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… Ten years ago former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned his country that its failure to grant sovereignty to occupied Palestinians was going to bring a “tsunami” of diplomatic rebukes. “We face a diplomatic tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of … Israel’s delegitimization is in sight.” Israel has of course done nothing to end the occupation since that warning; and the tsunami is finally happening … This process is not going to end any time soon … It’s amusing in a grotesque way that Israeli leaders feel they can occupy the West Bank forever, and call it Israel, defying world opinion, and believe they should get away with it.

… What the Israeli government really has feared most is an economic and cultural boycott such as the one that brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa. That blow came last week when Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which is sold in the food shops in the illegal-under-international-law Israeli settlements on the West Bank, would no longer market its product in those areas after the current contract with suppliers expires at the end of 2022 … The dramatic response by both Israeli politicians and their spear carriers in the US Congress indicated just how serious the move, little more than a gesture in practical terms, was considered to be … For Israel it was perhaps the shape of things to come with other companies possibly following the Ben & Jerry example by limiting their involvement in the country’s economy or pulling out altogether.

Did the now-deceased, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have links to the Israeli intelligence community? An investigative reporter for The Miami Herald claims that credible details making the link “are not far-fetched and need to be explored in further detail and examined.” “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Epstein had connections to the [Israeli intelligence community],” says Julie K. Brown, whose book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story” was released on July 20 … “[Epstein] did not do this alone,” she says. “There were plenty of people that either knew about what Epstein was doing, or even participated in what he was doing. This was an international sex trafficking organization that was similar to an organized crime family — so it shouldn’t just end just with the prosecution of [Ghislaine Maxwell].”

… Earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Manila we would invoke the U.S.-Philippines mutual security pact in the event of Chinese military action against Philippine assets … Why are we threatening this? Is who controls Mischief Reef or Scarborough Shoal a matter of such vital U.S. interest as to justify war between us and China? … There remains, however, ambiguity on what the U.S. is prepared to do if China moves on Taiwan. Would we fight China for Taiwan’s independence, an island President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger said in 1972 was “part of China”?

Parents across the country have been speaking out against the campaign to impose “Critical Race Theory” on their children in school classrooms. Mark Weber joins host James Edwards in this 51-minute session to look beyond the headlines. CRT, says Weber, is a small part of a much larger, decades-old campaign to discredit and dismantle what’s called “structural” or “systemic racism” in America, and to remove all traces of what is regarded as this country’s “racist” heritage. With regard to at least one key point, he adds, CRT proponents, as well as leaders of the “Black Lives Matter” protest movement, are right. They are correct in emphasizing that the USA was founded as a white republic.

… Indeed, “You Gentiles” reads as a Jew-hating fever dream. Samuel writes, “If anything, you must learn (and are learning) to dislike and fear the modern and `assimilated’ Jew more than you did the old Jew, for he is more dangerous to you … We try to adapt your institutions to our needs, because while we live we must have expression; and trying to rebuild them for our needs, we unbuild them for yours.” … Samuel’s book insists on the impossibility of Jews and non-Jews living in stability and respect, and the necessity of Jews living in their own land … In sum, at face value, the book is a statement of inevitable Jewish toxicity to gentile societies, written with a strange matter-of-fact dispassion … The picture Samuel paints of Jews and gentiles matches both Zionist tenets and the antisemitic vision of Jews as a menace.

An important work on the age-old, emotion-laden issue of relations between Jews and non-Jews. The author is Maurice Samuel (1895-1972), a shrewd and perceptive Jewish writer. Here he lays out a blunt, unvarnished defense of Jewish ethics and the Jewish mindset. He is also unsparing in his disdain for the routine hypocrisy and self-deception of many Jews and non-Jews when dealing with this issue. This book was first issued in 1924 by the prominent New York publishing firm of Harcourt, Brace & Co. “Years of observation and thought,” he writes, “have given increasing strength to the belief that we Jews stand apart from you gentiles, that a primal duality breaks the humanity I know into two distinct parts; that this duality is a fundamental, and that all differences among you gentiles are trivialities compared with that which divided all of you from us.”

… Even I was surprised by the ferocity of the Israeli reaction to Ben & Jerry’s announcement on July 19, that it would no longer sell its ice cream in Palestinian territories occupied by Israel … Could it be that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – which targets the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — has finally found Israel’s soft spot? … Ben & Jerry’s decision hints at a watershed moment in the BDS campaign … Israel is losing the battle for public opinion … That’s why I believe Ben & Jerry’s is likely to stay the course – and why more American companies will follow suit.

The Jewish founders of Ben & Jerry’s spoke out Wednesday in defense of the ice cream maker’s move to boycott Israeli settlements in the West Bank, calling it “one of the most important decisions the company has made in its 43-year history.” Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who sold the company decades ago and maintain no control over its operations, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that they support Israel but oppose its “illegal occupation” of the West Bank. They maintained that the decision taken by their former company is “not a rejection of Israel. It is a rejection of Israeli policy, which perpetuates an illegal occupation that is a barrier to peace and violates the basic human rights of the Palestinian people who live under the occupation.”

Two bronze horses sculpted by Josef Thorak for Adolf Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery that were abandoned on a Soviet military base in East Germany will become government property after a legal settlement with the collector who acquired them, according to the German culture ministry. Under the terms of the agreement the collector, Rainer Wolf of Bad Dürkheim near Mannheim, will retain other Nazi sculptures that were seized by police on his properties in 2015. These include two larger-than-life portrayals of muscular men by Arno Breker and two female nudes by Fritz Klimsch. Without giving details, the government said in the statement that it plans to exhibit the monumental horses by Thorak … The Reich Chancellery, built for Adolf Hitler by his chief architect Albert Speer, was largely destroyed in the Second World War.

… You’ve heard about slavery and mass human sacrifices of Central and South American Indians, but North American Indians were enslaving each other long before the white man showed up. Tlingit and Haida Indians, who lived in the Pacific Northwest, went raiding for slaves as far South as California. About one quarter of the population were slaves, and the children of slaves were slaves … What were called the Five Civilized Tribes of the American Southeast happily bought black slaves. In 1860, there were 21,000 Cherokee, and they owned 4,000 slaves. And that was just the Cherokee … Free blacks in the South owned slaves … Remember the Barbary Pirates of North Africa? Between 1530 and 1780 they caught and enslaved more than a million white, European Christians.

In his autobiography “Being Oscar: From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas,” Oscar Goodman recounts his 35 years as famed criminal defense lawyer for Jewish gangsters Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal … Prof. Rockaway tells the stories of Arnold Rothstein, the New York based organized crime mastermind known as the key figure behind the infamous 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” World Series baseball scandal; the “Cleveland Four,” including “Moe” Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Sam Tucker and Louis Rothkopf; Al Capone’s financial adviser Jack “Greasy Thumb” Guzlik; and the “Purple Gang,” the Detroit mob formed by Sammie Cohen and led by the Bernstein brothers … Further, both Meyer Lansky and his partner Bugsy Siegel helped the nascent Jewish state of Israel.

Perhaps no American Jewish actor has been so closely associated with crime films as Harvey Keitel … Now he’s adding to the list with “Lansky,” portraying perhaps the most famous Jewish gangster of all time, Meyer Lansky. Lansky, born in Russia in 1902, arrived in New York in 1911. Known as the “Mob’s Accountant,” he was notorious in his own right, operating criminal rackets from Miami to Las Vegas to Cuba and playing a role in the establishment of what’s been called the National Crime Syndicate … “Lansky” is upfront about the importance of Jewishness to Lansky’s story … Lansky’s “good” side, at least according to the film, consisted of fighting Nazis, and also providing crucial support to Israel at the outset of its existence.

The recent felony conviction and eight month prison sentence of January 6th protester Paul Hodgkins is an affront to any notion of justice. It is a political charge and a political verdict by a political court. Every American regardless of political persuasion should be terrified of a court system so beholden to politics instead of justice … In other words, Hodgkins deserved enhanced punishment because he committed a thought crime. The judge on the case, Randolph D. Moss, admitted as much. In carrying a Trump flag into the Senate, he said, Hodgkins was, “declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation.” … While many Biden backers are enjoying seeing the hammer come down on pro-Trump, non-violent protesters, they should take note: the kind of totalitarian “justice” system they are cheering on will soon be coming for them. It always does.

PayPal Holdings, Inc., is partnering with non-profit organisation the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate how extremist and hate movements in the United States take advantage of financial platforms to fund their criminal activities. The initiative will be led through ADL’s Center on Extremism, and will focus on uncovering and disrupting the financial flows supporting white supremacist and anti-government organizations. It will also look at networks spreading and profiting from antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Hispanic and anti-Asian bigotry. The information collected through the initiatives will be shared with other firms in the financial industry, law enforcement and policymakers, PayPal said … Over the past several years, PayPal has also been taking action against businesses peddling extremism …

Pro-censorship anti-bigotry group the Anti-Defamation League has partnered with PayPal to “fight hate” by cutting off its financing. But its definition of “hate,” criticized as expansive and fungible, has prompted concerns. The ADL and PayPal have banded together to “fight extremism and hate” by limiting users’ ability to donate money using the popular online payment processor, the advocacy group said on Monday. “PayPal and ADL will focus on further uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movemets,” the group said, adding that they would also go after “actors and networks spreading and profiting from all forms of hate and bigotry against any community.” … Such valuable information, they said, will be shared with law enforcement, the banking industry and policymakers.

… The White House claims its new war on terrorism and extremism is “carefully tailored to address violence and reduce the factors that … infringe on the free expression of ideas.” But the prerogative to define extremism includes the power to attempt to banish certain ideas from acceptable discourse … The Biden report stresses that federal law enforcement agencies “play a critical role in responding to reports of criminal and otherwise concerning activity.” “Otherwise concerning activity”? This is the same standard that turned prior anti-terrorist efforts into laughingstocks … The Biden report concludes that “enhancing faith in American democracy” requires “finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.” But permitting politicians to blacklist any ideas they disapprove won’t “restore faith in democracy.”

After witnessing how the death of George Floyd opened the floodgates of black Americans discussing racism, 22-year-old Los Angeles resident Chana Hall decided it was time to tell her own story. Her experience was not about police brutality, but the mistreatment she had experienced as a black child at Jewish day schools. Hall posted on her Facebook page: “What I am posting is no way to draw hate to the Jewish community. As a black Jew, I’ve never faced more racism in my life than I have from the Jewish community and Jewish schools.” The post, which Hall later deleted (she told the Journal she feared she would be targeted), described how she switched high schools due to the racism she experienced. Hall, who was raised Orthodox, was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish mother and a black father who converted to Judaism.

A contemporary “British Pathé” newsreel report on the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. An enthusiastic crowd of 100,000 welcomes the national teams of countries around the world as they enter the impressive stadium that was built for the two weeks of games. As leader of the host country, Chancellor Hitler formally announces the opening of the event. A sprinting young man brings aloft into the stadium the flame that had been carried by a relay of runners from the site of the original Olympic games in Greece. English-language narration. Runtime: 2:42 mins.

… The initial successes of our forces against the Soviets were due to the fact that the Russians were not stationed in defense positions, but were instead positioned right at the front for attack, which made it possible for us to quickly encircle large Soviet forces. Thus, in the first weeks of the war, we were able to capture more than three million prisoners of war as well as enormous quantities of war equipment, all of which was on the frontier, positioned for attack. That’s the truth of the matter, which can be proven.

Identity politics has engulfed the humanities and social sciences on American campuses; now it is taking over the hard sciences. The STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and math — are under attack for being insufficiently “diverse.” The pressure to increase the representation of females, blacks, and Hispanics comes from the federal government, university administrators, and scientific societies themselves. That pressure is changing how science is taught and how scientific qualifications are evaluated. The results will be disastrous for scientific innovation and for American competitiveness.

… For 20 years, the United States waged all-out war against this small, remote, impoverished state whose only weapons were old AK47 rifles and the boundless courage of its fierce people. In my first book about Afghanistan, ‘War at the Top of the World,’ written after being in the field with the anti-Soviet ‘mujahidin’ warriors, I called them ‘the bravest men on earth.’ Now, some 21 years later, I repeat this title. For the past two decades, the Afghan nationalist mujahidin have faced the full might of the US empire … Afghanistan was a war of lies, sustained by the powerful US and British media … Officially, the US lost 31,376 dead and seriously wounded in Afghanistan … The Afghans god knows how many. Estimates range from, 100,000 to one million … The known cost for this useless war was two trillion US dollars …

The end of the 20-year US war on Afghanistan was predictable: no one has conquered Afghanistan, and Washington was as foolish as Moscow in the 1970s for trying … Attempting to occupy, control, and remake a foreign country into Washington’s image of the United States will never work. This is true no matter how much money is spent and how many lives are snuffed out … Brown University’s Cost of War Project calculated the total cost of the Afghanistan war at more than two trillion dollars. That means millions of Americans have been made poorer for a predictably failed project … Meanwhile, the Costs of War Project also estimated that the war took more than a quarter of a million lives.

One-third of U.S. voters said they consider themselves to be “woke,” a term used to refer to someone who is aware and proactive about social justice issues such as racial discrimination. / A new The Hill / HarrisX poll of about 1,000 registered voters conducted between July 8-9 found 32 percent of them saying they “consider themselves to be woke.” … A 60 percent majority of Democrats surveyed said they think “wokeness” is a good thing for the country, but only about 20 percent of Republicans agreed. Polled voters were evenly divided in their view of whether being “woke” is a positive or negative concept for the country moving forward.

Israel and the United States have been working in tandem in recent weeks to pressure Poland to shelve or alter a proposed law on Holocaust restitution, according to a Thursday report … Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who has been leading the contacts with the Biden administration, asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to help Israel thwart the Polish law, according to the Haaretz daily. A US State Department source quoted by the newspaper said the Biden administration was keeping close tabs on the legislation, adding that the US is “urging the Polish parliament to fix the proposed law so the already pending claims can continue.” … Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of US senators sent a letter to Polish President Andrzej Duda expressing their “grave concerns” about the bill and urging him to oppose it.

Israel’s prime minister will take “strong action” against boycotts, after Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop selling ice cream in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Naftali Bennett warned the US firm’s parent company, Unilever, that there would be legal and other consequences. Ben & Jerry’s said on Monday that the sale of its products in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was “inconsistent with our values”. Palestinian activists praised the move. More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The outrage over Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling ice cream in the occupied Palestinian territories continues, and the states of Florida and Texas are preparing to take action. Both states have laws on the books against Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), the global movement that calls to hold Israel accountable for its occupation and war crimes against Palestinians through boycotts. Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the US, wrote a letter to the governors of over 30 states with anti-BDS laws to take action against Ben & Jerry’s … “As a matter of law and principle, the State of Florida does not tolerate discrimination against the State of Israel or the Israeli people, including boycotts and divestments targeting Israel,” [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis wrote.

An Israeli company that sells spyware to governments is linked to fake Black Lives Matter and Amnesty International websites that are used to hack targets, according to a new report. Researchers from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who worked with Microsoft, issued a report on Thursday about the potential targets of Candiru, a Tel Aviv-based firm marketing “untraceable” spyware that can infect and monitor computers and phones. One way the company’s spyware allegedly infects targets is through web domains, and the researchers found that the firm’s software was associated with URLs masquerading as NGOs, women’s rights advocates, activist groups, health organizations and news media.

Many of those who view “Titanic,” the blockbuster motion picture, may leave the movie theater believing that the April 15, 1912, sinking of the great British liner, with the loss of 1,523 men, women and children, was history’s greatest maritime disaster … But these disasters are dwarfed by the sinkings of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the General Steuben and the Goya, three German ships crowded with evacuated refugees and wounded soldiers that were struck by Soviet submarines during the final months of the Second World War.

Tokyo 2020 organisers on Thursday fired the show director for the Olympic opening ceremony on the eve of the event over a decades-old skit referencing the Holocaust … Kentaro Kobayashi’s comments in a video of a comedy sketch from 1998 emerged online overnight and sparked shock from some in Japan. “It came to light that during a past performance, (he) used language that mocked a tragic fact of history,” Tokyo 2020 chief Seiko Hashimoto told reporters. “The organising committee has decided to relieve Kobayashi of his post.”

Against the backdrop of conflagration in South Africa, I offer positive commentary about the country of my birth … I’m the author of a scathing, 2011 – dare I say prescient? – indictment of the political dispensation forced upon South Africa by the “Anglo-American Axis of Evil.” That dispensation is the “one man, one vote, one time” arrangement, to quote Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa: “Democracy is especially dangerous in ethnically and racially divided societies, where majorities and minorities are rigidly predetermined and politically permanent.” That’s what the West forced on South Africa. For the last decade, I’ve seen South Africa as a sea of troubles — and a harbinger of things to come in America. When America becomes a majority-minority country, it will likely resemble South Africa.

Israel’s prime minister vowed Tuesday to “act aggressively” against the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling its ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories, as the country’s ambassador to the U.S. urged dozens of state governors to punish the company under anti-boycott laws. The strong reaction reflected concerns in Israel that the ice cream maker’s decision could lead other companies to follow suit. It also appeared to set the stage for a protracted public relations and legal battle. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office said he spoke with Alan Jope, chief executive of Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever, and raised concern about what he called a “clearly anti-Israel step.” He said the move would have “serious consequences, legal and otherwise,” and Israel “will act aggressively against all boycott actions directed against its citizens.”

The show director of the Olympics opening ceremony has been dismissed, one day before the event is due to be held. Footage of Kentaro Kobayashi from the 1990s recently emerged in which he appears to make jokes about the Holocaust. Japan’s Olympic chief Seiko Hashimoto said the video ridiculed “painful facts of history” … This latest scandal has seen former comedian Mr Kobayashi strongly criticised for a sketch he performed 23 years ago, in which he and another comedian pretend to be children’s entertainers. In the sketch Mr Kobayashi turns to his colleague, referring to some paper dolls, saying they are “the ones from that time you said ‘let’s play the Holocaust’”, according to AFP news agency. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga described the comments as “outrageous and unacceptable”.

The leadership of the United Church of Christ adopted a resolution at its General Synod slamming Israel by accusing it of using “imperialistic theology” as justification of its policies towards the Palestinians. The 3,500-word document, adopted by a vote of 462-78, titled “Declaration for a Just Peace between Palestine and Israel,” pronounced “Israel’s continued oppression of the Palestinian people a sin, incompatible with the Gospel” and that it “rejects a future imposed by military power, illegal occupation and dispossession, or unilateral annexation of land and the use of an imperialistic theology as justification.” … The United Church of Christ is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States with some 4,852 churches and 802,356 members.

… The spree of violence in the nation’s capital this weekend is one more point in a larger, worrying, trend. According to Washington, DC, crime statistics, the rate of assaults committed with a gun has risen each year since 2018. So far, 455 assaults with a gun have been reported in 2021. This time last year, there had been 422. Across major US cities, rates of homicides and shootings are up … Regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge, nearly all US cities have seen a rise in gun violence and killings. Whether local police funding has increased or decreased has not spared them. But other violent crimes, such as robberies, have gone down, Prof Abrams explains. FBI data also shows that while violent crimes and murders were on the rise, the numbers remain far below the levels of the early 1990s.

… In 1954, after a million Mexicans had crossed over into the United States, President Dwight Eisenhower sent Gen. Joseph Swing to send them back. In the vernacular of the time, the mission was named Operation Wetback. Mission accomplished. Problem solved. And the point: America used to regard its southern border as sacrosanct and vulnerable, requiring constant vigilance and occasional action to secure … If the present rate of illegal entries continues, Biden, by the end of his first year as President, will have failed to stop perhaps two million illegal aliens from having breached our southern border. Biden is conducting the border policy of a failed state … America’s border paralysis is induced by liberal ideology.

American military officials drew up a secret plan in 1930 for war against Britain in which Canada would be the main battleground. “Joint Plan Red,” as it was known, envisaged the elimination of Britain as a trading rival. Professor Floyd Rudmin of Queens University in Ontario, Canada, charges that the plan was a blueprint for an American invasion of Canada. According to the plan, the United States was prepared to invade Canada if political unrest brought on by Quebec’s secession threatened American access to Canada’s fresh water and cheap hydroelectric power. The war plan document was drawn up by the Joint Board of the Army and Navy in May 1930, when Herbert Hoover was President … Its aim was to dismember the British empire on the grounds of “competition and interference with American foreign trade.”

A group of US Senators have sent a letter to Poland’s president calling on him to oppose a controversial bill that would effectively prevent Jews from pursuing restitution claims linked to Nazi-era persecution. The law has passed in the country’s lower house, but must still pass in its Senate and gain the president’s approval. Since the fall of communism in 1989, attempts by Holocaust survivors and their representatives to secure compensation for stolen Jewish property valued at $30 billion — according to an experts report commissioned by the Israeli government in 2007 — have failed. Under the proposed Polish law, outstanding claims for the restitution of property seized during the Holocaust that are more than 30 years old will be dismissed … This makes it effectively impossible for victims to claim compensation.

Politicians and pundits in Washington have long warned that China is seeking to erode global democracy and “export its authoritarian model,” but the culprit behind explosive spy revelations this week appears to be America’s closest military ally in the Middle East. A private Israeli surveillance firm has been selling spyware to several governments for use in terrorism and criminal investigations, but some have turned it on journalists, activists, business executives, and politicians, an investigation by a consortium of 17 media organizations revealed on Sunday.

… America has been constantly at war since 2003, outlasting three presidents in a row. It is unprecedented, and should never happen again, where the United States’ military has an almost 20-year authorization for war. No president, regardless of party, should be given a blank check to go war and remain at war … An America First military policy means military action should be used to defend our homeland, and only for as long as is necessary. It does not mean setting up an occupying army in foreign lands, wasting billions of dollars “rebuilding” foreign countries and costing countless lives while doing so … It’s time to end forever wars.

… Truth be told, Afghanistan was never a vital interest of the United States but has always been the most priceless possession of the Afghan people. But how the Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara of Afghanistan rule themselves, 8,000 miles away, is not our business. There never was a vital U.S. interest in Afghanistan worth a war of the cost in blood, treasure and time that we have just fought … We did it to ourselves. Hubris was our failing, as it often is of great powers, the mindset exhibited by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she declared: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

Let’s start with some stunning facts on the Afghan ground. The Taliban are on a roll. Earlier this week their PR arm was claiming they hold 218 Afghan districts out of 421 – capturing new ones every day. Tens of districts are contested. Entire Afghan provinces are basically lost to the government in Kabul, which has been de facto reduced to administer a few scattered cities under siege … Mapmakers cannot upload updates fast enough. This is fast becoming a textbook case of the collapse of a 21st-century central government … The Taliban seem to be riding an irresistible momentum, especially when Afghans themselves were stunned to see how the imperial “protector,” after nearly two decades of de facto occupation, left Bagram airbase in the middle of the night.

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has warned that the website can no longer be trusted — insisting it is now just “propaganda” for the left-leaning “establishment.” Sanger told UnHerd’s Lockdown TV Wednesday that he started the “encyclopedia of opinion” in 2001 purely on the basis it would offer true neutrality and offer “multiple points of view” on “hot button issues.” Now, he insisted, conservative voices are “sternly warned if not kicked out” if they try to add a different take on establishment views — which Sanger deemed “propaganda.” … Now you can only rely on the site to “to give an establishment point of view,” rather than the diverse range of opinions it was set up to give, he insisted.

The Church of England has confirmed plans to apologise to UK Jews for medieval antisemitic laws, put in place centuries before the church itself existed … The measures in question, put in place by the Synod of Oxford in 1222 … The Oxford decrees forbade the Jews from building synagogues where they had not settled before, introduced badges so that the Jews could be differentiated and forbade sexual and many social relations between Jews and non-Jews. Jews were not to remain in England unless they could support themselves … The move to apologise for the medieval laws comes as part of a growing recognition within the Church of England that Christian anti-Judaism was a key, if not the only, cause of modern antisemitism.

Military-grade spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners. The phones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and also known to have been clients of the Israeli firm, NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation found.

… NSO Group had been given explicit permission by the Israeli government to try to sell the homegrown hacking tools to the Saudis. It was a classified arrangement and resulted in the sale later being sealed in Riyadh in a deal reportedly worth at least $55 million … It is common for governments to help companies export their products. NSO, after all, employs former Israeli cyber-intelligence officials and retains links to the defence ministry. But revelations about how repressive states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and others have used NSO’s technology to target human rights lawyers, activists and journalists raise questions for Israel and have put the issue under fresh scrutiny.

In July 1944 a group of German conspirators tried to kill Hitler and violently seize power in Berlin. In the US and Germany today, the anti-Hitler conspirators are portrayed as men of exemplary courage, conscience and principle. This prevailing, “politically correct” idealization is a gross distortion of reality. By today’s standards, von Stauffenberg and the other leading conspirators were “Nazis.” They supported the policies and principles of the National Socialist government for at least five years, and only belatedly turned against the Hitler regime.

… About an hour and a half after the “Valkyrie” order was given [by the von Stauffenberg conspirators], my regiment, by then combat-ready, moved into the areas to be sealed off in accordance with its orders. The normal guard units, such as those at the War Memorial and the Bendlerblock, the headquarters of the Commander of the Replacement Army and of the Defense Production Office, remained at their posts … Goebbels asked me to address the troops assembled there, which I did. Their outrage at the traitorous goings-on was so great that they would have torn every single conspirator to pieces, had they been there.

Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Donald Trump to launch a military strike against Iran after it was clear that the former US president had lost the 2020 election, a report said Thursday. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, battled to prevent Trump from ordering a strike against Iran, while the president was circled by hawks, including Netanyahu, pressuring him to execute such a strike, according to a report Thursday by the New Yorker … Other foreign policy advisers, including then-vice president Mike Pence, also reportedly pushed for military action against Iran. When Milley asked why they were so intent on attacking the Iranians, at a meeting where Trump was not present, Pence replied: “Because they are evil.” Milley believed that Trump did not want a war …

Are young men living at home because they’re not working? Or are they not working because they’re living at home? Hard to say, but either way, the trends are clear: More American males aged 25-34 are living in a parent’s home, and fewer are participating in the labor force … “About half of prime age men who are not in the labor force may have a serious health condition that is a barrier to working,” the late Princeton economist Alan Krueger wrote in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity in 2017. Added Krueger: “Nearly half of prime age men who are not in the labor force take pain medication on any given day; and in nearly two-thirds of these cases, they take prescription pain medication.”

In less than six months in office President Joe Biden has already developed a national security policy that appears to lean strongly towards proactive use of military force in questionable circumstances, as if war is the answer to every problem. Biden should nevertheless be applauded for his persistence in withdrawing from Afghanistan after twenty years of ill-considered nation building, but even the departure from that country appears to be characterized by a lack of coordination … For the second time the president has ordered a US bombing raid on two targets in Syria, and for the first time, he also attacked a site inside Iraq … The Iraqi government, which was not informed in advance of the US bombings, not surprisingly reacted strongly, registering its opposition to such activity on the part of its so-called ally …

A 96-year-old former secretary at the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp will be tried at a north German juvenile court, accused of assisting in the systematic murder of thousands of people. The regional Itzehoe court in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein said on Friday that the trial would provisionally start on September 30 … She was a teenager when she worked as a secretary at the Stutthof camp near Gdansk during the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II. The 96-year-old, who worked as a civilian employee in the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp, is accused of aiding and abetting the murder of more than 11,000 people. The indictment reads: “The defendant is charged with committing a crime as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant’s office of the Stutthof former concentration camp …”

While Stutthof is not as well-known as other wartime German camps, a close look at the history of this important internment center is revealing. The patterns of deportations to and from the camp, and the treatment of inmates, both Jewish and non-Jewish, disclose some surprising features … Between June and October 1944, 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish women, originally from Hungary, arrived at Stutthof from Auschwitz. In addition, Jewish women originally from the Lodz ghetto also arrived at Stutthof from Auschwitz. During the summer and fall of 1944, as Soviet forces advanced toward the Baltic region, thousands of Jews, including Jewish mothers and their children, were evacuated to Stutthof from more than a dozen camps and remnant ghettos in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

California lawmakers have allocated around £60 million [nearly US $82.6 million] in their 2021-22 budget for Jewish causes, citing a recent spike in antisemitism. Millions will go to the Holocaust Museum Los Angeles for capital improvement, the LA-based Jewish Family Services for a permanent location, the Tauber Holocaust Library for renovation and a Jewish immigration advocacy group for asylum support. Most of the money is for non-profit organisations and is on top of federal funds. About £7 million [$9.6 million] is also available for an exhibit comprising an entire floor at the Museum of Tolerance. “Our caucus is deeply concerned about the increase in antisemitism,” said Assembly member Jesse Gabriel. “We have been working hard to ensure the State of California stands with our community during these challenging times.”

As part of California State Parks’ commitment to redressing racist and discriminatory features within the Parks system, a 1948 memorial honoring Madison Grant in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park has been removed. The large stone monument was removed by an excavator during a small ceremony on June 15 … The move comes in the wake of a national conversation about the names of geographic features and builds upon Governor Gavin Newsom’s work to support equity, inclusion and accountability throughout the state to better reflect our values.

… Mr. Mosier, one of the more entertainingly contrarian military historians writing today, convincingly dashes these myths – and more – in an important and groundbreaking book about the Eastern front … [Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin: The Eastern Front, 1941-1945] looks beyond Soviet propaganda claims to present a truly eye-opening account of the campaign … As the war wound down in the spring of 1945, Russian losses continued to be so heavy that the Red Army desperately conscripted all men between the ages of 14 and 60, and prepared to form all-female combat units … Indeed, he contends, Hitler well might have succeeded had not the Allied invasion of North Africa caused him to withdraw key units from the Eastern front to protect his southern flanks.

How close did Hitler come to winning World War II? What was the real turning point in the war, and why? In this pathbreaking revisionist study [Hitler’s Panzers East], Professor Stolfi provides some startling answers to these questions. If Hitler had played his cards just a bit differently, contends the author — a professor of Modern European History at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California — he could have won the war. German forces came very close to defeating the Soviet Union in 1941. Because Britain alone posed no mortal threat to German power, the defeat of Soviet Russia would effectively have ended the war, resulting in German hegemony over all of Europe. The result would have been a drastic change in the course of world history.

… Americans and Canadians like to believe they won the war in Europe and give insufficient recognition to the decisive Soviet role. Most Europeans would rather not think about the matter … Were it not for the USSR’s victory, Nazi Germany might be alive and well today. Let’s do the numbers. The Soviet armed forces destroyed 507 German divisions and 100 allied Axis divisions (according to Soviet figures) …. The Red Army accounted for 75-80 percent of Axis casualties in World War II … No one likes to admit it was Stalin who defeated Nazi Germany. Stalin killed far more people than Adolf Hitler … At that time, both Roosevelt and Churchill lavished praise and thanks on the Soviet Union, admitting its “gigantic effort” in defeating Hitler’s Germany. Today, however, we have chosen to forget who really won the war in Europe.

A record number of Americans died from drug overdoses last year in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, according to official data. In total, an estimated 93,331 Americans died of overdoses in 2020 – a nearly 30 percent increase from the previous year. Experts say the spike indicates how deadly some drugs have become, and the disruptive impact the pandemic has had on society. The surge was partly driven by the increase in fentanyl … Isolation and feelings of loneliness due to the coronavirus pandemic have also been blamed for an increase in drug deaths … The figures released on Tuesday mean that about 250 overdose deaths occurred every day, or around eleven per hour.

The Biden administration made headlines last week as it moved to shut down the websites of 33 foreign media outlets, including ones based in Iran, Bahrain, Yemen and Palestine. Officials justified the decision by claiming the organizations were agents of “disinformation.” The most notable of these is probably English-language Iranian state broadcaster Press TV. Visitors to PressTV.com are now met with the seal of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and a message notifying them that the domain “has been seized by the United States government.” (The site has since migrated to an Iranian-based domain, PressTV.ir.) This is far from the first time Press TV has been targeted.

Facebook users searching for information about the Holocaust in 12 languages, including German, Arabic and Chinese, will now be directed to authoritative information on an educational website. The initiative was first launched on January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, for social media users searching in English for terms associated with the Holocaust and the denial of it. Upon typing any related search terms, Facebook users are prompted to visit AboutHolocaust.org to learn about the history of the Holocaust … The site was developed by the World Jewish Congress together with UNESCO, the United Nation’s education, scientific and cultural organization.

Over the last week, I have been watching the Taliban sweep across the map of northern Afghanistan, capturing places that I first visited in 2001 at the beginning of the US-backed war … The vast sums of money available because of US expenditure produced a kleptocratic elite. The US has spent $144 billion on development and reconstruction, but some 54 per cent of Afghans live below the poverty line, with earnings of less than $1.90 a day … Visiting Kabul and other cities over the years, I came to feel that the Taliban had limited support, but that everybody viewed government officials as parasites to be circumvented or bribed … Government failure has enabled the Taliban to believe that they can return to power within a year. Such a prospect frightens many people.

… [Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor] Orban calls himself a freedom fighter and defender of traditional Catholic values who believes in democracy but not liberalism: “The Hungarian nation is not a mere pile of individuals.” … Is not Hungary being subjected to EU discrimination for the moral offense of holding on to beliefs that differ from the new EU consensus? Is the EU’s liberalism so intolerant of dissent it would expel an EU member who does not embrace its 21st-century teachings on LGBT rights? … American values, once declared to be freedom, liberty and independence, have evolved into inclusiveness, diversity and tolerance … Are future European generations to be taught that the Christian position on homosexuality was backward, bigoted and hateful and that its abandonment marked a major step in human progress?

Time was when Britain’s mighty fleets ruled a quarter of the earth’s surface … Last week [June 23], the imperial British lion made a last, feeble roar by sending one of its new anti-aircraft destroyers, ‘Defender,’ to annoy the Russians by patrolling off the south-western coast of Crimea … The Brits are masters at intrigue, double-dealing and propaganda. British propaganda drew the United States into two world wars. In our era, Britain has assumed leadership of western propaganda efforts against Russia and its allies … No one who knows history should be surprised that western moves on Sevastopol and Crimea produced such a strong Russian reaction. Imagine how the US would react to a Russian naval squadron staging war games in the Gulf of Mexico or off New York City.

One of Britain’s leading contemporary historians, Sir Anthony Seldon, has hit back at the ‘disgraceful’ claim that Winston Churchill was no better than Adolf Hitler. Speaking at the Daily Mail’s Chalke Valley History Festival, he added it was particularly worrying that the provocative comments had come from educated quarters … Sir Anthony did not mention who compared the former wartime leader to his Nazi nemesis. But he may have been referring to Indian writer and politician Dr Shashi Tharoor, who once described Churchill as ‘really one of the more evil rulers of the 20th Century, only fit to stand in company of the likes of Hitler, Mao and Stalin’. His comments, in 2017, have recently been followed by Left-wing activists seizing on the chance to trash Churchill’s reputation by saying he was racist.

… The truth about Winston Churchill is that he was a menace to liberty, and a disaster for Britain, for Europe, for the United States of America, and for Western Civilization itself … With his lack of principles and scruples, Churchill was involved in one way or another in nearly every disaster that befell the 20th century. He helped destroy laissez-faire liberalism, he played a role in the Crash of 1929, he helped start World War I, and by bringing in America to help, prolonged the war and created the conditions for the rise of Nazism, prolonged World War II, laid the groundwork for Soviet domination, helped involve America in a cold war with Russia, and pioneered in the development of total war and undermining western civilized standards.

At the beginning of World War I, Britain set up a blockade designed, according to one of its architects, Winston Churchill, to “starve the whole population of Germany — men, women and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission.” … Not until five months after the armistice did the Allies allow Germany to import food — not out of concern for the ongoing death and suffering, but out of fear that desperate Germans would follow the Russians into Bolshevism. By the time it was lifted, the peacetime blockade had killed about a quarter of a million people, including many children who either starved or died from diseases associated with malnutrition.

… If I’m known for anything as a historian, apart from being a pain in the neck, it’s because I uncover things. And uncovering things does not necessarily mean you go into the archives and see something and say: “Look at this, this is something quite extraordinary.” If you go into the archives long enough, ten or twenty years, you become what I would call a “gap-ologist” I can spot gaps in archives and they’re much more difficult to spot, because they’ve been papered over, and the files have been closed … Now what a scandalous statement that is! Here’s the one country, Germany, trying to prevent a war and the other country — Roosevelt, neutral — trying to fan the flames of anti-German feeling to fuel the war. Yet it is the Germans who are called the criminals, and the Americans who do the prosecuting.

As our July Fourth celebrations were beginning, the U.S. quietly closed and abandoned Bagram Air Base, the largest American military base between the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea. Afghan looters were soon seen scavenging inside the base. The long retreat of the American Empire is underway … Undeniably, [Chinese President Xi] and his predecessors have an awesome record, as the Financial Times relates: “China’s emergence over the past four decades ranks as the biggest and longest-run economic boom in history. Its annual gross domestic product rose from a mere $191 billion, or $195 per capita, in 1980 to $14.3 trillion, or $10,261 per capita, in 2019. It has raised more than 770 million people from poverty and transformed the Chinese economy into a high-tech powerhouse that is on course to eclipse America’s in size.”

… China, the emerging superpower, is back to the global prominence it enjoyed throughout centuries of recorded history, while the declining Hegemon is paralyzed by the “existential challenge” posed to its fleeting, unilateral dominance … What matters is what they define as a very effective system to make SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) development plans, and put them in practice … Over the past two decades, China’s GDP grew eleven-fold. Since 2010, it more than doubled, from $6 trillion to $15 trillion, and now accounts for 17% of global economic output … In this case, Chinese exceptionalism means respecting Confucianism – which privileges harmony and abhors conflict – as well as Daoism – which privileges balance – over the boisterous, warring, hegemonic Western model.

Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank amount to a war crime, a U.N. human rights investigator said on Friday, calling on countries to inflict a cost on Israel for its “illegal occupation”. Michael Lynk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, was addressing a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, boycotted by Israel which does not recognise his mandate or cooperate with him. “In my report, I conclude that the Israeli settlements do amount to a war crime,” Lynk said. He said the settlements violate an absolute ban on an occupying power transferring part of its civilian population into an occupied territory, thereby meeting the definition of a war crime under the Rome Statute founding the International Criminal Court (ICC).

A survey of US Jewish voters taken after the Israel-Gaza conflict finds that a sizable minority believes some of the harshest criticisms of Israel, including that it is committing genocide and apartheid. Among respondents to the survey commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute, a group led by prominent Jewish Democrats, 34 percent agreed that “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States,” 25% agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state,” and 22% agreed that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.” Among younger voters included in the survey released Tuesday, agreement with those statements was higher, though still in the minority.

… The inherent contradictions in advocating for democracy and equality, on the one hand, and the Jewishness of Israel, on the other — which, by definition (and law), provides lesser rights to its non-Jewish citizens … The deep inherent contradictions of our policy toward Israel are coming to a head … There is no case except Israel’s in which the United States specifically and actively advocates for a form of an ethno-nationalist state that discounts a large portion of its population and demands that others do the same … Advocating for Israel specifically as a Jewish state directly and indirectly conflicts with the notion that states should represent and treat all their citizens equally, which is at the heart of democracy, an issue that Biden has made central for his administration and its foreign policy.

… Across the political spectrum younger people tend to see Israel in a more negative light. Though projecting survey results onto a future political landscape is a dangerous gambit, Royden and Hersh’s findings indicate that we are headed for a future where American attitudes toward Israel are more contested than they are today in both parties. The implications of these survey findings for the U.S.-Israel relationship are potentially dire. Boosters of the relationship are accustomed to promoting Israel as not only a strategic partnership in the interests of the U.S., but an alliance built on “shared values,” presumably those of liberal democracy, and even cultural commonalities. But that selling point makes less sense as the possibility of a two-state solution recedes and Israel prepares for long-term occupation or even annexation.

… Welcome to Portland; the progressive dream that has turned into a nightmare … Portland is full of signs in windows and on lawns pleading with anarchists to move on and hurt someone else. These residents know they cannot depend on the police to either prevent crimes or arrest those who commit them, and who can’t manage to come together and face down a small but violent mob of misanthropes. The streets of downtown Portland, once a bustling home to independent boutiques, are now lined with boarded-over windows and closed businesses. No neighbourhood is secure from the current wave of terror; the breaking of shop fronts, arson and harassment of sleeping citizens in their homes are all commonplace.

On a visit to Europe … [President] Donald Trump insisted to his then chief of staff, John Kelly: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.” The remark from the former US president on the 2018 trip, which reportedly “stunned” Kelly, a retired US Marine Corps general, is reported in a new book by Michael Bender … Bender says unnamed sources reported that Kelly “told the president that he was wrong, but Trump was undeterred”, emphasizing German economic recovery under Hitler during the 1930s. “Kelly pushed back again,” Bender writes, “and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide.”

Immediately after taking power, Hitler and his new government launched ambitious programs to deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression. These innovative and comprehensive policies proved remarkably successful. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was booming. As historian Mark Weber explains here, this remarkable achievement is little known and rarely acknowledged. He also takes a look at the Third Reich’s economic and taxation policies, and their impact on people’s lives, as well as the ideology and social-economic principles on which they were based.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has claimed that Jews caused the world to “bow” to them due to the Holocaust. The authoritarian leader made the remarks in a speech on the occasion of a memorial service for Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazi Germany. “Jews were able to make the world remember [the Holocaust], and the whole world bows to them, being afraid of saying one wrong word to them,” said Lukashenko. “On our part, we, being tolerant and kind, did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings and let the things down to the point when they have started to hurt us,” he added … He said there must be more acknowledgment of the role Belarussians had in fighting the Nazis alongside Soviet forces, with the Belarussian president stressing that more work was needed to ensure that people remember Belarus’s part in World War II.

According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which compiled data from cities across the country showing hundreds of injuries and deaths over a 72-hour period, the Fourth of July weekend was the most violent weekend in the United States so far this year. Roughly 233 people were killed in the U.S. and hundreds more injured — from 5 p.m. Friday through Monday, according to the GVA data. The organization reported numbers exceeding 600 injuries as of Tuesday morning and is still finalizing numbers collected from police, media and government sources in real time. The U.S. saw historic spikes in gun violence in all its major cities in 2020, and the trend has continued into 2021 to make this year even more deadly. Chicago, New York City, and the Washington D.C. area reported the highest number of injuries and deaths over the holiday weekend.

Legions of Zionist and pro-Israel bloggers and online activists have for years been working to influence and shape what appears on the internet and in social media. This video explains how Israeli government agencies, Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, and independent Zionist activists, effectively promote pro-Jewish and pro-Israel narratives, imagery and propaganda (“hasbara”), and suppress, distort and smear whatever they regard as anti-Jewish or anti-Israel. Wikipedia, the influential online “free encyclopedia,” receives special attention. Zionist activists work relentlessly to revise, rewrite and shape Wikipedia entries to make them as pro-Israel and pro-Jewish as possible. Runtime: 14:15 mins.

A youthful Naftali Bennett, here as a Zionist online activist before he became Israel’s Prime Minister, talks about training Israeli Jews as “Wiki editors” to make sure that Wikipedia entries are “Zionist in nature.”

… Hasbara Fellowships was started in 2001 by the right-wing Zionist organization Aish HaTorah and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Its declared goal is to train students outside of Israel how to promote the Israeli state’s image on their respective campuses. Aish HaTorah supports illegal Israeli settlements within the Occupied Palestinian Territory … “Hasbara”, which is the term used to describe Israel’s public relations efforts, is widely seen as a euphemism for Israeli state propaganda. When a government is engaged in criminal behaviour, it is helpful to have students on campuses of higher learning in allied countries to serve as de facto ambassadors … I have come to realize that Hasbara Fellowships is simply the tip of the iceberg of a global propaganda effort aimed at silencing criticism of Israel’s criminal behaviour.

Wikipedia has become the new battleground for Israel’s PR image. The Yisrael Sheli (My Israel) movement and the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, have joined together for a new public relations initiative. Together they will soon offer a special course for volunteers who wish to write and edit English entries on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Ayelet Shaked, who is heading the project, was interviewed on Monday on Arutz 7 Radio, and said that she was surprised at the large number of individuals who have gotten in touch with her so far and are interested in joining the course.

… Failure to foresee the aggressive and disintegrating role which a victorious Soviet Union might be expected to play in a smashed and ruined Europe and Asia was the principal blunder of America’s crusading interventionists … It was an illusion that the United States was at any time in danger of invasion by Nazi Germany. It was an illusion that Hitler was bent on the destruction of the British Empire. It was an illusion that China was capable of becoming a strong, friendly, western-oriented power in the Far East. It was an illusion that a powerful Soviet Union in a weakened and impoverished Eurasia would be a force for peace, conciliation, stability, and international co-operation.

An Australian historian has uncovered hidden documents which reveal that African American troops used machine guns to attack their white officers in a siege on a US base in north Queensland in 1942 … What he discovered [in 2012] was evidence detailing one of the biggest uprisings within the US military … These troops, from the 96th Battalion, US Army Corps of Engineers, were stationed at a base on the city’s western outskirts known as Kelso. This was the site for a large-scale siege lasting eight hours, which was sparked by racial taunts and violence … According to the findings, the soldiers took to the machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons and fired into tents where their white counterparts were drinking. More than 700 rounds were fired. At least one person was killed and dozens severely injured, and Australian troops were called in …

… In the decades following World War II there’d been rumors among Australians that a bunch of black American GIs stationed Down Under had launched a full-scale mutiny against their white superior officers … Here’s the short version: In spring 1942, about 600 Negro soldiers with the 96th Battalion, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, were in north Queensland to construct an airfield. And on the night of May 22, an unknown number of them decided to train their guns on the tents of their white commanding officers … What’s not in dispute is that the incident was purposely hushed-up … When the Sherrod document was uncovered in 2012, the very few news organizations that reported the story tried to spin the mutiny as a justifiable response to racism.

Each year C-SPAN asks historians to rate American presidents by “leadership” qualities. The top ten in this year’s survey are: One, Abraham Lincoln; Two, George Washington; Three, Franklin Roosevelt; Four, Theodore Roosevelt; Five, Dwight Eisenhower; Six, Harry Truman; Seven, Thomas Jefferson; Eight, John F. Kennedy; Nine, Ronald Reagan; Ten, Barack Obama. The “worst” presidents, according to the historians’ survey, are James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. The survey asks historians to measure ten qualities of presidential leadership. Scores in each category were then averaged, and the ten categories were given equal weighting in determining the presidents’ total scores.

… Almost seven out of ten voters (69 percent) believe America is the greatest country to reside in, according to the latest Fox News survey, down from 83 percent in 2015 and from the high-water mark recorded a decade ago: 84 percent in April 2011, the first time the question was asked on a Fox News poll. On the other side of the ledger, 26 percent say America is not the best country to live in, up 12 points. The drop in positive views since 2015 is most pronounced among voters under age 45 … Democrats and Black voters are among those most likely to think the best days are still to come.

US sanctions and other actions against Russia and China have naturally drawn Beijing and Moscow closer together. Despite the obvious result of Washington’s policies over the past few years, US officials are acting surprised and concerned about the growing Russia-China relationship … The concerns the US says it has over this “quasi-alliance” will be used to justify more military spending and expansion. The Politico report said the most “striking and of greatest concern” of the US is China and Russia’s increased military and technological cooperation … In its 2022 budget request, the Pentagon identified China as the top “pacing challenge” facing the military. Washington views Beijing as a threat to US global hegemony, and US officials are not shy to admit that’s why countering China is the priority.

Israel’s president warmly welcomed his German counterpart on Thursday, praising him as an ally in combatting antisemitism. Reuven Rivlin said that Germany has been Israel’s “strong partner in the uncompromising fight against antisemitism” and has stood with Israel against “the forces of terror who seek to wipe us off the map.” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also met with Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem … Germany launched a new initiative with the United States last week to stem an alarming rise in antisemitism and Holocaust denial around the world. The U.S.-Germany Holocaust Dialogue seeks to reverse the trend … The dialogue creates a way to develop educational and messaging tools to teach youth and others about the crimes of the Nazis and their collaborators.

A new museum dedicated to the long-silenced trauma of German civilians forced to flee eastern Europe at the end of World War II opens next week after decades of wrenching debate. Perhaps reflecting what its founders call their delicate “balancing act”, the new institution in Berlin carries the unwieldy name of Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion and Reconciliation. Some 14 million Germans fled or were ejected from what is today’s Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Baltic states, Romania, Slovakia and the former Yugoslavia between 1944 and 1950 … The 65-million-euro ($78-million) museum takes pains to place the Germans’ plight firmly in the context of Hitler’s expansionist, genocidal policies.

… Between 1945 and 1950, Europe witnessed the largest episode of forced migration, and perhaps the single greatest movement of population, in human history. Between 12 million and 14 million German-speaking civilians — the overwhelming majority of whom were women, old people, and children under 16 — were forcibly ejected from their places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are today the western districts of Poland … Most disturbingly of all, tens of thousands perished as a result of ill treatment while being used as slave labor (or, in the Allies’ cynical formulation, “reparations in kind”) in a vast network of camps … By any measure, the postwar expulsions were a man-made disaster and one of the most significant examples of the mass violation of human rights in recent history.

… The American public has long thought of the Allied effort in World War II as a “great crusade” that pitted good and decency against Nazi evil. Even after all these years, it is likely that the last thing the public wants to learn is that vast and unspeakable wrongs were committed by both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during the war and its aftermath. It flies in the face of that reluctance for MacDonogh to tell “the brutal history” at great length [in his book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation]. That willingness is commendable for its intellectual bravery.

US President Joe Biden has nominated University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann as ambassador to Germany, German government sources said Wednesday after tumultuous years with Donald Trump’s envoy. Gutmann, 71, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, would be the first woman appointed to the post … Gutmann has led the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, since 2016 and is an expert in democratic processes and ethics. She served as chair of Barack Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Gutmann told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university newspaper, in 2013 that her Jewish father Kurt’s experiences in Nazi Germany had had a “profound influence” on her.

President Biden’s nominee to be the next ambassador to Germany is an Ivy League president whose university paid him nearly $1 million for an honorary professor gig where he was seldom seen, it was revealed Friday. University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, who has headed the Philadelphia-based institution since 2004, is the first envoy to a G-7 nation to be nominated by Biden … Biden accepted an honorary professorship at UPenn after he left office as vice president in 2017 … In July 2019, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Biden was paid $911,643 by Penn … The crowning achievement of Biden’s association with the university was the opening in February 2018 of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, an event overseen by Gutmann.

The Yale College Council on Sunday adopted a resolution condemning Israel for committing “human rights violations.” The student leaders passed the “Statement of Condemnation,” a joint resolution with Yale’s Middle Eastern and North African Cultural Center, Yalies 4 Palestine, and the Arab Students Association, after weeks of opposition from Jewish students. The measure denounces “injustice, genocide, and ethnic cleansing occurring in Palestine” and claims Israel is an “apartheid” state. “We stand against the discriminatory application of the law that strips Palestinians of basic rights,” the statement reads. “We stand against the apartheid and the persecution of Palestinians, and stand for peace and the freedom of the Palestinian people from violent military occupation.”

The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released Wednesday found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.) The annual digital news report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford also found some improvement in trust in nearly all the countries surveyed — probably thanks to COVID-19 coverage — but not in the U.S. where the low rating was flat year to year. One explanation, though not necessarily the only one, is the extreme political polarization in the U.S. This study, like many others, found extremely high levels of distrust — 75% of those who identify as being on the right thought coverage of their views is unfair.

About that clash between a British destroyer and Russian warplanes and warships in the Black Sea last week there are conflicting versions. The Kremlin version is the more dramatic … With this clash off Crimea, a peninsula Russia regards as vital and we have never regarded as vital, we could have been drawn into a conflict by our ally, Britain … The US does not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, but we have not threatened or used force to alter that reality. For no vital US interest is imperiled in Russia’s control of Crimea and its two million people. After all, czarist and Bolshevik Russia controlled that peninsula from the time of Catherine the Great to the time of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Most Indians see themselves and their country as religiously tolerant but are against interfaith marriage, a survey from Pew Research Center has found. People across different faiths in the country said stopping interfaith marriage was a “high priority” for them. The research comes follows laws introduced in several Indian states that criminalise interfaith love. Pew interviewed 30,000 people across India in 17 languages for the study … According to the survey, 80% of the Muslims who were interviewed felt it was important to stop people from their community from marrying into another religion. Around 65% of Hindus felt the same … Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) said it was very important to be Hindu in order to be “truly Indian”.

Antisemitic, white nationalist and insurrectionist organizations are lining their pockets with unpaid taxes, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League released Monday. These groups have established more than 30 nonprofit organizations exempt from state and federal income and unemployment taxes, and in some cases, property taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes and employment taxes, according to the report, released by the ADL’s Center on Extremism.

… There’s been quite a lot in the news about revelations that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted tax exempt groups for special scrutiny because of their views or outlook. Outrage over this profiling led to an apology by the IRS, and the agency’s chief was obliged to resign his post … Years ago the federal tax agency responded to Jewish-Zionist pressure by targeting the IHR for similar special scrutiny — but in this case no apology was ever issued, and no one ever resigned.

June 22, 2021 should go down as a dark day in the history of the First Amendment. On that date, the U.S. Justice Department seized control of dozens of Iranian websites. According to a Justice Department press release, the federal authorities seized 33 websites operated by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU), which is “linked” to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … The Justice Department charged that such entities “disguised as news organizations or media outlets, targeted the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations.” Such a vague and subjective justification should send chills down the spine of every American who values the First Amendment. “Disinformation” is fast becoming an all-purpose rationale (pretext?) for trying to silence dissenting voices, especially on foreign policy issues.

Polish experts say human remains uncovered this month near the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz date to after World War II, and most probably belonged to German soldiers taken prisoner by Soviet forces … After the Nazi defeat, Polish and Soviet communist authorities held German prisoners of war — as well as political prisoners — there and in the surrounding area. They were subjected to brutal treatment. In 1946, those who died were buried in sites through which the Sola now flows, according to Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance. There were similar finds of human bones in the same area last year, prompting an investigation then by the institute, which looks into Nazi and communist crimes.

… We hear a lot about terrible crimes committed by Germans during World War II, but we hear very little about crimes committed against Germans. Germany’s defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, “ethnic cleansing,” and mass killing … Even though this “unknown holocaust” is ignored in our motion pictures and classrooms, and by our political leaders, the facts are well established. Historians are in basic agreement about the scale of the human catastrophe, which has been laid out in a number of detailed books.

For many in Europe, the end of the Second World War meant peace and healing. But for millions of Germans, “liberation” opened a new and terrible chapter. This hour-long British documentary reveals the appalling violence meted out to the defeated, especially to those ethnic Germans who had lived peacefully for centuries in neighbouring countries. Using rare and unseen archive film, this documentary tells a harrowing story of vengeance against German civilians. The Savage Peace includes the unique testimony of eyewitnesses and victims, who recall the horrors with searing clarity, their memories undimmed 70 years after the events took place. As the writer George Orwell said, the treatment of the defeated Germans was a terrible crime that has gone unpunished.

This eye-opening book vividly chronicles the privations, terrors and atrocities endured by the German people in the final months of World War II, and in the immediate postwar years. In lucid, often riveting prose, the author provides a close up look at the grim fate of German women as the rampaging Red Army raped and murdered its way across Europe; the most horrific nautical disasters in history; the greatest mass migration and largest-scale “ethnic cleansing” of modern times, in which millions perished; the terrible ordeal of prisoners in wretched post-war Allied-run death camps; the genocidal terror bombing campaign carried out by US and British air forces; and much more.

… It’s crucial to stress that [Iran’s new president Ebrahim] Raisi, in principle, favors the restoration of the JCPOA [Iran nuclear agreement] as its was signed in 2015 – following the guidelines of Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. But if the Vienna charade goes on forever and the Americans keep insisting on rewriting the deal towards other areas of Iranian national security, that’s a definitive red line. Raisi acknowledged the immense internal challenges he faces, in terms of putting the Iranian economy back on track, getting rid of the neoliberal drive of outgoing Team Rouhani, and fighting widespread corruption. The fact that election turnout was only 48.7%, compared to the average 70% in the prior three presidential contests will make it even more difficult.