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… China’s model of political and economic development has enjoyed success in this century as an alternative to the Western model of liberal democracy. Beijing does not believe in untrammeled freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press. She does not believe in choosing leaders by the ballot box. China is not an egalitarian society. She does not believe in the equality of all races, religions and ethnic groups. She does not celebrate diversity but fears it, seeing what ethnic diversity did to the Soviet Union, tearing it apart into 15 nations. She does not believe in racial quotas for advancement, but in a meritocracy that rewards loyalty and performance. And Chinese student test scores are among the highest in the world.

China has been running the world’s largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years, driving China’s ever-faster rise as the global superpower. I worry that this poses some existential threat to Western civilization. Yet the most likely result is that America and Europe linger around a few hundred more years as also-rans on the world-historical stage, nursing our anti-hereditarian political correctness to the bitter end. When I learned about Chinese eugenics this summer, I was astonished that its population policies had received so little attention. China makes no secret of its eugenic ambitions, in either its cultural history or its government policies … Chinese biopower has ancient roots in the concept of “yousheng” (“good birth” — which has the same literal meaning as “eugenics”).

In an unusual move, the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania accused a local senior lawmaker of distorting the history of the Holocaust and blaming Jews for it. Robert Gilchrist, who took up the post in February last year, made the accusation following a speech Wednesday by Valdas Rakutis, a member of the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, and chairman of its commission on historical memory. “There was no shortage of Holocaust perpetrators among the Jews themselves, especially in the ghetto self-government structures,” Rakutis said in the speech, which took place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day … Rakutis also said that two wartime collaborators with Nazi Germany, Kazys Škirpa and Jonas Noreika, were not to blame for the fact that more than 95% of Lithuanian Jewry was murdered …

On Wednesday, Mother Jones and NBC News reported that a top Biden national security aide who is an expert on Russian cyber had given over half a million dollars to AIPAC in recent years through a family foundation. And the aide’s husband is on the AIPAC executive council in Baltimore. AIPAC is of course the leading Israel lobby group, which supports everything the rightwing Israeli government does, from persecuting Palestinians to threatening Iran. Mother Jones and NBC questioned Anne Neuberger’s fitness as the deputy national security adviser for cyber on the National Security Council. Well in no time, NBC (and its very professional reporters, Ken Dilanian) came under a hail of criticism including among others AIPAC, other Jewish groups, and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee … NBC folded.

This weekend [March 2018], 18,000 Americans from all over the country are coming to Washington to participate in the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference. AIPAC is one of the leading forces behind the Israel lobby, joined in recent years by the ascending Christians United for Israel. Other Jewish “pro-Israel” organizations are niche affairs, representing particular constituencies on the left or right. But it’s AIPAC that is the registered lobby on Capitol Hill, and it is AIPAC whose clout on matters relating to Israel exceeds the clout of the National Rifle Association on matters related to guns … It’s precisely this kind of overidentification that George Washington warned against in his 1796 farewell address.

The Anti-Defamation League is calling on the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department to conduct an investigation into Gab, the alternative social media outlet which once hosted the antisemitic rants of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, to see whether it had a role in planning the January 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol. “The January 6 attack at our nation’s Capitol was deliberate and coordinated,” the anti-hate organization said in an open letter to the DOJ. “Individuals who broke the law must be held accountable, but we cannot ignore that social media platforms, like Gab, may well bear a measure of criminal responsibility for the attack as well.” … Despite a government crackdown on other social media platforms following the chaos of last week, Gab is actually experiencing a renaissance.

CNN is partnering with the United Nations, UNESCO and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance foor this year’s Holocaust Commemoration Day, on Wednesday January 27. The network has produced two key elements of the UN’s official commemoration, which will be broadcast online by the UN, UNESCO and the IHRA on the day itself. Key speakers at the ceremony include the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres; UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay; and Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. Clarissa Ward, CNN chief international correspondent, interviews author Dr Irene Butter, who survived internment at the notorious Bergen-Belsen camp during World War II. Dr Butter is also joined by her granddaughter for a conversation about finding hope and protecting democracy.

People who search for information about the Holocaust on Facebook will now be prompted to visit a website on the genocide curated by the World Jewish Congress and UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Starting Wednesday [Jan. 27], which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, users will see a box labeled “Learning About the Holocaust” when they search Holocaust terms. Similar boxes with resources pop up after searching about things such as the COVID-19 pandemic and US elections … The box reads. “Learning about the Holocaust can help prevent future genocides and other acts of hatred based on religion, ethnicity or other differences.”

In mid-January, a week before being sworn in as president, Joe Biden announced that he would appoint Anne Neuberger as the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology on the National Security Council … But the glowing reviews left out an unusual piece of her story: In recent years, Neuberger, through a family foundation, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby known as AIPAC, for its efforts to influence the US government and public opinion.

NBC has removed a report about hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, by a top Biden security official’s family foundation, saying the article did not meet its standards. The article, which amplified a report by the left-wing investigative magazine Mother Jones, outlined more than $500,000 in giving to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee by a foundation named for Anne Neuberger, the top Biden cybersecurity official, and her husband Yehuda. The foundation funnels its donations through the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore. The article quoted only anonymous sources, including multiple who suggested that Neuberger’s ties to AIPAC donations “would raise a lot of eyebrows” about her impartiality.

Even if you never pay attention to stock market news, you have probably gotten the sense that something unusual is happening right now, and it has to do with a company called GameStop. The video game store sits at the center of a dramatic “short squeeze” that has market watchers wondering whether stock trading could forever be changed. Multiple prominent Jewish money managers are involved in the saga, on both the winning and losing sides … They aren’t the only Jewish characters involved. Ryan Cohen, founder of the successful pet products company Chewy, is the largest stakeholder in GameStop, with about 9 million shares, making him the big winner of the week. As of Wednesday, he had made $3 billion in a matter of days from the fallout. Then there’s Jewish troll extraordinaire Dave Portnoy …

Washington, DC has been continuously militarized beginning the week leading up to Joe Biden’s inauguration, when 20,000 National Guard troops were deployed onto the streets of the nation’s capital … With the inauguration over and done, those troops remain and are not going anywhere any time soon. Working with federal law enforcement agencies, the National Guard Bureau announced on Monday that between 5,000 and 7,000 troops will remain in Washington until at least mid-March. The rationale for this extraordinary, sustained domestic military presence has shifter several times, typically from anonymous U.S. law enforcement officials … It is hard to overstate what an extreme state of affairs it is to have a sustained military presence in American streets.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them … One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices – 545 human beings out of the 235 million – are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country … Don’t you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

A University of California, Riverside professor who wrote recently that Zionism “politically toxified our schools” said that outrage by Jewish groups over his remark proves it’s accurate. Dylan Rodriguez, a media and cultural studies professor at the university and the current president of the American Studies Association, a group that promotes research on culture and history, wrote about Zionism on Twitter on January 12. “A number of Zionist organizations want to convince us that Arab American Studies is ‘anti-semitic.’ This is not only intellectually insulting but is also an inherently racist position,” he also wrote in the tweet about anti-Israel vitriol and Arab-American studies.

The San Francisco Unified School District voted this week to rename 44 schools named after controversial public figures, including former Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and current Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The school district, which has more than 57,000 students enrolled, is changing the schools named after historical figures linked to “the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” according to the text of the resolution.

… Events across the nation marked the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth [Feb. 12, 2009], celebrating a man widely seen as the greatest US president — the secular saint who redeemed America’s original sin of slavery … Despite his visceral hatred of slavery, Mr Yacovone says, Lincoln – like the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries — never believed in the equality of races. “He supported enactment of the anti-fugitive slave law, he supported exclusion of black jurors and all basic civil rights,” Mr Yacovone says.

A prestigious university in Moscow said it would fire a professor who denied the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Vladimir Matveyev, a lecturer on international relations, told teachers from the St. Petersburg region on Thursday that “no gas chambers were found to kill people in concentration camps,” “the gas was used by the Germans for disinfection” and “Six million dead Jews are a fiction.” In a statement that same day, the state-owned university, known as RANEPA, said it “cannot accept” the lies told by Matveyev. Matveyev was not representing the university on the video call in which he made the remarks, RANEPA said, and was participating outside his professional duties. RANEPA stands for Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

Red and Blue Americans have grown so dangerously far apart, they should be considered different ethnic groups / … Not only are these two ethnic groups becoming more different, they are also growing more suspicious of each other. Another Pew poll found the majority of supporters from each party “fears” supporters from the other. Republicans see Democrats as immoral and lazy. And from the Democratic perspective, Republicans are dishonest and closed-minded. America was once a melting-pot … Once you stepped foot in the United States, you almost magically became “American”. It was a country where ethnic divides and animosities were left behind, in “the old country”.

… Trump the panderer clearly wanted to give one last gift to Israel, and he saved it for his last day in office, when he issued more than 140 pardons and commutations. Though other presidents have issued controversial pardons, no other head of state has so abused the clemency authority to benefit not only friends and acquaintances but also celebrity defendants including rappers, some advocated by the likes of the Kardashians, and also those promoted by monied interests. Most of the pardons went to cronies and to supplicants … Another clemency beneficiary who exploited his Jewish links was Philip Esformes, a former nursing home executive who executed one of the biggest Medicare frauds in U.S. history.

Israel’s military chief Tuesday warned the Biden administration against rejoining the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, even if it toughens its terms, adding he’s ordered his forces to step up preparations for possible offensive action against Iran during the coming year. The comments by Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi came as Israel and Iran both seek to put pressure on President Joe Biden ahead of his expected announcement on his approach for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. In Iran, leaders said they would not wait indefinitely for Biden to act. The 2015 deal put curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the easing of crippling economic sanctions. Israel strongly opposed the deal, saying it did not include sufficient safeguards to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Israel has said openly that it will attack Iran if the U.S eases sanctions against the Shiite regime and agrees to go back to the nuclear agreement the Jewish state claims is “the biggest hoax in recent history.” … Israel allegedly attacked another Iranian target in Syria on Jan 21 and such attacks are likely to continue. “This pressure will continue and grow, as a preparation for a direct attack on targets in Iran,” the Israeli source here added. Ministers of the Likud Party said earlier this week that the new US administration must not “appease” Iran, and warned Tehran that the Jewish state will not tolerate its military presence in Syria or accept its plans to build a nuclear bomb.

A close analysis of recent statements by members of President Joseph Biden’s foreign policy team indicates his administration has already signaled its intention to treat negotiations with Iran as an exercise in diplomatic coercion aimed at forcing major new concessions extending well beyond the 2105 nuclear agreement. The policy could trigger a renewed US-Iran crisis as serious as any provocation engineered by the Trump administration. Although the Biden team is claiming that it is ready to bring the United States back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran comes into full compliance first, it is actually planning to demand that Iran give up its main source of political leverage.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged coordinated global action on Monday to build an alliance against the growth and spread of neo-Nazism and white supremacy and the resurgence of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and hate speech sparked partly by the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.N. chief also urged international action “to fight propaganda and disinformation.” And he called for stepped up education on Nazi actions during World War II, stressing that almost two-thirds of young Americans do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Guterres spoke at the annual Park East Synagogue and United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Service marking Wednesday’s 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, held virtually this year because of COVID-19.

… At one time it was seriously claimed that at Auschwitz Jews were systematically killed with electricity. American newspapers in February 1945, citing a Soviet eyewitness report from the recently-liberated camp, told readers that the methodical Germans had killed Jews there using an “electric conveyor belt on which hundreds of persons could be electrocuted simultaneously [and] then moved on into furnaces. They were burned almost instantly, producing fertilizer for nearby cabbage fields.” At the Nuremberg Tribunal, chief US prosecutor Robert Jackson charged that the Germans had used a “newly invented” device to instantaneously “vaporize” 20,000 Jews near Auschwitz “in such a way that there was no trace left of them.”

Dubai has quickly become a favored holiday destination for Israeli tourists, with more than 66,000 of them visiting the Gulf principality just last month. But as the flow of tourists to the Gulf has increased so have reports of poor behavior, with claims of disrespectful behavior that blacken Israel’s international image. In addition to reports in the Arab media of Israelis stealing everything they can in hotels, from towels to bedside light fixtures, the Israeli tourism companies say there were rowdy parties, damage to luxury cars, Israelis cooking inside their hotel rooms in clear violation of hotel rules, and attempts to avoid paying for minibar purchases by replacing the liquor with water … Now it is all blowing up in our faces because of this inappropriate behavior.” Lazarov warned that things will “end badly” if this behavior continued.

… European Muslims have no right to take offence at insults about a religion they identify with, but European Jews have every right to take offence at criticism of an aggressive Middle Eastern state they identify with … Israel, and anything related to it, has become such a combustible subject – one that can ruin careers in an instant – that most political, academic and cultural figures in Germany now choose to avoid it entirely. Israel, as its supporters intended, is rapidly becoming untouchable … Antisemitism is Israel’s “get out of jail” card. Antisemitism serves to absolve Israel of the racism it structurally embodies and that would be impossible to overlook were Israel deprived of the misdirection weaponised antisemitism provides.

On January 12, the respected Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released a bombshell report entitled “This is Apartheid: Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” The “apartheid” label is big news – especially from an Israel-based organization. It is relevant to every American because our government gives Israel $10 million a day in aid. Those familiar with the Israel-Palestine issue have known for years that Israel is an apartheid regime – but also know that the bias in mainstream media has led to a shortage of deep reporting on stories critical of Israel … The media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has taken CNN and every other mainstream media outlet to task many times by for their biased Israel-related journalism.

… Admired by President Warren Harding and Adolf Hitler alike, Theodore Lothrop Stoddard was born in 1883 in Brookline, Massachusetts. Educated at Harvard College and Boston University, the historian and journalist’s seminal book was called, “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy.” … In Stoddard’s view, civilization was determined by race and heredity … One of the people who consumed the book was US President Warren Harding, who praised Stoddard in a 1921 speech … During his remarks, Harding spoke about the “race problem” at home and abroad. According to the American president, “fundamental, eternal, and inescapable differences” exist between the races … In 1939, Stoddard went to Nazi Germany to report on the Reich’s leadership after six years in power.

‘The Party.” That is the commonest phrase in Germany today. It denotes that all-powerful organization, NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) which dominates, energizes, and directs the Third Reich. Just what is the Party, and what are its relations with the Nation, the State Administration, and those numberless organizations characteristic of German life? That was one of the first questions I put when I got to Germany … One thing seems certain: The National Socialist upheaval that has created the Third Reich goes far deeper than the Fascist regime in Italy, and is perhaps a more defiant breach with the historic past than even the Communism of Soviet Russia.

… Lothrop Stoddard’s Into the Darkness, based on the author’s journey to central Europe from October 1939 to early 1940 … is a rare even-handed account of the Third Reich — its leaders, its people, its politics and society — at the outset of the Second World War … Readers of Into the Darkness, whether they share Stoddard’s racial views or not, may be surprised to discover how objectively he described what he saw.

In 1938 Theodore Andrica, Nationalities Editor of the Cleveland Press and author of the “Around the World in Cleveland” column, visited Third Reich Germany. During this visit he made this astonishing color film, which shows not only “official” Germany, including scenes from the annual NS Party Congress in Nuremberg, Hitler’s Berchtesgaden home, and even some shots of Hitler himself, but also remarkable footage of ordinary, daily life in rural and urban Germany.

Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz has been given a five-year jail sentence by a court in Geneva, in a trial described as the mining sector’s biggest-ever corruption case. The trial threw a spotlight on an often murky struggle for control of Africa’s natural resources. Steinmetz, a former diamond magnate who also holds French citizenship, was convicted of bribing public officials in Guinea, in order to gain control of the country’s iron ore deposits. The court also ordered him to pay compensation of 50 million Swiss francs ($56 million) to the state of Geneva. “It is clear from what has been presented… that the rights were obtained through corruption and that Steinmetz co-operated with others,” to obtain them, Chief Justice Alexandra Banna told the court, according to AFP news agency.

In the wake of the violent Jan. 6 assault on Capitol Hill where numerous extremists were captured on video wearing antisemitic sweatshirts and displaying other hateful items available from online retailers, ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and the World Jewish Congress (WJC) today called on all companies that operate online marketplaces to strengthen and better enforce policies banning any product that promotes or glorifies white supremacy, racism, Holocaust denial or trivialization, or any other type of hatred or violence.

… If our history has been an endless struggle against racism, nativism and demagoguery, and today’s struggle is against rampant anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, violence and lawlessness, as well as “white supremacists and domestic terrorists,” how can we credibly call ourselves a “great nation” and “good people”? While Biden identifies the demonic character of the enemy, he does not name them. Who are they? How can we defeat them if the president will not identify them? And if they are evil and we are good, then why should we unite with them rather than ostracize and crush them? … Joe Biden’s inaugural [address] was the most confusing, contradictory and incoherent ever delivered from the steps of the Capitol, reflective of the mind of its author and the state of the Union he now leads.

In this two-hour session, Mark Weber and Fróði Midjord examine the factors behind the ever more obvious breakdown of American-style democracy. How did a country that was so successful for more than a century become so confused and divided? “History matters,” Weber says. The discord and disorder of today’s America are the inevitable result of policies based on the seemingly noble but fundamentally false egalitarian-universalist view of life, society and history that has guided the US for decades. No nation based on such a worldview can endure, says Weber. He also speaks about the crucial Jewish role in shaping the cultural, intellectual, social and political life of modern America.

A book about the most famous composer in the western canon, a “dead white male” at that, isn’t an obvious place to look for insights into our current plight. Yet from the opening paragraph, Laura Tunbridge’s short, illuminating study of Beethoven (1770-1827), published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of his birth, casts a loose net across the centuries and deftly gathers in the connections … Tunbridge gives us detail enough to create a rounded portrait. She challenges, by example rather than theory, the presumption that Beethoven was curmudgeonly, friendless, loveless. Eccentric, yes, and with a canny knack at getting the best deals for his work, but a sympathetic figure too, frustrated by his ever-growing deafness.

US President Joe Biden filled the months before Inauguration Day lining up a slate of Cabinet secretaries, assistants and advisers, many of them Jewish. Biden’s choices reflect a diverse cross-section of American Jewry and possess expertise gleaned from decades of experience in government, science and medicine and law. Here’s a rundown of the Jewish names you should know as the Biden administration begins.

In the final hours of his US presidency, Donald Trump awarded clemency to more than a dozen Jews who had been convicted of crimes — but not Sheldon Silver, the disgraced former New York State Assembly speaker. Silver was not on the list of 143 people granted clemency, a traditional act for outgoing presidents. That means the former Democratic power broker will continue serving a prison term on corruption charges. The New York Times reported that Trump abandoned a plan to give clemency to Silver at the urging of New York Republicans and the New York Post. Among the Jews who did make the cut were several whose crimes affected Jewish communities or who had the support of the Aleph Institute, an organization that works with Jews who are incarcerated.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted a full pardon to Aviem Sella, the handler of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, as part of the outgoing president’s spree of clemency actions in his last hours in office. Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst, sold military secrets to Israel while working at the Pentagon in the 1980s. Sella, a retired Israeli air force officer, enlisted Pollard to spy for Israel and fled the United States after Pollard was arrested in 1985. Sella was charged in absentia on three espionage counts, but was not extradited to the U.S. from Israel. The Pollard case severely strained relations between Israel and the U.S. The White House said in a statement that Sella’s request for clemency received backing from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu …

Casino magnate and Israeli patriot multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of the world’s richest men, died in Las Vegas on January 11 at age 87 … Adelson was all about the Jewish state, positioning himself as the principal funder of the Republican Party under Donald Trump … In short, Sheldon Adelson committed as much as half a billion dollars from his vast fortune to buy control over a major element of U.S. foreign policy and subordinated American interests to those of Israel … It is indisputable that he wielded an incredible degree of power to shape Washington’s actions in the Middle East. In her own tribute to her dead husband, Miriam Adelson, an Israeli, described how he “crafted the course of nations.”

… In writing this “intimate look at the origins and conduct” of the 1945–1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Irving has relied heavily on many hitherto neglected papers and documents … As Irving shows [in his book, Nuremberg: The Last Battle], the victorious Allies who sat in judgment at Nuremberg were guilty of many of the same actions or crimes for which they tried (and hanged) the German defendants. Indeed, the Allies very probably outdid the Germans in crimes and atrocities … In some cases, the Nuremberg defendants were charged with or held guilty of crimes that were actually committed by the Allies … Irving tells the story of the Nuremberg Tribunal with great style and verve, painting a broad and vivid portrait.

With the mainstream media still obsessing about the January 6th “violent coup attempt” at the US Capitol Building, the incoming Biden Administration looks to be chock full of actual purveyors of violent coups. Don’t look to the mainstream media to report on this, however … So it’s hard to be optimistic about a Biden Administration with so many hyper-interventionist Obama retreads … The unholy alliance between Big Tech and the US government will happily assist the US State Department under Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Assistant Secretary of State Nuland with the technology to foment more “regime change” operations wherever the Biden Administration sees fit. Finish destroying Syria and the secular Assad? Sure! Go back into Iraq? Why not? Afghanistan? That’s the good war! And Russia and China must be punished as well.

… Hopes that the Democrats would accommodate their progressive wing to some extent by backing off of the aggressive “American first” policies pursued by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo were extinguished with the elevation of Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland to the number two and three senior positions at the State Department, to back up Secretary of State designate Tony Blinken … Blinken is in some respects Israel’s lead man in Washington. He was a strong supporter of invading Iraq and even recommended partitioning the defeated nation into three parts. He was a supporter of destroying Libya and an architect of the anti-Syria policy pursued by Obama. … And Nuland and Sherman, both of whom are also Jewish and ardent Zionists, will be along for the ride.

As President-elect Joe Biden announced his picks for the Cabinet, the joke went around on Jewish Twitter that the West Wing would have a minyan. Indeed, at least ten prominent Jews have been nominated to key positions. There’s Ronald Klain (chief of staff); Anthony Blinken (Secretary of State); Janet Yellen (Treasury); Merrick Garland (Attorney General); Alejandro Mayorkas (Homeland Security);and Avril Haines (Director of National Intelligence). One level down are Wendy Sherman (deputy Secretary of State); Eric Lander (science and technology adviser); Ann Neuberger (deputy National Security Adviser); and David Cohen (deputy CIA director). Plus there’s Doug Emhoff, the Jewish husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

… Firearms sales have also risen considerably just since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday. From the onset of the coronavirus pandemic to the ongoing civil unrest, 2020 was by far the strongest year on record for gun sales in the United States, a trend that is clearly continuing as 2021 gets underway … In the wake of the storming of the Capitol, gun stores throughout Southern California and the nation have experienced a surge of interest, especially among first-time gun buyers … Gussler said when the political environment changes, guns sales shift as well. “People are not comfortable. They don’t feel like they are protected enough, so they end up taking matters into their own hands,” Gussler added.

Israeli authorities on Sunday advanced plans to build an additional 780 homes in West Bank settlements, an anti-settlement monitoring group said, in a last-minute surge of approvals before the friendly Trump administration leaves office later this week. Peace Now said that over 90% of the homes lay deep inside the West Bank, which the Palestinians seek as the heartland of a future independent state, and over 200 homes were located in unauthorized outposts that the government had decided to legalize. Israel has stepped up settlement construction during President Donald Trump’s term. According to Peace Now, Israel approved or advanced construction of over 12,000 settlement homes in 2020, the highest number in a single year since it began recording statistics in 2012.

… Chicago Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky said she will introduce a measure to censure fellow Illinois Rep. Mary Miller. A day before the attacks at the Capitol, Miller invoked the name of Adolf Hitler during a speech, saying he was “right on one thing: Whoever has the youth has the future.” The comment is often attributed to Hitler, who organized youth groups to introduce children to Nazi ideologies. Schakowsky said Miller’s comments are unacceptable. “We cannot allow speakers to get up to crowds and preach things that are so detrimental to people of color or Jews or immigrants, and we’ve had enough of that,” Schakowsky said. Miller, a freshman representative from Illinois’ 15th District, has since apologized for her comments.

… A large majority of Americans believe the U.S. is “falling apart,” a new Axios-Ipsos poll has found. This is one of the rare things Republicans and Democrats agree on. Eighty-three percent of Republicans and 78% of Democrats say the country is crumbling. The poll of 1,019 Americans was conducted in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C … About 50% of those who took part in the poll consider the assault on the Capitol “an attempted coup” … The poll found that about one-fifth of Democrats (22%) and 7% of Republicans now “say they aren’t proud to be an American,” Axios reports. The survey asked questions about support for various prominent U.S. politicians, perceptions of media bias, and whether the U.S. economy is “rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.”

Israel is not a democracy but an “apartheid regime” that enforces Jewish supremacy over all the land it controls, a leading domestic rights group has alleged in a position paper bound to provoke fierce controversy. “One organising principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” said B’Tselem, an organisation that documents human rights violations … “Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it,” said the body’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad. “It is one regime between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid.”

More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule … In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians … The Israeli regime, which controls all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, seeks to advance and cement Jewish supremacy throughout the entire area. To that end, it has divided the area into several units, each with a different set of rights for Palestinians – always inferior to the rights of Jews. As part of this policy, Palestinians are denied many rights, including the right to self-determination.

… Throughout all its decades of existence, Israel has treated part of its subjects tyrannically … The rights group B’Tselem published a revolutionary paper last week, crossing the Rubicon by saying that the Jewish supremacy regime exists not just in the occupied territories, where B’Tselem has been documenting crimes since the group’s founding, but in all the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River … The conclusion: Israel is an apartheid state. Just as in South Africa it was ludicrous to talk about democracy, even though elections were held, it’s ridiculous to view Israel as a democracy.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China has caused a peak loss of 245,000 U.S. jobs, but a gradual scaling back of tariffs on both sides would boost growth and lead to an additional 145,000 jobs by 2025, a study commissioned by the U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC) shows. The group, which represents major American companies doing business in China, said the study by Oxford Economics also includes an “escalation scenario” which estimates a significant decoupling of the world’s two largest economies could shrink U.S. GDP by $1.6 trillion over the next five years … The study estimates that U.S. exports to China support 1.2 million American jobs and that Chinese multinational companies directly employ 197,000 Americans, while U.S. companies invested $105 billion in China in 2019.

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., wants the song known as the Black national anthem recognized as a national hymn. Clyburn, the third-highest Democrat in the House and its highest-ranking Black member, plans to introduce a proposal to upgrade “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to equal standing with the national anthem as early as this week to bring the country together and heal with a song “everybody can identify with,” he tweeted. He said the change would tell Black people, “you aren’t singing a separate national anthem, you are singing the country’s national hymn,” he told USA Today. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” emerged as Black Americans faced the threat of lynchings, and the realities of segregation and discrimination.

… Aaron Hiltner’s [new book] Taking Leave, Taking Liberties: American Troops on the World War II Home Front … shows, in like manner, that U.S. soldiers home in America during World War II were the greatest generation of fornicators and carousers … In his introduction. He reminds us of the realities of the U.S. troop presence overseas: “GI carousing from Australia, China, and Okinawa to Britain, France, and Germany was enormously disruptive. Rape, assault, petty crime, and casual violence became all too common hallmarks of American liberations and occupations.” … But here at home things were thought to be different … Instead, “Troop crime plagued American cities throughout the war, and civilians — especially women — lived with many of the same dangers and fears felt by the residents of occupied cities overseas.”

… One of the enduring narratives of World War II is that during the invasion of the Third Reich, British and American troops largely behaved well, and it was the soldiers of the Soviet Union’s Red Army who raped hundreds of thousands of German females, aged from eight to 80. However, a new book published in Germany makes the shocking and disturbing claim that the Americans raped a staggering 190,000 women in the decade from the invasion until West Germany became a sovereign country in 1955. In When The Soldiers Came, historian Professor Miriam Gebhardt also suggests the British raped 45,000 German women, and the French a further 50,000 … Is it really possible that the numbers are so high?… Although France was an ally, that did not stop U.S. troops from raping an estimated 3,600 French women.

The soldiers who landed in Normandy on D-Day were greeted as liberators, but by the time American GIs were headed back home in late 1945, many French citizens viewed them in a very different light. In the port city of Le Havre, the mayor was bombarded with letters from angry residents complaining about drunkenness, jeep accidents, sexual assault — “a regime of terror,” as one put it, “imposed by bandits in uniform.” This isn’t the “greatest generation” as it has come to be depicted in popular histories. But in “What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American G.I. in World War II France,” the historian Mary Louise Roberts draws on French archives, American military records, wartime propaganda and other sources to advance a provocative argument …

The frenzy of gun buying across the nation in December following the election of Democrat Joe Biden piled on to what was already an unprecedented year for firearm sales, breaking the previous year’s national record by 40 percent … The 3.9 million firearms background checks recorded by the FBI in December was the most ever recorded in a single month. The record December gave 2020 a total of 39.7 million background checks, surpassing the 2019 record of 28 million background checks by 40 percent. Connecticut, despite its strict gun laws, saw an increase in firearm sale activity of 27 percent over 2019 … It’s important to note that 2020 was already a record year for gun sale activity by November, in part because of concern about civil unrest and the coronavirus crisis.

A leading Israeli human rights group has begun describing both Israel and its control of the Palestinian territories as a single “apartheid” regime, using an explosive term that the country’s leaders and their supporters vehemently reject. In a report released Tuesday, B’Tselem says that while Palestinians live under different forms of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank, blockaded Gaza, annexed east Jerusalem and within Israel itself, they have fewer rights than Jews in the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. “One of the key points in our analysis is that this is a single geopolitical area ruled by one government,” said B’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad. “This is not democracy plus occupation. This is apartheid between the river and the sea.”

New figures offered further evidence of a California exodus, showing an increasing number of people moved out of the Golden State in 2020. Moving company U-Haul ranked California dead last on its list of state growth, giving it the distinction as the state with the steepest migration out … The 30 most populated U.S. cities all witnessed more U-Haul trucks departing than arriving over the next three months … The company said top destinations for folks leaving the Bay Area included the Sacramento Roseville region, San Diego, and Stockton. Many of those choosing to leave California altogether landed in Reno, Las Vegas, Portland, Phoenix, and Seattle. U-Haul also said that Tennessee was another popular destination for many Californians who moved out of the state.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division once invited an anti-Semite when she was a student at Harvard University. As the head of the university’s Black Students Association, Kristen Clarke, currently president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, invited the late Wellesley College professor Tony Martin, who self-published a book called The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, in 1994. Wellesley faculty members signed a statement censuring the book “for its racial and ethnic stereotyping and for its anti-Semitism.” … In defending Martin, Clarke told Harvard’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, that “Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed black intellectual who bases his information of indisputable fact.”

U.S. President Donald Trump famously tweeted that “trade wars were good, and easy to win” in 2018 as he began to impose tariffs on about US$360 billion of imports from China. Turns out he was wrong on both counts. Even before the coronavirus infected millions of Americans and sparked the steepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, China was withstanding Trump’s tariff salvos, according to the very metrics he used to justify them. Once China got the virus under control, demand for medical equipment and work-from-home gear expanded its trade surplus with the U.S. despite the levies.

A popular British children’s author omitted “The Merchant of Venice” from his adaptation of William Shakespeare plays for young audiences. One reason: anti-Semitism. “Yes, there was some worry that this might be the first time an 8-year-old reads about a Jew,” Michael Morpurgon told The Guardian about the decision not to include the play in the “Tales from Shakespeare” anthology for children older than 6. “A story that the Nazis used to portray Jewish people in a bad light – that is not something you put in front of an 8-year-old as their first example of an extraordinary group that has contributed so much to the world and suffered so much.” … “The play can be antisemitic … I did feel this was Shakespeare’s play and I could not tell it honestly. It would be offensive.”

A French auction house said Monday it had withdrawn around a hundred items of Nazi memorabilia from a sale planned this month in the central Auvergne region. Nazi helmets, an Adolf Hitler bust, a Waffen-SS armband and military decorations were among the objects presented for the online auction … A number of planned sales of Nazi relics have been cancelled in France since the start of the year after objections were raised.

… It looked as if Parler had proven critics of Silicon Valley monopolistic power wrong. Their success showed that it was possible after all to create a new social media platform to compete with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And they did so by doing exactly what Silicon Valley defenders long insisted should be done … But today, if you want to download, sign up for, or use Parler, you will be unable to do so. That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country … World leaders have vocally condemned the power Silicon Valley has amassed to police political discourse … So much of this liberal support for the attempted destruction of Parler is based in utter ignorance …

Joe Biden’s pick to run the Justice Department’s enormously powerful Civil Rights Division is a woman called Kristen Clarke … A new investigation by “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has uncovered shocking statements that Clarke made while attending Harvard as an undergraduate. In 1994, Clarke wrote a letter to The Harvard Crimson in her capacity as the president of the Black Students Association to explain her views on race science … “Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities — something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards.” … After an outcry on campus, Kristen Clarke suggested that she didn’t necessarily believe what she had written. Just a month later, however, Clarke invited the noted Trinidadian anti-Semite Tony Martin to speak on campus.

In this five-minute interview clip, actor Eric Braeden talks about how Hollywood has hampered historical understanding with inaccurate and childish portrayals. The actor — who was born Hans-Jörg Gudegast in northern Germany in 1941 – has appeared in many American television and motion picture productions. He is probably best known for his role as business magnate Victor Newman in the daytime soap opera “The Young and the Restless.” Germans overwhelmingly supported Hitler, he says, because his leadership brought prosperity and national revival. The prewar years of Third Reich Germany, he says, “were the most successful years of any leader of any country in foreign policy and in domestic-economic policy.”

Sheldon Adelson, who died last night, set out to destroy the Iran deal and the peace process and succeeded through his campaign contributions to Republican presidents. A fierce advocate for Israel, he wielded an incredible degree of power over U.S. policy … “He crafted the course of nations.” Adelson was always more frank about his aims than the media that reported on his contributions. “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” he said in 2017 … He was an extremist who maintained that “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” … Possibly Adelson’s greatest achievement was destroying the Iran deal that was the signature achievement of the Obama administration. Adelson opposed any negotiations with Iran.

A billionaire French-Israeli diamond magnate, Beny Steinmetz, has arrived in court in Switzerland to face trial over alleged corruption linked to a major mining deal in Guinea. He has always denied his company, BSGR, paid multi-million dollar bribes to obtain iron ore mining exploration permits in southern Guinea in 2008. He travelled to Geneva from Israel for the two-week trial. If convicted he could face up to ten years in prison. Steinmetz, 64, was previously sentenced in absentia to five years in prison by a court in Romania for money laundering. Swiss prosecutors say Steinmetz paid about $10 million in bribes, in part through Swiss bank accounts, to gain the rights to Guinea’s iron ore deposits in the Simandou mountains. The area is believed to contain the world’s largest untapped iron ore deposits.

The Anti-Defamation League’s call for President Donald Trump to be removed from office is not likely to lead to that result. But it is nonetheless a significant event: the first major, mainstream American Jewish organization to take such a stand, and an unprecedented one for the 108-year-old organization … Smaller, left-leaning Jewish groups unanimously condemned the president, and called for his resignation or impeachment, but so far no major Jewish organization has done so except for the ADL … “My job description is to protect the Jewish people,” [ADL CEO] Greenblatt said. “And liberal democracy is the safest form of government in the history of the Jewish people. If we allow it to be destroyed by authoritarianism, we know how this ends.”

Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent … Many Americans viewed this assault on social media accounts as a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans, but they are missing the point … This is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite … In short, US government elites have been partnering with “Big Tech” overseas for years to decide who has the right to speak and who must be silenced.

Former Texas congressman Ron Paul says he’s been blocked from using his Facebook page for unspecified violations of “community standards” as Big Tech purges users following last week’s Capitol riot. Paul, a libertarian leader and critic of President Trump, tweeted a screenshot of his temporarily restricted Facebook page. “With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified,” Paul tweeted. His most recent post linked to an article he wrote denouncing “shocking and chilling” censorship on social media … In response to his father being censored, Sen. Paul tweeted, “Facebook now considers advocating for liberty to be sedition.”

… The effort to disgrace and drive Trump from an office he will vacate in ten days is only a part of the general purge that is underway against conservatives, Republicans, and Trumpists. Twitter and Facebook — the social media megaphones Trump has used to communicate with some 80 million followers — have terminated the president’s personal accounts. Apple, Amazon, and Google have cut ties to the social media website Parler, which is popular among conservatives. The goal of Big Tech is censorship … And this is being applauded by individuals who see themselves as acolytes of the First Amendment … On Jan. 21, Democrats will control the Senate, the House and the White House. Big Tech, Big Business, Big Media will all be on board.

Parler, the alternative social media platform favored by conservatives, now finds itself virtually homeless on the internet as Amazon, Apple and Google have all booted it from their platforms in a span of a little more than 24 hours. Amazon said it would remove Parler from its cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services, Sunday evening, effectively kicking it off of the public internet after mounting pressure from the public and Amazon employees. The decision, which went into force on Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time, will shut down Parler’s website and app until it can find a new hosting provider. The Parler website was not accessible early on Monday. …

The Anti-Defamation League became the first major mainstream Jewish organization to call for Donald Trump’s removal from the presidency for his role in instigating an armed insurrection at the Capitol. “In our over 100 years of history, ADL has never called for the president of the United States to be removed from office, but what occurred on Wednesday was inexcusable,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL CEO, said in a letter … The ADL monitors extremist movements, and Greenblatt attached to his memo reports from his organization about ties between the insurrection and the far right, including anti-Semitic groups. Greenblatt also included petitions calling on social media companies to remove Trump from their platforms, an extension of the ADL’s recent campaign to press Facebook to act more aggressively against hate.

A newly sworn-in Republican congresswoman declared that “Hitler was right on one thing” at a pro-Trump Washington rally against certifying the Democratic results of the presidential election … “If we win a few elections, we’re still going to be losing unless we win the hearts and minds of our children. This is the battle. Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future,’” said Mary Miller, appearing to quote from the former Nazi leader’s autobiography Mein Kampf. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt condemned the remarks, tweeting “Hitler wasn’t right on anything …

Rep. Mary Miller, the Illinois Republican who said in a speech that “Hitler was right on one thing,” apologized after initially defending her remarks. At a Wednesday rally in Washington, D.C., shortly before a pro-Trump mob overran the U.S. Capitol, Miller gave a speech in which she talked about the importance of Republicans reaching young people and said, “Hitler was right on one thing: He said, whoever has the youth has the future.” The statement drew condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League as well as Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. Miller, a farmer and Sunday school teacher, was elected to her first term in November. On Friday, Miller issued an apology that said she was an ally of the Jewish community as well as pro-Israel, though the speech did not appear to be about Israel.

This recorded address by Adolf Hitler was distributed on 50,000 phonograph discs during Germany’s fiercely contested national parliament election campaign of July 1932, in which his National Socialist movement emerged as the country’s largest party. This “Appeal to the Nation” is similar in content and tone to many other speeches he gave in 1932, which for Germans was a year of mass unemployment, economic paralysis, and a broken, unresponsive political system. Translation of the complete text, with a foreword by Mark Weber, who examines how and why Hitler and his party won such broad popular support.

Israeli tourists visiting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been stealing items from hotel rooms in Dubai, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported … Complaints of Israeli tourists stealing from hotels comes a month after the first commercial passenger flight from Israel to the UAE to off, as part of a new regular service. Moreover, a manager of a hotel overlooking the world’s tallest building the Burj Khalifa, said: “We host hundreds of tourists from all countries of the world, some of them create problems, but we have not seen items stolen before.” “Recently we have seen Israeli tourists come to the hotel and pile up all their bags, stealing towels, tea and coffee bags, and even lamps.”

On Nov. 27, 2020, Facebook removed the Institute for Historical Review from its popular social media platform. No reason was given for the abrupt measure, but it was hardly a surprise. It came right after the publication of three widely distributed media items that complained that Facebook had still not dropped the IHR. These articles were in line with a decade-old campaign by Jewish-Zionist groups to get social media platforms to remove the IHR and other organizations they regard as harmful to their interests and agenda … People who care about accuracy and fairness in the media should understand the methods used by those who, in the name of “fighting hate,” work to silence voices they don’t like.

… Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power … What makes this most menacing of all is that the primary beneficiaries of these rapid changes are Silicon Valley giants, at least three of which — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — are now classic monopolies … The dominant strain of U.S. neoliberalism — the ruling coalition that has now consolidated power again — is authoritarianism.

After Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine condemned the honoring of Nazi collaborators in the former Soviet republic, dozens of people rallied outside the Israeli Embassy in Kyiv demanding that Jews apologize for Soviet oppression. The far-right activists called on Israel and the Jews to assume responsibility specifically for Holodomor, a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s and is widely believed to have been caused by the government of Joseph Stalin, then the leader of the Soviet Union … Ultranationalists in Ukraine and beyond have often blamed Jews for Holodomor, citing the support of many Jews for communism and the prominent positions of power that some of Jewish origins achieved under its rule in the Soviet Union …

… And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name “Genrikh Yagoda,” the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU’s deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin’s collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least ten million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system … Many Jews sold their soul to the devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their hands for eternity. We’ll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the NKVD’s special department and the organization’s chief interrogator, who was a particularly cruel sadist. In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin.

A belief in the socialist utopia led Kinmasa Katsuno (1901-1983) first to Paris, then to Moscow, and subsequently to Siberia as a prisoner stripped of all his civil rights. Unlike tens of thousands of Gulag inmates, Katsuno survived and was one of the first to tell the world about the horrors of the repressive Stalinist machine … Japanese communist Kinmasa Katsuno was one of the first to publish a book documenting life in the Gulag [the Stalin-Era Soviet network of punitive labor camps and prisons] … His books, Permafrost – Notes from a Stalinist Concentration Camp, and Diary of Escape from Communist Russia, were published in Japan in the 1930s when Katsuno, having survived years of slave labor in inhuman conditions, returned to his homeland. But how did he end up in the USSR in the first place?

America’s adversaries reveled and allies shook their heads in dismay at the assault on the heart of U.S. democracy on Wednesday. Many foreign leaders noted the United States’ centuries-long role as a bastion of self-rule by a free population. Some suggested that vaunted position had been diminished and urged a rapid return to it, and several placed the blame for the chaos squarely on President Donald Trump. Russia and Iran offered predictable ridicule of U.S. democracy – a theme both countries have fallen back on for years, but damning commentary from close allies in Europe showed there was real shock among America’s global partners at the level of bitter division within the country, and the driving force many see behind it.

On December 21, the United States Congress passed the COVID-19 Relief Package, as part of a larger $2.3 trillion bill meant to cover spending for the rest of the fiscal year. As usual, US representatives allocated a massive sum of money for Israel. While unemployment, thus poverty, in the US is skyrocketing as a result of repeated lockdowns, the US found it essential to provide Israel with $3.3 billion in ‘security assistance’ and $500 million for US-Israel missile defense cooperation. Although a meager $600 dollar payment to help struggling American families was the subject of several months of intense debate, there was little discussion among American politicians over the large funds handed out to Israel, for which there are no returns. Support for Israel is considered a bipartisan priority …

Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 71 years ago this month was a “day that will live in infamy” according to US President Franklin Roosevelt. Seven decades later, it increasingly appears that the president’s surprise and outrage may have been synthetic. Roosevelt had been maneuvering for more than a year to bring the United States into World War II … Historians will long battle over whether Roosevelt lured Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor … At minimum, the embargo of strategic material to Japan was a huge provocation. Japan foolishly took the bait and paid a terrible price.

… Most important, the U.S. government engaged in a series of increasingly stringent economic warfare measures that pushed the Japanese into a predicament that U.S. authorities well understood would probably provoke them to attack U.S. territories and forces in the Pacific region in a quest to secure essential raw materials that the Americans, British, and Dutch (government in exile) had embargoed … So effective has been the pro-Roosevelt, pro-American, pro-World War II faction that in this country it has utterly dominated teaching and popular writing about U.S. engagement in the “Good War.”

… [President George W.] Bush’s original conceit was the assumption that America was attacked because it was so free and virtuous, an innocent vestal virgin assaulted in an evil world … To achieve the best, American policymakers must understand how other peoples think, what other governments perceive, and how other nations are likely to respond. This includes exiling the worst forms of American exceptionalism — the belief that only Americans are moral, good, brave, prescient, tough, resilient, and determined.

Stalin didn’t have Photoshop, but that didn’t keep him from wiping the traces of his enemies from the history books. Using tools that now seem impossibly primitive, Soviet proto-Photoshoppers made “once-famous personalities vanish” and crafted photographs representing Stalin “as the only true friend, comrade, and successor to Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the USSR.” … In Soviet Union, people were literally written out of the history books by using photo manipulation techniques … Sometimes, photo doctoring meant going back to the past to change the historical record, as when Stalin ordered Leon Trotsky, who helped create Communism, eliminated from all photos … Here in this article we have compiled a photo collection with such examples.

2020 has been a killer year in every way, including murder. The United States has experienced the largest single one-year increase in homicides since the country started keeping such records in the 20th century, according to crime data and criminologists. The grim body count isn’t quite over yet, but the data collected so far is stark — a 20.9 percent increase in killings nationwide, in the first nine months of the year, according to the FBI, and even bloodier increases in many major cities, due largely to gun violence. Homicides recorded by 57 U.S. police agencies found a 36.7 percent increase for a similar time frame … It’s not just big cities that are seeing rising homicides. According to the FBI data, small cities with fewer than 10,000 residents saw more than a 30 percent increase in killings in the first nine months of this year …

The number of homicides and shootings in Chicago spiked dramatically in 2020, ending with more bloodshed than in all but one year in more than two decades, statistics released by police on Friday revealed. After three years of falling homicide totals, 2020 ended with 769 homicides — 274 more than the previous year and the most since the 784 homicides in 2016. The latest shooting victim figures told the same story, with the year ending with 4,033 shooting victims compared with 2,598 the year before … Chicago was not alone … The year ended in Detroit, Washington, D.C., New York, Milwaukee and other cities with more killings than the year before. The same held true in smaller cities, including Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Rockford, Illinois.

Hundreds of people marched bearing torches in the capital city of Ukraine Friday [Jan. 1] in an annual tribute to a leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany. Israel’s ambassador condemned the torchlight march Friday in Kyiv in memory of Stepan Bandera, issuing the strongest rebuke yet by an Israeli official of the event, which has grown in scope amid rising nationalism in Ukraine … During World War II, Bandera led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose men killed thousands of Jews and Poles, including women and children, while fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Red Army and communists. Expressions of admiration for Bandera and other collaborators have increased in scope and status following the 2014 revolution in Ukraine …

The Simon Wiesenthal Center slammed an online seller for offering a sweatshirt bearing the image of Adolf Hitler. London-based, Hong Kong-founded discount retailer Vova.com presents its online sale as “Casual Adolf Hitler Funny Graphic Hoodies New Fashion for Men.” The Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Shimon Samuels, wrote a letter to Vova expressing outrage at the sale … The Wiesenthal Centre called on Vova “to immediately destroy all supplies of the Hitler hoodie, investigate and cut all contacts with the delinquent company. An apology is due to the Jewish community, lest the ‘Hitler hoodie’ becomes a symbol for neo-Nazi and white supremacist hate.”

… In my view, Simon Wiesenthal was a liar and a fraud. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he was one of the biggest conmen of the 20th century. I spent four years working on a history of Nazi-hunting that was published last year, and the material I gathered on Wiesenthal was enough to make me scream out loud. When I started my book, I too believed that the great man was just that — great. But when I looked at all his memoirs, biographies and original archive material, I realised that, like so many others, the image I had built up of Simon Wiesenthal was hopelessly incorrect.

Every recent US administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine US law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal … Israel in fact is a multiple nuclear weapons proliferator … Additionally, it has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Yet the US and Israeli governments pushed for the invasion of Iraq based on lies about coming mushroom clouds … There has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” – effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility … The US government should uphold its laws and cut off funding to Israel because of its acquisition and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke with decades of Israeli tradition and blatantly interfered in partisan politics in the United States. Netanyahu colluded with then-Speaker of the House John Boehner to bypass President Barack Obama and address a joint session of Congress to express his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal … Democrats taught the Israelis a lesson, one neither Netanyahu nor any other Israeli politician has forgotten. They learned that Israel can do what it wants, and Democrats will not change their votes as a result. More than that, Netanyahu demonstrated that norms and conventional wisdom can be disregarded with little consequence.

Murder rates skyrocketed – and in some cases, even smashed records – in major U.S. cities as the nation grapples with a surge in violent crime in 2020 … According to the most recently released information from Chicago Police Department, the Illinois city has seen 3,237 shootings year to date as of Dec. 27 – up 53% from the 2,120 reported during the same time in 2019. A staggering 3,884 shootings and 2,222 wounded victims were reported in Philadelphia as of Dec. 27, while 1,446 people had been in 2,339 shooting incidents year over year, police department statistics show. And in California, Los Angeles Police Department reported 2,750 shots-fired incidents and 1,226 shooting victims as of Dec. 12 … At the beginning of December, the New York Police Department reported that the number of shootings had risen “to levels unseen in years.”

… 2020 is on track to be the “deadliest year in U.S. history,” according to The Associated Press, with a projected rise of 15% in total deaths from 2019 … Many Americans have experienced significantly higher levels of violence both wrought on and within their communities. Gun violence and gun crime has, in particular, risen drastically, with over 19,000 people killed in shootings and firearm-related incidents in 2020. That’s the highest death toll in over 20 years … 2020 has also been a record-breaking year when it comes to Americans buying firearms. And there is fear amongst activists and experts that this violence will continue in 2021 unless evidence-based, community-led initiatives that can quell the problems are enacted.

… After three consecutive years of declining violence, Chicago’s murder tally soared in 2020 as city leaders — including a new Chicago police superintendent — were forced to confront widespread civil unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Dec. 31, the city recorded 774 murders in 2020, an increase of more than 50% from the 506 murders in 2019, according to a database maintained by the Chicago Sun-Times. The uptick was felt across the city, as 20 of the CPD’s 22 police districts recorded more murders in 2020 than the year before. The number of overall shooting incidents skyrocketed, too, rising from 2,120 in 2019 to 3,237 as of Dec. 27, 2020. The department’s murder clearance rate on the year stands at 45.6%, with detectives closing 350 murder cases in 2020 …

… Across the city of Houston, 400 people were murdered as of Tuesday. That’s a spike of at least 42% over 2019 and 100 more than the highs seen in 2015 and 2016, when the city hit 300 murders. Violence across the city is up, with aggravated assaults seeing similar upward trends in a year that has been merciless … Without the court system being able to operate, courts are backlogged at least 18 months, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who commented on previous 13 Investigates reporting of the huge slowdown in the court system. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told ABC13’s Ted Oberg that officers are laughed at by suspects, who say they’ll be free in no time and back on the street.

President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed additional sanctions on Iran to play up to his Zionist base in the United States, according to a former US diplomat. The Trump administration imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran in a last-ditch attempt to ramp up pressure on the Islamic Republic. J. Michael Springmann, a former US diplomat in Saudi Arabia and current expert on international relations, told Press TV in an interview on Friday that the anti-Iran sanctions proved Trump was serving the Zionists’ interests. “He is doing this simply because he is playing up to his Zionist base in the United States,” he said. Trump’s anti-Iran stance appeases “his Zionist advisers, like his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and to a number of other people, such as the American ambassador to Israel and to other Jews,” he added.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie called it “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted as US attorney. After Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities, the wealthy real estate executive and father of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared, hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation. Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife. The scheme didn’t work. Kushner later pleaded guilty to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations in a case tailor-made for tabloid headlines. On Wednesday Trump pardoned Kushner as part of a late-hour clemency spree during the final days of his presidency …

The family real estate firm of US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner filed papers to sell at least $100 million in bonds on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, according to a Tuesday report. Kushner sold his personal stakes in Kushner Cos. in order to join the White House, but the planned sale could raise eyebrows among some who have accused Trump’s son-in-law of overly favoring Israel as he sought to broker a peace agreement between the Jewish state and the Palestinians in addition to normalization agreements between Arab states and Jerusalem. The deal would mark Kushner Cos.’ entrance into the Israeli bond market, The Wall Street Journal said, pointing out that the firm already owns billions of dollars’ worth in American properties.

Tech giants Google, Microsoft, Cisco and Dell on Monday joined Facebook in a legal fight against an Israeli spyware firm, filing a brief in an American court accusing the NSO Group of having “powerful, and dangerous” technology. Last year, WhatsApp and its parent company, Facebook, filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the NSO Group, accusing the firm of targeting some 1,400 users of its encrypted messaging service with highly sophisticated spyware through missed calls. The accounts said to have been targeted included those of senior government officials, journalists, and human rights activists worldwide. On Sunday, a cybersecurity watchdog said it had uncovered a case in which text messages were used to target phones without the owner opening the push notification — what’s known as a zero-click vulnerability.

Just weeks before its exit from the White House, the Trump administration voted against the United Nations’ 2021 programme budget, citing its continued support for a pro-Palestinian anti-racism conference and its refusal to snapback sanctions against Iran. The US and Israel both voted against the $3.2 billion budget for 2021, while 168 members voted in favour … The vote marks the second time the US has voted against consensus approval of the UN budget. The first took place in 2007 when then-US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad voted against the budget in a 142-1 vote. At the time, Khalilzad also cited objections over funding for a follow-up to the Durban conference.

Jonathan Pollard, who spent 30 years in U.S. prison for spying for Israel, arrived in Israel early Wednesday with his wife, triumphantly kissing the ground as he disembarked from the aircraft in the culmination of a decades-long affair that had long strained relations between the two close allies. “We are ecstatic to be home at last after 35 years,” Pollard said as he was greeted at Israel’s international airport by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu … Pollard arrived on a private plane provided by American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire supporter of both Netanyahu and President Donald Trump … Despite the damage he caused to relations with the U.S. over the years, Pollard was warmly embraced by Israel’s nationalist politicians.

Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy, received a hero’s welcome from the Israeli state, as he landed in the capital city of Tel Aviv on Wednesday … Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen from Netanyahu’s Likud party said Israel would give Pollard a pension, or stipend like ex-Mossad and Shin Bet agents. When Pollard was working at the Pentagon, he gave more than 1000 unredacted messages and cables, 800 unredacted reports and publications to his Israeli handlers … The Jewish state’s embrace of cold-war spy Pollard is shocking when compared to its revengeful treatment for a cold-war critic Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed some parts of Israeli nuclear program to a UK paper in 1986.

… During World War II, Churchill and Weizmann conspired to repeat the winning strategy of the Balfour declaration in WWI, attempting to monetize Jewish influence to bring the United States into the war … As soon as he had become Prime Minister in May 1940, Churchill instructed his War Cabinet member Arthur Greenwood to craft a document assuring the Jewish elites that a winning Britain will give them not only Palestine but a major share in the “new world order” to compensate for “the wrongs suffered by the Jewish people.” Although it is little known, this “Greenwood Pledge” is, according to Zionist Rabbi Stephen Wise, “of wider and farther reaching implications” than the Balfour declaration. The New York Times published it in its October 6, 1940, edition, under the amazing title “New World Order Pledged to Jews.”

… According to D. C. police data, there were 198 homicides in 2020, up from 166 homicides in 2019 — a 19% jump. That makes 2020 the deadliest year for the District since 2004, which had 248 homicides, and slightly above 2005, which had 196 homicides. Homicides have been increasing steadily over the last three years … While homicides surged in 2020, violent crime overall saw a slight decrease of 4% compared to 2019 … One of the biggest spikes in crime came from motor vehicle thefts. In 2020, D.C. police reported 3,276 thefts, a 50% rise over the 2,181 in 2019.

The Israeli assassination of Iranian defense official Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is being treated as a triumph of Israeli intelligence, with ubiquitous references in The New York Times and other major media outlets to the killing of “Iran’s top nuclear scientist.” In fact, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency eliminated Fakhrizadeh, a defense official, despite the knowledge that its public depiction of him as the key architect of an Iranian nuclear weapons program was a deception. For years, U.S. media outlets have portrayed Fakhrizadeh as Iran’s equivalent to J. Robert Oppenheimer, marketing him to the public as the mastermind behind an Iranian version of the Manhattan Project. This image was developed primarily through a carefully constructed Israeli disinformation operation based on documents that displayed signs of fabrication.

Two German World War II tombstones at a Texas veterans cemetery — each bearing Nazi swastikas — have been removed and replaced with new ones that do not use the symbol. The 1943 gravestones belonging to German prisoners of war Alfred Kafka and Georg Forst at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery featured an Iron Cross with a swastika in the middle, and the phrase, “He died far from his home for the Leader (Führer), people and fatherland.” … “Clearly, it took a long time for this to happen, and it’s obviously the right thing to have been done,” said Michael Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The foundation previously demanded Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie remove the tombstones, but the agency refused and argued they had a historical meaning.

… While it is understandable that many are outraged over the way this bill was rushed through, the real outrage is that the rushed passage of omnibus bills has become a yearly Christmas tradition on Capitol Hill. These spending bills are always full of outrageous special interest giveaways … This situation is the inevitable result of a government that tries to maintain the fiction that republican institutions are compatible with a welfare-warfare leviathan. Congress will continue to indulge this delusion until the system collapses. This collapse will likely be brought on by a collapse in the dollar’s value. The combination of the high-profile coronavirus bill with this year’s omnibus spending bill has brought new attention to Congress’ practice of funding the government via massive, unread appropriations bills.

… By any objective measure of destabilizing behavior, Israel in recent times has been doing at least as much as Iran to destabilize the Middle East, and probably more. This is true of terrorism, sabotage, and other clandestine operations, as illustrated most recently by the assassination of Fakhrizadeh … The destabilization goes well beyond the Palestinian conflict, however, and includes the Israeli terrorism, sabotage, and provocations aimed at Iran. The grimmest of the grim realities is that the current government of Israel is not only actively trying to subvert the new administration’s foreign policy but also is trying to drag the United States into a new Middle East war.

Russia’s envoy to Israel said Tuesday it is the Jewish state’s conflict with the Palestinians and other Arab entities that is destabilizing the Middle East, not Iran. Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov also accused Israel of being an aggressor for attacking arms shipments to the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group … “The problem in the region is not Iranian activities,” Viktorov told The Jerusalem Post. “It’s a lack of understanding between countries and non-compliance with UN resolutions in the Israel-Arab and Israel-Palestinian conflict.” … “Israel is attacking Hezbollah, Hezbollah is not attacking Israel,” he said, adding that Israel should not attack “the territories of sovereign UN members.” … “There is no way that we are approving any Israeli strikes on Syria, never in the past and never in the future,” he stressed.

Russia has defended its envoy to Tel Aviv, who was summoned to the Israeli foreign ministry over an interview critical of the occupying entity, saying his remarks are perfectly in line with Moscow’s well-known position on Middle East issues. Speaking to Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post on December 8, Russia’s Ambassador to Tel Aviv Anatoly Viktorov said the regime’s conflict with Palestine and other Arab countries, not Iran, is the root cause of instability in the Middle East. “The problem in the region is not Iranian activities,” he said. “It’s a lack of understanding between countries and non-compliance with UN resolutions in the Israel-Arab and Israel-Palestinian conflict.” Viktorov also blamed the Israel for fueling violence in the region through conducting airstrikes on Syria.

Alan Dershowitz gave a pep talk on Jewish influence to an orthodox audience in Scarsdale [New York] Tuesday night [May 2017] … That was Dersh’s theme: We earned our influence in this country by contributing more to its success than others, so now use your influence … Jews should use Jewish power, from intellectual to financial, to punish those who criticize Israel … “We have to hit them in the pocketbook. Don’t ever be embarrassed about using Jewish power” [he said] … “We should be the most powerful lobby in Washington … We are a very influential community. We deserve our influence. I hope all of you will participate in this great period of Jewish American, Jewish Israeli life, you have so much to contribute. Use what you’ve earned, use your influence to support Israel and support Jewish values.”

A statue of Abraham Lincoln with a freed slave appearing to kneel at his feet — optics that drew objections amid a national reckoning with racial injustice — has been removed from its perch in downtown Boston. Workers removed the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Emancipation Group and the Freedman’s Memorial, early Tuesday from a park just off Boston Common where it had stood since 1879. City officials had agreed in late June to take down the memorial after complaints and a bitter debate over the design. Mayor Marty Walsh acknowledged at the time that the statue made residents and visitors alike “uncomfortable.”