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… That denunciation of John Bolton interventionism came from Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii during Wednesday night’s Democratic debate. At 38, she was the youngest candidate on stage. Gabbard proceeded to rip both the “president and his chickenhawk cabinet (who) have led us to the brink of war with Iran.” … By debate’s end, Gabbard was the runaway winner in both the Drudge Report and Washington Examiner polls, and was far in front among all the Democratic candidates whose names were being searched on Google. Though given less than seven minutes of speaking time in a two-hour debate, she could not have used that time more effectively. And her performance may shake up the Democratic race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he believes liberalism has “outlived its purpose” and “become obsolete.” Speaking to the Financial Times at the Kremlin ahead of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Putin condemned open-door policies toward migrants, and said liberalism has gone too far at the expense of “traditional values.” “When the migration problem came to a head, many people admitted that the policy of multiculturalism is not effective and that the interests of the core population should be considered,” Putin said in an extensive interview … “The liberal idea has become obsolete.” … “Traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist.”

The president canceled a strike because it was “not proportionate,” and then vowed “obliteration.” / … So which one is it? Proportional responses, or obliteration for any attack? Reading the president’s statements, it’s impossible to know what Trump’s Iran policy is — and it’s clear that Trump doesn’t know either … The problem is that Trump doesn’t appear to possess the knowledge or judgment to formulate a policy independent of their advice, because he never bothered to learn about Iran in the first place. His policy from the start has been Iran is bad, and Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was bad, and was formed largely from Fox News fulminations … Not even the U.S. military knows what Trump wants.

… The president has fixated on Iran, tearing up the nuclear accord with Tehran and declaring economic war on it — as well as anyone dealing with Iran. He is pushing America toward war even as he insists that he wants peace. How stupid does he believe we are? … Whatever the president’s true intentions, Tehran can be forgiven for seeing Washington’s position as one of regime change, by war if necessary … The Trump administration is essentially a one-trick pony when it comes to foreign policy toward hostile states. The standard quo is to apply massive economic pressure and demand surrender. This approach has failed in every case. Washington has caused enormous economic hardship, but no target regime has capitulated. In Iran, like North Korea, U.S. policy sharply raised tensions and the chances of conflict.

Much worried commentary is being written these days about the possibility of a US-led war on Iran. The truth, of course, is there is already a war on Iran. And it is one that very much serves Israeli interests. The US government is prosecuting an economic war on Iran while intensifying its military posture against the country, increasing land, sea and air positions on the basis of unsubstantiated claims that Iran might someday develop nuclear weapons, is the engine of violence in the Middle East, and is likely to initiate attacks against US “interests” or those of its proxies … US and Israeli planners despise Iran principally because it is an independent regional power … Weakening Iran, with a view toward regime change, has long been a major Israeli preoccupation, highlighted by such Israeli policies as assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.

… The Wehrmacht officer is Chiang Wei-Kuo, adopted son of Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Wei-Kuo commanded a German Panzer during the 1938 Anschluss of Austria with the Reich, and earned a commission as a Wehrmacht lieutenant in anticipation of Fall Weiss, before being recalled back to China. How is it that the son of a WWII Allied Power’s head of state served on the “wrong” side on the road to war, you ask? … Nazi support was motivated by two reasons: the economic need for China’s raw materials, and the anti-communism of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT).

The White House on Saturday published one-half of its long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan — a multibillion-dollar proposal to upgrade the Palestinian economy. The Palestinian leadership has already rejected it, and so far, it has been widely panned by former U.S. envoys and Mideast policy experts. The proposal, presented on the White House website ahead of a conference this week in Bahrain to promote the Trump administration’s peace plan, features slick promotional language, billing it as a kind of Marshall Plan and “the most ambitious and comprehensive international effort for the Palestinian people to date.” … Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel … under George W. Bush and tweeted this reaction: “I would give this so-called plan a C- from an undergraduate student. The authors of the plan clearly understand nothing.”

Two very different sentiments were expressed at a debate on anti-semitism in the British House of Lords on Thursday, with a former UK chief rabbi saying the event showed the support the country’s Jews enjoyed, while a baroness blamed anti-semitic violence on Israel … From the other end of the spectrum came Baroness Jenny Tonge, long known as a fervent critic of Israel … Tonge went on to blame Israel for anti-semitic violence, stating, “There was a surge in violent anti-semitic activity during and after Operation Protective Edge in 2014 — a vicious and deadly attack on Gaza by the Israeli armed forces, in which thousands of Gazans were killed and injured. The killing and maiming continue, of course, with further attacks on Gaza and at the Friday protests.”

Decades after its dramatic demise, the Third Reich continues to fascinate millions and provoke heated discussion … Consistent with the author’s strong plea for a more thoughtful and objective look at the phenomenon of Hitler and National Socialism, Nolte presents his often highly unorthodox views without polemics, indeed with a certain reserve and tentativeness. Unlike those who incessantly insist that “we” must “never forget” the “lessons of the Holocaust,” Nolte calls for an evaluation of the Hitler era as free as possible of strident, emotion-laden polemics and self-serving purposes.

… Over the years, his sometimes unconventional insights into twentieth century history and political philosophy — presented in several books and numerous articles — have earned him wide acclaim … As even the most critical of his intellectual adversaries will concede, the often bitter controversy he touched off has been a landmark development in German awareness of twentieth-century European history. More than any other single person, he has encouraged a profound national self-examination of contemporary history, which in turn has engendered a new openness and maturity of thinking.

… By many criteria, 21st-century California is both the poorest and the richest state in the union. Almost a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. Another fifth is categorized as near the poverty level — facts not true during the latter 20th century. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients now live in California. The state has the highest homeless population in the nation (135,000) … The sidewalks of the state’s major cities are homes to piles of used needles, feces, and refuse … One out of three Californians who enters a hospital for any cause is now found to be suffering from either diabetes or pre-diabetes … California’s transportation system, to be honest, remains in near ruins … Twenty-seven percent of Californians were not born in the United States … California schools are usually in the bottom decile of national rankings.

… Reparations advocates make the unchallenged pronouncement that United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That’s utter nonsense … According to the state Department of Education, 75% of black California boys cannot meet state reading standards. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s mathematics exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. The same story of low education outcomes can be told about most cities with large black populations … There’s another possible reparations issue completely ignored: Blacks as well as whites live on land taken, sometimes brutally, from American Indians. Do blacks and whites owe American Indians anything?

One of the most important films in cinema history has been pulled from YouTube under its hate speech policy. Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” a German propaganda documentary on the 1934 Nazi Party Rally at Nuremberg, was removed under a new policy announced Wednesday against “videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory,” a policy that leaves untouched works of the cinema canon that glorify Stalin-era communism. While “Triumph of the Will” very obviously glorifies Nazism and dictator Adolf Hitler, it’s also central to the cinema canon, especially in the fields of documentary movies and propaganda films, and has, in the words of Eric Kohn at IndieWire “major historical value, raising essential questions about the nature of the film medium.”

This 1935 German film documentary is widely regarded as a brilliant and influential work of cinematographic art. Here, with English-language subtitles (not entirely accurate). Runtime: 104 mins. The film chronicles the September 1934 congress in Nuremberg of the National Socialist Party, a gathering that drew some 700,000 attendees. Includes excerpts from speeches by prominent Third Reich leaders. “Triumph of the Will“ is directed, produced and edited by Leni Riefenstahl, the world’s most prominent and successful woman film director and producer of the 1930s and 1940s. A major theme of the film is the devotion, love and trust of the vast majority of Germans for Adolf Hitler, and their gratitude for the success of his party and government — after just 19 months in power — in restoring confidence, national unity, and social concord.

As President Trump and his administration mull their next moves on Iran, a new poll found that less than a quarter of registered U.S. voters say they want the U.S. to take military action against Tehran. A Hill-HarrisX survey taken June 22-23 found that 19 percent of voters wanted the U.S. to launch a limited military strike on Iran, the option that Trump had ordered but pulled back from at the last minute last Thursday. Five percent of respondents said the U.S. should declare war on Iran. The majority of voters, 58 percent, preferred a non-military response to Iran’s shooting down of a U.S. spy drone. Forty-nine percent of voters said they wanted a negotiated end to the recent hostilities … In the survey, Republican voters were only slightly more interested in a military response to Iran than the general public.

Visualizing 150 Iranian dead from a missile strike that he had ordered, President Donald Trump recoiled and canceled the strike, a brave decision and defining moment for his presidency … Good for Trump. Yet, all weekend, he was berated for chickening out and imitating President Barack Obama. U.S. credibility, it was said, has taken a big hit and must be restored with military action … Still, it needs to be said: The president himself authorized the steps that have brought us to this peril point … If war is to be avoided, either Iran is going to have to capitulate, or the U.S. is going to have to walk back its maximalist position.

… The president is painfully aware that another indecisive war in the Middle East could cost him re-election, so he is hesitant to pull the trigger … The Administration has accused Iran of several recent attacks on tankers, but the lack of evidence has even made it difficult for media friends and many Iran-hating congressmen to believe the claims. But make no mistake, the situation is approaching the boiling point with Pompeo and Bolton reportedly driving the process behind the back of a largely disengaged Trump.

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, appealed Tuesday for the Palestinians to consider a $50 billion economic support plan, even though they already rejected the proposal because it does not include a political resolution to the long-running conflict with the Israelis. Kushner, speaking at a conference in Bahrain, defended the proposal as the foundation of any eventual peace plan. Meanwhile, Palestinians protested the plan in the streets of the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere. “We don’t need money. We are not hungry for bread,” said Gaza physician Said Jadba, one of the protesters jamming the streets of West Bank cities as the plan was unveiled. “We are hungry for dignity.”

Recent assertions by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., that U.S.-run detention centers for migrants are “concentration camps” drew immediate rebukes from some politicians, Jewish groups, and social media users … Nazi Germany was not the first nation to use concentration camps. The term dates from the eve of the 20th century, when it was used to describe policies used in at least three conflicts: South Africa’s Boer War, Spain’s campaign against Cuban insurrectionists, and the United States’ campaign against Philippine insurgents … The United States operated camps to hold Japanese-Americans following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, which drove the U.S. into World War II.

In the months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, many [Americans] expected an immediate attack against the West Coast. Fear gripped the country and a wave of hysterical antipathy against the Japanese engulfed the Pacific Coast … The Japanese were sent to concentration camps not by a group of West Coast racists seeking economic advantage, but by a popular and powerful government run by democratic liberals. At the top of the list of those responsible for not only authorizing the program, but also for keeping it in operation was President Franklin Roosevelt.

President Trump did the smart thing last week by calling off a US airstrike on Iran over the downing of an American spy drone near or within Iranian territorial waters. According to press reports, the president over-ruled virtually all his top advisors – Bolton, Pompeo, and Haspel – who all wanted another undeclared and unauthorized US war in the Middle East. Is Iran really the aggressive one? … President Trump is in a bind and it is of his own making. Iran has shown that it is not willing to take its marching orders from Washington, which means “maximum pressure” from the US will not work. He has two options remaining in that case: risk it all by launching a war or make a gesture toward peace. A war would ruin his presidency – and a lot more.

Mainstream media outlets were of a lot of different minds on the Iran question earlier this week, counseling different approaches for US-Iran tensions. Friday, those outlets were broadly united, upset by the lack of a new war they thought sure was coming. To be sure, Thursday was meant to be the start of the US-Iran War which hawks have been trying to piece together for generations. Trump ordered the attack, but ultimately, called it off a mere ten minutes from a strike. What had been a subject of debate was now USA Today accusing Trump of “not following through.” … NBC News was quick to accuse Trump of “indecision” and declared it would “embolden Iran.” CNN’s Samantha Vinograd accused Trump of not being able to “make up his mind,” and suggested that he’s “blown America’s credibility” by not attacking Iran.

An influential political commentator praises President Trump for stepping back from the brink of large-scale with Iran. The same “necons” who seem to have learned nothing from their role in pushing the US into the calamitous 2003 invasion of Iraq, says Tucker Carlson, are pressing head for yet another catastrophic war. Runtime: 7:24 mins. Carlson is host of the widely-viewed nightly political talk show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” broadcast on Fox News.

Iran sent four warning signals to a US surveillance drone before it was shot down on Thursday and did not strike a second plane carrying 35 passengers which accompanied it, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace division told ISNA news agency. “Ten minutes before the attack, a warning signal was sent to the drone. Those who were controlling the drone received the warning signals, but payed no attention,” Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying. “There was an American P-8 surveillance airplane with 35 passengers flying close to the drone. We could have hit that plane too, but we didn’t.” … Fars also published a map, claiming to display the full path that the drone took from Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates until it was downed by the IRGC.

… Asked her views on Biden’s remarks, Elizabeth Warren joined the attack: “It’s never OK to celebrate segregationists. Never.” But if that is the new Warren Rule in Democratic politics, it may be hard to maintain. For the Democratic Party, the oldest party on earth, was from its founding to the final third of the 20th century, the bastion of slavery, secession and segregation. Jim Crow voted a straight Democratic ticket. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, founding fathers of the party, were slave owners, as were James Madison and James Monroe, who succeeded Jefferson in the White House … The first Democratic president of the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson, restored segregation to the U.S. government. The second, FDR, chose a segregationist vice president, “Cactus Jack” Garner …

Living in 21st America, it’s impossible to go a single day without hearing multiple mentions of “racism.” It seems to be the lifeblood of our political-cultural life … Let’s be frank: America was founded by white people, white Protestant Christians, to be exact, and for white people of (mostly) the same description. As early on as 1790, just a short while after the United States Constitution was ratified, the Naturalization Act was passed. This law expressly limited citizenship in the new Republic to “free white persons of good character.” … America was established by those who settled it. There was no America before specific people at a specific time decided to tame the vast wilderness that would become the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

… What Soldiers Do [by Mary Louise Roberts] proves and documents, without doubt or gainsaying, whether the author intended it or not, that U.S. soldiers in World War II were the greatest generation of whoremongers in the history of the American military … “GIs were emboldened to believe the nation was theirs for the taking.” In garrison towns like Le Havre, the GI’s “disregard for French social norms meant they had public sex with prostitutes and assaulted women on the streets.” … The GIs propositioned women right in front of their husbands or boyfriends. Women could not walk the streets alone; sexual relations occurred in broad daylight under the eyes of children.

… Far from being universally welcomed as liberators, many troops had a distinctly surly reception from the people of Normandy. The reason for this was simple. Many Normandy towns and villages had been literally obliterated by Allied bombing … Some 20,000 French civilians were killed in the two-and-a-half months from D-Day, 3,000 of them during the actual landings … “It was rather a shock to find we were not welcomed ecstatically as liberators by the local people, as we were told we should be … They saw us as bringers of destruction and pain,” Mr Roker wrote in his diary … In his book, Mr Hitchcock raises another issue … Allied looting, and worse. “The theft and looting of Normandy households and farmsteads by liberating soldiers began on June 6 and never stopped during the entire summer,” he writes.

… The inescapable truth is that Hitler’s Wehrmacht was the outstanding fighting force of World War II, one of the greatest in history. For many years after 1945, this seemed painful to concede publicly … The Allied leaders invited their ground troops to fight the Wehrmacht with equipment inferior in every category save artillery and transport. German machine-guns, mortars, machine-pistols, antitank weapons and armored personnel carriers were all superior to those of Britain and America. Above all, Germany possessed better tanks … One of the more absurd propaganda clichés of the war was the image of the Nazi soldier as an inflexible squarehead. In reality, the German soldier almost invariably showed far greater flexibility on the battlefield than his Allied counterpart.

Modern circumstances continue to bear out the prescience of America’s founders. Especially George Washington’s warning against “entangling alliances.” In contrast, U.S. policymakers today treat military allies like Facebook friends, the more the merrier, something to brag about. However, most of Washington’s existing alliances are harmful, expensive commitments with little relevance to American security. Indeed, a couple are strikingly dangerous, even risking conflict with nuclear armed powers. A good place to start with an “America First” foreign policy would be to turn allies into friends, cooperating when in both nations’ interests, but no longer treating foreign governments as defense dependents.

US President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would be Iran’s “best friend” and that the Islamic republic could be a “wealthy” country if it renounces nuclear weapons, amid soaring tensions between the two nations. “We’re not going to have Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters outside the White House as he prepared to depart for Camp David for meetings on the situation with Iran, which downed a US drone earlier this week. “When they agree to that, they’re going to have a wealthy country. They’re going to be so happy, and I’m going to be their best friend. I hope that happens.”
“Let’s make Iran great again,” he added, tweaking for the occasion his main domestic political mantra. Trump last year withdrew the United States from an international accord designed to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief.

On the morning of June 22, 1941, the world is astonished by the news that Germany, together with Finland and Romania, had struck against the Soviet Union. German minister Goebbels broadcasts to the world Hitler’s proclamation announcing the beginning of the “Barbarossa” campaign, the largest military attack in world history. And then Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop addresses a large gathering of German and foreign journalists, and reads Germany’s note to the Soviet government giving its reasons for the attack. This film clip is a portion of the German weekly newsreel, “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” of June 25, 1941. With English subtitles (not entirely accurate). Runtime: 14:08 mins.

As dawn was breaking on Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, military forces of Germany, Finland and Romania suddenly struck against the Soviet Union. The stunning news of this attack was announced to the world by German radio at 5:30 that Sunday morning, when Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels broadcast the text of a proclamation by Adolf Hitler to the German people that laid out his reasons for the historic offensive. Following that was the broadcast of Germany’s declaration of war against the Soviet Union. This was in the form of a diplomatic note to the Soviet government. Because Hitler’s proclamation and the German Foreign Office declaration explain at some length the reasons and motives for the fateful decision to strike against the USSR, these are documents of historic importance.

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

How close did Hitler come to winning World War II? What was the real turning point in the war, and why? In this path-breaking revisionist study [Hitler’s Panzers East], Professor Stolfi provides some startling answers to these questions. If Hitler had played his cards just a bit differently, contends the author — a professor of Modern European History at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California — he could have won the war. German forces came very close to defeating the Soviet Union in 1941. Because Britain alone posed no mortal threat to German power, the defeat of Soviet Russia would effectively have ended the war, resulting in German hegemony over all of Europe. The result would have been a drastic change in the course of world history.

… The two-state solution is dead … The most obvious and humane path forward is the creation of a secular, democratic, binational state with equal rights for all … Of course, the sheer power of the Israel lobby in the United States is the main hurdle to such a radical departure from traditional blind support for Israel. Thus the Israel lobby should be restricted … The U.S. should end military aid to Israel, citing the Israeli military’s complicity in crimes against the Palestinian people. It should call for a gradual demilitarization of Israel and Palestine … It should demand that Israel bring itself into compliance with international law … It’s time for a mature relationship with Israel, free of the cloying sentimentalities and tired banalities (“Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East”) that infest our political discourse surrounding it.

… For most countries, the actions of a minority that seeks to advance the interests of a foreign nation would face strong resistance, but Israel manages to get away with what it does due to the presence of powerful and wealthy diaspora communities, most particularly in the Anglophone countries … Diaspora Jews are well entrenched in the media, which has enabled them to promote a narrative favorable to Israel no matter what it does, to include a repetitive dose of holocaust guilt that plays out from Hollywood and elsewhere in the media. The assiduously cultivated message for the public is that Jews are always the victims, never the aggressors, even when IDF snipers shoot Arab children and medical workers during protests.

… That image — the war as a moment of American domestic comity — however, might come as a surprise to anyone who lived through those years. In fact, the nation that waged that war was racked by deep political divisions, some with echoes that are still reverberating today … During the war, the country remained beset by racial and ethnic animosities … A survey in 1942 found that 90 percent of respondents [in the US] could not name a single provision of the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by the United States and Great Britain that delineated a clear and high-minded vision for the postwar world. A majority of those surveyed openly volunteered that they had “no clear idea what the war is all about.”

President Donald Trump said Friday the United States was “cocked & loaded” to strike Iran, but pulled back at the last minute because it would not have been a “proportionate” response to Tehran shooting down an American drone. The downing of the drone — which Iran insists violated its airspace, a claim Washington denies — has seen tensions between the countries spike after a series of attacks on tankers the US has blamed on Tehran … Trump said the US was prepared to hit “3 different sites” Thursday night but that he scrapped the strikes “10 minutes” before they were to have been launched … Iran vowed Friday to defend its borders after downing the drone, with the commander of the aerospace arm of its elite Revolutionary Guards saying the aircraft was warned twice before it was engaged over the Gulf of Oman.

US leaders have been threatening Iran for years, but US corporate media persistently and wrongly paint US escalations against Iran as defensive countermeasures … US media have persisted in ignoring this long record of US threats and hostile actions against Iran, casting Tehran as the aggressor in its conflict with the US … Iran is a threat to US interests in the sense that Iran is a barrier to full-spectrum US domination of the Middle East. But there’s no evidence Iran will attack the US … The media’s false implication that Iran is a danger to the population of the United States makes US escalations against the country appear necessary and justified, and reduces the likelihood that a sufficient number of US citizens will mobilize to stop the potential and actual harm being inflicted in their name.

… The American military, especially at the senior ranks, is apt to let you down whenever courage or moral fortitude is needed most. In nearly 18 years of post-9/11 forever war, not a single general has resigned in specific opposition to what many of them knew to be unwinnable, unethical conflicts … Think on it: of the some 18 general officers who have commanded the ill-fated, ongoing war in Afghanistan, each has optimistically promised not only that victory was possible, but that it was “around the corner” or a “light at the end of the tunnel.” … Why should any sentient citizen believe that these commanders’ former subordinates— a new crop of ambitious generals — will step forward now and oppose a disastrous future war with the Islamic Republic? Don’t believe it!

The rise of China surely ranks among the most important world developments of the last 100 years … During the three decades to 2010, China achieved perhaps the most rapid sustained rate of economic development in the history of the human species, with its real economy growing almost 40-fold between 1978 and 2010 … China is now set to surpass America’s total economic output within just another few years … Ordinary Chinese workers have increased their real income by well over 1,000 percent in recent decades, while the corresponding figure for most American workers has been close to zero … International surveys over the past decade have regularly ranked America as the world’s most hated major nation, a remarkable achievement given the dominant global role of American media and entertainment …

China’s economy is now the world’s second largest, and China is set to soon replace the US as the foremost economic and industrial nation. Over the past 30 years, real per capita income in China has grown by more than 1,300 percent. Over the last decade alone, China quadrupled its industrial output. It now produces more automobiles than the US and Japan combined. China — along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and, to a lesser extent, Taiwan and South Korea – has achieved dramatic economic growth with a social-political system that combines free enterprise and “state socialism.” What those countries have accomplished over the past half century proves that economic growth, technological progress and prosperity are possible without US-style democracy and capitalism.

… China’s bid to re-establish its leadership after a two century hiatus has been a national goal since Mao warned colleagues, “To overtake the United States is not only possible but absolutely necessary and obligatory. If we don’t, the Chinese nation will be letting the world down and we won’t be making much of a contribution to humanity. If we fail we will be wiped from the face of the earth.” Fifty years after his warning China founded the world’s most powerful military and security partnership, the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, the SCO … At their present rates of increase, Chinese and American military budgets will reach parity in 2028 and, given that Chinese missiles in every weight class already outrange their American counterparts, the world security scene will change irrevocably.

… Israel’s colonization of the West Bank was never accidental, defensive or reluctant. It was coldly calculated and intricately planned, with one goal in mind – and the moment to realize that goal is fast approaching. Annexation is not a right-wing project that has hijacked the benign intentions of Israel’s founding generation. Annexation was on the cards from the occupation’s very beginnings in 1967 … This is a war of attrition – what Israelis have long understood as “creeping annexation”, carried out by stealth to avoid a backlash from the international community. Ultimately, Israel wants the Palestinians gone entirely, squeezed out into neighboring Arab states, such as Egypt and Jordan. That next chapter is likely to begin in earnest if Mr. Trump ever gets the chance to unveil his “deal of the century”.

… As one who has traveled much and lived in several countries, I can tell you: It ain’t so. The world does not regard America with admiration … This is the country Americans believe the world wants to imitate. No. From outside, it seems more a country in political and cultural freefall … America’s foreign policy makes it hated in most of the world. It seems murderous, thuggish, brutal, a menace to everyone. For example, the U.S. killed over a million people in Iraq. This does not bother Americans … Americans, self-absorbed, perhaps the most historically ignorant of First-World peoples, shrugs such things off … From abroad, America is a feral, amoral, remorseless empire, rotting from within, willing to do anything to maintain its dominance. From inside the U.S., it seems otherwise.

Adolf Hitler did not wish to confront the reality of the Final Solution, a documentary on British television claimed on Monday night. The program alleged the Nazi dictator never visited an extermination camp, and pulled down the blinds of his Fuhrer train when a train carrying Jews to their deaths stopped on an adjacent platform. It also stated that the origins of the Holocaust lay in remarks made by Hitler at a private dinner, and noted the lack of a “paper trail” linking him directly to its instigation. “When it came to the extermination of Jews, Hitler was very hands off,” presenter Dr. Tracy Borman stated in the documentary, entitled “Private Lives,” which aired on Britain’s Yesterday channel. But doubt was immediately cast on the implication of some of the program’s claims by one of Britain’s leading experts on Nazi Germany, Prof. Sir Richard Evans.

Washingtonians pretend to be shocked by what President Trump does, but it’s Americans who should be shocked by what Washington does — such as illegally intervening in Syria’s civil war and occupying a third of that country. … The civil war has already destroyed whatever rules applied to Syria. Further violating both domestic and international law by invading and dismembering a country is an odd way to support the “rules-based international order.” … Perhaps most important, though little discussed in Washington, is that occupying Syria militarily, for whatever purpose, is a violation of international and U.S. law. The land is indisputably Syria’s and the Constitution requires Congress to authorize war.

… There is ample evidence to suggest that central figures within the Trump administration are itching for a war with Iran and willing to go to great lengths to get one. Despite this, there are repeated suggestions from the media that the US could “stumble” into a war with Iran “accidentally” or “by mistake” – despite purportedly wanting to avoid entanglement in another military conflict … Let’s get one thing straight. Washington does not get into wars “by mistake.” … The language of the “accidental war,” the conflicts that somehow manage to come looking for the US but never the other way around, is an obfuscation. It ignores years of US provocation against Iran … If the US goes to war with Iran, it will be entirely by design.

Actor John Cusack has apologised for sharing a “harmful” anti-Semitic image on Twitter. He shared a meme, since deleted, of a large hand with a Star of David on its wrist, oppressing a group of people. A caption on it read: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.” The saying, often misattributed to the French philosopher Voltaire, was in fact spoken by white nationalist Kevin Strom. Cusack added his own comment, “follow the money”, to the meme, before later deleting his post after it attracted criticism. He said he had “mistakenly retweeted an alt-right account” believing the image related to an Israeli hospital bombing.

Address by the IHR director in Tehran on Sept. 6, 2012. Nearly all of the 800 people in the “Friendship Salon” hall are Iranian university students, about half of them women. As he speaks, Weber’s remarks are translated into Farsi. His address, which lasted about two hours, includes a Q and A session. In this talk, titled “The Zionist Lobby in America,” Weber emphasizes the crucially important Jewish-Zionist role in the relentless campaign of smears against Iran, and the many threats by Israel to attack the country. He also speaks about widespread misconceptions in the US about Iran, and the Jewish grip on Hollywood and American cultural and political life. Runtime: 131 minutes.

President Donald Trump cannot want war with Iran. Such a war, no matter how long, would be fought in and around the Persian Gulf, through which a third of the world’s seaborne oil travels. It could trigger a worldwide recession and imperil Trump’s reelection … Who wants a U.S. war with Iran? Primarily the same people who goaded us into wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and who oppose every effort of Trump’s to extricate us from those wars. Should they succeed in Iran, it is hard to see how we will ever be able to extricate our country from this blood-soaked region that holds no vital strategic interest save oil, and America, thanks to fracking, has become independent of that.

The Japanese government has been requesting the United States for concrete evidence to back its assertion that Iran is to blame for the attacks on two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, government sources said Sunday. The request came after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a statement hours after the attacks blaming Iran but without offering proof. The Department of Defense later released a video allegedly showing an Iranian patrol boat removing an unexploded mine attached to the side of the Japanese-operated tanker Kokuka Courageous. But Japanese government officials remain unconvinced, the sources said … A source close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, “These are not definite proof that it’s Iran.” “Even if it’s the United States that makes the assertion, we cannot simply say we believe it” …

A special adviser to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini blamed the United States on Tuesday for a rise in tensions between Iran and the West. “This is happening for one reason that has not been cited so far, which is the fact that the United States has violated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, meaning the Iran deal,” Nathalie Tocci said on BBC radio’s Today program, telling the U.S.: “You’re not living up to your side of the bargain.” Tocci’s comments came amid escalating tension between the U.S. and Iran over attacks on foreign oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The United States blames Tehran, which denies it was responsible … The EU has shied away from endorsing U.S assertions that Iran was definitely responsible for the attacks on the tankers.

… Jared Kushner, presidential son-in-law and senior adviser responsible for crafting a Middle East peace plan, does have something in common with Lord Curzon and his colonial ilk … Kushner and his colleagues, White House adviser Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, have consistently stressed that theirs is essentially an economic development initiative for the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, meant to operate under existing conditions of almost absolute Israeli control … What Kushner and his colleagues are saying is that the Palestinians have no justified grievances, and no legitimate rights, except the right to whatever prosperity can be achieved with Gulf money under a permanent Israeli military occupation of their land.

Fresh evidence presented in an exclusive Al Jazeera investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 Americans proves the incident was not a mistake. Since 1967 the ‘official story‘ has been that Israel simply misidentified the American ship as Egyptian for several hours … A new [2014] documentary called ‘The Day Israel Attacked America” airing on Al Jazeera was produced and directed by award winning British film maker Richard Belfield. Thanks to the audio evidence obtained by Belfield, it is finally possible to prove the survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty were right all along … Israel’s intentions were to sink that ship and kill everyone on board so Egypt could be blamed for the tragedy. Why? To convince President Lyndon Johnson (and the American public) that we needed to declare war on Egypt.

Who is attacking oil tankers in the Gulf between Oman and Iran? So far, the answer is still a mystery. The US, of course, accuses Iran. Iran says it’s the US or its local allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates … One thing appears certain. President Donald and his coterie of neocon advisers have been pressing for a major conflict with Iran for months. The US is literally trying to strangle Iran economically and strategically. By now, Israel’s hard right wing dominates US Mideast policy, and appears to often call the shots at the White House and Congress. However, this latest Iran `crisis’ is totally contrived by the Trump administration to punish the Islamic Republic for refusing to follow American tutelage, supporting the Palestinians, and menacing Saudi Arabia … Many Americans love small wars. They serve as an alternative to football.

… The speed in which the Trump administration officially blamed Iran should give us pause, given John Bolton’s long history of fabricating of intelligence in favor of war. The mere process of gathering evidence — let alone conclusive evidence — of how the attack on Thursday was conducted and who was behind it would take days and weeks, not hours … Attacking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, on the other hand, provides Iran with few additional economic or diplomatic benefits while drastically increasing the downsides. Iran has little to gain from a violent escalation in which it will be seen as the aggressor, let alone one that allows the Trump administration to portray its bellicose policy as defensive and justified … What Iran would gain from such unprovoked hostility, however, remains unclear.

The European Union foreign ministers have remained unconvinced by U.S. allegations that Iran was behind last week’s attack on two tankers. There was strong support among EU countries for an independent UN investigation and calls for more evidence, The Independent [Britain] reported on Monday. Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, said the EU states “continue to gather information” … Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, said: “I believe that the main task of foreign ministers is to avoid war. We have to do that today.” Pekka Haavisto, the Finnish foreign minister, said it was important that EU states have “the full evidence” before reaching any conclusion.

YouTube has blocked some British history teachers from its service for uploading archive material related to Adolf Hitler, saying they are breaching new guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech. The video-sharing website announced on Wednesday that it would remove material glorifying the Nazis from its platform in an attempt to stop people being radicalised. In the process however, it also deleted videos uploaded to help educate future generations about the risks of fascism … Richard Jones-Nerzic, another British teacher affected by the crackdown, suggested YouTube’s policy did not take into account the extent to which the history syllabus focused on the second world war. “Modern world study and Hitler in particular have dominated the history curriculum in the UK over the last 25 years,” he said …

… It is one of 1,270 images that Schneider has just digitized from a trove of 41,000 glass negatives created by Hitler’s personal photographer and key propagandist, Heinrich Hoffmann. Most have probably never been seen before with this clarity, he said. “What makes this digitization project special is that the ensuing image has been reproduced from the original negative, rather than it being a copy or copy of a copy,” Schneider said in an email. “This results in unmatched quality.” Plans are to make the photographs available online soon, according to Billy Wade, a supervisory archivist.

A diary kept by President John F Kennedy as a young man travelling in Europe, revealing his fascination with Adolf Hitler, is up for auction. Kennedy, then 28, predicted “Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived”. “He had in him the stuff of which legends are made,” he continued. Kennedy wrote the entry in the summer of 1945 after touring the German dictator’s Bavarian mountain retreat. It is thought by historians to be the only diary every kept by the 35th US president. The original copy will be auctioned for the first time on 26 April in Boston by longtime owner Deirdre Henderson, who worked as a research assistant for Kennedy while he was a US senator with White House ambitions.

… And that brings us to the real war criminals. Rep. Duncan Hunter and his fellow soldiers may have killed hundreds of innocent civilians and even felt justified. Their superior officers, after all, established the rules of engagement. Above those superior officers, going up and beyond to the policymakers, the lie was sold to the American people to justify a war of choice against a country that could not have threatened us if it wanted to … Until those at the top who continue to lie and manipulate us into war for their own gain face justice, the real criminals will continue to go free and we will continue pursuing a suicidal neocon foreign policy.

Penguin Random House is standing by one of its books amid allegations that it traffics in antisemitic tropes. “How They Rule the World: The 22 Secret Strategies of Global Power” was authored by Spanish colonel Pedro Baños and published in April by Ebury Press, a division of Penguin. The work was criticized starting late last month by author Jeremy Duns, who noted that the cover features a drawing of octopus tentacles — an image long associated with antisemitic propaganda. Duns compared the Spanish language edition of the work to its English translation, and found that references to the Rothschild family, a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories, had been removed.

Emmanuel Nahshon, the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, issued a powerful statement against German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas for failing to internalize the lessons of the Holocaust by misrepresenting Anne Frank’s legacy. Nahshon, one of Israel’s most seasoned diplomats, wrote on Twitter: “Anne Frank’s diary is NOT a warning about wishy-washy pseudo universal values! Anne Frank’s legacy is a warning against the hatred and persecution of JEWS. The attempt to ‘universalize the lessons of the Shoah [Holocaust] is nothing less than a dishonest rewriting of history.” Nahshon’s tweet on Wednesday was a response to a tweet by the German Foreign Ministry that was written in honor of what would have been Anne Frank’s 90th birthday.

Having unilaterally stepped out of the Iran nuclear deal in May, the Trump administration reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic earlier this week, part of another so-called “maximum pressure” campaign … Not only does such an economic offensive amount to an act of war, the idea that sanctions will spur citizens to action is not borne out in practice, especially in Iran. The more likely result is to inspire a siege mentality in the populace — who instead view their leaders as their protectors — while also reinforcing hatred for the West … It remains to be seen what kind of teeth the new round of sanctions will have. Beyond dispute, however, are very real tensions growing between the US and its imperial satellites in Europe, a welcomed silver lining in an otherwise dismal situation.

… Pompeo delivered his remarks without providing any evidence to support his accusations, and then walked off the stage without taking any questions. The Secretary of State’s credibility has already been shot to pieces by his frequent lies and misleading statements on a range of issues touching on everything from North Korea to Yemen to Iran, so he needed to clear an even higher bar than usual to back up his accusations. He didn’t come close … Pompeo is the bully who cried “Iran!” so many times that we have no reason to trust his anti-Iranian claims now … The Trump administration has chosen the path of provocation and confrontation for at least the last thirteen months, and then they have the gall to fault Iran for its lack of diplomacy.

As Trump administration officials rushed to blame Iran for the reported attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, the timing and apparent target of the explosions immediately prompted warnings that they may have been part of a deliberate effort to provoke a war between the U.S. and Iran. The alleged attacks, which set a Japanese-owned tanker ablaze, came as Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an attempt to reduce dangerous military tensions between the Iran and the U.S … According to Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), an Iranian rescue vessel picked up 44 sailors and brought them to safety following the tanker explosions. It is unclear how much damage was done to the tankers or whether anyone was harmed by the reported attacks.

Twitter has removed nearly 4,800 accounts with ties to the Iranian government in a continuing effort to prevent election interference and misinformation on the platform, the company said on Thursday. Since October 2018, Twitter has been publishing transparency reports on its investigations into state-backed information operations, releasing datasets on more than 30 million tweets. The latest report discloses that thousands of accounts originating in Iran have been suspended … More than 1,600 removed accounts sent out nearly two million tweets sharing “global news content, often with an angle that benefited the diplomatic and geostrategic views of the Iranian state”, the report said. In addition, Twitter suspended 248 accounts that appeared to be tied to the Iranian government and engaged in public discussions relating to Israel.

Twitter has announced that it is removing 4,779 accounts associated or backed by Tehran, the latest strike in the ongoing anti-Iran campaign perfectly timed to coincide with the attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was already blaming Iran hours after the incident, offering not a shred of proof aside from a few other dubious incidents in the Middle East that the US has previously pinned on Iran, without evidence. Even the mainstream media has initially been reluctant to take his word for it, mostly because the narrative is so improbable … Some 4,779 accounts were removed for nothing more than tweeting “global news content, often with an angle that benefited the diplomatic and geostrategic views of the Iranian state.”

The astonishing widespread massive corruption of some of the biggest names in American politics that Peter Schweizer reveals in his new blockbuster expose is shocking, startling, stunning — and sickening. “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends” is an insightful and extraordinarily consequential book that should ignite a national uproar. Don’t hold your breath. Our national media can be expected to do all in its power to suppress the possibility of any uproar — even when the corruption is this vast. It’s what they’re best at — covering up their own malfeasance and protecting politicians with whose ideology they’ve allied themselves.

A high-rolling real estate firm co-founded by Jared Kushner received some $90 million in anonymous foreign investment, some of it from Saudi Arabia, since Kushner started working at the White House, The Guardian newspaper reported Monday. Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser, co-founded in 2014 the real estate investment firm Cadre. He resigned from its board and reduced his stake to less than 25 percent after he joined the Trump Administration in 2017, the report said, but initially failed to declare Cadre in an ethics disclosure, adding it later as an “inadvertent” omission. Sources familiar with the firm said much of foreign investment in the firm was funneled through the Cayman Islands, a well-known offshore tax haven, in transactions via Goldman Sachs, and at least $1 million of the funds originated in Saudi Arabia.

The Japanese owner of a tanker attacked in the Gulf of Oman claimed Friday that it was struck by a flying projectile, contradicting reports by U.S. officials and the military on the source of the blast. U.S. Central Command said the two vessels were hit Thursday by a limpet mine, which is attached to boats below the waterline using magnets. U.S. Central Command released video it claimed showed an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps patrol boat removing an unexploded mine from one of the tankers, the Kokuka Courageous. But on Friday morning, the owner of the 560-foot Courageous, said that sailors saw something flying toward the vessel just before the explosion, and that the impact was well above the waterline.

… Iranian rescue services saved 44 sailors from tankers after a reported attack and took them to the Iranian port of Jask, the state-run IRNA news agency reported on Thursday. The US Navy’s 5th Fleet also said that it was assisting two oil tankers targeted in a “reported attack” near the Strait of Hormuz, after the vessels sent distress calls. It was not immediately clear who attacked the vessels … According to shipping newspaper Tradewinds, Frontline’s oil tanker had been “torpedoed” off the coast of the Emirate of Fujairah … US Secretary of State Pompeo alleged that Iran had attacked the tankers to raise the global price of oil. Tehran has denied any involvement and called for an investigation.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for an attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, saying the assessment was based on intelligence, but presented no evidence to support his claim. “It is the assessment by the United States government that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today,” Pompeo said in specially scheduled remarks at the State Department Thursday, as investigations into the attacks were beginning … Pompeo spoke hours after the two tankers were attacked and less than a month after four other ships in the region were struck in what appears to be a similar way. National Security Adviser John Bolton blamed Iran for those strikes at the time, again without offering evidence that Tehran was responsible.

Two oil tankers have been damaged in a suspected attack in the waters between the United Arab Emirates and Iran as they were leaving the Persian Gulf … Fingers will certainly be pointed at Iran as the mastermind behind these events. But the potential benefits to the Persian Gulf nation are outweighed by the risks. And even if Tehran isn’t responsible, it will still suffer the consequences … This would seem very clumsy timing from a country seeing the first tangible signs of any easing of the crippling sanctions imposed by the Americans. But it is absolutely understandable if you’re someone whose ultimate goal is to derail any easing of tensions between the two nations, and to effect regime change in Tehran. Whoever is behind the attacks is no friend of Iran.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe traveled to Tehran on Wednesday to warn that an “accidental conflict” could be sparked amid heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S., a message that came hours after Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels attacked a Saudi airport, wounding 26 people. Abe’s trip is the highest-level effort yet to de-escalate the crisis as Tehran appears poised to break the 2015 nuclear deal it struck with world powers, an accord that the Trump administration pulled out of last year. It’s also the first visit of a sitting Japanese premier in the 40 years since the Islamic Revolution.

Given the predictable accolades regarding the 75th anniversary of D-Day in World War II — it’s important for Americans to keep in mind some discomforting facts about the so-called good war: … The reason that England declared war on Germany was to honor the guarantee that England had given to Poland. But it was an empty guarantee because England knew that it lacked the military capability to free the Poles from German control. At the end of the war and ever since, mainstream historians and newspapers have waxed eloquent about how “we” defeated the Nazis. The operative word, however, is “we” because “we” included the Soviet Union, which was ruled by one of the most brutal communist regimes in the world.

… The notion that the second world war was finer and nobler than the first is highly dubious in itself, since it sanitises so much, from the slaughter of civilians by Allied bombing to the gang rape of millions of women by our Russian allies at the moment of victory … The glorification of the second world war has had practical and baleful consequences. It has led us to an easier acceptance of “liberal interventionism”, founded on the assumption that we in the west are alone virtuous and qualified to distinguish political right from wrong – and the conviction that our self-evidently virtuous ends must justify whatever means we employ …

… Albert Einstein is regarded by many people as the greatest physicist of the 20 the century. His unique contributions are said to have revolutionized physics. However, many physicists dispute the revolutionary nature of Einstein’s discoveries … Christopher Jon Bjerknes accuses Einstein of plagiarism … Einstein was an enthusiastic supporter of Israel … Albert Einstein hated the German people … He wrote: “I am not a German but a Jew by nationality.” … The fact that two atomic bombs later hit Japan and not Germany was in Einstein’s view a great catastrophe. Germany was the only country against which Einstein would have condoned using the atomic bomb.

… And yet, within these limits and despite his ailments, Chopin wrote some perfect music. Has any other composer ever understood melancholy so completely? .. In addition to his fame as a virtuoso, Chopin may have been the most adventurous harmonist of his time … Chopin is one of those masters whom one wouldn’t necessarily have enjoyed as company. He was removed and dismissive of most of his composer friends (including those who were vital supporters), and he harbored a deep strain of anti-Semitism, even more than was common in his time and place. His genius was mostly relegated to his work … This [book, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, by Alan Walker] is now the best biography of Chopin — meticulous, scholarly and well-told.

On June 8, 1967, a series of airplanes and at least one helicopter attacked the USS Liberty … Pretty soon after the attack, Tel Aviv came forward to say that the attack had been an accident — a case of mistaken identity. Author Joan Mellen does not buy the Israeli version of events. In her history book Blood in the Water, Mellen lays out in detail why the attack on the USS Liberty was not only deliberate, but also directed by some of the top officials in the CIA and the American government … These black marks aside, Blood in the Water does make it abundantly clear that Israel not only knowingly attacked an American ship, but it did so with the intent of killing everyone onboard. Although America and Israel have been best of friends since 1967, Mellen’s latest work claims that this friendship is based on betrayal and spilt blood.

If you are able read just one book in 2019, I urge it to be Joan Mellen’s Blood in the Water: How the U.S. and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty. The author on the basis of meticulous research probes every detail to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sinking of USS Liberty in the midst of the 1967 War is the greatest moral and political scandal in all of American history. In what was long described as a ‘mistake’ or ‘accident,’ Israeli planes and submarines attacked the Liberty, killing 34, wounding 174 American naval personnel … Her contribution goes far beyond what prior research and scholarly writing had established and alleged. She demonstrates that the real story of the Liberty attack was far worse than a cover-up of Israeli criminality, it was ‘collusion,’ that is, a deliberated collaborative attack by Israel and the United States.

… The attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, left 34 dead and 174 wounded, along with myriad unresolved questions even after Israel admitted responsibility, claiming it had acted in error. This book represents a massive undertaking … Disturbingly, the author’s solid research indicates that the United States and Israel collaborated in planning, executing, and covering up this operation in order to implicate Egypt, bomb Cairo, and precipitate Gamal Abdel Nasser’s downfall … Gripping from start to finish, with reflections on the price that soldiers pay for their commanders’ war agendas.

On June 8, 1967, Israeli leaders learned they could deliberately attack a U.S. Navy ship and try to send it, together with its entire crew, to the bottom of the Mediterranean – with impunity. Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, a state-of-the-art intelligence collection platform sailing in international waters off the Sinai, killing 34 of the 294 crew members … Israeli messages intercepted on June 8, 1967, leave no doubt that sinking the USS Liberty was the mission assigned to the attacking Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats … Geiss shot back that one of his ships was under attack. Tellingly, [US Defense Secretary] McNamara responded: “President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.”

British television documentary about the June 1967 attack by Israel against the USS Liberty. Shows that US and Israel authorities continue to suppress important facts about the murderous attack. Also includes revelations about the still secret Israel-US “Operation Cyanide” project, in which the US military deceitfully aided the Zionist state in its devastating “preemptive” assault against Egypt. Runtime: one hour, nine minutes.

… I’m at Disneyworld … One thing I can say for Disney’s Hall of Presidents: it’s air conditioned. The presidents, we are told, have been our “leaders of liberty.” It never gets much better than that … Then we get to Franklin Roosevelt, who during the Great Depression — which had no cause, apparently — used his powers to make everyone better off. No one in that audience would have had the slightest inkling that unemployment remained in double digits throughout the 1930s. After the obligatory JFK idolatry, we get the apotheosis of Lyndon Johnson — who evidently had nothing to do with the Vietnam War … There’s more, but you get the idea: cartoonish propaganda we would laugh at if we saw it in any other country. This kind of propaganda is everywhere: in the media, in the universities, in popular culture, in politics, everywhere.

… Like any other nation, Iran has demonstrated it will not succumb to outside pressure. The Iranians are far more likely to respond with defiance than capitulation. The United States would not accept another nation making demands on it, so it should be no surprise Tehran likewise refuses to do the same. This is a country, after all, that weathered eight years of conventional war in the 1980s against a militarily superior Iraqi army supported by the West — all at a time when Tehran was isolated from the international community and under an arms embargo. Indeed, as we see it playing out today, Washington’s hostility against Iran will not improve the regime’s behavior — it will only result in greater hostility directed at the United States. This is how wars start.

… Today, the question in Washington — and surely in Tehran, too — is whether President Trump is making moves that will provoke, instigate, or inadvertently drag the United States into a war with Iran. Trump’s threats began twelve days after he took office, in 2017 … The sense of foreboding is tangible, the threats from both sides are no longer rhetorical. Before the nuclear-deal negotiations began, in 2013, Washington was consumed with hyped talk of the United States or its allies bombing Iran. If the nuclear deal formally dies, talk of military confrontation may again fill both capitals — even if neither country wants it … The problem, as U.S. history proves, is that the momentum of confrontation is harder to reverse with each escalatory step.

Debunking myths about D-Day and World War II. Four items in one: “Fading Illusions,” by Mark Weber and Kevin Strom; “The ‘Good War’ Myth of World War 2,” by Mark Weber (with an extensive bibliography); the exposé “US Normandy Invasion was Tsunami of Lust,” by Mathieu von Rohr; and, “Battling the People of the Lie” (part one, with a link to the full series), by Kevin Strom.

Remarkable footage of Parisians venting anger against Allied prisoners of war. Shortly after the Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944, British and American soldiers who had been captured by German forces are marched through Paris, under German guard, apparently for transfer to a railroad station. Large crowds gather to watch. While most look on silently, some women and men jeer, harass, assault and even spit at the prisoners. German soldiers and French police keep Parisians from even more violent abuse of the PoWs. Silent footage. Runtime: 2:18 mins.

Ahead of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France, Russia’s foreign minister has written an article arguing that the commemorations of the event are part of a “false” history that belittles the contributions of the Soviet Union toward defeating Nazi Germany. Sergey Lavrov chastised Western powers in an article published in Russia’s International Affairs magazine on Tuesday, ahead of events in Europe to mark the D-Day landings which helped change the course of World War II. “False interpretations of history are being introduced into the Western education system with mystifications and pseudo-historical theories designed to belittle the feat of our ancestors,” Lavrov wrote … “It was the peoples of the Soviet Union who broke the backbone of the Third Reich.”

The dominant view of World War II is that it was the “good war.” Hitler bears exclusive responsibility for the onset of war, because he aimed to conquer Europe, if not the entire world. The United States tried to avoid entering the war, but was forced into the fight by the surprise Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. The authors on this list dissent. Responsibility for the war was mixed, and Roosevelt provoked Japan’s attack. Allied conduct of the war, furthermore, was characterized by grave ethical misconduct.

A new pro-Israel group that is pretending to be a standard bearer for conservative opinion in the United States was founded in January … The Edmund Burke Foundation describes itself as “a new public affairs institute” having “the aim of strengthening the principles of national conservatism in Western and other democratic countries.” … The Foundation’s launch will be at an open-to-the-public conference that will be held at Washington’s Ritz-Carlton on July 14-16, 2019 … The Edmund Burke Foundation’s Chairman is an Israeli Yoram Hazony, who describes himself as a “Jewish philosopher.” He resides in the Jewish state and is a well-known Israeli nationalist … Why do some American Jews betray the interests of their own country to support another nation that is manifestly a pariah due to its own behavior?

Donald Trump has selected ambassadors who are less qualified than any appointed since the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, according to a new study of previously unavailable government documents … During Trump’s first two years as president, 42 percent of his picks have been political appointees with no diplomatic experience, the highest figure of amateur US diplomats serving since Roosevelt’s tenure (46%), and a significant rise from the 30% recorded under Barack Obama. Scoville said the data he received shows the qualifications of the typical nominee have deteriorated since 1980. Further, the average campaign contribution from political nominees grew significantly over the past 40 years, even after adjusting for inflation.

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump continued their commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied northern France by Allied forces. The president joined French President Emmanuel Macron in honoring the fallen on the very site of the invasion — the beaches of Normandy … Mr. Trump joined French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte at a ceremony marking the somber occasion … In his remarks, the president told those assembled that those who battled on the beaches saved “saved freedom.” “Those who fought here won a future, they won the survival of our civilization and they showed us the way to love, cherish and defend our way of life for many centuries to come,” Mr. Trump said …

The American public first learned of the D-Day invasion of northern France on June 6, 1944, from German news reports – not from US officials. As the announcer in this American NBC radio news broadcast tells listeners, “All night long bulletins have been pouring in from Berlin” about Allied air and sea landings in northern France, and of “heavy fighting” along a 60 mile front. The first US or Allied confirmation of what German reports called “the long-awaited Anglo-American invasion” came later, with an Allied military communique that provided much less information about what was happening than was given in the bulletins of Germany’s DNB and Transocean news agencies, and by Berlin radio. Runtime: 4:23 mins.

… The push into Nazi territory by Allied forces had been expected for months, but nobody knew exactly when it would come. War journalism was a highly censored business, so the first way people found out that D-Day had happened was when the military issued communiques from the front … Americans listening to CBS and NBC Radio found out about D-Day from an unexpected source: the Nazis, who flashed news of the invasion all over their radio service. “The news to this moment is all supplied by the enemy,” CBS reporter Irwin Darlington told his audience. “There is no Allied confirmation.” NBC’s announcer warned listeners that the Germans could be faking the news in the hopes of “upsetting patriot plans inside the conquered countries.”

… As dramatic as D-Day was, on any measure of scale, it does not rank among the ten biggest battles of World War II. (All of the top ten were fought on the eastern front.) Yet it has to be regarded as among the very most decisive battles of the war — and certainly one of the most stupendous accomplishment of American arms in particular … Hastings points out that, except for artillery, Allied equipment was consistently inferior to its German counterpart: Despite the huge Allied investment in technology, the Germans produced better rifles, better grenades, better machineguns, better antitank weapons, better tanks, and better aircraft. Most serious of all: the Germans consistently outmaneuvered and outfought the Allies in Normandy, especially the British.

YouTube updated its hate speech policies Wednesday to prohibit videos with white supremacy and neo-Nazi viewpoints. The video streaming company says it has already made it more difficult to find and promote such videos, but it’s now removing them outright. YouTube will also prohibit videos that deny certain proven events have taken place, such as the Holocaust. The changes come as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other online services face mounting concern that the services allow, and in some cases foster, extremism … YouTube, which is owned by Google, said it’s removing thousands of channels that violate the new policies. YouTube’s changes follow moves from Facebook to prohibit not only white supremacy, but also white nationalism and white separatism.

YouTube is removing thousands of channels for promoting Neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and conspiracy theories that deny well-known historical events like the Holocaust and the Sandy Hook school shooting ever occurred. On Wednesday, the Google-owned platform announced it was taking a stricter stance on hateful content by deleting the offending videos instead of just limiting their circulation. YouTube’s policy previously banned videos for using racial slurs to promote hate and dehumanizing people based on their ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation … The updated policy now prohibits content that alleges “the superiority of a group” over another to “justify violence, discrimination, segregation, or exclusion.” Calling for the subjugation or domination of an individual or group is also no longer allowed.

… Elections in the world’s largest electoral blocs — the 28-nation EU, and an India of 1.3 billion people — showed that the tide of nationalism continues to rise and spread across Europe and Asia … Our Founding Fathers believed we Americans were a new people, a separate, unique, identifiable people, a band of brothers, who had risked their lives and shed their blood. Liberals believe we are held together by abstract ideas and ideals, such as democracy, equality and diversity. But did Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Calhoun, Clay, Jackson, Sam Houston, Tyler and Polk really believe in equality and diversity as they drove Indians, French, British, Spanish and Mexicans out of this land to create a continent-wide nation of their own? Or was Manifest Destiny really all about us, and not them?

US President Donald Trump and Queen Elizabeth II gather with 300 veterans on the south coast of England on Wednesday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day – one of the heroic turning points of World War II … Trump, the queen and British Prime Minister Theresa May will be joined by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel … In a joint D-Day proclamation, the 16 attending nations affirm their shared responsibility to ensure that the horrors of World War II are never repeated. “Over the last 75 years, our nations have stood up for peace in Europe and globally, for democracy, tolerance and the rule of law,” it said. “We will work together as allies and friends to defend these freedoms whenever they are threatened.”

The number of Allied troops who died during training for the D-Day landings outnumbers those that perished during the fateful final landings, a fascinating new book reveals. The June 6, 1944, operation was the most ambitious military endeavour of the Second World War … At least 5,440 died in live fire drills, amphibious landing exercises and flight training, compared with around 4,414 at Normandy, says historian Peter Caddick-Adams. The lecturer was inspired to write Sand and Steel: A New History of D-Day, after hearing the stories of 1,000 D-Day veterans from all countries involved …

The great D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, was a high point of World War II and of the US role in defeating Hitler’s Germany. The anniversary of this greatest amphibious assault in history is a good opportunity to take a sober look at some comfortable falsehoods and myths about the “good war.” The familiar American portrayal of World War II, and the “good war” mythology of the US role in it, is not just bad history. It has helped greatly to support and justify a series of arrogant US foreign policy adventures, with harmful consequences for both America and the world.

… In her perceptive and thorough new book, What Soldiers Do, the historian Mary Louise Roberts of the University of Wisconsin has confronted that myth head-on, offering an alternate view of the Liberation as arresting as it is necessary … What Soldiers Do is thus an long overdue account of what Roberts calls the “tsunami of male lust” that crashed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 and its role in fostering French subservience to American power, personally and politically … If the US military was happy to turn a blind eye to such behaviour, the same could not be said for rape accusations against American GIs by French women, which did much to “undermine the myth of the American mission embodied in the manly GI.”

… What all these writers and thinkers are saying is that allegiance to Israel is actually an important factor in the support for Israel in the United States, to the point that some support Israel’s interests over America’s … And Judis makes the necessary correlation: When you characterize such discussion as anti-Semitic, you’re acting in bad faith, denying something you know to be true, and seeking to set a redline on an important argument. That’s just what is happening to Omar and Tlaib. Because they have taken the historic step of supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel, a first for American politicians, they must be maligned at every turn.

Ynet’s headline yesterday acknowledged what has been obvious to many Middle East commentators: Israel can’t win the next war. The most respected Israeli military correspondent Ron Ben Yishai’s headline reads as follows: “Why won’t we win the next war?” … Ben Yishai’s rationale is clear and sound: Israel can’t deal with military casualties … Ben Yishai is honest enough to admit publicly that Israel’s enemies understand the psychological, spiritual, cultural and political fabric of Israeli society. They are aware of Israel’s weaknesses and the IDF’s paralysis and they act upon these … Ben Yishai predicts that Israeli society will collapse into itself, and the Jews who seek a better life and are ‘spoiled enough’ to act upon it will be scattered over the world to look for a quieter and safer place under the sun.

Hadrian’s Wall, the ancient marvel that snakes through northern England, quite rightly steals the show when it comes to the frontiers of Roman Britain. It’s a spectacular sight, rolling poetically over hillsides and serving up ruins of fortifications for all to see … There’s a lingering misconception that the Romans never made it past Hadrian’s Wall, let alone into Scotland … After all, the Romans were resident at Hadrian’s Wall for close to 300 years, defending their empire’s boundary and embedding themselves in the region. But the story of Rome’s north-west frontier far from ends there, for it was the Antoine Wall that, albeit briefly, held the title of the wildest edge of the empire.

… Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition won a landslide electoral victory, gaining 302 of the 542 seats in parliament. The venerable Congress opposition party, that long led India, was crushed. We should pay attention. India is more or less the world’s largest democracy and is expected to be the third largest economic power by 2020. It’s also an important nuclear state with land and sea-launched ICBM’s that can strike the United States and Canada, Europe, and its rival, China … India is on a roll. Now, even more so thanks to a strong central government that favors commerce and big business. But it’s not all sitar music and incense. India is a modern nation of 600 million atop an ancient rural nation of 700 million … The Indian colossus still has political and financial feet of clay.

… The vast majority of American sons and daughters who have sacrificed the last full measure since 2001 have done so on missions that had very little — and often nothing — to do with defending America. While on the surface it seems noble and patriotic to assuage everyone with such comforting words who have lost a loved one in combat, we inadvertently make it easier to send future sons and daughters into unnecessary wars of choice … Lethal military force should be used only when the security of America has been directly threatened — only when no other form of national power will ensure our security — and, in any case, used infrequently. Force should only be used as a last resort — not as a policy option of first choice, as is so often the case today.

… What century is this? Is it the 21st century in the largest city of a state that ranks among the world’s most robust economies, or did someone turn back the calendar a few hundred years? … The city of Los Angeles has become a giant trash receptacle. It used to be that illegal dumpers were a little more discreet, tossing their refuse in fields and gullies and remote outposts. Now city streets are treated like dumpsters, or even toilets … I’m not sure when any of this became the norm, but it must have something to do with the knowledge that you can get away with it. Every time sanitation crews knock down one mess, another dumpsite springs up nearby.

Fifty-two people were shot and 10 people were killed in what police called a “despicable” spate of violence over the weekend in Chicago. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the latest deadly weekend in the city shows “the challenges we face are complex and profound.” … CBS Chicago reports it was the most violent weekend of 2019. The bloodshed comes on the heels of another deadly weekend during the Memorial Day holiday last week, when five people were killed in a spate of shootings. Violence tends to increase during warm summer months, according to police. Johnson said many of the victims shot over the weekend were targeted by gangs.

The Morgenthau Diaries consist of 900 volumes located at Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York. As a consultant to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, I was assigned to examine all documents dealing with Germany, particularly ones related to the Morgenthau Plan for the destruction of Germany following the Second World War. The Subcommittee was interested in the role of Dr. Harry Dexter White, the main architect of the Plan … The objective of the Morgenthau Plan was to de-industrialize Germany and diminish its people to a pastoral existence once the war was won … Anyone who studies the Morgenthau Diaries can hardly fail to be deeply impressed by the tremendous power which accumulated in the grasping hands of Dr. Harry Dexter White, who in 1953 was identified by Edgar Hoover as a Soviet agent.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially signed into law legislation against anti-Semitism, two days after a ceremonial signing in Jerusalem. DeSantis had held the ceremonial signing during a Florida Cabinet meeting at the US Embassy on Wednesday. He officially signed the bill on Friday in Tallahassee. Using the State Department definition as its template, the legislation defines as anti-Semitism calls for violence against Jews, advancing conspiracy theories about Jewish control and Holocaust denial. It also includes “applying double standards” to Israel “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” … He called Florida “the most Israel-friendly state in the country.”

… At a time when defense spending accounts for fifty-three cents out of every dollar appropriated by Congress, one might expect that the Pentagon would be under intense scrutiny by those who believe that the money is urgently needed elsewhere. Yet this is evidently not the case. Outrageous examples such as the toilet-­seat cover or TransDigm come and go almost without comment … The implications are profound, suggesting that the MIC [Military Industrial Complex] is embedded in our society to such a degree that it cannot be dislodged … We’ve been left with a very poor fighting force for our money. The evidence for this is depressingly clear, starting with our bulging arsenal of weapons systems incapable of performing as advertised and bought at extraordinary cost.

Martin Luther King Jr. allegedly had sexual relations with at least 40 women, from prostitutes to people within his inner circle, according to explosive new research published Thursday by David J. Garrow, one of the civil rights leader’s foremost biographers. The most shocking allegation, culled from decades-old FBI files, details a 1964 incident in which King reportedly “looked on, laughed and offered advice” to a fellow preacher who was raping a woman in a hotel room. Garrow recounts other allegations from formerly sealed FBI documents … in an eight-page essay he wrote for Standpoint, a British cultural and political magazine … The FBI allegations chronicled by Garrow could trigger a new examination of the civil rights hero’s personal life. Garrow is a prominent civil rights academic who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his King biography …

Newly-released documents reveal the full extent of the FBI’s surveillance of the civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King in the mid-1960s. They expose in graphic detail the FBI’s intense focus on King’s extensive extramarital sexual relationships with dozens of women, and also his presence in a Washington hotel room when a friend, a Baptist minister, allegedly raped one of his “parishioners”, while King “looked on, laughed and offered advice”. The FBI’s tape recording of that criminal assault still exists today, resting under court seal in a National Archives vault … The complete transcripts and surviving recordings are not due to be released until 2027 … There is no question that a profoundly painful historical reckoning and reconsideration inescapably awaits.

The tale of 9/11 will just not go away, largely because it is clear to anyone who reads the lengthy 9/11 Commission Report that many issues that should have been subject to inquiry were ignored for what would appear to be political reasons … Now, eighteen years after the event, there has been something like a breakthrough, penetrating the wall of silence erected by the government. FBI reports on the possible Israeli role in 9/11 were released on May 7, and they serve to support speculation by myself and other former intelligence officers that Israel, at a minimum, had detailed prior knowledge of what was to take place. More than that, Israeli intelligence officers working in the United States might well have enabled certain aspects of the conspiracy.

Mexico City’s youth department has removed a tweet with an infographic on the Nazis’ infamous propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. The Mexico City Youth Institute, or Injuve, also apologized after deleting the post about the birth of Goebbels, which featured the text in Spanish “el padre da la propaganda,” or “the father of propaganda,” and the hashtags #Nazi and #Hitler … There was speculation that the agency’s social media specialist would be fired. The Mexico Jewish community’s central committee reacted Monday in a statement … Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, Jonathan Peled, held a meeting with the head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is Jewish.

Apart from Hitler himself, perhaps the most fascinating figure of Third Reich Germany is the regime’s chief publicist and spokesman, Joseph Goebbels. He is widely portrayed as a master of lies and deceitful propaganda. But this familiar image, which is particularly entrenched in the United States, is itself a propaganda falsehood.

… If you’re a historian dealing with the Third Reich, you know that Goebbels’ diary must contain all the dirt from that era … I’ve gone through the diary with a special interest in the Jewish issue, and particularly the “final solution.” There’s no question that whatever tragedy befell the Jews in Germany during the Third Reich, Dr. Goebbels himself was the prime moving force behind it … More chilling is another diary entry a few weeks later. On March 27, 1942, Goebbels dictates a lengthy passage about another SS document that had been submitted to him, and which appears to have been much uglier in its content.