Headlines

… After President Trump’ s illegal and foolish assassination of Iranian general Soleimani on Iraqi soil early this month, the Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to cancel the agreement under which the US military remains in Iraq. But when the Iraqi prime minister called up Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to request a timetable for a US withdrawal, Pompeo laughed in his face … A million Iraqi protesters chanted “no, no to occupation.” The Iraqi parliament voted for us to leave. The Iraqi prime minister asked us to leave … So, before more US troops die for nothing in Iraq, why don’t we listen to the Iraqi people and just come home? Let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems and let’s solve our problems at home.

The Palestinians have roundly rejected Donald Trump’s Middle East proposal, feeling the cards are stacked against them. The plan recognises and legitimises the Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory, which are regarded as illegal under international law – although Israel disputes this. It would see Israel annex large swathes of the most fertile Palestinian land and gives complete security control of the West Bank to Israel in any future “state” … Among those in the East Room of the White House as the plan was unveiled was “megadonor” Sheldon Adelson. The casino billionaire paid tens of millions of dollars into Republican coffers and an estimated $20 million to the Trump campaign in 2016 … He cheered on the president as details of the new proposal were read out.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder exhorted world leaders to act decisively to stop the spread of anti-Semitism, by passing laws to imprison hatemongers and to educate children so that they know where hatred can lead. Marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Lauder addressed more than 200 survivors, delegates from more than 50 countries and political leaders … He also asked countries to stop casting votes in favor of what he called “the UN’s constant and shameful fixation on Israel.”

A college football coach in Michigan was suspended Monday for calling Adolf Hitler a “great leader” during an interview with the school’s student newspaper, a report said. Morris Berger, the offensive coordinator at Grand Valley State University, spoke at length about the Nazi leader when asked which three historical figures, except for famous athletes, he would want to have dinner with. “This is probably not going to get a good review, but I’m going to say Adolf Hitler,” Berger told the Grand Valley Lanthorn. “It was obviously very sad and he had bad motives, but the way he was able to lead was second to none. How he rallied a group and a following, I want to know how he did that. Bad intentions of course, but you can’t deny he wasn’t a great leader,” he added in the interview.

In this reasoned, well-researched lecture, Weber explains how and why Adolf Hitler and Third Reich Germany are portrayed in such a distorted and unbalanced way in the American mass media and schools, and by politicians. Grotesque distortions and even outright lies about Hitler and his regime are widespread and unchallenged in today’s America, Weber points out, even in supposedly authoritative history books and reference works. He gives clear, specific examples. In this address, titled “Is an Objective View of Hitler Possible?,” Weber says that the portrayal of the Third Reich, as well as other important aspects of modern history, reflects the interests and agenda of those who wield power. Runtime: One hour, seven minutes.

… Finally, I took it upon myself to read Hitler’s magnum opus, Mein Kampf, and see what I could pick up about him for myself … Reading the book and putting this material together has given me a better handle on what Hitler believed … The quotes are from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s words. Hitler had a biocentric worldview. His perspective on life was first of all referenced in Nature … Man is not separate from or above Nature but rather a part of Nature … Hitler held up the Greek ideal of an education that promotes a noble soul, physical beauty, and a brilliant mind. He called for an emphasis on the development of firm character, especially self-confidence, willpower and determination, and a sense of responsibility … Hitler believed that Jews stand in the way of all that must be achieved.

The US Treasury Department, under Secretary Steven Mnuchin, has worked to block an Iranian news website, Fars News. Mnuchin is an Israel partisan and former hedge fund owner … Reclaim the Net reports: “Fars News Agency, an Iranian media outlet, says that it’s had its English-language .com domain blocked internationally under US sanctions. In a statement posted to its .ir domain, which the news agency appears to be using as an alternative to the blocked .com, Fars News Agency said its international service provider had been ordered to cut off access to the Fars News Agency’s .com domain by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control …” … Similarly, YouTube recently took down another Iranian news website, Press TV.

One of Belgian’s leading newspapers was excoriated by Israel’s ambassador in Brussels this week for publishing an opinion piece that amounted to what he called “cheap, distorted and devious antisemitism and anti-Israel drivel.” The offending article — in the mass-circulation Flemish-language daily de Standaard — was authored by a Belgian journalist, Johan Depoortere. Titled “How the Zionists ‘Discovered’ the Holocaust” … Depoortere also asserted that “the Holocaust occupies such a central place in the propaganda of the Zionist state” … The 75-year-old Depoortere spent several years as foreign correspondent for Belgian television, reporting from Lebanon, central America, Russia and Afghanistan among other locations.

Four U.S. rabbis led by New York’s Avi Weiss gathered on Sunday in front of a church next to the Nazi German death camp at Birkenau in Poland arguing for its removal from a site where more than a million Jews were murdered … The rabbis argue the church should not be on the site of one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the world and it violates a 1987 agreement between European cardinals and Jewish leaders that there will not be any permanent Catholic place of worship on the site of the Auschwitz or Birkenau camps. “This (the church) in my mind is the greatest desecration of the history of the Holocaust,” Weiss said.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed a Middle East plan that he claimed was a “realistic two-state solution” but caters to nearly every major Israeli demand and was immediately rejected by Palestinians. It lays the groundwork for Israel to immediately begin annexing all of its settlements in the West Bank with US backing and also foresees the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty after a transition period … When Trump presented his administration’s long-anticipated proposal to remove the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the White House on Tuesday, Netanyahu was at his side and dozens of right-wing supporters of Israel — including the megadonor Sheldon Adelson and GOP members of Congress — flanked the podium.

It’s nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips. Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence … During the 2018-2019 season, more than 33% of NBA [professional basketball] teams had head coaches of color. The number of assistant head coaches of color was over 42%. The number of black NBA players was 82% … The same question can be asked about professional football where 70% of NFL players are black, and 9% of team head coaches are black. The thornier question and challenge is what can be done to make professional basketball and football look more like the American population?

French intellectual Renaud Camus has been given a two month suspended prison sentence for saying that mass immigration into Europe represents an “invasion.” Camus will only avoid jail by paying 1800 euros to two “anti-racist” organizations, SOS Racisme and the LICRA (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism). The writer, who is the author of Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement), was charged with “public incitement to hate or violence on the basis of origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion.” The conviction stems from a November 2017 speech in Colombey-les-deux Eglises to the National Council of European Resistance in which Camus declared, “Immigration has become an invasion.”

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Thursday that his nation had not fully learned the lessons of the Holocaust, as Jew-hatred was still growing. In an emotional speech at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Steinmeier reiterated that his country assumes full responsibility for the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people … Germany’s responsibility does not expire … Steinmeier, 64, was addressing some 50 world leaders participating in the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, which convened in the Israeli capital to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp … Steinmeier vowed to combat anti-Semitism, as well as “the poison that is nationalism.” He promised to protect Jewish life in Germany and to stand with the State of Israel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prime speaking slot at a Holocaust commemoration event in Jerusalem this week was generating controversy even before the longtime leader took the podium … Speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, Putin claimed that 40 percent of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were citizens of the Soviet Union. Historians called the claim absurd. “It’s completely false,” Jan Grabowski, a historian at the University of Ottawa, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview. Jelena Subotic, a professor of political science at Georgia State University and the author of “Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance After Communism,” called Putin’s claim “ridiculous and not based on historical fact” …

Historians have presented a collection of photos kept by the deputy commander of the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp that they say appears to include images of John Demjanjuk, the retired US auto worker who was tried in Germany for his alleged time as a Sobibor guard. The collection unveiled Tuesday at Berlin’s Topography of Terror museum comprises 361 photos as well as written documents illustrating Johann Niemann’s career. Niemann was the deputy commander of Sobibor from September 1942 until he was killed on October 14, 1943, in an uprising by Jewish inmates.

Unwanted visits from neo-Nazis are becoming an increasing problem for the memorial centre at the former World War II concentration camp at Buchenwald in eastern Germany, museum director Volkhard Knigge said on Thursday. Right-wing extremists were taking part in “targeted and pre-planned disruptions of tours” of the former camp, Knigge told the Neue Westfaelische newspaper … Knigge said that right-wing extremists were becoming more present at Buchenwald. “We increasingly find messages in the guest book claiming that Nazism and the concentration camps were sensible and good for the Germans,” he said.

Buchenwald is widely regarded as one of wartime Germany’s most notorious “death camps.” In fact, though, this carefully cultivated image bears little resemblance to reality … The camp deserves another, more objective look … General Lucius D. Clay, Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in Europe and Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone of Germany, 1947-49, carefully reviewed the Ilse Koch case in 1948 and found that, whatever her other misdeeds, the lampshade charge was baseless.

In an astounding gathering, at least 45 presidents, kings, premiers, and world leaders have gathered in Israel to pay obeisance to the Jewish State and “fight antisemitism.” … In the midst of the impeachment proceedings, US Vice President Mike Pence and Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi have flown to Israel to pay tribute … The opulent two-day event is entitled “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism.” … The event is the brain child of Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, a Russian-Israeli oligarch known for “unscrupulous business dealings” who made his money during the massive plunder of Russian resources that left many ordinary Russian citizens in misery. Kantor is the president of the European Jewish Congress and multiple other international entities.

The leaders of the three main European Union institutions, the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament … are in Jerusalem to attend – along with some 40 other world leaders – the fifth World Holocaust Forum which marks the 75 th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The forum takes place Thursday at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre. A ceremony is scheduled on Wednesday at the Warsaw Ghetto Square. It is the first visit in Israel of the three presidents of the European institutions since taking office in December. In a common message they said that, “revisionism and lack of education are threatening the common understanding of the uniqueness of the Shoah that is necessary to translate “Never Again” into concrete action now”.

… It’s permissible to discuss the power of every other group, from the Black Muslims to the Christian Right, but the much greater power of the Jewish Establishment is off-limits. That, in fact, is the chief measure of its power … Explicitly “Jewish” organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League enforce a dual standard. What is permitted to Israel is forbidden to America. This is not just thoughtless inconsistency. These organizations consciously support one set of principles here – equal rights for all, ethnic neutrality, separation of church and state – and their precise opposites in Israel, where Jewish ancestry and religion enjoy privilege.

… To get a good reading on a country’s economic health, start by looking at the health of its citizens. If they are happy and prosperous, they will be healthy and live longer. Among developed countries, America sits at the bottom in this regard. US life expectancy, already relatively low, fell in each of the first two years of Trump’s presidency, and in 2017, midlife mortality reached its highest rate since World War II … Likewise, Trump’s trade wars, for all their sound and fury, have not reduced the US trade deficit, which was one-quarter higher in 2018 than it was in 2016. The 2018 goods deficit was the largest on record … Even judging by GDP, the Trump economy falls short. Last quarter’s growth was just 2.1%, far less than the 4%, 5%, or even 6% Trump promised to deliver, and even less than the 2.4% average of Obama’s second term.

Now out of print, this book is available here at the lowest price of any distributor – and each copy includes the author’s autograph! / In this hilarious, intriguing and sometimes spiteful memoir — subtitled “The `Bad Boy of Holocaust History’ Blows the Lid Off Hollywood’s Secret Right-Wing Underground” – a daring writer, commentator and filmmaker looks back at his tumultuous and controversial life. Republican “hero” David Stein made international headlines in 2013 when he was unmasked as David Cole, the Jewish “Holocaust denier” who made an entirely different set of headlines in the 1990s. This lively, humorous memoir includes revealing glimpses into the private lives of prominent personalities. And in a serious 25-page appendix, Cole lays out his view of what did, and did not, happen to Europe’s Jews in “the Holocaust.”

One of France’s most influential and reputable magazines, L’Express, now acknowledges that “everything is false” about the Auschwitz “gas chamber” that for decades has been shown to tens of thousands of tourists yearly. “Auschwitz: The Memory of Evil,” a lengthy article by journalist and historian Eric Conan, a dedicated anti-revisionist, appears in the January 19-25, 1995, issue … Generally speaking, writes Conan, there have been many obvious falsifications in the Auschwitz and Birkenau camp sites.

Most American adults possess a general understanding of the Holocaust, but many in the US do not know basic facts about the slaughter of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany, according to a major study released Wednesday. The survey by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of American adults do not know that approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust or that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler came to power via democratic elections. However, the survey also found that an overwhelming majority of Americans adults, 84 percent, know that the Holocaust involved the deaths and persecution of Jews, in contrast with previous studies that found significantly fewer US adults with basic knowledge about the Holocaust.

… In February 2019, Schoen Consulting conducted a survey at the behest of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. The survey indicated that there is a serious deficiency in knowledge about the Holocaust among US adults and that fewer people care about the Holocaust than they did in the 1950s through 90s … According to the Schoen findings, one third of Americans, and a staggering 40 percent of Millennials, believe that substantially fewer than 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust (they mistakenly consider the figure to be closer to 2 million) … Stunningly, 41 percent of older adults and 66 percent of Millennials hadn’t heard of Auschwitz, the largest and most notorious concentration camp. Moreover, 80 percent of US adults had never visited a Holocaust museum.

On the subject of the Nazi gas chambers, Jean-Marie Le Pen recently stated: “If you take a thousand-page book on the Second World War, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or fifteen lines, and that’s called a detail.” He might have brought up some even harder hitting and more precise arguments, and referred to Eisenhower, Churchill, de Gaulle, Elie Wiesel, René Rémond, Daniel Goldhagen, and even the text of the Nuremberg Tribunal judgment. … In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi “gas chambers,” a “genocide” of the Jews, or of “six million” Jewish victims of the war.

It was meant to be a rather small summit, but it turned into the largest diplomatic event in the history of the State of Israel. When Israeli officials first started planning for the Fifth World Holocaust Forum to commemorate the 75th liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, they estimated that 10 or perhaps 15 world leaders or top dignitaries would attend … In fact, delegations from 49 countries, including 41 heads of state, are expected to attend the Forum this week … The event, headlined “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Antisemitism,” is co-organized by the office of President Reuven Rivlin, Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center and the World Holocaust Forum Foundation, which was founded by Moscow-born philanthropist and Jewish activist Moshe Kantor.

… The so-called holocaust, which has produced a host of taxpayer funded museums, is regularly featured in the media and also is part of mandatory public education in a growing number of states and school districts. That the established holocaust narrative lives on in spite of its irrelevancy and obvious contradictions is a reflection of Jewish power in the United States. Since the 1970s, when the regular evocations of the holocaust began in earnest, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life … Protecting Israel and Jewish privilege became two sides of the same coin, leading to creation of the holocaust narrative, which Professor Norman Finkelstein has aptly described as The Holocaust Industry.

FBI Director James Comey discussed those who participated in the Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual conference [May 2017] … Comey told the ADL gathering. “Good people helped murder millions.” … In his remarks, the top law enforcement officer added that in order to better understand humanity’s perils, the FBI requires officers and analysts to tour Washington’s Holocaust Museum in addition to studying about Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement. “I believe the Holocaust is the most significant event in human history. How could such a thing happen? How is that consistent in any way with the concept of a loving God?” Comey asked. “The answer for me is, I don’t know.”

Criminal activity imposes huge costs on black residents in low-income neighborhoods of cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia and many others. Thousands of black Americans were murdered in 2019. Over 90% of the time, the perpetrator was also black. Leftists and social justice warriors charge that what blacks have to fear most is being shot and killed by police, but the numbers don’t add up … Last year, 933 people were shot and killed by police. Twenty-three percent (212) of people shot and killed were black; 35% (331) were white; 16% (155) were Hispanic and 201 were of other or unknown races. The high homicide rate within the black community doesn’t begin to tell the full tragedy … As long as blacks buy into the notion that white racism is the source of their problems, the solutions will be elusive forever.

… Iraq has become the central military base and inexhaustible oil reservoir for the US that was envisaged by the Bush administration and its neocons. That is a major step in the total US domination of the Mideast and its energy resources. Israel has achieved its long-sought goal of removing Iraq from the confrontation over Palestine. With Egypt under a US-imposed dictator, that leaves only demolished Syria to stand up to Israel. The Saudis are gleefully stabbing their ‘brother’ Arabs in the back, as they always have done. Never in the past half-century have we seen the Arab states so pathetically feeble. Never have we seen Israel so strongly guiding US Mideast policy, including the murder of Gen. Soleimani.

… The Trump administration is making a dire mistake in maintaining U.S. forces in Iraq against the government’s will, and should reverse its stance, working with the Iraqi government on an orderly end to the U.S. military presence. Open government opposition to a U.S. military mission plus explicit threats by Iran to drive U.S. troops from Iraq make the situation too difficult and dangerous for U.S. forces to operate effectively. The fighting ability and political leverage the U.S. military had in Iraq is all but gone in the wake of the U.S. assassination of Iranian Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani, and the only way to regain a semblance of U.S. influence in the country is to pull U.S. forces out.

If you wonder what the post-Trump Republican Party will look like, take a glimpse at Tom Cotton, one of the US senators from Arkansas (where I live). Cotton has waged a relentless campaign for war against Iran and has supported every horror produced by the US foreign-policy establishment for the last 20 years. He makes other American hawks look like pacifists … Typical of take-no-prisoners warmongers, Cotton savages critics of the pro-war policy that has characterized US foreign policy in the 21st century. No baseless charge is beneath him. He recently attacked the Quincy Institute in the course of remarks about anti-Semitism.

… YouGov asked more than 34,000 Americans to say whether the Confederate flag most represents racism or heritage (additionally, panelists were allowed to select “Don’t know” or “neither of these” as responses) … For a plurality of Americans, the Confederate flag represents racism (41%). But for about one-third of Americans (34%) — particularly adults over 65, those living in rural communities, or non-college-educated white Americans — the flag symbolizes heritage.

The trial of Bruno Dey, a 93-year-old former SS guard at the Stutthof concentration camp, took a bizarre turn this week as a co-plaintiff withdrew from the case after inconsistencies were found in the story of his background. An investigation conducted by the German newsweekly Der Spiegel found that Moshe Peter Loth, 76, had not been imprisoned in Stutthof as an infant, as he had previously claimed, and neither was he the grandson of a Jewish woman who died in the gas chambers there. “Please accept my most sincere apologies for having caused any problems”, he wrote in a statement submitted to the court in Hamburg on January 11.

January 17 marks the 59th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech to the nation. After eight years in the White House, just three days before John F. Kennedy would be sworn in as his successor, Ike went on national television … The heart of his speech was a finely chiseled critique of what he dubbed the “military-industrial complex.” This criticism was all the more remarkable, of course, because Eisenhower had been a career military man … The budget of the Department of Defense (DoD) for fiscal year 2020 will be about $718 billion; DoD directly employs 1.3 million men and women in active duty, as well as more than 700,000 civilian employees … Assuring that security and liberty “may prosper together” — Eisenhower’s message is as important today as it was then.

At the end of his eight years as president, Dwight Eisenhower spoke to Americans in a nationwide farewell address. In the most prophetic and often quoted portion of his address — broadcast on national television on Jan. 17, 1961 — he warned about the influence and grave potential danger of the “military-industrial complex.” Excerpt. Runtime: 2:30 mins. “In the councils of government,’ he said, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

… Illustrating Ike’s prescient warning, Brown University’s respected Watson Institute just released a major study which found that the so-called ‘wars on terror’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan have cost US taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001 … As General Eisenhower warned, military spending has engulfed the nation. A trillion annual military budget represents just about half the world’s military expenditures … Trump is sending more troops to the Mideast while claiming he wants to reduce America’s powerful military footprint there. Our military is always in search of new mission … The US can still afford such bizarre behavior thanks to its riches, magic green dollar, endless supply of credit and a poorly educated, apathetic public too besotted by sports and TV sitcoms to understand what’s going on abroad.

Moscow is to create the most extensive collection of World War II documents, open to all persons anywhere, to once and for all “shut the filthy mouth” of those seeking to rewrite history for short-term gains, the Russian president said. Any person, Russian or non-national, will be able to access the archive, including through a website resource, and the ultimate goal is to debunk any disinformation about the most devastating conflict in human history, President Vladimir Putin pledged, during a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War … Putin also said that Moscow should follow the example of Tel Aviv, which virtually allows no one on Earth to forget about the true horrors of the Holocaust.

… Viktor Suvorov is a literary pen-name: he was born Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun in Soviet Ukraine; his father a military officer, his mother a nurse … In 1970, he was recruited by the GRU … From his new home in the UK, Suvorov wrote one of the most influential books of the perestroika era, Icebreaker. When it was published in 1988, his argument was heretical: that Stalin had been secretly plotting an offensive against Hitler’s Germany, and would have invaded in September 1941, or at the latest by 1942. Stalin, he wrote, wanted Hitler to destroy democracy in Europe, in the manner of an icebreaker, thereby clearing the way for world communism. The book undermined the idea that the USSR was an innocent party, dragged into the second world war. Russian liberals supported Suvorov’s thesis; it now has broad acceptance among historians.

Mark Weber joins host Tim Kelly in this January 2016 broadcast to talk about harmful but widely accepted myths about World War II. (Runtime: one hour, 13 minutes.) Weber talks about the self-righteous and calamitous policies of US President Woodrow Wilson in the First World War. Weber also reviews the even more delusional and catastrophic policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. His illegal and highly deceitful efforts to foment war in Europe, and then pull the US into the conflict continue to have harmful consequences for America and the world today.

Since Friday a loud chorus of voices has appeared in the media to celebrate President Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a move that has sparked renewed tension in the Middle East, a new deployment of U.S. forces, and predictions of increased military spending. Many of the pundits who appeared on national television or were quoted in major publications to praise the president’s actions have undisclosed ties to the defense industry — the only domestic industry that stands to gain from increased violence.

Just like David Barstow’s explosive investigative report on the Pentagon’s “Message Force Multipliers” in April 2008, Lee Fang at The Intercept has done us a tremendous favor by pointing out that many of the so-called military experts who are making the rounds this week to talk about the U.S.-Iran confrontation in Iraq are in fact paid shills for the defense industry. That’s right: David Petraeus, Van Hipp, Jeh Johnson, John Negroponte (and these are just the ones featured in Fang’s piece) — all have ties to the Big 5 contracting companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (whose stocks are soaring in response to recent events) and/or work for venture capital firms that invest in these companies.

Israeli officials announced Wednesday that dozens of world leaders will arrive in Jerusalem for the largest-ever gathering focused on combatting anti-Semitism amid a global spike in violence against Jews. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said the fifth World Holocaust Forum in January will coincide with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron and the presidents of Germany, Italy and Austria are among the more than 30 heads of state who have already confirmed their participation.

A record 2.3 million visitors toured former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau last year, the museum said recently, as the site gears up to mark 75 years since its last prisoners were freed. The figure was an increase of 70,000 on the visitor numbers from 2018, the previous record year. Almost 400,000 Poles toured the complex in 2019, while foreign visitors included 200,000 Britons, 120,000 Americans and 73,000 Germans … Auschwitz Memorial officials have appealed to VIPs and celebrities including Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio to help the site to reach one million Twitter followers by the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation on January 27.

The Israeli military struck 54 targets in Syria and about 900 targets in the Gaza Strip in 2019, statistics issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Friday showed. It was the first time for the IDF to publicly state the exact number of targets in Syria struck by the Israeli military, according to Israeli media report. According to the statistics, 38 km of the barrier along the Israel and Syria border has been built by the Israeli military last year. Along the Israel and Lebanon border, the IDF destroyed six cross-border tunnels dug by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. The past year of 2019 saw an increase of the strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip. Statistics reported that the IDF struck around 900 targets in the Gaza Strip, a rise compared with 865 targets in 2018.

Palestinians in the West Bank are still being prosecuted under military orders that were designed to keep the peace in the early days of an occupation and that have stifled civil rights in the territory for more than 50 years, a watchdog group says. The restrictions, some of which are based on laws passed during the British colonial era, are regularly used to break up protests, close radio stations and arrest activists under charges such as “attempt[ing] to influence public opinion … in a manner that may harm public order,” according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

The way that American political leaders and the US mass media deal with the Israel-Palestine conflict is an expression of a corrupt, unhealthy society that ignores basic historical and political realities and betrays the principles it claims to uphold. America’s policy of ardent support for the Zionist state also puts the US increasingly at odds against the rest of the world. As the new US ambassador to Israel recently acknowledged, US policy in the Middle East is driven by concern for Israel’s interests — and not by what’s best for America and humanity.

US President Donald Trump recently gave a minute-by-minute account to GOP donors of the drone strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3, telling them the top Iranian general was “saying bad things” about the US. CNN, which said it obtained audio of the remarks, reported that Trump was speaking to top Republican donors during a fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s South Florida estate. According to CNN, Trump said Soleimani was “saying bad things about our country” which led to his decision to authorize the drone strike that killed him. “He was saying things like ‘we’re going to attack your country, we’re going to kill your people.” “How much of this shit do we have to listen to?” Trump asked, according to CNN. “How much are we going to listen to?”

… The president has already declared that he needs no approval from Congress or from anyone else to initiate further military operations against Iran in the Middle East, even if the action taken is “disproportionate.” … On the day after the assassination while speaking to a gathering of his supporters at an evangelical church in Florida. He told the cheering crowd that “God is on our side” and that Soleimani “… was planning a very major attack, and we got him.” The audience went wild in approval, chanting “four more years.” … The assassination was not in reality based on any imminent threat and is therefore illegal under international law and is undeniably an unconstitutional act of war directed against both Iran and Iraq.

Two days before a Ukrainian passenger plane went down over Tehran [on Jan. 8] in the fog of battle, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reminded the world not to forget about something eerily similar — the shootdown of an Iran Air jetliner by a US Navy ship in 1988. Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus A300 with 290 people on board, was blown from the skies by a missile fired from the guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes as it flew over the Persian Gulf from Iran to Dubai on July 3, 1988.

Brazilian culture secretary Roberto Alvim was fired on Friday after using phrases similar to some used by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Alvim made the comments while discussing a new art prize in Latin America’s largest democracy. Alvim had held the post since November. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro made the decision after a backlash from Jewish organizations, key lawmakers, political parties, artists and the country’s bar association. Alvim drew criticism after he launched an arts initiative focused on nationalism and religion, while using language he later acknowledged was similar to that used Goebbels … The speeches, whose words have been reviewed by the AP, both say the nation’s art “in the next decade will be heroic” and “will be national.” Both men conclude: “Or it will be nothing.”

An outstanding historian’s much-sought biography of Joseph Goebbels, the extraordinary man who was Hitler’s close confidant and trusted colleague. This 2014 edition is the best quality one ever, with many new photographs. You’ll treasure this sumptuous hardcover masterpiece of more than 700 pages, with more than a hundred photos, many in full color. Also with dust jacket, detailed source and reference notes, and full index.

The British government secretly funded Reuters in the 1960s and 1970s at the direction of an anti-Soviet propaganda organization with links to MI-6, according to unclassified documents unveiled Monday. The government used the BBC to conceal funding in making payments to the international news group. “We are now in a position to conclude an agreement providing discreet Government support for Reuters services in the Middle East and Latin America,” reads a 1969 redacted secret British government document entitled “Funding of Reuters by HMG,” or Her Majesty’s Government. The document was declassified last year. “HMG’s interests should be well served by the new arrangement,” it continues.

The testimony of a Florida man in one of Germany’s last Nazi trials has been called into question after German media raised doubts about his claims that he was imprisoned in a concentration camp as an infant. Moshe Peter Loth, the 76-year-old American witness and co-plaintiff in the trial of a former prison guard known as “Bruno D.,” hit the headlines in November … “Bruno D.” is standing trial in Hamburg accused of being an accessary to thousands of murders while serving in the SS as a guard between August 1944 and April 1945. Loth, who says he is a Holocaust survivor, claimed he and his Jewish mother were imprisoned at Stutthof concentration camp, in Nazi-occupied Poland, after his birth on September 2, 1943, according to his lawyer.

China has been running the world’s largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years, driving China’s ever-faster rise as the global superpower … For generations, Chinese intellectuals have emphasized close ties between the state (guojia), the nation (minzu), the population (renkou), the Han race (zhongzu), and, more recently, the Chinese gene-pool (jiyinku) … With the 1995 Maternal and Infant Health Law (known as the Eugenic Law until Western opposition forced a name change), China forbade people carrying heritable mental or physical disorders from marrying, and promoted mass prenatal ultrasound testing for birth defects … Chinese biopower has ancient roots in the concept of “yousheng” (“good birth” — which has the same literal meaning as “eugenics”).

… The temple is a microcosm of a new civil religion taking shape in China – an effort by the Chinese Communist Party to satisfy Chinese people’s search for moral guidelines by supplementing the largely irrelevant ideology of communism with a curated version of the past … This effort is not an attempt to replace Communism with Confucianism. Yet it is fair to say that for the first time since China’s imperial order collapsed in 1911, a central government is embracing the ideas that made up the political-religious order that ran China for much of the past 2,500 years. Why? Not only to address China’s moral vacuum, but also as a populist measure. The country is entering a more uncertain era, of slower growth and rising inequality, and Beijing is draping itself in the mantle of tradition to broaden its appeal.

The reviews of The New York Times’ 1619 Project are in. It is “a very unbalanced, one-sided account.” It is “wrong in so many ways.” It is “not only ahistorical,” but “actually ­anti-historical.” It is “a tendentious and partial reading of American history.” This is what top historians have said of the splashy Times Magazine feature on slavery in the United States that aspires to fundamentally re-orient our understanding of American history and change what students are taught in the schools … The project is shot through with an ideological radicalism that leads to rank distortions and laughable over-reach … “These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing’,” the historians wrote.

Five historians recently wrote to the New York Times Magazine, asking the architects of its comprehensive 1619 Project, which tells the founding narrative of America through the lens of slavery, to issue several corrections. They argued that assertions in the 1619 package about the motivations that sparked the Revolutionary War and President Abraham Lincoln’s views on black equality were misleading. “We ask that The Times, according to its own high standards of accuracy and truth, issue prominent corrections of all the errors and distortions presented in The 1619 Project,” wrote the five professors, from Princeton University, Texas State University, Brown University and the City University of New York.

A court in Slovenia voided the treason conviction of a Nazi collaborator who was executed in Yugoslavia shortly after World War II. The Supreme Court of Slovenia, a European Union member on Italy’s eastern border, nullified the 1946 conviction of Leon Rupnik last week, the director of the Jewish Cultural Center of the capital Ljubljana wrote in a statement. The court ordered a retrial for Rupnik, the Nazis’ puppet ruler for Slovenia. “We were shocked and deeply concerned to learn about the decision,” the JCC’s director, Robert Waltl, wrote. The court ruled that Rupnik’s trial by the judiciary under Yugoslavia’s communist rulers was unjust. Rupnik has inveighed often against Jews, calling on listeners to “do battle with them.”

Thousands gather at this anti-Communist rally in the Slovenian city of Ljubljana, June 29, 1944. Speakers call for solidarity of Slovenes with Germany and the other nations fighting to defend the freedom and heritage of the European peoples. Among the prominent Slovene community leaders addressing this mass meeting is Leon Rupnik. Until April 1941 he had served as a high-ranking commander in the army of Yugoslavia. After the collapse of the multi-ethnic state, he served as mayor of Ljubljana, and then as President of the Slovene provincial government. In 1944 he established the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was put to death in 1946 by authorities of the new Communist regime of Yugoslavia.

A Ukrainian diplomat told Israel to butt out of the debate about honoring of Nazi collaborators. Thursday’s intervention by Gennady Nadolenko, head of Ukraine’s diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv, reflects an escalation in the disagreement between Israel and Ukraine over the issue. The subject is related to “internal issues of Ukrainian politics” and Israel’s protests about it are “counterproductive,” Nadolenko told Israeli diplomats, according to the news site Jewish.ru. Last week, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Lion, and his Polish counterpart Bartosz Cichocki wrote officials an open letter condemning the government-sponsored honoring of Stepan Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, two collaborators with the Third Reich.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez appointed as his deputy a politician who has called Israel an “illegal country” and hosted a talk show with allegedly anti-Semitic content that aired on an Iranian-funded TV station. The appointment Thursday of Pablo Iglesias Turrión, leader of the far-left Podemos party, follows an election in November that forced the Socialist party to partner with far-left movements to create the first coalition government in Spanish history. The government will have four deputy prime ministers. Podemos, which won 20 percent of votes in the Spanish general election in 2015 just a year after its creation, has called for a blanket boycott of Israel and has repeatedly accused its government of pursuing apartheid-like policies.

Scholars of the life of Gertrude Stein were startled to learn that in 1938 the prominent Jewish-American writer had spearheaded a campaign urging the Nobel committee to award its Peace Prize to Adolf Hitler … Stein’s seemingly paradoxical views about Hitler and fascism have never been a secret. As early as 1934, she told a reporter that Hitler should be awarded the Nobel peace prize.

President Trump’s decision earlier this month to assassinate Iran’s top military general on Iraqi soil – over the objection of the Iraqi government – has damaged the US relationship with its “ally” Iraq and set the region on the brink of war. Iran’s measured response – a few missiles fired on an Iraqi base after advance warning was given – is the only reason the US is not mired in another Middle East war. Trump said his decision to assassinate Gen. Qassim Soleimani was intended to prevent a war, not start a war. But no one in his right mind would think that killing another country’s top military leader would not leave that country annoyed, to say the least.

… What a striking decline in our beloved hometown, once renowned as Charm City. We saw countless blocks of empty trashed row-houses. Baltimore is also known for great neighborhoods; Fells Point, Little Italy, and so on. We drove through Highland town, pronounced, “Hollin” town by locals. I was shocked to see so many Highland town businesses which once thrived were gone, the storefronts boarded up … The East Point Mall, once a hub of family activity, has become a place to avoid, infected with drugs and criminals. Ruth said her old female friend barely escaped being carjacked in Baltimore in broad daylight by locking her doors before thugs could open them. Ruth does not venture into Baltimore unless it is absolutely necessary. Baltimore hit a new record high for homicides over the holidays.

… The claim that Soleimani and the Iranian government are somehow responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Americans” in Iraq – which has been repeated by leading Democrats and the mainstream media – appears to be groundless. There have not been significant U.S. casualties in Iraq since around 2007, when charges of Iranian involvement in attacks against U.S. forces first surfaced. Virtually all attacks against U.S. forces since the 2003 invasion had come from Baathist, Sunni, and other anti-Iranian groups … Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, admitted that there was no proof that the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with the lethal weaponry.

An interview-debate on the motives and forces behind the 2003 US-led war against Iraq. Stephen Zunes, professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, and Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, present different views on the motives behind the fateful decision to bomb, invade and occupy Iraq. Brother Nathanael Kapner arranged the exchange.

.. What was unremarkable – and unfortunate – in the speech [by President Trump] was the obvious assumption underlying it: That the United States enjoys, and should enjoy, absolute power in international relations … The claim of such absolute power has been the tacit US doctrine of foreign relations since at least as far back as the end of World War Two. America emerged from that war as the world’s sole nuclear power and, unlike other combatant countries, with its wealth virtually unscathed and its industrial capacity increased rather than demolished. Its rulers saw themselves as able, and entitled, to dictate terms to almost everyone, on almost everything.

The U.S. fiscal deficit topped $1 trillion in 2019, the first time it has passed that level in a calendar year since 2012, according to Treasury Department figures released Monday. The budget shortfall hit $1.02 trillion for the January-to-December period, a 17.1 percent increase from 2018, which itself had seen a 28.2% jump from the previous year … President Donald Trump had vowed that his stimulus policies, including massive corporate tax cut and aggressive deregulation, would help stem the red ink coming from Washington, but it has only increased. As deficits have swelled, so has the national debt, which is now at $23.2 trillion.

A majority of Americans disapprove of how President Trump is handling the situation in Iran and believe the drone strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani makes the country less safe, a poll released Sunday shows. Fifty-six percent of respondents disapprove of Trump’s grasp of the conflict with Tehran, while 43 percent approve … according to an ABC News/ Ipsos poll. Asked about the consequences of the drone strike on Soleimani, 52 percent said it made the US less safe, 25 percent said more safe, 22 percent said it didn’t have any effect, while 1 percent didn’t respond … The survey also found that 73 percent are “very” or “somewhat” concerned that the US could become involved in a full-scale war with Iran, and 27 percent said they were “not so” or “not concerned at all” about the possibility.

Iraqi officials fear economic “collapse” if Washington imposes threatened sanctions, including blocking access to a US-based account where Baghdad keeps oil revenues that feed 90 percent of the national budget. US President Donald Trump was outraged by the Iraqi parliament voting on January 5 to oust foreign forces, including some 5,200 American troops, who have helped local soldiers beat back jihadists since 2014. If troops were asked to leave, he threatened, “we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before.” The US then delivered an extraordinary verbal message directly to Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi’s office, two Iraqi officials told AFP.

The iron grip the United States maintains over the global financial system – and its propensity to use that power to promote its national interests – was reportedly at play this week after Iraq’s parliament voted on January 5 to urge caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to expel all foreign troops from the country. The Wall Street Journal reports the Trump administration warned Iraq that if it kicks US forces out of the country, Washington could respond by shutting down Baghdad’s access to a key account Iraq’s central bank holds with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – an account that is crucial to the management of Iraq’s oil revenues and its overall financial stability.

… Perhaps most important, Washington’s overreliance on secondary sanctions is building resistance to American financial dominance. Warned Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in 2016: “The more we condition use of the dollar and our financial system on adherence to U.S. foreign policy, the more the risk of migration to other currencies and other financial systems in the medium-term grows.” Overthrowing the almighty dollar will be no mean feat. Nevertheless, arrogant U.S. attempts to regulate the globe have united much of the world, including Europe, Russia, and China, against American extraterritoriality. Noted attorney Bruce Zagaris, Washington is “inadvertently mobilizing a club of countries and international organizations, including U.S. allies, to develop ways to circumvent U.S. sanctions.”

… One wonders just how far spineless college administrators will go when it comes to caving in to the demands of campus snowflakes who have been taught that they must be protected against words, events and deeds that do not fully conform to their extremely limited, narrow-minded beliefs built on sheer delusion … “Diversity” is the highest goal of students and professors who openly detest those with whom they disagree. These people support the very antithesis of higher education with their withering attacks on free speech. Both in and out of academia, the content of a man’s character is no longer as important as the color of his skin, his sex, his sexual preferences or his political loyalties. That’s a vision that spells tragedy for our nation.

US officials have confirmed that they were given advance notice Tuesday night before Iranian missile strikes against bases hosting US troops, part of what is seen as a concerted effort to avoid casualties. Iranian FM Javad Zarif said the advance notice was provided to the Iraqi government, citing respect for Iraqi sovereignty. Iraq told the US, giving time to get people out of the way of the attack. In addition, there are reports that the Iranians were directly communicating with the US through multiple sources, including the Swiss Embassy in Iran, to assure them that the attacks were the extent of their retaliation and that they are done.

Fifteen years after the U.S. invaded Iraq to turn Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship into a beacon of democracy, Iraq’s Parliament, amid shouts of “Death to America!” voted to expel all U.S. troops from the country. Though nonbinding, the expulsion vote came after mobs trashed the U.S. embassy in an assault that recalled Tehran 1979. What provoked Iraq’s Parliament into demanding the ouster of all U.S. troops? … Across the Middle East, U.S. diplomats, soldiers and civilians are on alert. The acting prime minister of Iraq, in an echo of Tehran and radical Shiites, is demanding that all 5,200 U.S. soldiers in Iraq depart.

… Two days later, when Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi addressed his country’s parliament, Trump’s justification for killing Soleimani was exposed as a cynical lie. According to Abdul-Mahdi, he had planned to meet Soleimani on the morning the general was killed to discuss a diplomatic rapprochement that Iraq was brokering between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Abdul-Mahdi said that Trump personally thanked him for the efforts, even as he was planning the hit on Soleimani – thus creating the impression that the Iranian general was safe to travel to Baghdad. Soleimani had arrived in Baghdad not to plan attacks on American targets, but to coordinate de-escalation with Saudi Arabia.

Fewer than a quarter of registered voters were able to identify Iran on a world map in a survey conducted by Morning Consult over the weekend. Just 23 percent of poll respondents were able to properly pick out Iran; When presented with a smaller map, showing just the Middle East, the number rose to 28 percent. Morning Consult’s Joanna Piacenza tweeted a map of the world showing where people think Iran is located.

On Sept. 22, 1947, Loy Henderson strongly warned Secretary of State George C. Marshall that partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was not workable and would lead to untold troubles in the future. Henderson was director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, and his memorandum … stands as one of the most perceptive analyses of the perils that partition would bring. Henderson informed Marshall that his views were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.”

To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 UN action on Israel-Palestine. The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect … The US administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations, and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon … The U.S. State Department opposed this partition plan strenuously, considering Zionism contrary to both fundamental American principles and US interests.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday he had declined an Israeli invitation to attend a Holocaust memorial event this month as organizers would not allow him to speak there, even though others including Russian President Vladimir Putin would … Duda also expressed dissatisfaction that the representatives of Russia, France, Britain, Germany and the United States would be able to speak at the event, hosted by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center, while Poland would not be able to. “The inability to speak in regards to this matter is against the interests of the (Polish) Republic,” Duda said. Polish leaders have been infuriated by comments made by Putin last month suggesting that Poland shares responsibility for World War Two.

Moshe Peter Loth made headlines in November when he hugged defendant Bruno Dey during his trial in Hamburg, German. Loth is a Florida man who identified as a Holocaust survivor, and Dey is a former concentration camp guard. “Watch out everyone, I’m going to forgive him,” Loth, 76, said as he approached Dey, who admits to having been a guard at the Stutthof camp near Gdansk, which today is in Poland. But Loth may have exaggerated his story — he was born into a Christian family and was likely never in a camp.

… Donald Trump’s action lies miles outside the laws of civilised war … But above all, what is all this about? It does not defend us, but exposes us to danger which may reach our towns and cities. At least in the past we could say we were defending liberty against a defined menace which would not stop threatening us until it was defeated in the field. But in these cases, what precisely are we fighting for? How will we know if we have won? Or are we heading for the permanent war envisaged in George Orwell’s 1984, in which we can switch from one enemy to the other in the blink of an eye, and pretend nothing has changed, but the fighting never stops?

The drone assassination in Iraq of Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani evokes memory of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914, which led to World War I. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quick to warn of “severe revenge.” That Iran will retaliate at a time and place of its choosing is a near certainty … Iran has not been isolated. Quite the contrary. One short week ago, for example, Iran launched its first joint naval exercises with Russia and China in the Gulf of Oman, in an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. in the region. Cui Bono? It is time to call a spade a spade. The country expecting to benefit most from hostilities between Iran and the U.S. is Israel (with Saudi Arabia in second place).

The Trump administration’s unlawful execution of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani is a strategic blunder of mammoth proportions that has now turned every American military official into a target, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told Sputnik … Freeman, who also served as US Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, said there is no concrete evidence to corroborate Trump’s claims or justify preemptive action … Trump’s “strategy-free” decision is tantamount to beginning a game of chess with only an opening move in mind, he said. “It is thus a reminder to the word of the witless hubris and violence with which the United States now conducts its international relations,” Freeman concluded.

In media appearances prior to the 2012 election, Donald Trump repeatedly predicted that then-President Barack Obama would start a war with Iran in order to win reelection. A CNN KFile review found Trump made the claims throughout 2011 and 2012 in radio and television appearances as well as in a since-deleted YouTube blog and on Twitter … Speaking on the Laura Ingraham Show in April 2012, Trump repeated his prediction. “I happen to think that the president is going to start a war with Iran,” said Trump. “I think it’ll be a short term popular thing to do. And I think he’s going to do that for political reasons.”

Donald Trump emphatically predicted in November 2011 that US president Barack Obama will “start a war with Iran.” That’s an “outrage,” he said in a video blog that was posted on the Trump organization’s YouTube page. “Our President will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate,” Trump said. “He’s weak, and he’s ineffective,” Trump added. “So I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election, because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected.” Runtime: 1:29 mins.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the United States has not “chosen the path of de-escalation” since it killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq on Friday. Mr Zarif called the assassination an “act of war,” and said US officials had since sent “rude, ignorant, arrogant” messages – both in public and private – that represented “an escalation in and of itself”. Runtime: 2:24 mins.

For approximately two-and-a-half centuries, the Assyrian empire exerted tremendous influence upon developments in what biblical accounts called the “land of Canaan.” At the height of its power, Assyria absorbed the kingdoms of Syria, Israel, Judah, and Egypt as far as Thebes … Over the centuries, the Assyrians have suffered from a “bad press.” True, they pursued policies of often ruthless conquest, made possible in part by their army, noted for its ferocity and fighting efficiency.

… Though the Russian Revolution of 1917, carried out in the name of Karl Marx, led to a ban on antisemitism, hatred of Jews and contempt for Judaism were widespread among socialists. Marx identified Judaism with the hated capitalist system, an antisocial force of alienation. “Real” emancipation meant doing away with Judaism … Marx wrote: “What is the worldly basis of Judaism? Practical necessity, selfishness. What is the worldly culture of the Jew? Commerce. What is his worldly God? Money …” … Jews previously subject to antisemitic residence restrictions streamed into Soviet cities where, unusually literate and loyal, and untainted by association with the tsarist regime, they became, in the words of the historian Yuri Slezkine, the “backbone of the new Soviet bureaucracy”.

Israeli officials announced that dozens of world leaders will arrive in Jerusalem for the largest-ever gathering focused on combatting anti-Semitism amid a global spike in violence against Jews. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said the fifth World Holocaust Forum in January will coincide with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron and the presidents of Germany, Italy and Austria are among the more than 30 heads of state who have already confirmed their participation … Kantor told The Associated Press that the goal was to convey the growing threat anti-Semitism posed to everyone, to advance legislation against it and to encourage “common people” to change their attitude about it.

… Jews learn at a very tender age that they are God’s chosen people. Unconsciously, this knowledge remains anchored in their “soul” throughout their life, even though many of them become total atheists … We are special. The language reflects this. There are Jews and there are the others … That is where we are now. A domineering regional power and a global crybaby, ruling a colonized population deprived of all rights while being convinced that dark forces are out to exterminate us at any moment, considering ourselves a very special people and an eternal victim. All this quite sincerely. And all this together. When somebody dares to suggest that anti-Semitism in the West is dying, and that anti-Islam is on the rise instead, the Jewish reaction is furious. We need anti-Semitism for our mental equilibrium. Nobody is going to steal it from us.

… President Trump proudly took credit for authorizing the assassination, a brazen violation of international law. He seemed unfazed that most of the rest of the world sees the US as “Murder Inc.” … Iran’s cautious leadership may hesitate to retaliate directly for this murder … Israel’s decisive influence over the Trump administration means that the US has fully embraced the same kill policies. Trump may now have the war with Iran he so obviously craves and that Israel and Saudi Arabia want. Any Iranian retaliation will be branded ‘terrorism’ by the administration and its media sycophants … America has always demonized troublesome Mideast leaders that defied its imperial writ. The region’s complex problems were simplified into cartoon characters that were labeled “bad guys” or “terrorists.”

President Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told us the US had to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani last week because he was planning “Imminent attacks” on US citizens. I don’t believe them. Why not? Because Trump and the neocons – like Pompeo – have been lying about Iran for the past three years in an effort to whip up enough support for a US attack … On Sunday the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US troops from Iraqi soil. It may have been a non-binding resolution, but there is no mistaking the sentiment. US troops are not wanted and they are increasingly in danger. So why not listen to the Iraqi parliament? Bring our troops home, close the US Embassy in Baghdad – a symbol of our aggression – and let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems.

One of the most prominent figures on Fox News isn’t joining in on the cheerleading of President Donald Trump’s assassination of Iran’s most important military leader. During his show on Friday, host Tucker Carlson delivered a lengthy monologue criticizing the escalation of tensions with Iran sparked by the killing of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who died in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq … “No one in Washington is in the mood for big-picture questions right now,” he said. “Questions like: Is Iran really the greatest threat we face? And who’s actually benefiting from this? And why are we continuing to ignore the decline of our country in favor of jumping into another pointless quagmire, from which there’s no obvious exit?”

Much has happened in the past 24 hours. Below are the five most important developments today following the assassination of Qassem Soleimani: Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has made some shocking revelations that put the assassination of Soleimani in a completely different light. He told the Iraqi parliament on Sunday that he “was supposed to meet Soleimani on the morning of the day he was killed, he came to deliver me a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi to Iran.” If this account is true, Trump — perhaps deliberately — acted to scuttle an effort to reduce tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia … Rather than being a blow to Iran, the assassination of Soleimani has fueled nationalist sentiments in Iran and unified the political elite as well as the country.

… Men with imagination, vision and ability to carry these qualities over into practical soldiering were rare in the static-minded, socially-centered British Army. Percy Hobart was one such man … From persecution, victimization, and his incredible misemployment as a Home Guard corporal, Hobart’s resurrection to a decisive command in the Allied armies is one of the more startling personal stories of the Second World War. His story was hardly the kind of thing likely to impress the public with the efficiency of the war effort, or the quality of Britain’s military leadership. Thus he remained almost unknown outside army circles.

Iraq’s Parliament called for the expulsion of U.S. troops from the country Sunday in reaction to the American drone attack that killed a top Iranian general … The bill is subject to approval by the Iraqi government. Even then, canceling the U.S.-Iraq agreement requires giving the Americans a one-year notice for withdrawal. But the vote was another sign of the blowback from the U.S. airstrike Friday that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and a number of top Iraqi officials at the Baghdad airport … Iraqi officials have decried the killing of the general a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. “The killing of Soleimani was a political assassination,” outgoing Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi told Parliament, adding that the Iranian general was scheduled to meet him the next morning about relations with Saudi Arabia.

Progressive anti-war voices expressed fresh condemnation of President Donald Trump overnight after he told reporters late Sunday that the people of Iraq would be sanctioned “like they’ve never seen before ever” if they follow through with an effort to force all U.S. military forces out of the country … Trump was asked about Sunday’s passage of a two-fold resolution in the Iraqi Parliament that called on the government to expel all American troops from the country, and file a United Nations complaint against the U.S. for violating Iraq’s sovereignty with last week’s assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. In response, Trump said that the U.S. would not leave on “a friendly basis” and vowed to make the Iraqis pay the U.S. back for military expenditures made in the country during the occupation that followed the 2003 invasion.

After 25 years of repeated failures, Americans want a foreign policy that preserves the security of the United States, enhances prosperity, and maintains the core U.S. commitment to individual liberty. They recognize that U.S. power can be a force for good, but only if it is employed judiciously and for realistic objectives. In short, a large and growing number of Americans want a foreign policy of restraint. But what does that mean in practice? In a sense, it’s easier to understand what restrainers don’t want. They don’t want endless wars, bloated military budgets, and security commitments that keep expanding, but are never seriously debated or approved by the public. If restrainers were suddenly put in charge of U.S. foreign and national security policy, however, what would they do differently? What do restrainers really want?

President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to withdraw the United States from its ongoing wars in the Middle East, and avoid the kind of military adventurism, like the Iraq war, that has destabilized the region. Trump’s track record, however, is largely detached from his promises – a disconnect perhaps at least partially explained by his largest campaign contributors’ consistent advocacy for U.S. military action in the Middle East and support for starting a preventive war with Iran … Three GOP megadonors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and Bernard Marcus contributed more than a quarter-of-a-billion-dollars to boost Trump’s 2016 campaign and support Republican congressional and senate campaigns in 2016 and 2018.

… His record is an unbroken string of broken promises, opportunities squandered, principles violated, and intentions abandoned … Although Trump promised to stop America’s endless wars, as many – if not more – U.S. military personnel are abroad today as when he took office. He increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and is now seeking to negotiate an exit that would force Washington to remain to enforce the agreement. This war has been burning for more than eighteen years. The administration has maintained Washington’s illegal deployment in Syria, shifting one contingent away from the Turkish-Kurdish battle while inserting new forces to confiscate Syrian oil fields – a move that lacks domestic authority and violates international law.

A little while ago I blogged about Norman Podhoretz’s statement in 1979 that neoconservatism arose in part out of a Jewish concern that the Democratic Party wanted to scale back the military, and this represented a direct threat to Israel’s security. Yesterday I discovered a similar statement from neocon godfather Irving Kristol, writing in 1973 … “… It is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States … American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.” Fascinating. Such dramatic language; and there is no quibbling or circumlocution about the fact that American Jews have the responsibility of protecting Israel.

As the city bids farewell to 2019, the NYPD [New York Police Department] will say goodbye to the steady decline in homicides it has proudly sustained over the last four years. For the first time since 2017 the NYPD will end the year with more than 300 homicides, officials said. As of Sunday, the city had investigated 315 slayings, 22 more than by this time in 2018, a jump of nearly eight percent. An additional killing – the stabbing of a 31-year-old man in a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, apartment building lobby – took place on Monday, bringing the city’s murder toll to 316. There were 289 murders last year and 292 in 2017, lows the city hadn’t seen since the 1950s. Shootings in the city are up so far this year by 3 percent, with 772 incidents compared to 749 by this time last year. There were also slight jumps in robberies and assaults.

Two fatal shootings on New Year’s Eve pushed the homicide count in Philadelphia past the total for 2018 and made it the worst year for killings in the city since 2007… After the two earlier shootings Tuesday, Philadelphia had 355 homicides in 2019, topping last year’s final tally of 353. The death of the woman Tuesday night appeared likely to be counted as 356. The last time the city recorded a higher figure was 2007, with 391 slayings … In stark contrast is New York City, which was expected to end 2019 with fewer homicides than Philadelphia. The population of New York City is 8.4 million compared with 1.58 million in Philadelphia.

It’s been 18 years since the United States invaded Afghanistan in what officials promised to be a decisive mission to uproot a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. You’re totally not shocked to learn that things didn’t quite work out as promised, and that the government repeatedly misled the public about its level of success, about the fundamental purpose of the endeavor and just about everything … Officials couldn’t even agree on the purpose of the war: … Some of the Post’s stories were eye-opening: how military officials were ordered to spend millions of dollars a day in small regions, even though no one had any idea what to do with it … Even more amazing, our military couldn’t distinguish between friends and enemies.

Bridget Stuart-Houston, who died 50 years ago on November 18th, began life as Bridget Dowling and was for a time known as Bridget Hitler, sister-in-law for a period to Adolf Hitler, thus providing him with a family connection to Ireland … There is some disagreement about how she met Alois Hitler, half-brother to Adolf … The young Bridget was smitten with the good-looking, exotic foreigner … Bridget’s relations with her family had become distant but reconciliation occurred when she had a son, William Patrick, called after her father, in 1911 … William Patrick [Hitler] visited his father in Germany in 1929 and returned there in 1933 when his uncle Adolf Hitler became chancellor … He and his mother settled in Long Island, New York, where they changed their name to Stuart-Houston and lived quiet, obscure lives.

The United States is now at war with Iran in a conflict that could easily have been avoided and it will not end well … Donald Trump rode to victory in 2016 on a promise to end the useless wars in the Middle East, but he has now demonstrated very clearly that he is a liar … In a sense, Iran has from the beginning been the exception to Trump’s no-new-war pledge, a position that might reasonably be directly attributed to his incestuous relationship with the American Jewish community and in particular derived from his pandering to the expressed needs of Israel’s belligerent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump bears full responsibility for what comes next. The neoconservatives and Israelis are predictably cheering the result …

Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the last five years and culminated in the general election this month. National identities and the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland are changing more radically than at any time over the last century … Some of these developments are highly visible such as the rise of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to permanent political dominance in Scotland … The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It can only be ignored at great political cost …

Iran expert Trita Parsi says the assassination of a top Iranian general is proof that Donald Trump’s pledge to end Middle East wars was hollow. The U.S. killed Major General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force, in a drone strike in Baghdad early Friday – a move that could inflame tensions in the region and potentially lead to open hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. “It’s an act of war that took place without any consultation with Congress, any approval from Congress, any authorization from Congress,” says Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a new anti-war think tank. “This is something that is going to be a major point of escalation, it’s a decision that I think ultimately made America less, rather than more, safe.”

Ghislaine Maxwell has reportedly found refuge in Israel, a damning New York Post report revealed on Wednesday. Maxwell, a British socialite who has been accused of recruiting under-age girls in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal, is apparently being hidden in order to protect information she has regarding the rich and famous who socialized with Epstein … “Ghislaine is protected. She and Jeffrey were assets of sorts for multiple foreign governments. They would trade information about the powerful people caught in his net – caught at Epstein’s house,” a source told the Post’s Page Six … The British citizen is the daughter of the late Robert Maxwell, a media mogul who allegedly was connected to the Mossad, British Intelligence, and even the KGB. He was embroiled in an elaborate fraud scheme in 1991.

Jewish organizations have often accusingly highlighted individuals who “collaborated” with German authorities during World War II. And in truth there was widespread and often enthusiastic cooperation with German leadership in Europe during that conflict, especially by people in areas that had suffered under Soviet oppression. Jewish collaboration with German authorities during World War II is not well known or understood. This video tells something of the Jewish police in the Warsaw ghetto, and in particular the role of Jakub Lejkin, a Jewish police officer known for his brutality who helped to deport Jews to the Treblinka camp in 1942. Polish narration, with English subtitles. Runtime: 11:52 mins.

US President Donald Trump is seen as more dangerous than Vladimir Putin of Russia or Kim Jong Un of North Korea, according to a YouGov survey in which more than 2,000 German people were interviewed. The participants also saw Trump as more dangerous than Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the poll, which was commissioned by dpa. Forty-one per cent said Trump posed the greatest threat to world peace out of the five world leaders … A separate poll carried out by the Kantar institute for Germany’s Funke media group found that Germans were more likely to trust French President Emmanuel Macron (57 per cent) than their own leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel (53 per cent).

All German political parties are infected with hatred of Jews, the chairman of the Jewish community in Halle, Germany, told the Bild newspaper. “All parties are infected by the anti-Semitism virus,” said Max Privorozki. “It is a big problem that everyone points their finger at others, but clears themselves of any suspicion. Of course, the AfD (Alternative for Germany) has a big problem with anti-Semitism, and the willingness to stamp it out is less than with other parties.” … A 2017 federal government study found that 40 percent of Germans hold modern anti-Semitic views, specifically hatred for Israel, reported The Jerusalem Post. The study also estimated that nearly 33 million Germans out of a total population of 82 million in the country are infested with contemporary anti-Semitism.

… 340,000 British and French troops were evacuated [in May-June 1940] from the besieged port of Dunkirk. At the time the event was portrayed by the British government and press as a kind of victory … “Far from being betrayed by their Allies, the British military commanders in France and Belgium practiced on them a methodical deception which enabled the British to get away with their rear defended.” … The British were responsible for crimes against both German soldiers and Allied civilians … French and Belgian civilians fared little better than the Germans at the hands of their British confederates. Looting was common and “stealing from civilians soon became official policy.” British military authorities executed without trial, civilians suspected of disloyalty.

The scene in the Green Zone in Baghdad easily evokes memories of Tehran forty years ago. A U.S. embassy in the Persian Gulf region is under siege by an angry mob … If there is a parallel with Tehran in 1979, it is to be found primarily in a U.S. failure to anticipate and understand the nature of the anti-U.S. anger so much in evidence … The United States would serve its own interests by letting that mission be performed by the locals best in position to perform it, and moving toward a withdrawal of its forces from Iraq. Let someone else worry about inflaming popular sentiment through perceived violations of sovereignty.

President Donald Trump promised to put America first in his foreign policy. He hasn’t had much success – U.S. forces are still fighting every “endless war” he promised to stop – but at least he theoretically has his priorities right. In contrast, Congress appears to hate America. Legislators of both parties consistently put other nations first … Endless commitments and wars, especially in the ever unstable and hostile Middle East, risk the American homeland … Endless war creates the very enemies cited as its justification. Legislators should put the interests of Americans first. The first step is making war a genuine last resort. The most effective way for Congress to do that is to take seriously its power to say no.

When Americans peer 30 years into the future, they see a country in decline economically, politically and on the world stage. While a narrow majority of the public (56%) say they are at least somewhat optimistic about America’s future, hope gives way to doubt when the focus turns to specific issues. A new Pew Research Center survey focused on what Americans think the United States will be like in 2050 finds that majorities of Americans foresee a country with a burgeoning national debt, a wider gap between the rich and the poor, and a workforce threatened by automation. Majorities predict that the economy will be weaker, health care will be less affordable, the condition of the environment will be worse and older Americans will have a harder time making ends meet than they do now.

… The U.S. national debt is now larger than the GDP … In 2019, the U.S. ran a deficit just shy of $1 trillion, and the U.S. government projects trillion-dollar deficits through the decade, which begins next week … In short, we are beginning to run historic deficits in a time of prosperity … Deficits are projected to run regularly in the coming decade at nearly 5% of GDP while economic growth has fallen back to 2% … The feds will have to borrow money to cover the Social Security deficit … Yet another major item in the budget is interest on the debt. And as that U.S. debt surges with all the new deficits this decade, and interest rates inevitably begin to rise, interest on the debt will rise both in real terms and as a share of the budget.

Major trends in American social, economic and political life are symptoms of a society on the path to ruin. In his 1993 book, Out of Control, former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warns of America’s moral and ethical decline, the corrosive role of American television and motion pictures, and much more. The Polish-born scholar and statesman stresses that American society today lacks any meaningful moral-ethical foundation. He writes of the “supremacy of decadence and hedonism” in today’s America, where “self-gratification is the norm.” A society that “puts a premium on individual self-satisfaction is a community threatened by dissolution.”

… We are remarkably oblivious to this reality of our systemic cheating, preferring instead not only to keep battling nature but to bask in an irrational elitist pride. We perceive the secular gods of progressivism, science, and freedom as the answers to every problem, the means of overcoming every natural obstacle … America finds itself in much the same position as the late Roman empire: ignorant and apathetic of its civic traditions, fiscally irresponsible to the point of a not-too-distant national bankruptcy, and militarily overstretched and fatigued from reckless international interventionism. If America is to survive, we must embrace the long, difficult road of perseverance, patience, and moderation.

The Vienna Philharmonic is doing away with an arrangement of Johann Strauss I’s Radetsky March, set by the Nazi-era composer Leopold Weninger, for its forthcoming New Year’s Concert … Henceforth the Philharmonic wanted a version of the march “unconnected to the Nazi past.” … The New Year’s Concert itself has Nazi roots. Beginning life in 1939, its programme of frothy Strauss waltzes, performed in the opulent surrounds of Vienna’s Musikverein, was intended to promote the Austrian capital and boost morale. Despite its origins, the concerts continued after the war. In 1987, the Philharmonic was led by Herbert von Karajan, who joined the Nazi Party in 1935 and whose conducting career thrived in Nazi-era Germany.

Pilgrims flock to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas, but Palestinian Christians fear for the survival of their own community in the land of Jesus’s birth … Christianity here survived the persecution of its earliest converts under Roman rule. It flourished under the Byzantine empire, endured the early Islamic caliphates and enjoyed a revival under the Ottoman Empire before the territory of modern-day Palestine passed into British control in 1917. Yet every Palestinian Christian I spoke to doubted whether there will soon be any significant Christian presence in the land where the founder of Christianity was born, preached his gospel and died … The percentage of the population that identified as Christian fell from 7.4 percent in 1947, before the creation of the state of Israel, to just two percent in 2007.

While Christians remain a small minority in Israel, their numbers are growing slowly and their educational achievements rival those of the majority Jewish population, figures released this week by the Central Bureau of Statistics reveal. Some 177,000 Christians live in Israel, or roughly two percent of the population, according to the CBS data, released in honor of the Christmas holiday on Wednesday. Of those, some 77.5% are Arabs, making up some 7.2% of Israel’s Arab community … Israel’s Christian community is striking for its educational achievement, especially among women, official figures reveal. Fully 70.9% of Christian high schoolers achieve college-entry matriculation grades, slightly higher than Jews (70.6%), and higher still than Druze (63.7%) and Muslims (45.2%).

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris. The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording … A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of a US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.

An Australian Jewish group on Friday called for Amazon to stop selling a board game in which players win by putting Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in power. The Melbourne-based Anti-Defamation Commission called on the internet retail giant to “show respect to the survivors” and said its objection to the “Secret Hitler” game had been sparked by a complaint from someone whose father survived the Holocaust … The Anti-Defamation Commission addressed its complaint to Amazon Australia, but the game is also on sale on Amazon’s US site, where over 1,400 reviewers gave it an average rating of 4.8 out of five stars.