel is never mentioned in the article, but Israel is clearly at the heart of Klarman’s giving. Klarman started a newspaper in Israel, the Times of Israel, and has given to a host of neoconservative Israel lobby organizations … What Lipner is saying is that Trump is threatening the pro-Israel consensus in American politics by so politicizing Israel support. This is something that many smart pro-Israel political leaders have emphasized. Chuck Schumer told AIPAC, don’t let Israel become a partisan issue. “If Israel becomes the domain of one party or another, Israel will lose.”

… If anyone had any illusions about American politics, they were dispelled this week [2014]. The casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson, organized a public display of his power … And what was he demanding from the future president of the United States? First of all and above everything else, blind and unconditional obedience to the government of another state: Israel … I wonder how ordinary Americans react to this spectacle of one billionaire – especially a Jewish one – choosing their next president for them … And here we have a Jew, straight out of the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, trying to appoint the ruler of the mightiest country on the planet … The basic problem is that the American political process is totally corrupt. There is no other way to put it.

A video posted on Facebook by the German Embassy in Brasilia explaining the culture of remembrance over the Holocaust in Germany was met with unexpected hostility from many Brazilians. Some insisted that Adolf Hitler espoused a left-wing ideology, others sought to deny the Holocaust. The video said that Germans “don’t hide from their past,” adding that “from a young age they’re taught to confront the horrors of the Holocaust.” The post garnered some 776,000 views on the embassy’s Facebook page, not to mention a number of contentious comments. Many Brazilians were enraged by the assertion that the Nazi party was a right-wing movement, pointing to its official name, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, as evidence that it was leftist instead. Other commenters questioned the validity of the Holocaust …

After being banned in the Netherlands for over 70 years, a new Dutch translation of “Mein Kampf” hit bookstores across the country in August. It didn’t take long for Hitler’s political manifesto, written in 1924, to become a best seller and stir controversy in the country. Even though booksellers are reluctant to even display it, the translation, “Mijn Strijd,” has been on the country’s best-seller list since its release – peaking in third place in mid-September … Caroline Reeders is the director of Athenaeum, one of the Netherlands’ largest bookstores and one of the book’s carriers. She also describes “Mijn Strijd” as a responsibly published historical source. “The book should be made available, but in a responsible way … nobody should be confronted by it,” she says. “The book hasn’t been put on display and customers searching for it have to ask.”