-
U.S. Foreign Policy Has No Policy
Philip M. Giraldi
… The part of the world where American meddling coupled with ignorance has produced the worst result is inevitably the Middle East. Washington has been led by the nose by Israel and Saudi Arabia, currently working in sync, to have the United States destroy Iran even though the Iranians represent no threat whatsoever to Americans or any serious U.S. interests … Senator Rand Paul’s courageous decision to place a “hold” on aid to Israel is long overdue, as Israel is a liability to the United States and is also legally ineligible for aid due to its undeclared nuclear arsenal and its unwillingness to sign the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The hysterical reactions of American Jews and Israel suggest that any redirection of U.S. Middle East policy will produce a hostile reaction from the Establishment …
-
Pro-Israel Groups Attack Rand Paul for Blocking $38 Billion to Israel
If Americans Knew
Free Beacon reports that “pro-Israel groups in America are mobilizing against Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) for blocking the continuation of U.S. aid to Israel.” Paul has placed a “block” on legislation to give Israel $38 billion over the next ten years – $23,000 per every Jewish Israeli family of four. This is the largest military aid package in U.S. history … A block is a legislative procedure in which a senator calls on the floor leader not to move forward with a bill and indicates that the senator may filibuster against it. Jewish News Syndicate reported last week that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had sent an action alert to its members calling on them to pressure Paul to remove his block on the bill … AIPAC has also been purchasing advertisements on Facebook attacking Paul “as the primary Senate force blocking the reauthorization of the U.S.-Israel security pact.”
-
For Many U.S. College Students, Thanksgiving is a 'Racist' Holiday
K. Baldwin - Western Journal
… The announcement of the University of Oregon’s student-run event called Thanksgiving a “celebration” of “ongoing genocide,” and said the alternative event would help people with raising their “critical consciousness and identifying ways to decolonize the holiday.” The school’s event description reads, “… Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe.” … Campus Reform, which describe itself as a “watchdog to the nation’s higher education system,” sent correspondent Josiah Tejada to ask students whether they believe Thanksgiving is racist or celebrates genocide … Another student said Thanksgiving was “racist” because “we’re celebrating taking away land from natives.”
-
Anti-Semitic stereotypes are alive and well in Europe, while the memory of the Holocaust is starting to fade, a sweeping new survey by CNN reveals. More than a quarter of Europeans polled believe Jews have too much influence in business and finance. Nearly one in four said Jews have too much influence in conflict and wars across the world. One in five said they have too much influence in the media, and the same number believe they have too much influence in politics … Those are among the key findings of a survey carried out by pollster ComRes for CNN … A third of Europeans said that Jews use the Holocaust to advance their own positions or goals … Nearly one in five said anti-Semitism in their countries was a response to the everyday behavior of Jewish people.
-
Ukrainians Around World Commemorate 'Holodomor' Victims
Kyiv Post (Ukraine)
Today [Nov. 24] Ukrainians around the world commemorate victims of an artificial famine of 1932-1933 known as the Holodomor, the result of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s order to force peasant households into collective farms. The exact number of Ukrainians who perished during the Holodomor genocide is unknown but scholars say at least 3.9 million people were starved to death in Ukraine as the Soviet government seized their property and crops, closed off the borders and denied any outside aid. Besides Ukraine, millions of people in other agricultural regions of the Soviet Union were subjected to collectivization and starvation. Of all ethnic groups, Kazakhstan saw the highest death ratio: an estimated 38 percent of the ethnic Kazakh population died during the 1931-1933 famine, according to a Harvard University study published in 2001.
-
Nationalism and Genocide: Origin of the Artificial Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine
Valentyn Moroz -- Institute for Historical Review
… These elementary analogies are enough to show that the murder of seven million Ukrainians in 1933 could not have been motivated by socio-economic or “class” reasons alone. Conflicts claim millions of victims only in struggles between nations, as in wars, colonial struggles, and so forth, when the national question is paramount. Moscow needed a holocaust. The imposed famine of 1933 and the whole range of repressive mass killings during the 1930s were an expression of the empire’s struggle for self-preservation. It was this instinct, and not the economic doctrine of collectivization, that impelled the Kremlin to carry out the horrors of the 1930s.
-
Iran President Rouhani Calls Israel a 'Cancerous Tumor'
Associated Press
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday called Israel a “cancerous tumor” established by Western countries to advance their interests in the Middle East. Iran’s leaders frequently condemn Israel and predict its demise, but Rouhani, a relative moderate, rarely employs such rhetoric. Addressing an annual Islamic Unity Conference on Saturday, Rouhani said “one of the ominous results of World War II was the formation of a cancerous tumor in the region.” He went on to refer to Israel as a “fake regime” set up by Western countries … Israel views Iran as an existential threat. Rouhani said the United States cultivates close ties with “regional Muslim nations” to protect Israel, an apparent reference to Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s Sunni Arab allies.
-
… Trump began by saying he was putting America first, but that was the last thing he was doing … Trump is also clear that he is running interference for the crown prince for the sake of Israel and in order to keep together his coalition against Iran. But Israel would not need to suck up to bone saw murderers if it would make peace with the Palestinians and stop colonizing their land and keeping them stateless. As for Iran, the US had made an epochal settlement with Tehran that mothballed most of its nuclear enrichment program in 2015. Trump trashed that agreement and tried to put Iran behind the eight ball, cheered on by aggressive Saudis willing to fight Iran to the last drop of American soldiers’ blood … With allies like this, who needs enemies?
-
Are the Saudi Princes True Friends?
Patrick J. Buchanan
The 633-word statement of President Donald Trump on the Saudi royals’ role in the grisly murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi is a remarkable document, not only for its ice-cold candor … “Our paramount goal,” Trump declared in his statement, “is to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world.” But this objective is every bit as utopian as George W. Bush’s second inaugural where he declared the “ultimate goal” of U.S. foreign policy to be “ending tyranny in our world.” Terrorism and tyranny have been with mankind forever, and they will be with mankind forever … Iran has not attacked us, does not want war with us and remains in compliance with the nuclear treaty from which we walked away.
-
Jewish Leaders Call for New Editions of the Bible and the Koran to Carry 'Trigger Warnings' Highlighting Anti-Semitic Passages
Daily Mail (Britain)
Jewish leaders are calling for new editions of the Bible and Koran to carry warning messages which highlight anti-Semitic passages in the holy texts. The recommendations have been made in a new document called ‘An End to Antisemitism! A Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism’. It was produced following an international conference organised by the European Jewish Congress, at which academics gathered to discuss how prejudice and discrimination can be tackled. Among the policies mentioned in the document was the idea of warning messages in holy texts, a topic discussed in a chapter entitled ‘recommendations regarding Religious Groups and Institutions.’
-
A Big Step for a Greater Israel
Eric Margolis
… The Trump administration quietly changed America’s long-held position on Syria’s strategic Golan Heights while attention was focused on the raucous political carnival in Washington. Though barely noticed, the policy change had enormous importance and will lead the United States into a lot of future Mideast misery … Now, the White House has quietly accepted permanent Israeli control of Golan, though it violates international law and past US policy. It’s clear that US Mideast policy is firmly under the control of the neocons aligned to Israel’s expansionist far right parties. In fact, it is impossible to see any difference between the policies of Israel’s hard rightwing leader, Benyamin Netanyahu, and President Donald Trump … A coterie of pro-Israel lawyers and property developers from New York City have completely taken control of Mideast policy.
-
An Israeli-American man was sentenced to ten years in prison in Israel on Thursday for making about 2,000 hoax bomb threats that forced evacuations of Jewish community centers across the U.S., and planes to make emergency landings. The threats were made by phone and email in 2016 and 2017, and raised concern at the time in the United States that anti-Semitism was on the rise … In passing sentence, the court said the defendant offered on the “dark web” — part of the Internet accessible only through special software — to make bomb and shooting threats for money, earning about $240,000 worth of the digital currency Bitcoin … Kadar, who was arrested in Israel in March 2017, is Jewish.
-
The Quakers of Britain announced that the religious movement will no longer invest in companies that “profit from the occupation” they accused Israel of maintaining in Judea and Samaria [“West Bank” Palestine]. The Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends, said in their announcement Monday that the decision was made by the church’s trustees in consultation with Meeting for Sufferings – the national representative body of Quakers. It said the Quakers have a long history of “pursuing ethical investments,” noting that it has taken decisions not to invest in the fossil fuel industry, arms companies and South Africa under apartheid. “Our long history of working for a just peace in Palestine and Israel has opened our eyes to the many injustices and violations of international law arising from the military occupation of Palestine by the Israeli government” …
-
Mired in Banality: Operation Finale
Mike D’Angelo – AV Film
Early in Operation Finale, a docudrama about the capture of fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann (played by Ben “Man Of A Thousand Nationalities” Kingsley), Eichmann endures a grilling from Mossad and Shin Bet agents, who’ve just grabbed him outside the Argentina home where he’s been hiding in fairly plain sight for 15 years … This is a movie that somehow manages to make Nick Kroll boring. Alexandre Desplat contributes an urgent, aggressively stylized score that would be terrific in another context but sounds all wrong for this sober material, and director Chris Weitz — yes, the American Pie guy — is just out of his depth. Operation Finale means to embody the banality of evil, but it’s mostly mired in plain old banality.
-
… Since announcing last July [2002] that CBS would air a four-hour, prime time miniseries on the early life of Adolf Hitler, media critics and Jewish spokesmen had had a field day. They feared that the early Hitler would be “humanized” into a sympathetic figure … Now, with “Hitler: The Rise of Evil” broadcasting May 18 and May 20 [2003] during the ratings sweeps period, the CBS chief is breathing easier. After previewing tapes of the film, a half-dozen Holocaust scholars and prominent rabbis generally have given it their approval. Some of the turnaround can be credited to an entirely new script and complete revision of the original project … The earlier critical volleys, and advice from Jewish leaders consulted by the producers, apparently gave a substantial push to the revisions.
-
Why Liberal Hegemony?
James Carden - The Nation
… Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been at war two out of every three years. Indeed, the frequency of US military deployments has been six times greater in the period between 1990 and 2017 than in the 200 years spanning 1789 and 1989. The seven wars initiated by the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have, in Mearsheimer’s telling, “failed to achieve any meaningful success.” Still worse, the costs have been immense … According to Mearsheimer, because liberalism is based on the concept of universal and inalienable rights, a “universalist logic” takes hold and leads American policy-makers “to think of every area of the world as a potential battlefield, because they are committed to protecting human rights everywhere and spreading liberal democracy far and wide.”
-
Why America Shouldn't Threaten Preemptive War
Doug Bandow
… Moreover, for Moscow the issue goes beyond the individual conflicts. For the Putin government to abandon important interests on America’s demand would be but the beginning, encouraging the United States to employ coercion elsewhere. After all, Washington has proved itself to be a most meddlesome power, intent on having its way everywhere, at whatever cost. The American government is currently applying sanctions — or considering doing so — on most of the known world: Europe, China, Russia, India, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and more. The United States will remain the most powerful nation for years to come. However, its ability to unilaterally impose its will is waning. And policymakers who imagine adversaries can be easily browbeaten ignore how Americans would react in similar circumstances.
-
Regime Change That is Needed is in Washington
Philip Giraldi
… Actually, the only regime change that is needed is in Washington and it would include Jeffrey, Bolton, Haley, Pompeo, and Miller … None of them are capable of acting to advance any American national interest, which they wouldn’t recognize even if it hit them in the butt. Once they are gone the U.S. can bid the Middle East goodbye and leave its constituent nations to sort out their own problems. Jeffrey’s ridiculous prescriptions for the Syrians and Russians are symptomatic of what one gets from a team of yes-men who have latched onto some dystopic ideas and pursued them relentlessly, blinded by what they believe to be American power. Someone should tell them that their antics have made that power a commodity that is dramatically depreciating in value, but it is clear that they are not listening.
-
American Jews Face a Choice: Create Meaning or Fade
Gal Beckerman - The New York Times
… Anti-Semitism is not what defines the experience of Jews in America today; assimilation is. To hear the professional worriers in the Jewish community, it’s love, not hate, that poses the bigger existential challenge. A vast majority of Jews — 72 percent among the non-Orthodox — now marry outside the tribe … Almost a third of millennial Jews are so unidentified with Judaism they say they have no religion at all. And Israel, which once inspired, now alienates many, especially the young … It’s the part of American Jewish identity that points with pride to the fact that Barack Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, and beams at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s status as a liberal rock star … A majority of American Jews in that 2013 Pew survey rated “humor” and “intellectual curiosity” much higher than community and religious practice as indicators of Jewishness.
-
DNA Links Prove Jews Are a 'Race,' Says Genetics Expert
Jon Entine – Forward (New York)
In his new book, “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, claims that Jews are different, and the differences are not just skin deep. Jews exhibit, he writes, a distinctive genetic signature … Ostrer, who is also director of genetic and genomic testing at Montefiore Medical Center, goes further, maintaining that Jews are a homogeneous group with all the scientific trappings of what we used to call a “race.”… To his credit, Ostrer also addresses the third rail of discussions about Jewishness and race: the issue of intelligence … Jewish success is a product of Jewish genes as much as of Jewish moms.
-
Don’t Deny Jewish History and Culture by Calling Us “White”
Micha Danzig -- Forward (New York)
… Anyone that understands Jewish history as well as the history of the entire development of the idea or construct of the “white race” should understand how that no Jew, Ashkenazi or otherwise, is “white.” While it is certainly the case that many Ashkenazi Jews today in America (such as Ruiz-Grossman) identify as “white,” that doesn’t make it any more accurate or appropriate … This is not merely a semantic issue. Jews are not “white.” We are a tribal people from the Levant … No one that wants to end anti-Semitism and to fight against bigotry and racism should be claiming that Jews are “white.”
-
Wilson’s Great War
David Stockman
The Great European War [1914-1918] posed no national security threat whatsoever to the US … In arming merchantmen and stowing munitions on passenger liners, England was hypocritical and utterly cavalier about the resulting mortal danger to innocent civilians. That was exemplified tragically by the 4.3 million rifle cartridges and hundreds of tons of other munitions carried in the hull of the Lusitania, when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland in May 1915 … Likewise, German resort to so-called “unrestricted submarine warfare” in February 1917 was brutal and stupid, but came in response to massive domestic political pressure during what was known as the “turnip winter” in Germany. By then, the country was starving from the English blockade – literally.
-
Behind the Sinking of the Lusitania: Lying the US Into War
Patrick J. Buchanan
… This week marks the 75th anniversary of World War II, as last month marked the 100th anniversary of World War I. Thus, it is a good time for Eugene Windchy’s Twelve American Wars: Nine of Them Avoidable. A compelling chapter in this new book, by the author of “Tonkin Gulf,” deals with how Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, schemed to drag America into Britain’s war in 1915 … Had [President] Wilson publicly warned U.S. citizens not to sail on the ships of belligerent nations and forbidden U.S.-flagged merchant ships to carry contraband to nations at war, America might have stayed out of the war, which might have ended in a truce, not a German defeat. There might have been no Adolf Hitler and no World War II.
-
Mark Weber joins host Tim Kelly in this January 2016 broadcast to talk about harmful but widely accepted myths about World War II. (Runtime: one hour, 13 minutes.) Weber talks about the self-righteous and calamitous policies of US President Woodrow Wilson in the First World War. Weber also reviews the even more delusional and catastrophic policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. His illegal and highly deceitful efforts to foment war in Europe, and then pull the US into the conflict continue to have harmful consequences for America and the world today.
-
The Pentagon has failed what is being called its first-ever comprehensive audit, a senior official said on Thursday, finding U.S. Defense Department accounting discrepancies that could take years to resolve. Results of the inspection – conducted by some 1,200 auditors and examining financial accounting on a wide range of spending including on weapons systems, military personnel and property – were expected to be completed later in the day. “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters, adding that the findings showed the need for greater discipline in financial matters within the Pentagon … The U.S. defense budget for the 2018 fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30 was about $700 billion.
-
The Pentagon has finally completed its first ever audit and the results are as many of us expected. After spending nearly a billion dollars to find out what has happened to trillions in unaccounted-for spending, the long look through the books has concluded that only ten percent of all Pentagon agencies pass muster … The problem with military spending is the philosophy that drives it. If the US strategy is to maintain a global military empire, there will never be enough spending. Because there is never enough to control every corner of the globe. But if we are to return to a well-defended republic, military spending could easily be reduced by 75 percent while keeping us completely safe.
-
The Art of the Smear: The Israel Lobby Busted
Sheldon Richman
In 2016 and 2017 Al Jazeera produced a program that unmistakenly documents the Israel government and U.S. Israel lobby’s all-out effort to spy on, smear, and disrupt American students and other activists who are working to build an understanding of the Palestinians’ plight. The Lobby — USA … is now available … What the program presents is shocking … The effort aims to smear Palestinian students in the United States and pro-Palestinian American activists and political candidates who criticize Israeli policy as anti-Semites and enablers of terrorism. The paid pro-Israel operatives, guided by Israeli government officials and embassy staff, have used social media and other channels in an attempt to destroy the career potential of student activists who work to raise Americans’ consciousness about the Palestinians.
-
Registering Israel's Useful Idiots
Philip M. Giraldi
Depending on what criteria one uses, there are between 200 and 600 groups in the United States that wholly or in part are dedicated to furthering the interests of Israel. The organizations are both Jewish, like the Zionist Organization of America, and Christian Zionist to include John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, but the funding of the Israel Lobby and both its political and media access comes overwhelmingly from Jewish supporters and advocates.
-
UNESCO Launches Holocaust Education Website
Associated Press
The U.N. culture and education agency has teamed up with the World Jewish Congress to launch a website to counter Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and WJC President Ronald Lauder unveiled the interactive “Facts about the Holocaust ” site at the cultural agency’s Paris headquarters on Monday. It features a trove of historical information about the Holocaust, including testimonies and it is linked to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Online Holocaust Encyclopedia. The new site has been conceived to combat what UNESCO calls “increased hate and disinformation online” on Jewish issues.
-
A Slippery Slope Towards Designer Babies?
The Economist (Britain)
Soon two biotechnology firms will begin to offer couples undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) the chance to screen embryos before they are implanted in the mother’s womb. … By selecting between different embryos, a couple undergoing IVF (1-2% of all American births today) can optimise the health of their future progeny in a way that those who conceive naturally cannot. When the technique becomes widely available, as it no doubt will, those wealthy enough to do so may opt to undergo IVF even if they are able to conceive naturally. And although both firms say that, for ethical reasons, they will screen embryos only for disease risk, there is no reason why other traits such as height, or most controversially intelligence, might not be selected in the same way.
-
Pope Pius XII in the Second World War
Mary Ball Martinez – Institute for Historical Review
The persistent myth of the Vatican’s indifference to the fate of Europe’s Jews during the Second World War had its origin in the 1960s … Responding to these accusations, Pope Paul VI opened the wartime records in the Vatican archives to study by four Jesuit historians, permitting them to select documents for publication. The American among them, Robert A. Graham, sorted out a great number that were eventually published in a series of volumes. These weighty documents clearly show that well before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, Secretary of State Pacelli, the future Pope, was deeply involved in promoting the welfare of Europe’s Jews.
-
Support for Israel Continues to Drop Among US Liberals and Youth, New Poll Shows
B. White – Al Jazeera
… A new US poll on the same topic will not help Shaked rest easy. The results indicate that key trends identified in recent years show no signs of slowing; Israel’s reputation is deteriorating among demographics such as Democrats, younger voters, African Americans and Hispanic Americans. The fact that the US public’s view towards Israel remains positive overall masks an increasingly partisan divide; the Economist/ YouGov poll found that only 25 percent of Democrat-voters consider Israel an “ally” of the US, compared with 57 percent of Republicans. As Israeli newspaper Haaretz observed, the poll “shows that support for Israel is directly co-related to gender, age, economic status and political outlook. It is strongest among older, well-to-do, conservative white men, and weakest among young, liberal, minorities and women”.
-
Virginians Oppose Taxpayer Subsidies for Israeli Business Projects, New Poll Shows
J. Metz – Antiwar.com
A plurality of Virginians (38.1%) favor ending taxpayer funding for Israeli business ventures in the commonwealth according to a Virginia Coalition for Human Rights (VCHR) poll fielded by Google Surveys. About a third of Virginians (32.7%) were neutral about discontinuing subsidies, while 29.2% disagreed … State Israel advocacy organizations lobbied to create and staff a taxpayer-funded state government office to exclusively promote Israeli business projects called the Virginia-Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) in 1996 … In 1984 the Israeli government lobbied the Reagan administration for preferential export access to the US to boost Israel’s struggling economy … The US-Israel trade deal passed in 1985 and is America’s worst performing bilateral trade deal with an inflation-adjusted 2017 cumulative deficit of $170.72 billion.
-
America Has Spent $5.9 Trillion on Wars in the Middle East and Asia Since 2001, a New Study Finds
CNBC
The U.S. wars and military action in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have cost American taxpayers $5.9 trillion since they began in 2001, according to a new study. That total is almost $2 trillion more than all federal government spending during the recently completed 2017-18 fiscal year. The report, from Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, also finds that more than 480,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting. Over 244,000 civilians have been killed. Another ten million people have been displaced due to violence. The $5.9 trillion figure reflects the cost across the U.S. federal government, since the price of war is not borne by the Defense Department alone, according to Neta Crawford, the study’s author.
-
The Cost of Post 9/11 Wars Hits $5.9 Trillion
C. Grisales - Stars and Stripes
The price for America’s longest wars has surpassed more than $5.9 trillion and at least 480,000 lost lives, according to a new study released by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. The figures highlight the toll of U.S. war operations around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the study projects the numbers could rise … The study’s death estimates include nearly 7,000 U.S. service members, nearly 8,000 U.S. contractors, more than 100,0000 military and police members from other countries, more than 244,000 civilians, and more than 100,000 opposition fighters … War appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan are funded by deficit spending and borrowing, and not new taxes or war bonds, the study notes. This adds to interest costs, it concludes.
-
Trump and the Europeans
Eric Margolis
… Many Europeans – and certainly Germans – consider their nations still militarily and politically occupied by the American Imperium. How else could the US National Security spy agency (NSA) get away with tapping Angela Merkel’s cell phone with nary a German protest? Given Russia’s military and financial feebleness (a defense budget less than one tenth of the US), what reason is there for a major US military presence from Spain to the Baltic and Black Sea? There are still US military bases in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany (34 bases), Belgium, Holland, Britain, Turkey, Denmark, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo, Greece, and soon Poland. Large parts of Europe are still militarily occupied by the US.
-
Alaska is by far the most dangerous state in the nation, according to the business website 24/7 Wall Street. The most sparsely populated of all U.S. states, Alaska has the highest rates of rape and aggravated assault in the nation … Last year’s murder rate in Alaska was up 20 percent over the previous year. New Mexico comes in at No. 2 … With aggravated assault numbers that are nearly double the national rate, Tennessee ranks as the nation’s third most dangerous state. Most of the state’s violent crime is concentrated in urban areas … The least dangerous state is Maine, according to the report, with 121 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. Other states that were deemed the least dangerous in America include Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia and Kentucky.
-
Robert Faurisson: A Profile
Revisionists.com
For more than 30 years, French scholar Robert Faurisson was known as an intrepid, intellectually formidable, and courageous critic of the familiar Holocaust narrative. His extensive writings and many lectures, which were based on considerable research and study, enraged powerful enemies who waged a fierce, relentless campaign to silence him. Regarded as Europe’s foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar, he was perhaps most renowned, and notorious, for his view that there was no systematic mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers during World War II. On the basis of controversial “Holocaust denial” laws that selectively criminalize dissident views on this emotion-laden subject, French authorities repeatedly brought him to court, where he was punished with fines and prison sentences … For his views Faurisson was repeatedly a victim of physical assault.
-
Robert Faurisson: A Long View
Arthur R. Butz
… The eighties – whose revisionist activity Faurisson utterly dominated – ended in France with the infamous Fabius-Gayssot law of 1990, a sort of Lex Faurissonia, if I may use Latin here for ‘the Faurisson Law,’ that is, the law specifically targeting Faurisson by the State. This was both a disaster for Faurisson and revisionism, but at the same time also a back-handed compliment to, and confirmation of, the intellectual significance of revisionism. It was not until 1999 that a serious compilation of Faurisson’s writings appeared, as the four volume Écrits révisionnistes … At this point Faurisson does not need a biographer as much as he needs somebody to summarize his work in a concise but thorough way.
-
Robert Faurisson: A Freedom Fighter to His Last Breath
Michael Hoffman
… In 1990, with him in mind, the French National Assembly passed the Faurisson law, otherwise known as the Fabius-Gayssot Act, criminalizing the expression of public doubts about the execution gas chamber claims. Here was a national law specifically legislated to gag one man! After Robert was removed from his university professorship due to the enactment of Fabius-Gayssot, he challenged the legislation as a violation of his right to freedom of speech … No wonder then that when Muslims are sanctimoniously lectured about their “misplaced” rage over blasphemy against Mohammed, they respond by wanting to know how it is that Faurisson’s “blasphemy” of the gas chambers is illegal in France while attacks on their Prophet are protected speech … Throughout the world the scholars and activists he has influenced and inspired are innumerable.
-
It’s not often that US Government officials are honest when they talk about our foreign policy … So, in a way, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was refreshingly honest last week when, speaking about newly-imposed US sanctions, he told the BBC that the Iranian leadership “has to make a decision that they want their people to eat.” It was an honest admission that new US sanctions are designed to starve Iranians unless the Iranian leadership accepts US demands … The US Secretary of State has demanded that Iran “act like a normal country” or the US would continue its pressure until Iran’s economy crumbles. How twisted is US foreign policy that Washington considers it “normal” to impose sanctions specifically designed to make life miserable – or worse – for civilians!
-
Failure Forecast: Sanctions Won't Work on Iran
John Glaser - The National Interest
… The administration has also kicked up a storm about the terrible, and largely imaginary, threat posed by Iran. As of today, the Trump administration has imposed a new set of harsh economic sanctions on Iran. This is in clear violation of the 2015 agreement that rolled back Iran’s nuclear program and put a lid on it for the foreseeable future … Sanctions have a generally poor track record of actually changing the behavior of the target state in the direction desired by the sanctioning country … If anything, the pain America imposes on ordinary Iranians will turn them against us, not against the regime … The truth is that the president has no real strategy here. The maximum-pressure policy is the product of Trump’s spite for his predecessor’s success, threat inflation on Iran generally and subordination to U.S. allies in the region.
-
Trump’s Iran Sanctions Undermine U.S. Interests and Values
Barbara Slavin - The National Interest
… The Trump administration may regret that it reimposed banking and oil sanctions on Iran on November 5, despite the fact that that country continues in compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal that President Donald Trump unilaterally renounced. U.S. allies in Europe and competitors such as Russia and China — which overwhelmingly continue to support the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — are furious and will find ways to undercut the U.S. campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran … With more than eighty million people, many of them extremely well-educated, and a diversified economy, Iran is a far better long-term bet than most of its regional rivals. Antagonizing and impoverishing its people in an implausible search for a “better deal” will undermine both U.S. national interests and American values.
-
Time to Limit Birthright Citizenship?: A Much Overdue Debate.
Doug Bandow - The American Spectator
Give President Donald Trump his due. In the midst of super-charged campaign, he convulsed the public debate over a seemingly settled issue, birthright citizenship. Despite the angry, even shocked response, the issue deserves debate … Today anyone born in the U.S., with minimal exceptions (children of foreign diplomats), becomes a citizen. That has created a reward for people who enter the U.S. illegally. There is even an organized practice of “birth tourism.” … Citizenship matters. For a century and a half being born in the U.S. was enough. But circumstances change. Maybe birthright citizenship is no longer the best policy. Whether you like or dislike the president, he again is pushing for people to rethink once settled policy. For that he deserves credit.
-
London’s Crime Epidemic Soars Past Total for Whole of 2017
Daily Mail (Britain)
The number of killings in London so far this year has now soared past the total in the whole of 2017. A week of violence in the capital earlier this month — and two further suspected murders yesterday — have taken the total number of homicides to 121. It means that with more than a month left to go until the New Year, the total is already above the 118 homicides seen in the capital in 2017 … A year of bloodshed has seen 68 stabbings, 12 shootings and two deaths involving a knife and a gun. In February, London’s murder rate rose past that of New York, with Scotland Yard looking at 15 suspicious deaths and the NYPD investigating 11. The murder rate surged again in the week from October 31, when there were five fatal stabbings.
-
Stabbings on the Rise in London
VOA News
… Terrible things have indeed been happening in London. Hardly a day goes by without a report of a knifing on London’s streets. The number of offenses involving a knife or bladed weapon recorded by the Metropolitan Police in the first three months of this year rose to 40,147, a seven-year record, prompting rising public alarm and angry accusations that city authorities and police have all but lost control, due to government-driven cuts in policing and the budgets of local social service departments … London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, warned it could take a generation before the tide is turned on violent crime in the capital … As if to underline that, last week, five Londoners were fatally stabbed in separate attacks … Many of the stabbings are gang-related, and crime analysts fear the numbers are likely to increase …
-
Trump to Award Sheldon Adelson’s Wife Highest Civilian Honor
The Times of Israel
The White House announced upcoming recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded in the US, and among the recipients is Miriam Adelson, wife of business magnate and Trump backer Sheldon Adelson. “Adelson is a committed doctor, philanthropist, and humanitarian,” the White house announcement said … In addition, “As a committed member of the American Jewish community, she has supported Jewish schools, Holocaust memorial organizations, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and Birthright Israel, among other causes.” The Adelsons have made numerous and significant contributions to Trump and to Republicans. CNN noted that in the recent midterm elections the couple donated at least $112 million to Republican candidates.
-
Donald Trump: America’s First Jewish President?
Marc Scaringi - The Western Journal
… In the wake of the tragic shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, President Donald Trump spoke out in the most forceful condemnation of anti-Semitism ever uttered by an American president … He’s not only strongly condemning anti-Semitism but also bringing the full power and prestige of the U.S. government to bear upon those would seek the destruction of the Jewish people. Trump is proving once again that, unlike his critics who pay lip service to religious tolerance while embracing deplorable anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan, he is confronting and attempting to destroy this evil and perverse ideology … Because of his unprecedented words and actions confronting the ancient scourge of anti-Semitism, perhaps Donald Trump will go down in history as America’s first Jewish president.
-
… In recent weeks, she and her businessman husband have started to discuss whether they should emigrate, prompted to do so by their sense of a rising hostility toward Jews, and when it comes to Britain, from both the right and left of the political spectrum. They had considered the United States as a possible destination. They are not the only British Jews thinking about emigrating. A poll last year found that almost a third of Britain’s 290,000 Jews have considered leaving during the past two years due to growing anti-Semitism. More than a third admitted that out of fear, they conceal any public signs indicating they are Jewish. And last week, it emerged that British Jews are applying for German citizenship in dramatic numbers …
-
Staying in Afghanistan is the Definition of Insanity
Charles V. Peña - The National Interest
… We’ve been staying the course now for over seventeen years with no end in sight. This is the very essence of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results … It is not up to the United States to engineer a solution in Afghanistan … The reason the U.S. military is a target in Afghanistan is because it is there. As such, it is a lightning rod to easily generate opposition from Afghans, who have a rich history of fiercely defending themselves against foreign invaders … According to the Pentagon, the war in Afghanistan currently costs $45 billion per year … Given that the neither the Taliban, nor Al Qaeda, nor ISIS in Afghanistan are existential threats to America, it’s well past time to stop the insanity.
-
After 17 Years, Many Afghans Blame US for Unending War
K. Gannon - Associated Press
When U.S. forces and their Afghan allies rode into Kabul in November 2001 they were greeted as liberators. But after 17 years of war, the Taliban have retaken half the country, security is worse than it’s ever been, and many Afghans place the blame squarely on the Americans. The United States has lost more than 2,400 soldiers in its longest war, and has spent more than $900 billion on everything from military operations to the construction of roads, bridges and power plants. Three U.S. presidents have pledged to bring peace to Afghanistan, either by adding or withdrawing troops, by engaging the Taliban or shunning them … None of it has worked … The U.S. has spent $132 billion on Afghanistan’s reconstruction — more than was spent on Western Europe after World War II.
-
Making America’s Wars Great Again
Arnold R. Isaacs
Here’s a paradox of the last few decades: as American military power has been less and less effective in achieving Washington’s goals, the rhetoric surrounding that power has grown more and more boastful. The cliché that our armed forces are the best and mightiest in the world — even if the U.S. military hasn’t won any of its significant wars in the last 50 years — resonates in President Trump’s promise to make America great again … The commemoration not only tells us something about the Pentagon’s custodians of our Vietnam War memories, it also reveals something much broader and deeper in American political and popular culture: a powerful need to think of ourselves as a righteous, just, and successful country that fights only righteous, just, and successful wars.
-
Israel’s 50-Year Time Bomb
Dan Steinbock - Consortium News
In the past, the Netanyahu government has vehemently opposed all parallels with South African apartheid. Unfortunately, new data suggests that under apartheid South African blacks had more to hope for than Palestinians today … Ironically, South African apartheid was more conducive to economic progress in its last two decades than life in the West Bank and Gaza in the past two decades. Moreover, the Netanyahu government’s economic policies have also dramatically increased economic polarization in Israel. In the early 1990s, the Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, was around 35 in Israel, at the level of Portugal and Italy. Closer to 43 today, it is among the highest in OECD countries, and at the level of Nigeria and Zimbabwe. But there may be still worse ahead.
-
Chomsky Warns of the Rise of ‘Judeo-Nazi Tendencies’ in Israel
Middle East Monitor (Britain)
Prominent Jewish intellectual Noam Chomsky has raised concerns over what he believes is the rise of “Judeo-Nazi tendencies” in Israel. Speaking to i24NEWS last week, the renowned political dissident, linguist and scholar repeated warnings given by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Israeli public intellectual, biochemist and polymath, concerning the dehumanising effect of Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine on the victims and the oppressors … Chomsky said: “If you have your jackboot on somebody’s neck, you have to find a way to justify it.” Repeating Leibowitz’s warning he added that “blaming the victim was a direct reflection of the continued occupation, the humiliation of people, the degradation, and the terrorist attacks by the Israeli government” … Israel, he told, i24NEWS is deliberately choosing expansion over security.
-
Nature 90, Nurture 10
Michael Walsh - PJ Media
Anyone with an ounce of common sense, two eyes, and a grasp of history understands instinctively that most genetic traits are inheritable. Height, body type, skin color, even eye color run in genetically related families, and those families, bound together in local, tribal, ethnic, and national communities, reflect that … And yet, for decades, ideologically driven scientists and cultural Marxist apologists have struggled with such a raw truth, and have endeavored to show that nurture, not nature, is the determining factor, especially when it comes to talents and intelligence … As the plain truths of genetics become ever clearer — and the pernicious false egalitarianism that began with Rousseau and continued with Marx continues to fade — the amelioration of “nurture” differences will only serve to highlight the genetic differences that remain …
-
Jewish institutions in Argentina have launched a campaign against British singer Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman. Waters’ Us +Them tour has been traveling around Latin America for the last month. Waters participated in an event of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel in Buenos Aires on Friday, a day before performing a concert there. “We must insist to our local governments to pressure Israel, in favor of the human rights of the Palestinians,” he said during the program titled “A world Without Walls,” organized by BDS Argentina. The Argentina Zionist Organization called Waters “one of the great anti-Semites of our time” in an online campaign protesting what it called his hate speech. Shows in which Waters displays a pig with a star of David also have irritated some Jewish global leaders.
-
Nearly Half of Britons Have an Unfavourable View of Israel
Press TV (Iran)
A study of attitudes towards Israel in the UK has found that 49 percent of Britons have an unfavourable view of Israel. The annual poll of UK attitudes about Israel was conducted by the Populus polling company and was commissioned by an Israel lobby group, the British Israel Communications and Research Center (BICOM). But despite the pro-Israel bias of the commissioners, the poll found that only 20 percent of the British public feels “warm” towards Israel and 23 percent feels warm towards Israelis. Meanwhile, 49 percent said they felt “cold” towards Israel, and 45 percent said they felt cold towards Israelis … When asked if they agreed with boycotts against Israel only 14 percent supported this. And when asked if they believe Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite, 38 percent said Yes …
-
Anti-Semitism has “moved from the margins into the mainstream,” Anti-Defamation League CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt said Sunday. His remarks on NBC’s “Meet the Press” came a day after a gunman fatally shot eleven and injured seven others in Pittsburgh in the deadliest attack on a synagogue in U.S. history. The tragedy can be linked to concurrent political rhetoric, Greenblatt said. “Political candidates and people in public life now literally repeat the rhetoric of white supremacists,” Greenblatt said. “They think it’s normal and permissible to talk about Jewish conspiracies, manipulating events or Jewish financers somehow controlling activities. And that is awful.” Social media is accentuating the pattern, he continued, suggesting tech giants should aid in addressing the phenomenon.
-
In Britain, 38 Percent of Voters Believe Labour Leader Corbyn is an Anti-Semite
R. Philpot - The Times of Israel
Thirty-eight percent of Britons believe Jeremy Corbyn, the hard-left leader of the country’s main opposition party, is an anti-Semite, according to a new poll released Wednesday. Only 25 percent of voters agreed that the Labour leader is a committed campaigner against racism of all kinds, including anti-Semitism … The annual survey for the British Israel Communications and Research Center, an independent UK-based think tank, indicates that Corbyn’s tough anti-Israel stance is out of step with most voters. Support for the Jewish state in Britain is holding steady after reaching a seven-year high in polling conducted last October … It found that 38% of voters agreed with the statement “Whatever Jeremy Corbyn claims, his actions and past history point to him being anti-Semitic.”
-
U.S. Elections: Not a Word About War, Not a Peep About Peace
Gerald Celente
Counting up the votes in a midterm election turnout that hit a 50-year high in the United States, all major party candidates running for the House and Senate championed America’s military/ industrial/ intelligence defense complex and its ballooning budget. Throughout the election cycle, not one Republican or Democratic candidate presented a campaign platform to end America’s longest, losing Afghan War, nor to end its other illegal and unconstitutional foreign engagements in the Middle East and Africa … Imagine, trillions spent and millions killed in illegal, immoral wars with no end in sight – launched on platforms based on lies from Washington and promoted by the media – and it was never a campaign issue in the 2018 midterm elections.
-
Israel Wins 2018 Election
Philip Giraldi
Judging from the mainstream media, Israel was not a major issue in the midterm election but it sure did come up a lot when candidates for office were wooing Jewish or Evangelical voters … Americans have never had the option of voting on the “special relationship” that Israel enjoys with the United States as no Congressman would dare run against it lest they be smeared in the media and find themselves running against an extraordinarily well funded opponent benefitting from large donations coming from out of state sources. The list of prominent politicians “taken down” by Israel is lengthy … Israel was engaging in interfering in legitimate political activity and also generating fake news on the social media in both 2016 and 2018, the same accusation that has been leveled against Moscow …
-
US and Israel Alone in UN Vote on Resolution Condemning Israeli Occupation of Syrian Territory
The Times of Israel
The United States on Friday for the first time voted against an annual UN resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, signifying a dramatic shift in US policy toward the territory. Despite the unprecedented move by the US, the resolution passed with 151 in favor, two against (Israel and the US), and 14 abstentions, one of nine anti-Israel resolutions passed by the world body in one day … The non-binding resolution, which is voted on by a UN General Assembly committee each year, takes issue with the “illegality of the decision” taken by Israel “to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan,” which it says is illegal under international law … The United States and the international community have long refused to recognize Israeli sovereignty there and officially consider it Syrian territory under Israeli occupation.
-
Disregard for World Opinion Defines the US Government
Vijay Prashad – Asia Times
… Neither the people of Canada nor Mexico – the closest neighbors of the United States – have a favorable view of either Trump or the United States. Only Israel, which voted with the United States over the embargo on Cuba, has a high opinion of Trump and of the US. Beyond the Pew poll, it is evident from the atmosphere in the United Nations that the countries of the world – even close US allies – fear US policy on a number of issues … Even countries with close ties to the United States, such as India and Japan, are against the sanctions … Disregard for world opinion as well as the opinion of the US citizenry defines the US government. Thirty-six million people around the world, half a million of them in New York City, protested on February 15, 2003, in an attempt to prevent the US war on Iraq. George W Bush did not pay attention to them. Nor will Trump.
-
Is Israel Turning a Blind Eye as Israeli Scammers Swindle Victims in France, US, Elsewhere?
Alison Weir
French and Israeli media report that a group largely made up of Israelis scammed 3,000 French citizens out of approximately $20 million. Most of the stolen money is in Israel, but Israeli authorities are reportedly failing to cooperate with France in prosecuting the scammers and retrieving the money. This is the latest of numerous examples of Israeli officials stone-walling international efforts against the perpetrators of massive financial swindles around the world, according to Israeli investigative journalists and others. These scams have brought estimated billions into the Israeli economy, propping up a regime widely condemned for human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing against indigenous Palestinians. Together, the stories paint a picture of a government that seems to be turning a blind eye to – and even protecting – scammers.
-
We Have an Identity Problem
Walter E. Williams
… In addition to the muddying of waters about one’s sex, race has become muddied. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has long claimed that she has Native American heritage. Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania saw her as making a contribution to their law schools’ racial diversity agenda by being on their faculties. Recently, many doubted her heritage … Warren’s recent effort to settle the issue through DNA analysis blew up in her face. She is only between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American … With privileges being determined by race and sex, we need something like South Africa’s apartheid-era Population Registration Act of 1950 to define in clear terms who belongs to what race and what sex, and thereby prevent race and sex fraud.
-
US Soldiers Died for Nothing in WW I
Jacob G. Hornberger - FFF
Let’s be blunt: the 117,466 U.S. soldiers who died in World War I died for nothing … The 1898 intervention was followed by President Wilson’s fateful decision to intervene into World War I, a brutal and vicious European war that ended up killing some 40 million people. There was absolutely no reason for Wilson to embroil the United States in the war. The conflict was none of the U.S. government’s business. But Wilson was an academic idealist. He was certain that given America’s “greatness,” it could force those Europeans to stop their incessant wars, once and for all. Wilson was convinced that if the U.S. entered the conflict, it could ensure that this would be the final war in history. In his mind, this was the war that would end all wars into the future.
-
A photograph showing Adolf Hitler embracing a young girl who had a Jewish grandmother has sold at auction for more than $11,000. The Washington Post reported the black-and-white image taken by Heinrich Hoffmann and inscribed by Hitler in dark blue ink shows him smiling as he embraces Rosa Bernile Nienau in 1933 at his mountainside retreat … Alexander Historical Auctions of Chesapeake City, Maryland, sold the photo Tuesday for $11,520. The auction house said research showed Hitler became aware of the girl’s Jewish heritage but chose to ignore it. Nienau, who was nearly six when the photo was taken, died of polio in 1943 … This wasn’t the first time the auction house handled Hitler-related items. In February 2017, a telephone owned by Hitler has sold at auction for $243,000.
-
America Should Have Skipped the War, Not Just the Ceremony
David Stockman
… The only war of the 20th century more senseless than Vietnam was the so-called Great War [1914-1918], and most especially America’s intervention in an old world tragedy for no good reason whatsoever. That is to say, the Marine heroes of the bloody battle of Belleau Wood did not die “in the trenches for the cause of freedom”. To the contrary, they died there owing to the fanatical megalomania of President Woodrow Wilson. The latter maneuvered America into the Great War in April 1917 when it was nearly over, and for the purpose of giving himself a grand seat at the peace conference afterward to reshape the world in accordance with his messianic vision … The Great War and the Carthaginian Peace which followed was the incubator for almost all the ills of the next 100 years …
-
Ten Big Myths about World War One Debunked
Dan Snow - BBC News
Much of what we think we know about the 1914-18 conflict is wrong / … No war in history attracts more controversy and myth than World War One. For the soldiers who fought it was in some ways better than previous conflicts, and in some ways worse. By setting it apart as uniquely awful we are blinding ourselves to the reality of not just WW1 but war in general. We are also in danger of belittling the experience of soldiers and civilians caught up in countless other appalling conflicts throughout history and the present day.
-
Sunday, November 11, marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the World War I armistice, when the guns fell silent across the Western Front, marking the end of a conflict that killed around 40 million people. This weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump will join dozens of other world leaders in France for events to mark the centenary … The United States entered the conflict in 1917 after declaring war on Germany. The intervention marked the beginning of America’s deep involvement in European security – but there are fears that the U.S. sacrifices are being forgotten. Historians say American involvement came late in the war but proved vital in boosting Allied manpower and morale.
-
Macron to Trump: ‘You’re No Patriot!’
Patrick J. Buchanan
… At the Armistice Day ceremony, Macron declared, “By saying we put ourselves first and the others don’t matter, we erase what a nation holds dearest … its moral values.” But Trump did not say that other countries don’t matter. He only said we should put our own country first. What country does Emmanuel Macron put first? Or does the president of France see himself as a citizen of the world with responsibility for all of Europe and all of mankind? … A nationalism their peoples regard as deeply patriotic has triumphed in Poland and Hungary and is making gains even in Germany. The leaders of the world’s three greatest military powers — Trump in the U.S., Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China — are all nationalists … Is not Benjamin Netanyahu an Israeli nationalist?
-
The Little-Known Allied WW2 Bombing of France
J. Laurenson - BBC News
It has been a taboo subject … the terrible civilian casualties suffered by the French due to Allied bombing up to and during the liberation of France. Historians believe Allied bombardments killed almost as many French people as German bombs killed Britons during the Blitz. According to research carried out by Andrew Knapp, history professor at the UK’s University of Reading, British, American and Canadian air raids resulted in 57,000 French civilian losses in World War Two … The most disturbing example is the bombing of Le Havre in September 1944. Nearly all of the city was reduced to ash and 5,000 French men, women and children were killed.
-
In Poland, Huge Crowd Marks Centenary of National Rebirth
Associated Press
Poland’s president, prime minister and other top political figures led an Independence Day march Sunday as part of a day of centenary celebrations, trailed by a huge crowd led by nationalist groups. More than 250,000 people marched in Warsaw to mark the 100th anniversary of Poland’s rebirth as an independent state at the end of World War I, according to police. President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the leader of the conservative ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, walked in a crowd fronted by soldiers carrying a huge flag words “For You Poland.” … Some held flags of the National Radical Camp, a far-right group and one of the main march organizers. The camp’s flag has a falanga, a far-right symbol dating to the 1930s of a stylized hand with a sword.
-
… Slovakia’s iteration of the show, launched on November 1 by the country’s public broadcasting corporation, the RTVS, has acquired a bitter anti-Semitic flavor. The television channel advertised Jozef Tiso (1887-1947), president of the wartime ‘Slovak State’, as one of the contenders for the title of the ‘Greatest Slovak.’ … At a time when some in Central Europe are seeking to minimize the involvement of local populations in the Holocaust, it bears stressing that the deportations from Slovakia were not a German imposition, but resulted from the initiative of Slovakia’s government – and were, in fact, stopped in 1943 after considerable international pressure, including from the Holy See … Following public outrage, RTVS decided to exclude Tiso from the poll and to withdraw the promotional materials about him.
-
Hate Crimes in US Up 17 Percent, FBI Reports
Associated Press
Hate crimes across the United States spiked 17 percent in 2017 — marking a rise for the third straight year — with a 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes, according to an FBI report released Tuesday. There were 7,175 reported hate crimes last year, up from 6,121 in 2016. The FBI’s annual hate crimes report defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias based on a person’s race, religion or sexual orientation, among other categories. There was a nearly 23 percent increase in religion-based hate crimes, with more than 900 reports of crimes targeting Jews and Jewish institutions. The FBI said there were 2,013 hate crimes against African-Americans, a 16 percent increase. Some of the increases may be the result of better reporting by police departments, but law enforcement officials and advocacy groups don’t doubt that hate crimes are on the rise.
-
Trump Mocks Macron Over World Wars as Merkel Calls for 'Real True European Army'
The Telegraph (Britain)
Donald Trump has hit out at Emmanuel Macron with a volley of tweets saying the French were “starting to learn German in Paris” before US intervention in the world wars, rounding off the attack off with a mocking plea to “MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!” Mr Trump began with an extraordinary attack on Emmanuel Macron’s call for a “European army” by likening a French defence rapprochement with Germany to the Nazi occupation of France. Minutes after his online outburst, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her unprecedented backing to Mr Macron’s defence plans, saying she too wanted a “real true European army”, which would complement, but not rival, the Northern Atlantic Alliance, Nato.
-
Trump Ramps Up Macron Spat by Mocking France in World Wars
The Guardian (Britain)
Donald Trump ramped up his spat with Emmanuel Macron, the French president, with a denigrating tweet in which he said Parisians had started to learn German during the second world war before the US saved them from occupation. The US president’s Tuesday morning tweet exacerbates his standoff with Macron following his visit to Paris over the weekend that was marred by his controversial behavior … Guy Verhofstadt, the chief representative for the European parliament on Brexit, shot back at Trump. “What Trump doesn’t seem to realize is that without French money, the USA would not even exist as France financed the American revolution. They even gave you the Statue of Liberty to celebrate this!” Verhofstadt tweeted.
-
French President Macron Calls For a 'European Army' to Defend Against China, Russia and the U.S.
Time
French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for the formation of a “real European army” to protect the continent “with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.” Agence France-Presse reports that while on a tour of World War I memorials Tuesday, Macron said: “We will not protect the Europeans unless we decide to have a true European army.” Macron has advocated for the mobilization of a collective European force since his election last year. But those calls may be received with more urgency after President Trump announced last month that the U.S. would pull out of a Cold War era nuclear weapons treaty with Russia. Trump has also displayed a tepid attitude in the past towards NATO’s mutual defense commitments.
-
The War for the Soul of America
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Freedom of the press does not mean guaranteed immunity of the press from the same kind of abuse the press directs at the president. John F. Kennedy was beloved by the media elite. Yet JFK canceled all White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune and called the publisher of The New York Times to get him to pull reporter David Halberstam out of Vietnam for undermining U.S. morale in a war in which Green Berets were dying. Some journalists have become Trump haters with press passes. And Trump is right to speak truth to mainstream media power, and to accord to the chronically hostile press the same access to the White House to which Robert De Niro is entitled. Since the days of John Adams, the White House has been the president’s house, not the press’s house.
-
Outrage All Around
Taki Theodoracopulos
… Media people who mostly live in well-guarded all-white buildings are ready to cry racist at the drop of any word or suggestion that might possibly be construed as such. … It is now two years, and journalists and pundits have shown they are not interested in finding the truth or investigating criminality, but only in destroying Trump. Night after night on television, hysterical women and irrational men call for civil unrest against the Trump machine … White Christians in America do feel under siege, and all they have to do to confirm their fears is open a newspaper or look at the TV. Imposing equality is a fine and just idea in a democracy, but not by making the majority into an endangered species. The media in America has become like the E.U.: an enemy of the people, unelected and answering to no one.
-
An 'Astonishing' Photo: Smiling Hitler Hugs Affectionate Jewish Girl
Daily Mail (Britain)
… This astonishing photograph shows the smiling Nazi leader embracing the young [one-quarter] Jewish girl – who referred to him as ‘Uncle Hitler’ and became known as his ‘sweetheart’ – at his Alpine retreat. Personally inscribed by Hitler, the photograph was taken in the summer of 1933 at the Berghof … / This astonishing photograph shows the smiling Nazi leader embracing the young Jewish girl who became known as ‘the Führer’s child’ because of her close friendship with Hitler that lasted from 1933 to 1938. One of her grandmothers was Jewish and Hitler knew this. Rosa died died on 5 October 1943 at 17 of polio / Another shot shows Rosa helping Hitler with his ties as he holds arms in the garden of his Alpine retreat.
-
… It was a shared birthday which brought a little girl and the Nazi leader together. According to the auction website, Rosa and her mother had joined the crowds outside Hitler’s Alpine retreat Berghof in 1933 on his birthday. It is thought that when he discovered Rosa had the same birthday, he invited Rosa and her mother Karoline up to the house – where these photographs were taken … She would write to Hitler and his aide Wilhelm Bruckner on at least 17 occasions between 1935 and 1938, until she and her mother, a widow, were told to cut off contact by the Nazi leader’s private secretary, Martin Bormann. Hitler was unimpressed by the order, Hoffmann would later say. “There are people who have a true talent for spoiling my every joy,” Hoffmann recalls the Nazi leader telling him in his book, Hitler Was My Friend.
-
The Stupidest, Most Tragic War
Eric Margolis
… As a former soldier and war correspondent, I’ve always considered World War I as the stupidest, most tragic and catastrophic of all modern wars … This war was not only an endless nightmare for the soldiers in their pestilential trenches, it also violently ended the previous 100 years of glorious European civilization, one of mankind’s most noble achievements … Contrary to the war propaganda that still clouds and corrupts our historical view, World War I was not started by Imperial Germany. Professor Christopher Clark in his brilliant book, `The Sleepwalkers’ shows how officials and politicians in Britain and France conspired to transform Serbia’s murder of Austro-Hungary’s Crown Prince into a continent-wide conflict … Clark clearly shows how the French and British maneuvered poorly-led Germany into the war.
-
The Ghosts of 1918
Jacob Heilbrunn – The National Interest
On November 11, Europe will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I … It would be difficult to think of a more catastrophic moment for the West, which has never fully recovered from the conflict … The National Security Strategy document released earlier this year by the Trump administration maintains that terrorism is no longer the biggest threat to the United States. Instead, it emphasizes great power conflict between America, Russia and China … So one hundred years after the end of World War I, international affairs appear in many ways to be coming full circle. Despite the venerable dream of a federation of man, there are numerous flash-points, ranging from the South China Sea to the Baltic States to Syria, that could draw the great powers into a conflict that inadvertently turns into a much larger one than anyone had anticipated.
-
On the Brink: How World War I Began
The New York Times
… The historiography of World War I is immense, more than 25,000 volumes and articles even before next year’s centenary. Still, Clark, and Sean McMeekin, in “July 1914,” offer new perspectives. The distinctive achievement of “The Sleepwalkers” is Clark’s single-volume survey of European history leading up to the war. That may sound dull. Quite the contrary … Both authors put a stake through the heart of a common narrative that has Germany mobilizing first so as to spring the preventive war its generals had long advocated. It didn’t … Not having a villain to boo is emotionally less satisfying, but Clark makes a cogent case for the war as a tragedy, not a crime: in his telling there is a smoking pistol in the hands of every major character.
-
A Century After the US Got Involved in World War I, It’s Time to Acknowledge Why
Robert E. Hannigan - HNN
Much media notice is likely to be taken this spring of the fact that a hundred years ago the US declared war on Germany, initiating for the first time ever American participation in a military conflict on European soil … But it is unlikely that many observers will venture beyond what for a long time has been the standard explanation of that involvement … From beginning to end, the official US response to the Great War was dominated by the goal of trying to restore and then put on a more secure foundation the kind of international order American policy makers wanted. Ideologically, they assured themselves that this was a quest in the interest not only of all Americans, but of the entire world.
-
Opioid Overdose Responsible for Over 500,000 Years of Life Lost in Ohio
Ohio University / Science Daily
More than 500,000 years of life expectancy were lost in Ohio during a seven-year period, according to a study conducted by The Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health (OAIPH) — a collaborative initiative formed by Ohio University’s College of Health Sciences and Professions and the University of Toledo’s College of Health and Human Services. / As opioid overdose continues to increase as a cause of preventable mortality in the state, the OAIPH set out to examine how opioid overdose deaths contribute to increased mortality, and to shine a light on the effect of the epidemic on the lifespan of Ohioans at the state and county level … 13,059 Ohioans died from opioid overdose during the seven-year period of study (2010-2016).
-
U.S. Friends of the Israel Occupation Forces Raises Record $60 Million for Soldiers
M. Sippell - Variety
Raising an all-time high of $60 million, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) topped last year’s record-breaking fundraiser by $6.2 million at the annual FIDF Western Region Gala, held at the Beverly Hilton on Thursday evening [Nov. 1]. In his speech, gala chair Haim Saban saluted the Israeli soldiers who were honored for outstanding service. “Tonight you have seen up close the unbreakable spirit and the unimaginable bravery of our IDF soldiers and their families,” said Saban, who chaired the gala along with his wife, Cheryl, for their 12th consecutive year.
-
Britain’s Royal Mint Rejected Issuing Roald Dahl Coin Over His Anti-Semitic Views
The Guardian (Britain)
Plans to celebrate the life of Roald Dahl with a commemorative coin were rejected because of concerns about the author’s anti-semitic views, it can be revealed. Official papers obtained by the Guardian using freedom of information laws also disclose that the Royal Mint dropped proposals to issue a coin to mark the centenary of Dahl’s birth because he was “not regarded as an author of the highest reputation”. The decision is set out in the minutes of a Royal Mint sub-committee meeting held in 2014, where the company instead opted for coins commemorating William Shakespeare and Beatrix Potter. The decision was made despite the Royal Mail honouring the children’s author with a set of commemorative stamps celebrating his books, many of which have been adapted into films.
-
How George Soros Became the Target of Both Anti-Semites and Right-Wing Jews
E. Cortellessa - The Times of Israel
… The more people seem to increasingly retreat into their tribal loyalties, George Soros has brought two divergent tribes together. He has become the go-to bogeyman of both the Jewish right and anti-Semites … Beyond being one of the main funders of Democratic candidates in the United States, he also dips his money into left-wing advocacy groups. Through his organization, Open Society Foundations, an international grant-making network, he has been a primary donor of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and Democracy Alliance. He also gave large sums of money to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, including $1 million to a Super PAC supporting the former during the 2012 campaign.
-
Ranting Against ‘Globalism’ Is Anti-Semitic’
Rachel Barenblat - Forward
… “Globalist” is a term with an anti-Semitic history, and it’s often understood as a code for “Jews,” so this language is activating and traumatizing for a lot of Jews. Especially in the wake of a bomb attack at the home of George Soros, a prominent Jewish philanthropist who is often slammed with the “globalist” label. Much of Soros’ recent’ work centers around promoting the idea of an “open society” … Attacks on Soros and his philosophy are dangerous not only to Soros himself but to freedom of expression across Europe. The connection between globalists and Jews is, in part, the old anti-Semitic smear that Jews are not truly loyal citizens of any nation.
-
The Futility of Trump’s Iran Policy
Daniel Larison - The American Conservative
… Like any other self-respecting nation, Iranians aren’t going to accept being told what to do by a foreign government, and they are much more likely to band together in solidarity rather than start an uprising against their own government. The stronger the nationalist tradition there is in a country, the more likely it is that the reaction to foreign threats will be one of defiance and unity. It simply makes no sense to think that the U.S. can pressure a proud nation to capitulate like this. The administration’s policy seems sure to fail on its own terms, and it is also the wrong thing to do.
-
Watch Final Episodes of Al Jazeera Film on US Israel Lobby
The Electronic Intifada
In the first two parts of the censored documentary The Lobby – USA, released by The Electronic Intifada this week, Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter “Tony” charmed his way into pro-Israel circles. He discovered a network of organizations acting as fronts for the Israeli state to spy on, disrupt and sabotage US supporters of Palestinian rights – especially BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. In the final two parts of the film, Tony gets a deeper look at Israel’s covert influence campaigns during his internship for The Israel Project. Watch parts three and four in the videos embedded above and below.
-
A large military parade was a highlight of Independence Day ceremonies in Mexico City, Sept. 16. More than 18,000 members of the army, air force, navy and Federal Police, along with 190 war planes and helicopters, took part in this impressive hour-and-a-half display of military strength and national resolve. President Enrique Pena Nieto presided over the event, which drew thousands of spectators. Runtime: 22:34 mins.
-
London and Paris, But Not Berlin, to Mark 100th Anniversary of the End of World War I
Associated Press
… While Germany’s leaders visit the capitals of its wartime enemies, at home there are no national commemorations planned for the centenary of the Nov. 11 armistice that ended the four-year war that left 17 million dead, including more than two million German troops. Next week, the German parliament is holding a combined commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the declaration of the first German republic, the 80th anniversary of the brutal Nazi-era pogrom against Jews known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), and the 29th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall … The end of World War I is now viewed through the prism of Hitler and the Holocaust …
-
British Historian Wants Even-Handed Look at World War One
Canberra City News (Australia)
History is written by the winners, they say, and expatriate World War I historian Peter Barton is sick of it … He will use the free public lecture to advocate historical research that actually compares our side’s version of events to the mountain of detailed records kept by the enemy, something he says had “simply never happened” before he did it recently … The historian argues a wholesale revision of its history is “absolutely necessary” … “I’ve been a World War I historian for a long time now, and looking at the German records just tells me how little I know about it … they change your perceptions of the entire war.”
-
2014: Good Year for a Great War?
Graham Allison - The National Interest
… None of the leaders in Europe of 1914 would have chosen the war they got and that in the end they all lost. By 1918, the Kaiser was gone, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the Tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of the flower of its youth and treasure … Thus as we look forward with hope to the year ahead, reflection on mistakes made a century ago reminds us of the perils of complacency.
-
Silent film footage from World War One has been painstakingly restored for a new documentary by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. Archive footage has been colorized, and sound has been added. Along with that Jackson presents original interviews with soldiers who fought in the war. “They Shall Not Grow Old” is being released in UK cinemas on October 16 to mark 100 years since the end of the conflict.
-
Not on the Agenda: America’s Wars Are a Non-Factor in Midterm Elections
Maj. Danny Sjursen
… For weeks now, my television, and yours, has been saturated with political commercials for and against local legislative candidates … But none, I repeat, none, say a thing about American foreign policy, the nation’s ongoing wars, or the exploding, record defense budget. You see, in 2018, despite being engrossed in the longest war in US history, the citizenry – both on Main Street and Wall Street – display nothing but apathy on the subject of America’s clearly faltering foreign policy … So where does the U.S. currently stand on foreign policy today? Well, it is actively bombing seven countries, has up to 800 military bases in 80 countries, has combat troops, special forces, drones and/or advisors on the ground in (or in the skies above) Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, West Africa, Libya and Pakistan, among others.
-
How Israel Partisans Buy U.S. Elections
Video - If Americans Knew
This video includes revealing clips from the suppressed Al Jazeera documentary about the “Israel Lobby” in the US. It also includes footage of members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, who describe how “The Lobby” pressures candidates to do Israel’s bidding. Also included is a look at a secret fundraiser for influential politicians, and how “Lobby” activists operate. Runtime: 21:25 mins.
-
Former US General Says War With China Likely Within 15 Years
Associated Press
The former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe warned Wednesday [Oct 24] that it’s very likely the United States will be at war with China in 15 years. Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said that European allies will have to do more to ensure their own defenses in face of a resurgent Russia because America will need to focus more attention on defending its interests in the Pacific. “The United States needs a very strong European pillar. I think in 15 years — it’s not inevitable — but it is a very strong likelihood that we will be at war with China,” Hodges told a packed room at the Warsaw Security Forum … Hodges was U.S. Army commander in Europe from 2014 until last year. He now is a strategic expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based research institute.
-
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has said Moscow will support Iran to counter US oil sanctions … Novak said that Russia is looking to continue trading Iranian crude oil beyond the Monday cut-off. “We believe we should look for mechanisms that would allow us to continue developing cooperation with our partners, with Iran,” Novak told the FT. Under a 2014 oil-for-goods deal, Moscow sells Iranian oil to third parties while Tehran uses the revenues from those sales to pay for Russian goods and services. The Russian energy ministry told the FT that the trade would continue next week, while Novak said that Moscow considered the US sanctions to be “illegal.”
-
The Trump administration’s latest round of sanctions against Iran will fail, says Tehran’s foreign minister in this lucid response to the US campaign. In this three-minute YouTube video presentation, Javad Zarif dismisses the sanctions, and Washington’s demands of change from Tehran, as “absurd, unlawful and fundamentally flawed.” “We have weathered difficult times in the face of 40 years of American hostility relying solely on our own resources, and today we and our partners across the globe will ensure that our people are least affected by this indiscriminate assault,” he says. The US would be better off rethinking its “unconditional support” for Saudi Arabia and Israel, which has “blinded the US to their appalling atrocities,” Zarif adds.
-
Iran Sanctions Could Turn Into Demonstration of US Weakness
Patrick Cockburn - The Independent (Britain)
US sanctions imposed on Iran today are the greatest test so far of President Donald Trump’s ambition to act unilaterally in defiance of both rival powers and traditional allies. The aim of the Trump administration is to put enough economic pressure on Iran to force it to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 or, more ambitiously, to secure regime change in Tehran by provoking popular unrest. It will be difficult to achieve either objective … There is no coalition supporting sanctions and a great array of states from China and Russia to the EU and Iran’s immediate neighbours, Turkey and Iraq, which are opposing them … The power of the US Treasury is never to be underestimated, but at this stage the odds against Trump succeeding look long and are getting longer.
-
French President Emmanuel Macron has sought to justify paying homage to Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain during centenary commemorations marking the end of World War One later this week. Mr Macron said Marshal Pétain was a “great soldier”, even though he had made “disastrous choices” during WW2. Pétain was praised for the defence of Verdun in 1916, but he was sentenced to death for high treason after WW2. Some French politicians and Jewish leaders condemned Mr Macron’s comments … Francis Kalifat of the CRIF association of French Jewish groups said he was “shocked” by Mr Macron’s comments praising a Nazi collaborator who helped send thousands of Jews to their deaths … Officially neutral, in practice the regime collaborated closely with Germany, and brought in its own anti-Semitic legislation.
-
French Crowds Welcome Marshal Petain, May 1944
Newsreel - Video
Enthusiastic crowds welcome French Head of State Pétain during his visit to the city of Nancy on May 26, 1944 – just eleven days before the D-Day landing of British and American troops at Normandy. Newsreel narration in French. Runtime: 3:02 mins. Philippe Petain, who was a revered military commander during the First World War, was named French Head of State in 1940 by overwhelming vote of the National Assembly.
-
The Truth Behind the French Resistance Myth
N. Shakespeare - The Telegraph (Britain)
Thirstily swallowed by a humiliated France, the dominant narrative of the French Resistance was cooked up by General de Gaulle – “Joan of Arc in trousers”, Churchill testily called him – when he addressed the crowds outside the Hôtel de Ville on August 25, 1944. “Paris liberated! Liberated by its own efforts, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the help of all of France.” Yet, as Robert Gildea exposes in this comprehensive survey of the French Resistance [Fighters in the Shadows], the myth that the French freed themselves is largely poppycock … It is not hard to see why the Resistance, in Gildea’s estimation, “mobilised only a minority of French people. The vast majority learnt to muddle through under German Occupation and long admired Marshal Pétain.”
-
Turbulence in US-Saudi Arabia Relations
Eric Margolis
… Khashoggi’s brazen murder has caused a crisis in US-Saudi relations, an angry confrontation with Turkey, and serious questions about the Saudi war in wretched Yemen, which so far had caused 60,000 deaths and left this remote land facing starvation … No one in the West cared about this massacre until the unfortunate Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul. This crime allowed disgust with Saudi Arabia over its Yemen war, beheadings and crucifixions to finally take precedence over arms sales and tawdry geopolitics … Since the 1930’s, the Saudi dynasty has been defended and supported by first Britain, then the United States. Few questioned the support of the world’s leading democracy for a cruel medieval monarchy. There was too much oil money involved.
-
Why Washington Can't Escape the Damage Done by Riyadh's Crown Prince
Doug Bandow – The National Interest
… The [Saudi] regime suppresses political dissent, persecutes non-Muslim faiths at home, and is pursuing military hegemony abroad. Despite a long and sometimes checkered relationship with the United States, this government threatens to undermine long-term Washington objectives … The kingdom once mattered geopolitically, but no longer. It has lost its energy dominance. Its financial dependence makes use of its “oil weapon” impractical, even suicidal. No outside power threatens to take control of the region. As a natural rival of Iran, Riyadh doesn’t need Washington’s encouragement to balance Tehran. In short, Saudi Arabia doesn’t much matter to America today … Far from inaugurating a new “American First” policy, President Donald Trump was acting as a front man for Washington’s foreign-policy establishment.
-
Iran’s President Warns of 'War Situation' as U.S. Sanctions Resume
Associated Press
The U.S. re-imposed all sanctions Monday on Iran that once were lifted under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, grinding further down on the Islamic Republic’s already-ailing economy in what President Hassan Rouhani described as a “war situation” now facing Tehran … As Iranian officials struck a martial tone, the strain could be felt on the streets of Tehran … “We are in an economic war situation. We are standing up to a bullying enemy,” Rouhani told government officials in televised remarks, invoking Iran’s ruinous 1980s war with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. “Yesterday, Saddam was in front us; today Trump is front of us. There is no difference. We must resist and win.” Iranian state television broadcast video of air defense systems and anti-aircraft batteries in two-day military maneuvers underway across a vast stretch of the country’s north.
-
What Impact Will New U.S. Sanctions Have on Iran?
E. Rosenberg - U.S. Institute of Peace
… What is markedly different about this round of sanctions is that this time the United States is going it alone … Iran has faced versions of this challenge in recent years yet has avoided state collapse or utter economic free-fall. Indeed, Iran has faced repeated currency and banking crises, and has been struggling with limited foreign investments for decades. The resiliency of coping with a “resistance economy” has conditioned generations of Iranians for living through very difficult times. The current sanctions pressure will provoke difficult circumstances for Iran, but they will not cause the economy to collapse or the political elites to capitulate to U.S. policy demands. By comparison to the enormous economic struggles of the 1980s, when Iran was locked into a war with Iraq, the economic fallout from more recent sanctions has been comparatively small.
-
The Atlantic Charter Smokescreen
Institute for Historical Review
During both the First and Second World Wars, the nations warring against Germany and her allies portrayed their fight as a “world war for humanity.” Despite the opening of hitherto closed government archives and the testimony of political participants, the general public, with rare exceptions, still believes in these wartime propaganda images of “the good guys” versus “the bad guys.” … Although the Allies, including Stalin’s Russia, continued throughout the war to invoke the principles embodied in the Atlantic Charter, those principles were in practice ignored …
-
A weeklong series of commemorations has begun in France to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, with some 80 world leaders expected to attend. French President Emmanuel Macron on November 4 hosted his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, where the two leaders attended a concert in the city’s cathedral. Macron will also host ceremonies on the battlefields across the country where hundreds of thousands of men died in muddy trenches during long stalemates between the Allies and German forces … U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin were expected to participate in the final ceremony at Paris’s Arc de Triomphe on November 11 — a century to the day since the day the fighting ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
-
Why Americans Should Remember World War I
Harry Blain
… The First World War – known as the “Great War” in Europe – has largely faded from memory on this side of the Atlantic. Arguably, this is because our involvement was so brief – joining the slaughter over two years after it began and leaving it just over eighteen months later. But, beyond the fact that it claimed the lives of over 100,000 Americans, there are good reasons why, a century later, we should remember this chapter in our history, not least because it has ominous parallels with today … The Washington Post lamented the lack of war enthusiasm on the East Coast, in contrast to the “healthful and wholesome awakening in the interior of the country,” which was praiseworthy “in spite of excesses such as lynching.” Other “excesses” included tarring-and-feathering, vandalism against people who didn’t buy enough Liberty Bonds …
-
The Rhyme of History: Lessons of the Great War
Margaret MacMillan - The Brookings Institution
… The one-hundredth anniversary of 1914 should make us reflect anew on our vulnerability to human error, sudden catastrophes, and sheer accident. So we have good reason to glance over our shoulders even as we look ahead … The past cannot provide us with clear blueprints for how to act, for it offers such a multitude of lessons that it leaves us free to pick and choose among them to suit our own political and ideological inclinations. Still, if we can see past our blinders and take note of the telling parallels between then and now, the ways in which our world resembles that of a hundred years ago, history does give us valuable warnings.
-
Watch the Film the Israel Lobby Didn’t Want You to See
The Electronic Intifada
The Electronic Intifada has obtained a complete copy of The Lobby – USA, a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States. It is today publishing the first two episodes … The film was made by Al Jazeera during 2016 and was completed in October 2017. But it was censored after Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, came under intense Israel lobby pressure not to air the film … To get unprecedented access to the Israel lobby’s inner workings, undercover reporter “Tony” posed as a pro-Israel volunteer in Washington. The resulting film exposes the efforts of Israel and its lobbyists to spy on, smear and intimidate US citizens who support Palestinian human rights, especially BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
-
Anya Parampil reports on Al Jazeera’s censored four-part investigation series on the Israel lobby in the U.S., which was leaked by the Electronic Intifada. She explains why the Qatari network opted to censor their investigation series after years of production. Co-Founder of the Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, explains why Americans must see the films to understand the full scope of Israel Lobby interference. Later, former member of UK Parliament, George Galloway, joins the show to discuss the Israel Lobby’s influence on Al Jazeera’s decision to censor the investigation. Runtime: 8:52 mins.
-
Mass Migration Mortal Threat to Red State America
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Does it make sense to grant all the honor, privileges and rights of lifetime U.S. citizenship to anyone who can fly to the U.S. or evade the Border Patrol and have a baby? … The gaps between Asian and white Americans, and Hispanic and African-Americans — in income and wealth, crime rates and incarceration rates, test scores and academic achievements — are dramatic and are seemingly enduring. To the frustration of egalitarians, the meritocracy of free and fair competition in this most diverse of great nations is producing an inequality of rewards and a visible hierarchy of achievement. Politically, continued mass migration to the USA by peoples of color, who vote 70-90 percent Democratic, is going to change our country another way. Red state America will inevitably turn blue.
-
A Nation Addled by Conspiracy Theories
Barbara Boland - The American Conservative
… Conspiratorial thinking isn’t really thinking at all. It’s laziness that jumps to conclusions before examining the facts. It accepts that somehow dozens of people could orchestrate a deception that fools millions — and then keep it secret for decades. Its adherents reject Occam’s Razor, the scientific and philosophical device dictating that, if there are two explanations for an occurrence, the simpler one is more likely to be true, and the more things you assume, the less likely your theory is to hold water. Reacting to loss, tragedy, or defeat by indulging conspiracy theories sidesteps difficult questions and uncomfortable feelings.
-
Trump Administration to Reimpose All Iran Sanctions Lifted Under Obama-Era Nuclear Agreement
Associated Press
The Trump administration on Friday announced the reimposition of all US sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, ramping up economic pressure on the Islamic Republic as President Donald Trump completed the unraveling of what had been one of his predecessor’s signature foreign policy achievements. The sanctions, which will take effect on Monday, cover Iran’s shipping, financial and energy sectors and are the second batch the administration has reimposed since Trump withdrew from the landmark accord in May … Shortly after the announcement, Trump tweeted a movie poster-like image of himself walking out of what appears to be fog with the phrase “Sanctions are Coming, November 5.”
-
Is Trump’s Iran Policy Meant to Start a War?
Trita Parsi, Sina Azodi - The National Interest
… The Iran strategy favored by Saudi Arabia and the Netanyahu government in Israel, and eagerly adopted by the White House, will likely lead to a military confrontation regardless of whether its assumptions about the status of Iran’s economy and political survivability are true or not. The Trump administration’s pressure strategy on Iran assumes that the Islamic Republic is standing on its last leg … If Trump’s bet proves wrong and the theocracy in Tehran shows itself too resilient, the United States will find itself in a vulnerable position. Trump’s complete isolation at the UN General Assembly last month was nothing short of astounding — yet, that may become the new normal.
-
As it has every year since 1992, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday for a resolution that called for lifting the U.S. embargo against Cuba — despite a U.S. move to put the focus on Cuba’s human rights record. The vote was 189-2 in favor of the resolution with no abstentions. Only the United States and Israel voted against it … U.S. officials said they didn’t expect to turn the tide on the embargo vote, but they wanted to show why they think the U.S. embargo is needed … Ever since the Cuba-backed resolution was first introduced, U.N. member states have approved it by an overwhelming margin. The most no votes it has ever garnered were four, including those of the United States and Israel, which has always voted in lockstep with the U.S.
-
School Principal Fired After 'Anti-Semitic' Shakespeare Production
The Times of Israel
A Toronto private school has fired its headmaster after a provocative performance of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice riled parents, who characterized it as blatantly anti-Semitic. Bishop Strachan School issued an apology and said it had “parted ways” with its head Judith Carlisle in a statement issued last week, days after two dozen parents penned a letter to the BSS board lamenting the play’s “demeaning, derogatory and highly inappropriate language.” The rendition put on by Box Clever Theatre, where Carlisle had previously served as a director, included an element of audience participation in which students were urged to chant “Hallelujah” in response to statements like “Burn the Jews” and “Take away their holy books.”
-
Time to End the Ruinous U.S. Alliance with Saudi Arabia
Gareth Porter
… More than any other American ally, the way Saudi Arabia operates is completely at odds with the values the US professes to champion and embody. The Saudi ruling elite is not only proudly anti-democratic but upholds an extreme interpretation of Islam that has made it the primary source of violence and instability in the Middle East over the past decade … Even after the 9/11 attacks, Saudi Arabia remained the leading source of funding for al-Qaeda, as Hillary Clinton noted in a classified 2009 paper … The Obama administration gave the alliance with the Kingdom new importance by responding to pressure from its Saudi allies – as well as Turkey and Qatar – with a CIA programme to support the supply of arms to opposition forces in Syria. It was a covert US operation managed by the CIA but funded by the Saudi government …
-
Khashoggi Died for Nothing
Philip Giraldi
… An absolute dictatorship run by one family, it [Saudi Arabia] has long both relied on and been the exporter of the most backward looking and unpleasant form of Islam, Wahabbism. But for the fact that the Saudis are the world’s leading exporter of oil, and, for Muslims, guardian of the religion’s holy sites, the country would long ago have been regarded as a pariah. But that said, Congress and the White House might well consider how the rest of the world views the United States when it comes to killing indiscriminately without fear of consequences. President Barack Obama, who has practically been beatified by the U.S. mainstream media, was the first American head of state to openly target and kill American citizens overseas.
-
Did Trump Goad and Guide the Pipe Bomber?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Democracy dies when the divisions in a society become so bitter and rancorous that a segment of that society becomes so estranged it decides that it would rather leave and live apart. With their endless charges of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia America’s elite has let Trump’s “base” know what it thinks of them. And at his rallies, where Trump’s mockery of that elite and its media allies evokes hoots and cheers, Middle America is telling our cultural and political establishment what it thinks of them. Before we were a democracy, we were a republic. And we were always more than just a polity. We were a people and a nation. Today we seem to be two countries and two peoples. And if that is true, a political system based on majority rule is not going to be strong enough to hold us together indefinitely.
-
Electric Chair Builder Worried Tennessee Execution Will Fail
Associated Press
If Tennessee electrocutes Edmund Zagorski on Thursday, it will be in an electric chair built by a self-taught execution expert who is no longer welcome in the prison system and who worries that his device will malfunction. Fred Leuchter had a successful career in the execution business before his reputation was tainted by his claim that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. Tennessee’s chair, which hasn’t been used since 2007, is just one of many execution devices Leuchter worked on between 1979 and 1990, according to an article by Fordham University professor Deborah Denno in the William and Mary Law Review. In addition to electric chairs, Leuchter built, refurbished and consulted on gas chambers, lethal injection machines and a gallows for at least 27 states.
-
The Botched Execution of Fred Leuchter
Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
A leading expert on gas chamber design and the operation of execution gas chambers in the US, and the author of the stunning 1988 technical study of the Auschwitz “gas chambers,” describes the vicious Jewish-Zionist campaign to destroy his career. He also provides a blow-by-blow description of his outrageous arrest, detention and expulsion from Britain … “Because I was somewhat naive at the time, I was not aware that by so testifying I was offending the organized world Jewish community … What I did not know was that anyone expressing such beliefs is guilty of a capital crime: that of thinking and telling the unspeakable truth about the greatest lie of the age. I would have to pay for this crime.”
-
… Leuchter was commissioned in early 1988 by German-Canadian publisher Ernst Zündel to conduct a thorough forensic investigation of the alleged wartime gassing facilities in Poland for his defense case in the Toronto “Holocaust Trial.” … Leuchter and his team carefully investigated the so-called gas chambers at, first, the Auschwitz main camp, second, the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which is supposed to have been the most terrible Nazi extermination center, and, third, the Majdanek camp near Lublin … As an expert witness testifying under oath in April 1988 in the second Zündel trial, and in his published report of his on-site investigation, Fred Leuchter explained in detail that the supposed gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek could not possibly have been used to gas people as alleged.
-
Since becoming president, Donald Trump has often criticised Nordic countries. But now Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has responded after a White House report found living standards in Nordic countries were “at least 15 percent lower” than in the US. Writing on Facebook, Mr Rasmussen said Denmark “would win every time” in a competition with the US. “Our children can get an education – no matter who you are and where you come from,” he wrote. “We can get to the hospital and get help if we get sick … And if you become unemployed, run into problems or otherwise need a helping hand, then the community is ready to seize and help one back on the right track.” … The only area where the US outperforms Denmark, Mr Rasmussen added, was in praising its own achievements …
-
In Holland and Belgium, Growing Resistance to Holocaust Memorials
C. Liphshiz - JTA
… Far from an isolated incident, the controversy unfolding in Amersfoort is symptomatic of a larger issue in the Netherlands and Belgium. There, Holocaust commemoration initiatives in recent years have been met with mounting resistance, despite significant grassroots interest in the genocide. The phenomenon is becoming particularly common in the Netherlands … In Amsterdam, dozens of artists this month signed a petition opposing the erection of a national monument in the capital city’s former Jewish quarter. Many current residents object to the memorial’s prominent footprint … And in May, an Amsterdam bookshop owner said that a police officer asked him to remove a sign commemorating Holocaust victims, citing Israel’s actions.