Headlines

… The US today has the greatest income inequality of all Western nations, surpassing China and more than a few undeveloped nations as well. From this, it has the lowest social mobility of most nations, meaning that improving one’s station in life is becoming increasingly impossible … Americans carry the largest amount of personal debt among all nations, including credit card debt and increasingly unrepayable student loans, and the US now leads the world in personal bankruptcies … America has launched the most wars of aggression in the history of the world, and has been at war for 235 of its 243 years as a nation, all those wars unprovoked and unjustified … The US has by far the highest incarceration rate of all nations, with more than 25% of the world’s prisoners in its jails and with almost 35% of all adult Americans having a criminal record.

… Over the last century, Americans’ life expectancy at birth has risen from 49 to 77. Yet in recent years, that rise has faltered. Among white people age 45-54 — or a time many view as the prime of life — deaths have risen. Especially vulnerable are white men without a four-year bachelor’s degree … What could be going on? The Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, a 2015 Nobel Prize recipient, say [in their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism] such men are dying of drug overdoses, drink-induced liver disease and suicide — what they call deaths of despair … “Deaths of despair reflect a long-term and slowly unfolding loss of a way of life.”

… The new book Deaths of Despair: And the Future of Capitalism by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton attempts to explain their important discovery — the declining lifespans of working-class white Americans since the turn of the century … The more I study the White Death of the past two decades, the more I am instead reminded of the tragic trajectory of a now much less publicized American race, Native Americans. Like American Indians, working-class white Americans seem to be living, and dying, like a defeated people, quietly offing themselves … As White Privilege became a preoccupation of the press, whites increasingly shot themselves, or drank themselves to death, or overdosed on synthetic or natural opioids.

… Two decades later, Vietnam has become one of the most comfortable countries in Asia. A place where millions of Westerners would love to live. Its quality of life is growing continually. Its socialist model and central planning are clearly successful. Vietnam feels like China, some twenty years ago. There are tremendous promenades in the cities of Hue and Danang, there is the construction of modern public transportation networks, as well as sports facilities … Vietnamese people count on constantly improving sanitation, medical care, education and cultural life … Its people are among the most optimistic in the world. In just the three years that I spent living in Vietnam, the country changed dramatically …From one of the poorest Asian countries, Vietnam has become one of the strongest, determined and optimistic.

.. . One of the key problems for American diplomacy, however, is that few outside of Washington really believe Iran poses a serious threat to global peace and security. For our European allies, preserving the Iran nuclear deal is a far higher priority than increasing the risk of a military confrontation. The reality is that Iran, at best, is a middling power with an aging military checked by other regional powers and does not have the capacity to pose a significant military threat to America … “Maximum pressure,” as currently practiced by the United States against Iran, is a self-defeating mentality that has decisively proven to be an abject failure … Continuing to employ maximum pressure is a losing proposition for the United States.

… Apart from anything else, Donald Trump’s demeanor has alienated nearly all of America’s traditional allies while most of the world regards him as a dangerous sociopath who is also something of a joke. The Trump supporters should be looking at his actual record, instances where he could have acted but didn’t and other occasions when he did things that were from the git-go clearly not in the U.S. national interest. I am thinking particularly of the ruined relations with Russia and China, the pandering to Israel, and also the inexcusable attacks on Syria. But the biggest mistake of all might have been the abrupt withdrawals from international agreements and bodies, to include the disastrous departure from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Los Angeles resident and potential “Second Mensch” of the United States Doug Emhoff knows what it means to stand up against anti-Semitism, and is confident that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris [his wife] will fight for all people, including the Jewish community … Emhoff also spoke about Israel-United States relations under a possible Biden-Harris administration. While Emhoff was becoming bar mitzvah, Harris was going door-to-door raising money for the Jewish National Fund to plant trees in Israel. Having been there three times, once with Emhoff, he said, “For Kamala, Israel isn’t political football. Its future as a secure Jewish and Democratic state is non-negotiable. I can assure you all of that.” … “Now she wants to use this leadership, this platform and this opportunity to lay down roots of peace and safety for all of Israel and Israel’s children.”

In a Foreign Affairs article in March titled “Why America Must Lead Again,” Joe Biden claimed that “the world does not organize itself,” and promised to “place the United States back at the head of the table” among the nations of the world. But Biden’s premise that the world can only be organized under the direction of the United States, and that the country should aspire to such a dominant position at this moment in history, are out of touch with global reality … Biden then played a key role in the propaganda blitz for the 2003 invasion of Iraq … During his final twelve years in the Senate, Biden never once voted against a military spending bill.

Kamala Harris, the California senator who is the Democratic vice presidential nominee, told Jewish supporters that Joe Biden, the presidential nominee, would not place any conditions on US aid to Israel. “Joe has made it clear he will not tie security assistance to any political decisions that Israel makes and I couldn’t agree more,” Harris said Wednesday in a call arranged by the Biden campaign for Jewish donors. “The Biden Harris administration will sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security, including the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation pioneered during the Obama-Biden administration and the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge.”

Economists and deficit hawks have warned for decades that the United States was borrowing too much money … That nonchalant attitude toward what were once thought to be major breaking points reflects an evolution in the way investors, economists and central bankers think about government debt … Instead of panicking, the financial markets are viewing this seemingly bottomless need for borrowing benignly … Expectations for economic growth and inflation are the crucial drivers of interest rates, and such low rates very likely mean investors expect a long period of piddling growth. But they also signal that investors see almost no chance that the United States, which has one of the best track records of any borrower on earth, will stiff them by defaulting.

A decorated Waffen-SS officer has died, aged 97, in New Zealand. During his lifetime he was a controversial figure having been lauded by local media as a “remarkable survivor” of WWII and a “pioneer” of skiing in his adopted country, to the dismay of many Kiwis. Willi Huber was born in the Austrian Alps in 1923, the son of a farmer … During his lifetime he appeared to show little remorse for his actions under Nazi rule. A 2017 report on a Sunday news program broadcast by TVNZ showed a smiling Huber recalling the time he met Hitler, aged 9 … “Can you imagine?” he mused, chuckling. “I give it to Hitler, he was very clever. He brought Austria out of the dump.” Reflecting on Austria’s economic status after the World War I, he added that Hitler had “offered a way out” for the Austrian people.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem has called for the name of former Geraldine resident Willi Huber to be removed from Mt Hutt Ski Area. The Otago Daily Times reported on August 15 that Willi Huber (96), who died in Geraldine recently, was a member of the Waffen-SS … Mr Huber was also called “The Father of Mt Hutt”, for his work establishing the ski area near Methven. Despite Mr Huber’s Nazi past, the Mt Hutt Ski Area manager James McKenzie was reported saying they wanted to continue to “respect his legacy”. Mr Huber has a ski run named in his honour as well as a Huber’s Hut restaurant. Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem and renowned Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said there should be no honouring of Mr Huber at Mt Hutt. … “We also demand Mt Hutt Ski Area rename the ski slope named after SS Officer Huber.”

This portrayal of the 1938 union (“Anschluss”) of Austria with the German Reich, includes contemporary film footage with recent English-language voiceover commentary. Runtime: 4:14 mins. For decades American officials and historians, along with the US media, have portrayed the union of Austria with the Reich as an act of “aggression” or “rape.” The truth is exactly the opposite. Rarely in history has a historical event taken place with broader and more joyful popular approval.

The Sound of Music is a popular, tuneful and enduring American film. But its portrayal of history, and especially its depiction of the 1938 union of Austria with the German Reich is a gross distortion of reality. In fact, the vast majority of Austrians joyfully welcomed the union (Anschluss) of their homeland with National Socialist Germany, and strongly, even enthusiastically, supported the Hitler government.

It is rare for a succinct foreign policy platform paper to so fully encapsulate a candidate’s thinking process. A policy paper [Jan. 2001] sent to Hillary Clinton, available on WikiLeaks, lays out the Democratic front-runner’s strategy as an architect of US intervention in Syria, shows the flawed reasoning that beget the scheme. Perhaps most importantly, the document shows utter blindness to the huge problems that the war ultimately led to. As with so many US wars in the Middle East, it all starts with Israel, and saw the US imposing regime change in Syria as primarily about benefiting Israel and spiting Iran, a position that closely mirrors that of several Israeli officials.

A batch of internal Clinton campaign emails published by Wikileaks in recent days [Oct. 2016] reveals the extent to which campaign donors drive Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric and policy positions on Israel and the broader Middle East. Last year, Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to billionaire media mogul Haim Saban on her campaign stationery vowing “to make countering BDS a priority” if she wins the presidency. Saban has donated at least $7 million to getting Clinton elected president and openly confesses that his number one priority is influencing US policy in Israel’s favor.

Mark Weber and Fróði Midjord examine and dissect a range of widely accepted myths about the devastating global conflict of 1939-1945. Runtime: 133 mins. They explain how the war’s outcome decisively shaped today’s America and Europe. They show that the conflict was not, as we’re told, a clear-cut battle between Good and Evil. The two also discuss Churchill, Hitler and `The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. This readable and well researched book by one of America’s most astute and influential public affairs commentators is a persuasive debunking of the “official” story of the origins and trajectory of WW2. It’s also a devastating critique of the “cult” image of Winston Churchill.

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

… Despite the nation’s great achievements in race relations, there remains institutional racism, namely the widespread practice of treating a person or group of people differently based on their race. Most institutional racism is practiced by the nation’s institutions of higher learning. Eric Dreiband, an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, recently wrote that Yale University “grants substantial, and often determinative, preferences based on race.” The four-page letter said, “Yale’s race discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular Asian American and White applicants.” Yale University is by no means alone in the practice of institutional racism.

They are two patriotic songs that, for decades, have been a staple of the final extravaganza in the “Proms” series of classical music concerts that bookends the British summer. But this year, “Land of Hope and Glory” and “Rule, Britannia!” are at the center of a toxic culture war debate that many say is distracting from the country’s real problems with systemic racism. Fury erupted when a newspaper claimed that the BBC, which organizes and broadcasts the event, was planning to replace the anthems out of concerns that the songs’ lyrics — which laud the country’s past glories — might be out of place in an age of historical reckoning … Government ministers, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, waded in to express outrage.

… Why hasn’t Karl Marx been canceled? … Marx gets a pass from the left because he’s of the left. Leftists ignore or try to separate him from the ideology bearing his name that helped produce over 100 million deaths in the 20th century alone … Karl Marx was, after all, a bigot. His attitude toward blacks and Jews alone (not to mention women) would stun Stonewall Jackson. Ugly racial-ethnic stereotypes by Marx are littered throughout his writings … Marx freely dispensed with nasty epithets aimed not only at blacks but at Jews … Marx — who was, ironically, an ethnic Jew — had “learned to despise and hate the people from whom he originated. This was an expression of what the Germans call Selbsthass (self-hate), a trait which Karl Marx displayed throughout his whole life.”

… America’s newspaper of record, The Washington Post, promotes its product with a phrase “Democracy dies in darkness.” In reality, the darkness is created by the media itself, which no longer reports what is taking place in an objective fashion. What does appear in the papers, online and on television and radio, no matter what the political orientation, is a product that is engineered to send a certain message. That message is itself disinformation, not substantially different than what takes place in the controlled media put out by so-called totalitarian regimes … Opinion polls suggest that the American public has largely figured things out, and reveal that few trust the media to do its job in an objective fashion.

If he wins the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won’t be the first president with Jewish in-laws: both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton beat him to it. But (barring any spontaneous decisions by Jared Kushner) he could become the first president whose Jewish offspring-in-law have Hebrew ink on their biceps. In fact, all three of Biden’s children — Beau and Hunter, his sons with his first wife, Neilia Biden, and Ashley, his daughter with current wife Jill Jacobs Biden — married members of the tribe. Here’s a rundown of the Jewish members of the Biden clan.

The president of the UN Security Council on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s demand to restore all UN sanctions on Iran, a move that drew an angry rebuke from the US ambassador who accused opponents of supporting “terrorists.” … U. S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted last Thursday that the United States has the legal right to “snap back” U.N. sanctions, even though President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers that was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. All the council members, except the Dominican Republic, had informed the council president that the U.S. administration’s action was illegal because Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, in 2018.

About three-quarters of U.S. adults say they support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan in a new poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute obtained exclusively by The Hill. In the poll, which surveyed 2,000 U.S. adults, 44 percent said they strongly support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq, and 30 percent said they somewhat support doing so. For Afghanistan, 46 percent said they strongly support bringing troops home and 30 percent said they somewhat support it … Asked whether the United States should be more or less involved militarily in global conflicts, 48 percent of respondents said engagement should decrease, while 32 percent said the level of engagement should stay the same and 7 percent said it should increase.

Pro-Israel advocates are overjoyed at the prospect of Joe Biden becoming the Democratic nominee for president this week. They say there has Never been a nominee from any party who is so pro-Israel, that Joe Biden personally wrote the Democratic platform that is “straight down the line” behind Israel, and that his choice of Kamala Harris as veep reflects his love of Israel. And as for the “hypercritical” new members of Congress, that attitude will be “defeated” under Biden. “We’ve actually never had a nominee on any side of the aisle for president who has a longer and stronger record than Joe Biden,” Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America said on an American Jewish Committee zoom call …

Joe Biden closed the Democratic National Convention the way he launched his campaign in April of last year: By invoking what he depicted as US President Donald Trump’s callousness to racism and anti-Semitism. Biden, speaking late Thursday night to the convention made virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic, recalled the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia … Biden has said in a campaign message to the Jewish community posted on his website that he would restore funding, cut by Trump, that tracks domestic extremism, prioritize the prosecution of hate crimes and “Lead a comprehensive approach to battling anti-Semitism that takes seriously both the violence that accompanies it and the hateful and dangerous lies that underlie it.”

A statute of Stephen A. Douglas, a senator from Illinois whose national reputation in the mid-19th Century was built on the idea that each new U.S. territory should decide on allowing slavery, will be removed from the state Capitol lawn because he personally profited from slavery, officials decided Wednesday. The board of the Office of the Architect of the Capitol voted unanimously to remove the figure of Douglas, whose career-long nemesis was Abraham Lincoln. A rendering of Pierre Menard, an early Illinois settler, politician and slave owner, also will be removed … The action came after House Speaker Michael Madigan asked the board to consider removing portraits and statuary of Douglas in and around the Capitol.

Liberal Jewish allies of the Anti-Defamation League are coming to its defense after more than 150 progressive groups signed an open letter calling for the ADL to be excluded from social justice coalitions. The effort, called Drop The ADL, criticizes the ADL’s work with police forces across the country as well as its support of Israel. Spearheaded by a coalition of pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups that disapprove of the ADL’s ties to law enforcement, the campaign follows earlier left-wing pushes against the Jewish anti-bigotry group … The list of 100 signatories includes an array of progressive groups, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the Movement for Black Lives, Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.

… There are now hundreds of cases like it in which YouTube selectively removes content for reasons that appear to be political and to involve censorship of political-related views that their censors disagree with. YouTube is like a newspaper that has a definite political slant and publishes only material in accordance with that slant. … Hypocrisy is a sign of our times. At a debate, a Kamala Harris can slice and dice Joe Biden for being a segregationist. She can look, act and sound as if this is truth and she means it. But then she can turn right around this week and laugh it all off, suggesting that it was just a “debate”. So, how is anyone supposed to know when Kamala Harris means what she says or does not?

Facebook, according to an Aug. 10 report, “actively promotes further Holocaust-denial content to that user” and “has been unwilling to recognize Holocaust denial as a form of hate speech against Jews.” “Hosting the Holohoax: A Snapshot of Holocaust Denial Across Social Media,” was released by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank in the United Kingdom. The findings show that not only is Holocaust-denial content available on Facebook, but the social-media network actively lists it through the site’s algorithm … Finally, the report lauds YouTube and Reddit for limiting Holocaust-denial content on their platforms.

The Trump administration was left isolated on the world stage as foreign allies and competitors alike rejected its demand to restore UN sanctions on Iran Thursday. Despite President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the US has “every capacity” under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which enshrined the international agreement, to trigger so-called snapback sanctions, because the US was initially a party to the deal … Other countries that remain party to the deal — China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and Germany — disagreed with Pompeo’s legal rationale for the move, as many believe the full return of UN sanctions would kill the 2015 agreement.

US President Donald Trump said Monday that his 2017 decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as the capital of Israel was done for evangelical Christians. “And we moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem,” Trump said at a rally held at an airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, apparently referring to his decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv. “That’s for the evangelicals.” Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital since its founding in 1948, although much of the international community does not recognize it as under the initial UN Partition Plan, Jerusalem was to be an international city. “You know, it’s amazing with that — the evangelicals are more excited by that than Jewish people,” he said to cheers from the crowd. “That’s right, it’s incredible.”

A Justice Department investigation has found Yale University is illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants, in violation of federal civil rights law, officials said Thursday. Yale denied the allegation, calling it “meritless” and “hasty.” The findings detailed in a letter to the college’s attorneys Thursday mark the latest action by the Trump administration aimed at rooting out discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges … The two-year investigation concluded that Yale “rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit,” the Justice Department said. The investigation stemmed from a 2016 complaint against Yale, Brown and Dartmouth.

If the definition of racism is deliberate discrimination based on race, color or national origin, Yale University appears to be a textbook case of “systemic racism.” And, so, the Department of Justice contends. Last week, Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband charged, “Yale discriminates based on race … in its undergraduate admissions process and race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year. Asian Americans and whites have only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials” … Is discrimination against white students in favor of Black students with far lower test scores morally acceptable if done to advance racial “diversity”? And, if so, for how long? Forever?

… Based on reported statistics, Jews approximately match or even outnumber non-Jewish whites at Harvard and most of the other Ivy League schools, which seems wildly disproportionate. Indeed, the official statistics indicate that non-Jewish whites at Harvard are America’s most under-represented population group, enrolled at a much lower fraction of their national population than blacks or Hispanics, despite having far higher academic test scores … Based on these figures, Jewish students were roughly 1,000% more likely to be enrolled at Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League than white Gentiles of similar ability. This was an absolutely astonishing result … Furthermore, I noted the possibility that this discrepancy might be related to the overwhelming Jewish dominance of the top administration of those institutions …

… There is a real historic change going on in the Middle East and north Africa, though it has nothing to do with the relationship between Israel and the Arabs. It is a transformation that has been speeded up by the coronavirus cataclysm and will radically change the politics of the Middle East. The era characterised by the power of the oil states is ending … It is this fifty-year-old system that is now faltering. As populations rise and young people flood into the labour market, more and more money is required to keep society running as before, but such resources are no longer there. This change has revolutionary implications as the unspoken social contract between rulers and ruled breaks down … Beset by wars and dysfunctional social and economic systems, the Middle East is too fragile to cope with the coming earthquake.

German and Israeli Air Force jets flew over the former Nazi concentration camp Dachau on Tuesday in tribute to the Jews and others killed there in the Holocaust. Two Israeli F-16s and two German Eurofighters escorted an Israeli Air Force Gulfstream G-550 carrying the commanders of both air forces over the camp memorial outside Munich, while a third Eurofighter filmed the formation from the sky. They also flew over the nearby Fuerstenfeldbruck airfield to pay tribute to the 11 Israeli athletes killed during the Munich massacre attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics … The Israeli aircraft are part of a group of six F-16s, two Gulfstreams and two Boeing 707 tanker jets that arrived in Germany on Monday for two weeks of exercises … It is the first time ever that the Israeli Air Force has participated in such exercises in Germany. A total of around 180 Israeli personnel are involved.

Each year many thousands of tourists visit the site of the notorious Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany, not far from Munich. They see the crematory, the memorial shrines, and the museum. And in recent years, as an almost daily fixture, they see Martin Zaidenstadt. This elderly Jewish man lectures visitors to Dachau on his experiences as a wartime prisoner there. He is particularly passionate about the horrors of the camp’s gas chamber where, he explains, many prisoners were put to death with poison gas … His story of Dachau internment is a fraud. He probably never visited the camp until the 1990s, says Ryback, and his tales of gas chamber killings are untrue.

Newly-found letters from an American Second World War doctor detail how German SS guards were massacred by Allied troops during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Captain David Wilsey was among the first to enter the death camp in Germany where tens of thousands of Jews and prisoners of war were tortured and executed by the Nazis. Invading troops were so abhorred by the piles of bodies and prisoners’ accounts that they rounded up the SS guards and tortured and executed them. In the newly published letters to his wife Emily, Captain Wilsey wrote: “I saw captured SS tortured against a wall [by U.S. soldiers] and then shot in what you Americans would call ‘cold blood’.” …

An American WWII doctor told how he calmly watched US soldiers massacre German SS guards in the Dachau concentration camp because they ‘So Had It Coming’. Captain David Wilsey wrote to wife Emily that he did not have a ‘single disturbed emotion’ because he saw the Nazis as ‘SS Beasts’ that deserved to be slaughtered. GIs tortured them by making them stand for hours in Heil Hitler salutes and pouring iced water over their naked backs before they were shot dead. Captain Wilsey also bragged about looting the camp supplies for eight days in an apparent collapse of the rule of law among the troops.

A new Cato national survey finds that self-censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds – 62 percent – of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self-censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58% of Americans agreed with this statement. These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share. Strong liberals stand out, however, as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of staunch liberals feel they can say what they believe.

A new survey by the Cato Institute has major implications for woke capitalism. The survey has revealed the extent to which the artificial corporate monoculture has poisoned our discourse and made it perilous for anyone outside the left to be open about their views. One of the key take-aways from the survey was that 62% of those polled said they were afraid to openly discuss their political opinions … Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this report is just how many respondents, particularly those on the left, reported being willing to punish their political opponents. Half of self-identified “strong liberals” said they would support firing Trump donors (only 36% of “strong conservatives” said they would support firing Biden donors) … Younger Americans are more willing to punish Trump or Biden supporters than older Americans.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday resoundingly defeated a U.S. resolution to indefinitely extend the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, with the Trump administration getting support from only the Dominican Republic, but vowing further action to prevent Tehran’s sale and export of conventional weapons. The vote in the 15-member council was two in favor, two against, and 11 abstentions, leaving it far short of the minimum nine “yes” votes required for adoption. Russia and China strongly opposed the resolution, but didn’t need to use their vetoes … U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft said “the United States stands sickened — but not surprised — as the clear majority of council members gave the green light to Iran to buy and sell all manner of conventional weapons.

Net migration to the UK from countries outside the European Union has risen to its highest level for 45 years, the Office for National Statistics says. Figures show an estimated 282,000 more non-EU citizens came to the UK than left in 2019, the highest since the information was first gathered in 1975. The ONS says a rise in students from China and India has driven this. In contrast, the number of people arriving from EU countries for work has “steadily fallen”.

… If the EU opens its doors to an endless stream of Africans and Arabs, where is the evidence that European nations will accept and assimilate them? Will these migrants and asylum seekers become good Europeans? Or will they create in the great cities of Europe enclaves that replicate the conditions in the African and Middle East countries whence they came? The history of the last half millennium tells the story of the rise and fall of a civilization … After two world wars, the rulers of these empires embraced a liberalism that now proclaimed the equality of all peoples, races, creeds, cultures and civilizations. This egalitarian ideology mandated the dismantling of empires and colonies as the reactionary relics of a benighted time … The colonizers of yesterday are becoming the colonized of tomorrow. Is this how the West ends?

… There is a visible sense of resignation among many Europeans and Americans … I will try to single out three factors which largely explain the causes of our decline … Capitalism shares a major portion of the blame for the rising interracial tensions and rising social disruptions both in America and Western Europe. It is in the interest of big business in Europe and the USA to import the army of cheap labor into Europe and America … Non-European immigrants know well that they can thrive best in the guilt-ridden post-Christian Europe and America, two continents deeply paralyzed by self-hate and the alleged evils of the legacy of colonialism, slavery and fascism.

In this closely reasoned and spirited address, American historian Mark Weber examines the accelerating crisis of the West, and the factors behind the malaise, distrust and anxiety that have spread across the Western world. He looks at what this means for those who care about the heritage and future of the West, and outlines prospects for the future. Given at a meeting in April 2015 in central Stockholm organized by Logik Förlag publishers (Sweden) in cooperation with Counter-Currents Publishing (USA). About 130 people, many in their twenties and thirties, gathered for this conference. Some attendees traveled from Norway, Denmark and Britain. Runtime: 34 mins.

The religious Jewish world has created some unusual jobs, from shofar makers to etrog pickers to mashgichim – kosher certifiers whose job is literally to watch others cook. But one of the more bizarre surely belongs to Dr. Yeshaya Shafit, who is Russia’s only mohel, or professional circumciser, for adult men. Shafit, a 56-year-old surgeon, travels across that vast country to circumcise about ten Jewish adults every week … Jewish ritual circumcision, called a bris or brit milah, is typically performed on 8-day-old babies, as dictated by Jewish law. Adult circumcision is common for Orthodox converts to the religion and others who become more religious later in life. In Russia, the adult demand is very high because many Jewish men were denied the procedure during the time of the communist Soviet Union, when Jewish religious practice was effectively outlawed.

The U.S. budget deficit climbed to $2.81 trillion in the first ten months of the budget year, exceeding any on record, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. The nation’s budgetary shortfall is expected to eventually reach levels for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 more than double the largest annual deficit on record. The federal government rang up a $63 billion deficit in July, the department reported. That’s a relatively modest amount compared to red ink that spilled in the spring months when the government tried to revive an economy that all but ground to a halt due to the coronavirus outbreak.

It’s not just a few Upper West Siders who are fleeing New York: Moving companies say they’re swamped with calls from residents looking to ditch the city – even though the COVID crisis has waned. One likely reason: The virus was but the last straw; New Yorkers are fed up with the shootings and lootings, homelessness on the streets, sub-par online schools, sky-high taxes, and the sheer obliviousness of pols like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. On Sunday, The Post highlighted families who’ve given up on the Upper West Side – now teeming with junkies, the homeless, convicts and others – and are headed for greener pastures … City and state officials have fueled crime, setting inmates at jails and prisons free and handcuffing cops, and they refuse to do anything meaningful to roll it back.

Even as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has leveled off in recent weeks, moving companies say they remain inundated with requests from people leaving New York City. Big Apple-based moving company Oz Moving, for example, told Fox Business that the volume of moves continues to rise at a “substantial rate” … According to the most recent data from United Van Lines, between May and July there was a 95 percent year over year increase in interest in moving out of Manhattan. That compares with a 19 percent increase in moving interest in the U.S., overall. The top destinations for people who moved out of New York City between March and August were Florida and California … Texas and North Carolina made up 16 percent of moves. Still, some local real estate experts say perception of the issue may be overblown.

… The people packing their bags are not coming to New York City – they’re fleeing it for good. Due to increasingly squalid conditions on the Upper West Side, including two new homeless shelters packed with junkies and registered sex offenders, longtime dwellers are departing the Big Apple with no plans to ever return … Crimes committed over the past several days would’ve been unheard of a year ago in the quiet neighborhood that’s home to Lincoln Center and restaurants … A 40-year-old woman was randomly stabbed in the 72nd Street subway station at noon Thursday; a 56-year-old man was sucker-punched while dining outdoors with his wife Wednesday night; photos were posted online of a man masturbating on the steps of the New York Historical Society …

Former vice president Joe Biden made history Tuesday by choosing California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate … When it comes to US policy on Israel, her positions more or less reflect mainstream Democratic thinking over the last ten years. Harris supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and believes in a robust US-Israel relationship, including the continuation of American military aid to the Jewish state … She has not bucked the party’s traditionally supportive posture toward Israel, or called for fundamental changes to the nature of the alliance. In November 2017, she visited Israel and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu … The Howard University graduate has also maintained a close relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

… The daughter of a mother who immigrated from India and a father who immigrated from Jamaica, Harris has some Jewish nuggets in her history. She met her Jewish husband, Douglas Emhoff, on a blind date in San Francisco, arranged by friends. They married in 2014 –Harris’ sister Maya officiated –and smashed a glass to honor Emhoff’s upbringing … Harris also co-sponsored a Senate resolution in early 2017 that essentially rebuked the Obama administration for allowing through a U.S. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policies.

… ‘The true test of a good government,’ Alexander Hamilton wrote, ‘is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.’ It is a test the United States and Britain have failed ruinously during the current crisis …East Asian states have displayed far superior decision-making and policy implementation. Some (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea) have elected leaders; two (China, Vietnam) are single-party dictatorships that call themselves communist. They share the assumption that genuine public interest is different from the mere aggregation of private interests, and is best realised through long-term government planning and policy. They also believe that only an educated and socially responsible elite can maintain social, economic and political order.

… Blowing up nuclear facilities is not the only way Israel and the US are trying to provoke Iranian officials into responding in a way that would justify more overt attacks on Iran … But if Israel is trying to provoke Iran into a response that would justify an Israeli or American retaliation before the US election, then Iran is not taking the bait. And if Israel is provoking Iran because they are watching the polls, Iran is not taking the bait because they are watching the polls too. Iran is not acting for the same reason Israel is acting: the possibility of a Trump defeat rising on the horizon … While the US and Israel exert “maximum pressure,” Iran seems to be exercising maximum restraint, believing that that pressure may ease after the US election. Biden may cease the provocation and return to the nuclear agreement.

… The atomic bombs had not “shocked Japan into submission,” as Washington later claimed and many people still think. The bombs did not secure unconditional surrender … In the end, the combination of the Russian invasion, the crippling US air war and naval blockade, and, most decisively, the Byrnes Note’s implicit promise to let Hirohito live, compelled Japan to surrender. The bomb did, however, achieve this: it brought forward by a fortnight the Soviet invasion and gave Hirohito a propaganda prop to justify his country’s surrender, and the regime face-saving solace in their defeat.

Armin Mohler, the Swiss-born author who has lived for many years in Germany, begins this well-written look at the Third Reich and its historical legacy by telling the fascinating story of his experiences as a 22-year-old in wartime Berlin … “The Third Reich was not as I had expected,” he recalls. Life in wartime Germany was much more complex and multifaceted than was portrayed … Mohler was struck, for example, by the self-confident style and attractive, even rather erotic appearance of Berlin’s women … Even membership in the National Socialist party did not imply a uniformity of thinking and behavior … “The greatest surprise for me was the intensity of the intellectual disputes.” … Most of this book is devoted to a forthright, dissident treatment of the highly emotion-laden issue of Germany’s burdensome Third Reich legacy.

The “systemic racism” refrain is a meaningless abstraction … Systemic racism is most certainly not “the only plausible explanation” for the lag in the fortunes of African-Americans, although, as it stands, systemic racism is inferred solely from one single fact: In aggregate, African-Americans trail behind whites in assorted academic and socio-economic indices and achievements … The systemic racism non sequitur is even harder to sustain when considering the Asian minority, a minority that has had its own historical hardships. In professions and academic pursuits where mathematical precocity is a factor, Asians are overrepresented, consistently outperforming whites. If proportional underrepresentation signals oppression, then overrepresentation, likewise, must reflect an unfair advantage.

Since the death of George Floyd beneath the knee of a cop in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, the nation has been instructed by its cultural elites that this is the daily reality that a racist America has too long ignored … Today, people watch their leaders in city after city fail to keep the peace and restore order as protesters riot at will, and they make plans to move out. In the suburbs and country, they quietly observe the inability of cops to quell the violence, and they buy guns. While the right backs Trump’s stand for law and order, the ultimate battle here may be between liberal Democrats elected to, and failing to, run the cities, and the radical left and Marxists who welcome their failure as they intend to kick the liberals down the stairs.

Louis Farrakhan is an anti-Semite. He’s called Jews “termites” and “Satan”, and Hitler a “very great man.” He says, “the Jewish media has normalized sexual degeneracy, profanity, and all kinds of sin.” … He is also a revered figure in the American black community. There are photos of Rep. Maxine Waters embracing Farrakhan. Rapper Snoop Dogg released an anti-Facebook diatribe when the social network banned Farrakhan … Millions of Americans take what he says seriously. This is an obvious problem which people do not want to discuss for obvious reasons … It’s no wonder the official Black Lives Matter statement of principles includes condemnation of only one foreign country: Israel. Black Lives Matter rallies have desecrated synagogues and chanted anti-Israel slurs.

This essay provides an overview of the history of the black-Jewish relationships in the twentieth century. The record shows quite clearly that Jewish organizations as well as a great number of individual Jews contributed enormously to the success of the movement to increase the power of blacks and alter the racial hierarchy of the United States … Jewish activism played an essential and critical role in the revolution in ethnic relations that has occurred in the last fifty years in the US It is a revolution that in its major premises has also been internalized by a large portion of the whites in the US and other Western countries, particularly by the white elite, who have made alliances with Jews and other components of the multiethnic elites.

Many Germans want U.S. troops to withdraw from their country, where nearly 35,000 American servicemembers are stationed, according to a new poll. The YouGov survey, commissioned by the German Press Agency DPA, found 42 percent of respondents want U.S. troops out, while 37 percent want them to stay, and 21 percent are undecided or didn’t answer. The margin of error was plus or minus five percent. The poll, taken a few days before this week’s two-day NATO summit in Brussels, also found that 75 percent are opposed to a benchmark that calls for each alliance member to hike defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product – a shortfall which President Donald Trump has cited as evidence of allies being too dependent on U.S. protection.

Leaders in education, politics and other areas gathered in suburban Evanston Sunday to ask that the Illinois State Board of Education change the history curriculum at schools statewide, and temporarily halt instruction until an alternative is decided upon. At a news conference, State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford said current history teachings lead to a racist society and overlook the contributions of women and minorities. Before the event Sunday, Rep. Ford’s office distributed a news release “Rep. Ford Today in Evanston to Call for the Abolishment of History Classes in Illinois Schools,” in which Ford asked the ISBOE and school districts to immediately remove history curriculum and books that “unfairly communicate” history “until a suitable alternative is developed.”

… To purge our society of names associated with evil is going to be quite a task … What should be done about our nation’s capital, Washington and District of Columbia? After all, George Washington owned slaves, and Columbia is the feminine form of Columbus … What about team names that glorify savage barbarians and criminals who raped and pillaged such as Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Pittsburgh Pirates? … I have been working 40 years at George Mason University. Despite his monumental contributions, such as our Bill of Rights, George Mason was a slave owner. Therefore, in keeping with the times, George Mason University is due for a name change.

American education standards and quality declined sharply during the 1960s and 1970s along with a new, “politically correct” emphasis on social-racial equality. Younger Americans perform much less well than northern Europeans and east Asians on international achievement tests. The 2002 “No Child Left Behind” law, enacted with broad bi-partisan political support, is (predictably) proving to be an ever more obvious failure. Such wasteful and irresponsible programs are based on America’s prevailing egalitarian-individualistic ideology. Because this guiding outlook is based on false premises about life, society and history, the programs and policies based on it are doomed to failure. Runtime: 49 mins.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle did not merely condone slavery, he defended it … Thousands of years after his death, his ethical works continue to be taught as part of the basic philosophy curriculum offered in colleges and universities around the world … What makes speech truly free is the possibility of disagreement without enmity, and this is less a matter of what we can say, than how we can say it. “Cancel culture” is merely the logical extension of what we might call “messaging culture,” in which every speech act is classified as friend or foe, in which literal content can barely be communicated, and in which very little faith exists as to the rational faculties of those being spoken to. In such a context, even the cry for “free speech” invites a nonliteral interpretation, as being nothing but the most efficient way for its advocates to acquire or consolidate power.

… Popular culture during the Third Reich had a similarly conventional outlook. Most of the costume dramas and screwball comedies shown in cinemas evinced few, if any, traces of Nazi ideology. Germans consumed them as harmless entertainment, much like they did with low-brow novels and the light music that predominated on the radio channels. While they favored domestic offerings, before World War II they did not have to feel cut off from international developments. Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse series and Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind were widely popular. The Third Reich’s own movie stars included the Hungarian Marika Rökk and the Swede Zarah Leander alongside domestic idols such as the cheerful comedian Heinz Rühmann and the ruggedly masculine Hans Albers.

… The cultural offerings of national socialism, he believes, held such mesmerising appeal for so many Germans precisely because it commanded a range of tastes from middle-class conservatism to emerging mass culture – a combination that “mobilised vast energies” across the population by appealing to fustian sorts and neophytes alike … The “event culture” of the movement was about more than paeans to dead composers. It was, Föllmer reminds us, a vast outpouring of innovation and energy: thoroughly modern Nazis. Leaps in cinematic technology exploited emerging trends and the thrills of mass culture while claiming to represent the eternal flame of Germanic endeavour. It was a fine time to be a moderately prosperous, culturally active German …

… Acting swiftly to promote a broad revival of the nation’s cultural life, the new National Socialist government made prodigious efforts to further the arts and, in particular, music … As part of its efforts to bring art to the people, it strove to erase classical music’s snobbish and “class” image, and to make it widely familiar and enjoyable, especially to the working class. At the same time, the new regime’s leaders were mindful of popular musical tastes. Thus, by far most of the music heard during the Third Reich era on the radio or in films was neither classical nor even traditional. Light music with catchy tunes — similar to those popular with listeners elsewhere in Europe and in the United States — predominated on radio and in motion pictures, especially during the war years.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is performed by the famed Berlin Philharmonic, under the direction of Wilhlem Furtwängler. This April 1942 performance in honor of Hitler’s 53rd birthday is organized by the National Socialist Party, with an introductory address by Dr. Goebbels. From the German wartime newsreel, “Die Deutsche Wochenschau,” of April 22, 1942. Runtime: 4:39 mins.

About three-quarters of U.S. adults say they support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan in a new poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute obtained exclusively by The Hill. In the poll, which surveyed 2,000 U.S. adults, 44 percent said they strongly support bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq and 30 percent said they somewhat support doing so. For Afghanistan, 46 percent said they strongly support bringing troops home and 30 percent said they somewhat support it … Asked whether the United States should be more or less involved militarily in global conflicts, 48 percent of respondents said engagement should decrease, while 32 percent said the level of engagement should stay the same and 7 percent said it should increase.

… By far the country that interferes the most in U.S. politics is Israel. Israel and its domestic Lobby initiate legislation relating to the Middle East and Israeli diplomats, lobbyists and soldiers all have free access both to Capitol Hill and to the Pentagon. If a Congressman dares to speak up against the Jewish state’s crimes he or she is smeared in the media and eventually forced out of office by a well-funded pro-Israel opponent. No other country gets away with all that. As it is highly likely that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be pulling out all the stops to reelect Donald Trump in November, why isn’t the Jewish state included on Schiff’s list?

Mark Weber joins host Greg Johnson for a lively, thought-provoking and wide-ranging conversation about dramatic recent events across the US, including the BLM movement, and the factors behind the ever more obvious breakdown of American and western society. Runtime: 111 mins. Weber cites historical parallels with our times. The outlook and values of most Americans, both white and black, he says, have been molded by decades of systematic conditioning by the media, through television and movies, and in classrooms. He urges aware young Americans to free themselves from the outlook that prevails in today’s America. Weber and Johson discuss the enduring relevance of Evola, Schmitt and other “fascist” thinkers.

The statue of Columbus and Queen Isabella has stood at the center of California’s capitol in Sacramento for over 130 years. It is being removed in the present climate because of the controversial figure of Columbus. Isabella is an afterthought – but as a rabbi not for me. Queen Isabella, with her husband King Ferdinand, signed the edict in 1492 expelling the Jewish community of Spain … My father-in-law and I visited Vienna in 2002. Maria Theresa’s statue stands between the Vienna Art Museum and the Museum of Natural History. The empress was a notorious anti-Semite … The Israel Museum displayed three bronze busts of the Roman ruler Hadrian, who governed when the Empire was at its greatest extent. This celebrated emperor was the second century tyrant who crushed the Bar Kokhba rebellion in Judea between 132-5 CE.

The U.S. public has been kept in the dark or misled about foreign policy for much of our history. For example, as we commemorate the anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let’s re-examine the myth of necessity of those barbaric acts. The myth that just won’t die and is believed by most Americans is that these bombings saved millions of lives and were necessary to end WWII in the Pacific. However, excellent work by Gar Alperovitz in his books and other writing, by Mark Weber in The Journal of Historical Review as well as by numerous other historians, strongly debunk this myth.

… The overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it … Seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with the Navy’s vitriolic assessment. Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.

Mike Pompeo declared the start of a new Cold War with China last week. The Secretary of State delivered an extremely hawkish speech on China at the Nixon Presidential Library in which he called for a “new alliance of democracies” to pursue a hostile anti-China policy. Everything about the speech, from the title to the criticism of Nixon’s opening to China, was an attempt to revive early Cold War-era antagonism … Pompeo’s speech was an expression of this unreasonable and unrealistic view, and it is likely to leave most U.S. allies in East Asia and elsewhere cold … Calling for a “new alliance” to oppose China when Trump and Pompeo have done such an abysmal job of managing existing alliances in the region just drives home how divorced from reality the speech was.

Despite all the efforts of equalization, women in high-ranking corporate positions are still exceedingly rare. But they are almost as rare in the dredges of society – and the reasons for both run deeper than sexism … At the other end of the normal curve, women are also almost as scarce as hen’s teeth. There are virtually no females who are homeless, or are in jail, or are on death row, or are in mental institutions, or who die as a result of committing violent crimes. Men dominate this tail of the distribution, as they do the other. Females are God’s, or nature’s, insurance policy. They are to a greater degree clumped into the middle. Males are God’s, or nature’s, crap shoot. When they are brilliant, they are very, very gifted. When they are not, they veer to a relatively stupendous degree in the opposite direction.

The hidden role of a British secret service officer who led the coup that permanently altered the Middle East is to be revealed for the first time since an Observer news story was suppressed in 1985. The report, headlined “How MI6 and CIA joined forces to plot Iran coup”, appeared in the May 26 edition but was swiftly quashed. It exposed the fact that an MI6 man, Norman Darbyshire, had run a covert and violent operation to reinstate the Shah of Iran as ruler of the country in 1953. Yet just a few days after the newspaper came out, all fresh evidence of this British operation and of Darbyshire’s identity disappeared from public debate … Coup 53 now makes a clear case that the British were orchestrating an uprising, going as far as kidnapping, torturing and paying for protesters to go out on to the streets of Tehran.

Police in France have again arrested Alain Soral, one of the country’s most prominent purveyors of anti-Semitic sentiment. Soral, who has previously been sentenced to prison for inciting racial hatred and denying the Holocaust was apprehended at his Paris apartment on July 29 in connection with his website, “Equality and Reconciliation,” Le Parisien reported. The website outlines conspiracy theories about how Jews exercise their power, and calls for a revolution. Separately, Facebook closed on Monday the Facebook page and Instagram account of Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a political ally and friend of Soral. Soral’s arrest was over incitement to hatred against Jews and actions that “endanger the fundamental interests of the republic.”

Facebook said Monday it had permanently banned French comedian Dieudonné, a convicted anti-Semite, from its platform and from Instagram for content it said mocked Holocaust victims. It also said some of his posts used “dehumanizing terms against Jews.” … The comedian, who goes by his first name Dieudonné, had his YouTube channel cut off for similar reasons in June by mother company Google. He had about 1.3 million followers on Facebook, and some 400,000 on YouTube. The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism welcomed the ban as a “great victory,” saying Dieudonne’s posts “have done considerable and irreparable damage among young people.” The comedian has been convicted multiple times, in France and in Belgium, for comments opponents say are bluntly racist …

Holocaust survivors are demanding Facebook remove posts denying that the genocide they escaped ever happened. The survivors are speaking out in a social-media campaign launched Wednesday by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which argues that Facebook has been too lenient towards Holocaust deniers … The group says Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, has refused to classify Holocaust denial as hate speech, pointing to his 2018 comments that deniers were not “intentionally getting it wrong.” He later tried to clarify his remarks, saying he found Holocaust denial “deeply offensive” and that he did not mean to defend people who hold those views.

… Does our recent (and not so recent) experience not show that freedom for those who think differently is now acceptable only within the constraints of the predominant social pact? … Years ago, Noam Chomsky caused a scandal when he followed Voltaire’s maxim to its extreme: he defended the holocaust denier Robert Faurisson’s right to ublish his book, and his argumentation even appeared in Faurisson’s book as an afterword. Today such a gesture would be immediately identified as anti-Semitic. Holocaust denial is today not only criminalized, the terms of its criminalization are sometimes even numerically circumscribed … Even if something is not legally criminalized, it can be submitted to de facto criminalization. Typical here is the fate of Martin Heidegger, until recently considered the key philosopher of the 20th century.

… It is, of course, the Holocaust that has been the driver of European memory laws … This is where the story becomes complicated. Despite pressure from former communist states, the EU has rejected including the denial of communism’s crimes in its 2008 framework decision … European memory laws have spread and metamorphosed to the extent that they now serve as the model for criminalizing accurate but nationally inconvenient historical accounts, as well as entrenching deeply flawed histories used as foundations for specific national ideologies and repressive political agendas … Given the role that memory laws have come to play in undermining both academic freedom and political speech, the EU should urgently reconsider its approach.

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

… The Japanese had in fact been trying to find a way to surrender with honor for months before the atomic bombs were dropped, and US leaders knew it. Japan could no longer defend itself from the ruthless, relentless US onslaught; years of ferocious firebombing had reduced most Japanese cities, including the capital Tokyo, to ruins … Seven of the eight five-star US generals and admirals in 1945 opposed using the atomic bomb against Japan. One of them, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, later said that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” … “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been tried as war criminals,” General LeMay remarked, according to Robert McNamara … He added: “What makes it immoral if you lose but not immoral if you win?”

The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate … The fact that Japan had 68 cities destroyed in the summer of 1945 poses a serious challenge for people who want to make the bombing of Hiroshima the cause of Japan’s surrender. The question is: If they surrendered because a city was destroyed, why didn’t they surrender when those other 66 cities were destroyed? … The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive – it foreclosed both of Japan’s options – while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.

Israel is involved in an extended campaign to pressure or damage Iran before President Donald Trump can be voted out of office in the November election, a former Israeli defense official and a current European Union intelligence official told Insider. Iran has seen weekly incidents, including explosions at a missile-production facility … A Middle Eastern official told The New York Times earlier this month that Israel’s intelligence services were responsible for the nuclear-facility explosion … With a broad belief among America’s allies that Trump is unlikely to win reelection, Israel’s apparent shift in tactics toward high-pressure “kinetic” operations seem to reflect a belief that under a Biden administration, there would be a move to save the 2015 nuclear deal that had been scuttled by Trump.

… The point is that the U.S. and the Israelis are intent on going to war against enemy number one Iran and are packaging their actions in such a way as to suggest that they are really behaving in a moderate fashion. They are assuming that Iran will retaliate, but in such a way as to avoid intensifying the conflict. In reality, taking action to destroy a nation’s economy is an act of war just as much as is staging attacks using bombs carried by spies or using missiles fired from planes. There is already a war going on, but the smokescreen provided by the coronavirus spread and BLM means that no one seems to want more on their plate and there is great reluctance to call it for what it is.

… What does black political power mean for the lives of ordinary black people? In other words, is political power a necessary condition for economic power? Let’s look around. Japanese and Chinese-Americans faced gross discrimination in our country, but when’s the last time you heard of them worrying about how many congressmen they have … By the way, Japanese and Chinese-Americans have median family incomes higher than white Americans – in the case of Chinese-Americans, 58 percent higher … Examine the socioeconomic status of black Americans in cities where blacks hold considerable political power … What we’ll find in those cities are grossly inferior education, welfare dependency for much of the population, unsafe neighborhoods …

Even before February 1840, when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, Britain and Germany enjoyed the closest of ties in friendship, marriage, Faith and culture … Historically British and German soldiers were the staunchest of allies. The great Battle of Waterloo in 1815, was won by the alliance of British and German troops under the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blücher, against their traditional enemies, the French … Queen Victoria herself was a descendant of Hanoverian kings and a daughter of a princess of Saxony. She couldn’t have been more German herself. Her husband, Prince Albert of Saxony was, of course, also thoroughly German. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert spoke German to one another in Buckingham Palace in London.

The anti-Israel activist Norman Finkelstein has told a meeting of the Labour Against The Witch-Hunt group: “I don’t know what a Holocaust denier is” – while backing what he said were “statistical, scholarly questions” around the question of whether six million Jews died in the Shoah. The American left-wing icon also heaped praise on the discredited Nazi apologist David Irving at the virtual event, describing him as a “very good historian” who “knew a thing, or two or three.” … He said: “David Irving was a very good historian – I don’t care what Richard Evans (the historian who was a key player in the Lipstadt libel trial) says. He produced works that are substantive … If you don’t like it, don’t read it. In the case of Irving, he knew a thing or two – or three.”

On March 15, 2000, British historian David Irving rose before the High Court of Justice in London to deliver his Closing Statement in a dramatic legal battle that had generated enormous media attention. At the center of the case is a 278-page book by Jewish-American scholar Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, a detailed polemic against Irving and other revisionists who dispute familiar Holocaust claims … Irving’s final address provides astonishing details of the concerted global campaign by Jewish organizations to destroy his career and silence him. He traces the secretive activities of this widely feared but little-understood international cabal.

A verdict has finally been reached in the much publicized Irving-Lipstadt libel trial in London. Judge Charles Gray, in a lengthy ruling made public on April 11, 2000, called David Irving an anti-Semitic and racist “Holocaust denier” who has “deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.” The judgment could hardly have been more severe. The 62-year-old British historian is now obliged to pay some $3 million in legal costs to the two defendants: Jewish American writer Deborah Lipstadt, and Penguin Books, the British publisher of her anti-revisionist work, Denying the Holocaust.

In the third year of Donald Trump’s presidency, a new Gallup report shows that despite marginal gains, the image of U.S. leadership started the new decade in a weaker position globally than at most points under the past two presidents … The image of U.S. leadership fared worst in Europe, where people remain as disenchanted with U.S. leadership as they were in 2017. The 24% median approval rating in 2019 was unchanged from 2018 and essentially the same as the 25% rating in 2017. However, the median 61% who disapproved of U.S. leadership was a new high … Majorities in six Asian countries approved of U.S. leadership. This included Israel (64%), Mongolia (62%), Turkmenistan (62%), the Philippines (58%) …

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech on the Trump administration’s China policy at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on July 23 … One of the core themes of Pompeo’s speech, however, is his apparent belief that the United States can change the nature and thus the behavior of China’s governing regime. Indeed, the Trump administration is increasingly focused on this objective … Pompeo appears to be encouraging the Chinese people to overthrow their government … Under normal historical circumstances, this would certainly be the case. But it is increasingly and painfully apparent that we are beyond normal historical circumstances. The United States is in relative historical decline.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at China on Thursday and said Washington and its allies must use “more creative and assertive ways” to press the Chinese Communist Party to change its ways, calling it the “mission of our time.” … “If the free world doesn’t change, Communist China will surely change us.” Pompeo said “securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time,” and America was perfectly positioned to lead it … Pompeo’s speech comes at a time when U.S.-China relations have dipped to their lowest point in decades …

Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the Nixon Presidential Library … He called on allies to create a new NATO-like coalition to confront the People’s Republic and stopped just short of calling for regime change. Basically, he declared a new Cold War … Trump is also starting his new Cold War with a weak hand. He has reduced U.S. engagement globally as China has deepened involvement … Trump also has limited leverage with the world right now. America is deeply unpopular globally … Pompeo’s abrasive speech may have played to Trump’s base, but it undermined long-term American interests and appears likely to fail, like so many of the President’s foreign-policy gambits.

…“Profiles in Courage” was published when Kennedy was thirty-eight years old. He was the junior senator from Massachusetts … The main body of the book is eight profiles of United States senators whom Kennedy considered to have been extraordinarily courageous … Three of Kennedy’s eight Senate heroes were slaveholders. None won inclusion in the pantheon for having taken what we’d now think of as a lonely liberal stand. Taft’s courageous act was opposing the Nuremberg trials for the members of the Nazi high command … “These conclusions are shared, I believe, by a substantial number of American citizens today,” Kennedy asserted … Kennedy referred to Reconstruction as “a black nightmare the South never could forget.”

A young John F. Kennedy filled dozens of pages in what historians believe to be his only diary. In one of the most interesting entries, Kennedy compares Adolf Hitler to a “legend.” After the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, JFK visited Hitler’s bombed Bavarian Berghof residence and Eagle’s Nest mountain retreat … A 28-year-old Kennedy wrote about his fascination with the dictator … “He had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him,” he wrote. “He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.” Kennedy predicted in his diary that Hitler would “emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived.”

In late July and early August 1945, just weeks after the end of the war in Europe, the 28-year-old John F. Kennedy visited war-devastated Germany … These diary entries show the youthful Kennedy’s wide-ranging curiosity and eye for telling detail … Kennedy wrote a remarkable commentary in his diary, dated August 1, 1945, about Hitler and his place in history: “After visiting these places, you can easily understand how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived…”

… Kennedy always remained convinced of what he believed to be the Jews’ corrupt, malignant, and profound influence in American culture and politics. “The Democratic [party] policy of the United States is a Jewish production,” Kennedy told a British reporter near the end of 1939 …

… Yet, as police are again being cursed and showered with debris, it is hard to see how this country reunites, and around what, no matter which party prevails in November. In addition to the reigniting of protests and riots in urban centers there has come, in tandem with demands to “defund the police,” a surge in violent crime … The country is not going to sit still for three more months of this. At some point soon, America is going to say: Enough is enough. Moreover, Trump has turned a permanent presidential spotlight on a real outrage: The shootings and killings that go on year in and year out, and are now escalating, especially in poor black neighborhoods of major cities, and are accepted as normal by the same liberal Democrats who have misruled those cities for decades.