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… Military spending is the second largest category of spending in the federal budget, behind Social Security spending. The US military budget equals the combined budgets of the next seven biggest-spending countries. Yet, many Republicans who claim to want to reduce federal spending want to increase the military budget … We saw the process at work again last week when the House passed a two-year budget deal that increases spending by approximately 320 billion dollars per year and suspends the debt ceiling for two years. Republican leadership ignored all these problems and claimed victory because the bill increases warfare spending … As long as Republican leadership supports an interventionist foreign policy, it will never support reducing warfare or welfare spending.

… In 1923, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded jointly to Sir Frederick G. Banting, a Canadian, and John J. R. Macleod, a Scotsman, for the discovery of insulin, one of the greatest medical advances of modern times … A substantial body of persuasive evidence indicates that the Nobel Committee made a major error in 1923, and that the award should rightfully have gone to an almost forgotten Romanian physiologist, Nicolae Paulescu … Paulescu’s most important achievement was his successful isolation of the pancreas hormone that regulates the blood sugar level. He began work in this field in 1916, but the First World War interrupted his investigation. In 1921 he announced the discovery of the hormone extract, which he called “pancreine,” now known universally as insulin.

A two-part archive, labeled “Activities of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem” and dated 1940-1941, sits in Britain’s National Archives … None of its secrets are to be available until January, 2042; and if the paired file is any precedent, even in 2042 it will be released only in redacted form. The ‘Grand Mufti’ in the archive’s heading is Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian leader whom posterity best remembers for his alignment with the Italian and German fascists; and the years 1940-1941 place him not in Palestine, but in Iraq — and if the second archive extends to late 1941, in Europe. What could possibly be hidden in a World War II document about a long-dead Nazi sympathizer that would present such a risk to British national security eight decades later, that none of it can be revealed?

… No other people has been capable of such perseverance toward an unwavering goal, pursued step by step over many generations — a hundred generations if we trace the Zionist project back to the period of the Babylonian Exile. Jews often find themselves divided on crucial issues and involved in radically opposed movements; yet in the end, even their antagonisms seem to synergically advance their common higher purpose … Thus the cohesion of the Jewish community is always maintained by the most committed Jews among the elites, through a paranoid terror of extermination combined with a complex of superiority. They may not all agree on “what is good for the Jews” at any particular time, but they are all absolutely committed to Israel’s grandiose destiny.

… Supporters of Britain’s “area bombing” (targeting civilians instead of military or industrial sites) maintain that it was a vital part of the war. Churchill wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland”. In another letter he called it “terror bombing”. … Others maintain that it was ghastly, but Hitler started it so needed to be answered in a language he understood. Unfortunately, records show that the first intentional “area bombing” of civilians in the Second World War took place at Monchengladbach on 11 May 1940 at Churchill’s orders (the day after he dramatically became prime minister), and four months before the Luftwaffe began its Blitz of British cities.

In the last months of World War II, Allied bombers from the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force conducted several major bombing raids on the eastern German city of Dresden. Beginning on the night of February 13, 1945, more than 1,200 heavy bombers dropped nearly 4,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city in four successive raids. An estimated 25,000 people were killed in the bombings and the firestorm that raged afterward. More than 75,000 dwellings were destroyed, along with unique monuments of Baroque architecture in the historic city center. With photographs.

When it comes to restrictions on religious freedom, Israel is in the company of countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, a new report says … The report, published Monday by the Pew Research Center, tracks the rise of religious restrictions globally. Israel was one of the top 20 most religiously restrictive countries in the world, according to Pew. It also has the fifth-highest level of “social hostilities related to religious norms,” and the sixth-highest level of “interreligious tension and violence” — a worse score than Syria … Israel self-defines as a Jewish state. Its haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate controls all recognized marriage, divorce, burial and Jewish conversion in the country, which means that non-Orthodox weddings, divorces, funerals and conversions are not recognized by the state.

… The United States is largely acting to advance the military interests of Israel (and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia) because of the immense power of the Israel lobby in the United States. In short, the destruction of Iranian power would enable Israel to solidify its dominance of the Middle East … From the beginning of Trump’s presidential campaign, his expressed non-interventionist position was negated by his staunch support for the interests of Israel … Trump realizes that war with Iran would not lead to any easy victory for the U.S., and would cause a devastating impact on the world oil market … A war with Iran would entail a morass that would almost guarantee his defeat in the 2020 election, for it is quite clear that most Americans are opposed to such a war.

… In 1954, I graduated from Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School, the city’s poorest school. During those days, there were no school policemen. Today, close to 400 police patrol Philadelphia schools … Years ago, there was little tolerance for the crude behavior and language that are accepted today … Children addressing adults by their first name, and their use of foul language in the presence of, and often to, teachers and other adults was unacceptable. A society’s first line of defense is not the law or the criminal justice system but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly imparted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct.

… Even half a century after his death, Walt Disney’s iconic images, stories, and characters continue to leave an indelible mark on culture … Considerable evidence exists to support the proposition that Walt Disney was an anti-Semite, although, as we shall see, the record is decidedly muddled … When Walt visited Munich in 1935, Nazi newspapers warmly welcomed him as a hero who stood up to the Jews of Hollywood … In 1938, just a few weeks after Kristallnacht, Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s personal filmmaker and propagandist, came to the United States seeking an American studio to work with her .. She was boycotted by all Hollywood studio leaders, except one – Walt – who expressed admiration for her work and gave her a personal tour of his studio.

… Laura B. Rosenzweig’s Hollywood’s Spies (2017) and Steven J. Ross’ Hitler in Los Angeles (2017) both document the Hollywood moguls’ undercover response to the Nazi menace within Los Angeles. The books’ primary focus is transplanted Chicago lawyer Leon Lewis, who convinced the studio elite — Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, and Harry Cohn — of the very real threat posed by domestic fascism. Both books contextualize an era when, in the wake of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, Los Angeles was full of fascist supporters, and hundreds of local Nazi and allied “radical right” nativist and extremist “Christian” groups … With studio money, Leon Lewis put together the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee (LAJCC), whose public face was improving “community relations,” but also infiltrated the radical right with spies.

Walt Disney was one of the great American artists of the 20th century. This needs to be recognised. So here I am, Walt, coming to the rescue, aided by an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris that celebrates Disney’s films as visual art… What Disney actually achieved was not to diffuse an American banality worldwide but, in a world that was becoming ever more banal and forgetful, to preserve the old oral storytelling of the pre-industrial world. Few artists have done as much as Disney to humanise modernity; the magical proof of this is one of his last films.

For more than 40 years, the company founded and built by Walt Disney offered popular, well-crafted entertainment that upheld American values and traditions. Its films and television programming — even if sometimes sugary — epitomized, to use the much-mocked phrase, wholesome family entertainment. It was the work largely of one man, Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966), a gifted illustrator, brilliant filmmaker and genial entrepreneur who left a lasting mark on American popular culture.

… Those who think of Switzerland as a quaint land of cuckoo clocks and chocolate are sorely mistaken. To paraphrase Voltaire’s bon mot about Prussia, Switzerland is a giant fortress, disguised as a country … Fifteen years ago, I was the guest of the Swiss Fortress Guard Corps, a top-secret military outfit that operates Switzerland’s mountain fortresses. I was one of the first non-Swiss to be shown the mountain forts that guard the heart of the nation’s ‘Alpine Redoubt.’ What I was shown astounded me – and continues to do so … These forts were equipped with 75, 105 and 150mm cannons, machine guns and mortars emplaced in mountain sides and camouflaged so they are almost invisible. Inside the forts are barracks, engine rooms, headquarters, clinics, observation posts and magazines filled with shells.

… Communities that have been ravaged by disasters rarely descend into chaos and despondency. Rather, they become increasingly egalitarian and interdependent. Consider the British and Germans during the Second World War … Our early ancestors lived in small, kin-based bands of about 150 people. Tormented by ravenous predators and nasty diseases, humans survived by sharing food and trading favors … In short, cooperation improved the reproductive success of those who engaged in it. Our human ancestors stayed alive and had babies by sticking together. We are thus wired for socialization … We evolved to experience hardships together. The prehistoric stressors that united early humans no longer exist. Now we create artificial ones … Outrage culture is driven by an unconscious desire for group solidarity.

China strongly opposes U.S. sanctions on a Chinese energy firm accused of violating curbs on Iran’s oil sector levied over Tehran’s nuclear program, its foreign ministry said on Tuesday. The United States sanctioned the company, Zhuhai Zhenrong Co Ltd, because it “knowingly engaged in a significant transaction for the purchase or acquisition of crude oil from Iran”, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday. Beijing firmly opposed the sanctions, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, adding that China’s cooperation with Iran was normal under international law. “We urge the U.S. to correct this wrongdoing and stop its illegal sanctions on companies and individuals,” she told reporters at a daily briefing.

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Tuesday that rejects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, after some Democrats expressed concern last week that the measure could cause infighting within the party leading up to the 2020 election. The bill — formally known as House Resolution 246 — also calls for increased security aid to Israel, and a two-state solution. It passed by a vote of 398-17, with five abstentions … The measure “opposes the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS Movement) targeting Israel, including efforts to target United States companies that are engaged in commercial activities that are legal under United States law, and all efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel.”

… There has been no graver crisis in U.S.-Turkish relations … How America and Turkey avoid a collision that could wreck NATO, where the Turks field the second-largest army in the alliance, is not easy to see. U.S. hawks are already calling for the expulsion of Turkey from NATO. And expulsion of U.S. forces and nuclear weapons from the Incirlik air base in Turkey in retaliation is not out of the question … While the U.S. and Iran have thus far avoided a military or naval clash that could ignite a major war, the “maximum pressure” sanctions Trump has imposed are choking Iran’s economy to death. How this ends in a negotiated resolution and not a shooting war remains difficult to see.

Former [Israeli] prime minister Ehud Olmert recently canceled a trip to Switzerland over fears authorities there were planning to detain him on suspicion of war crimes, according to a television report on Wednesday. Olmert, who was prime minister during the 2006 Second Lebanon War and the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, was scheduled to arrive in Zurich on Monday. However, defense and justice officials warned Olmert to change his plans after Swiss authorities informed Israeli officials over the weekend that the former Israeli leader would be detained for questioning upon his landing.

Some journalists in the Jewish media are starting to complain that President Donald Trump is “loving Israel” just a little too much since he keeps citing his concern for the Jewish state as the driving force behind some of his erratic behavior. It is a viewpoint that I most definitely share … So Israel is always in the news, or so it seems, though it is often not in the news when the story might be derogatory … No one outside the alternative media seems to be interested in the possibility, or rather likelihood, that Epstein was working for a foreign intelligence service, which would most likely be Israel. In the media the Epstein story died almost immediately, submerged in the tale of Donald Trump telling several congresswomen to go back where they came from.

Saikat Chakrabarti, the chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came under scrutiny for having worn a T-shirt that featured Nazi collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose. In December 2018, following his boss’s congressional victory, Chakrabarti did a video with NowThis News, titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff on Acting Fast in Congress,” in which he wore a T-shirt with Bose’s face. Chakrabarti’s choice of apparel is receiving a fresh round of criticism after Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, positively quoted Nazi sympathizer Eva Perón, the former first lady of Argentina. Twitter users pointed out that Bose was a fascist who was friendly with Adolf Hitler … In 1942, Bose met with Hitler ..

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti came under fire for wearing a t-shirt featuring Subhas Chandra Bose … The video was shared on Twitter and users slammed Chakrabarti saying that Bose had collaborated with the Nazis, and had met German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. However, many Indians pointed out that Bose was a freedom fighter who fought for independent India. Bose is widely revered in India as a nationalist and a patriot who wanted India free from the clutches of the British at any cost … Bose has regularly been featured on the Indian [postage] stamps from 1964, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2016 and 2018, and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport at Kolkata, an island in Andaman, and many other institutions are named after him.

While the declassification of the Netaji files has sparked a massive debate on the need to rewrite modern Indian history, … Bose: An Indian Samurai by Netaji scholar and military historian General GD Bakshi claims that former British prime minister Clement Atlee said the role played by Netaji’s Indian National Army was paramount in India being granted Independence, while the non-violent movement led by Gandhi was dismissed as having had minimal effect. In the book, Bakshi cites a conversation between the then British PM in New Delhi Attlee and then Governor of West Bengal, Justice PB Chakraborty … This startling conversation was first published by the Institute of Historical Review by author Ranjan Borra in 1982, in his piece on “Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian National Army and the War of India’s Liberation.”

The arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose in Germany in 1941 (during the turbulent period of World War II) and his anti-British activities in that country in co-operation with the German government, culminated in the formation of an Indian legion. This marks perhaps the most significant event in the annals of India’s fight for independence … Bose and his INA [India National Army] became household names throughout the country as the returning soldiers were sought to be prosecuted by the British.

… The conference’s organizer and star attraction, an Israeli advocate of nationalism, Yoram Hazony, is like his predecessor Yuval Levin, a neocon client; and from what I’ve seen of the program, most of the participants are the usual suspects. West Coast Straussians, lackeys of conservatism, inc. and professional Zionists like Daniel Pipes are all well represented at Hazony’s conference … It finally became necessary to produce someone like Hazony who could set forth the new party line: All nationalism (properly understood and certified by his sponsors) is OK, providing that we recognize certain guidelines. Whatever the Israelis have achieved is truly admirable nationalism, and exemplifies what the conference should be praising.

… As could be predicted, the US and UK media are reporting Iran’s seizure of the Stena Impero as if it were something out of the blue, pushing the war propaganda that “we” have been attacked and must retaliate … The truth is, the UK seizure of the Iranian ship was calculated to force Iran to retaliate and thus provide the pretext the neocons need to get their war … How could the US administration have miscalculated so badly? Many of us could have told President Trump that the neocons always promise a “cakewalk” when they are talking up a military action. Time and time again – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria – they promise a quick victory and deliver a quagmire.

While President Trump’s position on Iran tends to change with little notice, he backed away from his insistence that he doesn’t want war with Iran on Monday, saying now of the war “it could go either way, and I’m OK either way it goes.” Trump added that it’s “getting harder for me to want to make a deal with Iran” in the first place, because he views them as “behaving very badly,” and are “the number one state of terror in the world.” Trump followed this up by announcing new sanctions against China, saying they were intended to punish them for “accepting crude oil.” This is likely to be a bigger problem for US-China ties than Iran, as Iran is already heavily sanctioned. If Trump’s new bellicose stance sticks, this could be a major shift in US hostility toward Iran.

I’ve had many strange experiences in my decades of covering intelligence affairs … But none was odder than the day I was invited to lunch in New York City with the by now notorious figure Jeffrey Epstein … Also present was the self-promoting lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, who had saved the accused murderer Claus von Bulow, as well as a titan of the New York real estate industry (not Trump), and assorted bigwigs of the city’s elite Jewish society … A respected former CIA official, Phil Giraldi has come right out and accused Epstein of being an Israeli agent of influence … To Giraldi and this writer, the Epstein ‘massage’ operation was a classic intelligence operation designed to blackmail men of influence into doing Israel’s bidding.

… This past week revealed anew what we Americans think of each other, which portends trouble ahead for the republic … Trump’s 40-45 percent of the nation is not only being constantly castigated and demonized by the establishment media but it is also being told that, in the not far distant future, it will be demographically swamped by the rising numbers of new migrants pouring into the country. Your time is about up, it hears … Will the deplorables, who number in the scores of millions, accept a future where they and their children and children’s children are to submit to permanent rule by people who visibly detest them and see them as racists, sexists and fascists?

… The underlying political philosophy is best epitomized in the American Declaration of Independence … Thus was conceived the natural rights republic … The idea of natural rights lacked a solid philosophic foundation, argued later modern thinkers, because the new science of nature rendered untenable any claim of a grounding in nature for moral principles … Where everyone has a right to everything, there can be no justice. Rights-claims cannot proliferate indefinitely without at some point becoming self-negating … In the fractured logic of human rights claims as they have developed since the close of the Second World War, an ethic of entitlement yields aggressive assertions of identity and demands that that identity be recognized, even as an ethic of autonomy dissolves the stability and continuity of self upon which the very possibility of identity depends.

… America today is a society in denial. The country’s political, cultural and intellectual leadership — both liberal and conservative — denies social reality and ignores the historical record, and therefore inevitably betrays the interests of the people, leading America down a path that means ever greater anxiety and ever more rapid decline … The crying need in our nation today is candor, courage and truthfulness — not childish slogans, simplistic nostrums, or wishful thinking about a mythologized past or a utopian future …

In recent years, several Israeli leaders have opined that a “second Holocaust” is taking place in America through assimilation. However, the notion of a “silent” or “second Holocaust” taking place in the US was not born in Israel, but the Goldene Medina [the USA] itself … In November of 1991, thousands of Jewish leaders from around the world converged on Baltimore for the 60th General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations. The gathering’s highlight was an unprecedented seven-and-a-half hour symposium on the issue of intermarriage … Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach Program said a “silent Holocaust” was taking place among American Jews, but the process had less to do with assimilation than the community’s obsession with the Holocaust itself.

… There is great justification for the continuing Jewish obsession with the Holocaust … But obsessing over the Holocaust is exacting a great price. It is killing America’s Jews … We’ve reached the absurd point where the only feature of Judaism with which our young Jews identify is that of the Jew as victim — murdered, cremated or turned into a lampshade … There is a Holocaust taking place in America right now. We can’t hear it … But the net result is exactly the same. If we fail to act now, if we fail to share with our young Jews the beauty and meaningfulness of Jewish life and Jewish heritage … The “silent Holocaust” will have done its job. Hitler will have emerged victorious.

… In contrast to the situation in German-speaking countries, Jewish institutions in Iran do not require any security arrangements. Iran has not seen a single attack on a Jewish building … For those who remain, prospects are surprisingly positive. They have been granted official minority status, a permanent seat in parliament and freedom to practice their religion. They have their own butchers’ shops, their rabbis are permitted to conduct weddings, and the community can produce and drink its own wine for the Sabbath — and that, even though alcohol is otherwise subject to strict prohibition in Iran … Although Jews in Iran are not allowed to hold leading positions in state institutions such as the army, police or secret service, their lives are otherwise as free of restrictions as those of other Iranians.

… The U.S. and Iran have never officially fought a war but the two sides have engaged in bouts of violence since the CIA-backed coup that reinstalled Iran’s monarchy in 1953 and the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted that leadership for the current cleric-led government … On July 3, 1988, Aegis-armed guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes opened fire at what its crew would later claim they thought to be an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter jet. Instead, the aircraft was Iran Air Flight 655, a Dubai-bound civilian Airbus A300 with 290 people on board — all of whom were killed. “The incident still resonates with Iranians,” Reza H. Akbari, program manager at the U.K.-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting, told Newsweek.

Up to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent – most of them American-born – were rounded up in informal raids and deported in an effort to reserve jobs for white people / … These were the “repatriation drives,” a series of informal raids that took place around the United States during the Great Depression. Local governments and officials deported up to 1.8 million people to Mexico, according to research conducted by Joseph Dunn, a former California state senator. Dunn estimates around 60 percent of these people were actually American citizens, many of them born in the U.S. to first-generation immigrants. For these citizens, deportation wasn’t “repatriation” — it was exile from their country … These deportations happened not only in border states like California and Texas …

At the end of World War II, between twelve and fourteen million people, ethnic Germans, were forcibly expelled from Eastern Europe, or, if they had already fled, were prevented from going back to their homes … Others were detained in appalling conditions in concentration camps for weeks, suffering from disease, starvation, and maltreatment, before they were brutally pushed out to the west. Long lines trudged towards Germany, with the weak succumbing to hypothermia and malnutrition. Altogether probably half a million and perhaps as many as a million perished in what was the largest action of what later came to be known as “ethnic cleansing” in history. This massive act of expulsion and forced migration is still largely unknown outside the countries most closely affected by it.

To Americans World War II is all that is great about America. It represents American bravery, sacrifice, fortitude and compassion … When the expulsions came to a halt at the end of 1947 some 1,415,135 Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia had been expelled into the United States Zone of Occupation, along with 750,000 to the Russian zone and 1,500,000 to British zone … Thus, the United States was complicit in legalizing the largest episode of ethnic cleansing that occurred in the twentieth century when 12,000,000 to 16,000,000 Germans came to be expelled from their historic homelands from east-central Europe from the spring of 1945 to the end of 1947.

Washington radio station WTOP apologized Tuesday after pulling a story that commended Nazi aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The story removal and apology came after the news outlet described von Braun as a “brilliant German-American rocket scientist.” “After careful consideration, WTOP has decided to remove the article from our website. This story did not meet WTOP’s standards and should not have appeared on any of our platforms,” WTOP wrote in a tweet to its more than 280,000 followers. After World War II ended in 1945, von Braun came to the U.S. and worked with the U.S. Army to develop rockets for 15 years.

Poles are amongst the most honest people in the world, according to new scientific research on the subject of honesty. The study, carried out by an international team of scientists, put Poland in the top ten of the countries studied when it came to reporting lost wallets … China fared worse in reporting wallets with no money inside with less than ten percent of wallets being returned. The lowest ranking European countries were Italy for wallets with no money and Portugal for wallets containing money. New Zealand was the only none European country to make it into the top quartile for returning wallets, with both the UK and USA finishing in the bottom half of the 40 countries.

… Does the US have any legal or even moral right to launch a war against Iran if Iran does not pose an “imminent threat” to the US, to US interests or to US allies whom it has an obligation to defend. The answer is a resounding “No!” … In terms of international law, the matter is clear: The US has no right to attack Iran, and anyone who does so, from the soldiers, sailors and pilots who actually attack, to the officers who order them to or who push the buttons to launch the missiles or drop the bombs, to the politicians who tell them too, will be war criminals … The first step is to let the American people know that attacking Iran is not America’s god-given right. It continues America’s decades-long practice of being, by far, the world’s leading “rogue” nation …

… Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for what he called a “blatant assault” on the tankers. Pompeo also said that the attacks “should be understood in the context of 40 years of unprovoked aggression” against the US and other “freedom-loving nations” by Iran. There is no such history. Iran hasn’t started a war since the mid-19th century, when it was still the Persian Empire. The true context which must be understood is one of a century of US and Western exploitation of Iranian people and resources, and decades of US threats and aggression against Iran … Iran has no nuclear weapons, no bases within 10,000 kilometers of the United States and has never directly attacked the US or, of course, overthrown its government. Who is the real aggressor here?

Former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill said certain news outlets were “Zionist organizations” that produced “Zionist content.” He made the comment at this month’s Netroots Nation summit, a gathering of liberal activists, in Philadelphia, when asked about young journalists reporting on Palestinians. “They’re like, I want to work for Fox, or I want to work for ABC or NBC or whoever. And I want to be able to tell these stories,” he said, according to Jewish Insider. “You have to make choices about where you want to work. And if you work for a Zionist organization, you’re going to get Zionist content.”

Robert Redford’s 1994 film Quiz Show tells the story of the Twenty-One game show scandal of the late 1950s. Featuring a superbly literate and psychologically subtle script and outstanding performances by Ralph Fiennes, Paul Scofield, John Turturro, and Rob Morrow, Quiz Show dramatizes important moral issues and explores the corrupting force of television in American life … Quiz Show is not just a nostalgic portrayal of the self-confident, normatively white America of the 1950s, it is also a remarkably acute meditation on the role that television played in the fall of America’s WASP elite and the rise of today’s Jewish hegemony … Quiz Show is surprisingly frank about Jewish ethnic hostility toward founding stock Americans.

… Beyond the scams of the rich and famous, though, there are other surprising facts about college in America. Facts closer to our everyday experiences … Four out of ten college students fail to complete their degrees … Attending an elite university doesn’t boost income. What matters is the ability to get in … A student who got into Princeton but attended Penn State made as much as a student who got into, and attended, Princeton … Graduating from a non-selective college doesn’t boost income … They found “no income advantage” for those who graduated from a “non-selective” college compared to those who did not attend college … SAT coaching and test prep aren’t important … This suggests that education is less valuable than a degree. At least for earnings.

… The Centers for Disease Control recorded 47,173 suicides in 2017, and there were an estimated 1.4 million total attempts. Many of society’s plagues strike heavier at women and minorities, but suicide in America is dominated by white men, who account for 70 percent of all cases. Middle-aged men walk the point. Men in the United States average 22 suicides per 100,000 people, with those ages 45 to 64 representing the fastest-growing group, up from 20.8 per 100,000 in 1999 to 30.1 in 2017. The states with the highest rates are Montana, with 28.9 per 100,000 people; Alaska, at 27 per 100,000; and Wyoming, at 26.9 per 100,000 — all roughly double the national rate.

… Every day I read about an American “plan” to either invade some place new or to otherwise inflict pain to convince a “non-compliant” foreign government how to behave. Last week it was Iran but next week it could just as easily again be Lebanon, Syria or Venezuela … The United States is perhaps unique in the history of the world in that it sees threats everywhere even though it is not, in fact, threatened by anyone … Americans, Saudis and Israelis have become monsters in the eyes of the rest of the world even if in their own minds they are endowed with special privilege due to their being “Exceptional,” “Chosen by God,” or “Guardians of Mecca and Medina.” All three countries share a dishonest sense of entitlement that supports the fiction that their oppressive and often illegal behavior is somehow perfectly legitimate.

The chancellor said Germans have a “duty” to stand up to right-wing extremists just as the resistance faced down Adolf Hitler. July 20 is the 75th anniversary of the failed assassination attempt on the Nazi dictator. / German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday urged strong opposition from all sections of German society against the resurgence of right-wing extremism. In her weekly video address, a week before the 75th anniversary of the assassination attempt on Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, she paid tribute to those who opposed the Führer’s rule, and took action. … July 20 marks the anniversary of the 1944 bomb plot to murder Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power. The attempt failed and Hitler survived with minor injuries. The plot’s orchestrator, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, and some 200 co-conspirators were executed.

In July 1944 a group of German conspirators tried to kill Hitler and violently seize power in Berlin. In the US and Germany today, the anti-Hitler conspirators are portrayed as men of exemplary courage, conscience and principle. This prevailing, “politically correct” idealization is a gross distortion of reality. By today’s standards, von Stauffenberg and the other leading conspirators were “Nazis.” They supported the policies and principles of the National Socialist government for at least five years, and only belatedly turned against the Hitler regime.

… About an hour and a half after the “Valkyrie” order was given [by the von Stauffenberg conspirators], my regiment, by then combat-ready, moved into the areas to be sealed off in accordance with its orders. The normal guard units, such as those at the War Memorial and the Bendlerblock, the headquarters of the Commander of the Replacement Army and of the Defense Production Office, remained at their posts … Goebbels asked me to address the troops assembled there, which I did. Their outrage at the traitorous goings-on was so great that they would have torn every single conspirator to pieces, had they been there.

For years, we have discussed the unrelenting attacks on free speech in Europe with the expansion of hate speech laws and the general criminalization of speech … The implications of such anti-speech policies are evident in Germany where a survey, conducted by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach (and published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) found that only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their views in public … Over the course of the last 50 years, the French, English and Germans have waged an open war on free speech by criminalizing speech deemed insulting, harassing or intimidating … I fail to see how arresting a man for a Hitler ringtone is achieving a meaningful level of deterrence, even if you ignore the free speech implications.

The Trump administration appears to be walking on a slippery slope toward war with Iran, as previous administrations did with Iraq and Vietnam, with tragic results and buyer’s remorse … I would suggest that the Senate address each of the eight questions of the so-called “Powell doctrine” — former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s questions that must be answered affirmatively before the United States should take military action: 1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?; 2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?; … 4. Have all other nonviolent policy measures been fully exhausted?; 5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglements?; 6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?; 7. Is the action supported by the American people?; 8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

In separate votes, the House and Senate split over whether to limit President Trump’s authority to launch military action against Iran. On July 12, the House passed a bipartisan amendment that would prohibit funding U.S. military operations without congressional approval. The vote was 251-170, and 27 Republicans supported the legislation. On June 26, the Senate voted against a similar amendment that would have blocked funds for war with Iran unless it received congressional authorization. The vote was 50-40. It needed 60 votes to pass; 10 senators did not vote. The amendment received support from 46 Democrats but only four Republicans … On June 24, Trump claimed that he did not need congressional approval to initiate a strike on Iran.

… America’s decision has strengthened the hardliners here who say that Washington should never have been trusted in the first place. That mistrust of the US (and the UK) runs deep in Iran, after both countries orchestrated a coup that ousted Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953 … Hadi says that the Americans thought the sanctions would lead to rioting and the Iranian government would have no choice but to compromise. But he says the sanctions have done the exact opposite uniting both liberals and conservatives across the country. “We have national unity here, and the more difficult the situation the more united the people become.” … This is a country of many political opinions … But when Iran is confronted by America, most Iranians, conservative or liberal, will put their country first.

… The controversy inadvertently revealed the extent to which state law now requires the holocaust to be taught in all Florida public schools … The imposed holocaust narrative is full of holes and contradictions in terms of who was killed and how, but it is impossible for genuine academics to critique it if they want to stay employed. Books like Wiesel’s “Night” are largely works of fiction. The narrative exists to perpetuate the belief in Jewish suffering, which brings with it a number of practical advantages … Holocaust guilt is used in the United States to counter any criticism of what Israel and Jewish groups are up to, as they use their wealth and access to power to corrupt America’s institutions and drive the country to needless wars … Lest we forget, the holocaust industry operates everywhere in America, particularly in the education system.

As Theresa May prepares to vacate Downing Street, Britain has never appeared so broken, fragmented and rudderless. In London, long held up as one of the world’s major capital cities – a beacon of multiculturalism, dynamism, enterprise and opportunity – death stalks the streets and alleys of its vast sprawling housing estates. Gang warfare has grown … According to the Met’s own statistics, we learn that between January and June this year there have been: 125,190 thefts; 108,084 assaults and violent attacks … As for the number of homicides committed in the same six-month period, this stands at 67, with a significant proportion of those slain in the gang war mentioned above, victims of an orgy of knife crime that shows no sign of abating.

… The source didn’t know the details of the plan, but warned that Gen. Evelyn Barker would be attacked on the brief journey between his home in Jerusalem and his office at British headquarters. The assailants were militant Jews from the Stern Gang, determined to drive the British from the land in their bid for Jewish sovereignty … He reacted by banning British troops from having any social or business dealings with Jews, saying that they would be punished “in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt for them.” … The state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948; some of the militants went on to become influential figures, including future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin, who would sign the landmark Camp David peace accords in 1978, and Yitzhak Shamir.

… The writer goes on to describe additional massacres, looting and abuse perpetrated by Israeli forces in Israel’s War of Independence … Since the start of the last decade, [Israel] Defense Ministry teams have been scouring Israel’s archives and removing historic documents. But it’s not just papers relating to Israel’s nuclear project or to the country’s foreign relations that are being transferred to vaults: Hundreds of documents have been concealed as part of a systematic effort to hide evidence of the Nakba [the Zionist-imposed Palestinian “catastrophe”] … An investigative report by Haaretz found that Malmab has concealed testimony from IDF generals about the killing of civilians and the demolition of villages, as well as documentation of the expulsion of Bedouin during the first decade of statehood.

… The Balfour Declaration reflected in some part the sincere Christian Zionism of Prime Minister David Lloyd George and of Balfour himself. Far more important, however, was the considerable political influence of British Zionists under the able leadership of Chaim Weizmann, and of American Zionists led by Louis Brandeis, a close advisor to President Woodrow Wilson … Neither Britain nor Zionists had the right to dictate the fate of Palestine. Even at the time, many Britons denounced the double dealing and contempt for indigenous people that underlay the Balfour Declaration … Today there can be no excuse for celebrating this sordid chapter in settler-colonialist injustice, especially in light of the ongoing nakba: the catastrophe that Palestine’s “non-Jewish communities” continue to suffer in consequence.

Vicky Ward, who tried to report on Jeffrey Epstein’s criminality as early as 2003, recently wrote that Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta “cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had ‘been told’ to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. ‘I was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and to leave it alone,’ he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)”

Yesterday, prosecutors revealed that Jeffrey Epstein kept a fake Saudi passport in his home’s safe along with diamonds and piles of cash. It also emerged last week that Epstein invested millions in a deal with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak acknowledged to the Daily Beast that he, like other world leaders, visited Epstein’s Island and that he was first introduced to Epstein by Shimon Peres, former Israeli prime minister and president. Barak’s high-tech company financed by the arch sex trafficker is called Carbyne … Epstein wasn’t just a disgusting paedophile. It is likely that he was serving an intelligence agency, and perhaps more than just one.

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 stonewalling 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.

… History is littered with examples of wars that political leaders and the general public erroneously believed would be quick and easy … A common thread in the various blunders was the assumption that the initial phase of a conflict would be utterly decisive … That is what makes President Trump’s cavalier attitude about a war with Iran so worrisome. He implicitly assumes that the United States has control over the twin processes of retaliation and escalation. U.S. officials made that same faulty assumption in Iraq — and decades earlier in Vietnam. But even adversaries that are inferior in terms of conventional military capabilities may have numerous options to wage asymmetric warfare. And that strategy can become a war of attrition that inflicts serious damage on the militarily superior United States.

… We used to call the nexus of private interests and national defense the “military-industrial complex.” But that Cold War term no longer fits. “Industrial” does not capture the breadth of the activities involved. And “military” fails to describe the range of government policies and interests implicated … What we have now could be called a “National Security Corporate Complex.” Here are four things you need to know about this transformation … Since 9/11 [2001], an increasingly diverse array of firms have a significant stake in federal national security spending. Those funds now flow from a large portion of the federal government and into many sectors of the U.S. economy. If anything, Eisenhower’s complex has become more complex and potentially influential.

In his farewell address, delivered to the American people on national television, Jan. 17, 1961, President Eisenhower spoke firmly, and in carefully chosen words, to warn against the dangers in the years to come of the great “military-industrial complex.” Excerpt. Runtime: 1:54 mins. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Turkey has just called Donald Trump’s bluff by going ahead with the purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. The outrage in Washington is volcanic. Trump is vowing to rain fire and brimstone sanctions down on the disobedient Turks … Few thought the Turks would defy the US on this issue, but they failed to understand the depths of Turkey’s anger at the US … Turkey’s elected president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had been too independent-minded for Washington, clashing over US policy to Syria and the Gulf. He had also incurred the wrath of America’s Israel lobby for demanding justice for the Palestinians. Turkey is now under economic attack by Washington. President Trump is threatening sanctions (read economic warfare) against Turkey, an old, loyal US ally.

Mark Weber, an American historian and director of the Institute for Historical Review, was banned from Britain in April 2015 by order of Theresa May, who is now the country’s Prime Minister. The decision to ban him was “taken personally” by May while she was serving as Home Secretary … The Home Office finally … accepted that the reasons for the 2015 exclusion order were insufficient, but cited new justifications to support a continued ban … Weber explained in some detail just why the new examples of allegedly “unacceptable behavior” presented by the agency to justify a continued ban against him “lack any reasonable basis in fact,” are “weak, unconvincing or irrelevant,” and are “applied in an arbitrary way.” … May has been one of the most ardently pro-Zionist political figures in modern British history.

In November 1940, a six-member delegation of Hitler Youth visited Japan, tasked by Adolf Hitler himself with a single task: “The only thing you need do is thoroughly experience the great spirit of the Japanese people that has arisen in their national polity.” … From both a spiritual and cultural point of view, many leading National Socialists actually were extremely admiring of Japanese society and culture, in some respects even considering them superior to Germany’s … Heinrich Himmler, the head of the elite military and police forces known as the SS … was then apparently interested in founding the Third Reich on a Traditionalist basis, under the leadership of a military-spiritual elite embodying certain values, rather than liberal-egalitarian values and majority rule.

Archaeologists have discovered two Viking burial ships in the Swedish municipality of Uppsala. A find of this type is rare in the country. In fact, only around ten discoveries of this kind have been made to date in the Scandinavian nation … These types of burials, where individuals were placed in full-sized boats, were not available to the common folk. They are thought to have been reserved for individuals with high status … The archaeologists only found the remains of one individual. However, as is common with other burial ships in the region, this person was laid to rest beside several objects — including weapons, shields and a comb — they may have been given to take into the afterlife. The team also found the remains of animals, including a horse and a dog.

The debate over the contours of next year’s budget is in full swing, and as usual one of the biggest items to be determined is how much to spend on the Pentagon. Unfortunately, so far the debate between Capitol Hill and the Executive Branch has been about how much to increase the Pentagon’s already ample budget, not how to streamline it while making our military more effective … A responsible approach to Pentagon spending would focus on supporting genuine defense needs, not underwriting the capability to fight endless wars, expanding our already excessive nuclear arsenal, or subsidizing unnecessary overhead … America can be made safer for less, and the sooner our public officials realize that fact — and act on it — the better off we all will be.

The vast majority of Americans couldn’t pass the U.S. citizenship test when asked test questions in a recent 50-state survey, but that’s not because their teachers failed them or because students are no longer required to study American history. It’s because the American history curriculum has focused on memorization of names, events, and dates, which students find irrelevant, boring, random, and fail to retain beyond their class test. So finds a new report from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation … A groundbreaking 50-state-poll conducted by WW [Foundation] earlier this year that revealed only four in ten Americans can pass a 20-question test based on questions from the U.S. citizenship exam. Even more disturbing, only 27 percent of those under the age of 45 nationally can demonstrate a basic understanding of American history.

… Relative ignorance of history is nothing new in America. From the start, America’s habits have been those of youth: our people have always been ambitious, restless, and on the move. Waves of immigrants and constant technological revolutions keep the country eternally young. And so, Americans scorn history. But they shouldn’t … If you are a parent, read your child a history book. If you are a student, listen to a history podcast. If you are going for a walk, visit a monument or site of historic interest and learn its story. Don’t be afraid to start small. The Romans called history res gestae or “deeds done.” We might add that history is also a story of deeds undone. The more we Americans study the past, the better we’ll be able to plan our future.

… Take, for instance, the 1922 English entrance examination for the University of Illinois … The 1922 entrance exam seems to expect students to have read and be on familiar speaking terms with any number of works. These include Old Testament stories, a range of Shakespearian plays, English literature, and poetry, as demonstrated in the sample questions below: “Describe the conditions causing Achilles to stop fighting.” “What was Franklin’s plan for the union of the colonies? Discuss his arguments in favor of it.” “What characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are more than mere types? Defend your answer.” “Summarize the chief ideas you gained from reading one of Thackeray’s essays in the English Humorist.” “Point out four distinctly Poesque characteristics marking The Raven.”

Over the last few days, we have been treated to the spectacle of watching leading opponents of the nuclear deal demand that Iran adhere to the limits set by the deal they have vehemently denounced and undermined for years … The remarkable thing about this lie from Bolton is that it is such a transparent and stupid fabrication … This is what I have called the boundless bad faith of Iran hawks and nuclear deal opponents, and we are seeing even more of it than usual this month. The constant recourse to making things up, misrepresenting facts, and distorting evidence to suit their ideological agenda shows how weak Iran hawks’ arguments are and how politically radioactive their real agenda is.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton was presented with the Defender of Israel Award at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual Brandeis Award dinner, held Sunday night [Nov. 4, 2018] in New York. ZOA also gave its Brandeis Award to high-tech businessman and philanthropist Bob Shillman, its Woo Kai Sheng Outstanding Journalism Award to Fox television and radio host Mark Levin, and the Dr. Bob Shillman Award for Outstanding Diplomacy to US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell. President Donald Trump was lavishly praised at the dinner for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

… Arnon Milchan … is a Hollywood billionaire movie producer born in Israel, well known for such films as Pretty Woman and Bohemian Rhapsody. He is less well known for his role in arranging for the procurement and illegal transfer of U.S. technology that enabled the Jewish state to develop its own nuclear arsenal … I had also speculated on how a leading Israeli spy working actively and successfully against vital U.S. anti-nuclear proliferation interests had managed to continue to maintain a home and business in Los Angeles while also appearing regularly at the Oscar presentation ceremonies … The federal government clearly regards spying for Israel as a victimless crime, rarely arresting anyone and almost never prosecuting any of the numerous easily identifiable Israeli intelligence agents roaming the country.

… Liberals, Zionists, and “responsible” conservatives now occupy a rhetorically Hitlercentric universe, in which Nazism is the measure of all evil and Roosevelt is redeemed by his determination to crush Germany. The stain of guilt for Nazism constantly spreads – to ordinary Germans, allies of Germany, neutrals, isolationists, Swiss bankers, and Pius XII himself … Everyone and everything is measured on a single scale, which might be called the Hitler Continuum. But there is not corresponding Stalin Continuum. Those who aided and defended and celebrated Stalin at the height of his crimes incur no guilt or obloquy. To have dreamed the Communist dream is evidence of idealism, not guilt or even irresponsibility.

Joseph Stalin once said: “The death of a man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.” Sadly, history seems to have proved the paranoid dictator correct … Stalin was a man who knew about death. He caused millions of them himself, and his nation suffered an estimated twenty million or more deaths during the war with Hitler’s Germany … However, it is interesting to note that many well-informed people are not aware that China’s conflict with Japan cost at least ten million lives, far more than any other nation except the USSR.

The majority of American veterans and members of the general public agreed in two new surveys that the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the U.S. military campaign in Syria were all “not worth fighting.” The Pew Research Center, for the pair of polls published Wednesday, asked all respondents to consider the costs versus the benefits to the United States in their analysis of whether each conflict was worthwhile. Roughly two-thirds of both veterans and members of the public told Pew that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq wasn’t worth it, and nearly 60 percent said they felt the same way about the ongoing 18-year war in Afghanistan – the longest in U.S. history. The numbers were slightly lower for opposing the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War, which is also ongoing.

Israel’s construction of its 760 km-long separation wall in the occupied Palestinian West Bank advances as Tuesday marks the 15th anniversary since the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion that deemed it illegal. While the decision is non-binding, the United Nations judiciary body ruled in 2004 that the wall violates international law and declared construction must stop immediately and Israel should make reparations for any damage caused. By a majority of 14 to 1, the judges found that the barrier “would be tantamount to de facto annexation” of Palestinian territory. The U.N. General Assembly later voted overwhelmingly to demand Israel to comply with this ruling but was ignored.

The rate of intermarriage among US Jews is “like a second Holocaust,” Israel’s new minister of education said. Rafi Peretz made the statement at a cabinet meeting on July 1, Axios reported Tuesday, citing three people who were in the room. Peretz, a former chief rabbi of the Israeli army, is the leader of the Union of Right Wing Parties bloc. Peretz said the assimilation of Jews around the world and mostly in the US was “like a second Holocaust,” and also said that, due to intermarriages in the last 70 years, the Jewish people “lost 6 million people,” according to the report, which added that Peretz’s spokesman confirmed the account.

Former president Jimmy Carter recently made a profound and damning statement — the United States is the “most warlike nation in the history of the world.” … What the Times and other press sources fail to recognize is that it is the United States that is the rogue state by any true measure. And this truth is not lost on the citizens of the world who, in two global polls, ranked the United States as the greatest threat to world peace. In the meantime, the promised and desperately needed infrastructure overhaul in this country is barely mentioned anymore … As the 2020 presidential campaigns begin, it is baffling to witness that none of this is a matter of debate. The one candidate who is willing to broach this subject — military veteran Tulsi Gabbard — is vilified and ridiculed as a result.

… Iran’s carefully constructed choreography in the face of economic asphyxiation at home and a US military buildup on its borders has so far been a study in strategically considered policy decisions, delivered in the measured language of international relations … For Iranians, the United States chose the wrong issue on which to attack their country … Though deeply divided ideologically, the two leadership nodes — the reformists, represented by President Rouhani, and the hard-liners, by Supreme Leader Khamenei — have been brought together by the new crisis. This has translated into a coherent policy approach from Tehran, played out on two key stages.

Rabbi Marvin Hier has a busy schedule. The Los Angeles-based founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was in New York for a few days late last month … The late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who lived in Vienna, was more of a figurehead to the Simon Wiesenthal Center than an active leader. It has always been Hier’s show. Today the organization works as a monitor of anti-Semitism and arm of Jewish advocacy. It has produced over a dozen films, and maintains its Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance. … “Sometimes presidents get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. Speaking as a Jew, so many presidents talked about making Jerusalem the capital of Israel. They made nice speeches, but in the end they couldn’t deliver. Trump delivered.”

… In my view, Simon Wiesenthal was a liar and a fraud. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he was one of the biggest conmen of the 20th century. I spent four years working on a history of Nazi-hunting that was published last year, and the material I gathered on Wiesenthal was enough to make me scream out loud. When I started my book, I too believed that the great man was just that — great. But when I looked at all his memoirs, biographies and original archive material, I realised that, like so many others, the image I had built up of Simon Wiesenthal was hopelessly incorrect.

Since its founding in 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has grown to become one of the most important and influential Jewish organizations in the world … The Wiesenthal Center has a long record of reckless propaganda for war. Long before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it had been pressing for an American attack against the Middle East nation, backing its effort with alarmist “Big Lie” claims about the supposed danger posed by the Baghdad regime.

While Israel tries to portray a friendly face to the outside world, internally it is promoting racism and violence at levels that are more alarming than ever before … Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, recently demanded that the Israeli Education Ministry halt an online course that was designed to prepare young Israelis traveling abroad to be “good ambassadors.” The content, particularly regarding anti-semitism and BDS (the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement), is so offensive to Arabs and Muslims that a school in Nazareth canceled an exchange program for high school students from the city to go to Sweden, rather than having the students exposed to the content of the course.

… With a 2016 Department of Defense report finding that nearly three-quarters of young Americans are unfit to serve in America’s military, Trump’s encouragement and military display may not be enough to reverse declining military recruitment … A 2018 report by Mission: Readiness, a group of 750 retired military professionals that makes policy recommendations to increase the percentage of young Americans eligible to serve in the military, found that 71 percent of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 fail to meet all of the basic requirements for military service. The biggest disqualifier is obesity, with roughly 31 percent of American youths disqualified because they are overweight. Other factors explaining the shortage of eligible recruits are inadequate education, criminal history and drug use.

… The only country in the world that currently regards the United States favorably is Israel, which certainly has good reason to do so given the largesse that has come from the Trump Administration. Everyone else is keen to get out from under the American heel … Even the feckless Angela Merkel’s Germany now understands that national interests must prevail when the United States is demanding that it do the unspeakable. At the recently concluded G20 meeting in Tokyo, Britain, France and Germany announced that the special trade mechanism that they have been working on this year is now up and running … The significance of the European move cannot be understated. It is the first major step in moving away from the dominance of the dollar as the world’s trading and reserve currency.

… I’d like first of all to explain why I embarked on the study of history. It is because historical education in Japan is extremely distorted … One of the reasons for this, it seems to me, is historical instruction, particularly that pertaining to the current interpretation of the Far East war crimes trials … The fact that the leaders of only the defeated countries were put to death was in fact illegal. If in fact we are to execute the leaders of aggressive nations, how are we to consider the invasion by the Soviet Union of Finland, of Poland, of Manchuria and the Kurile Islands? … The reason why Japan made war against the United States and the United Kingdom was for survival and self-defense. Japan had no desire whatsoever to capture Hawaii, for example, or to occupy San Francisco or Los Angeles.

[From the postwar prison writings of Hideki Tojo, Japan’s World War Two premier] … During this period [1939-1941], Japan’s peaceful commercial relations were successively obstructed, primarily by the American rupture of commercial relations, and this was a grave threat to the survival of Japan. In particular, the economic blockade by the various powers, led by the United States, inflicted a mortal blow to the survival of Japan … This, together with the outrageous act of economic blockade by means of the freezing of Japanese assets by the United States, Britain, and Holland, was a mortal threat to Japan, whose economic activities depended on foreign trade … From a military point of view, the US-British side openly increased its support of the Chungking [Chinese] forces, thus causing the war to continue.

Ibn Khaldun isn’t exactly a household name — but he should be. Fascinatingly, one great American president was a big fan of Khaldun: Ronald Reagan. “The Gipper” quoted him throughout his Presidency no less than ten times. A medieval historian from modern-day Tunisia, Khaldun wrote “The Muqaddimah” in the 14th century. The work was a monumental, “universal” history — an attempt to synthesize all known history from an Islamic perspective and elucidate lessons he hoped would benefit Islamic civilization … Khaldun understood that a marketplace requires individual initiative, yes, but also a shared ethic, and a sense of solidarity with others. The marketplace is the Golden Rule in action: a place where you do, but “as you would have others do to you.” You do through service to others.

… The ideas of German legal theorist Carl Schmitt are, in the words of the Financial Times, “back in vogue.” A celebrated scholar, an avowed and unrepentant Nazi supporter and a Mussolini sympathiser, Schmitt saw politics as a constant combat between warring factions … “Tell me who your enemy is, and I will tell you who you are,” he said. Without enemies, he thought, we are nothing. For decades after the Second World War, Schmitt’s anti-Semitism put him beyond the pale of serious scholarship, and he was never allowed to teach at German universities again. But since his death in 1985, age 97, Schmitt’s stature has grown. According to Jan-Werner Muller, professor of politics at Princeton University, he is “the [twentieth] century’s most brilliant enemy of liberalism.”

… Iran is ready for an all-out war, no matter what the consequences. The second message is that Iran is aware that the US President has cornered himself … It is Trump’s desire to avoid war that makes him susceptible to Iranian pressure. Trump will be in an even more critical position domestically if Iranian missiles target Middle Eastern oil. Iran is offering only two choices to the US President: end the embargo on Iranian oil or go to war … Iran and the US are already at war economically. A way out of this crisis would be for Trump to close his eyes while allowing Europe to work to lift the economic pressure on Iran, without sanctioning the European companies concerned. Otherwise, there may be no escape from a regional and global catastrophe.

… His legacy had begun five years before, as the commander of the German Schutztruppen, their colonial force in East Africa … Over the next three years, Lettow-Vorbeck and his troops would embark on one of the most successful guerrilla campaigns in history … They were the last major German force to surrender, and they had become folk heroes for their exploits in the exotic East African Theater. Despite their high casualty rate, and lack of supplies, they were never fully defeated in combat, and instead demonstrated the ability of even a large force to outmaneuver, out-think, and out-march its opponent, leading to one of the most effective guerilla campaigns in history.

… Make no mistake about it: Trump’s neocons are determined to trap him into a massive, disastrous war with Iran and they are using the same tactics they used to hoodwink George W. Bush into a multi-trillion dollar war on an Iraq that could not have attacked us if it wanted to … The Iranians are not backing down. They rightly feel cheated, as they continued to honor the deal even as the US re-imposed crippling sanctions meant to destroy their economy and starve their people. President Trump has a very serious decision to make. He is being frog-marched into war by his neocons and his Middle East “partners.” He has very little time left to change course. If the neocons are not swept out immediately, he is risking both his second term and his legacy.

Undeterred by decades of carnage and the disastrous outcomes of prior conflicts, ideologues within the Trump administration are clamoring for military action against Iran. The exact basis for this escalation varies … The claim that the Iranian regime harbors or supports Al Qaeda is patently absurd and easily disproven … An American military campaign against Iran would only succeed at great cost. The Iranian military is better organized and equipped than many countries in the region … The Trump administration can recognize Iran for its potential in stabilizing the Middle East or can replicate past U.S. mistakes, solidifying this nation’s role as the foremost agent of global chaos.

… Even as higher education gets more expensive, the actual economic returns to a university degree are about flat … On a larger scale, the problems of entitlements, pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and federal, state, and local debt are becoming more severe all the time. Already, in places such as Detroit, Illinois, and Puerto Rico, where political rules make flexible solutions hard and the population is aging very quickly, massive debt restructurings loom large. But around the country, the pressures of long-term obligations will grow … For virtually the entire period of Boomer political dominance, it has been obvious that long-term obligations needed to be fixed. And yet, the problem has not been fixed. Younger Americans will suffer the consequences.

A high school principal in Boca Raton, which has a large Jewish population, is being reassigned after telling a student’s mother that “not everyone believes the Holocaust happened.” The Palm Beach County school district said Monday that Spanish River High School Principal William Latson will be reassigned to a district job effective immediately. The district said in a statement that while Latson has apologized, “his leadership has become a major distraction.” … In his response, the principal remarked that he couldn’t “say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee.” He added that not all students’ parents believe the Holocaust happened. In a statement, a school district spokesperson said: “Mr. Latson made a grave error in judgment in the verbiage he wrote.” …

The World Jewish Congress has called on the US Congress to make Holocaust education mandatory in schools. The WJC started a petition late last week following recently released statistics that found 49 percent of millennials polled are unable to name one Nazi death camp, while 41 percent believed that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was significantly less than six million. “The horrors of the Holocaust are fading from our collective memory, especially among millennials,” WJC explained … The petition also calls for Congress to take proactive steps to make sure that students are equipped to take up the challenge of remembering the Holocaust, continuing its legacy, and fighting antisemitism as the number of Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle across the globe.

The [British] government has revealed that its current annual spend of Holocaust education in the UK is more than £4.3 million [US $5.38 million], alongside the £75 million [$93.88 million] promised to the planned new national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in London. The figures were revealed by Minister of State for Schools Nick Gibb MP … He said the Department for Education gives the Holocaust Educational Trust more than £2.1 million per year for its Lessons from Auschwitz project, and gives £500,000 to the UCL Institute of Education’s Centre for Holocaust Education … “The Department is fully committed to Holocaust education,” said Gibb. “Every young person should learn about the Holocaust and the lessons it teaches us today” …

The Trump administration has been labelled “inept”, insecure and incompetent in leaked emails from the UK ambassador to Washington. Sir Kim Darroch said that the White House was “uniquely dysfunctional” and “divided” under Donald Trump. But he also warned that the US president should not be written off … In the messages, Sir Kim said: “We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.” … In a message sent last month, Sir Kim branded US policy on Iran as “incoherent, chaotic” … Sir Kim said it was “unlikely that US policy on Iran is going to become more coherent any time soon” because “this is a divided administration”.

US representatives had requested Germany increase their military presence in Syria as the US plans to move its own troops out of Syria in the near future. Germany has said it is already making “significant” contribution. / Germany has rejected a US request for German ground troops to move into Syria. German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said on Monday that Germany would not increase its military presence in the country. On Friday, the US had called for Germany to send ground troops into Syria. “When I say that the government intends to continue with its ongoing measures in the framework of the anti-IS coalition, then that means no ground troops,” Seibert said. The German military currently provides reconnaissance jets, a refueling aircraft and other non-combat military assistance in the fight against IS.

Charlottesville, Virginia, will no longer celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s birthday as an official city holiday, and instead will observe a day recognizing the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans. The city council voted Monday night to scrap the decades-old April 13 holiday honoring the slave-holding president and Founding Father. Charlottesville will now mark Liberation and Freedom Day on March 3, the day U.S. Army forces arrived in the city in 1865. Charlottesville has been grappling publicly for years with how to tell its history of race and discrimination … The legacy of Jefferson, the nation’s third president, author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the University of Virginia, has been a component of that ongoing debate.

… Let’s look at the tactics used by the left to blacken the reputations of American heroes. To wit, the lie that the principal author of the declaration, Thomas Jefferson, fathered a child with his slave, Sally Hemings … No serious historian ever believed Callender’s defamation … Their reasoning was that there was absolutely no evidence to support the theory and plenty to contradict it … Two months after these false “findings” had been broadcast from every news outlet where English is spoken, Foster admitted that the DNA had not proved Jefferson fathered any children by Sally Hemings, merely that he could have fathered one child. Only eight newspapers mentioned the retraction … There are no letters, diaries or records supporting the idea that Jefferson was intimate with Hemings, and quite a bit of written documentation to refute it …

… Jefferson’s interests were always for the welfare of the country and its citizens. Even today, though, there are dishonest individuals and various special interests who hate anyone who shares his ideals. Jefferson once said that he was assailed by so many enemies that if he were to answer them all, he would not have time for anything else … Concerning the thorny issue of slavery, Jefferson wrote: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these [black] people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government.” He did not mean that the two races could not somehow co-exist, but rather that they could not live together in peace and harmony. History has borne out the truth of his observation.

… The Holocaust discourse in its current form contains numerous essential religious elements. It has priests and prophets. It has commandments and dogmas (e.g. ‘Never Again’) and rituals (memorial days, pilgrimage to Auschwitz, etc.). It has an established, esoteric symbolic order (good, evil, death, liberation). It also has a temple, Yad Vashem, and shrines – Holocaust museums in capital cities worldwide. The Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive global financial network, what Norman Finkelstein terms the ‘Holocaust industry’. This new religion is coherent enough to define its ‘antichrists’ (i.e. Holocaust deniers), and powerful enough to persecute them (through Holocaust-denial and hate-speech laws) … The holocaust religion adheres to the primacy of one people.

Mad Magazine, the humorous periodical whose snide and snarky take on contemporary American life influenced generations of children over the past seven decades, will apparently soon cease publication … While not a Jewish publication, many of its most famous artists and writers were members of the tribe, and Mad exhibited a comedy sensibility drawn from the Jewish experience … Founded in 1952 by EC Comics publisher William Gaines and Jewish cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, the magazine held up a mirror to 20th century American life while adding a large dollop of Jewish-style humor. Its distinctive voice was created in large part by Jewish editors and artists like Al Feldstein, Don Martin and Dave Berg … Mad was replete with Jewish-sounding terms and sound effects, especially real and faux-Yiddish terms.

… The possibility that the United States might be committing an act of war under false pretenses apparently did little to discourage the president’s principal foreign policy advisers, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, from pushing a military response. Tehran’s action was presented as raw aggression, an act of war that deserved retaliation … But then why has Trump chosen to surround himself with advisers apparently so at variance with his views? … Pompeo’s demands [of Iran] look a bit like the ultimatum to Serbia in June 1914 after a nationalist backed by Serbian military intelligence assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to the Palestinians – using Gulf Arab oil money – has so far been a resounding failure, as was widely predicted. The so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ turned out to be a shabby swindle … Trump’s offer was pure New York City real estate hipper dipper … In other words, Israel hopes to gain most or all of the West Bank and Jerusalem by getting the rich but dim Gulf Arabs and Saudi Arabia to pay the proposed bribe money. The US and Israel will more or less divvy up the central Mideast. Just this week, the director of Israel’s Mossad said that his spy agency had played a key role in bringing the Arab oil monarchs into alliance with Israel.

Penguin Random House has stopped short of demands to withdraw Pedro Baños’s How They Rule the World from sale, but will print no further copies of the book after an external review found the Spanish-language edition contains “echoes of Jewish conspiracy theories”. The publisher initially rejected allegations of anti-Semitism in the book, which claims to reveal “the 22 secret strategies of global power”. But after continued pressure from organisations including the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which called for the book’s withdrawal, Penguin commissioned an external review, led by Julia Neuberger, which yesterday announced its results. Imprint Ebury is therefore printing no more copies of the English-language edition and has frozen stock, sending no further copies out to retailers.

Israel is trying to “suck America into” a war with Iran that could destabilize the Middle East and lead to a world war in much the way that the imperial rivalries in 1914 led to the First World War, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned in Washington last week [March 2018]. A war with Iran, he said, could “perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become.” But Israeli leaders want a war, and they are pushing one with the support of their American political friends … Another pro-war faction are “warmed-over neoconservatives” who got us into the Iraq war … Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who now teaches government at Washington-area universities, served Powell during the run-up to the Iraq war.

A leading Israeli government minister takes credit for 27 U.S. states passing laws aimed at curbing citizens’ advocacy for BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign targeting Israel. Gilad Erdan, minister for strategic affairs and information under Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed the Jerusalem Post conference in New York two weeks ago, and bragged that the Israeli government had taken its fights “to the enemy,” and that includes BDS … Erdan then took credit for American laws: “Our efforts are producing results. 27 US states now have counter-BDS legislation. Let’s give a hand to all the governors and state legislators who supported this law. They deserve it.” … So it is a huge scandal that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, but Israel is messing in our politics all the time, and that’s standard operating procedure.

A vast majority of voters said they supported President Trump’s decision to not launch a retaliatory strike against Iran last month, according to a new Harvard CAPS/ Harris Poll. Seventy-eight percent of voters surveyed said they believed Trump’s decision to call off the strike on Iran was the right move … Trump ordered and then reversed a decision to strike Iran after an unmanned and unarmed U.S. drone was struck down last month … The same poll found that 57 percent of voters said they were against military confrontation with Iran if the U.S. was not directly attacked by the country, while 38 percent said they would support another U.S. military entanglement in the region … The Harvard CAPS/ Harris Poll found that 55 percent of voters said they disapproved of the way the U.S. was handling relations with Iran.

Every U.S. president has been a member of a church, except for one: Abraham Lincoln. Famously opaque on the subject of religion, Lincoln’s personal faith was something even his closest friends said they couldn’t figure out. Though he became more interested in religious questions toward the end of his life, “Honest Abe” never directly identified himself as a Christian — even after he realized it could hurt him politically … Lincoln’s religious views shifted throughout his life, as most people’s do. He grew up in a Baptist household but was never baptized as a child or an adult, and in his early 20s he was outspoken about his religious skepticism.

Bob Fosse’s 1972 film Cabaret is supposed to be propaganda for Weimar decadence and against Nazi brutality. But the film utterly fails as propaganda insofar as it changes no minds … Some see Cabaret as a celebration of decadence and others see it as a case for National Socialism. Most of the latter, of course, do not embrace or condone National Socialism themselves. But once the movie is over, they can at least understand why millions of Germans did so … Healthy people see that, in the end, hedonism and individualism are just a nihilistic death cult … Of course, the filmmakers want us to mourn the passing of Weimar. But healthy viewers see something very different, a message that Goebbels himself would have approved: Weimar was a disease.

… Some things are pretty clear. One is that while Trump pulled back on starting a shooting war, the administration is directly attacking millions of Iranians already … Sanctions are simply war by other means. Under the terms of the United Nations Charter, in fact, the unilateral imposition of economic sanctions may constitute an internationally prohibited act of aggression … These are all actions designed to provoke Iranian responses, deliberately edging us closer to a direct military exchange that could easily lead to a full-fledged regional war. Such a confrontation doesn’t have to start with a direct U.S. military strike on Iran, although Bolton and Pompeo have certainly been pushing for that … With key figures in the Trump administration trying so hard to provoke Iran, it would hardly count as an accident.

American librarians are distancing themselves from the founder of the Dewey Decimal system, Melvil Dewey because of his history of anti-semitism, racism, and sexual harassment, the Guardian reported. The council of the American Library Association (ALA) voted to remove Dewey’s name from one of their top awards, the report published on the Thursday stated. Dewey, reportedly did not allow Jews, African Americans, or other minorities into the Lake Placid Club, which he owned. He also “made numerous inappropriate physical advances toward women he worked with and wielded professional power over,” the resolution stated. Along with Dewey Decimal system, Dewey was one of the founders of the ALA.

Protesters have clashed with police across Israel following the funeral of a teenager of Ethiopian descent who was shot dead by an off-duty officer. Thousands took to the streets of several cities on Tuesday, blocking roads with sit-ins and burning tyres. A police spokesman said 111 officers were wounded during the disturbances, and that 136 people were arrested. The prime minister acknowledged the Ethiopian community faced “problems” but told protesters not to block roads. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel in the 1980s and 1990s. They say they have faced systematic discrimination, racism and a lack of empathy for their hardships ever since.

President Trump’s peace plan for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or at least the economic side of it, was discussed at a meeting in Bahrain on June 25 and 26. The plan, euphemistically entitled “Peace to Prosperity” and the “Deal of the Century” is also, inaccurately, likened to a “Marshall Plan for Palestinians.” It is based on the assumption that money, ultimately the better part of $50 billion, can lure the Palestinian people into surrender — that is, the surrender of their right to a state of their own on their stolen ancestral land as well as the right of return for the 7.5 million Palestinians who have been forced into exile. Upon surrender, according to the plan, “an ambitious, achievable … framework for a prosperous future for the Palestinian people and the region” will be put into place.

“The liberal idea has become obsolete … (Liberals) cannot simply dictate anything to anyone as they have been attempting to do over the recent decades.” Such was the confident claim of Vladimir Putin to the Financial Times on the eve of a G-20 gathering that appeared to validate his thesis … Putin took power, two decades ago, as this 21st century began. In recent years, he has advanced himself not only as a foe of liberalism but a champion of populism, traditionalism and nationalism … What may be said of Putin? He is no Stalin, no Communist ideologue, but rather a Russian nationalist who seeks the return of her lost peoples to the Motherland, and, seeing his country as a great power, wants NATO out of his front yard.

… Ever since taking over their preset positions, Pompeo and Bolton have been developing a strategy to draw the Trump administration into a war by claiming that Iran is bent on attacking the US and its allies. A key influence on this strategy has been a still secret U.S.-Israeli agreement in December 2017 to develop a common approach to Iran, as revealed by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid … Those moves toward higher tensions with Iran have been based all along on nothing more than a highly convenient interpretation of Iranian moves – much of that interpretation was influenced by the Israelis.

The U.S. special representative for Iran said Friday that Europe has a choice: Do business with the United States, or do business with Iran. The comments by Brian Hook came as European countries made a last-ditch effort to prevent Iran from breaching the terms of a 2015 nuclear deal … U.S. officials have indicated that they would like to see Iran abide by the terms of the nuclear deal, even though the United States withdrew from it … An Iranian breach of the stockpile limit would not put it significantly closer to building a nuclear weapon, but it would strike another blow to the tattered deal. The stockpile of uranium enriched to 3.67 percent is suitable for use as fuel in nuclear power plants but far short of the weapons-grade level of more than 90 percent needed for fissile material in a nuclear bomb.

Israel secretly operates a troll army of thousands, partly funded by a government department. The Ministry of Strategic Affairs is dedicated to a global “war” against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights. To conceal its involvement, the ministry has admitted to working through front groups that “do not want to expose their connection with the state.” The troll army Act.IL is one of many such groups. It focuses on spreading Israeli propaganda online … Act.IL is run by a former Israeli spy who has argued that his outfit is involved in “a new kind of war.” … The group’s chief executive has admitted in Hebrew to working closely with Israeli ministries, and in English that his staff are mostly former Israeli spies … Ben Yosef explained that “controlling the online media discussion became our top priority.”

Renewed doubt has been cast on a claim by Adolf Hitler’s favourite architect that he once considered assassinating the Führer by the discovery of a long forgotten Foreign Office document. Albert Speer, who also served as Nazi minister for armaments and war production, claimed he turned against Hitler in the latter stages of the Second World War, and planned to assassinate him by pumping poison gas into the Führer Bunker in Berlin. Historians have long doubted the claim, which helped Speer escape a death sentence in the Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War. But now a German historian claims he has found new evidence it is false in a memo preserved by the Foreign Office. The memo, from an American official who interrogated Speer before the Nuremberg trials, appears to show key details of the architect’s story changed over time.

The conventions of mainstream journalism make it difficult to challenge America’s self-conception as a peace-loving nation. But the unlovely truth is this: Throughout its history, America has attacked countries that did not threaten it. To carry out such wars, American leaders have contrived pretexts to justify American aggression. That’s what Donald Trump’s administration — and especially its national security adviser, John Bolton — is doing now with Iran. The historical examples abound … For more than a century, this false innocence has been a feature of every unprovoked American war. And it is this false innocence that Americans must relentlessly challenge if they wish to avoid war with Iran now.

While the rest of the candidates at the first Democratic debate tonight have been doing their best to out-socialist each other, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been trying to keep the country out of war … “War with Iran would be worse than war with Iraq,” said Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran. “Donald Trump and his chickenhawk cabinet — Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and others — are creating a situation where a spark would light a war with Iran. Trump needs to get back into the Iran deal, swallow his pride, and put America first.” Gabbard’s position contrasts with the positions of other Democratic candidates on the stage … Drawing critical attention to America’s interminable overseas wars has been the explicit purpose of Gabbard’s longshot campaign from the beginning.

In a televised speech on 25 June, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke of “mental incapability” and “mental disability” in the White House. Reuters and many other Western media outlets inaccurately rendered the terms Rouhani used in English as the highly offensive “mentally retarded”. A word-for-word translation of Rouhani’s remark would be: “They have become stricken with mental incapability [Persian: natavani-ye zehni]. The White House has become stricken with mental disability [Persian: ma’luliyat-e zehni]. They don’t know what to do.” The most precise Persian equivalent for “retarded” would probably be ‘aqab mande’, which captures the same notion of being slowed or delayed in development or progress.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has responded to President Donald Trump’s recent threats to Tehran on Twitter, saying that the United States “is not in a position to obliterate Iran.” Speaking exclusively to CNN a week after Iran downed a US military drone, Zarif said that US actions have been “confrontational” and “provocative,” but that Iran is not seeking war. “I think President Trump should remember that we don’t live in the 18th century. There is a United Nations charter, and threat of wars is illegal,” Zarif said. Amid escalating tensions between the Trump administration and Tehran, the US President warned Tuesday that any subsequent attack Iran might carry out on “anything American” would be met with “great and overwhelming force.” “In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration,” the President tweeted.