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… Protests continued Friday night and into early Saturday morning in cities from Portland, Oregon, to Atlanta, Georgia. The demonstrations descended into rioting in several instances, with the National Guard mobilized in some cities … Police in Columbus, Ohio declared an emergency in the city’s downtown, after chaos and violence broke out between officers and protesters … Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has declared a state of emergency for Fulton County after businesses were looted and vandalized in downtown Atlanta, including the College Football Hall of Fame … Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has declared a state of emergency after a demonstration turned violent late Friday night and into Saturday morning.
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Pres. Trump Signs Into Law New 'Holocaust Education' Act
The Times of Israel
US President Donald Trump signed into law on Thursday legislation to allocate $10 million in federal funding over the next five years to further Holocaust education. Authored by New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, the Never Again Education Act directs millions of dollars toward expanding the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s education program, supporting a website with curriculum materials for teachers and hosting workshops in Holocaust education and awareness throughout the country. The bill garnered bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, with 302 co-sponsors, and passed by a vote of 393-5 on Holocaust Remembrance Day in January. The Senate then unanimously passed the legislation on May 13, sending it to the president’s desk.
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Veterans Affairs Chief Wants to Keep 'Nazi' Gravestones in US Military Cemeteries for Historical Purposes
Stars & Stripes
Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie argued Thursday against calls from lawmakers to remove German soldiers’ gravestones etched with swastikas from VA-operated cemeteries. Two gravestones of German prisoners of war are in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas, and one is in Fort Douglas Post Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah. The graves are placed among those of American veterans, some of whom fought against Nazi Germany in World War II. During a hearing of the House Committee on Appropriations on Thursday, Democrats and Republicans called on the VA to replace the three gravestones … Wilkie favored an approach that would keep the gravestones but would add historical context in an effort to educate Americans about the Holocaust.
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A storm has erupted in the Czech Republic over the publication and sale of a calendar of “Personalities of the Third Reich” featuring a dozen leading Nazis, including Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich. The calendar is published by Naše Vojsko, which publishes materials “on military, historical and technical topics”. It is listed for sale in its website for CZK 499 (18,5 euros). Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamacek called the calendar “tacky and immoral”. The Israeli and German embassies in Prague both condemned the publication. Israeli ambassador in Prague Daniel Meron said he was “shocked and disgusted by such a calendar.’’ Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA) condemned the publication.
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A mass rally in Prague to protest the British-organized assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-level German official in Bohemia-Moravia. From 1938 to 1945, the Czech lands were organized as the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” within the German Reich. A leading figure in the Czech Protectorate government, Emanuel Moravec, addresses the large gathering in Prague’s “Old Town Square” on June 2, 1942. The rally concludes with the singing of the Czech national hymn. Runtime: 1:24 mins.
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Anti-Semitism Examined as a Social Virus in New PBS Documentary
Laura Paull - JTA
Any person who follows the news knows that anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world. As it has spread, so has our insight that this is a hatred with many faces, a many-headed monster fed by myths about Jews that will not die. Its more violent manifestations — defacements of Jewish cemeteries, street attacks, armed assaults on Jewish institutions — are often referred to as “outbreaks,” as if anti-Semitism were a disease. Indeed, the phrase “virulent anti-Semitism” is often used to describe the manifold expressions of that ideology. And as with a contagious disease, humanity must marshal all its informational resources to have any hope of defeating it. That is the concept of “Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations,” a probing new documentary making its television premiere May 26 on PBS.
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The Nature of Anti-Semitism
Ron Unz
… The ability of a relatively small number of agitated and energetic Jews to police the acceptable boundaries of historical narratives may have enormous consequences for our larger society, deterring scholars from objectively reporting historical facts and preventing students from discovering them … A cohesive, organized group generally possesses huge advantages over a teeming mass of atomized individuals … Traditional Jewish religious doctrine seems to consider Jews as being in a state of permanent hostility with all non-Jews, and the use of dishonest propaganda is an almost inevitable aspect of such conflict.
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Anti-Semitism: Why Does It Exist? And Why Does it Persist?
Mark Weber – Institute for Historical Review
Over the centuries, rage and hostility against Jews has repeatedly erupted in terrible violence. Again and again, Jews have been driven out of countries where they’d been living. Why does anti-Semitism exist? And why has furious hostility toward Jews broken out, again and again, in the most varied nations, eras and cultures? … Anti-Semitism is not a mysterious “disease.” As Herzl and Weizmann suggested, and as history shows, what is often called anti-Semitism is the natural and understandable attitude of people toward a minority with particularist loyalties that wields greatly disproportionate power for its own interests, rather than for the common good.
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IQ Rates Are Dropping in Many Developed Countries, and That Doesn't Bode Well for Humanity
E. Horowitz - NBC News
People are getting dumber. That’s not a judgment; it’s a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline. Though there are legitimate questions about the relationship between IQ and intelligence, and broad recognition that success depends as much on other virtues like grit, IQ tests in use throughout the world today really do seem to capture something meaningful and durable. Decades of research have shown that individual IQ scores predict things such as educational achievement and longevity. More broadly, the average IQ score of a country is linked to economic growth and scientific innovation … A range of studies using a variety of well-established IQ tests and metrics have found declining scores across Scandinavia, Britain, Germany, France and Australia.
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Millennials: The Unluckiest Generation In U.S. History
A. Van Dam - The Washington Post
After accounting for the present crisis, the average millennial has experienced slower economic growth since entering the workforce than any other generation in U.S. history. Millennials will bear these economic scars the rest of their lives, in the form of lower earnings, lower wealth and delayed milestones, such as homeownership. The losses are particularly acute on the jobs front.
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Why Diversity Is Not A 'Strength,' And Why Some Countries Are Better Off Than Others
Mark Weber - Podcast
Is it really true, as American political leaders and educators claim, that “diversity is our strength”? And why are some countries more prosperous, stable, orderly and happier than others? Detailed research shows that ethnic-racial “diversity” actually weakens a society. In more diverse societies, levels of trust are not only lower between groups, but even among members of the same group. Ethnically cohesive societies are more prosperous, trusting, orderly, safe and healthy than those that are diverse. Extensive, path-breaking research also shows that a nation’s level of prosperity, economic progress and social well-being is based in large measure on the average intelligence level of its people.
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How Much is Academic Achievement Shaped by Genes?
K. Rimfeld, M. Malanchini
Children differ widely in how well they do at school. In recent years, researchers have shown that around two-thirds of differences in school achievement can be explained by differences in children’s genes. Genes have been shown to influence how well children do at primary school, at the end of compulsory education, and even in different subjects … We found that about 70 percent of the stability in achievement is explained by genetic factors, while 25 percent is accounted for by the twins’ shared environment, such as growing up in the same family and attending the same school … We found the influence of genes remained substantial – at 60 percent – even after accounting for intelligence, which was measured using several verbal and nonverbal tests taken by the twins over the course of childhood and adolescence.
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Blood, Sweat and Booze: Churchill’s Debts and the Moguls Who Saved Him
O. Aderet - Haaretz (Israel)
… Churchill liked the company and money of Jewish millionaires, too. One of them, Austrian-born Sir Henry Strakosch, rescued him from two major crises. On June 18, 1940 … Strakosch wrote a check for 5,000 pounds. In today’s terms, that’s 250,000 pounds, or 1.25 million shekels ($332,000) … That wasn’t the first time Strakosch had opened his wallet to Churchill; that happened around the time the Germans entered Austria two years earlier … A second Jewish millionaire who often came to Churchill’s aid was Sir Ernest Cassel, an old friend of the family. With the help of various money “gifts,” he supported the young Winston … Churchill entered World War II nearly bankrupt and came out a rich man.
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Irving on Churchill: Dismantling Churchillian Mythology
T. J. O’Keefe - Institute for Historical Review
… Irving went on us describe several sources of secret financial support enjoyed by Churchill. In addition to money supplied by the Czech government, Churchill was financed during the “wilderness years” between 1930 and 1939 by a slush fund emanating from a secret pressure group known as the Focus … Irving then revealed further details of Churchill’s financing by the Czechs, as well as the facts of Churchill’s financial rescue by a wealthy banker of Austro-Jewish origins, Sir Henry Strakosch … Irving then gave a detailed account of the cynical maneuverings of Churchill to escalate the aerial campaign against Germany’s civilian population …
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Zionists Have Feelings Too
Philip Giraldi
… In the United States there has been a concerted effort to equate any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism while simultaneously making anti-Semitism a hate crime and thereby converting what one might perceive as exercise of a First Amendment right into a felony. This is largely being done as part of the plan to create a legal basis to suppress the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) … But when it comes to protecting Israel in speech and in writing, no one outdoes the totally cowed Europeans. It is a criminal offense to challenge the many shaky details of the standard holocaust narrative in France, Germany and Britain and now the wordsmiths are hard at work to broaden what is unacceptable in speaking or writing.
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US Lawmakers from two House committees used Memorial Day weekend to call for the removal of gravestones from a military cemetery that are inscribed with Nazi symbols and sentiments. The four lawmakers sent the bipartisan request to Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie in a letter Sunday. The signatories include the top Democrat and the top Republican on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Two tombstones among 140 for World War II POWs at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas, are marked with a swastika inside a German cross and inscribed, “He died far from his home for the Führer, people and fatherland.” Another gravestone in the military cemetery in Salt Lake City is marked with a swastika.
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Mark Weber joins host Fróði Midjord in this lively, wide-ranging session to talk about The Godfather, Parts I and II, and to explain how the story it tells is relevant today. In this episode of the “Guide to Kulcher” series, the two men examine how the Godfather story profoundly underscores the tragedy of modern America. Besides being great cinema art and superb story-telling, this film masterpiece is also important for what it says about modern US society. That’s suggested in the opening scene of The Godfather, Part I, which begins with the words “I believe in America.” Runtime: 101 mins.
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Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, published a blog post this month declaring that the online encyclopedia’s “neutral point of view” policy is “dead” due to the rampant left-wing bias of the site. Noting the article on President Donald Trump, Sanger contrasted its extensive coverage of presidential scandals with the largely scandal-free article on former President Barack Obama. Sanger also criticized Wikipedia’s coverage of religion and other controversial topics … On May 14, Sanger published a blog piece titled “Wikipedia Is Badly Biased,” and started by declaring Wikipedia’s “Neutral Point of View” policy dead. Having founded the online encyclopedia with Jimmy Wales and having been involved in the original drafting of the policy, Sanger offered particular insight into its development and its practice in recent years.
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China’s Jinping Takes Up the US Challenge
Patrick J. Buchanan
Is the U.S. up for a second Cold War — this time with China? What makes the question newly relevant is that Xi Jinping’s China suddenly appears eager for a showdown with the United States for long-term supremacy in the Asia-Pacific and the world … Yet, the rising totalitarian power of China, even with its imperial ambitions undisguised, does not threaten the vital interests of the United States … If China is prepared for a Cold War II with the United States to establish its predominance, what are we prepared to do should China absorb Hong Kong and convert it into a second Shanghai? What are we prepared to do if China puts new pressure on Taiwan and seizes offshore islands in the East China Sea, as she did in the South China Sea?
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China’s New Army of Tough-Talking Diplomats
J. Landale – BBC News
Once upon a time Chinese statecraft was discreet and enigmatic … Well, not any more. China has dispatched an increasingly vocal cadre of diplomats out into the world of social media to take on all comers with, at times, an eye-blinking frankness. Their aim is to defend China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and challenge those who question Beijing’s version of events. So they launch salvos of persistent tweets and posts from their embassies around the world. And they hold little back, deploying sarcasm and aggression in equal measure. Such is the novelty of their techniques that they have been dubbed “wolf warrior” diplomats …
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White House senior adviser Jared Kushner has been overseeing a major attempt to overhaul the Republican party platform ahead of the 2020 election, according to a report. The effort is being led by Trump campaign adviser Bill Stepien in tandem with the Republican National Committee, with all involved reporting back to Kushner with any developments, according to Axios. Work on changes to the platform have been underway for six months. President Trump’s son-in-law has told confidants that he wants to shrink the GOP’s exhaustive manifesto of party positions down to the size of a single card that could fit in people’s hands, the outlet reported Sunday … Two people familiar with Kushner’s views on the updated platform say he told colleagues that he wanted “something like the 10 principles [Republicans] believe in.”
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US Congress Approves Bills on 'Anti-Semitism' Envoy, Assistance to Israel, Marking Dachau Liberation
JNS
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed bills on Thursday benefiting the Jewish and pro-Israel community, and instilling a resolution to remember the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945. One bill would elevate the position of U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism to an ambassador-level role, thereby requiring Senate confirmation … Another bill would allocate the annual $3.8 billion in U.S. assistance to Israel in accordance with the 2016 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the United States and Israel. … Finally, a resolution was reported out of the committee that would commemorate the 75th anniversary of the U.S. liberation of Dachau …
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Innocent at Dachau
Joseph Halow. Book available from IHR
In this moving memoir and carefully researched historical study, an insider tears apart the popular image of the postwar American-run “war crimes” trials of Germans. As a young court reporter at the U.S. war crimes trials held at Dachau, the author returned to the transcripts — and his memories of those proceedings — after more than 40 years for a fresh look at how injustice was done to the defendants, and to historical truth. Incorporates the personal experience of a sensitive American observer and original archival digging to make a major contribution to the study of the postwar trials. Banned in Germany. With dust jacket, 16 photos, and index.
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Innocent in Dachau: The Trial and Punishment of F. Kofler, et al.
Joseph Halow - Institute for Historical Review
… There can also be no question about the use of duress and physical force by the interrogators. This was confirmed by the review of the Malmedy case, but was present in other American cases as well. There were certainly American legal personnel who were disturbed by the beatings administered to the prisoners in order to extract confessions of guilt, but for the most part they kept silent … I was the reporter assigned to record the last session of the Nordhausen trial, which was also the last trial session held in Dachau … The time is long past for one-sided recriminations over German war crimes and concentration camps. As anyone who worked in Dachau, impartially, could testify, there were also injustices committed in the trials instituted to punish the Germans.
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On Memorial Day, the media do their usual sacralizing of war. Instead, it should be a day for the ritualized scourging of politicians. During the last 70 years, their lies have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of almost 100,000 American soldiers and millions of foreigners. And yet, people still get teary-eyed when politicians take the stage to talk about their devotion to the troops … The Post was not alone in its groveling to war. Major television networks behaved like government-owned subsidiaries for much of the period before and during the Iraq War … In reality, Memorial Day should be a time to remember the government’s crimes against the people. Politicians have perennially sent young Americans to die for false causes or on wild-goose chases.
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'This Isn't The Britain We Fought For,' Say Britons of World War II Era
Daily Mail (Britain)
.. .. Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally. But was it worth it? Her answer – and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s – is a resounding No. They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It’s not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger … They feel, in a word that leaps out time and time again, ‘betrayed’ … “Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today.” … “Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,” wrote an ex-Durham Light Infantryman, “and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.”
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… Documented in the disturbing book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, by the husband-and-wife team of Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Economics. For white Americans between 45 and 54, average life expectancy was no longer increasing; in fact, it was actually declining — in a pattern seen almost nowhere else on Earth … This reversal has come almost entirely among white Americans without a four-year college degree, who make up 38 percent of the U.S. working-age population … Much of the decline stems from higher rates of suicide, opioid overdoses and alcohol-related illnesses — the “deaths of despair” that Case and Deaton refer to … They write: “Destroy work and, in the end, working-class life cannot survive.”
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Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
Princeton University Press
Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row — a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year — and they’re still rising … Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair … Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.
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A Lockdown Line in the Sand
David Cole - Taki’s Mag
… The lockdowns have committed obscene violence against our rights and our Constitution. We are a changed people because of them. Yes, there have been previous mass infringements of liberties in the U.S., from Prohibition to Manzanar. But they always came down through channels. It’s telling that the same people who won’t allow a single Trump executive order to go into effect without running it past judge after judge after judge to test for “constitutionality” have suspended basic rights for a majority of Americans based on dubious proclamations from mayors and governors. Funny how no one on the left wants to run the lockdown orders past a Hawaiian judge. The most basic constitutional rights of worship and assembly … have been abrogated because some tin-pot state and local officials invoked the “cuz I sez so” rule.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on trial Sunday on three cases of fraud, corruption and breach of trust. If convicted, Netanyahu faces years in jail. He maintains his innocence and accuses the justice system of trying to engineer a coup against him. Benjamin Netanyahu had already made history as the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history. Sunday, he did it again, becoming the first sitting prime minister to go on trial for fraud and breach of trust. He arrived at the court from a Cabinet meeting of his new national unity government.
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US sanctions have caused immense pain and harm to Iranians over the years, but they also led to great achievements such as self-sufficiency in many products. “Despite the harsh conditions of the country and the illegal and unjust sanctions and the severe economic pressure of the United States, production in Iran has not stopped and today we are witnessing great successes such as self-sufficiency in wheat and other food and agricultural products,” President Hassan Rouhani said late Tuesday. “We are also self-sufficient in gasoline, gas and diesel production today, and infrastructure work done in the country for years has helped us succeed in the fight against the coronavirus,” he added.
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What Does Winning Mean in a Forever War?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… With our “democracy crusades,” we have been trying to conquer and convert people who do not wish to be converted. … Our enemies in the Middle East do not defeat our military. They outlast us. They apparently have an inexhaustible supply of volunteers willing to give up their lives in suicide attacks. They are willing to fight on and trade casualties endlessly. They do not subscribe to our rules of war. They tire us out, and, eventually, we give up and go home. They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not ours. They are not trying to change us. We are trying to change them. And they wish to remain who they are.
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Births in US Drop to 34-Year Low
Science News
For the fifth year in a row, the number of babies born in the United States has declined. It’s the lowest number of births – just under 3.75 million in 2019, gleaned from birth certificate data – since 1985, according to the report published online May 20 from the National Center for Health Statistics … There’s been a general downward trend in births since the Great Recession, which lasted from 2007 to 2009. In periods of economic uncertainty, births tend to drop, says family demographer Karen Benjamin Guzzo of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. But rather than rebounding after the recession ended, as would be expected, births have continued to fall. It’s an indication that not everyone’s prospects improved as the economy recovered, she says.
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Remembering the Fallen: Lies and Deceit in America’s Wars
Mark Weber - Podcast
On Memorial Day we remember all those who have suffered, sacrificed and died while serving in our country’s armed forces. But time and again, American political leaders, supported by much of the media, have sent young people to their deaths, and have ruined the lives of many more, in foreign wars that were promoted and justified on the basis of deceit and lies. A good example is the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, which has cost more than four thousand American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, and has brought death to many tens of thousands of Iraqis.
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Israel To Annex the United States?
Philip Giraldi
… The United States has wound up with a “best friend and ally” that has spied on the U.S., stolen its technology, corrupted its government processes and lied consistently about its neighbors to create a casus belli so Americans can die in pointless wars rather than Israelis. The Lavon Affair and the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty reveal that Israel’s government will kill Americans when it suits them to do so, knowing full well that the sycophants in Washington and the Jewish dominated media will hardly whimper at the affront … The extreme Israeli-philia embraced by the White House and Congress has, inter alia, meant unrelenting hostility towards both Iran and Syria, neither of which poses any real threat or challenge to the American people or to any genuine U.S. interests.
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Americans Reject Israeli Annexation, Polls Show
G. Smith - Antiwar.com
Public opinion polls soliciting the views of American voting age adults on timely policy matters impacting Israel and its US lobby are scarce. Americans are only rarely asked about whether they approve of the U.S. having given the lion’s share of the foreign aid budget to Israel over the last seven decades. Perhaps that is because they do not approve. Few Americans have been polled on whether they would personally accept the economic incentives of the Trump Middle East “Deal of the Century.” In fact, they would not. They have also nearly never been asked about whether they support campus bans on free speech rights to boycott Israel over its human rights record … In 2019 Gallup finally admitted that its sympathy question had deep systemic flaws that tended to trigger higher response rates for Israel over Palestine.
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Pres. Trump Says Anti-Semitic Industrialist Henry Ford Had 'Good Bloodlines'
The Times of Israel
President Donald Trump lauded the “good bloodlines” of notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford on Thursday, drawing immediate rebuke from American Jewish groups. “The company, founded by a man named Henry Ford,” Trump said after touring a Ford Motor Company plant in Michigan. “Good bloodlines, good bloodlines. If you believe in that stuff, you got good blood.” Ford is famous for disseminating anti-Semitic writings, including “The International Jew,” which was published by the Ford-owned Dearborn Independent newspaper in four volumes … The head of the [Jewish-Zionist] Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt called on Trump to apologize, noting Ford’s famous belief in the genetic superiority of the white race.
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Scammers posing as out-of-work residents have bilked Washington state out of “hundreds of millions of dollars” in unemployment benefits, a top official said. The fraudsters submitted bogus unemployment claims under the names of tens of thousands of people whose personal information had been stolen, said Suzi LeVine, commissioner of the state’s Employment Security Department. “I realize that this is a jaw-dropping figure,” LeVine told reporters Thursday. She didn’t provide a specific dollar amount … The Secret Service has reportedly warned that a Nigerian fraud ring was swiping millions of dollars in benefits from Washington and six other states using stolen data such as Social Security numbers.
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Feds Suspect Vast Fraud Network Is Targeting U.S. Unemployment Systems
The New York Times
A group of international fraudsters appears to have mounted an immense, sophisticated attack on U.S. unemployment systems, creating a network that has already siphoned millions of dollars in payments that were intended to avert an economic collapse, according to federal authorities … In a memo obtained by The New York Times, investigators from the U.S. Secret Service said they had information suggesting that the scheme was coming from a well-organized Nigerian fraud ring, and could result in “potential losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” … The Secret Service memo said Washington State had emerged as the primary target thus far, but there was also evidence of attacks in Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Wyoming.
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An alligator who survived World War Two in Berlin and was rumoured – wrongly – to have belonged to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler has died in Moscow Zoo. “Yesterday morning, our Mississippi alligator Saturn died of old age. He was about 84 years old – an extremely respectable age,” the zoo said. Saturn was gifted to Berlin Zoo in 1936 soon after he was born in the US. He escaped the zoo being bombed in 1943. British soldiers found him three years later and gave him to the Soviet Union … Since July 1946 the alligator has been a hit with visitors in Moscow. “Moscow Zoo has had the honour of keeping Saturn for 74 years,” the zoo said in a statement.
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Twenty Years After Withdrawal, Israel and Hezbollah Brace for War
Associated Press
Twenty years after Hezbollah guerrillas pushed Israel’s last troops from southern Lebanon, both sides are gearing up for a possible war that neither seems to want. Israeli troops are striking Hezbollah targets in neighboring Syria and drilling for what could be an invasion of Lebanon. The militant Hezbollah group is beefing up its own forces and threatening to invade Israel if provoked. The bitter enemies routinely exchange warnings and threats … Hezbollah has evolved into the most powerful military and political entity in Lebanon. The party and its allies dominate Lebanon’s parliament, and are the main power behind Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government … In a region filled with adversaries, Israel considers Hezbollah to be its toughest and most immediate threat.
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About 40 Percent of US Adults are Obese, Government Survey Finds
Associated Press
About four in ten American adults are obese, and nearly one in ten is severely so, government researchers said Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention findings come from a 2017-18 health survey that measures height and weight. More than 5,000 U.S. adults took part. The survey found that the obesity rate was 42 percent … Adult obesity rates are trending up, said the CDC’s Cynthia Ogden, one of the report’s authors. A half-century ago, about one in one hundred American adults were severely obese. Now it’s ten times more common. The obesity rate has risen about 40% in the last two decades. The findings suggest that more Americans will get diabetes, heart disease and cancer, said Dr. William Dietz, a George Washington University obesity expert.
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Argentina’s Jewish community was shocked to find that the country decided to print a new banknote with face of a doctor who expressed support for Nazi ideology and [allegedly] supported Josef Mengele’s cruel experiments on Jews at Auschwitz. One of the new notes is a 5,000 peso bill (around $73.5) and has the face of Dr. Ramon Carrillo, a doctor of sanitation known for his support of the Nazis, according to a Ynet report on Wednesday. Israel’s ambassador to Argentina tweeted on Monday: “When we say ‘never again,’ in reference to the Holocaust, there is no point in commemorating someone that, at least sympathizes with this ideology.” … The Simon Wiesenthal Center slammed the Argentinian government for paying homage to an admirer of Adolf Hitler.
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Iran will support any nation or group that fights Israel, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday, ahead of this week’s annual observance of Quds (Jerusalem) Day to express support for Palestinians. “We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere who opposes and fights the Zionist regime, and we do not hesitate to say this,” Khamenei said in a post on his official English-language Twitter account. Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy in the Middle East, has been a key supporter, along with Russia, of President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s civil war, sending military advisers as well as material and regional Shi’ite militias.
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What the 'Grievance Studies Affair' Says About Academia's Social Justice Warriors
Robert Maranto - The Hill
On April 20, some may celebrate the birthday of a man who helped define the 20th century. An artist, philosopher and successful author and motivational speaker before his election to national office, he valued expertise. Once in office, the leader chose a cabinet of PhDs, lawyers and military officers. A vegetarian in his later years, his government broke new ground in animal rights and wildlife conservation. For all his (dubious) achievements, in 2018 the long dead Adolf Hitler gained an honor that eluded him in life: publishing in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Such publications earned me tenure at two universities. Given the intellectual climate in parts of academia, nowadays Hitler also might earn tenure.
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When Canada’s Prime Minister Met With Hitler
A. Levine - Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)
… Like many others who came into contact with Hitler before the Second World War, [Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie] King was plainly in awe of him, as is clear in the approximate 7,400-word moment-by-moment assessment of the meeting [in June 1937, in Berlin] he dictated to [secretary] Pickering for his diary. He praised Hitler more than once: “I spoke … of what I had seen of the constructive work of his regime, and said that I hoped that that would continue … That it was bound to be followed in other countries to the great advantage of mankind.” … “He has a very nice, sweet, and one could see, how particularly humble folk would come to have a profound love for the man … As I talked with him, I could not but think of Joan of Arc. He is distinctly mystic.” … “I believe the world will yet come to see a very great man … in Hitler.”
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Adolf Hitler made his final address to the nation in a radio broadcast on Jan. 30, 1945, the twelfth anniversary of the National Socialist seizure of power. Here are the concluding sentences of that historic address, with English-language subtitles. In this talk, delivered three months before his death, he concludes with determined confidence that, in spite of setbacks, Germany and Europe will ultimately prevail against the grave threat from the East. This brief video clip, just 41 seconds in length, is from a 1997 BBC documentary “The Nazis: A Warning From History.” This clip garnered two and a half million “views” on YouTube before it was removed.
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Prospective Jewish immigrants to Germany from nations of the former Soviet Union will have an easier time under relaxed regulations announced by the German government. The new rules will primarily impact older and disabled Jews. Jewish immigrants 60 and older, as well as disabled adults of any age, will soon no longer be required to partake in an “Integrationsprognose” – a prognosis or forecast of integration into German society. Regulations pertaining to family reunification for parents and Jewish spouses also will be relaxed. Germany has long been a popular destination for Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, counting more than 200,000 Jewish immigrants since 1990.
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Jewish Intermarriage With Non-Jews Is a ‘Tragedy’ Says Leading Israel Advocate
Middle East Monitor
A prominent member of one of America’s most active pro-Israel advocacy groups has said that marriage between Jews and non-Jews is a “tragedy” for Israel because it presents a “crisis” for the core of political support for the Zionist state. The remarks by Steven Bayme of the American Jewish Committee have been described as “racist” … He made his comments during a speech about a “crisis” within the American Jewish community, claiming that “mixed marriage threatens Jewish future.” His speech was captured in a video wherein he warns the community about the decrease in the number of Jews who are growing up with a strong affinity with the state of Israel. The “tragedy”, according to Bayme, is that more than 70 per cent of non-orthodox Jews are marrying non-Jews …
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New Court Files Expose Sheldon Adelson’s Security Team
Max Blumenthal – The Gray Zone
An exclusive investigation by The Grayzone reveals new details on the critical role Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands played in an apparent CIA spying operation targeting Julian Assange, and exposes the Sands security staff who helped coordinate the malicious campaign / … Obtained by media outlets including The Grayzone, the UC Global files detail an elaborate and apparently illegal US surveillance operation in which the security firm spied on Assange, his legal team, his American friends, US journalists, and an American member of Congress … Throughout the black operations campaign, US intelligence appears to have worked through Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, a company that had previously served as an alleged front for a CIA blackmail operation several years earlier.
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Sheldon Adelson’s Emerging Tawdry Ties to the CIA
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos – The American Conservative
What’s worse than a Sheldon Adelson bankrolling President Trump’s 2016 election, leading to big payoffs for him in U.S.-Israeli policy and his own people (John Bolton), nested in the inner sanctum? What’s worse than a Sheldon Adelson influencing U.S. trade policy in China, mostly because of his titanic casino interests in Macau? How about a Sheldon Adelson providing his elite security team as an interlocutor for covert, illegal CIA operations overseas. Sounds like a bad spy thriller but read this impressive deep dive by Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone … It’s a stomach turner as well as a page turner … The Grayzone has since obtained more court records and conducted numerous witness interviews that establish how insidious this spy operation was, and how close Adelson’s massive private security apparatus was to it.
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Sheldon Adelson to Donate $100 Million to Trump and Republicans, Fundraisers Say
P. Stone – The Guardian
The billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, an ardent pro-Israel conservative, is expected to donate at least $100 million to boost Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election efforts and Republican congressional candidates this fall, say three Republican fundraisers familiar with Adelson’s initial plans. Adelson’s hefty checks are expected to be written to several Super Pacs – political groups that have to disclose their donors – as well as “dark money” not-for-profit organizations that can keep their donors secret, say the fundraisers. One source predicted that Adelson, who in tandem with his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, donated more than $100 million to Super Pacs and dark money groups in each of the last two presidential cycles, could wind up contributing close to $200 million in 2020
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Should the United States Have Fought in World War II? No
John L. Chapman
… Neither Hitler nor Mussolini had any kinetic designs on the United States. In fact, Hitler went out of his way to avoid war with the Americans until he felt duty-bound to support Japan. Further, Hitler had said as far back as 1925 that he regarded Britain and its sea power as a natural ally for a resurgent Germany … For Hitler, any German war would be fought in the East, as Asian Bolshevism was considered the primordial threat to European harmony and commercial life … Long-ignored, too, is the inconvenient fact that it was France and Great Britain which declared war on Germany in 1939, not the other way around … Let us therefore have the courage to face the truth: World War II, like most all wars the United States has fought before it or since, was a needless war, fought on behalf of corrupt special interests.
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Why Hitler Declared War on the United States
Institute for Historical Review
Here is the complete text of Hitler’s historic address of Dec. 11, 1941, in which the German leader recounts the reasons for the outbreak of war in September 1939, explains why he decided to strike against the Soviet Union in June 1941, reviews the dramatic course of the war thus far, and deals at length with US President Roosevelt’s hostile policies toward Germany. Hitler details the US government’s increasingly belligerent actions against Germany and Italy, and concludes by announcing that Germany was now joining Japan in war against the United States.
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Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a leading Jewish congresswoman, on Friday called on the Department of Veterans Affairs to replace three headstones in military cemeteries bearing swastikas and invoking Hitler. The inscriptions are on graves of German prisoners of war who died in US internment camps during World War II. Two are in a Houston cemetery and another is in Salt Lake City. In addition to the swastikas, the tombstones include the phrase “He died far from his home for the Führer, people, and fatherland.” Führer was the title Adolf Hitler assumed for himself. “It is deeply troubling and terribly offensive that swastika-adorned headstones that include messages honoring Hitler continue to stand in this nation’s Veterans Administration National Cemeteries,” Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said in a statement.
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In Bosnia, Protests Against Catholic Mass Remembering Slain Croatian WWII Pro-'Nazi' Collaborators
RFE/ RL
Thousands of Bosnians have staged a protest against a public mass held in the capital, Sarajevo, to honor Croatia’s pro-Nazi collaborators and civilians killed by communist partisans at the end of World War II. The Catholic Churches of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, despite widespread condemnation, held the mass at the Sarajevo Cathedral on May 16 … The Bosnian and Croatian churches stepped in and organized the event under the auspices of the Croatian parliament, which in 2016 reintroduced state sponsorship of the commemoration after having revoked it in 2012 amid criticism that it was rehabilitating the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime. Sarajevo Archbishop Vinko Puljic, who held the mass, earlier rejected the accusations, and said that praying for the victims’ souls did not mean approval of their acts.
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Donald Trump Is Complicit in a Catastrophe for Christians
Rev. Munther Isaac, Fr. Jamal Khader - Haaretz (Israel)
Implementing the Trump plan would bring catastrophic consequences for the prospects of a political solution between Israelis and Palestinians, and particularly for the fulfillment of the rights of the Palestinian people, including Palestinian Christians. The basic principles of the U.S. plan contradict the official position of the Heads of [Christian] Churches in Jerusalem … Many Palestinian Christians and members of the Church will lose the land they lived in and farmed for generations. It is a mortal blow to a dynamic Christian presence in the birthplace of Jesus … Israel’s current efforts towards West Bank annexation, implementing the Trump plan, will consolidate a status quo that is utterly damaging to the future of Christianity in the Holy Land. As Christians, we pray and call for all those who care about equality, freedom, and just and lasting peace …
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Britain’s Grave Historical Responsibility for the Palestine Tragedy
Arnold J. Toynbee
… The evicted Palestinian Arabs have been forcibly deprived of their country, their homes, and their property without having been allowed to have a voice in the determination of their own destiny. Though the facts are public, there is a widespread ignorance of them in the Western World and, above all, in the United States, the Western country which has had, and is still having, the greatest say in deciding Palestine’s fate. The United States has the greatest say, but the United Kingdom bears the heaviest load of responsibility … The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the World, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the World’s peace.
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The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
Jews for Justice in the Middle East
As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational “terrorists” who have no point of view worth listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance … This paper outlines the history of Palestine to show how this process occurred and what a moral solution to the region’s problems should consist of. If you care about the people of the Middle East, Jewish and Arab, you owe it to yourself to read this account of the other side of the historical record.
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New Holocaust Education Act Passes Senate, Goes to Trump for Expected Signature
JN - Jewish News (Arizona)
The U.S. Senate passed the Never Again Education Act, which seeks to expand Holocaust education in the United States, by unanimous consent on Wednesday … The legislation, which now goes to U.S. President Donald Trump for his expected signature into law, would expand the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s education programming to teachers nationwide, requiring the museum to develop and disseminate resources to improve awareness and understanding of the Holocaust and its lessons … “Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States and across the globe. We must act to reverse this dangerous course,” said Rosen in a statement.
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Jewish and pro-Israel groups applauded the U.S. Senate passage on Wednesday of the Never Again Education Act, which seeks to expand Holocaust education in the United States. The legislation, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in January, now goes to U.S. President Donald Trump for his expected signature into law, would expand the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s (USHMM) education programming to teachers nationwide, requiring the museum to develop and disseminate resources to improve awareness and understanding of the Holocaust and its lessons … Under the passed bill, $2 million would be allocated annually for this year and each of the next four years to the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund, administered by the USHMM’s governing body, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
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Germany has made public burning of the EU flag or that of another country punishable by up to three years in jail, classing it as a hate crime. The vote in the Bundestag (parliament) on Thursday makes defiling foreign flags equal to the crime of defiling the German flag … The move followed Social Democrat (SPD) complaints about protesters’ burning of the Israeli flag in Berlin in 2017. Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht, a member of the centre-left SPD, said “burning flags publicly has nothing to do with peaceful protests”. She said it stoked up “hatred, anger and aggression”, and hurt many people’s feelings. The new law also applies to acts of defilement besides burning, such as publicly ripping a flag up. Public display of the Nazi swastika and other Nazi symbols is already banned in Germany.
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French Parliament Passes Law Requiring Social Media Companies to Quickly Delete 'Hateful' Content
MSN
The French parliament passed a controversial hate speech law on Wednesday that would fine social media companies if they fail to remove certain illegal content within 24 hours — and in some cases, as little as one hour. The new regulation calls for the tech platforms to remove hateful comments — based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability, as well as sexual harassment — within 24 hours after they are flagged by users. Terrorist and child pornography content must be removed within one hour of being flagged. Platforms could face fines of up to €1.25 million ($1.36 million) in the event they fail to follow the regulations. There are no fines if platforms prematurely remove content that is later deemed acceptable. Some legal experts and activists fear this law will grant the government unprecedented power to censor online activities.
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Bosnia’s most senior Catholic clergyman plans to host a memorial service on Saturday for Croatian civilians and soldiers of the Nazi-allied Ustasha forces, the Dnevni Avaz daily reported Monday. Jews in Bosnia and Israel’s embassy to that Balkan nation are protesting the plan, titled “Mass for Bleiburg,” and to be held at Sarajevo’s Heart of Jesus Cathedral … In May 1945, partisans killed tens of thousands of Ustasha soldiers and supporters who had fled to the Bleiburg environs in Austria, as the Allies progressed on Adolf Hitler’s Germany and its allies. In recent years, commemorations of Nazi collaborators, including state and church officials, have become commonplace in Eastern Europe, where many regard them as patriots who fought Russian Soviet domination.
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Remember Stalin’s Gulags
Eric Margolis
Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, we remain fixated on some of its worst crimes. But only some. The incessant use of Holocaust remembrance has been cynically used by some on the hard right to justify Israel’s repression of the Palestinian people and the expansion of the Jewish state. For example, Israel’s rightist government waited until the 75th anniversary celebrations of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp by the Red Army to announce it planned to annex 30 percent more of the Palestinian West Bank … We rightfully remember the horrors of the Nazi system. But what about a far larger, more murderous system that has faded from our memory, the Soviet Gulag? … Some leading Russians historians say up to 20 million died in the Gulag. That’s well double the number claimed to have died or been killed in Nazi camps.
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Holodomor: The Secret Holocaust In Ukraine
J. Perloff - The New American
When Ukraine resisted Soviet attempts at collectivization in the 1920s and ’30s, the Soviet Union under Stalin used labor camps, executions, and starvation (Holodomor) to kill millions of Ukrainians … While there is disagreement over how many lives the genocide claimed, Gradenigo’s figures have turned out to be rather accurate. In Harvest of Sorrow, historian Robert Conquest, considered by many the leading authority on the famine, put the toll at 14.5 million. About half of these deaths represent the liquidation of the kulaks, via execution and slow death in gulags, while the famine itself claimed the lives of approximately seven million, including three million children.
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Palestinians Pay the Price for Israel’s Slavery to the Memory of the Holocaust
Daniel Barenboim - Haaretz (Israel)
… The horror of the inhumanity of the Holocaust and its tragedy belongs to humanity as a whole. I am convinced that only the ability to see it as such will give us the necessary clarity of thought and emotional capacity to deal with the conflict with the Palestinians. If it is true that the Palestinians will not be able to accept Israel without accepting its history, including the Holocaust, it is equally true that Israel will not be able to accept the Palestinians as long as the Holocaust is its only moral criteria for existing. So what about Israel and its new government? Not only are its ethics of memory flawed, but maintaining the occupation and creating new settlements, and now even planning to annex additional territories, have made the Palestinians morally superior.
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West Point Prof Pens Blistering Takedown of U.S. Military Academies
K. B. Vlahos – The American Conservative
… If you are anyone searching for reasons why the most powerful military in the world has not won a war in 75 years, you might call him a truth-teller. And a pretty brave one at that. Tim Bakken’s The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris and Failure in the U.S. Military is set for release, and it should land like a grenade. Unlike the myriad critiques of the military that wash over the institution from outside the Blob, this one is written by a professor with 20 years on the inside. He knows the instructors, the culture, the admissions process, the scandals, the cover-ups, and how its legendary “warrior-scholars” have performed after graduation and on the battlefield. Bakken’s prognosis: the military as an institution has become so separate, so insulated, so authoritarian, that it can no longer perform effectively.
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More Americans are ordering more rounds, and that’s leading to more funerals, according to a new study on alcohol-related deaths. Looking at data from the National Center for Health Statistics, researchers estimate deaths from alcohol-related problems have more than doubled over the past nearly 20 years. Death certificates spanning 2017 indicate nearly 73,000 people died in the U.S because of liver disease and other alcohol-related illnesses. That is up from just under 36,000 deaths in 1999. Some of the greatest increases were found among women and people who were middle-aged and older … Overall, researchers found men died at a higher rate than women. But when analyzing annual increases in deaths, the largest increase was among white women.
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Israel’s media watchdog has launched an investigation into a US-based evangelical network following allegations that its programming violated law by seeking to promote conversions to Christianity. International Christian network GOD TV last week launched its “Shelanu” (Hebrew for “ours”) channel on local cable carrier Hot. Communications Minister David Amsalem wrote on his Twitter account that he would “not allow any missionary channel to operate in Israel, not at any time or in any way.” The Council for Cable and Satellite Broadcasting said it was conducting a hearing to determine whether to suspend Shelanu’s license over broadcasting “Christian missionary content to Jews,” noting they had presented themselves to regulators as a channel for Christians.
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… While some other countries also ban Christian evangelizing, Israel is the only one that receives tens of millions of dollars from evangelical Christians … While this is rarely reported, there have been a multitude of actions by the Israeli government, rabbis and others targeting its Christian inhabitants, and discrimination against Christians is endemic in the Israeli system. These actions parallel those against other minorities whose land has been confiscated by Israel, and lives and institutions damaged or destroyed … Israeli forces have desecrated churches, Israeli officials have condoned burning New Testaments, Israeli rabbis have endorsed the killing of non-Jewish civilians, including children, and the Israeli government has steadily confiscated land from Christians for Jewish-only habitation.
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Christian Zionism
Mark Weber - Podcast
The fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant Christians in the US who fervently embrace Israel are the single most important block of non-Jewish American supporters of the Zionist state and its policies. But few of these “Christian Zionists” realize just what an odd minority they are among the world’s Christians, and how out of step their views are with traditional Christian principles. Christian Zionists reject the ethical values of Jesus as laid out in the Gospels, and betray fellow Christians in Palestine who are victims of Israeli dispossession and oppression.
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ADL’s 'Extremism' Statistics Are Inflated
Anthony L. Fisher – Business Insider
The Anti-Defamation League’s statistics about extremism have been cited as authoritative by much of the press, including its most publicized claim that nearly three-quarters of extremist killings in the US over the past decade have been committed by “right-wing extremists,” a category that includes white nationalists. But if you define “extremist incidents” as incidents involving violence constituting a hate crime or terrorism, or incidents where a report of the incident refers to motivation by extremist views, just 58% of the incidents cited by the ADL over a 10-year-period fit that definition … What I found is that the actual number of violent extremist incidents — if defining such crimes as being motivated by bigotry or politics — is much smaller than the ADL’s oft-reported overall number.
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Democracy is Eroding in More Countries, Says 'Freedom House'
L. Gehrke - Politico
Hungary is no longer a democracy, Poland is about to go down the same path, democracy in the Balkans is eroding because of Chinese and Russian influence, and the EU is doing nothing to stop it all, according to the NGO Freedom House’s latest “Nations in Transit” report, out Wednesday. In the study, which covers 29 countries from Central Europe to Central Asia, the authors describe “a stunning democratic breakdown,” saying that there are “fewer democracies in the region today than at any point since the annual report was launched in 1995.” … The Freedom House report says foreign influence has been a destabilizing factor. “In addition to Russia’s continued malign influence, China has been advancing an ambitious foreign policy in practically all of the region’s 29 countries,” the authors say.
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In its latest report, U.S.-based democracy monitor Freedom House warns of a “stunning democratic breakdown” across Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia … The report’s judicial framework and independence category had the largest number of declines, with six countries registering a deterioration: the Czech Republic, Georgia, Latvia, Montenegro, Poland, and Slovakia … It says Poland has dropped out of the group of consolidated democracies and is now rated a semi-consolidated democracy. Hungary, Serbia, and Montenegro have all left the category of democracies entirely … The report singles out EU member Hungary as having the largest drop ever recorded in the 25 years since Freedom House — a nonprofit organization largely funded by the U.S. government — published its first Nations In Transit report.
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President Donald Trump claimed last week that the US and Britain had won World War II. This was a shameless lie and distortion of the facts … Let’s do the numbers. The Soviet armed forces destroyed 507 German divisions and 100 allied Axis divisions (according to Soviet figures). These latter included the pan-European Waffen SS … No one likes to admit it was Stalin who defeated Nazi Germany. Stalin killed far more people than Adolf Hitler, including 6 million Ukrainians liquidated in the early 1930’s and four million Muslims during the war. The Soviet gulag was grinding up victims well into the 1950’s. Today, seven decades later, we are barraged with films and reports about Germany’s concentration camps while Stalin’s far more extensive and lethal gulag is ignored.
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Working With Stalin
Joseph Sobran
… We hear a lot about the evils of “Holocaust denial.” But those who question the conventional version of Nazi history are only retrospective and speculative. They don’t influence events. That can’t be said for those who assisted and glorified the Soviet Union under Stalin while it was still active and thereby facilitated its enormous crimes. I don’t mean Warner Brothers. I mean Joseph Davies. I mean Walter Duranty. And I especially mean the man who inspired this movie, Franklin Roosevelt. Stalin’s victims were in part his victims too.
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… Max Hastings’s book, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-45, rates among the most tragic books I have ever read. Opening in September 1944, after the battle for Normandy, when the western Allies believes the war was all but over, Hastings plunges into seven months of violence more total than anything our planet had ever suffered before, or ever will again barring a nuclear war … The Germans resisted to the last as ferociously on the western as on the eastern front. And since the German army, man for man, was the best fighting force in Europe, this extended resistance prolonged the war months beyond all Allied expectations.
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Coexistence with China or Cold War II?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Can we coexist with this rising and expansionist power? Or must we conduct a new decades-long Cold War like the one we waged to defeat the Soviet Empire and Soviet Union? The U.S. prevailed in that Cold War because of advantages we do not possess with the China of 2020 … China is thus a greater rival than the USSR of Stalin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but the U.S. is not today the nation of Ronald Reagan, with its surging economy and ideological conviction we would one day see the ideology of Marx and Lenin buried. Three decades of post-Cold War foolish and failed democracy-crusading have left this generation not with the conviction and certitude of Cold War America, but with ashes in their mouths and no stomach to spend blood and treasure converting China to our way of life.
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British Propaganda Efforts in Syria May Have Broken UK Law
Ian Cobain, Alice Ross - Middle East Eye
The UK’s covert propaganda programmes in war-torn Syria were poorly planned, probably illegal and cost lives, according to a scathing internal review of the initiative that has been seen by Middle East Eye. Using news agencies, social media, poster campaigns and even children’s comics, communications companies working under contract to the British government attempted to undermine both the Assad government and the Islamic State group and bolster elements within the Syrian opposition. In February, a Middle East Eye investigation revealed details of a British government propaganda campaign in Syria which sought to promote the UK’s strategic interests through support for the “moderate armed opposition”.
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Why Germany Surrendered Twice in World War II
E. Blakemore – National Geographic
On May 7, 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies in Reims, France, ending World War II and the Third Reich. Or did it happen on May 9 in Berlin instead? Both are true … When Soviet premier Joseph Stalin heard that Germany had signed an unconditional surrender of all its troops in Reims, he was furious. He argued that since the U.S.S.R. had sacrificed the most troops and civilians during the war, its most important military commander should accept Germany’s surrender rather than the Soviet officer who had witnessed the signing in Reims … The Russians celebrate May 9 as Victory Day to this day. The Reims surrender wasn’t even reported in the Soviet press until a day afterward …
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Putin's WWII 'Victory Parade'
Victor Rud – EU Today
… How did the “common cause” with Moscow during WWII work out? … General George Patton saw it differently, addressing the press camp of the U.S. Third Army in Regensburg, Germany: “Washington … [has] allowed us to kick hell out of one bastard and at the same time forced us to help establish a second one as evil or more evil than the first. We have won a series of battles, not a war for peace.” … Stalin hoped that Hitler would succeed in engulfing Europe, Stalin then turning on and overcoming Germany, with an “All-European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” to follow … Western luminaries will also endorse a catechism of 27 million “Russians” killed. (Moscow has periodically ratcheted it upwards.)
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Why Hitler Struck Against Soviet Russia
Mark Weber – Video
Important evidence has come to light in recent decades that shatters the familiar, endlessly repeated view that Hitler, bent on world conquest, launched a treacherous surprise attack against a peaceful Soviet Union. By June 1941 Soviet dictator Stalin had built the world’s largest military machine, and had deployed an enormous strike force in readiness for a massive attack against Germany that would roll on to overwhelm central and western Europe. Hitler’s “Barbarossa” attack, say a growing number of historians in Russia, Germany and other countries, was actually a preventive war to forestall an imminent Soviet strike. This 50-minute video received more than 220,000 “views” on YouTube before it was “restricted” in late 2017, and then banned altogether.
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A single Tiger tank faced 50 Soviet T-34s in this remarkable engagement during the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. A “Mark Felton Production.” Runtime: 5:03 mins. The German tank was commanded by Franz Staudegger, a 22-year Sergeant (Oberscharführer) with the First SS Panzer division. He destroyed 22 Soviet tanks, exhausting his ammunition supply, and the remaining T-34s retreated. The Battle of Kursk in Russia was one of the most important clashes of German and Soviet forces of World War II. It’s widely regarded as the greatest tank battle in history. For his exemplary courage and resourcefulness, Staudegger was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, the first Tiger tank crewman to be so honored. The young SS man, who was from Kärnten (Austria), later served on the western front.
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Southern Poverty Law Center Now Has $162 Million Stashed in Offshore Accounts
Washington Free Beacon
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which last year faced accusations of racism among its highest ranks, reported $162 million stashed in offshore investments and paid its disgraced former leaders over $1 million. The controversial group has continued to build its massive war chest by tens of millions of dollars even after employees claimed that the group’s leadership allowed sexual harassment and racial discrimination against its minority staffers. The ensuing media firestorm ultimately led to the ousting of cofounder Morris Dees, longtime president Richard Cohen, and legal director Rhonda Brownstein from the group in March 2019. New forms, covering a period beginning Nov. 1, 2018, and ending on Oct. 31, 2019, show that Cohen and Brownstein each received six-figure severance packages.
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How The Southern Poverty Law Center Started Inventing 'Hate Groups'
Kyle Shideler - The Federalist
… Since its founding, the SPLC had been treated — at least in the mainstream media — as an unquestioned arbiter of what qualifies as racism and hatred. Being added to the SPLC’s “Hate List” was the death-knell for any number of organizations that ran afoul of Dees … Things started unraveling Dees and the SPLC in 2018, when the organization was forced to settle with Maajidd Nawaz for more than $3 million … All of these clearly indicate that Dees and his behavior, as well as the corrupt nature of the SPLC’s ever-expanding fundraising, was well known, particularly on the left — yet it was ignored … The SPLC may be corrupt. It may even be racist and sexist. But for those seeking to silence their political opponents, the SPLC is useful. For that reason alone, it is likely to endure.
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The SPLC State ... And the Unprecedented Threat to Civil Liberties
J. Kirkpatrick - The Social Contract
… The SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] is so effective because it exercises power through multiple levels, each building on the other … The SPLC’s influence within law enforcement is magnified by how the organization’s reports of “hate groups” are dutifully reprinted by national outlets every year, despite the fact that many of these groups are either innocuous (such as the Family Research Council) or practically nonexistent. Many local papers also easily generate copy by simply referring to what “hate groups” exist in their area, thus inspiring local watchdog groups and Antifa to begin organizing against a threat which may not even exist … The SPLC serves not just as an activist group, but as an authority determining who is and who is not permitted to operate a group or business.
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A Salute to Gen. Jonas Savimbi
Eric Margolis
Thirty years ago this week began the largest and longest series of battles in southern Africa and a key event in the Cold War. I was there with both mechanized and artillery units of the South African Defense Forces (SADF) and guerrillas of their Angolan ally, the UNITA forces of Gen. Jonas Savimbi … My old friend Gen Savimbi continued to lead his Ovimbundu people and UNITA against the ruling Marxist regime in Luanda until the US government determined that Angola’s growing oil resources were worth more than old ally Savimbi. I have on impeccable source that in 2002 the US hired a top-notch Israeli hit team to ambush and kill Savimbi. UNITA disbanded and the US got Angola’s oil. As the British say, there are no permanent friends in politics, only permanent interests.
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Please Tell the Establishment That U.S. Hegemony is Over
Daniel Larison - The American Conservative
…The truth is that decline was never a choice, but the U.S. can decide how it can respond to it. We can continue chasing after the vanished, empty glory of the “unipolar moment” with bromides of American exceptionalism. We can continue to delude ourselves into thinking that military might can make up for all our other weaknesses. Or we can choose to adapt to a changed world by prudently husbanding our resources and putting them to uses more productive than policing the world … U.S. hegemony is already on its way out; now Americans need to decide what our role in the world will look like afterwards. Warmed-over platitudes about “leadership” won’t suffice and throwing more money at the Pentagon is a dead end. The way forward is a strategy of retrenchment, restraint, and renewal.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday vetoed what he called a “very insulting” congressional resolution seeking to limit his war powers in Iran. In a statement, Trump said he had used his veto because the resolution — a rare bipartisan rebuke to the president approved in March — was based on “misunderstandings of facts and law.” The measure stemmed from fears among both Trump’s Republicans and Democrats that the White House was stumbling into war with the Islamic republic … The resolution said the US president cannot commit his military to hostilities against Iran or any part of its government or military without explicit authorization from Congress … Trump has preached the need for a drawdown of American military entanglements abroad, but has ramped up a hostile relationship with Iran.
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The Hedge Fund Man Behind Pro-Trump Media’s New War on China
Eli Clifton - Responsible Statecraft
A fortune made at a secretive hedge fund led by Robert Mercer — one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors — appears to be fueling a push for a confrontation with China across a number of connected media properties … A branch of the Epoch Media Group — a conservative media empire controlled by Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement with a stated goal of destroying the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — received over $900,000 from and was formerly led by one of Mercer’s longtime employees, Huayi Zhang, at the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. Most of Epoch Media Group’s work has been devoted to portraying China in the most dangerous and sinister ways possible … Epoch has expanded outside of its hawkish anti-Beijing editorial line, emerging as one of the most prolific pro-Trump media outlets.
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We Didn’t Win the War: Ten Myths About Britain and World War II
Peter Hitchens - Mail (Britain)
… The uncomfortable truth is that from the very beginning, it was Britain which sought a conflict with Germany, not Germany with Britain … The sad truth is that this country deliberately sought a war in the vain hope of preserving a Great Power status our rulers knew in their hearts it had already lost. The resulting war turned us into a second-rate power … The general impression is that the end of hostilities brought a new sunlit era of optimism in a ravaged continent. Yet victory led swiftly to an appeasement of Stalin at least as bad as our appeasement of Hitler in 1938, with nations handed over bound and gagged to the Kremlin’s secret police regime. And the following months and years brought death on a colossal scale, of which we nowadays know almost nothing.
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A leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany [AfD] party drew criticism on Wednesday for describing the day World War II ended in Europe following Nazi Germany’s surrender as a “day of absolute defeat.” Alexander Gauland, the co-leader of the party’s parliamentary group, made the comment as he opposed calls for May 8 to be made a public holiday. This year is the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe in 1945. “May 8 doesn’t have the potential to be a holiday because it is an ambivalent day,” he was quoted as telling the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group. “For concentration camp inmates, it was a day of liberation. But it was also a day of absolute defeat, a day of the loss of large parts of Germany and the loss of the possibility to shape things.”
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Germany’s defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era that, in many ways, was worse than the destruction wrought by war. In a sobering and courageous new book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the ruined and prostrate Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or starvation.
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GoDaddy Drops ‘Miss Hitler’ Competition Site After Pressure From Jewish Group
The Times of Israel
The GoDaddy.com web hosting company said Thursday that it had taken down the domain of the site running the “Miss Hitler 2020” pageant, following pressure from Australia’s Anti-Defamation Commission, a Jewish group aimed at fighting against anti-Semitism and racism. The competition, run by the so-called World Truth Historical Revisionism website, encourages women to enter by posting sexy Nazi-themed photos together with an entry explaining why they “love and revere the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler.” “We have suspended the account and informed the account owner to move the domains in question to another registrar, as they have violated our terms of service,” GoDaddy said in a brief statement.
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President Donald Trump’s bluster continues to leave the world more confused than usual. After Iranian boats sailed near a U.S. navy flotilla, he threatened Iran via tweet, authorizing American forces to “shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass” U.S. vessels. It was an echo of his tweet two years ago, insisting that Tehran “never, ever threaten the United States again.” He never acted on that threat … U.S. forces are unwelcome and under fire in Iraq by Iranian-backed militias. American personnel remain in Syria, where they illegally occupy Syrian oil installations and are tasked with blocking transit of Iranian forces aiding the Syrian government. Confrontations with Russian regulars and mercenaries allied with Syria and Iran already have occurred. Even an inadvertent clash could escalate dangerously.
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How Long Can Biden Stay in His Basement?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… With four months left before his nomination in Milwaukee, and six months before the November election, there are still among Democrats gnawing concerns based on Biden’s performance in the debates and primaries, and since, that he has lost the ability to articulate issues clearly and cogently, or to complete complex thoughts … Biden forgets, mumbles, misspeaks, loses his train of thought and appears, at times, confused. Moreover, Biden is no spring chicken. He would take office at 78, one year older than Ronald Reagan, our oldest president, was when he left office … Campaign 2020 may show us our own democracy at its worst.
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US Will Push Other Countries to Love Jews More, Says US Government’s Top 'Anti-Semitism' Official
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Elan Carr, the State Department’s antisemitism monitor, wants to get people in other countries to love their Jews more as a means of countering antisemitism. In a press call Monday to mark Jewish American Heritage Month, Carr outlined steps the United States was taking worldwide to advocate for defending Jews as violent antisemitism spikes, including security measures, prosecuting hate crimes and condemning anti-Semitic speech. “In addition to all of those important defense measures, we are determined also to work with our allies in developing and driving Philo-Semitic narratives for their country, in the hope that we can reach the day when every society dedicates itself, as the United States has, to embrace and to treasure its Jewish community,” he said.
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US Senators Request Funding Increase for State Dept. 'Anti-Semitism' Envoy
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
A bipartisan group of 28 US senators on Monday sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, and asked to increase funding for the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism … “Providing additional funds in FY 2021 will ensure the State Department has the resources needed to track and respond to this growing scourge and that the United States remains a leader in combating [antisemitism] internationally.” … The letter was endorsed by the Anti-Defamation League, The Jewish Federations of North America, American Jewish Committee, Hadassah, B’nai B’rith International, and many other organizations.
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The Death of Hitler
Audio - BBC Witness History
As Soviet troops were closing in, Adolf Hitler killed himself in his command post in central Berlin. For this audio presentation, Louise Hidalgo gathered firsthand accounts from BBC archives about the German leader’s death on April 30, 1945. This podcast includes portions of interviews with persons who were with Hitler during those final days, and at the time of his death.
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Hitler’s Testament: Historic Final Statement
Institute for Historical Review
A day before his death in his beleaguered command center in central Berlin, Adolf Hitler summoned Traudl Junge, his youngest secretary, for an important task. Standing at a large table in the conference room of the cramped underground concrete bunker complex, he paused a bit before he began dictating “My Political Testament,” a declaration that would be his final words to the German people, as well as a statement for coming generations … Hitler also sought to explain why things had turned out so calamitously, and he anticipated accusations that would be made against him in the years ahead.
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With host James Edwards and co-host Keith Alexander, Mark Weber begins his guest appearance on this session of “The Political Cesspool” radio show with a look at the US government’s recent designation of a small, little-known Russian monarchist and Christian group as a “white supremacist” and “terrorist” organization. While it’s not very important in itself, says Weber, this absurd and hypocritical move underscores the ease and frequency with which the Trump administration – and the US government generally – play fast and loose with facts and truth. It’s yet another symptom of the deep-rooted illness of modern American political life.
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In Tortured Logic, Trump Begs for a Do-Over on the Iran Nuclear Deal
Tyler Cullis, Trita Parsi - Responsible Statecraft
Even the Trump administration seems to grudgingly have concluded that breaching the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) was a mistake. More than two years after the U.S. exit, the deal still stands while the Trump administration is running out of options to force a re-negotiation. It is now so desperate it is seeking to convince the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that it never quit the deal in the first place … This underscores the real reason for Trump’s move: the U.S. is out of leverage when it comes to Iran. While U.S. sanctions have decimated Iran’s economy, they have not forced Iran to accede to Trump’s demands. Iran has neither begged for talks nor abandoned the JCPOA. Its posture remains essentially the same, immune to Trump’s best efforts to cause it to lash out to international approbation.
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FX/Hulu Caught Fabricating Quotes in 'Mrs. America' Scene of Real-Life Phyllis Schlafly Debate
Breitbart
The Eagle Forum posted a video exposing how the new FX series airing on Hulu, Mrs. America, outright lies about what conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly really did when battling the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 70s. In its recent fact check video, Eagle Forum President Ed Martin compares the archive footage to the scenes in the Hulu series depicting the TV debate between Schlafly (portrayed by Cate Blanchett) and her husband, attorney Fred Schlafly, and pro-ERA activist Brenda Feigen-Fasteau, and her husband, Marc. TV talk show host Tom Snyder hosted the discussion … In the Hulu presentation, Schlafly is depicted as a flailing shill who came to the show wholly unprepared to debate the meat of the Equal Rights Amendment. At the same time, Fasteau is presented as a hard-charging crusader in full control of the facts.
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Churchill’s War: The Real History of World War II
Paul Craig Roberts
… The one historian from whom you can get the unvarnished truth of World War II is David Irving … These works far surpass all previous histories of the war and all accounts of the agendas and events that produced the war … He lets the history-makers speak for themselves in their own words, and it is seldom a pretty picture. Irving’s books sold millions of copies, and he was well-to-do. But he fell foul of Zionists … People in the Western world have been indoctrinated for 75 years into a white hat/ black hat story of World War II that exonerates the “allies” and demonizes Hitler and Germany … The effort to suppress truth from coming out continues 75 years after the war … It is the kind of history that only gets written once in a century. Irving is clearly the master of historical documentation.
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David Irving: A Profile
Institute for Historical Review
David Irving, the controversial British historian, is the author of numerous books on military history and World War II, including several international bestsellers … Irving has a track record of uncovering startling new facts about supposedly well-known episodes of history. Much of his effectiveness has been due to his extensive reliance on primary source materials, such as diaries, original documents and so forth, from both official archives and private sources. He is disdainful of scholars who engage in what he calls inter-historian incest, and who thereby help to keep alive myths left over from Second World War propaganda … This fiercely independent and iconoclastic historian is widely acknowledged – even by adversaries – as an eminent authority on World War II, Hitler and Third Reich Germany.
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Australian Jewish Group Calls on Website to Stop Hosting ‘Miss Hitler’ Pageant
The Times of Israel
Australia’s Anti-Defamation Commission on Sunday appealed to the GoDaddy.com web hosting company to take down the domain of the site running the “Miss Hitler 2020” pageant, calling it “an incitement to murder.” The last two years have seen attempts by neo-Nazis to host the competition largely foiled after reported pressure from Israel convinced the Russian social media network VKontakte (also known as VK) to take down the page. The competition encourages women to enter by posting sexy Nazi-themed photos together with an entry explaining why they “love and revere the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler.” The Anti-Defamation Commission said the competition was now on the World Truth Historical Revisionism website, a domain hosted by GoDaddy.com.
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In Finland, Lenin Statue Marked With Jewish Star
Anti-Semitism (Israel)
A statue of Lenin has been vandalized in Kotka. The star of David, symbolizing Judaism, is painted on the forehead and foundation of the statue of V.I. Lenin. The foundation of the statue is also inscribed with the paint “Jewish mass murderer.” It is reported from the Southeast Finland Police Situation Center that the police patrol had noticed and recorded the vandalism in the police system on Friday morning. The actual criminal investigation into the vandalism has not yet been initiated, but the matter is being investigated by the police.
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Was the Russian Revolution Jewish?
Seth J. Frantzman - The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
… The role of Jews in the Russian Revolution, and by extension Communism writ large, has always been a sensitive subject because antisemitic voices often painted Soviet Communism as a Jewish plot, or “Jewish Bolshevism.” … Half of the top contenders in the Central Committee of the Communist Party to take power after Lenin’s health declined in 1922 – Lev Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev – were Jewish. Yakov Sverdlov, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from November 1917 to his death in 1919, was Jewish … In a twisted irony, some of these Bolsheviks who had played a prominent role executing others, such as NKVD Director Genrikh Yagoda, were themselves executed.
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A decision by officials in Prague to remove a statue of a Soviet army marshal from a local park last fall has evolved into a diplomatic dust-up that has only escalated since the sculpture was finally taken down in April, pushing tensions between the Czech Republic and Russia to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War … The dispute over the statue of Red Army Marshal Ivan Konev cuts to the heart of ongoing efforts by Central and Eastern European countries to reevaluate their history since the fall of the Berlin Wall, said Jiri Pehe, the director of New York University’s center in Prague. “The Czech Republic is just like some other East European countries. Thirty years after the fall of communism, it is going through a certain reinterpretation of certain events,” he said.
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With Apparently Fabricated Nuclear Documents, Netanyahu Pushed the US Towards War With Iran
Gareth Porter – The Gray Zone
President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.” … An investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction …
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Newly released FBI documents suggest that Israeli government officials were in contact with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and offered “critical intel.” In one of the extensively redacted documents, an official who appears to be an Israeli minister warns that Trump was “going to be defeated unless we intervene.” He goes on to tell a Trump campaign official: “The key is in your hands.” The previously classified documents were released in response to a lawsuit brought by the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, Politico and the Washington Post. The unsealed documents suggest that rather than Russia, it was Israel that covertly interfered in the election. While all these media companies except one seem to have ignored the apparent Israeli connection revealed in the FBI documents, Israeli media have been quick to jump on it.
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HBO’s 'The Plot Against America'
E. Michael Jones
“Fear” is the first word of The Plot against America, the Philip Roth novel which just got re-cycled as an HBO series by David Simon and Ed Burns, creators of The Corner, The Wire, and Generation Kill. “Fear,” Roth tells us, “presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.” The memories in question are Roth’s, of growing up in a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey … The premise of the novel is that Charles Lindbergh was elected president in 1940. Everything else in the book follows from that premise, and from Roth’s ethnic paranoia and his ethnic bigotry … Both Goldhagen and Roth subscribe to the most basic tenet of Jewish ideology, namely, that anti-Semitism has nothing to do with Jewish behavior. That premise turns all history into a form of political mystification.
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The Real History Behind HBO’s ‘The Plot Against America’
L. Zaltzman - JTA
The new TV show based on Philip Roth‘s novel “The Plot Against America,” helmed by David Simon, the Jewish creator of “The Wire,” has premiered on HBO and made a splash with critics and fans. The eerily captivating series, which borrows details from the iconic Jewish author’s life and a crucial moment in American history, depicts an alternative reality in which isolationist Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and encourages anti-Semitic attitudes throughout the country … The “greatest danger to this country lies in their [the Jews’] large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government,” Lindbergh said, among other things.
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Charles Lindbergh: An Authentic American Hero
Mark Weber - Podcast
Charles Lindbergh became an instant world celebrity at the age of 25 when he made a grueling 33-hour flight from New York to Paris. His daring flight, and his aviation pioneering afterwards, made him, for some time, the most admired man in America. He was also a prolific, prize-winning author, inventor, explorer, and social activist. But his greatest act of courage was in speaking out — eloquently and frankly — against the deceitful campaign to push the United States into war. Lindbergh deserves to be remembered and honored today, not only as an authentic American hero, but also because much of what he wrote and said is instructive and relevant in our own age.
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Hasidic Jews Defy New York’s Lockdown
Philip Giraldi
Last Tuesday an estimated 2,500 male Hasidic Jews gathered in the streets of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to attend the funeral of Rabbi Chaim Mertz. The gathering was contrary to New York City’s coronavirus lockdown, which forbids gatherings of more than ten persons while also mandating that individuals must maintain “social distancing” of at least six feet from each other … New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was outraged when he learned of the gathering … De Blasio was inevitably immediately called an anti-Semite … Hasidic Jews, recognizable for their distinctive attire, operate much like a cult and have frequently had problems in dealing with the broader communities that they wind up settling in. They have established their own tribal groupings, primarily in New Jersey and New York …
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WhatsApp Says Israeli Firm 'Deeply Involved' in Hacking Users
The Guardian (Britain)
WhatsApp has alleged in new court filings that an Israeli spyware company used US-based servers and was “deeply involved” in carrying out mobile phone hacks of 1,400 WhatsApp users, including senior government officials, journalists, and human rights activists. The new claims about NSO Group allege that the Israeli company bears responsibility in serious human rights violations, including the hacking of more than a dozen Indian journalists and Rwandan dissidents.
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We Are Living in a Failed State
George Packer - The Atlantic
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public — had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity — to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category … Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state … And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?
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The End of America
Philip Carl Salzman - PJ Media
… The death of societies and cultures is usually suicide. Members of the society lose faith in its institutions, reject its cultural values, demonize their fellow citizens, enthusiastically entertain foreign ideologies, and open their doors to foreign adversaries. This is particularly devastating when elites turn against the society’s institutions and culture. The initial result is social conflict, loss of confidence, and eventually civil war and or foreign invasion … Joe Biden, presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for Democrat candidate for the Presidency, announced that illegal immigrants are more American than American citizens. Furthermore, as progressives view whites as racist oppressors, “social justice” requires their replacement by black, brown, yellow, and red non-whites, until the whites are in the minority and no longer have any power.
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In What Sense Do You Think We Are Free?
William Sullivan – American Thinker
.. Consider this. A junkie can wake up on a brisk morning in the streets of San Francisco, defecate on the sidewalk in plain view of onlookers, and insert a used needle into his arm to inject illegal narcotics into his veins. The cops will make no effort to stop him, for, you see, that might be a violation of his supposed “rights.” … He is far less likely to incur the attention of law enforcement, or even the news media, than you might incur for the crime of choosing to attend your local church, should it have the audacity to be open. It is you, don’t you understand, who is the public health menace.
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Los Angeles: The Moral Crisis of Skid Row
Christopher F. Rufo - City Journal
… Walking down San Pedro Street to the heart of Skid Row, I see men smoking methamphetamine in the open air and women selling bootleg cigarettes on top of cardboard boxes. Around the corner, a man makes a drug transaction from the window of a silver sedan, a woman in an American-flag bandana flashes her vagina to onlookers, and a shirtless man in a bleached-blond woman’s wig defecates behind a parked police car. Slumped across the entryway of an old garment business, a shoeless, middle-aged junkie injects heroin into his cracked, bare feet. Skid Row is the epicenter of L.A.’s addiction crisis. More than 12,000 homeless meth and heroin addicts pass through here each year, with thousands living in the vast network of tent encampments that line the sidewalks.
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New York Times '1619 Project': The Wrong Way to Teach About US Slavery
David J. Bobb - New York Post
… The 1619 Project’s curriculum, created by the Pulitzer Center (no relation to the prizes) for The New York Times, fails to give teachers and students a reliable resource — because instead of treating history as inquiry, it uses history for crude ideological ends … Seeking mainly to settle scores, such history lends itself to conspiracy theorizing and the division of historical actors into good guys and bad, with no one in between. Whether done from the left or the right, this isn’t history but polemic. And it’s dangerous, because today’s civics and history lessons form tomorrow’s United States. Polarized times render ideologically charged history and civics lessons especially tempting.
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… In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement … I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, “Why?,” he mumbled, “Target practice,” and fired until his pistol was empty.
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In a U.S. Death Camp, 1945
Werner Wilhelm Laska - Institute for Historical Review
… The American guards who arrived with the truck were nasty and cruel from the start. I was forced in with kicks and punches to my back … In late afternoon we stopped in an open field again, and were unloaded in the same manner, with beating and kicking. We had to line up at attention just like recruits in basic training. Quickly, the Americans fenced us in with rolls of barbed wire, so there was no space to sit or to lie down that night. We even had to do our necessities in the standing position … Every morning a truck passed by the cages to pick up the dead from the previous night, those who were either shot within or on the fences, or dead from hunger or typhoid, dysentery and other sicknesses. Of every ten attempting to escape, eight were shot and two got through.
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From the Allied Camps to the Revisionist Camp
Hans von der Heide - Institute for Historical Review
… We spent a day or two in a stable in Compiègne, with little or no food, depending on who still had something to “bribe” the Yanks with, before we were even moved to Cherbourg camp … Cherbourg “camp” consisted of various compounds of mud surrounded by barbed wire. There was no accommodation or shelter whatsoever for the first two weeks or so. Then a few wooden shacks were put up, in which we had to sleep on the ground, packed together like sardines in a can … This was to be our “abode” for roughly six weeks … Nights were cold and it rained for long hours, so it was not very comfortable to “sleep” in deep mud or later on the ground barely covered with straw.