Headlines

Israel was responsible for Friday’s assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, The New York Times reported, citing three unnamed intelligence officials. The report came after several Iranian officials pointed the finger at the Jewish state for the hit on the man Israel and Western intelligence officials have identified as the leading figure in Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. The Times report said it was not clear how much Washington knew ahead of the attack, though it noted that Israel and the US work closely on issues pertaining to Iran. An unnamed Israeli official told Kan news Friday that “without Fakhrizadeh it will be very hard for Iran to advance its military [nuclear] program.” Iran has never admitted to having a nuclear weapons program, though Israel and Western nations dismiss such denials.

Former CIA head John Brennan blasted the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, calling the assassination “highly reckless,” then ended up in a Twitter war with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over his comments. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was slain Friday when a gunman ambushed him in his car near Tehran … “This was a criminal act & highly reckless,” tweeted Brennan, who ran the CIA under President Obama from 2013-2017. “It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict. Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits.” … [Brennan added:] “Such an act of state-sponsored terrorism would be a flagrant violation of international law & encourage more governments to carry out lethal attacks against foreign officials.”

… Storytelling is central to any civilization, so its sudden failure across society should set off alarm bells … Culture is larger than pop culture, or even just art. It encompasses class, architecture, cuisine, education, manners, philosophy, politics, religion, and more. … “Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.” This highlights why the increase in “deaths of despair” is such a strong condemnation of our dysfunction … In 1955, more Americans paid to attend classical music concerts than baseball games … Today’s upper class is raised on a steady diet of pop culture that valorizes nonconformism; elites learn to signal their status through attitude … College is characterized in two contradictory ways: it is the only firm path to the upper-middle class, and it is a time of Animal House antics.

Florida Atlantic University has received a $20 million gift, the largest in school history, to create an institute for Holocaust and Jewish studies. The benefactors of the gift are Kurt and Marilyn Wallach, managing partners of K&M Capital and general partners at Kurtell Growth Industries, a real estate firm in Vero Beach. The Kurt and Marilyn Wallach Institute for Holocaust and Jewish Studies will be housed within the university’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at its Boca Raton campus. A portion of the gift will be used for construction of a building on campus that is intended to serve as the university’s hub for Holocaust, human rights and Jewish studies education programs, as well as those that promote interfaith and interethnic understanding.

… The Nuremberg enterprise violated ancient and fundamental principles of justice. The victorious Allies acted as prosecutor, judge and executioner of the German leaders. The charges were created especially for the occasion, and were applied only to the vanquished. Defeated, starving, prostrate Germany was, however, in no position to oppose whatever the Allied occupation powers demanded. As even some leading Allied figures privately acknowledged at the time, the Nuremberg trials were organized not to dispense impartial justice, but for political purposes.

A Civil War memorial toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters in Colorado over the summer will be replaced by a sculpture of a Native American woman in mourning. The new statue, approved by Denver representatives on Friday, will commemorate the 1864 Sand Creek massacre, where US Army soldiers attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado, CPR News reported. The Capitol Building Advisory Committee voted 7-2 to approve the replacement monument after hearing from descendants of some of the hundreds of people, mostly women and children, killed at Sand Creek.

A notorious French Holocaust denier was jailed for four months by a court in Paris on Wednesday. 51-year-old Vincent Reynouard was convicted for posting a Holocaust denial video on YouTube in May 2017 — a grave offense in France, where the denial of Nazi atrocities has been a crime since 1990. Reynouard is well-known in Holocaust denial circles in Europe … More recently, he was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 20,000 euros in 2008; one year in prison in 2015; and two months in prison in 2016 — all for Holocaust denial offenses. Reynouard’s latest conviction follows a 17-month-jail term for his fellow Holocaust denier, Hervé Lalin.

Israeli leaders on Saturday welcomed the U.S. decision to end parole restrictions on Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer who served 30 years in prison after being convicted of spying for Israel. The U.S. Justice Department’s parole commission decided on Friday to allow a travel ban on Pollard to expire. The move was seen by some as a parting gift from the Trump administration to its ally Israel … Pollard pleaded guilty in 1986 to conspiracy to commit espionage in connection with providing Israeli contacts with hundreds of classified documents he had obtained as a naval intelligence specialist in exchange for thousands of dollars. He was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison. After serving 30 years, which included time in custody following his 1985 arrest, he was released on parole in 2015 …

The overwhelming majority of voters believe the nation is deeply divided over its most important values, and many have doubts about the health of the democracy itself. And supporters of President Donald Trump and Joe Biden alike think the opposing candidate will make things even worse if elected, according to a new poll [Oct. 2020] from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Overall, 85% of registered voters describe Americans as being greatly divided in their values, and only 15% say that democracy in the United States is working extremely or very well. The poll shows voters overall are especially pessimistic about the impact of Trump’s reelection: 65% say divisions would worsen if the Republican president were reelected, a number that includes a quarter of his supporters.

… Americans have rarely been as polarized as they are today. The studies we’ve conducted at Pew Research Center over the past few years illustrate the increasingly stark disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on the economy, racial justice, climate change, law enforcement, international engagement and a long list of other issues. The 202 presidential election further highlighted these deep-seated divides. Supporters of Biden and Donald Trump believe the differences between them are about more than just politics and policies. A month before the election, roughly eight-in-ten registered voters in both camps said their differences with the other side were about core American values, and roughly nine-in-ten – again in both camps – worried that a victory by the other would lead to “lasting harm” to the United States.

On Monday, Joe Biden announced he will nominate his long-time advisor Anthony Blinken to be the secretary of state for the incoming administration. Blinken has a long history of advocating for intervention in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Blinken was Biden’s top aide in 2002 when Biden was leading the charge in the Senate to give George W. Bush his invasion of Iraq … In 2019, Blinken co-authored an Op-Ed in The Washington Post with neoconservative Robert Kagan. The piece argued against President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and said the US did “too little” in Syria. “Without bringing appropriate power to bear [in Syria], no peace could be negotiated, much less imposed,” the article reads.

In this hour-long presentation, Lady Michele Renouf tells about her arrest by German authorities in Dresden at a World War II memorial gathering. In this conversation with Dr. Edward DeVries, she relates what she said at the gathering in 2018, and why authorities regarded her remarks there as a violation of the country’s notorious Paragraph 130, the criminal code section that forbids “hate speech.” Her case was supposed to go to trial on Oct. 16, but German authorities instead decided to drop the case, apparently fearful that a trial would prove embarrassing. Born in Australia, Michele Renouf lives in London. She is a former model. In recent years has been a documentary filmmaker.

An American Holocaust Museum has opened an exhibition about the death of George Floyd. The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center in Florida … is housing a collection of 45 photographs of individuals reacting to killing of Mr Floyd, the African American choked to death by white police officer in Minneapolis earlier this year. The exhibition is entitled Uprooting Prejudice: Faces of Change, and features images by Minneapolis photographer John Noltner. One portrait features the father of Michael Brown Jr, who was shot dead by a policeman in Missouri in 2014. Lisa Bachman, assistant director of the Holocaust Center, said: “We have produced this so that people can come and look these individuals in the eye.” …

Despite comprising just two percent of the total U.S. population, Jews have always played an outsized role in politics. In the outgoing 116th Congress, nine Jewish members served in the Senate and 27 served in the House of Representatives. Reflective of American Jewish voting patterns overall, every Jewish member of the Senate and 25 members in the House are Democrats or caucus with Democrats … While Congress traditionally does not play a prominent role in foreign policy, support for the State of Israel has long been a bipartisan consensus view.

With just two months remaining on its time in power, the Trump administration is capping its revisions of U.S. Middle East policy with another full-throated show of support for Israel. On Thursday [Nov. 19], Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a series of measures expressly aimed at countering the international movement to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel, also known as BDS. The movement, founded by Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, seeks to use economic pressure to protest Israeli policies in the occupied territories and support Palestinian independence. Israel has already applied strict measures to curtail the movement’s activities within its borders — and now, the country’s efforts are getting a global boost from the Trump administration.

… American voters were therefore given the choice of one government that panders to Israel at the expense of U.S. security or another party that does exactly the same thing … Jewish power in America is for real and it is something that some Jews are not shy about discussing among themselves … Many Americans long to live in a country that is at peace with the world and respectful of the sovereignty of foreign nations. Alas, as long as Israeli interests driven by overwhelming Jewish power in the United States continue to corrupt our institutions that just will not be possible. It is time for all Americans, including Jews, to accept that Israel is a foreign country that must make its own decisions and thereby suffer the consequences.

The United Nations voted overwhelmingly to approve a draft resolution in favor of Palestinian self-determination, with Israel and the United States voting against. The proposal on Thursday in the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee — the committee that deals with human rights and humanitarian affairs — passed 163 to 5, with ten abstentions. Canada, which typically votes alongside Israel in such resolutions, stood with the majority. The resolution emphasized “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine” and “stressed the urgency of achieving without delay an end to the Israeli occupation …” … In addition to Israel and the US, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Nauru also voted against the resolution.

The US Justice Department on Friday declined to extend the parole of Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of spying on America for Israel, and the 66-year-old is now free to travel to the Jewish state. The decision brings to an end a saga that threatened Israel’s close military cooperation with its main ally and created one of the most serious rifts between Jerusalem and Washington in recent decades. Given the high profile nature of Pollard’s case, it is likely that the Justice Department’s decision required an okay from government higher-ups. In setting the ex-spy free, the Trump administration bestowed yet another gift to Israel, which has lobbied for years for Pollard to be allowed to move to the Jewish state. Previous efforts have met fierce resistance from the US justice and intelligence communities.

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https://www.bitchute.com/video/1iOBgjU2skVm/
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https://www.spreaker.com/user/guidetokulchur/the-great-gatsby
Mark Weber joins host Fróði Midjord in this probing look at one of the most influential and enduring of American novels. Although its story is set in the 1920’s “Jazz Age,” The Great Gatsby is uncannily relevant for our age. In this episode of the “Guide to Kulcher” series, Weber explains why F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is not only a brilliant and elegantly crafted work of literature, it’s also important for what it says about American society and the trajectory of American history. Runtime: 85 mins. Many more people are familiar with film versions than with the book, especially the glittery, sprawling adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and the mellower version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. But these screen adaptations fail to convey the novel’s deeper social-cultural message.

This site has been warning for months that Donald Trump might launch a military attack against Iran — and meantime, the mainstream press mostly ignored the danger. We were right, and they were wrong. The New York Times reported [Nov. 16] that last Thursday, Trump asked senior advisers if he could militarily strike at Iran’s nuclear program, but the officials, including Vice President Mike Pence and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talked him out of it … In recent months the U.S. and Israel have waged a clandestine sabotage campaign inside Iran, including destroying power plants, aluminum and chemical factories, a medical clinic and seven ships at the port of Bushehr. The people facing “global threats” are not “Mr. Trump,” but the people of Iran. The Times also downplayed the Israel angle.

[ Text of address given in London, England, and, slightly modified, in Guadalajara, Mexico ] … As long as the power of what Desmond Tutu calls “the very powerful” Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system and the American media, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace. That’s why no task is more important or pressing than to identify, counter and break this power.

Almost two years since the president declared that U.S. forces would be leaving Syria, American troops are still in that country illegally on a mission that has nothing to do with U.S. security. According to outgoing Syria envoy James Jeffrey, U.S. officials have been playing a “shell game” with troops numbers to conceal how many American forces remained there, and he said that there are a “lot more” than 200 troops operating in Syria now. The conduct Jeffrey describes isn’t all that surprising when we remember how desperate Syria hawks and the military have been to keep U.S. forces in Syria no matter what, but it is remarkable that he would admit this deception publicly … The U.S. has wasted vast resources in its attempt to “shape” the Middle East to its liking over the last thirty years, and it was all for nothing.

… It gets worse every four years, despite the narrowing of any “policy” differences between the two parties over recent decades. If anything, presidential votes are overwhelmingly about tribal affiliations with our kind of person, not substantive ideology … Few of us feel optimistic about America’s future … Regardless of how the election turns out, it’s obvious America is not much of a country anymore, much less a nation. The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can get to work asserting the principles of federalism, subsidiarity, nullification, and even secession. None of the current frictions will get better over time, but they can get much worse … Addressing the reality of our dysfunction is not divisive; the divide already exists. Our task is to apprehend this and end the charade of one nation.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the U.S. will regard the Palestinian-led boycott movement as “anti-Semitic” and cut off government support for any organizations taking part in it, a step that could deny funding to Palestinian and international human rights groups. Pompeo announced the initiative during a visit to Israel … “We will regard the global, anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,” Pompeo said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “We will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw U.S. government support for such groups,” he said …

The United States government will formally designate the anti-Israel boycott movement “anti-Semitic” and immediately start cracking down on groups affiliated with it, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Thursday during a visit to Israel, calling BDS a “cancer.” “Today I want to make one announcement with respect to a decision by the State Department that we will regard the global anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,” he said, standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a joint statement … BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, is not a registered organization but rather a term for a worldwide movement of pro-Palestinian activists who embrace economic sanctions against Israel as the best nonviolent means to fight what they consider unjust policies of the government in Jerusalem.

… The facts are unbelievable. The U.S. Congress passed special legislation that requires the United States to hold a “consultation” with its ostensible ward, Israel, before signing arms deals in the Middle East. In other words, Israel has something close to veto power over America, rather than the opposite … Which is the superpower, and which the ward? Where did this madness come from that allows Israel to thwart arms deals between other countries? German submarines to Egypt? That depends on Israel’s approval … That is how powerful the Israeli and Jewish lobby in Washington is … According to Israel, only it has the right to arm itself with every possible or impossible weapon in the world. In contrast, it has demanded in advance that the imaginary Palestinian state, which will never arise, be completely disarmed.

The United States hit Iran with new sanctions on Wednesday, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the case that undoing the actions of the Trump administration would be foolish and dangerous. The Treasury and State departments announced they had targeted a leading Iranian charity and numerous of its affiliates for human rights violations. At the same time, Pompeo released a statement titled “The Importance of Sanctions on Iran,” which argued that the Trump administration’s moves against Iran made the world safer and should not be reversed … The administration seeks to ramp up pressure on Iran before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Biden has said he wants to return to the rapprochement with Iran that started in the Obama administration but was ended by outgoing President Donald Trump.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting to erase the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan from Chinese history according to a report this weekend by human rights magazine Bitter Winter … “During the past month, fourteen stone tablets summarizing the life story of Genghis Khan and his achievements were painted over or destroyed in Genghis Khan Square in the Hailar district of Hulun Buir prefecture-level city, in Inner Mongolia. Protests of the local population were ignored,” Bitter Winter revealed … The History Museum of Nantes, France abruptly canceled a long-planned Genghis Khan exhibit on October 13 after the Chinese Cultural Affairs Bureau demanded that the museum alter the exhibition’s title, removing the words “Genghis Khan,” “empire,” and “Mongol.”

A museum in France has decided to postpone an exhibition featuring Genghis Khan, legendary leader of the ancient Mongol empire, after Chinese authorities demanded a change in the title and complete access to exhibit descriptions … On 13 October, the museum suddenly announced that the exhibition was cancelled. It said that authorities of the Chinese Cultural Affairs Bureau wanted to change the exhibition’s title, taking out the words “Genghis Khan,” “empire” and “Mongol”. Bertrand Guillet, Director of the museum, said in a statement that the Chinese also wanted “control over all our productions, texts, maps, the catalogue, press releases.” An edit, proposed by Beijing “included biased rewriting aimed at completely erasing Mongolian history and culture in favor of a new national narrative,” according to Guillet.

… There is a tendency to sentimentalize our relationships with allies, clients, and partners by claiming them as our “friends.” There are no friendships between states. There may be better or worse relationships, and there may be friendly working relationships between individual leaders, but it isn’t possible for governments to have friends, and it is a mistake to think of our ties to other countries in these terms … Catering to the whims of Saudi Arabia is the chief example of this error, but the same goes for U.S. relations with Egypt, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. There are no formal treaties that oblige the U.S. to defend these countries, and they are likewise under no obligation to aid the U.S. These relationships are nothing like our treaty alliances, but they are routinely described and defended in this way.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he made no distinction between Democrats and Republicans and intended to stand up for Israel’s interests in the face of a new American administration. The Israeli leader has been trying to sound a message of bipartisanship since Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Netanyahu’s close friend, Donald Trump, in last week’s presidential election … “What I see before my eyes is not Democrats and not Republicans. It is just the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said in a speech to parliament. “I am committed to stand behind the interests that are crucial to our future and our existence and this is how I will continue even with the next American administration.”

Four years after signing the now-infamous “Never Trump” letter condemning then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a danger to America, retiring diplomat Jim Jeffrey is recommending that the incoming Biden administration stick with Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East. But even as he praises the president’s support of what he describes as a successful “realpolitik” approach to the region, he acknowledges that his team routinely misled senior leaders about troop levels in Syria. “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.

… There were a number of anti-Nazi films during and even before U.S. entry into the war. But the attitude of the motion picture community to Communism and the Soviet Union was quite different. The Boy from Stalingrad (1943), Song of Russia (1944), and other productions informed Americans of the happy life led by the citizens of the Marxist utopia, and of their death-defying resistance to the German invaders … The Longest Day [1962] gives the impression to the easily impressionable and historically clueless (the vast majority) that the Second World War was won on the western front, principally by the United States and Britain.

… After reading Hollywood Goes to War, one cannot help but come away with the impression that the movie industry and various government agencies were very much in the propaganda business before and during World War II … In 1939 Warner Brothers premiered Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which claimed in melodramatic fashion that Germany sought to conquer the entire globe … In 1943 Warner Brothers premiered Mission to Moscow, based on the book of the same name by Joseph E. Davies, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. The authors of Hollywood Goes to War characterize this picture as the “most notorious example of propaganda in the guise of entertainment ever produced by Hollywood.”

… In recent months, Nazi memorabilia was stolen from several war museums in Denmark and the Netherlands. Thieves made off with mannequins dressed in Nazi uniforms, in one instance blocking off a major roadway and evading the police … The thieves escaped with some 20 artifacts — including three mannequins, one in Hitler Youth attire and another in an SS uniform. Per Monopol magazine, the SS uniform is estimated to be worth around 200,000 kroner, or $31,400. The thieves, who remain unknown, may have been inspired by an earlier, more ambitious robbery at the Eyewitness Museum in Beek, in the Netherlands … Authorities in Holland told The Times they believe the thefts were either commissioned by wealthy collectors in Russia or Eastern Europe or were committed by members of far right groups.

War museums across the Netherlands are scrambling to tighten their security after raids by highly organised thieves targeting memorabilia linked to Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS and other parts of the Nazi regime. Amid huge global demand for second world war memorabilia, museums in Ossendrecht, in north Brabant, and in Beek, Limburg, have been ransacked in recent [October] days and months … “SS uniforms, daggers, helmets, emblems, caps, parachutes, firearms, binoculars, you name it. There’s nothing left. The firearm is very rare, but I was able to display it in this museum. [It was all] German stuff, they didn’t take anything from the allies. A French corner, English, Canadian: all intact. German material, especially clothing, is rare.”

Weeks after a federal complaint alleged an anti-Semitic climate at the University of Illinois, the university announced it would work with Jewish groups to improve conditions for Jews and pro-Israel students on campus. The campus in Champaign-Urbana, home to 34,000 undergraduates and some 3,000 Jewish undergraduate students, was recently the subject of a legal complaint asking the US Education Department to investigate a “hostile environment of anti-Semitism.” The complaint cited multiple instances of swastika graffiti, vandalism at Jewish centers and harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students … Now, the school’s administration has signed a joint statement along with the federation, the school’s Hillel and Chabad and other groups promising to do more to address anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism at the school.

Iranian newspapers from across the political spectrum – reformist, centrist, conservative and hardline – closely tracked the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The papers differed in their coverage based on their ideological leaning. Reformist and centrist outlets covered former Vice President Joe Biden’s projected victory as a major turning point in U.S.-Iran relations. “America’s New Chapter” read a front-page headline in Aftab-e Yazd, a reformist newspaper. Conservative and hardline papers focused instead on President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election and his claims of widespread voter fraud.

A new senior adviser at the Pentagon repeatedly said the United States’ support for Israel was the result of “Israeli lobby” money, and accused prominent officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, of becoming “very very rich,” from their support for Israel. Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, who was appointed as senior adviser to newly installed acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller this week, made the comments in two media appearances in 2012 and 2019 … “Mr. Bolton has become very, very rich and is in the position he’s in because of his unconditional support for the Israeli lobby.” … An outspoken critic of American foreign policy and “endless” wars, Macgregor also said the Israel lobby has “enormous influence” on Congress and accused the lobby of wanting to instigate “military strikes” with Iran …

Senior U.S. Defense official Douglas Macgregor, who was recently installed at the Pentagon by partisan loyalists of President Donald Trump, has come under fire for saying that American politicians become “very, very rich” by supporting Israel, with pro-Israeli organizations calling his remarks “antisemitic.” … Macgregor, a retired Army Col., went even further than Omar, bluntly claiming that politicians who support Israel are only driven by money, and that the pro-Israeli lobby in the U.S. is trying to drag America into war … He added that AIPAC has “enormous quantities of money that over many years have cultivated an enormous influence in power in Congress.”

… United States support for Israel did not come about because Americans are markedly more intelligent, humane or enlightened than, say, Norwegians, Japanese or Irish. No, the US-Israel alliance is, rather, a consequence, a result, of the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political and cultural life. Awareness of this fact is growing everywhere … By supporting Israel and its policies, the United States betrays not only its own national interests, but the principles it claims to embody and defend … In the years to come, the cost of the US alliance with Israel is certain to rise much more. As some Jewish leaders have openly acknowledged, the Iraq war is merely part of a long-range effort to install Israel-friendly regimes across the Middle East.

At least 425 homicides have occurred in Philadelphia so far this year — the highest annual sum in 25 years. The last time Philadelphia saw as many victims killed at the hands of another in one year was in 1996 with 420 homicides, and 1995 with 432 homicides, according to Philadelphia police statistics. As of Monday, the Philadelphia Police Department has recorded more than 1,900 gunshot victims, 377 of which were fatal. With more than a month and a half left in 2020, breaking an all-time high of 500 homicides isn’t out of reach, according to authorities.

… The 1846 U.S. invasion of Mexico – popularly, if misleadingly, dubbed the Mexican-American War – must rate as an acute pivot point in the young nation’s history … The successful conquest and significant annexation of a Western nation-state – a fellow republic at that – constituted a no-turning-back moment for a self-declared “democratic beacon.” … The American Army’s invasion of Mexico was justified by a lie, overtly aggressive, and unnecessary. In that sense it bore striking resemblance to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Absent an unexpected showing of significant electoral fraud, Joe Biden will become America’s next president. The government of the world’s most powerful nation will be directed by a decrepit lifetime politician known for his often exquisitely bad judgment and almost complete lack of creative thinking … He [Biden] likely will continue a foreign policy which presumes that it is Washington’s duty to reorder and uplift the globe, irrespective of the cost in American lives and wealth … To Trump’s credit he did not start any new wars … Trump’s greatest failing, though, was being a rhetorical president, allowing those around him to sustain the interventionist status quo in practice. Although he had some good instincts, he lacked the attention span, interest, knowledge, and commitment to follow through and end even one war.

… In Britain we remember the great crusade against the Nazis as our finest hour. But as the historian Keith Lowe shows in an extraordinary, disturbing and powerful new book, Savage Continent, it is time we thought again about the way the war ended. For millions of people across the Continent, he argues, VE Day marked not the end of a bad dream, but the beginning of a new nightmare … In Prague, captured German soldiers were ‘beaten, doused in petrol and burned to death’. In the city’s sports stadium, Russian and Czech soldiers gang-raped German women.

… Despite the unquestionable justness of the Allies in seeking victory and defeating the Axis powers during World War Two, there is no denying that at times the liberating forces of supposed good crossed the line into monstrosity themselves … Some such instances, like the bombing of Dresden in 1945, remain a topic of considerable moral debate while other atrocities have become lost to popular memory and consigned to the annals of history. Here are 20 atrocities committed by the Allies during the Second World War that have been largely forgotten, but definitely should not be …

The United Arab Emirates bid to purchase F-35 multirole stealth aircraft caused a firestorm among Israel lobby operatives, pundits and congressional fellow travelers. They say the US has an obligation to maintain Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge” if not Israel’s “Qualitative AND Quantitative Military Edge.” … Their latest solution for maintaining QME therefore involves giving Israel veto power over such US arms sales … Since then, Israel has continued to be the Middle East’s leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation … Publicly known cumulative US foreign assistance (excluding intelligence support and other covert funding) to Israel is on track to reach $295 billion in 2020.

… Tensions are rising between the U.S. and China, as the list of ideological, political and economic clashes continues to lengthen. And there is a transparent new reality: China seems in no mood to back down … Xi makes no apology for – indeed, he is proud of – using state power to impose the state ideology upon the peoples he rules, and he openly repudiates our democratic values as inapplicable in his country. Our rejection of China’s claims to virtually all of the reefs and atolls in the South China Sea is also being ignored. Beijing’s warnings grow louder and more pointed as the U.S. continues to send warships, the latest being the USS John McCain, close to islets claimed by China. What is our strategy here? Are we prepared for a naval and air clash in these waters? What would be the U.S. strategic goal?

The outdated notion that China “just wants to do business” should be completely erased from our understanding of the rising global power’s political outlook. Simply put, Beijing has long realized that, in order for it to sustain its economic growth unhindered, it has to develop the necessary tools to protect itself, its allies and their combined interests … The US’ growing isolationism and failed leadership at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic have been Xi’s perfect opportunity for this new China debut. The world is changing before our eyes. In the coming years, we are likely to, once more, speak of a bipolar – or, possibly, tri-polar – world, one in which Washington and its allies no longer shape the world for their benefit. In some way, China is well on its way to reclaim its new status.

… In The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination, [British historian Richard] Evans clinically dissects and demolishes not only the baseless but persistent claims that Hitler survived the bunker, but a series of other myths which continue to swirl around Nazi Germany …The historian is, for instance, not convinced that Hitler ever actually read the “Protocols.” His private library of more than 16,000 books didn’t contain the “Protocols” … Likewise, the conspiracy theory developed by the Communists – that the Nazis had themselves set fire to the German parliament and pinned the blame on the hapless van der Lubbe in order to do away with their opponents – was also a lie … But the theory of a Nazi “false flag” operation continues to persist, and is one backed by some reputable historians.

One of the most enduring myths of our age is the story that the Nazis set the Reichstag building on fire as a “false flag” operation to generate popular support for measures of the Hitler government to suppress dissent and consolidate power. Even some prominent historians have accepted the often-repeated smear, which was invented and vigorously promoted by Communists, that Goering and other Nazi officials set the German parliament building ablaze on Feb. 27, 1933, and then cynically blamed the crime on enemies.

… Thus was born one of the great myths of modern history — that the Nazis set fire to their own Parliament to provide an excuse for curbing the activities of the Communists … The trial of Van der Lubbe and the other suspects should have dispelled any suspicion of Nazi guilt. It was a scrupulously fair trial which resulted in the acquittal of all the defendants except Van der Lubbe himself … When considering the facts, it seems incredible that the myth of Nazi responsibility for firing the Reichstag could ever have been accepted at all. Yet it was, and by reputable historians …

Palm Beach County [Florida] School Board members voted unanimously Tuesday to terminate former Spanish River High Principal William Latson from his administrative school district job, a little more than a year after their first vote to fire him from his principal position. The veteran administrator was ousted in October 2019 after telling a parent he “can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee.” Latson appealed, and an administrative law judge sided with him, concluding in August that Latson’s action did not merit termination. But board members on Tuesday rejected the judge’s recommendation, adopting a final order in the case that maintains Latson’s actions did merit termination.

As Joe Biden preps to become the nation’s second Catholic president, the president-elect also has deep Jewish roots within his extended family. Biden, 77, who regularly attends church near his home in Wilmington, Delaware, has been vocal about his Catholic upbringing, but all of his children grew up to marry Jewish spouses, the Jewish Chronicle reports. Hallie Olivere, the widow of Biden’s late son Beau, became Joe Biden’s first Jewish daughter-in-law when the pair got hitched in 2002. The president-elect knew Olivere’s mother, Joan, since childhood and once joked that as a child he would’ve liked to have married her.

The Iranian media was transfixed by the U.S. election, with more than a dozen newspapers covering the race largely from their own ideological perspective – reformist, centrist, conservative or hardline. Conservative and hardline papers focused on the confusion surrounding the result … Right-wing outlets displayed images of street violence after President Trump refused to concede. “Cheating, chaos and street war” read a front-page headline in Kayhan, the most hardline paper … Reformist and centrist papers instead focused on the election’s potential impact on U.S.-Iran relations. “Can Biden cause a victory for reformists in 2021?” Shargh, a reformist newspaper, asked …

No matter who wins the election, Americans should not expect to see a heightened sense of national unity or higher levels of satisfaction with the political system in the months to come … Polling numbers point to a decades-long slide in trust of political institutions and a popular perception of dysfunction in Washington. Only 20% of respondents now say that they trust the federal government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time,” down from a peak of 77% in the early 1960s … Only 18% report high levels of confidence in television news — about half of what that figure averaged in the 1990s … Pew’s long-term study of political values shows a dramatic rise in polarization from 1994 to 2017 …

… Apparently they’re not familiar with the election-theft case of Lyndon Johnson, who would go on to become president of the United States … Johnson election theft took place in 1948, when he was running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate against Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, one of the most admired and respected governors in the history of the state … So, Lyndon Johnson stole the election and ended up going to Washington as Texas’ U.S. Senator. Ironically, if Stevenson had become the state’s senator instead, Johnson would never have been selected to be John Kennedy’s vice-presidential running mate and, consequently, would never have been president.

Students are paying a higher price tag for college, but is the quality of their education also increasing, or at least staying stable? … In 2003, the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy found that only 31 percent of college graduates scored at “the proficient level” of reading. That number was 9 percentage points higher in 1992. Of the 2003 college graduates, 53 percent scored at the “intermediate level” and 14 percent scored at the “basic level.” … In 2008, 57 percent of college graduates failed a civic literacy exam put out by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. And a 2013 Gallup and Lumina Foundation poll found that only 11 percent of business leaders believed that college graduates are prepared for the workforce.

… It’s a dark day for Israel: Donald Trump has lost the election. No other country in the world, with the possible exception of the Philippines or Nebraska, was as saddened by his fall … Whereas 75 percent of West Europeans are fed up with the U.S. president, in Israel a large majority – including centrists and some leftists – admires him … Israel admires Trump not despite his many repellent shortcomings but because of them. Trump is the embodiment of everything that’s bad and ugly about Israel … Trump is the embodiment of Israel the unbeautiful; he could easily be elected prime minister. The vulgarity, coarseness, belligerence, ignorance, scheming and lies; the contempt for the weak, for the law, for justice, the media, science and the environment – all this fits us like a glove.

The legacy of Britain’s wartime leader, Sir Winston Churchill, is reported to have been under review at the Imperial War Museum, in the latest blow against British history amid the iconoclastic Black Lives Matter unrest. Churchill has long been a target of ire for the radical leftist movement, which has accused the man credited with defeating Nazi Germany of being racist and a colonialist … Black Lives Matter has targeted a swath of historical figures in Britain, including Admiral Lord Nelson, who has long been a target of leftists in the country … The majority of the British public, however, is against Black Lives Matter’s push to demonise British history … On the question of Sir Winston Churchill, 80 per cent responded that his statue in Parliament Square should not be removed …

… In a last minute reversal, German prosecutors and a district court judge in Dresden have ended their criminal case against Lady Michèle Renouf, terminating a 32-month process, days before it was to come to trial. Having arrested and charged Lady Renouf in 2018 immediately after her impromptu speech at a commemoration in Dresden, German prosecutors opened proceedings a year later under Germany’s notorious §130 Volksverhetzung law alleging “public incitement” … “This decision was extraordinary – almost sensational”, says Wolfram Nahrath, Lady Renouf’s German attorney, who points out that such an acquittal of the charges in a ‘Holocaust’-related trial is a first in Germany. The German authorities did not want to take the risk of putting Lady Renouf on trial …

… The survey is based on the premise that detailed knowledge of the so-called holocaust should be an essential part of everyone’s education. Currently, twelve states already require holocaust instruction in their public school curricula, though that includes five of the six biggest states, and recently passed federal legislation will eventually fund holocaust education everywhere in the U.S. But, of course, the real back story that one must not mention is that the standard holocaust narrative is at least as much fiction as fact and it is employed regularly to create special benefits and protections for both Jews in general and also for the State of Israel. That is why the usual sources in the media become outraged whenever it seems that the propaganda is not effective.

… It is no wonder that we have no accountability in foreign policy when foreign policy plays such a small part in the process of selecting a president … Biden’s foreign policy record is hardly awe-inspiring, and at different points he has taken some awful and misguided positions. His vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq is well-known, and it stands out as the worst decision in his career … The U.S. will continue to exhaust itself in unnecessary wars and unwise security commitments as long as leaders in both parties believe that U.S. global hegemony and dominance are beyond question.

Journalists from around the world who report to their countries on the US, provide perspectives on America, especially during this year’s Presidential election, that are not often heard in the mainstream US media.

… If Joe Biden becomes our 46th president, the tenure of office of this visibly frail and enfeebled leader is likely to be among the more abbreviated in American history, and bereft of high achievement … Bottom line: Joe Biden is not going to be the “transformational” president of his imagining. Nor is he going to be the “most progressive president since Roosevelt” as some Democrats have been promising. And the reasons are obvious … Biden has no such mandate and no such power base, and he lacks the natural gifts of FDR. Sorry, but there is no new “Era of Good Feelings” in store for America. To the contrary.

Google Play banned the third-party app BitChute this week, which was promoted as a “free speech” alternative to YouTube that has become a safe haven for neo-Nazis, hosting racist, violent and anti-Semitic videos that are later posted on social media. Google suspended the app, stating that it is in violation of its affiliate spam policy, although BitChute denies this claim, tweeting a photo of Google’s notification. The U.K.-based video platform was set up in January 2017 by tech entrepreneur Ray Vahey and Richard Anthony Jones. It has become a platform used by alt-right groups, with UK-based Community Security Trust (CST) finding it to be one of the four most dangerous outlets of extreme anti-Semitic content on the Internet.

Iran’s supreme leader has mocked the rancorous aftermath of election day in the United States, saying that the vote has exposed the reality of US democracy … “What a spectacle!” supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted late Wednesday. “One says this is the most fraudulent election in US history. Who says that? The president who is currently in office. His rival says Trump intends to rig the election! This is how #USElections & US democracy are.” The deepening polarisation of US politics since Trump’s surprise election victory four years ago has drawn expressions of concern even from Western allies, with Germany warning of a “very explosive situation” in the aftermath of the poll.

An Icelandic company has plunged the country’s publishing industry into a debate about censorship with its plan to publish a 1976 book that argues the Holocaust is a hoax. The book, an Icelandic-language translation of “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry” by Arthur Butz, is being advertised online ahead of its launch in the coming weeks, in time for the Christmas shopping period, the news site Visir reported Wednesday. Separately, the city of Malmo in Sweden last week suspended its ties to an association called the Arab Book Fair, which puts on events across Europe. The suspension follows the flagging of anti-Semitic literature at previous fairs and on the fair’s website, the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote in a statement. Denying the Holocaust is not illegal in Iceland …

A complaint filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleges that Jewish students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “faced an unrelenting campaign of anti-Semitic harassment.” A Friday statement announcing the complaint said that Jewish and pro-Israel students in the past five years “have been subjected to an alarming increase in anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism,” and that the university did not take adequate action … A summary of the complaint, originally filed in March, detailed a number of incidents where swastikas were found on campus and Jewish buildings and ritual items were vandalized. It also included events that displayed virulent anti-Israel rhetoric, which it said made campus inhospitable for Jewish and pro-Israel students.

U.S. President Donald Trump received the highest percent of the Jewish vote for a Republican in decades, while former Vice President Joe Biden hit a new low for a Democratic candidate in recent years, according to a poll released on Wednesday. Trump received 30.5 percent of the Jewish vote, while Biden got 60.6 percent, according to a Republican Jewish Coalition survey conducted by Basswood Research and McLaughlin & Associates. According to the RJC poll, Biden’s share of the Jewish vote was the lowest for any Democratic presidential candidate since 1988, while Trump is the highest since that same election.

… No matter who wins, can this nation come together again? And if it cannot — a real possibility — what form will America take as it disintegrates? … Suburban residents, fearful that the urban mobs may one day be coming for them, were stockpiling guns and ammunition … Today, we are divided over ideology, morality, culture, race and history. We are divided over whether America is the great nation we were raised to revere and love or a nation born in great sins and crimes — such as the near annihilation of indigenous peoples and their cultures and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Black peoples from Africa … In this divided country, at times, Americans seem to detest each other. Indeed, if the United States did not exist as one nation, would this diverse people ever agree to form a compact to come together, or would we seek to retain our separate identities?

… This election has produced a result where it is abundantly clear that half of the electorate voted to oust the other half … All the usual tired bromides about democratic elections should be more clear than ever. There is no “will of the majority.” The winner doesn’t represent “the nation.” There is no consensus. We’re not coming together “as a people.” These tired slogans should now strike every intelligent person as nonsense … Until dissenters from the zeitgeist can assert far greater control through cultural institutions, publications, and schools, the nation’s ideology will continue in the direction it’s already moving. National elections are now referenda on the current speed at which the nation moves in that direction. But the direction itself is not up for debate.

A committee at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday passed with overwhelming majorities a series of resolutions critical of Israel, lambasting the Jewish state, among other things, for ostensible human rights violations against Palestinians and “repressive measures” against Syrians in the Golan Heights … The resolution in support of UNRWA passed with 153 yes votes. Only two countries — Israel and the US — voted against, and 12 countries abstained … The resolution he was referring to, entitled “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” was adopted by a majority of 138–9, with 16 abstentions. A resolution decrying Israel’s “repressive measures against the population of the occupied Syrian Golan” passed 142–2, with 19 abstentions.

The European Union has called on Israel to cease demolishing Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and lift a threat to demolish Palestinian schools, calling them “an impediment towards the two-state solution”. The statement, issued by the spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, came two days after Israeli bulldozers razed a Bedouin village near Tubas in the Jordan Valley, leaving its nearly 80 inhabitants homeless … “The EU calls for the protection of children, including ensuring their right to education in a safe and secure school environment,” the statement said, noting that education is a basic human right. “The EU reiterates its call on Israel to halt all such demolitions, including of EU-funded structures, in particular in light of the humanitarian impact of the current coronavirus pandemic,” it said.

The European Union and the United Nations have condemned the Israeli demolition of a Palestinian community in the Jordan Valley on Tuesday, which rendered around 73 Palestinians — including 41 children — homeless … “The EU reiterates its call on Israel to halt all such demolitions, including of EU-funded structures, in particular in light of the humanitarian impact of the current coronavirus pandemic,” the spokesperson said. … Khirbet Humsa’s Palestinian residents, however, rejected the court’s claim, telling The Times of Israel that they have lived in the area their entire lives … The United Nations also condemned the demolition of Khirbet Humsa as a violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.

In theory, Europe and the United States stand on completely opposite sides when it comes to the Israeli occupation of Palestine … In practice, however, despite the seeming rift between Washington and Brussels, the outcome is, essentially, the same. The US and Europe are Israel’s largest trade partners, weapon suppliers and political advocates … Not only did the EU fail to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing occupation and human rights violations, it is practically financing Israel, as well … While Washington is openly pro-Israel, the EU has played a more clever game: selling Palestinians empty words while selling Israel lethal weapons.

In the only relatively credible survey I’ve seen here in the run-up to Tuesday’s US presidential vote, 70% of Israeli Jews and 63% of all Israelis told pollsters from the Israel Democracy Institute that “from the standpoint of Israel’s interests,” Donald Trump is the “preferable” presidential candidate. On the Israeli Jewish right, the figures were a vast 82%-6% for Trump over Joe Biden; in the center 62%-16%; even on the left, Biden could only manage a 40-40 split with Trump. Those findings stand in stark contrast to several polls ahead of the 2016 elections, in which Israelis favored Hillary Clinton over Trump. Indeed, the IDI’s figures, released late Monday, show a marked rise in appreciation for Trump even since its last such poll in June …

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday expressed his hope that America’s current Middle East policy would continue to hold sway in the years to come. Speaking at a press conference in Ramat Gan, Netanyahu told JNS that strong bipartisan support for Israel was among the foundations of the U.S.-Israel alliance, which “has never been stronger.” Under U.S. President Donald Trump, said Netanyahu, the United States has “isolated Iran, confronted its aggression, recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognized our sovereignty over the Golan Heights, [and] extended scientific and technological cooperations into Judea and Samaria.”

Americans are bracing for an election day unlike any in US history, overshadowed by a direct threat from Donald Trump of “violence on the streets” if the vote count is not cut short, stoking fears that democracy itself is at stake when the polls close on Tuesday night. The president’s incendiary tweet, which was quickly labelled by Twitter as potentially misleading, was fired off amid a febrile atmosphere on the last night of his campaign, with reports of mobs of his supporters driving around the streets in flag-waving motorcades seeking to intimidate opponents, while business districts in major cities boarded up windows … The dark warnings from the president marked the conclusion of a campaign that was in many ways unprecedented.

Judging by the plywood, it’s shaping up to be an Election Day like no other. In downtown Washington, the sounds of hammers and power tools echoed through the streets Monday as workers boarded up dozens of businesses. In New York City, businesses from Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square to high-end shops in Manhattan’s chic SoHo neighborhood had already covered their windows. Similar scenes played out in Denver and St. Paul, Minnesota, with business owners fearing that Tuesday’s election could lead to the sort of unrest that broke out earlier this year. Just a short walk from the White House, construction workers were carrying large sheets of plywood. For block after block, most stores had their windows and doors covered.

The National Guard is gearing up to activate across the country to support the Nov. 3 general election in several capacities. The missions range from assisting with cyber defense, working the polls, and standing-by in case of post-election civil unrest. There was a new round of newly-disclosed Guard activations Monday, including 1,000 troops in Massachusetts, 300 in Arizona, 300 in Alabama, and an undisclosed number in Florida, Oregon and Illinois. The Massachusetts and Oregon troops will be on standby in case of civil unrest, and the Arizona forces will be on stand-by for rapid deployment anywhere in the western portion of the nation if requested by any governor. National Guard officials in Illinois would not elaborate on the roles their newly activated troops would play.

… The self-proclaimed “King of Debt” currently in the Oval Office will long be known as the father of America’s fiscal demise … The Donald has not remotely created the greatest economy ever. The US was a debt- and speculation-entombed economy when he took the oath of office, and he only made it far worse — even before the coronavirus lockdowns sent it reeling … The larger point is that Trump’s wholehearted embrace of sheer fiscal and monetary madness has not only left the nation spiraling toward the Mother of all Financial Disasters, but he has also finally euthanized what remained of GOP fiscal rectitude … There is no apparent political route to restoring sustainable public finances.

… Israel might be the true undisputed winner in the 2020 election even though it was not on the ballot and was hardly mentioned at all during the campaign. Jewish billionaires with close ties to Israel have been courted by the two major parties, both to come up with contributions and to urge their friends in the oligarch club and media to also respond favorably. The Democrats’ largest single donor is entertainment mogul Haim Saban, while the Republicans rely on casino multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson. It is estimated that 60% of the political contributions for the Democrats comes from Jewish sources, and Saban is the single largest contributor … In truth, the United States has become Israel’s bitch and there is hardly a politician or journalist who has the courage to say so.

A factual, reasoned 16-minute talk on the immense power and influence of the “Jewish lobby” in the US, and its harmful role, especially in directing US Middle East policy. As long as this power remains entrenched, says Weber, there will be no end to the Jewish-Zionist domination of American political life and the mass media, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the Israeli threat to peace, and the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East.

… Politics today has become something not seen in our history. The true tragedy is that many Americans have bought into the hate, destructiveness and plain nastiness, and are seemingly ignorant or uncaring about its long-term consequences for our nation …The bottom-line question is whether our nation can survive the divisions that we see today. Too many people want to blame it all on Trump. How much blame can be put on Trump for the riots, looting and, as Axios estimated, the close to $2 billion in losses from property destruction? What about the murder and shooting of civilians and law enforcement officers?

Americans have bought nearly 17 million guns so far in 2020, more than in any other single year, according to estimates from a firearms analytics company. Gun sales across the United States first jumped in the spring, driven by fears about the coronavirus pandemic, and spiked even higher in the summer, during massive racial justice protests across the country, prompted by police killings of black Americans … While there is no hard data on how many Americans bought a gun for the first time this year, advocates across the political spectrum say they believe that many of the guns sold in 2020 went to new gun owners. Fears about lawlessness and government instability drove many people to purchase firearms, according to a recent survey of California residents …

… Should Joe Biden win, he would be, on Jan. 20, 2021, the oldest and most visibly enfeebled leader to win the presidency in the history of the republic, with the possible exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 19. Biden would have to deal with an economy that, if the stock market remains a reliable lead indicator, may be tanking anew even as the COVID-19 epidemic consumes a thousand American lives daily. And foreign policy, that lost issue of the campaign of 2020, will be clamoring anew for the president’s attention. In the Asia-Pacific region, China is increasingly defiant of the U.S. and openly applying military pressure upon Taiwan, matching U.S. arms sales to the island with ever more direct threats.

The defining event of this post-Covid era (whomsoever wins in the U.S. elections), will likely be the U.S. de-coupling from China – Tech de-coupling of telecoms (from Huawei’s 5G); de-coupling from Chinese media and chat platforms; the purging of all China tech from the U.S. microchip ecosystem; the disconnecting of China from internet, from app stores, from undersea cables; and from access to U.S. cloud-based data storage systems … This is not Cold War, but a reversion to an earlier era that then ended with hot war [1914-1918] – when policy-makers (and markets) famously failed to appreciate the rising danger that was accreting …

The Arizona State Board of Education has voted to make learning about the Holocaust and other genocides a requirement for middle and high school students across the state, mirroring proposed legislation that failed. The board has added these subjects to the minimum course of study and competency goals and graduation requirements for Arizona students, KJZZ-FM reported. Previously, these subjects were part of the board’s History and Social Science standards. “We don’t have that much time left with our Holocaust survivors and to do something like this to enshrine their powerful message — both of history and what happened — but also of hope to making sure that it never happens again, I think is one of the most important things that the board can do,” Democratic state Rep. Aaron Lieberman said at the board meeting Monday.

A Florida principal who told a parent he “can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event” was fired Monday for the second time, with the school board reversing a decision from last month to rehire him. William Latson made the comments to a parent in 2018, and was later removed from the Boca Raton high school where he had been principal. In October 2019, the school board voted 5-2 to fire him, citing not just the comments, but Latson’s refusal to answer questions about them … Palm Beach County is heavily Jewish, and Spanish River Community High School, which Latson led, has many Jewish students.

… If the intended effect of the taboo on Holocaust denial is to suppress it, the actual effect is to arouse suspicion: why are deniers being muzzled if the evidence incontrovertibly belies their claims? … The more the taboos multiply, the more the Nazi holocaust is unmoored from time and space and is reduced to an object of idolatry. … Many basic questions regarding the Final Solution have not yet been resolved; indeed, controversy still swirls around when it began and why Hitler implemented it … If the integrity of the Jewish people’s martyrdom has been traduced, it’s overwhelmingly due, not to Holocaust deniers, but the machinations of Jewish organizations that have exploited the Nazi holocaust for financial and political gain.

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.

Robert Fisk, a veteran Middle East correspondent for The Independent and the most celebrated journalist of his era, has died after an illness. He was 74. Fisk was renowned for his courage in questioning official narratives from governments and publishing what he uncovered in frequently brilliant prose … Christian Broughton, editor of The Independent until last week and now managing director, said: “Fearless, uncompromising, determined and utterly committed to uncovering the truth and reality at all costs, Robert Fisk was the greatest journalist of his generation.” … Much of what Fisk wrote was controversial, something he appeared to savour.

… The 1969 trial of seven leftwing activists for inciting a riot at August 1968’s Democratic National Convention was an intensely Jewish moment in American history. Of the seven activists on trial, three were Jews (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner), and a further two (Tom Hayden and David Dellinger) lived their lives in a heavily Jewish milieu and dedicated themselves to Jewish causes … As The Times of Israel has noted, the film represents a trial bleached of its intensely Jewish qualities. I’ve written previously that the 1960s New Left was indisputably a Jewish subculture … None of this is probed in the film, which altogether dodges the prospect of exploring Jewish radicalism in the New Left … The trial of the Chicago 7, like so much Jewish activism, was essentially a war on civility.