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Why the Media Is Ignoring the Afghanistan Papers
Alex Shephard - The New Republic
… Like the Pentagon Papers, which showcased the lies underpinning the Vietnam War, the Post’s investigation shows that U.S. officials, across three presidential administrations, intentionally and systematically misled the American public for 18 years and counting … The documents are an indictment not only of one aspect of American foreign policy, but also of the U.S.’s entire policymaking apparatus. They reveal a bipartisan consensus to lie about what was actually happening in Afghanistan … Despite wasting thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, everyone in the U.S. government gets off scot-free. The very people who have kept us in Afghanistan since 2001 remain empowered, thanks to a combination of cynicism and apathy.
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Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires
Eric Margolis
… The venerable Washington Post newspaper revealed a bombshell 2,000-page, secret Pentagon report detailing the astounding failure of US war strategy in Afghanistan, America’s longest war. Americans have been fed a steady stream of lies about the Afghan War … Arrogance and ignorance, backed by mammoth brute force, led US policy in the remote Asian nation … Those journalists like this one who insisted on telling the truth about Afghanistan were fired or ignored … According to the Pentagon report, the US has wasted at least one trillion dollars ($1 trillion) on its Afghanistan War … The past presidents who cheered on this disgraceful war against one of the world’s poorest, most backward nations deserve to be disgraced.
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Russian President Putin Says Polish Officials Sided With Nazis Prior to World War II
Moscow Times (Russia)
Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Polish officials on Tuesday for siding with the Nazis prior to World War II in comments sparked by a recent European resolution … Citing archival documents, Putin told defense officials Tuesday that Poland’s envoy to Nazi Germany had promised to build Hitler “a beautiful monument in Warsaw” if he expelled the country’s Jews to Africa. “That bastard! That anti-Semitic pig,” Putin said, apparently referring to Józef Lipski, who served as the Polish ambassador in Berlin until [Sept.] 1939. “He was in complete solidarity with Hitler in his anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic sentiment,” the Russian president said … Poland and the Western powers, Putin said, “acted in collusion” with Hitler.
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A detailed look at President Franklin Roosevelt’s secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. Highlights his efforts in 1938 and 1939 to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany. Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war that had already engulfed Europe, he bears a grave responsibility for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time. This paper relies heavily on confidential reports by Polish diplomats that fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in 1939. These revealing documents also confirm the crucial role of Jewish power and influence on US foreign policy during these years.
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The European Atrocity You Never Heard About
R. M. Douglas -- The Chronicle of Higher Education
… Between 1945 and 1950, Europe witnessed the largest episode of forced migration, and perhaps the single greatest movement of population, in human history. Between 12 million and 14 million German-speaking civilians — the overwhelming majority of whom were women, old people, d children under 16 — were forcibly ejected from their places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are today the western districts of Poland … Most disturbingly of all, tens of thousands perished as a result of ill treatment while being used as slave labor (or, in the Allies’ cynical formulation, “reparations in kind”) in a vast network of camps … By any measure, the postwar expulsions were a man-made disaster and one of the most significant examples of the mass violation of human rights in recent history.
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After initially banning the visits of Christians from the Gaza Strip to Bethlehem [in Israeli occupied Palestine], Israel softened its stance at the last minute Tuesday, allowing about 320 faithful access to the Church of the Nativity for Christmas Mass … With many thousands more gathered outside on a chilly night in Manger Square, watching the Mass on large video screens, Pizzaballa encouraged the faithful to ward off the failures of spirit that come when “we are tired of see and confronting the injustices that occur around us.” He specifically cited “the divisions of our population caused by politics.” The ceremony, in what claims to be the oldest Christian church, located in the [occupied] West Bank town where Jesus is believed to have been born, began hours before midnight, with psalms and Christmas carols sung in about a dozen languages.
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Thousands Mark Christmas in Palestine Town of Bethlehem
Associated Press
Thousands of Christian pilgrims on Tuesday flocked to the West Bank town of Bethlehem, celebrating Christmas Eve in the traditional birthplace of Jesus. Visitors converged on the town’s large Christmas tree in Manger Square, near the spot believed to mark Jesus’ birthplace. Uniformed Palestinian scouts wearing yellow and gold capes paraded past assembled visitors, the sound of drums and bagpipes filling the cool, clear air. Vendors hawked snacks and holiday gifts, adding to the festive atmosphere … While Bethlehem is in the Palestinian-administered area of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Israel’s imposing separation barrier encloses parts of the city and is a constant reminder of the complex political reality.
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The Christmas Truce of 1914: Proof that Peace Is Possible
Thomas L. Knapp
As 1914 drew to a close, Europe had been at war for months. On the Western Front, opposing armies faced each other across a stalemated front line running from the North Sea to the Swiss border. On December 24, 100,000 soldiers from both sides of that line decided to create some peace on Earth. They decorated their trenches with holiday spirit. They sang carols to each other across “No Man’s Land,” then walked into the space between their trenches, met, smoked and drank together, and exchanged what gifts they could round up. Chaplains conducted Christmas services for all comers. Impromptu football matches were played between shell craters … A similar truce occurred on the Eastern Front between Austro-Hungarian and Russian troops.
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Scientists Find Genetic Causes of Loneliness
C. Choi – Discover
… A new study of nearly a half-million people find there may be genetic roots to loneliness. These findings also show that some genetic variations are linked to social activities like going to the pub. The results were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. Previous research has already shown that loneliness is more than just a state of mind. It’s strongly linked with an increase in all causes of death, on a level comparable to smoking and in excess of factors like obesity and lack of exercise. Loneliness is also quite common … The team discovered 15 genetic variations were associated with susceptibility to loneliness … A number of genetic variants were apparently linked with social activities such as going to the pub and being in religious groups, or being part of a gym or sports club.
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The Ten Most Misleading American Historical Sites
James Loewen – The Guardian
When I was a kid, my dad stopped the car at every historical marker on our family vacations. He thought he was educating us. But too often these markers were telling us things that never happened and leaving out important things that did. Here’s a quick tour of ten of the worst historic sites in the US: Wongest … Most Ridiculous … Most Eurocentric … Most Racist … Getting Even the Numbers Wrong … Most `Heterosexualized’ … Least Important … Impossible, Aerodynamically … Most Censored … Most Good-Hearted Lie
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Despite themselves, American evangelicals, in siding with U.S. government and Israeli policies, have undermined the very Christians in Palestine who are the guardians of the birthplace of Christianity. Blinded by ideological-religious politics, these evangelicals have ignored the precarious situation of the remaining Christian population in the homeland of Christianity … Many evangelical Christians are conservative, aligning with a view that puts Israel’s security above all other priorities. This support blinds them to the issues confronting Palestinian Christians … Under the Trump administration, Palestinian Christians are going to fare no better than Palestinian Muslims.
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Countering Christian Zionism in the Age of Trump
Mimi Kirk - LobeLog
… As Christian Zionists … the two men’s remarks reflect their belief that the modern state of Israel is the result of biblical prophecy. This belief centers around the idea that 4,000 years ago God promised the land to the Jews, who will rule it until Jesus’ return to Jerusalem and the rapture … Activists argue that while Christian Zionism may be a broadly held belief, it is not deeply held … Abuata says the Christian movement for Palestinian rights has grown significantly in the past decade, noting that ten years ago he wouldn’t have been welcomed into 80 percent of the mainline Christian denominations and churches with which he now coordinates. This year also marks the 10-year anniversary of the publication of the Kairos document, a call by Palestinian Christians to Christians around the world to fight the Israeli occupation.
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Plundering Iraq
Eric Margolis
… Few talk or think about Iraq these days; the media ignores this important but demolished nation. Iraq, let’s recall, was the target of a major western aggression … During the war, the US destroyed most of Iraq’s water and sewage systems, causing some 500,000 children to die from water-borne diseases, wrecking much of its industry and commerce, leaving millions of men unemployed. Public services have broken down. Before the US invasion, Iraq led the Arab world in industry, farming, medicine, education and women’s rights. All that was destroyed by the ‘liberation.’ … Today, Iraq is far worse off than during the days of Saddam Hussein. It is being plundered and exploited while its people suffer. So much for ‘liberation.’
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The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said she will open a full investigation into alleged war crimes in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, an announcement that was welcomed by Palestinians but drew a strong rebuke from Israel. “I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine,” Fatou Bensouda said in a statement on Friday. “In brief, I am satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” Bensouda added that before opening the investigation, she would ask the Hague-based tribunal to rule on the territories over which it has jurisdiction, as Israel is not a member of the court.
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Israel Fears International Criminal Court Could Issue Global Arrest Warrants for Top Officials
The Times of Israel / J. Magid
Israel fears the International Criminal Court’s decision to move forward with a potential investigation into crimes allegedly committed in the Palestinian territories by Israel will open up current and former government officials and military personnel to prosecution on the global stage, according to a report Saturday. With Israel planning to refuse to cooperate with a potential investigation by the ICC, officials fear top officers of the Israel Defense Forces, as well as low-ranking soldiers, could face international arrest warrants, Israel’s Channel 12 reported. The prime minister, defense ministers, IDF chiefs and the heads of the Shin Bet security service over the past five years could all face the danger of prosecution.
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How a Fake Nazi Document Fooled the Experts
M. Laytner - Tablet
For the last 60 years, an obscure document called the SS Rentabilitätsberechnung that purports to calculate the profit generated by the Nazi’s slave labor killing machine has been quoted by historians, writers and rabbis, exhibited at museums, and used in classrooms around the world. The problem is that it appears to be, if not an outright fabrication, then at the very least an artifact of unprovable provenance. This would be a problem in any historical field but is especially troubling in the high stakes world of Holocaust history where even routine matters of historical revision provide fodder to Holocaust deniers. The SS Rentabilitätsberechnung, which roughly translates as “profitability calculation,” has been widely cited as a source that shows how much profit the SS expected to realize from the average slave laborer.
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One of the most widely quoted sources of information about Hitler’s personality and secret intentions is the supposed memoir of Hermann Rauschning, the National Socialist President of the Danzig Senate in 1933-1934 who was ousted from the Hitler movement a short time later and then made a new life for himself as a professional anti-Nazi …Haenel was able to conclusively establish that Rausching’s claim to have met with Hitler “more than a hundred times” is a lie. The two actually met only four times, and never alone. The words attributed to Hitler, he showed, were simply invented or lifted from many different sources, including writings by Juenger and Nietzsche.
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Israeli Woman Sentenced to 22 Years in Prison for Investment Fraud
Associated Press
A federal judge in Maryland on Thursday sentenced an Israeli woman to 22 years in prison for orchestrating a scheme that prosecutors said defrauded tens of thousands of investors across the globe out of tens of millions of dollars. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang told Lee Elbaz, 38, that her actions cost vulnerable investors their life savings, homes and even their marriages. “This was a very significant crime with significant harm to victims,” the judge said … Elbaz is one of 21 defendants charged in the fraud case and was the first to be tried. Five pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors … In a court filing last week, prosecutors said the scheme involving Elbaz and others cost investors more than $137 million between May 2014 and June 2017.
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The ‘Afghanistan Papers’ Highlight the Systemic Rot in U.S. Foreign Policy Making
Dan DePetris - Responsible Statecraft
… The American people’s skepticism of the foreign policy establishment is fully understandable and more than justifiable given the results. The views that have held a monopoly in the Beltway have not served this country well. Nor have the architects of those views, all of whom are permitted to hide from any accountability in their Ivory Towers. Thankfully, it’s not too late to turn things around. But in order for the ship to avoid crashing into the iceberg, our leaders need to begin looking at the world as it is rather than how they would like it to be. Burying our heads in the sand and clinging to unworkable policies like a five-year old boy clings to a toy fire truck will only make it more difficult for the next generation of leaders to fix this country’s mistakes.
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… As the White House also appears keen to do whatever is necessary to bring about regime change in Tehran, the tendency in Washington to serve as an apologist for whatever Riyadh does will continue for the foreseeable future. And, as an added bonus, the Saudis buy billions of dollars’ worth of American made weapons annually … The current situation with the House of Saud is not good. It is a regime that is under considerable pressure because of its corruption. Internationally, it has few friends due to its widely condemned war in Yemen as well as from the consequences arising over the killing and dismembering in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi … Trump’s obsession with destroying Iran, which has promised to do in his next term, makes him blind to the deficiencies in the allies he seeks to use to that end.
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Sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran violate the United Nation’s charter and international law, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has said in a conference in Qatar. “Malaysia does not support the re-imposition of the unilateral sanctions by the US against Iran,” he told the Doha Forum … A week ago, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani announced what he called a $39 billion “budget of resistance” to counter US sanctions following a fuel price rise that sparked deadly nationwide protests … “Such sanctions clearly violate the United Nations Charter and international law. Sanctions can only be applied by the United Nations in accordance with the charter,” he added.
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Are You a Child of a Holocaust Survivor Who Was Interned in a Ghetto? You May be Entitled to a Large Sum of Money!
International Center for Holocaust Reparations
Are you a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto? Are you a child of a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto? You may be entitled to a large sum of money! Even if you are already receiving compensation from the Claims Conference or from the German authorities, including the German Pension Insurance you may be eligible to receive additional payments. The pension is paid even to those who were interned for a short period of time in a Ghetto (including Ghettos in Poland, Romania (New!), Czernowitz, Shanghai, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Transnistria, Amsterdam, Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus and many more). The possibilities are for a one-time retroactive compensation, as well as a monthly payment from the German Social Security.
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President Trump Signs Order on Campus Anti-Semitism
Inside Higher Education
President Trump has signed an executive order focused on anti-Semitism on college campuses, drawing praise from some quarters and concerns from others about implications for free speech on campuses. The executive order instructs agencies to “consider” a definition of anti-Semitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in investigating complaints of discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The IHRA definition is controversial in higher education because it encompasses some forms of anti-Israel speech … “The Remembrance Alliance definition makes clear what our administration has stated publicly and on the record,” Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to Trump, wrote in an op-ed about the order published in The New York Times. “Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
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Trump Signs Order Against Anti-Semitism At Colleges, Worrying Free Speech Advocates
L. Wamsley – NPR
President Trump has signed an executive order that will make Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act apply to anti-Semitic acts. The order is generating concern that it will stifle free speech by those who oppose Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians. The executive order takes indirect aim at the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that has generated intense controversy on college campuses. Title VI bans discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs and activities, such as colleges and universities, that receive federal funding. The executive order will extend the ban to discrimination based on anti-Semitism. Trump signed the order at a Hanukkah celebration at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
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The grave of a top Nazi who helped plan the Holocaust and was assassinated by British-trained agents during World War II has been dug up in Berlin, German police said on Monday. The grave of Reinhard Heydrich was “dug up in the night between Wednesday and Thursday,” and an investigation has been opened on charges of disturbing a burial site, a police spokeswoman told AFP. German media said it appeared nothing was removed. Heydrich was the powerful head of Hitler’s Reich Security Office, which included the Gestapo … His car was attacked with an anti-tank mine in the city on May 27, 1942, by Czechoslovak agents trained by Britain’s secret Special Operations Executive. Heydrich died of his injuries a few days later. His body was brought back to Berlin and buried in the city’s Invalidenfriedhof, a military cemetery.
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Heydrich Funeral: Prague and Berlin
Newsreel – Video
Wartime French newsreel report on the funeral of SS General Reinhard Heydrich, who was killed in Prague in June 1942 by British-trained assassins. In the Czech capital, thousands of people pay tribute to the murdered acting Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. And in Berlin, Hitler and Himmler honor Heydrich in a solemn ceremony in the Reich Chancellery. Portion of “France-Actualité” newsreel report, with French-language narration. Runtime: 40 secs.
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Italy Cartoon Depicting EU as Nazi Camp Sparks Outcry
Associated Press
A cartoonist in Rome has sparked a heated controversy in Italy and abroad after depicting the European Union as the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as an escaping prisoner. Artist Mario Improta posted the cartoon on his Twitter account Saturday, after Johnson’s Conservatives won a majority in the U.K. election. Johnson ran on a platform of “get Brexit done,” vowing to take Britain out of the European Union by the scheduled deadline of Jan. 31 … The comparison between the EU and a concentration camp immediately prompted a wave of criticism from politicians, Rome’s Jewish community and even some of the artist’s followers on Twitter.
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… What we learned in what is rightly being called the “Pentagon Papers” of our time, is that hundreds of US Administration officials – including three US Presidents – knowingly lied to the American people about the Afghanistan war for years. This wasn’t just a matter of omitting some unflattering facts. This was about bald-faced lying about a war they knew was a disaster from almost day one … Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the three lying Administrations … We’ve wasted at least half a year on the Donald Trump impeachment charade – a conviction desperately in search of a crime. Meanwhile one of the greatest crimes in US history will go unpunished. Not one of the liars in the “Afghanistan Papers” will ever be brought to justice for their crimes.
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Will the Secessionist Epidemic Ever End?
Patrick J. Buchanan
Fresh from his triumphal “Get Brexit Done!” campaign, Prime Minister Boris Johnson anticipates a swift secession from the European Union. But if Britain secedes from the EU, warns Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland will secede from the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland, which voted in 2016 to remain in the EU, could follow Scotland out of Britain, leaving her with “Little England” and Wales … The Scottish National Party won 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats in Parliament, and Sturgeon calls this a mandate for a new vote to secede … When did secessionism begin? The Americans started it all. The first great secessionist cause was the Revolution, when the 13 American colonies declared and won independence from the British crown.
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A majority of Democratic voters said former President Obama was a better leader than founding father and first president of the U.S. George Washington in a new poll. The poll, conducted by Monmouth University, found that 63 percent of Democratic survey respondents believed that Obama was a better president than Washington. Twenty-nine percent of those polled believed that Washington beat out the 44th president. Among all registered voters surveyed, 58 percent say Washington was a better president compared to 33 percent for Obama. Compared to Trump, Washington received 71 percent support while the president received 15 percent. Forty-four percent of Republican voters polled said Washington was a better president than Trump, while 37 percent said Trump is better than Washington.
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Afghanistan: Oh, When Will We Ever Learn?
Thomas Knapp
… Not that we really needed “The Afghanistan Papers” to tell us the war was unwinnable. That was clear from the beginning. Any mission beyond quick strikes on al Qaeda’s facilities and operators in Afghanistan was doomed to failure. The idea of taking over the country and making it into a “western democracy” was transparent foolishness … Nor do “The Afghanistan Papers” tell us anything else we shouldn’t have already known. They merely confirm a lesson we should have learned nearly 50 ago … Next time the politicians want to drum up or continue an optional war, they’ll tell us the same lies they told us this time, and last time, and the time before that. We’ve got to stop believing those lies.
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Iran’s Leader Praises Roger Garaudy, French Scholar and 'Holocaust Denier'
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted his support for Roger Garaudy, a French philosopher who denies the Holocaust in his book Les Mythes Fondateurs de la Politique Israélienne (The Founding Myths of Modern Israel). In 1998, after a trial, France banned the book. Following the French ban, Iran and the Muslim world began supporting him, and the Arabic version of the book became popular. Khamenei begins his thread: “In his book, #RogerGaraudy, the French philosopher, expressed doubts about the number of #Holocaust victims. The French govt not only banned his book, but also brought Garaudy to trial. These are the claimants of advocating #FreedomOf Speech.”
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Origin and Enduring Impact of the 'Garaudy Affair'
Theodore J. O'Keefe – Institute for Historical Review
… Nor did the impact of Founding Myths end with the literary controversy that swept France in the first half of 1996. Garaudy’s trial and conviction in Paris in 1998 for Holocaust heresy ignited further conflagration across the Islamic Middle East and beyond. As Zionist organizations soon had cause to lament, influential persons and groups in Arab countries, and in non-Arab Muslim nations such as Iran, made, for the first time in the Islamic world, a show of concerted support for the Holocaust revisionist position.
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The Founding Myths of Modern Israel
Roger Garaudy – Book available from IHR
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.
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Foreword to Arabic Edition of Garaudy's 'Founding Myths'
Mohamed Hasanein Heikal
… In relating each of these founding myths of Israeli policy, Garaudy did not want to discuss or contradict them himself. Instead he drew the facts out of the primary sources and the original documents and let them speak for themselves, and follow their logical courses to reach their own natural conclusions by themselves … The “myth” of the holocaust plays a real role in the existence and subconscious of contemporary Jews. It is therefore a dangerous mistake to leave the true part of the holocaust story to the scheming of the Zionist movement, so that it can be exploited as myths have usually been exploited throughout history.
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Fraud in Higher Education
Walter E. Williams
… According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them … It’s clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents … Over 75% of two-year college students and 50% of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20% of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30% of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic.
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The University of California is violating state civil rights laws by requiring applicants to take the SAT or ACT, standardized tests that unlawfully discriminate against disabled, low-income, multilingual and underrepresented minority students, two lawsuits filed Tuesday allege. The lawsuits, filed on behalf of the Compton Unified School District, four students and five community organizations, demand that the ten-campus UC system eliminate the testing requirement. Any decision by UC to drop the tests — as some prominent UC officials themselves are urging – would play an outsized role in the future of standardized testing in the nation because of the size and status of the premier public research university system.
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The Afghanistan War is More Than a Trillion Mistake. It’s a Travesty
Ben Armbruster - The Guardian (Britain)
The American people have known that the war in Afghanistan was a lost cause for quite some time … That’s why the Washington Post report on the so-called “Afghanistan Papers”, detailing how US officials “deliberately mislead the public” on the war’s progress, is almost sort of unremarkable … While DC’s culture of no culpability certainly plays a role in this case, the more compelling answer lies somewhere near the fact that once the American war machine kicks into gear, no amount of facts undermining its very existence is going to get in the way … If we don’t start holding these people to account – and it’s not just about Afghanistan – the DC foreign policy establishment will continue to act with impunity …
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Former Israeli Spy on Israel’s Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein
W. Webb - MintPress
In recent weeks, renewed attention has been brought to the allegations that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking and sexual blackmail operation was run on behalf of Israeli military intelligence. Those claims revolve around statements made by a former Israeli military intelligence official turned public relations consultant Ari Ben-Menashe … Ben-Menashe claimed to have seen Jeffrey Epstein in the office of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, several times in the 1980s. At the time, Ben-Menashe was in close contact with Robert Maxwell regarding their work mutual work with Israeli military intelligence. Maxwell, in addition to heading a media empire and being a one-time member of U.K. parliament, was a longtime operative for Israeli intelligence … Maxwell is alleged to have recruited Jeffrey Epstein for Israeli intelligence …
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Trump Tells Pro-Israel Conference That Some US Jews Don’t Love Israel Enough
The Times of Israel
President Donald Trump told a pro-Israel conference Saturday night that some American Jews don’t love Israel enough. He also noted that he did not have to worry about getting his audience’s votes, because they would cast ballots with business interests in mind. Those comments, to the Israeli American Council advocacy group in Florida, drew quick criticism from opponents and were derided as anti-Semitic. In his 45-minute speech to an audience of more than 4,300, the president criticized American Jews who, he said, were not sufficiently supportive of the Jewish state … Trump was welcomed to the stage by Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, who fund the IAC and who donated $30 million to Trump’s campaign in the final months of the 2016 race.
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'The Biggest Thing You Did for Israel’ Was Breaking Iran Deal, Adelson Tells Trump
P. Weiss - Mondoweiss
Donald Trump’s speech to the Israeli American Council on Saturday night in the presence of his biggest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, has caused some shock waves. Largely because he referred to Jewish wealth. Here are some surprises from the speech … Trump says American Jews don’t love Israel enough … “We have to get the people of our country, of this country, to love Israel more. I have to tell you that. We have to do it. We have to get them to love Israel more. Because you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people – they don’t love Israel enough. You know that. You know that. (Applause.)” … Trump says if anyone can make a deal between Israel and Palestine, it’s Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, who “loves Israel.”
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But Mr. Trump, Is Israel Lovable?
Sheldon Richman
Speaking before Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli-American Council the other day, Trump took a shot at Jewish Americans who he says don’t “love Israel enough.” … Although Trump stands accused of fomenting anti-Semitism by such remarks, he actually turns the loyalty issue upside-down. He doesn’t say that some Jewish Americans are too loyal to Israel (presumably at the expense of America), which is what a classic anti-Semite would say, but that they are not loyal enough … Trump now entitles us to ask: what’s so lovable about Israel anyway? The modern state was founded through a campaign of ethnic cleansing – violent expulsion of Arabs, that is, non-Jews, from their long-held properties – and outright massacres and terrorism.
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Money and Media Manipulation of American Politics
Mark Weber – Podcast
Behind the pro-Israel slant of US foreign policy and a domestic policy that promotes “diversity” is money power and media control. Three of the most important players in American political life are George Soros, Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson. They disagree about tactics and methods, but these super-wealthy Jewish activists — and many others like them – are united in promoting the interests of Israel and the organized Jewish community. Well-funded manipulation of the nation’s mass media, and cultural and educational life, is decisive in determining the basic policies and direction of American life, above all by molding the “accepted” social-ideological premises on which policies and laws are based.
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Free Speech on the Ropes
Philip Giraldi
… Freedom of speech is particularly threatened in any situations having to do with Israel, a reflection of the power of that country’s lobby in the United States … Israel is engaged in what might be described as a war with the objective of driving any and all criticism of the Jewish state out of polite discourse, making it illegal wherever and whenever possible … It is important for Americans to realize that Israel not only spies on the U.S., digs its paws deep into our Treasury, and perverts Washington’s Middle East policy, it is also attempting to dictate what we the people can and cannot say. And Congress and much of the media are fully on board, which is the real tragedy.
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Google has targeted Iranian broadcasters Press TV and Hispan TV once again, blocking access to their official YouTube accounts without any prior notice. Over the past years, the US tech giant has recurrently been opting for such measures against Iranian media outlets. It has taken on Press TV more than any other Iranian outlet given the expanse of its viewership and readership … The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting – which runs Press TV and Hispan TV as part of its World Service – has called such attacks clear examples of censorship … As part of the campaign, the US State Department has called on social media companies Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to block the accounts of Iranian government leaders, and iOS – a mobile operating system created by US company Apple Inc. – disabling Iranian applications.
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The Great American Shakedown
Chris Hedges
The Democratic Party and its liberal supporters are perplexed. They presented hours of evidence of an impeachable offense, although they studiously avoided charging Donald Trump with impeachable offenses also carried out by Democratic presidents, including the continuation or expansion of presidential wars not declared by Congress, exercising line-item veto power, playing prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner to kill individuals, including U.S. citizens, anywhere on the planet, violating due process and misusing executive orders … Public opinion remains largely unaffected … The liberal class and the Democratic Party leadership have failed, even after their defeat in the 2016 presidential election, to understand that they, along with the traditional Republican elites, have squandered their credibility. No one believes them. And no one should.
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All is Forgiven: Europe’s Leaders Pray for Boris
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - The Telegraph (Britain)
… Europe is in any case exhausted … German industrial output has dropped 5.3 percent over the last year, and not just because of China. Over the last five quarters the UK has grown by an accumulated 1.5 percent (mediocre, yes) but Germany has grown by just 0.5 percent. Every major country in Western Europe is facing an internal political drama of one kind or another. France is in the grip of an open-ended general strike of elemental significance … Germany’s Social Democrats have lurched hard-Left, voting for a wish-list of fantasy demands … The coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel limps on but in a state of ideological divorce and on borrowed time. The post-War political centre in Germany is crumbling.
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Confidential Documents Reveal U.S. Officials Failed to Tell the Truth About the War in Afghanistan
C. Whitlock - The Washington Post
A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable … With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation. The interviews also highlight the U.S. government’s botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.
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The U.S. government’s claims of progress in the war in Afghanistan over the last 18 years came as top officials in private were venting that it was a costly waste of time, according to a report published Monday. The Washington Post obtained and published a massive trove of confidential government documents which it says were part of a federal project aimed at figuring out what had gone wrong in the lengthy conflict … Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who acted as an Afghan war czar in the Bush and Obama administrations, reportedly told interviewers in 2015 that those in charge “were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing.”
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Calls for an end to so-called forever wars are being bolstered this week by a bombshell report detailing how U.S. officials lied when they claimed progress in the 18-year war in Afghanistan. Lawmakers, particularly Democrats, have responded to the revelations with demands for hearings and calls to withdraw from America’s longest war … Private interviews conducted by a government watchdog and published this week by The Washington Post document in stark detail how officials from the Bush administration to the present were providing grim outlooks behind closed doors even as they painted a rosy picture in their public statements.
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Poland's Ruling Elite Want to Hand Over 30% of Residential Property to 'Holocaust' Survivors
Paul Mieczysław - Russia Insider
.. For the 1.2 million Polish-Jews and their descendants living in Israel alone, there is a growing elite consensus that they are entitled to parts of Poland that they claim their ancestors used to own. Before WW2, Jews owned the most valuable real estate in the centers of major cities and towns, while Poles were concentrated in rural parts. Warsaw was 30% Jewish … Today, international Jewry has abandoned communism for world capitalism, and is using Donald Trump’s America to “strangle” us. The weapon of choice is S447 (Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today … If this law is put into practice, approximately 30% of Warsaw homeowners will be forced to pay “rent” to random Jews claiming to be Holocaust survivors or their descendants in New York City and Tel Aviv.
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The Holocaust is Not the 'Pill' to Die On
David Cole - Taki’s Mag
… To be sure, Holocaust denial certainly is a way to provoke rage, especially among mainstream conservatives … I get the appeal. But take it from the “based Jew”: This is not the hill to die on. Holocaust denial is wrong. I mean factually wrong … Yes, actual Holocaust revisionism (not denial) is a fascinating field and a worthwhile endeavor … Revisionism has enriched and strengthened World War II historiography, and if you truly want to learn about it, read David Irving, Mark Weber, and me. But you’re not gonna get “Holohoax” from any serious scholar. You want a “victory”? Okay — Auschwitz wasn’t an extermination camp, the 6 million figure is too high, and the Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Dachau “gas chambers” are phonies. There, you got your victory. Yipidee-doo, go out and celebrate. And then move on to the things that matter …
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If the Draft Is Brought Back, Many Americans Would Try to Avoid Military Service
L. Sanders – YouGov
Fifty years ago a lottery was held to begin drafting Americans into military service for the Vietnam War. This lottery marked the first time since World War II that the US drew numbers to determine who would serve in the military, and it came amid anti-war protests that showed how opposed young people were to selective service. There was no legal avenue to avoid the draft, but many young men tried to find excusable reasons. Young men today would do the same if there was a draft, according to data from YouGov. Three in ten (31 percent) male Millennials say that they would “try to avoid being conscripted into the armed forces.” Since all males between ages 18 and 25 must enroll in the US draft, this group is the most likely to be impacted by selective service.
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… [This] impeachment is not about President Trump’s abuse of power. Instead, it is an attempt to make sure President Trump, and all future presidents, confine their abuses of power to items that advance the agenda of the political establishment. President Trump’s most consequential abuses of power have been met with the full approval of the majority in Congress, the mainstream media, and the deep state. For example, when President Trump launched military action in Syria without obtaining a congressional declaration of war there were no calls for his impeachment … All modern presidents have exceeded constitutional limitations on their power and thus could have, and maybe should have, been impeached … The only real dispute among the political class is which party should wield the levers of power.
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… France’s President Emmanuel Macron called today’s NATO brain dead, invoking the ire of Trump. What Macron meant was that the alliance has no coherent strategy or world view. The US wants to use NATO as a Europe-based police force to support its imperial operations in the Mideast, Africa and, most lately, against China. Most Europeans say that these far-flung regions have nothing to do with European security and want no part of a growing conflict with China. It was bad enough the US forced NATO to get militarily involved in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq. Trump wants his European Foreign Legion; Europeans say no.
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Billionaire philanthropist Ronald Lauder is funding a $25 million campaign against political candidates in the United States who support or normalize anti-Semitism. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, announced the new campaign, called the Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, or ASAP, on Monday. The effort will include a nonprofit organization and a super PAC. Lauder will have the final say on which politicians – federal, state and local – will be targeted for defeat … A statement announcing the launch of ASAP said it would “also respond and take action against institutions and cultural figures who support anti-Semitism.” Lauder also told The Times that he would look into universities and their professors, and pressure them to stop anti-Semitic statements and actions by contacting major donors.
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Zionist 'Wiesenthal Center' Names UK’s Corbyn as Top Anti-Semite of 2019
The Times of Israel
The Simon Wiesenthal Center named UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as its the top anti-Semitic person or event for 2019, and warned that Britain would become a “pariah” if it elects the hard-left leader as prime minister this week. Jewish groups and others have rung alarm bells over the prospect of Corbyn’s promotion to 10 Downing Street with increasing distress as the December 12 British election has approached, accusing him of allowing a massive rise in anti-Semitism within the ranks of the party and of being anti-Semitic himself. “No one has done more to mainstream antisemitism into the political and social life of a democracy than the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, the head of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the British Daily Mail.
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… A former Israeli security official urged American Jews to restrain Israel’s “unjust” war in Palestine because it fuels anti-Semitism around the world. The statement is remarkable because that view is generally seen as anathema: saying that Israel’s actions have any role in the growth of anti-Semitism. Ami Ayalon, a Navy commander and former head of the Shin Bet, spoke at J Street last week and said that Israelis believe they are fighting a just war of defense for their existence, and that the world refuses to acknowledge that. But in fact Israel’s existence is established, and American Jews can see that Israel is engaged in an unjust war.
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It’s not often that George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, makes an appearance before a Jewish audience. It’s even rarer for him to use such an occasion [in Nov. 2003] to talk about Israel, Jews and his own role in effecting political change … When asked about anti-Semitism in Europe, Soros, who is Jewish, said European anti-Semitism is the result of the policies of Israel and the United States … “If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish,” he said. “I can’t see how one could confront it directly.” That is a point made by Israel’s most vociferous critics, whom some Jewish activists charge with using anti-Zionism as a guise for anti-Semitism.
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Jewish-Zionist Power in America
Mark Weber – Podcast
A factual, reasoned 16-minute talk on the immense power and influence of the “Jewish lobby” in the US, and its harmful role, especially in directing US Middle East policy. As long as this power remains entrenched, says Weber, there will be no end to the Jewish-Zionist domination of American political life and the mass media, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the Israeli threat to peace, and the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East.
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Jaw-Jaw or War With Iran?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Strategically, economically and politically, the Islamic Republic of Iran seems to be in almost desperate straits … What, exactly, is the goal of these U.S. sanctions? What is the strategic objective of the pain we are causing — to punish the Iranians or to persuade them to come to the bargaining table? If it is to strangle the Iranian economy and cause riots, then it is working. But what is the diplomatic objective? Is it to force Iran to accept a new, tougher and more durable nuclear deal? … Is it to ignite a revolution and bring down the government? Is it to provoke Iran into launching reprisal attacks on U.S., Israeli or Saudi interests that might result in a war that sees Iran’s naval and missile forces smashed as Saddam Hussein’s forces were smashed?
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Iran May Be the Only Winner in Iraq
Philip Giraldi
… A remarkable 700 pages of documents relating to Iran’s role in Iraq has surfaced and was printed recently in The Intercept, which received the material, and also in The New York Times … The documents, in fact, make clear that the Iranian government considers Iraq a client state whose friendly government has to be propped up at all costs. It has indeed penetrated virtually every government ministry at nearly every level … If there is a lesson to be learned from the documents it is that if you blunder around the world breaking countries that you know little about, you will wind up with up doing more damage to yourself. It should have been obvious even in Washington that Iran, with its Shiite connection and first-rate intelligence service, would be well placed to convert Iraq into a Persian satrapy after the removal of Saddam Hussein …
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Israel Carried Out Nuclear Missile Test Aimed at Iran, Says Zarif
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said on Friday that Israel’s rocket propulsion test conducted that morning was a nuclear missile test “aimed at Iran.” “Israel today tested a nuke-missile, aimed at Iran,” Zarif said on Twitter, adding that the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom “never complain about the only nuclear arsenal in West Asia – armed with missiles actually DESIGNED to be capable of carrying nukes – but has fits of apoplexy over our conventional & defensive ones.” … There was no comment on whether or not the test was successful nor what system was tested but some speculated that it may be the surface-to-surface Jericho system, an intercontinental ballistic missile which according to foreign reports can support a nuclear payload.
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Israeli Fake News Operation Targets Muslim US Congresswomen
The Guardian (Britain)
Two Muslim US congresswomen have been targeted by a vast international operation that exploits far-right pages on Facebook to inflame Islamophobia for profit, a Guardian investigation has found. A mysterious Israeli-based group uses 21 Facebook pages to churn out more than a thousand coordinated fake news posts per week to more than a million followers around the world. It milks the traffic for revenue from digital advertising. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who earlier this year became the first Muslim women to serve in the US Congress, have been singled out for vicious attacks by the coordinated effort … A key figure in the network is Ariel Elkaras, a thirty-something jewelry salesman and online operator living on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
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Pearl Harbor: A Sober Reappraisal
Charles Lutton -- Institute for Historical Review
… Pearl Harbor revisionism has come of age. From the first writings of John T. Flynn, to George Morgenstern’s masterful study, to the work encouraged by Harry Elmer Barnes, the testimony of participants in the events, and the latest findings of “second-generation” historians who are not satisfied merely to retell the standard accounts, this endeavor to uncover the truth has not been marked by paranoid “conspiracy theories” or reactionary “Roosevelt baiting.” What revisionists have accomplished is a sober re-appraisal of the origins of the Pacific War, and the making of a strong case for remembering December 7, 1941, as President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy.”
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Did FDR Lure Japan Into Attacking Pearl Harbor?
Eric Margolis
Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 71 years ago this month was a “day that will live in infamy” according to US President Franklin Roosevelt. Seven decades later, it increasingly appears that the president’s surprise and outrage may have been synthetic. Roosevelt had been maneuvering for more than a year to bring the United States into World War II … Historians will long battle over whether Roosevelt lured Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor … At minimum, the embargo of strategic material to Japan was a huge provocation. Japan foolishly took the bait and paid a terrible price.
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Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War
Book by George Morgenstern, Available from IHR
This classic work remains unsurpassed as the best one-volume treatment of the background to the Day of Infamy. Indispensable introduction to the question of who bears the blame for the Pearl Harbor surprise, and, more important, for America’s entry, through the “back door,” into World War II. In his introduction to this attractive IHR edition, Dr. James Martin writes: “Morgenstern’s book is … still the best about the December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack, despite a formidable volume of subsequent writing by many others on the subject.”
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Secrets of World War II: Pearl Harbor and Germany
Beyond 50 Radio - Video
In this focused, hour-long broadcast, IHR director Mark Weber and host Daniel Davies review the long record of deceit by American presidents to generate public support for war, and the complicity of politicians and the media in this deceit. Weber looks at the lies of George W. Bush and other high-ranking US officials for the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq, President Johnson’s campaign of deceit to build support for the Vietnam war, and President Franklin Roosevelt’s fear-mongering campaign for war against Germany and Japan. Runtime: 53:34 mins.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday said acknowledging Nazi crimes was part of Germany’s national identity in a message aimed at far-right calls for a shift away from a culture of remembrance. Merkel crossed the gates of the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland on Friday for the first time in her 14 years as chancellor, promising to battle a new wave of anti-Semitism … “Remembering the crimes … is a responsibility which never ends. It belongs inseparably to our country,” Merkel said. “To be aware of this responsibility is part of our national identity, our self-understanding as an enlightened and free society, a democracy with rule of law,” she said. Merkel said Auschwitz “demands that we keep the memory alive”.
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French Lawmakers Pass Resolution Calling Israel Hatred a Form of Anti-Semitism
The Times of Israel
The lower house of France’s parliament on Tuesday approved a draft resolution that calls hate of Israel a form of anti-Semitism, drawing praise from Jerusalem and Jewish groups. The 577 members of the National Assembly voted on the draft, which also calls on the government to join other European nations in adopting the definition of anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The resolution was backed by 154 lawmakers while 74 opposed it. The IHRA definition states that some forms of vitriol against Israel, including comparing it to Nazi Germany, are examples of anti-Semitism, though criticizing Israel’s policies is not. … Israel hailed the move, with Foreign Minister Israel Katz calling it “an important step in the battle against anti-Semitism” and urging more countries to follow suit.
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Paying Tribute to Jewish Power: 'Ah, How Sweet It Is ...'
Robert Faurisson
Alain Finkielkraut is a professor of philosophy at France’s elite École Polytechnique who for years has been a darling of a certain section of the Parisian intelligentsia … “Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century! [he writes] We are no longer History’s accused, but its darlings. The spirit of the times loves, honors, and defends us, watches over our interests; it even needs our imprimatur. ” … Obviously, it is “sweet” to be Jewish in these final years of the century, but only a Jew has the right to say so. In effect, as Finkielkraut acknowledges, it is no longer possible to publish without the imprimatur of organized Jewry.
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US and Israel in Talks on New 'Defense Pact'
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made progress on a defense pact between their countries in their meeting in Lisbon this week, Netanyahu said on Thursday. “The meeting with Pompeo was critical for Israeli security,” Netanyahu said of the discussion that took an hour and 45 minutes on Wednesday. “We agreed to promote a defense pact.” … Netanyahu said “We will do it with full cooperation with the IDF and security forces and ensure total freedom of action for the US and the IDF.” Relevant officials in Israel and the US have reviewed a draft of the agreement, which was originally proposed by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
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In Britain, Jewish Leader Calls for Jeremy Corbyn to be 'Sacrificed'
The Canary (Britain)
A former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) has called for Jeremy Corbyn to be ‘sacrificed’. Speaking at the BoD meeting on 19 May, Lionel Kopelowitz said: “The word Corbyn is a very suitable one for him, after Corbyn in Hebrew is ‘korban’, which is a sacrifice. And I think we should sacrifice him for all the trouble that he has caused.” His comment forced current BoD president Marie Van Der Zyl to say: “I’d just like to remind you that you are being live streamed.”
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Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein Were Spies Who Used Underage Sex to Blackmail Politicians, ‘Ex-handler’ Claims
The Sun (Britain)
Ghislaine Maxwell and her paedophile lover Jeffrey Epstein were both Israeli spies who took pictures of powerful men having sex with underage girls to blackmail them, their alleged Mossad handler has sensationally claimed. The pair allegedly ran a “honey-trap” operation where they would provide young girls to politicians in order to squeeze them for information for the Israelis. The unsubstantiated claims have been made by Ari Ben-Menashe who claims he is a former Israeli spy. Ben-Menashe claims that he was the “handler” of Ghislaine’s dad Robert Maxwell, who was also a spy, and that it was the former newspaper baron who introduced Epstein and his daughter to the Israeli intelligence agency.
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Google Has 10,000 People Censoring YouTube Videos, Drastically Cutting ‘Controversial Content’
Real Clear Politics
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki tells Lesley Stahl what the video platform is doing about hate speech in an interview Sunday on the CBS newsmagazine program ’60 Minutes.’ Wojcicki told ’60 Minutes’ that Google employs 10,000 people to focus on “controversial content.” She described their schedule, which includes time for therapy. Stahl also said there are reports that the “monitors” are “beginning to buy the conspiracy theories.” … Lesley Stahl: … “Earlier this year, YouTube started re-programming its algorithms in the U.S. to recommend questionable videos much less and point users who search for that kind of material to authoritative sources, like news clips. With these changes Wojcicki says they have cut down the amount of time Americans watch controversial content by 70 percent.”
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Time to Foreclose on the Churchill Cult
Paul Gottfried
… In the Second World War Churchill supported the terror bombing of German cities, at a time when these population centers could no longer defend themselves and when the war was all but lost. In March 1946 at Fulton, Missouri, Churchill warned about an “iron curtain” descending on Eastern Europe, but during the war he had been at least as willing as FDR to accommodate Stalin. At Yalta the prime minister worked to preserve the British Empire by shamelessly praising Stalin and the Soviet Empire … Throughout his life, he stood for the British Empire, British independence, and an “anti-socialist vision of England.” In the end, Churchill watched all three vanish.
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The Bogus Mythology of World War II
Eric Margolis
… History is the propaganda of the victors. Few photographs of the gulag have survived, evidence was destroyed, and witnesses have died. Churchill and Roosevelt could not admit they were allied to the greatest mass killer since Genghis Khan, and complicit in his crimes. Or reveal that Communist agents of influence had shaped White House policy. The feeble-minded Roosevelt even hailed Stalin as “Uncle Joe.” … Those who considered the Jewish Holocaust a unique historical crime were not eager to bring attention to Stalin’s genocide lest it diminish or dilute their own people’s suffering.
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1940: Myth and Reality, by Clive Ponting
Publisher’s Weekly
In a radical new look at Britain’s “finest hour,” Ponting reviews the mythology that grew up around the dramatic events of 1940 (Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, Churchill’s inspiring leadership) and concludes that it was also the most painful year in British history … As the country’s strategic position collapsed, the only way to avoid a humiliating compromise peace with Hitler was to beg for major assistance from the United States. But the Americans drove a hard bargain, and once U.S. material began to flow eastward across the Atlantic, Washington used its financial power ruthlessly to keep Britain in a state of dependence through the rest of the war … Ponting’s argument is compelling, his reasoning sure, his conclusions jarring.
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The Root Cause of the Conflict is the Israel Lobby
Philip Weiss – Mondoweiss
The good thing about Secretary of State Pompeo’s declaration that the U.S. does not regard settlements as illegal is that it is a naked expression of the power of the Israel lobby in U.S. policy making. Even the Associated Press chalked the decision up to Trump’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson … Adelson has more power than the Secretary of State, writes Tim Egan of the Times … This is not just a domestic political question, it’s a foreign policy problem. The Israel lobby is the root cause of the Israel Palestine conflict … The Israelis have been able to continue to devour the land only because the United States supports the occupation in international fora, and gives Israeli a diplomatic umbrella against any storm, due to blind bipartisan political backing here.
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The International Zionist Conspiracy
Philip Giraldi
A recent article by Philip Weiss on the Mondoweiss website lays out an argument that most liberal Jews, like Weiss, are hesitant to support, namely that Jewish power, and more to the point its money, as exercised through the so-called Israel Lobby in the United States and elsewhere, has been the principal enabling force behind the international pariah that the state of Israel has become … Jewish power in America and elsewhere must never be discussed unless it is a discussion involving only Jews, who openly recognize and appreciate the phenomenon … Zionist Jews are essentially able to shut down any discussion of Palestine or of Palestinian rights.
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Trump Beats Out Lincoln as Better President, Majority of Republicans Say in New Poll
The Washington Times
President Trump was rated above Abraham Lincoln by a majority of Republicans surveyed in a recent poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov. Conducted between Sunday and Tuesday this week, the survey asked a random sample of 1,500 adults several questions about Mr. Trump as part of a weekly tracking poll. Among the questions asked of respondents was to consider both Mr. Trump and Lincoln and answer, “Which Republican president was better?” Three-quarters of all people surveyed picked Lincoln as the better president, but most Republicans answered otherwise: Among respondents identified as Republicans, 53% chose Mr. Trump as the better president and 47% named Lincoln.
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… Such are the passions provoked these days by [Gabriele] d’Annunzio, whose introduction into Trieste’s Piazza della Borsa in September has anguished many local residents. Once the cosmopolitan port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Trieste boasts a proud literary pedigree … As a poet, d’Annunzio is considered among the great Italian stylists. But some residents complain that it is d’Annunzio’s politics, not his letters, that motived the initiative to place him in their city, to which he had little connection. On Sept. 12, 1919, 100 years to the day before his statue was unveiled, d’Annunzio led his company of black-clad rebel Italian soldiers and irregulars into the city of Fiume on the Adriatic coast. The expedition, filled with unapologetic militarism, inspired Fascism and Mussolini.
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… Analysts monitoring extremist groups have called the event one of Europe’s biggest gatherings of ultra-fascists, extreme right-wingers and nationalists. Participants throw firecrackers, pose with flares and don jackets and sweaters reading, “Death to the enemies of the fatherland.” Many of them say the greatest threat to Poland is Jewish property restitution claims … Poland’s far-right activists have started to vehemently oppose any restitution claims and are advocating for a bill that would not just ban restitution, but also criminalize it … Yelling into a microphone, Robert Bakiewicz, the organizer of the march, said that Poland’s elites — the politicians and the wealthy — were “not saying a word when Jews want to plunder our fatherland.”
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Young Americans are Less Trusting of Other People – and Key Institutions – Than Their Elders
Pew Research Center
Americans believe trust has declined in their country, whether it involves their fellow citizens’ faith in each other or their confidence in the federal government, according to a wide-ranging new Pew Research Center survey. And adults ages 18 to 29 stand out for their comparatively low levels of trust in a number of these areas. Around three-quarters (73%) of U.S. adults under 30 believe people “just look out for themselves” most of the time … Across all three of these questions, adults under 30 are significantly more likely than their older counterparts to take a pessimistic view of their fellow Americans … Young Americans are also less likely than older adults to say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in religious leaders, police officers, business leaders and K-12 public school principals.
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The History of 'History is Written by the Victors'
M. Phelan – Slate
… Who really said, “History is written by the victors.” The lawyer (played by Corey Stoll) attributes the quote to Winston Churchill, but Jones counters by pointing to an earlier iteration of the sentiment by Hermann Göring, Churchill’s enemy in World War II. So: Who said it first … Driver’s Jones is correct to point out that Göring is indeed recorded as having voiced this sentiment at the Nuremberg trials. In the original German, Göring is reported to have said … “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.” As for Churchill … there’s actually no concretely documented instance in which he’s known to have uttered “History is written by the victors.” … In other words, the world has rewritten history to credit the saying to one of the 20 th century’s greatest victors, but it’s always been very popular with history’s biggest losers.
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The Life and Death of the Luftwaffe
Werner Baumbach. Book available from IHR
Remarkable saga of the rise and fall of one of history’s great air forces, as told by one of its most decorated and honored officers, Werner Baumbach. A key figure in the aerial campaigns over England, Russia, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic, Baumbach became head of the Luftwaffe’s Bomber Command before his thirtieth birthday. Here he gives a detailed, frank, inside account of Germany’s air war, seen from the top: Hitler as leader and strategist; assessments of key Luftwaffe figures as Göring, Milch, Udet, Jeschonnek, and Galland; and the great controversies over tactics and strategy that helped decide the war.
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The World Jewish Congress (WJC), which calls itself “The Representative Body of over 100 Jewish Communities Worldwide,” held its annual gala at the Pierre hotel in New York City on Nov. 6. It bestowed its annual Theodor Herzl Award (named after Israel’s founding father) on former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for her work on behalf of Israel. Some previous awardees have been Joe Biden and Henry Kissinger … The Jewish Voice described the recent World Jewish Congress gala: “It’s 6 PM on Wednesday November 6th in New York City and dozens of Secret Service are gathered at the Pierre to protect billionaires, politicians and global influencers at one of the premier evenings of the year.” JV reports that “the illustrious guest list was unparalleled,” and provides a lineup that represents extraordinary wealth and power …
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Theresa May has come under fire after unveiling a statue that ‘honours a Nazi-sympathising anti-Semite’. Britain’s former prime minister travelled to Plymouth on Thursday for a ceremony to unveil a bronze statue of Nancy Astor who was the first female MP to sit in Parliament … The unveiling event – held near to Lady Astor’s former family home – spurred fury online, with thousands of people alleging that Ms Astor was a Nazi sympathizer … In the lead up to the Second World War, Lady Astor is said to have written to US Ambassador to Britain Joseph Kennedy Sr. saying that Hitler might be the solution to the ‘world problem’ of Jews.
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Despite Nazi Sympathy Claims, Statue Erected in Britain of First Woman MP
Jewish News - The Times of Israel
A statue has been erected in honour of the first woman MP to take her seat in Parliament – despite claims Nancy Astor was part of a society set sympathetic towards Adolf Hitler … Lady Astor was at the centre of a clique which became known in the press as the Cliveden set, a group often accused of being sympathetic towards Hitler and influencing foreign policy, a claim which she called a “terrible lie”. Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, recounted an episode he uncovered in which Lady Astor argued Jews were to blame in some measure for their persecution … According to the i newspaper, she expressed virulently antisemitic views in letters to US ambassador Joseph P Kennedy …
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UN Report on Israeli Settlements Speaks the Truth – But the World Refuses to Listen
Robert Fisk - The Independent (Britain)
… In his latest UN report, he reminds readers that the creation of Israel’s “civilian settlements” in occupied territory is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a “war crime” under the Rome Statute. So you can see why the 67-year old [Michael] Lynk, a labour lawyer by training, has been having a tough time since his appointment to the voluntary, unpaid UN post three years ago … Israel, Lynk adds, “has rightly assessed that the international community – particularly the western industrial nations – has lacked the political will to compel an end to its impunity.” He even quotes the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who wrote that “no country is as dependent on the support of the international community as Israel, yet Israel allows itself to defy the world as few dare”.
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A new Hungarian government scheme to promote marriage and childbirth with subsidized loans has already helped produce a boom in weddings, though it is still too early to say whether more babies will follow. Nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has made it a priority to persuade more Hungarians to marry and have children to reverse a population decline. He has introduced a number of tax benefits and other programs to favor families. A big new scheme this year offers couples that marry before the bride’s 41st birthday subsidized loans of up to 10 million forints ($33,000). A third of the loan will be forgiven if they go on to have two children and the entire debt wiped out if they have three. The central statistics office (KSH) said there had already been a 20 percent surge in the number of people getting married during the first nine months of this year.
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US forces mustered dozens of military vehicles near oil fields in the Rumeilan region of Al-Hasakah province in Syria’s northeast, Syrian state television reported on Thursday. The equipment was transferred from the US positions in the north of Raqqa province and west of Al-Hasakah province, the media said. Earlier this month it was reported that a US military convoy consisting of 22 military vehicles and two trucks crossed the Syrian-Iraqi border and positioned itself near several oil deposits in northeastern Syria … US President Donald Trump himself has confirmed several times that his country main intention in Syria is to retain control over the oil fields in its northeast … Damascus in its turn has voiced protests against American military contingent’s presence in the country and US’ plans to secure Syrian oil.
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Indispensable No More?: How the American Public Sees U.S. Foreign Policy
M. Hannah, C. Gray – Eurasia Group Foundation
The Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF) commissioned a national survey to investigate the foreign policy preferences of American voters … The findings are consistent across a number of foreign policy issues, and across generations and party lines: More than twice as many want to decrease as increase the defense budget; … A plurality want to end the war in Afghanistan within the next year regardless of outcome … Support for American exceptionalism and leadership continues to be driven by the power of America’s example, but the public confidence in America’s example is apparently eroding. Compared with last year, fewer Americans believe the U.S. is exceptional for what it represents, and more believe the U.S. is not an exceptional country.
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Is Macron Right? Is NATO, 70, Brain Dead?
Patrick J. Buchanan
.. The 29 member states of “the most successful alliance in history” will meet to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Yet all is not well within NATO … As a fighting faith, communism is dead in Europe. Why then are we Americans still over there? Since the Cold War, we have doubled the size of NATO … Do we truly believe that if Russia marched into Estonia, the U.S. would start attacking the ships, planes and troops of a nation armed with thousands of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons? Would NATO allies Spain, Portugal and Italy declare war on Russia? … Under NATO, we are now committed to go to war for 28 nations. And the interventionists who took us into Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen want U.S. war guarantees extended to other nations even closer to Russia. One day, one of these war guarantees is going to be called upon …
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The Democratic establishment is increasingly irritated. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, long-shot candidate for president, is attacking her own party for promoting the “deeply destructive” policy of “regime change wars.” Gabbard has even called Hillary Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.” … Only a naif would imagine that these wars will disappear absent a dramatic change in national leadership … Yet every expansion of conflict makes the American homeland more, not less, vulnerable … Tulsi Gabbard is talking about what really matters. The bipartisan War Party has done its best to wreck America and plenty of other nations too. Gabbard is courageously challenging the Democrats in this coalition, who have become complicit in Washington’s criminal wars.
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The Derangement Syndrome
Tim Black - Spiked
Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii and, since February, Democratic presidential candidate, is highly unlikely to win the Democratic nomination … Yet the Democratic establishment and its media cheerleaders seem to have become fixated on her. She annoys them. She riles them … It’s because of her willingness to question the narratives that have justified Western intervention in Syria … That’s right. Clinton thinks Gabbard is a Russian plant. She thinks Gabbard is ‘being groomed’ by the Kremlin. She thinks she is being manoeuvred, by Putin and Co, out of the Democratic Party and into a third-party position, so as to split the Democratic vote in 2020 … The entitlement underwriting her [Clinton’s] deranged conspiracy theory is breathtaking.
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Are We on the Path to War? – Middle East Heats Up While Viewers Watch the Impeachment
Philip Giraldi
Americans and also much of the rest of the world have been watching or otherwise following the impeachment proceedings in Washington and not paying much attention to developments in the Middle East that could be setting the stage for a new war. It should surprise no one to learn that Washington has no actual policy to finish what it is doing and get out, so it is allowing itself to be led by its so-called allies in the region … The conventional wisdom that a serious war is too dangerous to contemplate in the confined spaces of the Middle East might be naïve in the extreme as representatives of a number of nations consider just how to fight each other and how to win. One misstep, or even a false flag provocation, is all it would take to engulf the region in flames.
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Italian Professor to be Disciplined for Tweeting Praise of Hitler
Associated Press
Italy’s education minister says a state university professor will be disciplined for Twitter posts defending Hitler. Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti tweeted University of Siena’s rector informed him Monday that he intended to take unspecified “measures’’ against Professor Emanuele Castrucci. Castrucci, in a reply on his Twitter feed, wrote: “Hitler, even if certainly no saint, in that moment was defending the entire European civilization.” Rector Francesco Frati decried the “revisionist and neo-Nazi” posts as “shameful.” Castrucci’s reply followed his posting a photo of the Nazi dictator flanked by a dog. The professor’s caption read: “They said I’d been a monster to not inform you that I fought against the true monsters that today govern you, dominating the world.”
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Officials from the Italian town of Schio are doubling down on their refusal to install a memorial honoring local victims of the Holocaust, after the move prompted criticism from the Jewish community. In an address made late last week, Valter Orsi, mayor of Schio, defended the municipal council’s recent decision to reject a memorial representing citizens of the town who died in Holocaust death camps. According to Orsi, the proposal was not brought to the town in good faith. “We do not support political exploitation in our city,” he said, reported Corriere della Sera on November 28. “There is already a plaque for the victims of the camps.”
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The Problem With Settlements Is Not Only That They Are Illegal. It’s That They Are Immoral
Peter Beinart - Forward
The Trump administration said Israeli settlements in the West Bank don’t violate international law. That’s absurd … But critics who condemn the Trump administration for disregarding international law are missing the deeper point. So are critics who condemn it for undermining the two-state solution. Fundamentally, the problem with settlements is neither legal nor geopolitical. It is moral. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are institutionalized expressions of bigotry … When Netanyahu defends settlements, he’s not defending Jews’ right to live in the West Bank. He’s defending our right to live there as masters. Spend even a few hours on the ground with Palestinians in the West Bank and all this becomes obvious. But it rarely comes through in the American media …
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It is hardly a major surprise that the US government has finally decreed that illegal Jewish settlements built in defiance of international law are somehow “consistent” with the said law. US foreign policy has been edging closer towards this conclusion for some time … The US has never, not even once, stood up for Palestinians or Arabs since the establishment of the State of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948. Moreover, Washington has bankrolled the Israeli occupation of Palestine in every possible way, including the subsidizing of the illegal Jewish settlements … Israel has never been truly concerned with international law, but it needed this US green light to move forward with annexing at least 60 per cent of the occupied West Bank. Indeed, with the hemorrhaging of US concessions to Israel, Netanyahu is eager for more.
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… The most shocking thing to come out of the hearings thus far is confirmation that no matter who is elected President of the United States, the permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia. Even more shocking is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered in the slightest! … According to his testimony, Vindman’s was concerned over “influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.” “Consensus views of the interagency” is another word for “deep state.” … Let that sink in for a moment: Vindman did not witness any crimes, he just didn’t think the elected President of the United States had any right to change US policy toward Ukraine or Russia!
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How Rich People Like Gordon Sondland Buy Their Way to Being US Ambassadors
Dennis Jett – The Conversation
In every other developed democratic country, the role of ambassador, with only very rare exceptions, is given to career diplomats who have spent decades learning the art of international relations. In the U.S., however, many ambassadors are untrained in diplomacy, and have simply bought their way into a prestigious post. The involvement of the American ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, in the Ukraine scandal has prompted interest in the media and Congress in the role of non-career ambassadors like him … The real problem with political appointee ambassadors. That is the selling of the title in exchange for campaign contributions to people who are clearly unqualified for the job.
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Dealing in Hate: The Development of Anti-German Propaganda
Michael F. Connors – Online book
Here is the complete text of an informative, fact-packed survey of the origins and development of the sustained propaganda campaign of bigotry and hatred that has brought untold misery to millions, and which still persists. Dr. Connors explains how millions of Americans and Europeans — including Germans themselves — have been conditioned to accept a “hate Germany” attitude. He examines the often-repeated claim that Germans have been much more prone to warfare than other nations. He logs the outbreaks of warfare over a century, and shows that Germany has committed far fewer acts of aggression than her European neighbors. He also examines the manipulation of public opinion through the invention of atrocity stories.
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The Contract on Corbyn
Gideon Levy - Haaretz (Israel)
The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. The contract was taken out a long time ago, and it was clear that the closer Corbyn came to being elected prime minister, the harsher the conflict would get … The Jews of Britain also want a prime minister who supports Israel – that is, supports the occupation. A prime minister who is critical of Israel is to them an exemplar of the new anti-Semitism. Corbyn is not an anti-Semite. He never was. His real sin is his staunch position against injustice in the world, including the version Israel perpetrates. Today this is anti-Semitism.
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The Graying of the 'Greening of America'
David Skinner - Washington Examiner
… Among the overheated, overreaching, radical books of the late ’60s and early ’70s, The Greening of America stands out … Consciousness III, “just emerging,” was the spirit of the student movement, which epitomized the most free, the most authentic, the most egalitarian, and the most evolved generation America had ever seen. A beneficent shift in consciousness was under way, [author Charles] Reich announced, and it came to America courtesy of the kids, the hippies and radical students, the dropouts and rock ‘n’ rollers. They were showing the way forward … Reich’s claims for the new lifestyle were, to put it mildly, grandiose. “The present transformation,” he wrote in the book’s climactic chapter, “goes beyond anything in modern history … What is coming is nothing less than a new way of life and a new man.”
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Holocaust Training for American Police
Philip Giraldi
Jewish groups in the United States are adept at creating mechanisms that benefit themselves and also frequently Israel at the expense of the American taxpayer. The proliferating holocaust museums are a good example… The national holocaust museum in Washington is, for example, supported by the taxpayer to the tune of $54 million per year … Holocaust education is mandatory in the public schools of 15 states, and Jewish groups are active in determining just what appears in textbooks about Israel, which means that the propagandizing about Jews and Israel begins early and continues throughout one’s education … Policemen in Tampa Florida are now undergoing “holocaust training,” sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.
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The Groypers of Wrath
David Cole – Taki’s Mag
… Regarding immigration, what structurally has changed under Trump? We don’t have a wall …we don’t even have any new wall being constructed. Chain migration? Still chuggin’ along. Birthright citizenship? Unchallenged. Amnesty laws? Still lettin’ ’em in. It’s often said that leftists can’t meme. Guess what: They don’t have to. The current course of events favors them. In terms of numbers pouring into the country and birth rates exploding within, all the left needs to do is nothing, because they’ve already set the wheels in motion. … Keep in mind, many of the commonsense immigration restrictions and reforms that Trump championed in 20 are things Democrats used to support. And we haven’t enacted those restrictions and reforms yet.
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Fourth Soviet Spy of Manhattan Project Unearthed
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
… There was an additional spy that was involved in handing sensitive material to Soviet agents regarding details of the Manhattan Project. The project is what eventually led to the development of the first nuclear weapon. The passing of sensitive information to the Soviets allowed them to remodel and eventually develop their own atomic bomb by 1949. The fourth spy has been revealed to be Oscar Seborer, born in New York City in 1921, to Jewish immigrants from Poland. Following his involvement in the spy ring, which included the notorious Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, he fled to the Soviet Union in 1951, where he received a military award and died in Moscow in 2015. The newly declassified FBI documents gave Seborer a code name, and the report claims that he gave the Soviet Union “the formula for the ‘A’ bomb.”
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Historians Find A Family of Jewish Spies Who Passed Atomic Secrets to the USSR
Jewish Press (Brooklyn, NY)
Oscar Seborer, who was working at Los Alamos, NM, at the time Manhattan project scientists were laboring to beat their Nazi counterparts in the race for an atomic weapon, passed sensitive information to Soviet agents, according to an article titled “On the Trial of a Fourth Soviet Spy at Los Alamos” by Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, in the current issue of the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence … Like many Jewish families from Eastern Europe, the Seborers came to the United States in stages. … All of the children gravitated toward the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In fact, the Seborer family was part of a network of people connected to Soviet intelligence … Oscar Seborer died on 23 April 2015 in Moscow.