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… U.S. policy in Syria has always been centered around opposition to Assad, rather than the defeat of ISIS, whose caliphate was destroyed long before Trump’s withdrawal order. Perhaps this contradiction is most glaringly seen in the justifications Washington offers for the U.S. military presence in Syria. We are frequently told we’re there for one reason only to be given a new reason a few months later … Trump has also defended the decision to keep a small contingent of troops in Syria by stating that Israel and Jordan asked him to keep our forces there. This justification was reaffirmed in a recent Trump rally where the president characteristically stated off-the-cuff, “The fact is, we don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. We’ve been very good to Israel.”

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Saturday compared Donald Trump to a German Nazi propagandist for the president’s barrage of attacks against him on the campaign trail. When Biden was asked during an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle how he would combat Trump’s repeated claim that he was pushing a socialist agenda, the former vice president didn’t mince words. Trump is “sort of like Goebbels,” Biden said, invoking the name of Joseph Goebbels, the mastermind of Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine. “You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge” among voters.

Apart from Hitler himself, perhaps the most fascinating figure of Third Reich Germany is the regime’s chief publicist and spokesman, Joseph Goebbels. He is widely portrayed as a master of lies and deceitful propaganda. But this familiar image, which is particularly entrenched in the United States, is itself a propaganda falsehood … Contrary to the image of him that many have come to accept, Goebbels was successful as a publicist and spokesman not because he was a master of the “Big Lie,” but rather as a result of his regard for accuracy and truth … “Seen in the long view, Goebbels preached, the best propaganda is that which does no more than serve the truth.” As French scholar Jacques Ellul noted, the postwar image of Goebbels as a master dissembler is itself a propaganda distortion.

… The latest genuine conservative candidate for high office who is being subjected to character assassination by many of the usual suspects is Colonel Douglas Macgregor, nominated on July 27 by President Trump to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Germany. … The Macgregor nomination has been viciously attacked by CNN, Max Boot of the Washington Post, and by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) … But the real issue that the critics have with Macgregor inevitably comes down to the Israel/ Jewish agenda … The ADL has expressed “deep concern” over the Macgregor appointment due to his “problematic remarks” … They accused Macgregor of having “downplay[ed] the importance of commemorating the Holocaust era, [and] exaggerating the views and influence of ‘people who call themselves neocons’.” …

Given that Facebook has 2.7 billion users and is the world’s largest and arguably most influential media platform, it comes as no surprise that right-wing Zionist organizations have identified it as a site to promote their agenda … Adopting the by now well-known approach of weaponizing anti-Semitism, they began pressuring Facebook to introduce a specific definition of anti-Semitism to its own data mining tools, so that instead of trolls labeling criticism of Israel anti-Semitic, algorithms would. The objective, in other words, is to force Facebook to alter its hate speech definition so that its own “detection algorithm” will characterize any criticism of Israel as hate speech and automatically remove the pertinent content from the platform.

Corporate media outlets such as Forbes, Bloomberg, CNN, and the Washington Post have described recent accords that normalize Israeli relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain as “peace” deals. This is a misleading label to apply to agreements that help cement a belligerent military alliance against Iran, and allow violence against Palestinians, Libyans and Yemenis to continue. MSNBC aired a segment headlined “Trump Announces Peace Deal Between Bahrain and Israel,” during which Washington Post White House bureau chief Philip Rucker referred to the agreement as a “peace accord.”

Florida will become the latest US state to offer vanity license plates that show support for Israel after Governor Ron DeSantis – an ardent backer of the country – signed a bill approving dozens of new designs. The “Florida Stands With Israel” plate was approved along with 32 others, including ones with slogans such as “In God We Trust” and “Don’t Tread on Me”, when DeSantis signed the bill on Friday. The state will hold a contest for the design of the new “Florida Stands With Israel” plates, sponsored by the Israeli-American Council (IAC) and coordinated by Artists for Israel … Ohio and North Carolina also offer similar plates in support of Israel. All three states have laws that censure and limit the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which supports Palestinian rights. In total, at least 30 states have passed similar legislation.

The rural upstate New York hamlet of Swastika is keeping its name, despite a complaint that it symbolizes the hate and intolerance of the Nazi regime. The unincorporated crossroads in the Adirondack Mountain town of Black Brook, about 35 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border, has been known as Swastika for more than a century. But town council members considered a name change after a visitor from New York City said it was offensive … State Sen. James Skoufis questioned in a tweet Thursday whether the debate would’ve looked different if one of the council members was Jewish. He also called for legislation … One of the four council members who voted to keep the name, Howard Aubin, told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise that “only an intolerant person” would assume the name is connected to Nazis.

Fifteen of the top 25 biggest political donors this cycle are Jewish or of Jewish origin. I picked through the top 100 on the Open Secrets website for a glance at those 15, including Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Bernie Marcus and Donald Sussman. The biggest donor by far is Tom Steyer, the hedge funder-philanthropist who ran a presidential campaign this year and whose father was Jewish. But scroll through the list of 100 and there are plenty of other intriguing stories behind the names …

… Regarding Palestine and Israel, however, both parties’ establishments are quite clear on offering Israel unlimited and unconditional support. The discrepancies in their positions are, at times, quite negligible, even if Democrats, occasionally, attempt to present themselves as fairer and evenhanded … Moreover, a Democrat administration, as revealed, will not even consider the possibility of conditioning US financial and military support to Israel on the latter’s respect for Palestinian human rights, let alone international law altogether … The Democrat establishment has refused to even use the word “occupation”, with reference to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, in their party platform … The truth is, US unconditional backing for Israel is a common cause among all American administrations, whether Democrat or Republican.

… There has, in contrast, been only a tiny amount of talk about Jewish privilege, as manifested in, for example, the greater wealth of Jews than white gentiles in the United States … We can take a crack at quantifying this by looking at the Forbes 400, a popular ranking of the richest people in America. Here’s the first 100 names listed on the last annual report from October 2019, along with my understanding of each billionaire’s ethnicity … So, 35 of the first 100 on the 2019 Forbes list are, more or less, Jewish. If you sum up my weights, the first 100 make up 33.25% of the Forbes 100, or just about exactly 1/3. This appears to be about the same fraction as when I previously looked into the question in 2003. Jewish organizations usually report that Jews make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, so being about 1/3rd of the Forbes 100 is impressive.

… A study of the Pew Forum institute from 2008 found that Jews are the richest religious group in the US: Forty-six percent of Jews earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to 19% among all Americans. Another Gallup poll conducted this year found that 70% of American Jews enjoy “a high standard of living” compared to 60% of the population and more than any other religious group. More than 100 of the 400 billionaires on Forbes’ list of the wealthiest people in America are Jews. Six of the 20 leading venture capital funds in the US belong to Jews, according to Forbes … Jews are well represented in Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the US Congress and Administration, Hollywood, TV networks and the American press – way beyond their percentage in the population.

On September 19, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States had reimposed U.N. sanctions on Iran that had been lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The five other major powers that signed the original agreement – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia – rejected the Trump administration’s decision to invoke so-called snapback sanctions. In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany said the U.S. effort was “incapable of having legal effect” because the Trump administration withdrew from the deal on May 8, 2018. “The United States certainly understands that its assertions are at odds with reality,” said the Russian foreign ministry in a statement.

The Trump administration is gearing up to start enforcing snapback sanctions against Iran in the name of the United Nations – measures that the UN itself says are not valid. A UN Security Council resolution backing the Iran nuclear deal allows participant nations to reactivate international sanctions on the Islamic Republic by simply notifying the UN that Tehran is not in compliance with the terms of the agreement … “It’s ridiculous; it’s illogical; it’s illegal; it’s absurd” … said Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council … Late in August, the overwhelming majority of the 15-member Security Council rejected the US push, dismissing the US notification for re-activating sanctions.

… The poverty we have today is spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty is an absence of what traditionally has been known as various human virtues. Much of that spiritual poverty is a result of public and private policy that rewards inferiority and irresponsibility … Today, decent education is just about impossible at many big-city public schools where violence, disorder, disrespect and assaults on teachers are routine. The kind of disrespectful and violent behavior observed in many predominantly black schools is entirely new. Some have suggested that such disorder is part of black culture, but that is an insulting lie. Black people can be thankful that double standards, and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and irresponsibility, were not broadly accepted during the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s.

… All in all Berben’s Dachau, 1933-1945: The Official History is fascinating. The book tells us that the prisoners had a brothel, a canteen, Sundays off, church services, plays, lectures, a library, newspapers, concerts, and movies … It tells us they had a modern hospital with doctors and nurses who made every effort to help the prisoners, until they were finally overwhelmed by disease near the end of the war. It tells us that disease was the primary cause of death at Dachau, and that even the American liberators lost thousands of prisoners to disease … In the face of continuing propaganda efforts to represent Dachau and other German concentration camps to the public at large as centers of annihilation, Berben’s official history if anything gives authoritative support to the revisionist position.

… The Democratic Party leadership is owned by Israel through its big Jewish donors whose billions come with only one string attached, i.e. that the Jewish state must be protected, empowered and enriched no matter what damage it does to actual U.S. interests. Number one Israeli-American billionaire donor Haim Saban has said that he has only one interest, and that is Israel … At the Israel America Council’s National Conference Nancy Pelosi explicitly put Israel’s interests before America’s … Biden is close to AIPAC and has spoken at their annual convention a number of times. He is opposed to putting any pressure on the Jewish state at any time and for any reason, which presumably includes not even protecting U.S. interests or the lives and property of American citizens.

Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, the pro-Israel philanthropists and major Republican givers, will spend up to $50 million in a final weeks campaign push for President Donald Trump, CNBC reported. The casino magnate and his physician spouse are consulting with the Trump campaign about where to spend the money, the report said. Trump is trailing his rival, Joe Biden, in fundraising and a Biden ally, former New York mayor and media mogul Mike Bloomberg, has pledged $100 million in the critical swing state of Florida … The Trump campaign has meantime accelerated its Jewish outreach, this week launching Jewish Voices for Trump as its official campaign Jewish outreach body.

President Donald Trump said that Jews put their ethnic allegiances above all others, making them unreliable political allies, according to the Washington Post. Following conversations with Jewish lawmakers, Trump said in the past that Jews “stick together” and are “only in it for themselves,” the paper reported, citing former and current senior officials. The quotes came as part of a lengthy article quoting anonymous officials describing how Trump treated race in private conversations. The Post did not add further context to those two partial quotes except to say that by “sticking together,” Trump appeared to mean that the loyalty of Jews to one another exceeded other loyalties. Many of the quoted broadsides echo remarks Trump has said in public, perhaps in slightly less blunt terms.

Mark Weber talks about the power and influence of the Jewish lobby in the US, Zionist corruption of the American political system, US-Iran relations, the danger of war between the US and Iran, and more. Marzieh Hashemi, an American-born journalist who lives in Iran, conducts this 15-minute interview with the IHR director in the lobby of the Azadi hotel in Tehran, Feb. 2013. Hashemi is also a documentary film maker and a host/ presenter for Iran’s English-language Press TV.

It’s hard to imagine that anything literally hanging from utility poles across Manhattan could be considered “hidden,” but throughout the borough, about 18 miles of translucent wire stretches around the skyline, and most people have likely never noticed. It’s called an eruv (plural eruvin), and its existence is thanks to the Jewish Sabbath … This allows people to freely communicate and socialize on the Sabbath — and carry whatever they please — without having to worry about breaking Jewish law … New York City isn’t the only metropolis in the U.S. with an eruv. They can also be seen (or not seen) in St. Louis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, and numerous other cities across the country.

… Condoning political violence, or at least rationalizing it, has become commonplace in the nation’s humanities departments … All of this has been internalized by the faculty and passed on to the student body. The rehabilitation of targeted violence to achieve political aims is a familiar project on college campuses … This project is working. In 2017, one survey found that a majority of matriculated college students believed it was acceptable, even necessary, to apply a Marcusian maximalist view toward the suppression of views deemed beyond the pale. Almost one-fifth of students said they agreed that violence was an acceptable form of protest against speakers with whom they disagreed.

Iran’s president told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that the United States could impose “neither negotiations nor war” on the Islamic Republic amid heightened tension between the longtime foes over Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers. “Iran is not a bargaining chip in U.S. elections and domestic policy … Any U.S. administration after the upcoming (U.S.) elections will have no choice but to surrender to the resilience of the Iranian nation,” Hassan Rouhani told the annual U.N. gathering in a video message … “This is a victory not just for Iran, but for the global community – during the transitional international order in the post-Western world – that an aspirant to hegemony is humiliated in such self-created isolation,” Rouhani said, referring to the Trump administration.

The chilling discovery was made during an excavation at the infamous Penal and Investigative Prison No. III in Warsaw, Poland. The Stalinist facility, commonly known as Toledo Prison, was run by the Soviet secret police for only 12 years but has been regarded by its inmates as a particularly cruel and harsh place. Potentially hundreds of inmates were executed at the prison, which persecuted political enemies, members of the Polish underground and Polish home army before and after the end of World War II.

The Trump administration, desperate for some good news, just manufactured its own news by confecting a ‘peace’ deal between Israel and a bunch of pipsqueak Arab monarchies – just in time for November US elections. The Gulf monarchies – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – that signed this agreement are so frightened of neighboring Iran that they would happily have opted for Israeli rule rather than welcome the angry, unforgiving Iranians, who call the Gulf Arabs ‘traitors, cowards and backstabbers,’ a sentiment shared by much of the Arab world … As for peace in the Mideast, recall the biting words of Roman historian Tacitus, ‘where they make a desert they call it peace.’ That is what awaits over five million Palestinian refugees, not a new dawn promised by the Trump administration.

The United States said Monday it was imposing sanctions on Iran’s defense ministry and enforcing an arms embargo under a United Nations authority that is widely contested. US President Donald Trump said he issued an executive order “restoring United Nations (UN) sanctions on Iran, and imposing new sanctions and export controls on more than two dozen entities and individuals that support Iran’s nuclear, missile, and conventional arms-related activities.” … The Trump administration declared Saturday that all UN sanctions against Iran had been restored, a move most of the rest of the world rejects as illegal and is likely to ignore. The Trump administration also promised to “impose consequences” on any UN member state that does not comply with the sanctions …

Trump Administration officials have been saying this for weeks, but on Friday reiterated their intentions to try to enforce a UN Security Council resolution that includes broad sanctions against Iran. Officials say they expect every nation to comply. The glaring problem with this is that the resolution doesn’t exist, at least not as an active resolution the US wants. The P5+1 nuclear deal gave the US the authority to reimpose sanctions on Iran, but the US had withdrawn from that pact years ago. Though the Trump Administration argued that didn’t matter, the UN has virtually unanimously rejected their interpretation, and rejected the UN Security Council resolution … Reality doesn’t seem to matter to the administration in this case, and they say they’re going to enforce the whole thing unilaterally.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said he mourned the death of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “I join the American people in mourning the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the great judicial leaders of our time,” Netanyahu said. “She was proud of her Jewish heritage and the Jewish people will always be proud of her,” he wrote on Twitter … “I am a judge, born, raised and proud of being a Jew,” she said in an address to the American Jewish Committee following her 1993 appointment to the court … In her 27 years on the court, Ginsburg emerged not only as the leader of the court’s liberal wing but as a pop cultural phenomenon and feminist icon … Ginsburg attributed her outsider perspective to her Jewish roots, pointing often to her heritage as a building block of her perspective on the bench.

Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in ten believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found … According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war. Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated, or they weren’t sure … Almost two-thirds (64%) of American millennial and Gen Z adults believe Holocaust education should be compulsory in schools. Seven out of ten said it was not acceptable for an individual to hold neo-Nazi views.

… A new survey has found that critical gaps exist in how younger generations know about the Holocaust, calling into question the effectiveness of current Holocaust education, and how it can be used to grow awareness of modern anti-Semitism and hatred … Nationally, 63 percent of respondents didn’t know that six million Jews were killed during the years of World War II and the Holocaust, and 36 percent believed that two million Jews or fewer were killed … A total of 80 percent agreed with the statement that “It is important to continue to teach about the Holocaust, in part, so it doesn’t happen again”; 64 percent believed Holocaust education should be compulsory at school … In the survey, 11 percent of respondents agreed that the Jews caused the Holocaust; 22 percent said the Holocaust was associated with World War I …

… Holocaust education has always been weaponized … “Never again” is not about looking back, but looking straight ahead, stopping and stomping the present-day “enemies” of a hate-filled Jewish establishment that despises the West, its traditions, and anything white, Christian, or European in origin … Decades of antiwhite, anti-West propaganda have convinced a generation of dumbasses that anything white is Nazi. That’s why the survey respondents answered as they did, and that’s why Jews were targeted along with other paleskins during the riots … We don’t need “more” Holocaust history. We need accurate history in all subjects …

Powerful interests have hijacked “the Holocaust,” and use it to further their own interests, says the author of this provocative but carefully documented and persuasively argued study. “Organized Jewry,” writes Norman Finkelstein, “has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel’s and its own indefensible policies.” The “Nazi genocide,” he also writes, “has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these policies.” Jewish organizations in the US, he also contends, have used the plight of Holocaust survivors to extort staggering sums of money from the rest of the world. This is not done not for the benefit of needy survivors, the author explains, but for the financial advantage of these organizations.

President Donald Trump blasted portions of the American education system Thursday. During a Constitution Day speech at the National Archives Museum, he blamed school curricula for inciting race-related protests. Trump called the way schools teach about racism and slavery “left-wing indoctrination in our schools.” … “We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world,” Trump said. The president also announced he’d establish a national commission to promote patriotic education called the 1776 Commission.

… Mr. Biden appears less likely to improve America’s foreign policy than to return us to a narrow Washington consensus that has failed our country and the world … In short, Mr. Biden’s vision looks less like a better approach to foreign policy and more like a rerun … This “familiar” approach has led again and again to failure in recent years. Whether in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine or elsewhere, the United States has encountered problems that can’t be solved with a more “muscular approach” or more “American leadership” (to use two favorite clichés of the foreign policy establishment) … For now, the best way to understand where Mr. Biden stands today is to look at the people with whom he has surrounded himself. If personnel is policy, so far it looks like we’ll be getting little more than a rehash of the Beltway consensus.

… Why can’t we keep Hitler out of our elections? Four years ago, it was the Democrats who were on the Hitler kick. “Trump is literal Hitler! He’ll put us all in camps!” And this time, it’s the right’s turn at bat … Last week, Glenn Beck upped the ante by claiming that Bernie is such a Nazi that his election “will result in another Holocaust.” … If we take Hitler out of the equation, if we stop compulsively having to bring Nazis into everything, we can eliminate the need for such contortions. Making middle-class and blue-collar working folks pay more in taxes to support the lazy and indigent is bad on its own merits; you don’t have to invoke Auschwitz … Hitler was a lot of things, and chances are, something you do, something you support, is similar to something Hitler did. Hence the wisdom of dropping him from our political discourse.

… Some fundamental ideas that once could be recognized as true, and even self-evident by a majority of people, are now banned from public discourse under the pretext that they are reminiscent of Nazism … The current cancellation of the White race is the final phase of the denazification project … Whatever we think about Hitler’s personality, there is no justification for the ban on balanced or even positive appraisals of his thought … For Hitler, there can be no healthy nation without social justice: that is the meaning of “National Socialism” … The National Socialist state claimed to bring a revolution in Law, by restoring the primacy of natural law.

… The UN Digital Library contains voting records on all proposed resolutions – which show that often the United States and Israel stand nearly alone against the world in justifying Israeli violence against Palestinians … “The Question of Palestine” has been an ongoing topic in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) since 1947. But does that indicate a sinister motive? A survey of UN resolutions may provide an answer … This sample of United Nations resolutions demonstrates the UN’s objective, not to bash a country because of its ethnic makeup, but to right the wrongs perpetrated against Palestinians … As long as Israel refuses to make amends toward the Palestinian people, the reprimands will continue – not because the UN is anti-Israel, but because Israel is anti-justice.

In a letter to Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, the Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, noted that, “your October meeting will establish a checklist of candidates, for the 2020 prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. Among them is bruited Portuguese author, António Lobo Antunes.” … Samuels argued that, “this was marked, reportedly, by what Lobo called ‘their omnipresent obsession with the Shoah’ … The Wiesenthal Centre considers this language as Holocaust banalization – recognized as a form of antisemitism … He felt “a permanent climate of fear” and that, “the State of Israel was created on hatred …” “They hate the Germans … The Holocaust always, always, always …” Lobo, apparently, continued, “I was shocked to learn that they never have sex with non-Jews …”

There is only one way to look at the UAE-Israel deal: The United Arab Emirates is seeking more support from the United States, and it believes it must go through Israel to get it … This understanding of the Israel lobby’s power goes well beyond the conventional view of the lobby as influencing US policy with respect to Israel and Palestine. But the assessment is not mine alone. It is a widely-held belief in world capitals. Even Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi have acted in similar fashion: looking on the Israel lobby as a gatekeeper to Washington … Israeli analysts regularly address this influence … What’s most fascinating about this theory of access is that there are unquestionably a number of examples to support it, but the American press would never touch it.

Israeli-American mogul Haim Saban, a major Democratic donor and bundler, is expected to host a virtual fundraiser in support of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden next Monday, Jewish Insider has learned. The event will feature Biden, along with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and costs $500,000 per person … Saban and his wife, Cheryl, who were the largest individual donors to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign … Saban has maintained close ties with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, in recent years and reportedly helped broker the recent normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

President Richard Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham – the nation’s most prominent Christian evangelist – frankly discuss the Jewish role in the US media during a private meeting in the White House. This recording of their conversation on Feb. 1, 1972, was made public 13 years later. Nixon says: “It’s all run by Jews and dominated by them in their editorial pages. The New York Times, The Washington Post – totally Jewish too.” Graham responds: “This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.” In response to that, the president says: “You believe that?” “Yes, sir,” says Graham. “Oh, boy,” replies Nixon. “So do I. I can’t ever say that [publicly], but I believe it.” MSNBC television news report. Runtime: 1:03 mins.

… What will my youngster learn in college? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni provides some answers that turn out to be quite disturbing … Parents think a college education is necessary for success. Their youngsters think differently. According to the TD Ameritrade study, 49% of young millennials said their degree was “very or somewhat unimportant” to their current job … More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, such as flight attendants, janitors and salesmen. The bottom line for parents and their youngsters is that spending four or more years in college and accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in debt is not the only road to a successful life.

Think some things are so beloved and essential to Western civilization they can’t be canceled? Think again … No one, living or dead, is safe from the attentions of woke fascists. Even Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven’s work is not only at the core of the standard repertory of classical music … For the last 200 years, Beethoven’s compositions have also been symbols of the struggle for freedom against tyranny … To woke critics, Beethoven’s music has taken on a new, darker meaning. To musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding, stars of the “Switched on Pop” podcast produced in association with the New York Philharmonic, the Fifth Symphony is a stand-in for everything they don’t like about classical music and Western culture. As far as they’re concerned, it’s time to cancel Ludwig.

More than one in ten American adults under 40 believes that Jews caused the Holocaust. That’s one finding from a survey published Wednesday trying to gauge Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Generation Z, a cohort ranging in age from 18 to 39. The survey found that most respondents had heard of the Holocaust and 37 percent knew that six million Jews died … But 11% of the respondents believed the Jews were responsible for the Holocaust, 15% said they thought the Holocaust was a myth or has been exaggerated, and 20% said people talk about it too much … The survey of 1,000 respondents across all 50 states was organized by the Claims Conference, which coordinates restitution and reparations payments for Holocaust survivors and sponsors Holocaust education programs.

B’nai Brith Canada is urging a Greater Toronto Area municipality to rename a street dedicated to a Nazi battleship captain who fought in the Second World War. Langsdorff Drive, located in Ajax, Ontario, was named in 2007 after Hans Langsdorff, who commanded Nazi German forces at the 1939 Battle of the River Plate. The Town of Ajax is named after the HMS Ajax, a British ship that took part in the engagement. After losing the encounter, Langsdorff scuttled his ship off the coast of Argentina, allowing its crew to escape rather than face the British fleet again. He then shot himself … B’nai Brith’s position is that there is no room for monuments or other dedications in Canada honouring Nazi combatants or their collaborators.

An open letter in support of the Black Lives movement signed by more than 600 different Jewish groups was published by the New York Times On the 57th anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom … The signatories were a plethora of congregations as well as some major organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, multiple chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women, the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. … The letter declared: “The Black Lives Matter movement is the current day Civil Rights Movement in this country, and it is our best chance at equity and justice.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) latest “Update on the Budget Outlook,” this year’s $3.3 trillion federal deficit is not just three times larger than last year: it is the largest federal deficit in history. The CBO update also predicts that the federal debt will equal 104 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) next year and will reach 108 percent of GDP by 2030. The CBO update also shows that the Social Security, Medicare, and highway trust funds will all be bankrupt by 2031 … This year’s spike in federal spending was caused by the multi-trillion dollar coronavirus relief/economic stimulus bills … However, spending had already increased by $937 billion from the time President Trump was sworn in until the lockdown. Federal spending is unlikely to be reduced no matter who wins the presidential election.

Four days ago, Donald Trump said the U.S. isn’t involved in the Middle East for oil, but because we “want to protect Israel.” The comments have gone all but unreported in the mainstream press. Trump made the comment during a rally in Winston-Salem, N.C. on Sept. 8 … “The fact is, we don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. We’ve been very good to Israel. Other than that, we don’t have to be in the Middle East.” … These comments by Trump, the disrupter, tie into the long but shadowy pedigree of analysis from policymakers that we invaded Iraq to make Israel safer. Like the former head of the 911 Commission who said that the threat to Israel was the motivation for the war, but that was “the threat that dare not speak its name.”

… Is America, at long last, really coming home from the forever wars? … This time, Trump’s withdrawals look to be irreversible … Speaking in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Trump made a remarkable declaration: “We don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel … There was a time we needed desperately oil, we don’t need that anymore.” … Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been in an extended argument with itself over America’s role, America’s mission in the world. George H. W. Bush’s New World Order is ancient history, as are the democracy crusades his son George W. Bush was persuaded to launch. But what will Trump’s foreign policy legacy be, should he win?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented U.S. President Donald Trump with a doctored video which showed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas calling for the murder of children, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Bob Woodward in his new book “Rage”. The incident occurred on May 22, 2017, at a time when Trump was beginning to have doubts about Netanyahu … As described by the Jewish Insider, which obtained an advance copy of the book, Woodward portrays a strained relationship between Tillerson and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was tasked with resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tillerson believed Netanyahu’s relationship with Kushner, whose family he had known for many years, was “nauseating to watch.” … Tillerson was sacked in March 2018 …

… To characterise what’s gone on in Portland as a traditional “protest” is a misnomer, however. Pay a visit to the area around the Federal Courthouse in Downtown after midnight and you are greeted by brigades of black-clad “Antifa” foot soldiers — geared up in full body armour … If there is any foundational idea operative in Portland, it’s to keep a frenetic confrontation with the state going for as long as possible, so as to maximise the chances that an incendiary incident might occur and catalyse a larger insurrectionary uproar … When protesters chant “NO GOOD COPS IN A RACIST SYSTEM,” the “system” to which they are referring is the foundational system of governance of the United States — again, deemed inherently “fascist” and “white supremacist”, and therefore impossible to reform.

… What arises from all the aforementioned is that in the words of the Prophets, and also in the words of our Sages OBM [“Of Blessed Memory”], the Gentiles are thought of as animals. Even so, it clearly does not mean that they are actually treated as animals, and there are distinctions between Gentiles and animals … Nevertheless, we have seen that the status of the Gentiles in Halacha [Jewish religious law] is similar to that of animals in many respects, and generally speaking, there is no real distinctions made between them … There is no escaping the facts: the Torah of Israel makes a clear distinction between a Jew, who is defined as “man,” and a Gentile. This distinction is expressed in a long list of Halachic laws, be they monetary laws, the laws of the Temple, capital laws or others.

Judaism is not just another religion. Its core values are markedly unlike those of Christianity and the other great faiths. A central message of the Hebrew scriptures is that Jews are a divinely “chosen” people – a unique community distinct from the rest of humanity. Some recent news items reconfirm this point, which is important for an understanding of the reality of cultural and political life in the United States, the US relationship with Israel, and the issue of war and peace in the Middle East and in the world. Runtime: 48 mins.

On August 7, amid broad efforts to get Facebook to clamp down on extremist activity and hate speech, more than 120 organizations sent a letter to the social media giant, urging it to “fully adopt” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism as the “cornerstone of Facebook’s hate speech policy regarding antisemitism.” … This letter represents the latest front in the battle to use the IHRA definition to officially exclude criticism of Israel from the bounds of acceptable discourse … So far, Facebook has responded to the letter by changing its policy regarding hate speech in ways it says take the IHRA definition into account, but it has resisted adopting the IHRA definition in its entirety.

… Jones is a Welsh reporter, first name Gareth, who is our vantage point for the Stalin-engineered Ukraine famine of the 1930s that amounted to the state-ordered murder of more than three million people by seizing the region’s grain … To this day, Mr. Jones is all but unknown and his courage is unsung by his inky heirs, whereas Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize remains on the books even after a thousand other things have been canceled. Meanwhile, Mr. Jones joins the unconscionably brief list of brutally honest films about Communism.

… History is the propaganda of the victors. Few photographs of the gulag have survived, evidence was destroyed, and witnesses have died. Churchill and Roosevelt could not admit they were allied to the greatest mass killer since Genghis Khan, and complicit in his crimes. Or reveal that Communist agents of influence had shaped White House policy. The feeble-minded Roosevelt even hailed Stalin as “Uncle Joe.” … Those who considered the Jewish Holocaust a unique historical crime were not eager to bring attention to Stalin’s genocide lest it diminish or dilute their own people’s suffering.

Check out any professional and most college basketball teams. Their starting five, and most of their other ten players, are black, as is 80 percent of the NBA. This does not come anywhere close to the diversity and inclusion sought by the nation’s social justice warriors. Both professional and college coaches have ignored and thrown any pretense of seeking diversity and inclusiveness … Do you think that any diversity-crazed college president would chastise his basketball coach for lack of diversity and inclusiveness? … At many predominantly black high schools, not a single black student tests proficient in math and a very low percentage test proficient in reading; however, these schools confer a diploma that attests that the students can read, write, and compute at a 12th-grade level …

The University of Rhode Island will remove two murals depicting WWII veterans after the school’s administration received complaints that the individuals depicted in the murals are “predominantly white.” The University of Rhode Island recently announced plans to remove two murals depicting World War II veterans because it lacks “diversity and a sensitivity to today’s complex and painful problems,” according to the university. Kathy Collins, vice president of student affairs, told CBS 12 she received complaints because the two folk-art murals portraying life in the GI Bill era of the 1950s “portray a very homogeneous population” and that most of the people depicted in the murals are “predominantly white.” … She cited the controversial deaths and shootings of black Americans such as George Floyd and Jacob Blake as part of her decision …

Brooklyn College Professor of Math Education Laurie Rubel argued this week on Twitter that the mathematical equation 2+2=4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.” Rubel’s tweet was retweeted and promoted by several academics at universities and colleges around the nation … Rubel, who teaches math education, tried to make the case this week that basic math is “white supremacist.” The tweets are part of a larger trend in recent scholarship by American academics, many of which have argued that “objective truth” is a social construct … Several academics from institutions around the nation chimed in. Harvard Ph.D. candidate Kareem Carr suggested that math should be reevaluated because it was primarily developed by white men.

No German writer was better placed for observing the German occupation of Paris than Ernst Jünger. A hero of World War I, wounded 14 times and awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, Jünger was internationally famous for his trench memoir “Storm of Steel” (1920). Between the wars, he studied insects, read Nietzsche, and fought in the Weimar streets with the anti-leftist Freikorps militia. Beginning in 1941, Jünger worked in military intelligence from an office in the luxurious Hôtel Majestic … He also spent his days in Paris collecting rare books, cultivating mistresses, coining aphorisms to add to his diaries and mingling in the moral soup with artists and writers … Jünger’s war diaries, translated here with damning clarity by Thomas and Abby Hansen, are a fascinating, refined and disturbing record of the moral disasters of Nazism and collaboration.

Color photos by French photographer André Zucca show daily life in Paris during the years of the World War II German occupation, 1940-1944.

As some conservative commentators have observed, there are striking similarities between woke militants and the Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917. But what is unfolding, in the US and to a lesser extent in other countries, is at once more archaic and more futuristic than a twentieth century revolutionary coup. The current convulsion is an outbreak more closely akin to the anarchical millenarians movements that raged across Europe in the late Middle Ages … Woke activists, in contrast, have no vision of the future … Rather than aiming for a better future, woke militants seek a cathartic present. Cleansing themselves and others of sin is their goal … More than the faux-Marxian musings of postmodern thinkers, it is the singular American faith in national redemption that drives the woke insurgency.

… The victims of yet another Israeli air strike in Syria. Who’s heard about it? Who knows about it, who cares? Who has the energy to look into it? … On Monday night 11 more people are killed in a raid in southern Syria, attributed to Israel. On Wed night, Syria reported another strike. According to the Damascus Center for Human Rights, three of the victims were Syrian soldiers and seven were “Iranian militia operatives,” which automatically justifies any bombing … Every few weeks there is an air strike in Syria, usually with lethal results. On July 20, five deaths were reported in a strike in Damascus. On June 23, five Iranians and two Syrians were killed in an attack attributed to Israel. On June 4, there were nine victims in a bombing by warplanes firing from Lebanese airspace, attributed to Israel …

There is a tendency on the part of major Jewish groups in the United States and in Europe to discover what they describe as anti-Semitism wherever one turns … The lead organization in shaping the acceptable narrative is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which promotes itself as “Fighting Hate for Good.” In other words, anyone on the other side of the narrative is by definition a “hater.” … So, once again, it is all about the perpetual victimhood of Jews … It is of course the ultimate irony that Jewish groups are very sensitive to the suffering of blacks in the United State while at the same time largely ignoring the war crimes and other devastation going on in Israel and Palestine at the hands of their co-religionists.

… Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches …The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs … One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to … Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life … However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.

Just how and why did the Soviet Union collapse? Was the demise of this once-mighty empire inevitable? In this important book, the last leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the last President of the USSR, offers answers to these questions and provides valuable insights on the 70-year Soviet experiment, including its origins and collapse, an assessment of his tenure as the last Soviet leader, and reflections on current global issues. On My Country and the World is organized into three parts … Gorbachev tried to maintain the multi-national USSR, but reorganized on a voluntary basis. What he failed to appreciate is the deeply entrenched resentment based on the fact that the country’s many non-Russian nationalities (who made up nearly half the total population) had been forcibly brought under Moscow’s control …

A white Jewish US university professor who lied for years about being black has quit her job at George Washington University in the capital Washington, the school said Wednesday. “Update regarding Jessica Krug: Dr. Krug has resigned her position, effective immediately,” the university said on its Twitter account. Krug — a history professor focusing on Africa — said she had been pretending to be black “for the better part” of her adult life. “I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim,” Krug wrote in a post on the platform Medium. Krug, who is light-skinned, said she first claimed “North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness.”

The Wiesenthal Centre had called for the intervention of Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, to demand that Volkswagen Mexico drop all relations with its Coyoacan dealership due to its display of Nazi posters. It took less than three hours for the Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, to receive a message from Robin Aschhoff, Head of International Communications for Volkswagen. In parallel, the Centre’s Latin America Director, Dr. Ariel Gelblung, pressed Volkswagen Mexico, resulting in the attached press release announcing Volkswagen Mexico’s end to any commercial and business relationship with the dealership.

Why are there still thousands of American troops in Syria? The government offers up an official counter-terrorism justification for maintaining an illegal military presence in the country, and the president will sometimes talk about “keeping the oil” there, but the real answer is that no one with any authority or influence in Washington wants to bring them home. The usual mix of inertia, cowardice, and ideology that defines so many of our foreign policy debates also creates perverse incentives for politicians in both parties to defend an illegal, unauthorized mission that has nothing to do with American security … Congress never authorized it, and U.S. forces are in Syria without the permission of the government in Damascus. American troops are illegally operating in a country whose government the U.S. isn’t formally at war with …

… “I didn’t come along and divide this country,” President Trump said at his first presidential press conference in 2017. “This country was seriously divided before I got here.” He’s not wrong, says Kreitner. “Our most powerful myth, that the many ever melded into one, is just that: a myth,” he writes. “Our refusal to recognize this, like patients who insist, against all evidence, that they are not ill, has been a major cause of our political dysfunction.” According to a 2019 Georgetown poll, 67 percent of Americans think we’re heading toward an inevitable civil war. Media on both sides have stoked the flames, with CNN talking heads and Rush Limbaugh alike predicting the country’s dissolution. A Washington Post headline from last year gave this chilling assessment: “In America, talk turns to something not spoken of for 150 years: Civil war.”

Having spent the past month traveling around the United States — from major cities to the countryside — the scale of the ‘movement’ which erupted in late May after the death of George Floyd is almost incomprehensible. According to the New York Times, which relays their finding with obvious excitement, the ‘movement’ (its precise contours seldom defined) “may be the largest” in U.S. history … From large metro areas like Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul, to small and mid-sized cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana and Green Bay, Wisconsin, the number of boarded up, damaged or destroyed buildings I have personally observed — commercial, civic, and residential — is staggering … It’s abundantly clear that there was a strong ideological component to these riots, one that’s also been under-emphasised by the media …

My students are know-nothings … The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West … What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words … Our education system produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to a public, a common culture, a shared history … Even on those better days, I can’t help but hold the hopeful thought that the world they have inherited – a world without inheritance, without past, future, or deepest cares – is about to come tumbling down, and that this collapse would be the true beginning of a real education.

… Ethnic Russians were much less loyal to the Soviet regime in their encounters with the German occupiers than historians have believed up to now. This is the story told by UiO [University of Oslo] researcher Johannes Due Enstad, who has recently published a book about the German occupation of Northwest Russia during World War 2 … According to Enstad, this German agricultural policy was the main reason why the positive attitude to the occupants lasted as long as it did … “Many sources interviewed after the war tell us that, in a material sense too, they were better off during the German occupation than during the years after the Germans were chased into retreat,” says Enstad. Another reason for the relative popularity of the occupiers was their policy on religion … Many priests openly supported the occupants and prayed for a German victory in their sermons.

… My book is the first (in English) to focus on the occupation experience of a mostly rural Russian population … Many in northwest Russia despised the Bolshevik regime for reasons grounded in their own personal experience, as even Soviet authorities had to admit. Another reason many Russians were ready to support or tolerate the German occupation regime has to do with German agricultural policy … German authorities in northwest Russia allowed de-collectivization to go ahead, later institutionalizing it by decreeing a “New Agrarian Order” in spring 1942. Peasants naturally welcomed de-collectivization. In some places, tears of joy and “spontaneous cheers for the Führer” were observed … People in the countryside “began to live a life both freer and more affluent than under Soviet power.”

The Danish parliament is scheduled to consider a bill proposing a ban on non-medical circumcision of minors … Henri Goldstein, the president of the Jewish Society in Denmark, suggested that the proposed measure represents “the worst threat since World War II” to the country’s Jewish community, who traditionally circumcise baby boys on their eighth day of life in a ritual known as brit milah … The proposal to ban the circumcision of minors is backed by 86 percent of Danes, according to TV2. In 2018, a bill to ban non-medical circumcision of minors was introduced in Iceland, but was scrapped amid an international outcry.

Ron Chernow has written a detailed and sometimes tedious history of one of the world’s most prominent international banking families [The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family] … Chernow provides insight into how Jewish patricians operate in society, and how their roles changed during the turbulent twentieth century … If anyone can be called the father of the Federal Reserve Bank, the New York Times has rightly noted, it is Paul Warburg … An international network of Jewish organizations and charities devoted to the well-being of Jewish communities around the world operated as a shadow government for this scattered, stateless population … They also played a major role in domestic and international politics.

It’s increasingly clear to even the average American that if riots come to your neighborhood, you’re on your own. The message received is increasingly be this: if your plan is to wait until the police show up to provide “protection,” be prepared to wait a long time. Consequently, as violence appears to surge in America’s cities, millions of Americans have become first-time gun owners. There are two trends at work which are making Americans doubt that government law enforcement is reliable and effective … Meanwhile, gun purchases have surged … Gun retailers saw a 95 percent increase in firearm sales and a 139 percent increase in ammunition sales in the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 2019.

John M. Ellis’ new book, The Breakdown of Higher Education, argues that higher education is so corrupt that it can only be reformed from the outside … What once was higher education has broken down and become left-wing indoctrination in identity politics … The National Center for Education Statistics sees a “sharp decline” in literacy between 1992 and 2003. The numbers are astounding: nearly 70 percent of college graduates cannot read reasonably complex materials (we’re not talking about Shakespeare, but something like an FDR speech) and explain what it means … Studies by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) confirm this: more than 80 percent of college seniors at the top 50 schools fail tests about basic facts on American history or American government.

In response to the recent riots and protests, America’s biggest companies have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to so-called racial justice organizations such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and denounced political speech on the right as hate … In fact, multinational corporations and the far left are natural bedfellows. Both factions are staunch supporters of globalism, including mass immigration … Pushing for open borders provides cheap labor and an expanded consumer base for corporations, while satisfying the left’s political demands for multiculturalism. Rectenwald says big business treats some of the very fundamentals of nationhood — borders, citizenship, cohesion, and historical ties — as impediments to the free flow of capital and labor … What corporations actually gain from the hard left is legitimacy.

… “Liberal economic princi­ples provide no support for traditional communities; quite the contrary, they tend to atomize and separate people,” [American political philosopher Francis] Fukuyama warns … Fukuyama pronounces that “a civilization devoid of anyone who wanted to be recognized as better than others, and which did not affirm in some way the essential health and goodness of such a desire, would have little art or literature, music or intellectual life. It would be incompe­tently governed, for few people of quality would choose a life of public service. It would not have much in the way of economic dynamism; its crafts and industries would be pedestrian and un­changing, and its technology second-rate.” … The lazy popular reading of Fukuyama as a liberal triumphalist ignores the darker prophecies he appended to his bestseller …

… On Tuesday, the mayor’s office made national news by releasing a list of monuments and memorials in Washington that should be “removed, replaced or contextualized.” Among them are the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and Columbus’ statue at Union Station. The name of Alexander Graham Bell should be erased from Bell Multicultural High School, Bowser’s working group said. Like Winston Churchill and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the inventor of the telephone believed in eugenics. Presidents James Madison, author of the Constitution, John Tyler, who annexed Texas, and Zachary Taylor, who led the U.S. army to victory in the Mexican-American War, are also candidates for having their memorials and monuments “replaced, removed or contextualized.”

… Portland is often called the whitest big city in the US – about 72% of its population is non-Latino white, while only about 6.6% of the population is black (compared to 12.7% of the overall US population) … Although the provisional government of the territory banned slavery in 1844, it also required all African-Americans to leave Oregon – any black person who stayed would be publicly flogged every six months until they left. Five years later, in 1849, another law was passed forbidding free African-Americans from entering the territory, and in 1857 Oregon adopted a state constitution banning black people from entering, living or owning property in the state. In 1859, when Oregon joined the union ahead of the civil war, it was the only state to explicitly forbid black people from living within its borders.

Bullet holes still pockmark the walls of the house in Mexico where Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was brutally murdered 80 years ago, a reminder of an earlier failed assassination attempt. “I’m already familiar” with death, Trotsky said after he survived that attack in his home in a suburb of Mexico City where he spent his last years in exile. … Months later, on August 20, 1940, that trail of persecution finally caught up with him when he was killed with an ice axe by an assassin acting on Joseph Stalin’s orders … Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein to a Jewish family, Trotsky was the founder of the Red Army and, along with Vladimir Lenin, one of the prime movers in the Bolshevik revolt that overthrew Czar Nicholas II. After falling out with Stalin in the 1920s, Trotsky was forced into exile.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that at least 80 percent of the members of the first Soviet government were Jewish. “I thought about something just now: The decision to nationalize this library was made by the first Soviet government, whose composition was 80-85 percent Jewish,” Putin said June 13 [2013] during a visit to Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center … According to the official transcription of Putin’s speech at the museum, he went on to say that the politicians on the predominantly Jewish Soviet government “were guided by false ideological considerations and supported the arrest and repression of Jews, Russian Orthodox Christians, Muslims and members of other faiths. They grouped everyone into the same category.”

We’re relentlessly told that we must “never forget” the “Six Million.” But we hear far less about the vastly greater number of victims of Lenin and Stalin, and the grim legacy of Soviet Communism. Some 20 million people perished as victims of the Soviet regime, historians acknowledge. Jews played a decisive role in founding and promoting the egalitarian-universalist ideology of Marxism, in developing the worldwide Marxist political movement, and in brutally imposing Bolshevik rule in Russia. With the notable exception of Lenin, who was one-quarter Jewish, most of the leading Marxists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews, including Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Radek.

… Lurking beneath the headlines justifiably devoted to these major stories of 2020 are very troubling data that reflect intensifying pathologies in the U.S. population — not moral or allegorical sicknesses but mental, emotional, psychological and scientifically proven sickness … For the youngest part of the adult population, ages 18-24, significantly more than half (62.9 percent) reported suffering from depressive or anxiety disorders … In 2018, NBC News, using health insurance studies, reported that “major depression is on the rise among Americans from all age groups, but is rising fastest among teens and young adults.” In 2019, the American Psychological Association published a study documenting a 30 percent increase “in the rate of death by suicide in the United States between 2000 and 2016 …”

The U.S. trade deficit surged in July to $63.6 billion, the highest level in 12 years, as imports jumped by a record amount. The Commerce Department reported that the July deficit, the gap between what America buys and what it sells to foreigners, was 18.9% higher than the June deficit of $53.5 billion. It was the largest monthly deficit since July 2008 during the 2007-2009 recession. The July deficit increase was driven by a record 10.9% increase in imports which rose to $231.7 billion. Exports were also up but by a smaller 8.1% to $168.1 billion. When Donald Trump campaigned for president in 2016 he pledged to sharply lower the country’s large trade deficits, especially with China …

These days the U.S. is the world’s most militaristic power, threatening, droning, bombing, invading, and occupying far more countries than any other nation. Operating on the well-established principle that might makes right, American presidents routinely intervene with neither domestic nor international legal warrant, as in Syria today. Washington also routinely sanctions allies as well as adversaries, insisting that every person in every nation follow US dictates. Today America is lawlessly engaged in low-level aggression against Syria. US troops have occupied much of the north … After more than nine years the Obama/ Trump campaign in Syria had failed as completely as US interventions in Iraq and Libya … US foreign policy has become an illegal, almost criminal, enterprise.

… Civil Rights have become America’s new civic religion, and conservatives helped to make that happen … Commemorating the [King] holiday in 1987, Reagan pioneered cancel culture, urging Americans to “be totally intolerant to racism anywhere around you.” … The historian Mark Weber, in a speech delivered in 2015, correctly predicted future disorder as an inevitable byproduct of this elite ideological consensus … The truth is that the insurrection of 2020 is not a perversion of the memory of Martin Luther King. It is the logical culmination of the Civil Rights movement itself … The founding fathers and the majority of American presidents throughout history were white supremacists. If they’re true to their own values, Republicans should want to detonate and flatten almost the entirety of Washington’s statuary.

… In spite of its relative economic prosperity, Europe today is in greater danger than ever before in its history. Far worse than the consequences of military defeat, a terrible war, or a devastating plague, Europe is threatened with cultural, ethnic and racial extinction … The current malaise of the West is the entirely predictable result of policies based on the premises about life and society of the prevailing egalitarian-individualist ideology … We must not permit intimidation, malicious smears or threats to keep us from affirming what is true, and doing what is right, strengthened by the confidence that future generations will respect us, and history will vindicate us.

… While international media focuses on the tense situation at the border every once in a while, Israeli incursions into Lebanon are neither new nor accidental. Israel violates Lebanese sovereignty several times a day, as the Israeli military infiltrates Lebanon by land, sea, and air. Within the first five months of 2020, the Lebanese government registered over 1,000 Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty by land, sea, and air. The Israeli army has also repeatedly used Lebanese airspace to launch airstrikes on Syria. Israeli military jets and spy drones are omnipresent … Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty are a form of state violence that affects millions of people daily – in particular the country’s south with its majority Shia population.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called upon Youtube to delete a Holocaust denial video posted to the video sharing platform in Korean. The video from Spika Studio denies that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, labels Anne Frank as a fraud, legitimizes Hitler’s unfair disposition towards European Jewry and alleges that Jews have secretly controlled America for over 50 years. “This slick, 25-minute video from ‘Spika Studio’ by a host named ‘Sue’ denies 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis,” said Associate Dean and Director of the SWC’s Global Social Action Agenda Rabbi Abraham Cooper. “American Jews and Korean Americans are good neighbors here in Los Angeles and in communities across the United States.”

Born in 1929, the masterful composer Ennio Morricone, who died this week [July 2020] at the age of 91, made his entrance into the world just after the advent of synchronized cinematic sound … Morricone was a revolutionary, transforming, even inventing ways of making music for moving pictures that exerted a huge influence on his contemporaries, his admirers, and, most enduringly, his audience. He was born and died in Rome, but his music for films stretched across the globe molding the way we see and understand landscapes, people, and history, from the South American rain forest to the grasslands and deserts of the North American West … For all its ennobling mixture of diversity and specificity, technique and imagination, Morricone’s soundtracks speak a global language, immediately and powerfully understood and loved.

A US academic whose work focuses on Africa and the African diaspora has said she lied about being black. Jessica Krug, an associate professor at George Washington University (GWU), admitted that she was in fact a white Jewish woman from Kansas City. “I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie,” a blog post written under Ms Krug’s name read … Writing in a Medium post published on Thursday, Jessica Krug said she had falsely assumed identities “that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness”. “To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child,” she wrote.

In northeast Syria last week, a U.S. military vehicle collided with a Russian armored vehicle, injuring four American soldiers. Both the Americans and Russians blame each other for failing to follow established rules of the road. Had an American been killed, we could have had a crisis on our hands. Query: With the ISIS caliphate dead and buried, why are 500 US troops still in Syria a year after Donald Trump said we would be pulling them out? What are they doing there to justify risking a clash with Russian troops who are in Syria as the invited allies of the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad, whether we approve of his regime or not? … Potential collisions between the U.S., Russia, or China are not even back-burner issues this election year. Meanwhile, we are consumed by the coronavirus, the crashed economy, racial divisions, and riots …

The city surpassed 1,000 shootings for the year on Sunday, according to NYPD data, which also shows an average of nearly ten people fell victim to gun violence each day over the last four weeks. With four more months left in 2020, New York City logged 1,004 shootings as of Aug. 30, according to NYPD data released Monday … It is the first time the city has eclipsed the benchmark in gun violence since 2015, when 1,138 shootings were recorded for the entire year. “Mr. Mayor, it is time to stop calling New York the safest big city,” a Brooklyn cop quipped to The Post. The notable number comes a week before Labor Day, when cops expect another bloody holiday weekend in the Big Apple. The city has seen 13 straight weeks of surging gun violence …

More than half of all American states have passed laws designed to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. No advocacy group was more important to this push than the Israel Allies Foundation, an American non-profit that supports a network of pro-Israel legislators across the globe … Public records obtained by The Forward show that the Israeli government approved a grant of more than $100,000 to the Israel Allies Foundation in 2019. The IAF has not disclosed this or any previous Israeli grants to the United States government, in possible violation of laws requiring American political advocacy groups to disclose foreign-government contributions … It is one of eleven American groups that received Israeli government funds, according to the documents …

… Facebook, Google and other news and social networking sites now all have advisory panels that are authorized to ban content and limit access by members. This de facto censorship is particularly evident when using the internet information “search” sites themselves, a “service” that is dominated by Google … Google, for example, ranks the information that it displays so it can favor certain points of view and dismiss others. Generally speaking, progressive sites are favored and conservative sites are relegated to the bottom of the search with the expectation that they will not be visited … Who controls the narrative controls the people, or so it seems. It is a dangerous development, particularly at a time when no one knows whom to trust and what to believe.

While Facebook continues to struggle with Holocaust denial on its platform, policies implemented by YouTube and Reddit show that eliminating anti-Semitism on social media is still possible, a British think tank claimed in a report released last week … It found that Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, “provide[s] a home to an established and active community of Holocaust deniers,” whereas such conspiracy theories had significantly decreased on YouTube after a policy change by the Google-run company in 2019 … Facebook did announce last week that it would change its policies to ban conspiracy theories about supposed Jewish global domination, as well as images of blackface.

Less than two weeks after publication, an essay on poverty and race which critics decried as “unscholarly” and “overtly racist” has been retracted. The essay, by Lawrence Mead, of New York University, appeared in the journal Society on July 21. It immediately drew the ire of hundreds of academics and advocates who, in a pair of petitions, demanded among other things that the journal retract the paper. Earlier this week, Springer Nature, which publishes Society, flagged Mead’s essay with an editor’s note stating that it was investigating the matter. Now the publisher has decided to remove the article … According to a statement from Springer Nature: … “Springer Nature condemns racism and discrimination in all its forms. We unequivocally condemn the content of this article which is in stark contrast to our values as a company.”

Statues of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin have been removed from the Washburn University campus [Topeka, Kansas] after protests against racial injustice elsewhere led to statues honoring slaveholders being vandalized, pulled down or moved, the school said Thursday. The two bronze statues that had stood outside the university’s law school in Topeka for two decades were removed in July after Washburn President Jerry Farley discussed the concerns with the family of the donor, who has since died, school spokesman Patrick Early said … Some Washburn students have questioned the propriety of the statutes but the decision to remove them from campus was not in response to a protest or request from students, Early said.

… Wellbery is among thousands of Jews around the world expected to apply. Adopted last year by the Austrian National Council, the amendment allows those who were persecuted by the Nazi regime and their direct descendants (including children adopted as minors) to obtain Austrian citizenship without giving up their current passports — that’s still mandated of new Austrian citizens outside of this law. It applies not only to citizens of Austria proper and successor states of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy, but also to stateless persons who had a primary residence in Austria but had to leave for safety by May 15, 1955, a decade after the war ended. The amendment is “in line with Austria’s ongoing endeavor for reconciliation with all those who suffered under the totalitarian Nazi regime in Austria,” Austria’s US Embassy said in a statement.

Earlier this month, while meeting with the Iraqi Prime Minister, President Trump reaffirmed his intent to remove all US troops from Iraq. “We were there and now we’re getting out. We’ll be leaving shortly,” the president told reporters at the time … The US invasion of Iraq 17 years ago was correctly described at the time by the late NSA Director Bill Odom as “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” After a relentless barrage of lies about former US ally Saddam Hussein having “weapons of mass destruction,” the US attack and destruction of Iraq did not bring the peace and prosperity promised by the neocon war promoters. Instead, the US “liberation” of Iraq killed a million Iraqis, most of whom were civilians. It destroyed Iraq’s relatively prosperous economy.

… We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own … Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud … U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. They often collide, and when they do, U.S. interests must prevail.

More than 600 Jewish groups signed a full-page New York Times ad in support of the Black Lives Matter movement … “We speak with one voice when we say, unequivocally: Black Lives Matter.” The groups also state, “We support the black-led movement in this country that is calling for accountability and transparency from the government and law enforcement.” … The groups make a connection between anti-black and anti-Jewish hatred … “Anti-Semitism is part of the same machinery those politicians use to blame black and brown people, people who are immigrants, people who are Muslim and more,” they continue … Groups that signed the ad include the Anti-Defamation League, J Street, IfNotNow, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, HIAS, Hebrew College, Jewish Voice for Peace …

The Trump administration is treating its international allies like its enemies, said Carrie Nooten in Le Monde (France). After the United Nations Security Council last week rejected a U.S. proposal to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that France, Germany, and the U.K. — all of which abstained from the vote — had decided “to side with the ayatollahs.” It was an outrageous claim … It’s astonishing how little support the U.S. has been able to muster, said Borzou Daragahi in Independent.co.uk. … In his attempt to destroy the Iran agreement, Trump is instead destroying the credibility of the U.N. Security Council, said Carsten Luther in Die Zeit (Germany). The other members of the council will “simply ignore” the U.S. attempt to snapback sanctions.

The Polish ambassador to Berlin says that, with Germany and other countries succumbing to postmodernism and “gender ideology”, Poland now stands alone as “the last bastion of the West” holding out against “the fall of Europe” … Andrzej Przyłębski, who has served as ambassador since 2016, made the remarks in an interview with right-wing German newspaper Junge Freiheit … “Today’s Europe is founded on principles that lead to a dead end.” As examples, he pointed to “the widespread atomisation of societies, family breakdown, growing hostility towards the Christian faith, the domination of gender ideology and destructive criticism of European culture”.

San Francisco is plagued by homelessness, addiction, crime, and violence. In this eleven-minute documentary, Christopher F. Rufo investigates what went wrong – and how one of the world’s most prosperous and envied cities became a haven for public disorder. Under the banner of compassion, Rufo shows, the city’s political class created a regime of cruelty and inequality.

.. Post-apocalyptic scenes which have consumed much of LA, turning the City of Dreams into an urban nightmare from which people are fleeing in droves … A makeshift tent city made up of flapping tarpaulins and cardboard boxes surrounds the gym on all sides. Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like zombies – all just three blocks from multi-million-dollar homes overlooking the Pacific. Stolen bicycles are piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes. TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the city; of women being attacked during their morning jog or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their front gardens … British-born Danny O’Brien runs Watford Moving & Storage. ‘There is a mass exodus from Hollywood,’ he says.

California lawmakers are setting up a task force to study and make recommendations for reparations to African Americans, particularly the descendants of slaves, as the nation struggles again with civil rights and unrest following the latest shooting of a Black man by police. The state Senate supported creating the nine-member commission on a bipartisan 33-3 vote Saturday. The measure returns to the Assembly for a final vote before lawmakers adjourn for the year on Monday, though Assembly members overwhelmingly already approved an earlier version of the bill … Democratic Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles. She cited disproportionate homelessness, unemployment, involvement in the criminal justice system, lower academic performance and higher health risks during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ten people were killed and 45 more, including two Chicago police officers and a 15-year-old boy, were wounded in shootings across Chicago over the weekend. Ahead of the weekend, Chicago police braced for protests in the city in the wake of civil unrest north of the Illinois border sparked by the Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake. The department’s new Critical Incident Response team, consisting of about 200 officers, was deployed downtown. Seven people were arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest at Loyola University Saturday, while a march downtown that day ended with no arrests. Last weekend, 66 people were shot throughout the city, five of them fatally.