Headlines

President Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, notes former CIA analyst Paul Pillar, is more obsession than strategy, and a not-so-mysterious explosion on the outskirts of Baghdad Monday shows why. Iraqi political analysts are blaming the attack on Israel, saying it follows two attacks earlier this month on facilities of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq … Israel has long attacked Iranian-backed forces in Syria, an enemy of the United States. Now Israel has expanded its scope of operations to attack targets in Iraq, whose coalition government is friendly to the United States. The predictable result: the Iraqi government is bailing on Trump’s policy. The dynamic exposes two underappreciated realities of Trump’s Iran obsession: Any U.S. war on Iran will ignite war in Iraq, and U.S. credibility is visibly faltering across the region.

… Netanyahu’s widening of Israel’s war with Iran and its proxies into Lebanon and Iraq — and perhaps beyond — and his acknowledgement of that wider war raise questions for both of us. Israel today has on and near her borders hostile populations in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq. Tens of millions of Muslims see her as an enemy to be expelled from the region. While there is a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, the Saudis and Gulf Arabs are temporary allies as long as the foe is Iran. Is this pervasive enmity sustainable? As for America, have we ceded to Netanyahu something no nation should ever cede to another, even an ally: the right to take our country into a war of their choosing but not of ours?

A powerful bloc in Iraq’s parliament called on Monday for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, following a series of airstrikes targeting Iran-backed Shiite militias in the country that have been blamed on Israel. The Fatah Coalition said it holds the United States fully responsible for the alleged Israeli aggression, “which we consider to be a declaration of war on Iraq and its people.” The coalition is a parliament bloc representing Iran-backed paramilitary militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. The coalition’s statement came a day after a drone strike in the western Iraqi town of Qaim killed a commander with the forces — the latest in strikes apparently conducted by Israel against the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.

… The slow death of the Amazon is an alarm call to us all of the importance of trees to mankind. I’ve been to many nations – such as India and Haiti – where most of their original trees were cut down – and the result has been an environmental disaster for mankind and animals … The gutting of America’s wildlife and environmental laws by the Trump administration is a shameful act of ignorance. But one supposes that our president, who appears to live on burgers and diet Coke, has zero interest in wetlands, trees, birds, animals or rivers. Even Adolf Hitler was an arch conservationist and vegetarian who hated smokers and loved birds and trees. The Mongols destroyed every city in their bloody path to free up more grazing for their ponies.

In the United States, the white share of the population is declining as Hispanic, Asian and black populations grow. But the shift to a more diverse nation is happening more quickly in some places than in others. From 2000 to 2018, 109 counties in 22 states, from California to Kansas to North Carolina, went from majority white to majority nonwhite – that is, counties where non-Hispanic whites are no longer the majority, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data … Overall, 293 U.S. counties were majority nonwhite in 2018. Most of these counties are concentrated in California, the South and on the East Coast, with few in the country’s middle section. In addition, several majority white counties with large populations may flip in coming years.

The birthrate in England and Wales has hit its lowest level since records began, government statistics have shown. In total, there were 657,076 live births in England and Wales last year – a fall of 3.2 percent from the previous year, and down by ten percent from 2012. The number of live births fell from 11.6 per 1,000 people to 11.1, the lowest since records started in 1938. The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), also showed that the percentage of live babies with mothers not born in the UK also fell for the first time since 1990, from 28.4% to 28.2%. Since 1947, the rate has dropped by 45.9%, when the number of babies being born was at its ultimate peak.

A Canadian editor was handed a one-year prison sentence for promoting hatred against Jews and women in his publication. James Sears, editor of the quarterly Your Ward News in Toronto, was sentenced Thursday to two six-month terms by Judge Richard Blouin of the Ontario Court of Justice. The publication promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic blood libel claims and published columns justifying rape. It also contained racist, Islamophobic and homophobic messages … Noah Shack, vice president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, hailed the conviction as a “moment of justice for the thousands of women and Jewish community members … who have been impacted by the toxic hate-mongering of Your Ward News.”

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to clarify that when he said Jews who vote for Democrats are being “disloyal,” he meant they were abandoning their support for Israel and the Jewish people. Trump spoke to reporters as he departed from the White House in Washington and answered questions about his comments made the day before, which were widely condemned as employing anti-Semitic tropes of dual loyalty. “If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,” Trump told US media. “Only weak people would say other than that.” He also said he hadn’t heard of anyone calling his remarks from Tuesday anti-Semitic. “I have been responsible for a lot of great things for Israel,” Trump also said. “No president has ever done anywhere close to what I’ve done” for Israel.

… A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to any country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish community … Zionist Jews and their non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double standard. Jewish-Zionist organizations, along with their non-Jewish allies, support one social-political ideology for Israel and the world Jewish community, and a completely different one for the United States and other non-Jewish countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is evil and bad for non-Jews, while at the same time they vigorously support ethnic nationalism — Zionism — for Jews.

As tensions escalated with Iran, 78 percent of Americans said they opposed military action against Iran, according to a Gallup Poll … The vast majority of Republicans (72 percent) and Democrats (86 percent) said they instead favored economic or diplomatic efforts. The poll was taken between July 15-31, after Iran shot down a U.S. drone on June 20 and President Trump called off military retaliation. Americans were less unified, however, if non-military efforts failed: 53 percent of Americans polled said Washington should refrain from military action even if diplomatic and economic measures failed; 42 percent said the United States should launch kinetic operations. Positions split divided along partisan lines: 68 percent of Democrats were opposed to military action as a second option, while 60 percent of Republicans supported military action as a fallback.

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. The powerful collection includes essays by historians, poets, columnists, a variety of academics, and more.

Conservatives called the New York Times’ project “divisive,” progressives hailed it as the “real” history of America … The conclusions reached by the 1619 Project could have been guessed from the start … Nor is there anything subtle about its constituent articles, which all follow the same formula: blaming slavery, a white historical figure, or white people as a class, for present-day shortcomings of American society, which in turn affect black people disproportionately. According to what has already been placed online, dead white slavers and their inheritors are at fault for a lack of a functioning democracy, rapacious capitalism, incarceration rates, political gridlock, poor healthcare, traffic jams, and the country’s sugar addiction.

A new initiative from the New York Times examining the history of slavery in the US has been met with applause and criticism online. Some say the project is “long overdue,” while others accuse the paper of “rewriting” history. The 1619 Project was conceived as a way to observe the “400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery” and, in the Times’ words, to “reframe our country’s history” by placing the stories of slaves at the forefront … Conservative radio host Erick Erikson dismissed the project, arguing that if the Times is correct and the US is “tainted by racism since the 1600s” in every way, then it would stand to reason that the US itself is illegitimate. That would also mean “the constitution is illegitimate, and revolution is the answer” …

… Far from being the poor, dependent outpost relying on British largesse – as depicted by Brexiters – the Republic of Ireland is an outward-looking, dynamic, trading entrepot … Ireland has been far more successful in diversifying from the UK than the UK has been in diversifying from Ireland. Today, little Ireland remains the UK’s fifth largest export market. Britain exports more to Ireland than it does to China … Ireland buys more from Britain because Ireland is much richer. Rich people buy stuff. On a conservative estimate, the Irish are now over 25 per cent richer than their UK counterparts … Ireland is growing nearly five times faster than the UK every year.

… The new programming comes at a time of growing questions about what to do with the troves of Nazi propaganda art that’s stowed away in Germany, and in the US as well. To this day, many works of Nazi propaganda and Nazi-sanctioned art are stashed away at the Center of Military History Fort Belvoir, outside of Washington, DC, and there is no imminent plan for its return. The US military uncovered and removed troves of art after the war as part of the de-Nazification process … It is estimated that there are more than 500 works of art from the Third Reich still in the US Army Center of Military History.

Most American adults of voting age believe representatives should visit their congressional districts rather than go to Israel according to a new poll. IRmep Polls surveyed 2,000 American adults about where they believed congressional reps should go during recess. Junkets to Israel funded by an entity housed within the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a domestically registered lobby and a small number of other Israel lobby groups account for a third of all privately funded congressional trips with an international destination … The trips are designed to present Israel as a militarily vulnerable and valuable ally deserving massive U.S. foreign aid.

… This week, Hong Kong airport was besieged and shut down by thousands of young local demonstrators protesting China’s attempt to impose a new extradition law on Hong Kong that would allow Beijing to arrest Hong Kong residents for ‘anti-state’ activities … The massive rioting in Hong Kong earlier this week set off alarm bells in Beijing, which runs an Orwellian police state on the mainland … Perhaps more important, Chinese leaders study their nation’s history and draw lessons from it, unlike America’s history-free politicians. For the Americans, history is what was on Fox TV the week before … If the Hong Kong students are not wise, they risk winding up in China’s penal camps, the ‘laogai.’ … Western politicians can huff and puff all they like but they are powerless to change the tide of events in Hong Kong.

… At the root of most of the problems black people face is the breakdown of the family structure. Slightly over 70% of black children are raised in female-headed households. According to statistics about fatherless homes, 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes; 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father figure; 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes; 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes … Fatherless boys and girls are twice as likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to end up in jail … As late as 1950, only 18% of black households were single parent … Intellectuals and political hustlers who blame the plight of so many blacks on poverty, racial discrimination and the “legacy of slavery” are complicit in the socioeconomic and moral decay.

… U.S. troops have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, in a war that has cost 2,400 American lives … Is it too soon to ask: What have we gained from our longest war? Was all the blood and treasure invested worth it? And what does the future hold? If the Taliban could not be defeated by an Afghan army, built up by the U.S. for a decade and backed by 100,000 U.S. troops in 2010-2011, then are the Taliban likely to give up the struggle when the U.S. is drawing down the last 14,000 troops and heading home? The Taliban control more of the country than they have at any time since being overthrown in 2001. And time now seems to be on their side. fer … Around the world, America is involved in quarrels, clashes and confrontations with almost too many nations to count.

… Those are some of the lesson plans suggested in a draft of California’s newly proposed ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 public schools. The documents have led to bitter debate in recent weeks over whether they veer into left-wing propaganda, and whether they are inclusive enough of Jews and other ethnic groups. Now, amid a growing outcry, even progressive policymakers in the state are promising significant revisions. The materials are unapologetically activist — and jargony. They ask students to “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism and other forms of power and oppression.”

It is astonishing to observe some Americans twisting themselves into pretzels so they can continue to make excuses to explain the bizarre behavior of President Donald Trump on the world stage. The line most commonly heard is that he has “kept us out of new wars.” The reality is somewhat different. He has kept us in old wars in Afghanistan and Syria that he could have ended while also needlessly ratcheting up tension with countries like Russia, Venezuela, Iran and China that could easily escalate into armed conflict … The most frightening aspect of the current situation is the feeling that the man whose finger is on America’s nuclear trigger is not quite sane … And if you need more good reasons to impeach Donald Trump, here they are …

… American Jewish leaders think Netanyahu is a fool because they don’t realize how much he has to hide. He’s not a fool. He may have barred Omar and Tlaib partly because Donald Trump asked him to. He may have felt the stunt would appeal to right-wing voters in Israel’s upcoming elections. But he likely also understood that if Omar and Tlaib brought the American media with them to the West Bank, they might begin to puncture the cocoon that he and his American Jewish allies have worked so hard to build. That cocoon shields both American Jews and American politicians from Palestinian reality.

A research study from Queen’s University Belfast’s Management School has found that members of Nazi organisations were more upwardly mobile and climbed higher up the social ladder than non-members during the Third Reich. The results show that when examining social mobility between generations, Nazi members advanced further than non-members due to the fact that people joining the organisations were already ‘upwardly mobile’ individuals, rather than acquiring higher-status positions as a direct reward of joining … Some of the key findings include: Members of the Nazi organisations were more likely to come from high-status backgrounds and had higher levels of education; People from a higher-status background were almost twice as likely to join the Nazi organisations than someone from a lower-status background.

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between Nazi membership and social mobility using a unique and highly detailed dataset of military conscripts and volunteers during the Third Reich. We find that membership of a Nazi organisation is positively related to social mobility when measured by the difference between fathers’ and sons’ occupations. This relationship is stronger for the more ‘elite’ NS organisations, the NSDAP and the SS. However, we find that this observed difference in upward mobility is driven by individuals with different characteristics self-selecting into these organisations, rather than from a direct reward to membership … We find that NS membership is associated with higher socio-economic background and human capital levels.

To deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression, both the Roosevelt government in the US and Hitler’s government in Germany launched innovative and ambitious programs. Although Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs helped only marginally, the Third Reich’s much more focused and comprehensive policies proved remarkably successful. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was booming. This remarkable achievement is little known and rarely acknowledged. Runtime: 35:38 mins.

… Other nations are increasingly going their own way as it becomes clear that the Trump administration has only one consuming interest — its own— and no desire to even discover what anyone else’s interests might be … Trump’s philosophy of “America First” has become, in practice, something more: America Only. And after two and a half years, this attitude has become more than a mere annoyance: It is beginning to change national behavior around the world. Nations are starting to act almost as if the United States isn’t there — or if it is, mainly as a hindrance … In many critical regions around the world, U.S. credibility is pretty much shot.

Of all the things you might want to symbolise your city, the human turd is pretty much bottom of the list. Yet San Francisco, the hi-tech capital of world, is indelibly marked by the association … “Since 2011 there have been at least 118,352 reported incidences of human fecal matter on [San Francisco] city streets”. A tastefully brown-coloured bar chart of “human feces incidents” shows that this is a growing problem – the bars get longer every year. Last year, the San Francisco mayor created a “poop patrol” to literally clean up the city … The fact that this, and the associated epidemics of homelessness, drug use and crime, is happening in one the most economically advanced and politically liberal cities in the world is an irony lost on no one.

… In Los Angeles, the extraordinary scale of homelessness has dragged the varieties of indigence, need, and affliction out from the ghettos, missions, and holding cells and into the public’s view … Alleys strung up with tarps and covered in refuse; down the tent-lined sidewalks of residential streets mere steps from multi-billion dollar businesses; seeing crumpled bodies inside sleeping bags being stepped over by people inured to the sight … A more hellish concentration of deprivation and disorder than anything I’ve seen before in America … Following the RVs west … you’d find, among the ranch houses, bungalows, and restaurants, clusters of people without the metal roof of a car or camper sleeping on the street under tents, plastic tarps, and in sleeping bags with no cover at all, alongside mounds of trash, debris, and human waste.

Walk around almost any town or city in Britain and you will encounter a rough sleeper, pleading for coins. You’ll probably come across a cardboard and polyester encampment too – they are pretty much ubiquitous across the country; ghostly faces peer from fragile constructions under bridges, in foul doorways and beneath church porches. Sodden blankets and damp sleeping bags offer scant protection against the bitter November winds. The statistics are bleak: rough sleeper numbers in England rose in 2017 for the seventh consecutive year … The situation has worsened in the intervening years, with rough sleeper numbers rising by 15 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year.

In headier days, Europe’s leaders dreamed of a multicultural continent, its aging cities saved by millions of new migrants eager to join a stable, prosperous urbanity. This was the promise behind former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia … That dream has faded, with Europeans now opposing new migration by wide margins. Once-peaceful German and Swedish cities have seen a spike in crime, a resurgence of anti-Semitism, and growing political unrest — all associated with the migrant influx. In 2016, Pew Research found that 59 percent of Europeans thought that immigrants imposed a burden on their countries. In addition, less than a third believe immigration has improved their countries …

There is no plausible reason for the United States to go to war with Iran, although the Trump administration appears to be preparing to do so … It remains impossible to tell whether the [Trump] administration actually intends to go to war, is merely engaging in coercive diplomacy, or is adrift in a sea of miscues. It may not matter. In a maelstrom of probes and provocations, strategic intention may give way to heedless reaction … The similarities between the current situation and the prelude to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2002–2003 are unmistakable. A pugnacious and insecure US president obsessed with a government he has demonized is unconstrained due to a disrupted interagency process and a Congress paralyzed by a cowed and craven Republican Party … Long wars begin with the conviction that they will be short.

… A senior U.S. Congressman has led a delegation of 41 of his Democratic Party colleagues plus spouses on a week-long luxury all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, which is one of the few countries in the world that defines its full citizenship as a matter of race and religion. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland is, however, apparently tone deaf to some critics of the annual excursion, having made the pilgrimage to Israel more than 15 times … Hoyer is a bought and paid for Israeli puppet and a big part of his job is to make sure that new Congressmen and women are adequately brainwashed regarding what is going on in the Middle East.

Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke might call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “racist,” but a delegation of 41 US House Democrats stood and clapped for him at the end of a two-hour meeting on Wednesday. The delegation, led by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and sponsored by an AIPAC-affiliated charity, met Netanyahu in the evening in the Foreign Ministry, after spending much of the morning in Ramallah and a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas … While the diplomatic process was a major focus, no questions – according to a participant – were asked about the settlements, Netanyahu’s relationship with US President Donald Trump, or the Nation-State Law.

… The Jewish state has now largely alienated its former friends and supporters in Europe. Its all-important American patron and protector suffers from budgetary bloat, political constipation, diplomatic enervation, and strategic myopia … Israel is now known around the world for the Kafkaesque tyranny of its checkpoint army in the Occupied Territories, its periodic maiming and slaughter of Lebanese and Gazan civilians, its blatant racial and religious bigotry, the zealotry and scofflaw behavior of its settlers, its theology of ethnic cleansing, and its exclusionary religious dogmatism … Official America’s passionate attachment to Israel has become a very salient part of U.S. political pathology.

… The picture of the relationship between German big business and the Nazi party which Turner provides us is one that reveals how little big business had to do with the party’s success … Most of the NSDAP funds were derived from membership dues, interest-free loans, and the gate receipts from the many mass rallies the party held … In sum, the NSDAP was a prototypical “grass-roots” political organization able to expand and prosper during a period when most of the bourgeois parties suffered a serious loss of support.

Israel’s decision on Thursday to block two American Congresswomen from entering the country amid pressure from Donald Trump drew widespread criticism in Washington, with some Democrats warning the move threatened to erode US support for its longtime ally. In an unprecedented chain of events, the Israeli government announced it would bar entry to Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, ahead of a planned visit to the West Bank. The move came just hours after Trump publicly urged Israel not to allow the two Democratic lawmakers into the country in a highly unusual effort to influence a foreign government against his political opponents. Top Democrats in Washington swiftly condemned Israel’s actions while urging its government to change course.

People in Britain, America and Russia all greatly overestimate their country’s contribution to defeating Adolf Hitler, according to new research. A survey found people from each country think it was responsible for contributing more than half to the victory – the UK (51%), the US (54%) and Russia (75%). Experts say that this is vastly more than the proportion of credit afforded to them by the rest of the world in a phenomenon dubbed ‘national narcissism.’ For the UK, the average plunges to 19 per cent in the eyes of those from seven other Allied countries – and Germany, Italy and Japan, who fought against them. For Russia it crashes to 20 per cent while America enjoys a 27 per cent share of the credit US – still way below the country’s own self-belief in victory. Popular culture may go some way to explaining this disparity in the West …

… Americans and Canadians like to believe they won the war in Europe and give insufficient recognition to the decisive Soviet role. Most Europeans would rather not think about the matter … Were it not for the USSR’s victory, Nazi Germany might be alive and well today. Let’s do the numbers. The Soviet armed forces destroyed 507 German divisions and 100 allied Axis divisions (according to Soviet figures) … The Red Army accounted for 75-80 percent of Axis casualties in World War II … No one likes to admit it was Stalin who defeated Nazi Germany. Stalin killed far more people than Adolf Hitler … At that time, both Roosevelt and Churchill lavished praise and thanks on the Soviet Union, admitting its “gigantic effort” in defeating Hitler’s Germany. Today, however, we have chosen to forget who really won the war in Europe.

A gripping first-person memoir of soldierly sacrifice, heroism and fierce combat against numerically superior Soviet forces during World War II, by a charismatic Belgian writer and politician turned front-line infantryman. New, revised IHR edition, with index and photos. Here is the epic story of the Walloon Legion, a volunteer Belgian unit of the World War II pan-European SS force, as told – in absorbing prose — by the legendary Degrelle. Captures the grit, terror and glory of Europe’s crusade against Communism.

The New York Times has published five editorials since the beginning of May that are ostensibly critical of a possible military war between the United States and Iran. As anti-war arguments, however, they are woefully lacking — vilifying Iran without subjecting the US to comparable scrutiny, and hiding US aggression towards Iran. The editorials regurgitate the same anti-Iran demonology pro-war voices offer to try to justify an attack on the country … The editorials also muddy responsibility for the crisis, presenting what is happening as roughly equally the fault of the United States and Iran. The first editorial argued that the “Trump administration is playing a dangerous game in Iran, risking a serious miscalculation by either side.” … If the two countries are on a “collision course,” it’s because the US is driving its vehicle directly into Iran’s.

The California State Board of Education has rejected a proposed ethnic studies curriculum for the state’s schools, saying it “falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned.” The Jewish community is among several minority groups that have protested the draft. Earlier this month, the California Legislative Jewish Caucus said that the curriculum “effectively erases the American Jewish experience,” “omits anti-Semitism,” “denigrates Jews” and “singles Israel out for condemnation.” … School board leaders said in a statement Monday. “The Board will ultimately adopt an ethnic studies model curriculum that aligns to California’s values.” A 2016 law ordered the Board of Education to create a curriculum that would highlight the contributions of minorities in the development of California and the United States.

… Undeniably, Russia is a rival. But Putin’s economy is the size of Italy’s while China’s economy challenges our own. And China’s population is ten times that of Russia, and four times that of the USA. Manifestly, China is the greater menace. Are Americans willing to make the necessary sacrifices to force China to abide by the rules of reciprocal trade? Or will Trump be forced by political realities to accept the long-term and ruinous relationship we have followed since granting China permanent MFN status in 2001? This issue is likely to decide the destiny of our relations and the future of Asia, if not the world.

… As a former intelligence officer myself, there is little doubt in my mind that what Epstein did and how he did it was an intelligence operation. There is no other viable explanation for his filming of prominent politicians and celebrities having sex with young girls. And as for the question of whom Epstein might have been working for, the most likely answer is Mossad … American movers and shakers like Bill Clinton, with his 26 trips on the Lolita Express, former Governor Bill Richardson, or former Senator George Mitchell are precisely the types of “agents of influence” that the Mossad would seek to coerce or even blackmail into cooperation … Epstein clearly had contact with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, and Wexner also had close ties to the Jewish state and its government.

George Soros has donated $5.1 million to a new super PAC ahead of the 2020 presidential election — over twice as much as he had spent at this point in the campaign leading up to the 2016 election, Politico reported Wednesday. The Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire’s Democracy PAC is his first involvement in the 2020 election cycle. Soros, a longtime donor to the Democratic Party, has not and does not plan to weigh in on any of the Democratic candidates during the primary stage, according to Politico. He told The Washington Post last year that doing so could “divide the Democratic party.” Soros eventually spent $20 million on the 2016 race, one of the largest amounts for a donor in either party.

… Iran’s last war, however, should dispel any notion of cowardice and military weakness — a history President Trump and anti-Iran hawks like National Security Adviser John Bolton must face with clear eyes if the United States is to avoid another needless, catastrophic war in the Middle East … Today, Iran’s population is more than double what it was in 1980 — estimated at roughly 83 million. After lacking military support from abroad during the Iran-Iraq War, Iran now has extensive domestic weapons manufacturing capabilities. Also unlike 1980, it has more allies in the region. In other words, if Iran fought so stubbornly under such dire circumstances during the ’80s, it will only fight more effectively today.

Holocaust denier and blogger Alison Chabloz said she was banned from France. Chabloz, who is British, said in a Monday post on Gab, a social media platform popular among those on the far-right, that she was questioned when attempting to board a train to Paris, The Jewish Chronicle reported. She said she was told she was barred from entering the country until 2059. Holocaust denial is banned in France. Last May, Chabloz, who posted songs on YouTube denying the Holocaust, was convicted by a London court of sending “offensive, indecent or menacing messages.” The 55-year old was found guilty of writing, performing and disseminating three songs about Nazi persecution. One was about the young diarist Anne Frank. In another, she claimed that the Holocaust was “just a bunch of lies.”

Two of the world’s most important powers, India and Pakistan, are locked into an extremely dangerous confrontation over the bitterly disputed Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir. Both are nuclear armed. Kashmir has been a flashpoint since Imperial Britain divided India in 1947. India and Pakistan have fought numerous wars and conflicts over majority Muslim Kashmir. China controls a big chunk of northern Kashmir known as Aksai Chin … Making matters worse, both India and Pakistan’s nuclear forces are on a hair-trigger alert, with a warning time of only minutes … India and Pakistan, where people starve in the streets, waste billions on military spending because of the Kashmir dispute.

Paul Findley, a moderate Republican congressman from Illinois who sought to limit presidents’ power to wage war and pressed the United States government to engage with the Arab world, died on Friday in Jacksonville, Ill … Mr. Findley was an early critic of the Vietnam War … He became convinced that the influential pro-Israel lobby known as Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had a stranglehold on American politicians that prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state and prevented rational dealings with Arab leaders in general … His stance led to his being targeted by Aipac activists in his 1980 re-election campaign … He won that year, but the same forces came back at him in 1982 … In 1982, he lost by less than one percent of the vote.

Former Congressman Paul Findley, a longtime advocate for Palestinian human rights, has passed away at the age of 98. Findley was a forefather of the movement for justice in Palestine, speaking and writing on the issue for almost half a century. Findley was a Republican Congressman from Illinois when he began speaking out about Palestine in the 1970s. Before long, the Israel lobby targeted him, and after serving 22 years in Congress, he was pushed out in 1982. Findley then wrote a groundbreaking book: They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby. He described in riveting detail how Israel partisans had similarly worked to push out other Americans who had spoken out about Palestine, from positions in Congress, the media, academia, and elsewhere.

Nine-Eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the 9/11 catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president in recent decades had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people …

Pope Francis on Friday said he was “concerned” about recent political rhetoric, cautioning against nationalism and saying that recent political speeches he’s heard “resemble those of Hitler in 1934.” “I am concerned because we hear speeches that resemble those of Hitler in 1934,” he told Italian outlet La Stampa. “’Us first. We … We … These are frightening thoughts.” … The pope previously has spoken out against he sees as a rising tide of nationalist views.

This recorded address by Adolf Hitler was distributed on 50,000 phonograph discs during Germany’s fiercely contested national parliament election campaign of July 1932, in which his National Socialist movement emerged as the country’s largest party. This “Appeal to the Nation” is similar in content and tone to many other speeches he gave in 1932, which for Germans was a year of mass unemployment, economic paralysis, and a broken, unresponsive political system. Translation of the complete text, with a foreword by Mark Weber, who examines how and why Hitler and his party won such broad popular support.

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a full-page “explainer” about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign targeting Israel under the headline, “Is BDS Anti-Semitic? A Closer Look at the Boycott Israel Campaign.” We were surprised — and pleased — that the piece was as fair as it was … The Times acknowledges that the demand by the BDS campaign for “full equality” for Palestinian citizens of Israel is threatening to Zionists … As the Times suggests, discrimination is embedded in Israel’s laws. The nation-state law is a “basic law,” said to be equivalent to a constitution. In Israel, Jews have more rights than the 20-25 percent of the population that is non-Jewish, and the millions of Palestinians under occupation are denied rights altogether.

… Boris Johnson’s claim to fame is his ardent support of getting Britain out of the European Union – aka Brexit … Brexit will transform Britain from a mid-level European power into a lonely, isolated appendage of the United States … Brexit will compel Britain to join a lopsided trade pact with the US that will see the further gutting of British industry and farming. Ever weaker British military forces, still one of Europe’s more potent, will become auxiliaries to US forces in America’s endless imperial wars … Britain struggled for three centuries to prevent the French, then the Germans, from dominating Europe. After Brexit – which is due to happen in October – the French and Germans will finally become Europe’s paramount powers. The EU will become a joint Franco-German condominium – unless, of course, Russia joins.

Those who believed America’s racial divide would begin to close with the civil rights acts of the 1960s and the election of a black president in this century appear to have been overly optimistic. The race divide seems deeper and wider than at any time in our lifetimes … Biden’s raising of the race issue is going to come back and bite him. Said Joe in Iowa: “Our president has more in common with George Wallace than George Washington.” Yet, that greatest of the Founding Fathers, George Washington, whom Biden invoked as his beau ideal of a leader, was a slave owner and demonstrably more of a white supremacist than Trump.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) — an international watchdog organization focusing on conflicts, the arms trade and nuclear proliferation — released a new report on Monday that claimed that Israel has nearly a hundred nuclear warheads, more than previously thought. The SIPRI report described Israel’s nuclear arsenal as follows: 30 gravity bombs capable of delivering nuclear weapons by fighter jets; an additional 50 warheads that can be delivered by land-based ballistic missiles; and an unknown number of nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles that would grant Israel a sea-based second-strike capability. In total, the SIPRI report estimated that Israel possesses between 80 and 90 nuclear weapons, an increase over previous years.

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Findley, who spent 22 years in Congress, has died at age 98. The State Journal-Register reports that Findley died Friday at a hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois. The newspaper reports that Findley supported civil rights, opposed the Vietnam War, advocated for agriculture and engagement with Palestinians and others in the Arab world. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin called Findley “an elected official who showed exceptional courage in tackling the age-old controversies in the Middle East.” Durbin, a Democrat, defeated Findley in 1982 for a House seat. Paul Findley was born in Jacksonville. He graduated from Illinois College and was a Navy lieutenant in the Pacific during World War II. He was elected to Congress in 1960.

A 92-year-old former SS private will go on trial this fall in Germany on 5,230 counts of being an accessory to murder, accused of helping the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp function, a Hamburg court said Thursday. Though he is not accused of any specific killing, Bruno Dey is charged as an accessory to those committed at Stutthof from August 1944 to April 1945 when he served as a guard there, because he helped prevent prisoners from escaping, according to the charges filed by Hamburg prosecutors. “Surveillance was necessary for the concentration camp to function, and the camp was made to kill people,” Hamburg state court spokesman Kai Wantzen said of the prosecution’s argument. When he was charged in April, prosecutors called him “a small wheel in the machinery of murder.”

While Stutthof is not as well-known as other wartime German camps, a close look at the history of this important internment center is revealing. The patterns of deportations to and from the camp, and the treatment of inmates, both Jewish and non-Jewish, disclose some surprising features … Most Stutthof victims apparently lost their lives in the grim and hastily organized evacuations by foot or sea. As harsh as they were, these evacuations were not part of any killing policy. In spite of its high death rate, Stutthof was not organized or operated as an extermination center, and the many deaths there were not the result of any systematic policy or program.

The State Department has updated the working definition of anti-Semitism detailed on its website to include comparisons between current Israeli policies and those of the Nazis. The move comes just two weeks after the House passed a resolution denouncing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and amidst consistent attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for introducing a bill that affirms the right to boycott foreign countries in the name of human rights. The revised definition was first spotted by Israeli-American Council chairman Adam Milstein.

With a national debt approaching $23 trillion and a trillion dollar deficit for this year alone, Congress last week decided to double down on suicidal spending, passing a two year budget that has the United States careening toward catastrophe. While we cannot say precisely when the economic crash will occur, we do know that it is coming. And last week Congress pounded down on the accelerator … Take what they call “national defense” spending. This is the misnomer they use to try and convince us that pumping trillions into the military-industrial complex will make us safe and free. Nothing could be further from the truth: probably ninety percent of the “defense” budget is aggressive militarism and welfare for the rich.

… In 2018, Baltimore was rated one of the “Rattiest Cities” in the nation by pest control company Orkin … In 2017, St. Louis had the nation’s highest murder rate, at 66.1 homicides per 100,000 residents. Baltimore came in second, with 55.8 murders per 100,000 people. The unpleasant fact is that predominantly black and Democratic-run cities have the worst records of public safety … In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s mathematics exam. In six other high schools, only one percent tested proficient in math … Citywide, only 15 percent of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test … Baltimore’s black students receive diplomas that attest that they can function at a 12th-grade level when in fact they may not be able to do so at a sixth-, seventh- or eighth-grade level.

… Boris Johnson, who assumed the UK premiership on July 24 following the resignation of Theresa May, will find that Britain’s protracted departure from the European Union (EU) is not the only source of simmering political tension as he begins his new role in the top job … Scotland’s pro-independence first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, reiterated nationalist calls for her UK constituent nation to be given the right to hold a second referendum on Scottish statehood … Prior to his assumption of office last Wednesday, opinion polls indicated that Scots would vote to leave Britain faced with a Johnson premiership. Combined with the prospect of the UK leaving the EU without a deal … Johnson’s rise to the top has put the Scottish independence debate firmly back on the British political agenda.

Nicola Sturgeon has warned Boris Johnson against blocking a fresh referendum on Scottish independence after a poll found a majority would now vote yes. The first minister [of Scotland] said it would be “undemocratic and unsustainable” for the Conservatives to oppose one after the poll by Lord Ashcroft put the yes vote at 52 percent, once don’t knows and non-voters were excluded. The poll, the first since Johnson’s visit to Scotland last week, also found that most Scots want a fresh independence referendum by 2021, once undecideds were excluded … In a further blow to pro-UK parties, it also found that a majority (52%) believed the yes campaign was likely to win, including a third of voters who rejected independence in the first referendum in 2014.

A century ago, in July 1919, Germany began its journey to the lowest reaches of Hades … The treaty signed on June 28 in the famous Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles palace, however, proved to be but a brief interlude of peace … Variously the Big Three or Four (U.S., United Kingdom, France, and sometimes Italy) sought to remake the world. They battled each other over their respective shares of the plunder, such as dividing Germany’s colonies and one-time Ottoman possessions, and concocting a system to hinder Berlin’s recovery … Most wars are stupid, unnecessary, and harmful to all sides. Some are the result of hubris … The centennial of the Versailles Treaty should remind us of the necessity of ending any conflict with a good peace — and, more importantly, of not starting a bad war.

It was June 28, 1919. Envoys, statesmen and diplomats from the world’s leading powers had gathered in Versailles Palaces’ famous Hall of Mirrors to ink the treaty that would formally end the First World War … Millions were dead, ancient dynasties were in ruins and political upheaval was sweeping the continent. The treaty, which was the result of six months of peace talks in Paris, was intended to do more than just formally resolve hostilities between the Allies and Germany, it would lay the foundation for a more peaceful and just world … The settlement ultimately failed to live up to its more noble ambitions and helped set the stage for a second even deadlier conflict 20 years later. To mark the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles, here are 11 key facts about the agreement and its impact on history.

If you have been wondering when the twenty Democratic aspirants for the presidency will begin a serious discussion of American foreign policy in the Middle East, where Washington has been bogged down in both current and impending wars, you are not alone. With the honorable exception of Tulsi Gabbard, no one seems keen to touch that particular live wire … In general the Jewish state continues to get a pass from both the press and politicians on all issues that matter … If that does not convince one that Congress has always been and continues to be Israeli occupied territory, check out some bills that have been working their way through the legislature.

… In the United States, Britain, and other Western countries, there has been much self-congratulation about how “we” won the Second World War. Yet, it was on the Eastern Front that the outcome of the war was decided. Had the best of Hitler’s forces not been fighting the Soviets, it is unlikely that there would have been any Allied victory in 1945, or anytime foreseeable thereafter … The Soviet Union proved to be a far more resilient opponent than predicted … Even through the last weeks of the war, German regular troops and officers were, on average, superior to their opponents in the East and the West. The Wehrmacht was simply overwhelmed by the forces of the Soviet Union and her Western Allies.

A gripping first-person memoir of soldierly sacrifice, heroism and fierce combat against numerically superior Soviet forces during World War II, by a charismatic Belgian writer and politician turned front-line infantryman. New, revised IHR edition, with index and photos. Here is the epic story of the Walloon Legion, a volunteer Belgian unit of the World War II pan-European SS force, as told – in absorbing prose — by the legendary Degrelle. Captures the grit, terror and glory of Europe’s crusade against Communism. (Also available from the IHR in both hardcover and paperback editions.)

… This isn’t the first time U.S. citizens have faced the threat of deportation — and its reality. It is estimated that about two million people, 60 percent of whom were American citizens of Mexican descent, were removed to Mexico as part of a Depression-era effort known as repatriation, according to the state of California, though the exact number is unknown and estimates range … At that time, Balderrama says, no distinction was made between Mexican immigrants arriving with documents (as a majority did), their children born in the U.S., and the Mexican-American families had who lived in the West and Southwest for generations before those territories became part of the U.S … It was in this atmosphere that the Herbert Hoover administration announced a series of deportation programs and began conducting large public raids in major cities.

As the cathedral of Notre Dame burned in Holy Week, Ben Shapiro took time out to tell his vast social media audience … that the cathedral was a “central monument to Western civilization, which was built on the Judeo-Christian heritage.” The term ‘Judeo-Christian’ is a favourite of Mr. Shapiro’s and appears with wearying frequency … It took an Israeli paper, Ha’aretz to point out the obvious yet unmentionable: “There certainly seems to be a degree of wilful blindness, if not crass manipulation, in Shapiro setting up 12th-14th century France, when Notre Dame was being built, as embodying `Judeo-Christian religious principles,’ when during that period France’s Jews were expelled (twice), their holy texts subject to public book burnings, and their property confiscated by the crown (several times).”

Winning the biggest tank battle in history – against Nazi Germany at Kursk in 1943 – remains a great source of pride for Russians. So it is not surprising that Russian officials have lashed out at Western historians for questioning the Red Army’s mastery of the battlefield. For decades Russians have seen no reason to doubt Soviet military historians, who portrayed the Battle of Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943 as a turning-point … But recently a British historian, Ben Wheatley, analysed German Luftwaffe aerial photos of the Prokhorovka battlefield … Wheatley’s assessment, backed by detailed study of battle reports and historical archives, is that on 12 July the Germans lost just five Panzer IV tanks at Prokhorovka, but decimated “kamikaze” Soviet tank formations, turning more than 200 Soviet tanks into smouldering wrecks.

… [In his book Uprising!, David Irving] discovered that the Communist regime and its terror machinery was viewed by the Hungarian people — and, it turns out, the U.S. State Department — as being almost entirely in the hands of Jews. A “Jewish Quartet” ruled the country … He cites the work of an American sociologist, Jay Schulman, who interviewed many Hungarian refugees after the events of 1956 and found that “the Communist leaders were perceived as Jews by almost 100 percent of the people we have seen.” … Uprising! is vintage Irving. Once again, the conclusions he draws after years of diligent research challenge critics to revise long-accepted interpretations.

According to a just published report in the Atlantic and a previous article by a former CIA officer, an Israeli-born individual is at the center of U.S. policies targeting Iran. The Atlantic reports that financial sanctions are the “key tool” the United States has been using against Iran during “the past three presidential administrations.” And Treasury official Sigal Mandelker “is the one with her hand on the lever.” … In 2017 Mandelker was named Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. As we will see, this office was created at the behest of Israel partisans. It provides a powerful position from which to direct policies … It appears that Mandelker is or was an Israeli citizen who was born in Israel.

… Most of America’s punitive actions against Iran are taking place in a world not physical but financial. Sanctions are the key lever the United States uses against what it sees as the Islamic Republic’s provocative behavior — especially for the past three presidential administrations running, but never more so than in this one. And the Treasury official Sigal Mandelker is the one with her hand on the lever … It’s Mandelker, and the office she oversees as the undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, doing much of the actual execution … She takes it personally as a child of Holocaust survivors, and has spoken publicly about the 1940s-era Treasury Department’s role in freezing Nazi assets around the same time her parents were hiding in Eastern Europe.

… The Jewish Museum and Center of Tolerance [in Moscow] might just be the single best museum that I have ever visited … First, visitors are treated to a propagandistic 4D film – importantly, one with excellent production values – on themes such as the Jewish Covenant with God, the Promised Land of Israel, and the evil Pharaoh … It sets the tone for the rest of the visit, invoking pride amongst Jews and sympathy for the Jewish experience amongst Gentiles … This patriotic, semi-mystical approach is the universal foundation to instilling a sense of pride for the nation … There are museums about Jewish culture, history, and especially the Holocaust sprinkled all over the world’s leading metropolises. This is one of several factors that give Jews cultural or “soft” power far in disproportion to their demographic and even economic heft.

… Many noted American conservatives — journalists, former diplomats and retired and occasionally on-duty military officers, and some right-wing historians and political scientists — criticized the atomic bombing. They frequently contended it was unnecessary, and often maintained it was immoral and that softer surrender terms could have ended the war without such mass killing … Yet today, this history of early anti-A-bomb dissent by conservatives is largely unknown … The strongest postwar criticism of the atomic bombing by a prominent American ex-military leader probably came from Admiral William Leahy, a conservative who had also been a top military adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.

This newspaper described the ebb and flow of the war in considerable detail. Censorship was in operation, but the Nippon Times offered voluminous coverage in English based on statements by the Imperial authorities, reports by vernacular Japanese newspapers and foreign news agency dispatches, archival records show … “New-type bombs were used by the small number of Superforts that raided Hiroshima on Monday morning, causing considerable damage to the city quarters,” the newspaper said on Aug. 9 [1945], citing an Imperial Headquarters statement.

A letter sent by National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Emmer to party members identified three “left-wing radicals” that he says “bought control of Congress for the Democrats.” They are all Jewish. Emmer represents Minnesota’s Sixth District in the US House of Representatives … The letter employs the anti-Semitic trope that rich Jews use their money for power and control. The three men have been targeted with the same accusation by several Republican and conservative figures, including former House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Democratic freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota in a tweet earlier this year suggested that the pro-Israel lobby had bought its influence on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) accused billionaires George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer of being “left-wing radicals” who have “bought control of Congress for the Democrats.” Soros and Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York, are Jewish. Steyer’s father is Jewish, and his mother is Episcopalian. Steyer is running for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which funds and supports Republican incumbents and first-time congressional candidates, stated the anti-Semitic trope in an NRCC letter that apparently circulated in March …

As you watch the presidential election unfold, I thought you might find it useful to read the qualities of a good leader as listed by an ancient Chinese emperor … He lists the following qualities necessary for good governance: respect for those with wisdom and virtue; caring for the people as if they were your own children; promoting the development of industry; and establishing friendly relations with people abroad … The four things a ruler must never do. He must never rule with falsehoods and lies. He must never forget public duties and responsibilities and instead pursue personal interests and desires. He must never lack restraint and self-control. He must never be materialistic, extravagant and conceited. … So there you have a few criteria by which to judge the candidates.

… Throughout American history, presidents have uttered comments, issued decisions and made public and private moves that critics said were racist, either at the time or in later generations. The presidents did so both before taking office, and during their time in the White House … Democrat Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in 1963 after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and sought to push a civil rights bill amid demonstrations by African Americans … But according to tapes of his private conversations, Johnson routinely used racist epithets to describe African Americans and some blacks he appointed to key positions. His successor, Republican Richard Nixon, also regularly used racist epithets while in office in private conversations.

… Events across the nation marked the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth [Feb. 12, 2009], celebrating a man widely seen as the greatest US president — the secular saint who redeemed America’s original sin of slavery … Despite his visceral hatred of slavery, Mr Yacovone says, Lincoln – like the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries — never believed in the equality of races. “He supported enactment of the anti-fugitive slave law, he supported exclusion of black jurors and all basic civil rights,” Mr Yacovone says.

… Raising a family in the city is just too hard. And the same could be said of pretty much every other dense and expensive urban area in the country. In high-density cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., no group is growing faster than rich college-educated whites without children … Today’s cities, however, are decidedly not for children, or for families who want children … Cities have effectively traded away their children, swapping capital for kids. College graduates descend into cities, inhale fast-casual meals, emit the fumes of overwork, get washed, and bounce to smaller cities or the suburbs by the time their kids are old enough to spell. It’s a coast-to-coast trend …

Hiroshima marked the 74rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city with its mayor renewing calls for eliminating such weapons and demanding Japan’s government do more. Mayor Kazumi Matsui raised concerns in his peace address Tuesday about the rise of self-centered politics in the world, and urged leaders to steadily work toward achieving a world without atomic weapons … He urged the younger generations never to dismiss the atomic bombings and the war as a mere events of history, but think of them as their own, while calling on the world leaders to come visit the nuclear bombed cities to learn what happened … Prime Minister Shinzo Abe acknowledged widening differences between nuclear and non-nuclear states.

America’s leaders understood Japan’s desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender — that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place — the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives. … General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: “The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war.”

… Since the last “good war,” a debate has ensued over the moral legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons, particularly against civilians. The critics hold that it is a crime to incinerate civilians en masse; defenders commonly claim that the bombing was necessary to bring the war to a close, thereby saving countless American lives. Most of those who make this claim do so in earnest. The problem is that this defense is both historically false, and taken to its logical conclusion, extremely dangerous … The U.S. War Department and related agencies that specialized in producing hate propaganda and lies developed specifically racialist attacks on the Japanese.

Today [August 6] is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

On August 2, 1939, one month before the outbreak of World War II, Albert Einstein, the famous German-born physicist, signed a two-page letter to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt that would help bring the US into the nuclear arms race and change the course of history … The letter warned Roosevelt that “extremely powerful bombs of a new type” could be created in light of this discovery – and that these bombs would be capable of destroying entire ports and their surrounding areas … So crucial was Einstein’s letter that the investing legend Warren Buffet told students at Columbia University in 2017 that “if you think about it, we are sitting here, in part, because of two Jewish immigrants who in 1939 in August signed the most important letter perhaps in the history of the United States.”

The world changed forever when a US bomber dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima 70 years ago. The Americans said they took the drastic step to put an early end to World War II and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers, but this official narrative is now being overturned … Many historians say the bombings did not lead to the Japanese surrender, and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan two days later was a bigger shock …. America believed the shock and awe of the devastating power of the new bombs would force Japan into surrender, but experts say inside Japan it was viewed differently. The Americans had already destroyed 66 Japanese cities with a massive fire bombing campaign. In just one night, 100,000 civilians were killed in Tokyo.

The German magazine Der Spiegel has found itself embroiled in a new antisemitism scandal after the weekly published an issue depicting contemporary Jews in Germany as ultra-Orthodox Eastern European Jews with side locks. The Hamburg-based magazine was also accused of spreading Nazi propaganda … Richard Grenell, the US Ambassador to Germany, who has waged a robust campaign to combat antisemitism in Germany in particular and in Europe in general, told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday: “Sadly, we are not surprised that they [Spiegel] are continuing to be antisemitic and anti-American.” The German Jewish community’s leveling of a second allegation of antisemitism against Spiegel within weeks is unprecedented.

A recent article in German weekly Der Spiegel makes anti-Semitic accusations against Jewish organizations in the country that work to promote the struggle against the hatred of Jews and the recognition of Israel’s positions. The report accuses two organizations … of using “dubious methods” to wage a “focused campaign” aimed at changing Germany’s Middle Easy policies to better conform to those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government … According to the report in Der Spiegel, the aforementioned organizations have ties to the [Israeli] Strategic Affairs Ministry’s international campaign against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and acted “aggressively” to promote the decision by the Bundestag to define BDS as anti-Semitic and call to withhold government funding from organizations with ties to the anti-Israel movement.

The leading political magazine in Germany, Der Spiegel, published last month a three-page article headlined ‘’Lobbying in the Bundestag: How two organizations control Germany’s Middle East policy’’. According to this article, written by a team of six journalists, two organizations based in Germany – Values Initiative and The Middle East Peace Forum (Naffo) – are “controlling German Middle East policy.” The publication of the article on Jewish-Zionist influence followed the vote by the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, of a resolution condemning BDS, the anti-Israel Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions campaign as being antisemitic and seeking the destruction of the Jewish state … Der Spiegel claimed that members of parliament did “not want to reject the resolution out of fear of being labeled an antisemite.”

It appears that President Trump and Congress have reached a deal to increase the debt limit and a two-year budget that will substantially increase the yearly federal deficit. Besides throwing aside any semblance of budget restraint by either political party, it will create $1 trillion plus budget deficits for as long as the eye can see. Trump likes to claim that everything he does is the largest by any President. He is going to get his “wish” with the budget deficit since they are on course to be the biggest in an expanding economy. Between the 2018 tax cuts and the increase in spending for 2020 and 2021 it will push the accumulated deficits to be the largest ever over a four-year timeframe. And God help the U.S. when a downturn in the economy hits and the deficits balloon beyond any current projection.

… In the years that followed, Baltimore, by most standards, became a worse place. In 2017, it recorded 342 murders — its highest per-capita rate ever, more than double Chicago’s, far higher than any other city of 500,000 or more residents and, astonishingly, a larger absolute number of killings than in New York, a city 14 times as populous. Other elected officials, from the governor to the mayor to the state’s attorney, struggled to respond to the rise in disorder, leaving residents with the unsettling feeling that there was no one in charge … It takes remarkable fortitude to remain an optimist about Baltimore today. I have lived in the city for 11 of the past 18 years, and for the last few I have struggled to describe its unraveling to friends and colleagues elsewhere.

Remote, hidden in dense forest, protected by nearby lakes and marshes – the Wolf’s Lair in Poland was a secure headquarters for Adolf Hitler in World War Two. So much so, that the Nazi dictator spent 850 days at the vast, secret complex in 1941-1944, before withdrawing to his Berlin bunker. Now the Polish state’s Srokowo Forest District, which manages the site, is giving the Wolf’s Lair a big makeover to pull in more tourists. … Critics argue that insensitive “attractions”, such as amateurish re-enactments with people wearing Nazi uniforms, could turn it into a sort of ghoulish “Disneyland” … Hitler spent most of the war at this HQ – in what was then East Prussia – from June 1941 to November 1944; There were about 200 installations, including two airstrips and a railway station, protected by minefields and anti-aircraft guns.

The head of a leading Holocaust charity has repeated a call for the government to consider legislation prohibiting the sale of Nazi memorabilia, after a UK auction house sold a Nazi artefact for tens of thousands of pounds last Friday … Its asking price was between £3,500-£4,000 but it sold for around ten times that – £36,500 [US $44,242] … The medal was presented to Graf in 1933, months after the Nazis took power in Germany, to commemorate a decade since the Nazis’ failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch. In the middle of the failed coup attempt, an altercation between Nazi paramilitary units and armed police led to shots being fired, killing sixteen Nazis and four policemen. Graf, an amateur wrestler, had shielded Hitler with his own body, taking five bullets.

… Ronen Bergman’s book, “Rise and Kill First,” was released in late 2018 to what, considering the inflammatory subject, was relatively little fanfare. While this might seem surprising, on reading this important chronological documentary of the inception and development of Israel’s worldwide assassination program it becomes clear that this book does provide a unique, very detailed and accurate history of Israel’s hundreds of extrajudicial killings over the past fifty plus years … What he presents is the result of seven years of his ongoing interviews of the scores of military and later political players who were the controllers of this seventy-five-year history of Israeli military development of domination and increased hegemony by assassination … In 1983 Israel next began approving targeted killings of foreign diplomats.

In this startling work, an eminent author presents evidence of collusion between US and Israeli intelligence in the murderous 1967 attack against the USS Liberty, a US naval surveillance vessel, and in maintaining a cover-up that has endured for more than 50 years. So intense and sustained was the attack – it lasted for nearly an hour and a half – and so specific was the aiming for the antennae and satellite dish on deck, that it was scarcely credible that Israel’s aggression was not deliberate. Based on interviews with more than 40 survivors, knowledgeable political insiders, and Soviet archives of the period, investigative writer Joan Mellen presents disturbing evidence of complicity between US and Israeli intelligence in the attack, and in maintaining the decades-old cover-up.

Israel’s chokehold over U.S. politics and politicians has been so powerful for so many decades that this obvious reality is routinely denied, a collective gagging of the truth that is itself a measure of how strong the Israeli grip is. The most potent and poignant example of how much American independence has been surrendered to Israel when it comes to events in the Middle East may be the contortions of cover-up that followed Israel’s attempt to sink the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War in 1967, killing 34 American seamen. The desire of virtually the entire U.S. political and media establishments was for this unpleasant incident to go away. No one, it seemed, wanted to hold Israel to account or to challenge its lame excuses about an inadvertent mistake.