Headlines

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) … The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group … Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” … It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros.

It is an understatement to say that Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America [by Chris Arnade], is an important book: it is a must-read … After seeing Arnade’s photos, included between chapters, and reading story after story of decline and disintegration — a homeless dad pushing dirty kids aimlessly around in a shopping cart; more ruined downtowns than you can count, some miles and miles from the nearest schlocky chain store; mass graves for dead homeless off Long Island — one wonders whether the United States really is a developed country. Many social scientists no longer think so.

America is regressing to have the economic and political structure of a developing nation, an MIT economist has warned. Peter Temin says the world’s’ largest economy has roads and bridges that look more like those in Thailand and Venezuela than those in parts of Europe. In his new [2017] book, “The Vanishing Middle Class”, reviewed by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Mr Temin says the fracture of US society is leading the middle class to disappear. The economist describes a two-track economy with on the one hand 20 per cent of the population that is educated and enjoys good jobs and supportive social networks. On the other hand, the remaining 80 per cent, he said, are part of the US’ low-wage sector, where the world of possibility has shrunk and people are burdened with debts and anxious about job security.

From her influential post at the Treasury Department, Sigal Mandelker has vowed to defend “our great partner, Israel” by sanctioning Iran. Her actions have resulted in FBI interrogations of US citizens who attended a conference in Iran … / Several US citizens have been questioned by the FBI and threatened with arrest for their participation in New Horizon, a public media conference held each year in Iran. The interrogations and threats are the result of orders apparently delivered by Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal P. Mandelker, a militantly pro-Israel lawyer … Mandelker’s actions against the US citizens who participated in New Horizon represent an under-acknowledged but significant escalation in the Trump administration’s strategy of “maximum pressure” to bring about regime change in Iran.

… Since he himself ventured to Riyadh in 2017— his first foreign trip — Trump has consistently sacrificed America’s national interests in catering to the preferences of the Saudi royal family … It was fear of precisely this kind of obsequious subservience to foreign nations and interests that prompted President George Washington to issue his famous 1796 Farewell Address … Washington’s words still resonate … Tragically the Trump administration’s Middle East policy illustrates both sides of the equation. The president exhibits just such “permanent, inveterate antipathies” against Iran and Syria and “passionate attachments” to Saudi Arabia and Israel. The result has been to badly distort U.S. policy and harm American interests.

While it’s seems axiomatic that most Americans suffer from historical amnesia, that’s not necessarily true for the U.S. military. And as America and Iran were sprinting towards a military confrontation last week, a recently retired senior U.S. military officer expounded on what he called “the bumbling, incompetent and feckless stupidity of it all.” … Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Yemen to destroy the Houthi rebellion (and reinstate the government of Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi) not only surprised the Obama administration, it was met with nearly open disdain by the U.S. military … Left unsaid, but implied in this assessment, is what the official was careful not to say: that despite all of America’s saber rattling and Mike Pompeo’s bluster, the U.S. is playing an increasingly weak military hand — and it’s only getting weaker.

… So who did it? In my view, the attacks were financed by private citizens in Saudi Arabia and organized from Germany and possibly Spain. All the hijackers came from states nominally allied to the US or its protectorates. Fifteen of the 19 were Saudis. Two came from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and one each from Egypt and Lebanon … Private nationalist groups in Saudi who bitterly opposed foreign domination of their country could very well have financed and organized 9/11. But, of course, Washington could not admit this. That would have brought into question the US occupation of Saudi. What’s also pretty clear is that Israel – at minimum – knew the attack was coming yet failed to warn its American ‘allies.’ Israel was the chief beneficiary of the 9/11 attacks – yet its bumbling Arab foes and bin Laden were blamed for this crime.

Three talks by three seasoned specialists at a special IHR meeting in Oct. 2016 provide informed perspective, each from a different angle, on Jewish-Zionist power in America and the world. Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor who has written extensively on the Jewish role in history and contemporary life, takes a close look at Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election campaign. Gilad Atzmon, who was born in Israel and now lives in Britain, reviews the Jewish role in Capitalism, Marxism, Communism, and other major intellectual-political trends in modern history. Mark Weber reviews the lives and careers of both MacDonald and Atzmon in his introductions of those two speakers. In his own address Weber provides an overview of Jewish-Zionist power and its enormous impact on American society and the world.

Whenever Israeli intelligence suffers defeats and failures it resorts to its past successes and the relationship between the Mossad and Hollywood and has proven to be invaluable for Israeli propaganda … Netflix has come up with “The Spy,” a series about Eli Cohen starring Sacha Baron Cohen … As these critics make clear, the entire premise of the Eli Cohen fictitious plot is a figment of the Mossad’s imagination: that Cohen penetrated deep into Syrian society and government … Elie Cohen was a failed spy who was not able to secure access to the government or the military of Syria, but who sent Syrian newspapers to Israel and ran what appeared to be a brothel in Damascus.

… In opposing and obstructing Iran’s nuclear program, it is America, and not Iran, that is acting outside the framework of international law. Iran has every right to a full civilian nuclear program that includes the domestic enriching of uranium … Any discussion of the Iran conflict must begin with the premise that Iran has the right to acquire equipment for a nuclear program that enriches uranium for civilian purposes … The international community was furious that the US thought it had the unilateral right to cancel what was not a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US but an agreement between the Iran and the world. It is not Iran that is acting illegally as a rogue nation in defiance of the world: it is the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump has lost faith that his campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran will bring that country to its knees. Trump’s firing last week of John Bolton, the latest of the administration’s national security advisers, signaled as much. And the recent attacks on Saudi oil sites suggest that Bolton’s approach, which was supposed to bring about Iranian capitulation, may instead have begotten Iranian counter-escalation and a short brush with war … Moreover, Tehran understands Trump’s ultimate objective as regime change, followed by Iran’s total capitulation … If Washington hopes to negotiate with Iran, it will need to convince Tehran that it’s looking for a deal rather than capitulation, and that the United States’ signature counts for something.

If U.S. troops pull out of the Persian Gulf and stops meddling in the region’s affairs, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, then there is a chance for peace in the Middle East. “The security of our region shall be provided when American troops pull out,” said Rouhani. “Security shall not be supplied with American weapons and intervention.” The Iranian leader added that the U.S would also have to drop the sanctions put on Iran in violation of the Obama-era nuclear deal in order to return to the negotiating table. Rouhani said the sanctions were an attempt at a “silent killing of a great nation … particularly women and children.” “The Iranian nation will never, ever forget and forgive these crimes and these criminals,” Rouhani said.

When Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad arrived at Columbia University on Wednesday, he was no doubt fully aware that his appearance had generated controversy. Major Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, had condemned the Ivy League school for giving such an exalted platform to someone who has called Jews “hook-nosed,” said that they “rule the world by proxy” and questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. He once said he was “glad to be labeled anti-Semitic.” But when given an opportunity to apologize or express remorse — at a college with more than 10,000 Jewish students — the Malaysian leader was defiant.

The prime minister of Malaysia defended his past anti-Semitic statements and questioned the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in a speech at Columbia University Wednesday. “I am exercising my right to free speech. Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews, when a lot of people say nasty things about me, about Malaysia, and I didn’t protest, I didn’t demonstrate?” Mahathir Mohamad said in response to a question from an audience member. Mohamad, who was speaking at the college’s World Leaders Forum, has called Jews “hook-nosed,” said they “rule the world by proxy” and questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. He also has said that he is “glad to be labeled anti-Semitic.” The 94-year-old leader returned last year as prime minister of the southeast Asian country after serving from 1981 to 2003.

House Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee said on Thursday that over 60 alleged hate groups, mostly socially conservative organizations, anti-immigration entities, and religious groups, should be stripped of their tax-exempt status. Some of the bigger organizations on the list include the fundamentalist Protestant group American Family Association … The groups [including the Institute for Historical Review] were designated as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that itself is controversial and whose founder was fired this year for misconduct. The Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee held a hearing Thursday focused on “How The Tax Code Subsidizes Hate” …

The “OK” hand gesture, a mass killer’s bowl-style haircut and an anthropomorphic moon wearing sunglasses are among 36 new entries in a Jewish civil rights group’s online database of hate symbols used by white supremacists and other far-right extremists. The Anti-Defamation League has added the symbols to its online “Hate on Display” database, which already includes burning crosses, Ku Klux Klan robes, the swastika and many other of the most notorious and overt symbols of racism and anti-Semitism. The New York City-based group launched the database in 2000 to help law enforcement officers, school officials and others recognize signs of extremist activity. It has grown to include nearly 200 entries.

… The cold, hard reality is that the United States lost the war in Afghanistan. All we are debating — whether in talks with the Taliban or in op-ed pages back home — is the size and shape of the fig leaf designed to conceal a major strategic failure, after 18 years of war, thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars squandered. To be clear, the Afghan debacle is not, strictly speaking, a military defeat. The Taliban never vanquished the U.S. military in a large-scale clash of arms, or caused its forces there to collapse. Instead, it is a defeat in the Clausewitzian sense —18 years of war and “nation building” did not produce the political aims that U.S. leaders (both Republicans and Democrats) had set for themselves. The reason is fairly simple: Afghanistan’s fate was never going to be determined by foreigners coming from 7,000 miles away.

A look at lies and deceit in the two world wars. Fantastic stories about German atrocities in World War I were promoted to mobilize public opinion in the US, Britain and France. In World War II, the disastrous British evacuation of Dunkirk was portrayed as a great success. Another durable propaganda myth is the story of “merciless” German bombing of Coventry. Actually, it was the British who first began indiscriminate bombing of civilians. As historian Phillip Knightley points out, German news reports about the war were generally more accurate and reliable than those of the Allies.

… President Trump likely understands that a US war on Iran will be his undoing as president .. According to a Gallup poll just last month, only 18 percent of Americans were in favor of military action against Iran. Seventy-eight percent of Americans – including 72 percent of Republicans – want the president to pursue diplomatic efforts over war. Iran has made clear that any attack on its territory will trigger a total war. The Middle East would be engulfed in flames and the US economy would be in the tank … The message to Trump is pretty clear – war with Iran would be deeply unpopular – and it seems clear he understands the message … Attempting to placate the neocons is a fool’s errand, because they are never satisfied even up to and including war. The tide is turning in America – and even in Washington – against Saudi Arabia.

One of the most vexing questions in African-American history is whether free African Americans themselves owned slaves. The short answer to this question, as you might suspect, is yes, of course … R. Halliburton shows that free black people have owned slaves “in each of the thirteen original states and later in every state that countenanced slavery” … And for a time, free black people could even “own” the services of white indentured servants in Virginia as well … The numbers of slaves owned by black people over all was quite small by comparison with the number owned by white people … The percentage of free black slave owners as the total number of free black heads of families was quite high in several states …

… In a blog post on Tuesday [Sept. 3], YouTube said it had removed more than 100,000 videos and over 17,000 channels for violating its hate speech rules in April through June, which is five times more than it removed in the previous three months. It also took down over 500 million comments over hate speech. YouTube attributed the increase to its recent efforts to counter the proliferation of hate content. In June, the company updated its hate speech policy to include a ban on supremacist content and the removal of videos that deny well-documented atrocities, such as the Holocaust, and the 2012 shooting rampage at Sandy Hook elementary school … YouTube has also flip-flopped on content decisions … YouTube didn’t provide a clear explanation as to its decision-making process …

YouTube says it has removed more than 17,000 channels for hate speech, representing a spike in takedowns since its new hate speech policy went into effect in June. The Google-owned company calls the June update – in which YouTube said it would specifically prohibit videos that glorify Nazi ideology or deny documented violent events like the Holocaust – a “fundamental shift in our policies” that resulted in the takedown of more than 100,000 individual videos during the second quarter of the year. The number of comments removed during the same period doubled to over 500 million, in part due to the new hate speech policy.

On Sept. 22, 1979, an American Vela surveillance satellite recorded a double flash over the South Atlantic, and staff at the Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, recognized the familiar shape of a nuclear mushroom. According to a Foreign Policy report published precisely 40 years later, an analysis of the evidence suggests a clandestine nuclear test, “which only one country was willing and able to carry out: Israel,” and accuses the Jimmy Carter administration of a cover-up … The Carter administration was certain that South Africa’s nuclear weapons program was not advanced enough to test a nuclear weapon, left only one possible culprit – Israel. Which is why leading administration figures strongly recommended a cover-up, and the White House offered the public alternative explanations of the blast.

President John F. Kennedy worried that Israel’s nuclear program was a potentially serious proliferation risk and insisted that Israel permit periodic inspections to mitigate the danger, according to declassified documents published today … Kennedy pressured the government of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to prevent a military nuclear program, particularly after stage-managed tours of the Dimona facility for U.S. government scientists in 1961 and 1962 raised suspicions within U.S. intelligence that Israel might be concealing its underlying nuclear aims. Kennedy’s long-run objective, documents show, was to broaden and institutionalize inspections of Dimona by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In this secret internal memo of July 19, 1969, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger explains to President Richard Nixon the “dangers” of Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Kissinger notes that Israel had broken its pledge to the US not to “introduce” nuclear weapons in the region. He also notes that if the US tries to force Israel to live up to its commitment by withholding delivery of US warplanes, “enormous political pressure will be mounted on us.” This memo, declassified in 2007 after being “sanitized,” lays out US policy regarding the Zionist state’s nuclear arsenal: “While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.”

… “The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons,” Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser, warned Mr. Nixon in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969 … “This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us,” Mr. Kissinger said, “and may even have stolen from us.” … “On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us,” Mr. Kissinger went on.

A singer and Holocaust denier who was convicted of broadcasting “grossly offensive” songs about Jews has been jailed after violating her sentence by posting on her blog. Alison Chabloz, 55, made “at least 50” separate posts on her website, which was deemed to be in breach of the terms of the suspended sentence she received in May 2018 for her songs. Chabloz, from Charlesworth in Derbyshire, was convicted last year for writing, performing and publishing songs which mocked Jews and the Holocaust.

After just two days, the Yale Daily News website removed a banner display ad of the Institute for Historical Review. Although it was scheduled to run for a week, the site of the student newspaper of Yale University dropped the public service advertisement without notice or explanation on Friday, Sept. 20. The banner ad featured the IHR motto, “For a More Just, Sane and Peaceful World.” A viewer who clicked on it was taken to the home page of the IHR website. Last year an IHR public service billboard at two San Francisco transit stations prompted wide media attention … An inaccurate and hostile Washington Free Beacon report about the Yale ad is typical of mainstream media treatment of the Institute. To justify its labeling of the IHR as a “hate group,” the article approvingly quotes two highly partisan organizations.

Most Americans are opposed to the idea of a new US military conflict over the recent attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, a new poll has found, amid reports that Washington is not ruling out a military response to the attack which slashed the close US ally’s oil output by more than half. The survey by the Business Insider, released late Wednesday, found that only 13 percent of Americans would want to see a joint military response by the US and Saudi Arabia to the Saturday attack. Asked what role they think the US should take on in case of a military response by Saudi Arabia, 25 percent of the participants in the survey said “the US should remove itself entirely from the affairs of the region and let Saudi Arabia handle the issue itself.”

The stunning success of Saturday’s drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s main oil export processing center has brought the Iran crisis to a new and pivotal point. It has demonstrated that Iran has significant capability to pressure the United States to end its war on the Iranian economy, and has the will to bring it to the next level. A set of complex issues related to different Iranian and Houthi weapons systems and other forensic evidence surrounding the destruction at Abqaiq will be the center of attention in the coming days. The forensic evidence presented by the administration may be weak or persuasive, but in either case, it would be a strategic mistake for those who oppose the war in Yemen and America’s involvement in it to make this the story.

The drone attack on Saudi Arabia oil facilities on September 14 is jolting the entire Middle East, the latest incident in a months-long battle between the Trump Administration and Iran … Let’s not forget that the Trump Administration started this low-level war by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear accord. The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to ratify the agreement, so the U.S. stands in violation of UN resolutions and international law … Remember, there is no legal authority whatsoever for Pompeo’s threats other than the unilateral US sanctions that are themselves a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, which the UN Security Council had passed unanimously, and is thus violating international law.

A Dutch museum has banned visitors from taking photos at a controversial exhibition of designs from Hitler’s Nazi regime to stop them being “interpreted the wrong way.” The crowds at the Design Museum in Den Bosch — which has been sold out since “Design in the Third Reich” opened earlier this month … 277 articles ranging from a 1940s Volkswagen Beetle to statues of Hitler’s favorite sculptor Arno Breker, propaganda posters, and films by Nazi director Leni Riefenstahl … The exhibition’s opening prompted protest from left-wing and anti-fascist groups … Extraordinary measures had been taken, including banning photography inside, posting extra staff and only allowing 50 visitors entry at a time … Two years in the making, the museum had intensive talks with Den Bosch’s local Jewish community as well as organisations representing Jews …

Vinnytsia massacre. A series of executions of thousands of citizens of the city of Vinnytsia and its surrounding area, perpetrated in 1937–8 by the NKVD during the Yezhov terror. The massacre was not the only action of its kind; many were carried out by the Soviet state security in prisons throughout the Ukrainian SSR. But the Vinnytsia massacre gained particular notoriety because of the extent to which it was made public. In an attempt to discredit the previous Soviet regime by highlighting the atrocities it had perpetrated, the German occupational forces, following the lead of eyewitnesses, exhumed the bodies of the massacre’s victims between May and July 1943 … It was reported that a total of 9,439 bodies (including 169 women) were recovered. Most of the victims had been shot in the back of the head; some had been buried alive.

A wartime German film report on the Vinnytsia massacre — mass killings of mostly ethnic Ukrainians by the Soviet secret police. Shown here are mass graves in and near the Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia that were discovered during the German occupation of Ukraine in 1943. An international commission of medical specialists carried out a detailed forensic investigation of the site and the remains of the victims. More than 9,000 bodies were recovered. This film report is from the weekly newsreel, “Die Deutsche Wochenschau,” of July 21, 1943. German-language narration. Runtime: 1:16 mins.

… Amidst historic U.S.-Iran tensions, Beijing is doubling-down on its strategic partnership with Tehran, ignoring U.S. efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic from global markets. Following an August visit by Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Beijing, the two countries agreed to update a 25-year program signed in 2016, to include an unprecedented $400 billion of investment in the Iranian economy – sanctions be damned. The capital injection, which would focus on Iran’s oil and gas sector, would also be distributed across the country’s transportation and manufacturing infrastructure. In return, Chinese firms will maintain the right of the first refusal to participate in any and all petrochemical projects in Iran, including the provision of technology, systems, process ingredients and personnel required to complete such projects.

… The Iranians know that there is no appetite in Europe for a U.S. war or even a U.S. military strike … The Europeans are eager to restart trade with Iran. They are not interested in Trump’s froth. Nor are the Turks, whose senior banking officials have met with the Iranians to discuss how to reestablish trade outside the U.S. orbit … Even the British, embroiled in their Brexit mess, are not eager for war … There are no allies for Trump apart from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates: This is a Coalition of the Foolish … If you want to identify the most reckless powers in our world today, look no further than Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America.

President Donald Trump does not want war with Iran. America does not want war with Iran. Even the Senate Republicans are advising against military action in response to that attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities … If neither America nor Iran wants war, what has brought us to the brink? Answer: The policy imposed by Trump, Pompeo and John Bolton after our unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Our course was fixed by the policy we chose to pursue. Imposing on Iran the most severe sanctions ever by one modern nation on another, short of war, the U.S., through “maximum pressure,” sought to break the Iranian regime and bend it to America’s will … A more fundamental question arises: If the United States was not attacked, why is it our duty to respond militarily to an attack on Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia is once again a radioactive political football in the U.S., and President Donald Trump can’t resist grabbing it. In a series of tweets this weekend, Trump indicated that Iran is behind the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities and that the United States will respond after hearing from the Saudi government “under what terms we would proceed.” His implication — that the royal family in Riyadh will dictate U.S. actions — prompted fury in Washington, where the Saudis have faced an increasingly hostile climate in recent years, especially in Congress and even among some of Trump’s fellow Republicans … Saudi Arabia’s reputation in Washington is arguably worse now than it has been in nearly two decades …

In the early morning hours of July 4, 1984, the offices of the Institute for Historical Review in Torrance, southern California, were destroyed in a devastating arson attack … For a long time the perpetrators’ identity remained a mystery. It was only 18 years later that responsibility for the attack was publicly and authoritatively established … Based on its investigation of the crime, the report notes, in December 1984 the Torrance Police Department submitted the case to the District Attorney’s office for criminal complaints against Irv Rubin, Earl Krugel, Michael Canale and Danny Nichols on arson and conspiracy charges. But no arrest was ever made.

Billions of birds have vanished from North American skies over the past five decades, a new study has found — and scientists say it is a sign of a major ecological crisis. The bird population in the United States and Canada has plummeted by nearly three billion birds, or 29 percent, since 1970, according to a sweeping study published Thursday in the journal “Science.” The researchers say the drop points to a “widespread ecological crisis” likely fueled by several factors — including the destruction of bird habitats and the widespread use of pesticides — that are made worse by climate change … “For the first time, the results also showed pervasive losses among common birds across all habitats, including backyard birds.”

Rome was not built in a day and the ‘most accurate’ model of Ancient Rome is testament to this as it took archaeologist Italo Gismondi 35 years to build. The Plastico di Roma imperiale (model of imperial Rome) was actually commissioned by Mussolini in 1933 and is so realistic that a few shots of it were used in the film Gladiator. The model can be viewed today in the Museum of Roman Civilisation in Rome, Italy. … Roman cities were laid out so efficiently that it can also teach us more and inspire us about infrastructure in modern society … Gismondi kept adding to his model of 4th century AD Rome until three years before his death at the age of 87. He made it all from alabaster plaster, with metal and plant fibre reinforcements … It was based on a series of 46 maps that detail ancient Rome in very precise detail.

Over the centuries, their name became so interchangeable with destruction that it became its synonym. But it turns out the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that managed to take over Rome in 455, may not deserve that connotation … The sack of the Roman capital made history books, but was not the violent event many assume. Though the Vandals were considered heretics by the early Church, they negotiated with Pope Leo I, who convinced them not to destroy Rome. They raided the city’s wealth, but left the buildings intact and went home. Years of clashes followed … Their kingdom had ended, but their legacy never did. To this day, “vandal” is associated — perhaps unfairly — with the group’s successful sack of Rome.

… You do not have to walk far in Los Angeles to see people sleeping rough. Many spend their nights in temporary shelters, or other places not meant for human habitation — on the street, in an abandoned building, or a transport hub. The number of homeless people in Los Angeles has grown by 33 percent over the past four years. Every night, nearly 60,000 Los Angeles County residents are homeless, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has found … Homeless people are now seen in nearly all neighbourhoods and business districts throughout Los Angeles. This was not the case a decade ago, when most of the homeless population was contained in an area known as Skid Row.

The Saturday attack on Saudi oil facilities, which took 5.7 million barrels of oil per day offline, is the escalation that wasn’t supposed to happen. Now that it has happened, we enter perilous new terrain. America has blamed Iran and hinted at some sort of retaliation. Iran has denied responsibility, while the [Yemen] Houthis gladly take it. There are conflicting reports of where the missiles or drones were launched from … Trump is in a tight spot of his own making, with neither escalation nor retrenchment looking to be attractive options … Trump’s renunciation of the Iran nuclear deal is mostly about Israel and its perceived security requirements … Trump has threatened retaliation, but he surely does not want a big war with Iran. His supporters definitely do not want a war with Iran. Americans in general are opposed to a war with Iran.

… With the spectacular attack on Abqaiq, Yemen’s Houthis have overturned the geopolitical chessboard in Southwest Asia – going as far as introducing a whole new dimension: the distinct possibility of investing in a push to drive the House of Saud out of power … Houthi striking capability – from drone swarms to ballistic missile attacks – has been improving remarkably for the past year or so … Even before Abqaiq, the Houthis had already engineered quite a few attacks against Saudi oil installations as well as Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports … So we’re back to the realistic bottom line, which has been stressed by not only Moscow and Beijing but also Paris and Berlin: US President Donald Trump gambled big time, and he lost. Now he must find a face-saving way out. If the War Party allows it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu skillfully “played” US President Donald Trump by plying him with inaccurate information, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson said. Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political life after close elections, was “a bit Machiavellian” and would share “misinformation” with the United States, according to Trump’s former top diplomat. Tillerson, who was fired by Trump last year, made the observations during a forum Tuesday at Harvard University as reported by The Harvard Gazette, the university’s official news outlet. “In dealing with Bibi, it’s always useful to carry a healthy amount of skepticism in your discussions with him,” he was quoted as saying, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

The United States has added at least 2,400 more troops to the Middle East in response to tensions with Iran between May and September 2019. As of September 2019, there were over 60,000 U.S. troops deployed in and around the Persian Gulf. This number includes forces positioned in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Gulf countries. In terms of military hardware, the Pentagon has sent additional Patriot missile batteries, B-52 bombers, and F-35 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The following are best estimates of U.S. forces positioned in the region drawn from publicly available sources.

Is white guilt a Christian affliction? Edward Gibbon would probably say so. Gibbon was the genius who wrote, in 1776, the 12 volumes that comprise “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” wherein he saddled nascent Christianity with the downfall of the Roman Empire, no less … Gibbon seems to point toward Christianity’s self-immolating, progressive, pathologically inclusive nature, remarking on the courting by early Christians of “criminals and women.” … To go by Gibbon, Christianity might be called the Social Justice movement of its day. Gibbon certainly seemed to suggest so … Before Gibbon, it was Voltaire, French philosopher and writer extraordinaire, whose historical analysis led him to view Christianity as having had a softening effect on Rome, culminating in its yielding to the invading barbarians.

As he threatened to bomb Iran at Saudi Arabia’s behest, President Donald Trump also intensified his battle with objective reality on Sunday, by railing against what he called “The Fake News” media for “saying that I am willing to meet with Iran, ‘No Conditions’.” Since there is video of Trump saying exactly that in June, and at a news conference last year, there are only two possible explanations here: The president is either suffering an alarming memory loss or flat-out lying … The president’s statement that he was standing by for instructions from the Saudi royals, “as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed,” prompted furious responses from Democrats like Rep. Ruben Gallego and Sen. Bernie Sanders …

Here we go again! Israel is caught red handed spying against the United States and everyone in Congress is silent, as are nearly all the mainstream media which failed to report the story. And the federal government itself, quick to persecute a Russian woman who tried to join the NRA, concedes that the White House and Justice Department have done absolutely nothing to either rebuke or punish the Israeli perpetrators … The reality of Israeli large-scale spying in the United States is indisputable. One might cite Jonathan Pollard, who stole more highly classified information than any spy in history. And then there were Ben-Ami Kadish, Stuart Nozette and Larry Franklin, other spies for Israel who have been caught and tried, but they are only the tip of the iceberg.

First of a four-part Fox News investigative report, by Carl Cameron, on Israeli spying on US telecommunication systems. This startling December 2001 report, produced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, attracted much attention at the time. It was later removed by Fox News. Runtime: 19:16 mins. “A defense intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said, `the Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies. It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target’.”

Israel has been caught spying in Washington again [May 2000], this time on the White House and other sensitive telephone systems. But Americans have to look and listen very hard to learn the details. The damage could be as great as that sustained during spy-for-pay Jonathan Jay Pollard’s blatant military codes, plans and secret-stealing rampage of the 1980s … Predictably, on the record the White House, Department of Justice and the FBI all are minimizing the damage, saying that although the investigation into Israeli eavesdropping on White House telephones “remains open,” no one has been charged because no crime can be proved. But off the record FBI officials have confirmed to journalists not only the espionage, but details about the operation and the perpetrators.

The U.S. government’s budget deficit increased by $169 billion to $1.07 trillion in the first eleven months of this budget year as spending grew faster than tax collections. The Treasury Department reported Thursday that the deficit with just one month left in the budget year is up 18.8 percent over the same period a year ago … The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting a deficit this year of $960 billion, compared to a 2018 deficit of $779 billion. Going forward, the CBO sees the annual deficit topping $1 trillion in 2020, and never falling below $1 trillion over the next decade … For this year, revenues are up 3.4 percent, but spending is up by 7 percent, nearly double the increase in revenues.

… The Nazi government implemented a number of policies which were for the good of their people and those of the future; many of these policies are now implemented by our own governments … Nazi Germany was the first country to ban vivisection [medical research on live animals] in the world … High ranking Nazis … were very concerned about animal conservation, particularly pertaining as to how animals were butchered. Most current laws in Germany, and indeed the world, are derived from the laws put forth by the Nazi Party … When the Nazis came to power in 1933, their concerns not only laid with the people, but with the animals native to Germany … The Nazis banned smoking in restaurants and public transportation systems, citing public health, and severely regulated the advertising of smoking and cigarettes.

Third Reich Germany was a world leader in public health policy and medical research. The regime’s “war on cancer,” for example, was the most vigorous anywhere, and included restrictions on the use of asbestos, bans on carcinogenic pesticides and food dyes, and restrictions on public smoking and cigarette advertising. Years ahead of their colleagues in the US, Third Reich researchers were the first to prove definitively that smoking was the major cause of lung cancer. Hitler’s Germany was also a pioneer in promoting healthier and better quality foods, environmentalism, holistic medicine, animal welfare, and healthier living generally.

The U.S. State Department announced on Thursday that Cherrie Daniels has been tapped to be its Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues. Founded in 1999, the Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues “develops and implements U.S. policy to return Holocaust-era assets to their rightful owners, secure compensation for Nazi-era wrongs, and ensure that the Holocaust is remembered and commemorated appropriately,” according to the State Department website. The special envoy will also work on State’s efforts to combat anti-Semitism, said department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus … The Trump administration has made Holocaust reparations a priority, as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised the issue with the Polish government in February.

Amid growing concerns over global anti-Semitism, a panel of experts convened at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on New York’s Upper East Side to discuss the “weaponization of anti-Semitism” and ways to combat it. At the event, which was hosted by the Bnai Zion Foundation, panelists began by discussed the sources of anti-Semitism: the Israel-hating radical left, the far-right as exhibited by white supremacist and Islamic extremists … Elan Carr, U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism … said the Trump administration is working on an “interagency process on anti-Semitism” that will unite the State Department, the Department of Education, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department to deal with an issue that has become graver and more prevalent.

The recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities by Yemeni Houthi forces demonstrate once again that an aggressive foreign policy often brings unintended consequences and can result in blowback … What is remarkable is that all of Washington’s warmongers are ready for war over what is actually a retaliatory strike by a country that is the victim of Saudi aggression, not the aggressor itself. Yemen did not attack Saudi Arabia in 2015. It was the other way around … The neocons want a US war on Iran at any cost … The only sensible way forward is for a rapid end to this four-year travesty, and the Saudis would be wise to wake up to the mess they’ve created for themselves. Whatever the case, US participation in Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen must end immediately, and neocon lies about Iran’s role in the war must be refuted and resisted.

The Cato 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey, a new national poll of 2,300 U.S. adults, finds that 71 percent of Americans believe that political correctness has silenced important discussions our society needs to have. The consequences are personal—58 percent of Americans believe the political climate prevents them from sharing their own political beliefs … A solid majority (59%) of Americans think people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions in public, even those deeply offensive to others. On the other hand, 40% think government should prevent hate speech. Despite this, the survey also found Americans willing to censor, regulate, or punish a wide variety of speech and expression they personally find offensive …

Last night fans of Peaky Blinders met the gangster drama’s latest villain – a fictionalised version of British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley … During the 1930s Mosley led Britain’s virulently anti-Semitic fascist movement, whose streetfighters – known as blackshirts – were notorious for their violence against Jews and left-wing opponents. He was on friendly terms with Mussolini. And Hitler was guest of honour at his second wedding … The British authorities definitely considered Mosley a threat. During World War Two he was interned as a suspected enemy sympathiser. It was widely assumed at the time that, had the Nazis successfully invaded the UK, he would have been installed as head of a pro-German puppet regime.

… This [‘fascist’ outlook] arose from the memory of comradeship in the trenches [of the First World War], uniting all classes in face of the machine-guns which struck down all irrespective of social class. It arose from his “socialist imperialism”; its dynamic thrust came from his synthesis of economic ideas; its method of government was inspired by Lloyd George’s inner cabinet, a government of action which had won the war of 1914-18 and which Mosley would transform into “a machinery of government” to solve the problems left by that war.

In German-occupied Prague, a disturbing exhibition of “souvenirs” captured during the Nazi invasion of the U.S.S.R. shows how one totalitarian regime sought to discredit the other. Occupied Prague at the time was ruled over by Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most ruthless Nazis of the Third Reich, who requested the exhibition’s transfer from Vienna to Prague. Inside the exhibition, which was open to the public daily from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. throughout March 1942, an entire village lane from Soviet territory had been transported from the fighting front and recreated to show the “gray misery” of life under Bolshevism.

Partial text of the booklet accompanying the 1942 exhibition life in the Soviet Union, organized by Germany’s National Socialist Party. The original German-language brochure is 48 pages, with numerous black and white photographs from the exhibition. Only a few of the photos are given here. A documentary film of the same title was issued to supplement the exhibition.

The controversy between Israel and Russia regarding airstrikes of Iranian targets in Syria and Iraq continues, despite the meeting Between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was reported on Friday by Independent Arabia. According to the report, Moscow has prevented three Israeli air strikes on three Syrian outposts recently, and even threatened that any jets attempting such a thing would be shot down, either by Russian jets or by the S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. The source cited in the report claims a similar situation has happened twice – and that during August, Moscow stopped an air strike on a Syrian outpost in Qasioun, where a S-300 missile battery is placed.

There have been several interesting developments in the United States government’s war on free speech and privacy … Following the Israeli model for blocking entry of anyone who can even be broadly construed as supporting a boycott, the United States now also believes it should deny admittance to anyone who is critical of US government policy, which is a reversal of previous policy that considered political opinions to be off-limits for visa denial. DHS, acting in response to pressure from the White House, now believes it can adequately determine hostile intent from the totality of what appears on one’s phone or laptop, even if the material in question was clearly not put on the device by the owner.

… The two-state solution has been put to death, and it actually happened long ago. What remains is one state, in which the only battle will be over the system of government. There’s no longer any real debate in Israel … The Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel, and the apartheid state arose in the Jordan Valley. If Netanyahu keeps his promise – and, as noted, we should hope he does – both Israelis and the world will know that the second apartheid state in history has been officially established. Then we’ll see how Israelis live with this, and especially how the world responds.

More than half of city school kids still can’t handle basic math or English, even though this year’s state exams scores ticked up slightly, according to state data released Thursday. While state officials lauded scoring increases, only 47.4 percent of city students in grades 3 to 8 scored at proficient levels in English and 45.6 percent made the grade in math, according to the numbers. The city’s overall English proficiency rate edged up by 0.7 percent from the prior year and math scores improved by 2.9 percent, the numbers show. The city’s Asian kids had the highest rate of math and English proficiency yet again, the data show. In math, 74.4 percent made the grade, followed by white students at 66.6, Hispanics at 33.2 and African Americans at 28.2.

… This is merely the latest iteration of a growing battle over history. Although the height of the frenzy over Confederate memories is over, this struggle is likely to go on for years … Frankly harder to justify is the veneration of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson was a vicious racist elected five decades after the Civil War. (He also took America into an unnecessary, murderous war in which America had no vital interests.) Roosevelt was a war-mongering imperialist who hardly hesitated in supporting genocidal wars against “inferior” peoples … Imagine if Germany today similarly celebrated Kaiser Wilhelm — after all, he was also an esteemed monarch defeated only by an overwhelming international coalition — or Adolf Hitler.

… Who really won the war? Certainly, the Soviets who, after losses in the millions from the Nazi invasion, ended up occupying Berlin, having annexed the Baltic states and turned Eastern Europe into a Soviet base camp … The Americans, who stayed out longest, ended the war with the least losses of any great power. Yet, America is a part of the West, and the West was the loser of the world wars of the last century. Indeed, the two wars between 1914 and 1945 may be seen as the Great Civil War of the West, the Thirty Years War of Western Civilization that culminated in the loss of all the Western empires and the ultimate conquest of the West by the liberated peoples of their former colonies.

How accurate is this hallowed portrayal of America’s role in World War II? As we shall see, it does not hold up under close examination … The three Allied leaders accomplished what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany, Italy and Japan of conspiring to achieve: world domination … Presidential deception to justify war did not start with George W. Bush. Americans who express admiration for the US role in World War II, and for Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential leadership, have little moral right to complain when presidents follow his example and lead the country into war by breaking the law, subverting the Constitution, and lying to the people.

The liberal international order, erected after the Cold War, was crumbling by 2019. It was flawed from the start and thus destined to fail. The spread of liberal democracy around the globe — essential for building that order — faced strong resistance because of nationalism, which emphasizes self-determination … Both liberalism and communism, in other words, are bent on transforming the world … At its core, liberalism is an individualistic ideology that places great weight on the concept of inalienable rights. This belief, which says that every individual on Earth has the same set of basic rights, is what underpins the universalistic dimension of liberalism … Mixing different peoples together, which is what happens when there are open borders and broad-minded refugee policies, is usually a prescription for serious trouble.

… After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States stood supreme in the world … Given this favorable position, the rational course of action was clear. America should have withdrawn from its global commitments. No threat faced us: why, then, did we need to police the world? Nevertheless, American commitments were maintained and extended. [Stephen] Walt [in his new book The Hell of Good Intentions] holds that this was not done to protect America but rather, to a large extent, for reasons of ideology … The pursuit of liberal hegemony rests on faulty theory and has led to bad results. The supporters of liberal hegemony thought that a liberal world order was self-evidently desirable, and that America had the power to impose it on nations that dared to resist …

… Southerners have the reputation of supporting U.S. wars … I remember with shame how many of us were foolishly led into supporting the Vietnam War. The antiwar movement was so arrogant and unpatriotic that it seemed natural to support the war. We should have thought further. We had become too much American and too little Southern … While others celebrated the glory of an aggressive U.S. and its supposed righteous mission in the world, these Southern critics were concerned with the effects on American republicanism and the Constitution of the drive for world power. It was a remnant of Jeffersonian sentiment, a sentiment of people for whom America was a people and not a theory.

In this headline-making work, a prominent French scholar delivers one powerful blow after another to the pernicious historical myths cited for decades to justify Zionist aggression and repression, including the Israeli legend of a “land without people for a people without land,” and the most sacred of Jewish-Zionist icons, the Holocaust extermination story. For financial gain, as an alibi for indefensible policies, and for other reasons, Jews have used what the author calls “theological myths” to arrogate for themselves a “right of theological divine chosenness.” The wartime suffering of Europe’s Jews, he contends, has been elevated to the status of a secular religion, and is now treated with sacrosanct historical uniqueness.

The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel’s behavior, one of the former officials said … The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest associates — though it’s not clear whether the Israeli efforts were successful.

According to the great military thinker, Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller, ‘the object of war is not victory. It is to achieve political goals.’ Too bad President Donald Trump does not read books. He has started economic wars against China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela without any clear strategic objective beyond inflating his ego as the world’s premier warlord and punishing them for disobedience. Trump’s wars are economic. They deploy the huge economic and financial might of the United States to steamroll other nations that fail to comply with orders from Washington. Washington’s motto is ‘obey me or else!’ … Trade sanctions are not making America great, as Trump claims. They are making America detested around the globe as a crude bully.

… Fuller was more than a brilliant thinker. Of inestimable help in publicizing ideas that demanded a revolutionary change in the conventional British military thinking of the time was Fuller’s gift — one might even use the word genius — for vivid, forceful and persuasive writing … Fuller’s renown is not merely as a military prophet and innovator, nor, obviously, is it due to his commitment to a short-lived political movement. He is remembered today primarily as a masterful writer of history, and as a historian who artfully described the underlying forces behind historical events.

… History shows that an incumbent power can hold on to certain privileges and power sources for a very long time even after a marked decline. America had a larger economy than the United Kingdom as early as 1870, but the pound continued to be the world’s most important currency for decades afterward. The dollar will not be replaced as the global currency anytime soon. At the same time, the tentative measures that countries are taking to reduce their dependency on the dollar show they are anticipating that a post-America era is in the making. This trend is bound to strengthen now that the U.S. is regarded as an increasingly fickle opponent and unpredictable ally.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a deeply controversial pledge on Tuesday to annex the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank if re-elected in September 17 polls. Palestinians immediately reacted by saying Netanyahu was destroying any hopes for peace, while his electoral opponents accused him of a cynical play for right-wing nationalist votes with polls only a week away. In his televised speech, the prime minister also reiterated his intention to annex Israeli settlements in the wider West Bank [Palestine] if re-elected. But he said he would do that in coordination with US President Donald Trump, whose long-awaited peace plan is expected to be unveiled sometime after the vote.

In a high-profile speech on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to annex a part of the West Bank called the Jordan Valley if he wins Israel’s upcoming election on September 17. “If I am elected I commit to annex the Jordan Valley. It is our eastern border, our defense wall,” the prime minister vowed. “Give me the mandate. No previous Israeli prime minister has proposed doing so.” The annexation is billed as a security measure, an essential move for Israeli to protect its heartland. In practice, though, it would mean seizing land that’s vital to any future Palestinian state’s success — effectively dismantling the peace process. It’s a truly radical pronouncement, a blaring statement that this Israeli government has no interest in a serious negotiated peace with the Palestinians.

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley and settlements in the West Bank if reelected would violate international law. “Such steps, if implemented, would constitute a serious violation of international law,” Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement … Netanyahu on Tuesday promised to quickly apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley if put back into office as he pitched voters ahead of the September 17 election. Netanyahu’s vow was roundly condemned by the Palestinians as well as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, with the EU saying it would not recognize any change to Israel’s borders that was not agreed to by both sides. The UN on Tuesday warned that the plan would have no “international legal effect.”

An exhibition of Nazi design has opened in the Netherlands to protests and a request for visitors to the museum not to take and share photographs for fear of the exhibits being glorified on social media. The Museum of Design in Den Bosch is showcasing sculpture by Adolf Hitler’s favourite artist, Arno Breker, a 1943 VW Beetle, photos and Leni Riefenstahl films from the era, in what is being billed as the first great exposition of the “Design of the Third Reich”. Running for five months, the exhibition has been criticised by the Association of Dutch Anti-fascists, which has called in vain for local authorities to intervene. As the museum opened, activists from the local communist party staged a small protest a few hundred metres from the institution’s front door.

Certain must-pass ideological litmus tests have arisen for the 25 declared candidates (so far) seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Perhaps chief among them is subscription to the belief that the American criminal-justice system is racist and overly punitive … None of the above claims advanced by the presidential hopefuls is correct — and acting on any of them would be disastrous … Not only are most prisoners doing time for serious, often violent, offenses; they’ve usually received (and blown) the second chance that so many reformers say they deserve … America’s incarceration numbers would be even higher if more perpetrators of serious crime were apprehended … Likewise, the racial disparities in our prison population are a function of racial disparities in serious criminal offending, not systemic bias.

… Last year, drug overdoses claimed more than 68,000 American lives and 47,000 of those deaths involved an opioid. Even though heroin, prescription opioids and synthetic opioids like fentanyl are receiving most of the attention, deaths from other drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine are inreasing. A new report from the RAND Corporation has shed light on just how many people use illicit drugs across America as well as how much they pay for them. In 2016 alone, people in the U.S. spent an estimated $146 billion on cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. Adding RAND’s figures together from 2006 to 2016 would mean total spending on illegal drugs over the course of the decade was nearly $1.5 trillion.

… According to filmmaker Séan Ó Cualáin, whose documentary Men At Lunch attempts to uncover the secrets of the famous “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photo taken in 1932, Matty and Sonny are two of the eleven immigrant workers taking a midair meal atop the nearly-completed RCA building at New York’s Rockefeller Center … A second, rarely-seen image captured on the same day may reveal why: “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” was in fact one of many staged photographs taken on September 20, 1932, as part of a publicity stunt set up by Rockefeller Center … Bringing a little more rain to the parade, The New York Times theorizes that the famous beam was probably not even dangling disastrously above open air, but that a completed floor of the RCA building waited just a few feet below.

For decades, the two-state solution has been the central pillar of the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus in Washington. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, every single U.S. administration has been committed, at least nominally, to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Yet the expiration of the two-state paradigm under Prime Minister Netanyahu and the lack of a clear alternative to take its place has kicked that pillar away, disordering the politics of Israel-Palestine in the United States … U.S. politicians and the major Jewish-led organizations that deal with Israel-Palestine have so far failed to adjust in response … And so, in the gap between their stated positions and the reality on the ground, confusion, hedging, and half-measures pervade.

Political correctness has gone too far and “exceeds common sense”, three quarters of Britons have said in a wide ranging study. More than half of people also said political correctness is “eroding the expression of Britain’s values and traditions” in a report by the LSE using findings from Opinium. In the report due to be published next week, 76 per cent of people agreed political correctness “sometimes goes too far and exceeds common sense” … Younger people were more likely to defend political correctness … In addition, 40 per cent of people said political correctness “helps to create a fairer society by enabling more citizens to feel comfortable and participate to their fullest extent”.

… After the Spanish-American War of 1898, William McKinley would make us an imperial power by annexing Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines, the last in a brutal war that cost 200,000 Filipino lives … How, then, did America acquire her vast territory? By revolution, purchase, invasions, annexations, war, theft and expulsions — of French, British, Mexicans, Spanish and Native Americans. Quite a record. While Trump’s diplomacy in the Greenland matter was not as deft as Seward’s in acquiring Alaska, the attitude exhibited would not be unfamiliar to many of the great men in our history. And the cancellation of Trump’s state visit to Copenhagen aside, this issue of Greenland’s future has been tabled. It is not going away.

The United States, says Weber, has changed from a republic focused on its own prosperity and well-being to a globally intrusive military power. This worldwide military presence reflects an entrenched American view that the US is a social-political model for all nations, and therefore has a right, based on perceived moral superiority, to intervene everywhere. He traces the evolution of this outlook from the fateful Spanish-American War of 1898, and the false pretexts and promises used since then to justify wars. Going to war to fight “evil” or “terrorism,” says Weber, is a recipe for endless strife and conflict. Video based on interview with Weber by Daniel Davis, host of the “Beyond 50” radio show. Runtime: 9:48 mins.

Feelings about the state of the country are primarily negative. Nearly seven in ten (69%) Americans report that, when thinking about what is going on in the country today, they generally feel a negative emotion, including feeling sad (29%), angry (20%), or fearful (20%). By contrast, less than one-quarter (23%) of Americans feel positive emotions, including less than one in five (17%) who say they are hopeful, and six percent who say are content … White Americans (18%) are more hopeful than Hispanic (13%) or black (12%) Americans, while black Americans are more likely than white Americans to say they are fearful (27% v. 19%) … Over the past year, Americans have grown more pessimistic about our ability to bridge political differences and address important national problems.

… A core trait of a good leader is to love the people you’re in charge of. The Han Dynasty text “Guiguzi” states, “One with talent but no kindness cannot command an army.” How a leader regarded those in his charge was among the key traits that separated sage kings from tyrants. It was the virtue that determined whether a military leader cared about how his choices affected the well-being of his men, and whether a ruler cared about how a policy affected the everyday lives of his people … Benevolent leaders also possess a broadness of mind — the ability to see the bigger picture and to guide people along a road that leads them to the best outcome … Benevolence was seen as going hand in hand with governance, and this was a common theme across many cultures.

A quick quiz: who said the following, the great interpreter of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville or the German dictator Adolf Hitler: … The person who said all of these things was of course Tocqueville, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was Hitler, for he made much the same points … National Socialist rhetoric and propaganda largely agreed with the form, if not the content, of Abraham Lincoln’s famous slogan of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” For the National Socialists, the Third Reich was a people’s regime in the truest sense … The fascists believed liberal democracy to be at best misguided and at worst a fraud … And anyway, the “liberal democracies” are actually dominated by the oligarchic and media elites who bribe politicians and shape public opinion.

This richly detailed work takes a boldly dissident look at the personality and historical role of Adolf Hitler. Prof. Stolfi reinterprets the known facts about the German leader to construct a convincing, realistic portrait of the man. Unlike most profiles, which are relentlessly hostile and focus on recounting his deeds in detail, this fascinating work seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of Hitler’s character, outlook and motives. It is a major mistake to compare Hitler to the typical politician or statesman of the modern age. Instead, Stolfi emphasizes, he should be understood as a world-historical religious figure or prophet. With dust jacket, 16 photographs, source notes, and index.

The “standard” biographies of Adolf Hitler are inadequate and fundamentally flawed, says American historian Russell Stolfi in a remarkable new book, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny. The mass media and even supposedly scholarly works portray the German leader as a monstrous, criminal demagogue who was driven by irrational hatred and lust for power. In fact, contends Stolfi, Hitler was a prophetic, messianic and visionary figure, who should be understood along with such personalities as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Mohammed and Jesus.

… Then, as now, the United States was deploying its military forces assertively, to the point of brinksmanship, in the backyard of the would-be adversary … Then, as now, policymakers in the U.S. administration welcomed — even sought — an incident as a rationale for air strikes against the adversary, in the absence of anything else that North Vietnam was doing that was a threat to U.S. interests … The politicization was sufficient to carry the day. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became the congressional authorization for U.S. airstrikes against North Vietnamese naval facilities and also for a ground war in which 58,000 Americans would die … As with Vietnam in 1964, politicians are susceptible to being swept up by a mood of revenge and bellicosity.

Sen. Wayne Morse was one of only two members of Congress to vote against the fateful Gulf of Tonkin resolution of August 1964, which gave President Lyndon Johnson blank check authority to wage war against North Vietnam. This authorization, warned Sen. Morse, was unconstitutional. Moreover, it was later established that the alleged North Vietnamese attack against US warships, which the White House cited to justify the sweeping resolution, either never took place, or had been greatly exaggerated.

Head of Iran’s government department of tourism says around eight million foreigners visited the country in the last Iranian calendar year ending in March 2019. “Some 7.8 million foreign tourists arrived in the country last year,” said Ali Asghar Mounessan, adding that the figure shows a 40-percent year-on-year increase. Mounessan, who heads the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization of Iran (ICHTO), said each tourist coming to the country spends an average sum of $1,400 during his or her stay … He said the boom in tourism arrivals and revenues have come despite sanctions imposed by the United States in the past year, adding that major accommodation places across the country have been booked up for months to come.

Israel recently has been expanding its military attacks across much of the Middle East, hitting multiple countries. The aggressive campaign far outpaces anything any adversaries of Israel have been doing to it, or even trying unsuccessfully to do to it. Over the past two years Israel has used combat aircraft to conduct scores of attacks in Syria. Israel has stayed silent about most of this campaign of bombardment, but when it speaks it says the targets it hits are associated with Iran. The most recent widening of Israel’s assaults have involved Lebanon, including drone attacks on facilities in suburban Beirut associated with Hezbollah … The most dramatic geographic widening of the Israeli assault came last month with multiple attacks, reportedly conducted with F-35s, in Iraq — which, of course, does not even border Israel.

Israel’s military went on a propaganda offensive against Iran and Hezbollah using social media to drastically increase tensions with neighboring Lebanon hours after Benjamin Netanyahu warned the nation’s enemies, in Arabic, to “watch it.” The Israeli prime minister was on the campaign trail ahead of elections scheduled for September 17. But the barrage of agitprop by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) represented a dramatic shift towards a warning of outright war. The casus belli, Israel says, is Iran’s efforts to modernize Hezbollah’s Lebanon-based arsenal of what Israel says is more than 100,000 rockets into precision-guided missiles.

… This year’s poll found that among Americans who feel that blacks and whites are equal, or that blacks are superior to whites, 82 percent expressed a strong interest in voting in 2020. That was seven percentage points higher than people who feel strongly that whites are superior to blacks … The Reuters analysis also found that Americans were less likely to express feelings of racial anxiety this year, and they were more likely to empathize with African Americans … The July 17-22 poll also found that 29% of whites agreed that “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage,” down seven points from a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in August 2017 and nine points down from another Reuters/ Ipsos poll in August 2018.

… The best way to mark the anniversary of the beginning of World War II would be to learn from it and other catastrophic conflicts which came before. For instance, alliances can deter war but also risk spreading violence. Military action rarely has humanitarian effects. Good intentions do not prevent awful results. Wars are filled with unintended consequences. International social engineering is a daunting task, confronting different cultures, histories, religions, ethnicities, politics, traditions, and more. Blowback is real, a terrible consequence of ill-considered intervention. Washington’s foreign policy consensus is busted, and its practitioners are incompetent. The American republic disappeared long ago, leaving a half-hearted, bungling semi-empire which views the entire world as its sphere of interest.

… Zinn is the Brooklyn-born Jewish social radical (and lifelong communist fellow-traveler) who died at the age of 87 in 2010 … He published his radically leftist People’s History of the United States in 1980, which has sold over two million copies. The book has been adopted as an educational tool for American public schools … In many of his antiwar statements, Zinn, far more than his contemporary critics in the conservative movement, sounds like a Taft Republican. He deplored America’s entry into World War I, the use of Irish immigrants as cannon fodder in the Civil War, and the failure to seek a negotiated peace to end our war with Japan … Thus we find inklings of what once passed for American conservatism in this unlikely source. Perhaps we on the traditional Right should cut this deceased radical from Brooklyn a bit of slack.

Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism is a new book by Richard Drake, himself an accomplished historian who teaches at the University of Montana … Beard’s offense was to have committed heresy, not once but twice over. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, he opposed U.S. intervention in the European war that had begun in September 1939. And when that conflict ended in 1945 he had the temerity to question the heroic “Good War” narrative that was even then already forming. Present-day Americans have become so imbued with this narrative as to be oblivious to its existence … In that sense, the persistence of the Good War narrative robs Americans of any capacity to think realistically about their nation’s role in the existing world.

In this scholarly article, excerpted from his book, The Forced War: The Origins and Originators of World War II, Dr. Hoggan examines the secret war aspirations of President Franklin Roosevelt. Hoggan also shows how Poland’s leaders, bolstered by assurances from London of military backing, sought to provoke war with Germany. During the months prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939, he explains, Poland’s provocations of Germany were frequent and extreme. Hitler had more than sufficient justification to go to war with Poland.

A carefully researched and persuasive debunking of the widely-accepted “official” story of the origins of World War II, by one of America’s most astute and influential public affairs commentators. In this masterful and provocative book, Buchanan draws on the work of more than a hundred historians to trace the fateful failures of judgment that consigned millions to decades of subjugation under Soviet Communist tyranny, and ended Europe’s central role in world affairs. This is also an important dissident treatment of the origins and consequences of the First and Second World wars, and a devastating critique of the “cult” image of Winston Churchill. Buchanan concludes with timely warnings about US foreign policy today. With 36 photos, source references, bibliography and index.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was not invited. President Trump abruptly canceled. And as other global leaders gathered in Poland on Sunday to commemorate the start of the deadliest conflict in human history, the event served to underscore the divisions in Europe and within Poland itself … It is not just in Russia where history is being deployed as a potent political weapon. In Poland there is a deep divide over how the country’s suffering over the past century should be remembered and memorialized … The struggle for control of the historical narrative resonated so deeply in Poland because for so long, Poles were not allowed to tell their own story. Under Communist rule, for instance, discussion of the massacre of more than 20,000 Poles in the Katyn forest in 1940 by Soviet troops was forbidden.

In April 1943, Nazi Germany announced the discovery of a series of mass graves containing the bodies of thousands of Polish officers who had been arrested and then executed by the Soviet Army. Seventy-five years later, the Katyn massacre is still a sensitive issue between Poland and Russia. Runtime: 2:31 mins.

Germany’s enemies maintain today [1940] that Adolf Hitler is the greatest disturber of peace known to history, that he threatens every nation with sudden attack and oppression, that he has created a terrible war machine in order to bring misery and devastation everywhere. At the same time they intentionally conceal an all-important fact: they themselves drove the leader of the German people finally to draw the sword. They themselves compelled him to seek to obtain at last by the use of force that which he had been striving to gain by persuasion from the beginning: the security of his country. They did this not only by declaring war on him on Sept. 3, 1939, but also by blocking step by step for seven years the path to any peaceful discussion … A quick look at the most important events provides incontrovertible proof of this.

… The 1939-45 conflict is still wreathed in delusions, delusions often employed to try to justify modern wars which are alleged to have comparably ‘good’ aims. The belief in its goodness is in fact ludicrous. Our main ally (rejected at the beginning with lofty scorn, embraced later with desperate, insincere enthusiasm) was one of the most murderous tyrants in human history … During and immediately after the war, as I have discussed here, we employed methods which would have disgusted our forebears and which ought to disgust us, but which were so frightful that we still lie to ourselves about them, or hide them from our consciousness.

… Proponents of the Afghan War insist that ‘terrorists’ will take over if US troops withdraw. By now, it’s unclear who the so-called ‘terrorists’ really are. Previously, the US branded Taliban as terrorists … Under the banner of the faux War on Terrorism, the US bombed and rocketed Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest but proudest nations, for 18 years, using B-1 heavy bombers and fleets of killer drones against mountain tribesmen armed with old rifles and fierce courage. America faces historic defeat in Afghanistan. By not winning, it loses. How this loss would affect the rest of America’s empire remains to be seen. But the sooner America ends this shameful colonial war the better.

… The Graham-JINSA proposal is particularly dangerous as it effectively permits Israel to be interventionist with a guarantee that Washington will not seek to limit Netanyahu’s “options.” … This treaty would serve as a green light for an Israeli attack on Iran, should they opt to do so, while also serving as a red light to Tehran vis-à-vis an ironclad US commitment to “defend” Israel that would serve to discourage any serious Iranian retaliation. Given that dynamic, the treaty would be little more than a one-way security guarantee from Washington to Jerusalem … Israel has no defined borders as it is both expansionistic and illegally occupying Palestinian land, so the United States would in effect be obligated to defend space that Israel defines as its own.

… Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, had planned their own “Delegation to Palestine,” scheduled to begin on August 17. Tlaib, who was born in the U.S., planned to travel to the West Bank to visit her 90-year old Palestinian grandmother … But, aided and abetted by Donald Trump, Israel withdrew permission for the trip unless Tlaib agreed to remain silent about Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians. She refused to abide by the gag order and the trip was cancelled … Israel’s refusal to allow members of the U.S. Congress entry into Israel-Palestine without muzzling them backfired. It has garnered widespread criticism, even by AIPAC, and focused the national discourse on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which Tlaib and Omar support.

… This is how Jewish power works on behalf of the Jewish state. It is done right out in the open, at least if one knows where to look, and it operates by what the intelligence community would refer to as misdirection. That means that you never talk about Israel itself, except in a positive, laudatory fashion, you never mention Jewish power in America, and, finally, you have in reserve some fabricated threats that can be surfaced to dominate discussion and render Israel’s malign activity invisible … Removing politicians who are not fully on board with the Israel agenda is normal practice and has been for many years … Criticizing Israel means not being reelected to Congress next time around, and it is not because Israel is greatly loved by voters.

As Americans prepare to celebrate the holiday, their pride in the U.S. has hit its lowest point since Gallup’s first measurement in 2001. While 70 percent of U.S. adults overall say they are proud to be Americans, this includes fewer than half (45%) who are “extremely” proud, marking the second consecutive year that this reading is below the majority level. Democrats continue to lag far behind Republicans in expressing extreme pride in the U.S. These findings are explored further with new measurements of the public’s pride in eight aspects of U.S. government and society. American scientific achievements, military and culture/arts engender the most pride, while the U.S. political system and health and welfare system garner the least.

… If you’re thinking that your youngster will get a truly liberal arts education, you are sadly mistaken. It turns out that less than half of the schools studied require courses in traditional literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history and economics. At some colleges, students can fulfill their humanities requirement with a course titled “Global X: Zombies!” … There’s another college-related issue not given much voice and that’s how important is a college education in the first place. That’s an issue raised by a Market Watch article, “Half of young Americans say their degree is irrelevant to their work.” Parents think a college education is necessary for success. Their youngsters think differently. According to the TD Ameritrade study, 49% of young millennials said their degree was “very or somewhat unimportant” to their current job.

For Americans and others, World War II might seem a black-and-white story of good defeating evil, with the Allies fighting far from home to defeat Adolf Hitler’s genocidal regime and open a new era of peace and liberty. But from the Baltics and Poland to Hungary and Russia, where fighting, deportations and mass executions happened, there are many shades of gray: heroic resistance and martyrdom but also collaboration — and a liberation by Soviet forces that spelled the start of decades of occupation and oppression for those behind the Iron Curtain. That leaves a lot of room for differing ways to remember the war.

… The American public has long thought of the Allied effort in World War II as a “great crusade” that pitted good and decency against Nazi evil. Even after all these years, it is likely that the last thing the public wants to learn is that vast and unspeakable wrongs were committed by both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during the war and its aftermath. It flies in the face of that reluctance for MacDonogh to tell “the brutal history” at great length [in his book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation]. That willingness is commendable for its intellectual bravery.

For many in Europe, the end of the Second World War meant peace and healing. But for millions of Germans, “liberation” opened a new and terrible chapter. This hour-long British documentary reveals the appalling violence meted out to the defeated, especially to those ethnic Germans who had lived peacefully for centuries in neighbouring countries. Using rare and unseen archive film, this documentary tells a harrowing story of vengeance against German civilians. The Savage Peace includes the unique testimony of eyewitnesses and victims, who recall the horrors with searing clarity, their memories undimmed 70 years after the events took place. As the writer George Orwell said, the treatment of the defeated Germans was a terrible crime that has gone unpunished.

An eminent British historian provides a brilliant, devastating critique of the widely accepted, “official” view of the origins of World War II. The war between Germany, Poland, Britain and France that broke out in September 1939, he shows, was not the result of an intentional plan by Hitler. “Far from wanting war, a general war was the last thing he wanted,” Taylor writes. “The war of 1939, far from being premeditated, was a mistake, the result on both sides of diplomatic blunders.” This edition includes a bibliography and index, and a “Second Thoughts” response to critics. This controversial and intensely discussed work earned praise from respected British journals. The New Statesman called it “A masterpiece: lucid, compassionate, beautifully written.”

YouTube recently took down some channels affiliated with white nationalism after it initialized a policy to more explicitly bar such content. There are many more channels on the platform that have either directly pushed white supremacist ideas or are associated with white nationalists. In June, YouTube announced that it would prohibit “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status,” specifically mentioning content that promotes “Nazi ideology” or Holocaust denial … On August 15, the Anti-Defamation League published a report with a list of white nationalist channels operating on the platform. Over a week later, YouTube removed multiple channels that were mentioned in the ADL report,…

The channels of two prominent far-right YouTubers have been re-instated after the video-sharing site said it made a mistake in removing them. Initially, YouTube gave no reason for changing its decision and just said it had made a “wrong call”. Later, it said that while many people found the channels “deeply offensive”, they had not broken its rules. The decision came days after YouTube’s chief executive said YouTube had to be open to hosting “controversial” ideas. YouTube removed several channels and accounts this week, claiming they had broken its hate speech policies. Among them was a channel run by white nationalist Martin Sellner and an anonymous British YouTuber known as The Iconoclast … Mr Sellner is also banned from entering the UK … Several other far-right channels that YouTube banned this week remain unavailable.