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President Biden’s “townhall” meeting this past week was a disaster. From his bizarre poses to the incoherent answers, it seemed to confirm America’s worst fears about a president we are told was elected by the most voters ever … Strategic ambiguity has been US policy toward Taiwan/ China for decades, but the new Biden China policy could be re-named “strategic incoherence.” The policy of “strategic ambiguity” is foolish enough – who cares who rules Taiwan? – but advancing the idea that the United States is willing to launch a nuclear war with China over who governs Taiwan is a whole other level of America-last foolishness … These are dangerous times.
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Warnings and Threats – Or Bluster and Bluff
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Consider, then, a brief summation of the confrontational postures adopted by the Biden diplomats … We are openly warning Iran that time is running out, that if Tehran does not return to negotiations on the nuclear deal and compliance with its terms, a U.S. attack on Iran cannot be ruled out. We are putting China on notice that we do not accept its broad claims to the islets of the East and South China Seas, and we may be there to fight alongside our allies to sustain their claims. Now congressional leaders in both parties are crafting measures to give Biden authorization to take us to war with China to protect Taiwan, whose declaration of independence, warns Beijing, would cross its “red line” and mean war.
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California state lawmakers on Thursday announced $2.5 million in funding to support the expansion of Holocaust Museum LA, including for a new learning center pavilion and new programming for younger learners at the Los Angeles venue. The state support will allow visitor capacity to increase to 500,000 per year, including 150,000 students, by 2030, according to the museum. “Museum space is at capacity, particularly during school hours, and requests for student tours and public workshops continue to increase,” said Holocaust Museum LA CEO Beth Kean. Previously, the California State Assembly’s Jewish Caucus secured $6 million for Holocaust Museum LA in the 2019-20 state budget.
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Ethnic Studies Mandated in California
Philip Giraldi
…. Californians are already overloaded with the Zionist narrative … History textbooks, as nearly everywhere in the United States, heavily emphasize the holocaust in World War 2 … Once again Israel wins both ways in California, joining states like Texas, Florida and Virginia that are already fully on board. Not only has the mandatory Ethnic Studies program largely shut out the Palestinians and turned Jews into perpetual victims, Governor Newsom has also put his markers down on increasing the consumption of the standard holocaust myth to indoctrinate young Americans who have the misfortune to attend California schools. And the trend is unfortunately a national one as more states appear poised to get on board the pander to Israel movement.
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Holocaust Deceit, 'Remembrance,' and Reality
Mark Weber – Podcast
Lurid falsehood and outright lies are routinely promoted, even by supposedly reputable media, as part of the seemingly endless campaign of “Holocaust Remembrance.” A recent item in Canada’s most prestigious daily newspaper about the wartime German concentration camp of Buchenwald is a good example. Weber cites, and discredits, specific falsehoods. Such historical deceit is a routine part of the relentless “Holocaust” campaign, which plays such an important role in our society because it’s an expression of Jewish-Zionist power, and is meant to further Jewish-Zionist interests.
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The Israeli occupation has demolished about 172,900 Palestinian homes, displaced 1,324,000 Palestinians and confiscated 19 million dunums (19,000 square kilometres) of the land of historical Palestine “to bring 5 million Zionist immigrant from around the globe to replace the indigenous people.” Marking the World Habitat Day yesterday, the Land Research Centre in Jerusalem said: “During the Nakba 1948, the Israeli occupation demolished 125,000 Palestinian houses and displaced 800,000 Palestinians, about 47 per cent of the Palestinians.” The centre stated that the continuous Israeli attacks led to the occupation of about 78 per cent of historical Palestine and demolished about 4,500 houses, rendering 30,000 Palestinians homeless between 1950 and 2021.
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In recent years the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On” has been widely reproduced and parodied. Millions around the world believe that the British government promoted the slogan on posters during World War II to boost public morale. The true story is quite different than what many believe.
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A Conductor’s Impossible Legacy: Wilhelm Furtwängler
David Allen – The New York Times
… Ask me to show you what the point of a conductor is — what a conductor can achieve — and I would point you to a [Wilhelm] Furtwängler recording. The problem is that Adolf Hitler would point to him, too. For Hitler, Furtwängler was the supreme exponent of holy German art; it was to the Nazis’ satisfaction that he served — in effect if not in title — as the chief conductor of the Third Reich … Distressingly, Furtwängler turned out to have been at his most intensely visionary during the war, performing for an Aryanized audience at the helm of a purged Berlin Philharmonic … As for the man himself, it speaks to the lasting power of Furtwängler’s artistry that we still demand so much of him morally — more, for example, than of Herbert von Karajan, who joined the Nazi party, or Karl Böhm, who hailed Hitler from the podium.
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Wilhelm Furtwängler and Music in the Third Reich
Antony Charles – Institute for Historical Review
… Acting swiftly to promote a broad revival of the nation’s cultural life, the new National Socialist government made prodigious efforts to further the arts and, in particular, music … As part of its efforts to bring art to the people, it strove to erase classical music’s snobbish and “class” image, and to make it widely familiar and enjoyable, especially to the working class. At the same time, the new regime’s leaders were mindful of popular musical tastes. Thus, by far most of the music heard during the Third Reich era on the radio or in films was neither classical nor even traditional. Light music with catchy tunes — similar to those popular with listeners elsewhere in Europe and in the United States — predominated on radio and in motion pictures, especially during the war years.
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Israel Approves $1.5 Billion Budget for Potential Attack on Iran
Dave DeCamp - Antiwar. com
According to a report from Israel’s Channel 1, the Israeli government approved a $1.5 billion budget to prepare for a potential attack on Iran. The extra funds would be used to purchase additional aircraft, surveillance drones, and the munitions needed to strike Iran’s underground nuclear facilities … Throughout the year, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has repeatedly said the IDF is “accelerating” plans to strike Iran, and Israeli politicians have constantly been threatening the Islamic Republic … The US has joined Israel in issuing threats against Iran. Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted at military action against Iran alongside Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. Blinken said if diplomacy with Iran fails, the US will turn to “other options.” Lapid made clear that one of Blinken’s “options” was military action.
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Who’s the most powerful person in your state? Well, based on public employee salaries, it’s likely a college coach (sorry, governors). A whopping 28 college football coaches are the best-paid employees in their states, along with 12 college hoops coaches who top the state payrolls. Check out the map to find your state’s top-earning public official, plus the governor’s salary.
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The biggest movie in the world right now is not the latest Bond film No Time To Die or even Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It’s a Chinese propaganda film about the 1950s Korean War, centred on a story of Chinese soldiers defeating American troops despite great odds. In just two weeks since its release, The Battle at Lake Changjin has made over $633 million at the box office. This puts it far ahead of Shang-Chi’s global earnings of $402 million, and in just half the time. It is set to become China’s highest-grossing film ever … Commissioned by the Chinese government, The Battle At Lake Changjin is just one of several nationalist films which have become big commercial hits in China in recent years.
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China is Not Yesterday’s Enemies
Peter Van Buren - The American Conservative
Joe Biden’s China policy is unnecessarily adversarial. It is impractical and dangerous. It plays out as if it is being run by WWII reenactors. China was artificially reimagined as an enemy-in-a-box as the wars of terror sputtered out and America needed a new villain. Biden envisions China as an autocratic foil for democracy to wage a global struggle against. “On my watch,” Joe said, “China will not achieve its goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world.” … In Biden’s neo-Churchillian view, the U.S. and, what the hell, the whole free world he believes he is president of, are in a death match with China. But there is unbelievable hypocrisy in America’s claimed role.
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Classical Music’s Suicide Pact - Part 2
Heather Mac Donald - City Journal
… As the lies about classical music accumulate, not one conductor, soloist, or concertmaster has rebutted them … Narcissism, the signal characteristic of our time, is shrinking our cultural inheritance to a nullity … The betrayal of the music guardians is not unique. Other individuals entrusted with preserving Western civilization are abdicating their responsibility, too, either actively colluding with the forces of hate or passively allowing those forces to conquer their field … Classics professors have been mute before calls to eliminate their entire field if it cannot be purged of its alleged racism and misogyny. Every humanities subject is being hollowed out with similar charges. Under the logic of the current moment, any tradition that comes out of Europe is racist because its contributors will have been overwhelmingly white.
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How a Jewish Manhattan Project Scientist Quietly Helped the Soviets Get the Bomb
The Times of Israel
In 1948, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was sharply focused on the Communist Party of the USA to root out Russian espionage — and with his attention concentrated there, missed the escape of a highly accomplished Soviet spy hiding in plain sight. Born into a Jewish family that had immigrated from czarist Russia to the United States, George Koval … also joined the US Army and conducted top-secret work at two locations of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs that exploded over Japan in 1945 … The two factors of communist idealism and pragmatic protection of his family, Hagedorn says, motivated him to become a spy … A later-in-life correspondence between Koval and a former colleague in the US, in which the former expressed no regrets for his espionage. Another document testified to his prowess as a spy.
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The Morgenthau Plan and the Problem of Policy Perversion
Anthony Kubek – Institute for Historical Review
The Morgenthau Diaries consist of 900 volumes located at Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York. As a consultant to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, I was assigned to examine all documents dealing with Germany, particularly ones related to the Morgenthau Plan for the destruction of Germany following the Second World War. The Subcommittee was interested in the role of Dr. Harry Dexter White, the main architect of the Plan … The objective of the Morgenthau Plan was to de-industrialize Germany and diminish its people to a pastoral existence once the war was won … Anyone who studies the Morgenthau Diaries can hardly fail to be deeply impressed by the tremendous power which accumulated in the grasping hands of Dr. Harry Dexter White, who in 1953 was identified by Edgar Hoover as a Soviet agent.
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Portland Sets New Homicide Record
Fox News
The number of homicides in Portland has now surpassed its previous annual record of 66, set in 1987 – and there are still more than two months to go in the calendar year. As of Tuesday, Oregon’s largest city has recorded 67 killings so far this year, three-quarters of which have been carried out by firearms, according to the Associated Press. The total number of shootings – around 1,000 – has also left an additional 314 people injured … The homicides come as Portland’s police department is struggling to keep up amid an acute staffing shortage and budget cuts.
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Portland police have yet to make any arrests a week after a group of around “100 anarchists” marched through the city’s downtown, damaging local businesses, tagging buildings with “Kill Cops” graffiti and lighting dumpsters on fire in the street – resulting in estimated damages of at least $500,000. The Portland Police Bureau told Fox News on Tuesday that no arrests have been made related to the widespread acts of vandalism that happened on Oct. 12 … Members of the group set off illegal fireworks and sprayed graffiti on buildings. Police released photos from the scene showing graffiti that read “Kill Cops” and “Riots Work.” … In total, police said the group targeted 35 separate locations, including banks, retail stores, coffee shops and government buildings.
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Following Takeover, Staff at US News Agency 'Politico' Told to Leave If They Don’t Support Israel
Middle East Monitor
Staff at the recently purchased American news agency, Politico, has been warned that they must abide by the parent company’s commitment to Israel or else find a new job, though they are not expected to sign a formal pledge in writing, as their German counterparts. The message was communicated to the 500 staff of Politico, by Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of the Berlin-based company, Axel Springer, which said in August that it was buying the American news agency for more than $1 billion. Döpfner, who has previously said that support for Israel is “a German duty,” is reported in the Haaretz telling staff at Politico that Axel Springer’s commitment to Israel is like “a constitution” and if they did not like it, they should not work for the firm.
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Touchy Subject: We Must End Self-Censorship on Israel and Palestine
John Lyons - Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
… I knew that if I reported the truth about the treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank, I would be the target of a backlash which would be tough, nasty and prolonged. I knew that the report would not encourage a debate about the central theme of the story — whether it was fair that in the West Bank there is one law for Jewish children and one for Palestinian children — but rather a round of attacks on me. Most journalists based in Jerusalem who report exactly what they see in front of them are trolled and abused … The Israeli-Palestinian issue is the single issue which the media will not cover with the rigour with which it covers every other issue. And, most importantly, it’s the story of how the Australian public is being short-changed — denied reliable, factual information about one of the most important conflicts of our time.
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Congress Has Introduced Over 70 Pieces of Israel-Centric Legislation So Far in 2021
K. Shihadah - If Americans Knew
For a country that practices apartheid, defies international law, and engages in ethnic cleansing, Israel is popular in the US Congress. During just about 125 days in session, the houses of Congress managed to entertain more than 70 new pieces of legislation pandering to Israel. It is no coincidence that the pro-Israel lobby is arguably the most pervasive and influential lobby in the U.S. – and that Israel partisans, many of them billionaires, make massive campaign donations to both parties. This year’s legislative items include plenty of military aid and non-financial perks for Israel, and scoldings for those who speak ill (if truthfully) of the Jewish state … Below is a list of legislation currently under consideration in Congress (and there will be more in the coming days).
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Two progressive Jewish groups have joined a coalition calling on financial giant Fidelity to stop facilitating donations to right-wing organizations, including one that bankrolls Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Fidelity has, at the request of clients, directed millions of dollars to controversial nonprofits through so-called “donor-advised funds,” which allow wealthy individuals to funnel tax-deductible donations through third parties that obscure the flow of money. The Unmasking Fidelity campaign last week added the two left-wing Jewish groups to its coalition. The coalition is calling on Fidelity Charitable, which allows the company’s clients to make tax-exempt donations, to reveal past contributions to organizations that it says promote racism and anti-LGBT sentiment and to cease making such donations.
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Critical Race Theory and the Jewish Project
Gilad Atzmon
There is a growing debate in the USA about Critical Race Theory (CRT). Peculiarly enough, CRT’s opponents insist that the ‘Marxist’ discourse must be uprooted from American culture and the education system. I am puzzled by it, as I cannot think of anything more removed from Marx’s thinking than CRT … One may wonder at this stage why people within the conservative right refer to CRT as ‘Marxist’ despite it having nothing to do with Marx and having much to do (ideologically) with Zionism and Hitlerian biologism. One option is that people within the American Right believe that the reference to Marx communicates well with their supporting crowd … The American Right may be using codified language to tackle its own paralysis. It clearly struggles to call a spade a spade.
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An Unknown Holocaust: Mass Killing, 'Ethnic Cleansing' and Brutal Mistreatment of Germans by the Victorious Allies
Mark Weber – Podcast
Weber reviews the little-known story of misery and death imposed by the victors on defeated Germany in the aftermath of World War II. The Allied powers imposed an “unknown holocaust” of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, “ethnic cleansing,” and mass killing. More than 14 million Germans were expelled or forced to flee from eastern and central Europe. Some three million Germans died needlessly — about two million civilians, mostly women, children and elderly, and one million prisoners of war. Weber also highlights the Allied double standard in putting German leaders to death for policies that the Allies themselves were carrying out, sometimes on a far greater scale.
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NATO’s ‘Cognitive Warfare’: ‘Battle For Your Brain’ Waged by Western Militaries
B. Norton - The Gray Zone
NATO is developing new forms of warfare to wage a “battle for the brain,” as the military alliance put it. The US-led NATO military cartel has tested novel modes of hybrid warfare against its self-declared adversaries, including economic warfare, cyber warfare, information warfare, and psychological warfare. Now, NATO is spinning out an entirely new kind of combat it has branded cognitive warfare. Described as the “weaponization of brain sciences,” the new method involves “hacking the individual” by exploiting “the vulnerabilities of the human brain” in order to implement more sophisticated “social engineering.” … A 2020 NATO-sponsored study of this new form of warfare clearly explained … “Cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.”
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US Policy Is to ‘Oppose the Reconstruction of Syria,’ Says Sec’y Blinken
Dave DeCamp – Antiwar.com
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US position on Syria is to “oppose” the country’s reconstruction and not support any attempts at normalization with the government of Bashar al-Assad. At a joint press conference with his Israeli and UAE counterparts, Blinken said the US has not “changed our position to oppose the reconstruction of Syria until there is irreversible progress toward a political solution.” More and more Arab countries are accepting that Assad isn’t going anywhere and have taken steps to normalize, including Jordan, which opened its border with Syria in September. Blinken said the US does not intend to “express any support for efforts to normalize relations or rehabilitate Mr. Assad” or lift a “single sanction” unless there is regime change in Damascus.
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Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government will make the special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating anti-Semitism a permanent position and bolster the role with more resources. Trudeau made the announcement on Wednesday during his virtual appearance at the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, reported Canadian Press. “We need to attack directly the problem of anti-Semitism with increased urgency and focus all together because anti-Semitism isn’t a problem for the Jewish community to solve alone,” the prime minister told the forum. “It’s everyone’s challenge to take on, especially governments.”
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The European Commission is set to incorporate the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as part of Europe’s strategy to combat anti-Jewish racism. Details of the Commission’s plan were outlined yesterday in a 26-page programme. The three central goals are to prevent anti-Semitism in all its forms; protect and foster Jewish life; and promote Holocaust research, education and remembrance … “We want to see Jewish life thriving again in the heart of our communities,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “This is how it should be. The strategy we are presenting today is a step-change in how we respond to anti-Semitism. Europe can only prosper when its Jewish communities feel safe and prosper.”
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… America’s kids, the product of an obscenely well-funded school system, rank last in the developed world in reading, writing and math, making homegrown retardation a far more pressing problem in modern-day America than homegrown terrorism … There’s no doubt that American kids are drowning in self-esteem … Inflated self-esteem and narcissism not only mask failure, but create pumped up nihilists, ready to unleash on their surrounds, unless met with palliative praise … Our child-centered, non-hierarchical, collaborative, progressive schooling has produced kids who do not believe they can and should be corrected; and when corrected lash out in anger or bewilderment. Indeed, to listen to our university students speak — is to hear a foreboding amalgam of dumbness and supreme confidence combined.
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Thomas Jefferson Statue To Be Removed From New York City Council Chambers
The New York Times
For more than 100 years, a 7-foot-tall statue of Thomas Jefferson has towered over members of the New York City Council in their chamber at City Hall, a testament to his role as one of the nation’s founding fathers and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. But for the last two decades, some Black and Latino Council members, citing Jefferson’s history as a slaveholder, called for the statue to be banished — a push that gained significant momentum in the last year, as the nation has broadly reconsidered public monuments that can be viewed as symbols of systemic racism. On Monday, city officials voted unanimously to remove the statue from Council chambers, but delayed a decision on where to put it.
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Colin Powell became the first Black U.S. secretary of state and top military officer during decades as one of America’s most prominent leaders, but his reputation was tainted in 2003 when he touted spurious intelligence at the United Nations to make the case for war with Iraq despite deep misgivings … Powell will forever be associated with his presentation on Feb. 5, 2003, to the U.N. Security Council, making President George W. Bush’s case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein constituted an imminent danger to the world because of Iraq’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. He admitted later that the presentation was rife with inaccuracies and twisted intelligence provided by others in the Bush administration and represented “a blot” that will “always be a part of my record.”
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'He Lied': Many Iraqis Still Blame Colin Powell for Role in Iraq War
Associated Press
For many Iraqis, the name Colin Powell conjures up one image: the man who, as US secretary of state, went before the UN Security Council in 2003 to make the case for war against their country. Word of his death Monday at age 84 dredged up feelings of anger in Iraq toward the former general and diplomat, one of several Bush administration officials whom they hold responsible for a disastrous US-led invasion that led to decades of death, chaos, and violence in Iraq. His UN testimony was a key part of events that they say had a heavy cost for Iraqis and others in the Middle East … In 2011, Powell told Al Jazeera that he regretted providing misleading intelligence that led the US invasion, calling it a “blot on my record.” He said a lot of sources cited by the intelligence community were wrong.
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New Video Seems to Challenge Jewish Singer’s Claim of Antisemitism at German Hotel
The Times of Israel
New footage published by the German newspaper Bild raised questions Sunday about an Israeli-German musician’s claim that he was refused service at a hotel for wearing a Star of David necklace. In security footage from the hotel in Leipzig, the necklace does not appear to be visible around Gil Ofarim’s neck. Ofarim posted a video to social media earlier this month, in which he accused the Westin Leipzig hotel of denying him service because he was wearing a Star of David necklace. The video, which he titled “Antisemitism in Germany 2021” in all capital letters, went viral, with antisemitism watchdogs and others sharing it widely … Surveillance footage from the hotel appears to shows he did not have a Star of David around his neck when he tried to check into the hotel.
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Note to Blinken: Israel’s ‘Military Option’ Shouldn’t Be On Our Table
Daniel Larison - Responsible Statecraft
As indirect talks to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) remain in limbo, the U.S. and Israeli governments continue suggesting that “other options,” including military action, are available and will be considered if the talks should fail … In the context of discussing Iran’s nuclear program, what Lapid and Blinken are referring to is an endorsement of an illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran in the name of “preventing” Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon that Iran is not seeking … Any “preventive” military action against Iran would not only be a flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter, which prohibits the use or threat of force in international relations except in self-defense, but it would also likely produce the outcome that it is supposedly trying to stop, namely Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.
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Britain’s pro-Israel lobby gained another important scalp last week after a prolonged campaign of intimidation finally pushed a major UK university into firing one of its lecturers. Bristol University dismissed David Miller, a political sociology professor, even though an official investigation had concluded that accusations of antisemitism against him were unfounded. Research by Miller, a leading scholar on propaganda, had charted networks of influence in the UK in relation to Islamophobia that included the very pro-Israel lobby groups that worked to get him fired. The decision is likely to prove a severe blow to academic freedoms in the UK that are already under growing threat from efforts to silence criticism of Israel in the wake of reports from Israeli and international human rights describing it as an apartheid state.
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With Nod to Military Action Against Iran, US Gives In to Israeli Pressure
J. Ditz – Antiwar.com
Secretary of State Tony Blinken said all options are on the table against Iran, giving a clear nod to threats to attack militarily. This is exactly the sort of threat Israel has wanted, and Israeli officials are congratulating one another in getting that out of the US. “All options” was a catch-all term for the US in threatening anyone, but Israeli officials felt the US wasn’t saying it nearly enough against Iran … It isn’t clear that the US is any closer to attacking Iran now, however … The US stated goal is to return to the JCPOA and see Iran returned to it as well. Iran seems wholly prepared for that, on the condition that the US actually honors the deal and that they get some sort of assurance that the US won’t back out again like they did last time.
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Jews Built Hollywood. So Why is Their History Erased From the Academy’s New Museum?
Sharon Rosen Leib - Forward
After over a decade of delay caused by money problems, competing narrative visions and the COVID-19 pandemic, the $484 million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles has finally opened to the public. The Academy heralds its new museum as the most important institution devoted to filmmaking in the world … But what of the Jews who laid the foundation upon which they built their careers? … Hollywood’s founding moguls included Sol’s tyrannical boss William Fox, Adolph Zukor (Paramount), Harry and Jack Warner (Warner Bros.), Carl Laemmle (Universal), Sam Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer (MGM) and Harry Cohn (Columbia) — all Jewish. They achieved global reach by creating celluloid dream factories whose moving pictures rapidly became America’s most influential cultural export.
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The Big Hollywood Lie: Denying Jewish Control
New American View
… The Jewish denial that Hollywood is controlled by Jews is a great lie which can be attested to by anyone who has ever been associated with the film industry … It is positively insulting for them to deny their influence and power — particularly when they themselves are continually boasting in their own circles about their “overrepresentation” in these fields. And it is absolutely infuriating when this denial reaches the point that non-Jews are attacked by Jewish agitators and Zionist zealots for stating obvious facts and truth.
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White House Not Stolen, But Bought With Zuckerberg’s Money
Michael Goodwin - New York Post
… In “Rigged,” author Mollie Hemingway lays out what amounts to a fascinating alternative to the “stolen” charge. She presents a strong case that the $419 million that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ostensibly spent to get out the vote was actually used by Democrat activists to infiltrate local election operations and take over jobs government workers were supposed to do. Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist and a Fox commentator, shows how two Zuckerberg nonprofits used their unprecedented deep pockets to line up left-wing groups in key cities that in turn hired poll workers, collected absentee ballots and cured those with errors … “The 2020 election wasn’t stolen,” Doyle concluded. “It was likely bought by one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men pouring his money through legal loopholes.”
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Mark Zuckerberg Spent $419 Million on Nonprofits Ahead of 2020 Election — and Got Out the Dem Vote
New York Post
During the 2020 election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars to turn out likely Democratic voters. But this wasn’t traditional political spending. He funded a targeted, private takeover of government election operations by nominally nonpartisan — but demonstrably ideological — nonprofit organizations. Analysis conducted by our team demonstrates this money significantly increased Joe Biden’s vote margin in key swing states. In places like Georgia, where Biden won by 12,000 votes, and Arizona, where he won by 10,000, the spending likely put him over the top … The 2020 election wasn’t stolen — it was likely brought by one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men pouring his money through legal loopholes.
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An Irish author announced that she will only sell the Hebrew translation rights of her new novel if she can find a publishing house that adheres to the guidelines of the anti-Israel BDS movement. Sally Rooney’s third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You was released in September. That same month, the author declined an offer from the Israeli publishing house Modan, which printed her last two books in Hebrew, to buy the novel’s Hebrew translation rights. In a statement on Tuesday, Rooney said while she was “proud” to have her last two novels translated into Hebrew, she has decided not to sell the translation rights of her third book to an Israeli-based publishing house because of her support for BDS.
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A new report on anti-Semitism in Ireland provides a comprehensive and “deeply disturbing” look into how Irish politicians and activists use the guise of criticism of Israel to promote anti-Semitic accusations and tropes that is becoming pervasive throughout Irish society. “The spread of anti-Semitism throughout the Irish mainstream is clearly worse than in almost any other Western nation …,” according to the report. The over 200-page report, written by British investigative journalist David Collier, meticulously documents anti-Semitic and anti-Israel social-media posts made by Irish politicians, academics, student groups and NGOs/activists throughout Ireland largely over the past decade. “In Ireland, anti-Jewish racism spreads within the corridors of power and … appears to be as much driven from the top-down as the reverse,” the report said.
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Rachele Mussolini, the granddaughter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, has won a second term as a city councilor in Rome, receiving over 8,200 votes. While Rachele Mussolini had previously garnered only 657 votes in the 2016 election, she was able to capture a plurality this time, receiving more votes than anyone else on the ballot. The election took place on October 3 and 4 in 1,200 municipalities across Italy. This included the nation’s four largest cities, Rome, Naples, Turin and Milan, as well as hundreds of smaller localities. Rachele Mussolini is a member of the Brothers of Italy party, a far-right group critics say is rooted in neo-fascism. The Brothers of Italy is one of a number of right-wing parties that have seen a steady increase in support and power in the country, including a similar faction known as the League.
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America’s image today of Benito Mussolini and his Italian Fascist regime is, to a considerable extent, a product of Second World War propaganda. The wartime image of the Duce (leader) as a clownish bully remains largely intact to this day. But this was not always so. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Mussolini and Fascist Italy were generally well regarded in the United States.
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In German Court Case, 100-Year-Old Rejects Charge of Accessory to Murder at Wartime Camp
Associated Press
A 100-year-old man on trial for his alleged role as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp during World War II told a German court Friday that he was innocent. The defendant is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, where he allegedly worked between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing. German news agency dpa reported that the defendant, who was identified only as Josef S. in keeping with German privacy rules, said on the second day of his trial before the Neuruppin state court that he didn’t know the Sachsenhausen camp.
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Stone Carving Honoring Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel Dedicated at Washington National Cathedral
The Algemeiner
The Washington National Cathedral held a dedication ceremony on Tuesday for its new stone carving of the late Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel. The carving was completed in April 2021 and is located inside the Cathedral’s Human Rights Porch, which features carvings of historical defenders of human rights. Wiesel is the first person from the modern-day Jewish community to be featured in the cathedral … Tuesday’s event was held in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.
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Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel’s 'Night'
Alexander Cockburn - CounterPunch
… The trouble here is that in its central, most crucial scene, [Elie Wiesel’s book] Night isn’t historically true, and at least two other important episodes are almost certainly fiction … Wiesel made things up, in a way that his many subsequent detractors could identify as not untypical of his modus operandi: grasping with deft assurance what people important to his future would want to hear and, by the same token, would not want to hear … In Wiesel’s eyes, as in the eyes of his disciples, Night assumed a level of sacrosanctity, next in importance to the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai … Although the Nobel committee extolled him as a “messenger to mankind” it is difficult to find examples of Wiesel sending any message on behalf of those victimized by the policies of the United States, and virtually impossible when it comes to victims of Israel.
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A Prominent False Witness: Elie Wiesel Incites Hate Against Germans
Robert Faurisson
… Wiesel claims to be full of love for humanity. However, he does not refrain from an appeal to hatred. In his opinion: “Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate — healthy, virile hate — for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead.” … Elie Wiesel passes for one of the most celebrated eyewitnesses to the alleged Holocaust. Yet in his supposedly autobiographical book Night, he makes no mention of gas chambers. He claims instead to have witnessed Jews being burned alive, a story now dismissed by all historians. Wiesel gives credence to the most absurd stories of other “eyewitnesses.” He spreads fantastic tales of 10,000 persons sent to their deaths each day in Buchenwald.
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Hundreds of workers at Google and Amazon are demanding that both companies stop providing cloud services to the Israeli military. In May Israel carried out deadly attacks on Gaza, killing almost 250 people and more than 60 children. That same week the Israeli government signed a contract with Amazon Web Services and Google for over $1 billion. That contract secured a four phase project called “Nimbus,” which will provide cloud services to the Israeli government and military. In an open letter, published in The Guardian, nearly 400 Google and Amazon workers condemned the contract and called on the companies to sever ties with Israel.
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Alan Turing’s nephew has claimed the idea that his code-breaker uncle was ‘hounded to death by the state’ and took his own life because he was convicted for being gay is all part of a long-standing myth. Dermot Turing also suggested that he was not a ‘great codebreaker’ who was essential to Bletchley Park, as portrayed in the hit 2014 film The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. In the film, Turing was struggling to cope mentally following his conviction for ‘homosexual offences’ in 1952 before killing himself two years later … These two defining features of the movie, among others, have come under fire from his nephew who said such portrayals only help to perpetuate myths, and that his uncle would have been ‘made sick’ by the repeated focus on his trial and time at Bletchley.
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French conservative politician Gilles Platret has been condemned by some in his own party after claiming that some neighbourhoods see native French being “ethnically cleansed” by migrants. A vice-president of the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) and Mayor of Chalon-sur-Saône, Platret spoke out earlier this week on French television saying, “What we see today in some neighbourhoods — and I will use a word that will necessarily make reactions around this table — I feel a kind of ethnic cleansing.” According to a report from broadcaster LCI, he added that “people of foreign origin … gradually drive out what is called in demography natives, that is to say, people from the country, to make room,” adding that people from a “Muslim bloc” were pushing native French out.
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A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake [Texas] advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News. Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the comment Friday afternoon during a training session on which books teachers can have in classroom libraries. The training came four days after the Carroll school board, responding to a parent’s complaint, voted to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom. A Carroll staff member secretly recorded the Friday training and shared the audio with NBC News.
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Spanish right-wing politicians are rebuffing calls for Spain to apologise for dark chapters in its colonial past and have scorned US President Joe Biden’s recent acknowledgement of the atrocities suffered by indigenous peoples. The leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casado, described Spain’s colonial expansion to the Americas as “the most important event in history after the Roman empire”, on the eve of Spain’s 12 October holiday marking Christopher Columbus’s 1492 arrival in the New World … His comments came after President Biden, in a message to mark the US Columbus Day holiday, said the explorer’s arrival had led to “a wave of devastation” for Native Americans … He issued a proclamation to make the 11 October US holiday Indigenous Peoples’ Day, alongside the existing Columbus Day.
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The Amen Corner Strikes Again
Philip Giraldi
Once upon a time the Israel Lobby destroyed critics of the Jewish state and its behavior by stealth. If a Congressman or Senator were speaking honestly about the lopsided relationship with Israel which required suppressing, it was done by making sure that individual was not reelected … Legislators who have been dethroned by Israel using the same technique are Senators Chuck Percy and William Fulbright as well as congressmen Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney and James Traficant … Those who do not go along are no longer brought down in semi-clandestine fashion. They are instead openly and explicitly denounced as anti-Semites and holocaust-deniers. Anti-Semitism has become the hot wire in American political discourse.
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The Israel Lobby’s Crushing Win on Iron Dome
Philip Weiss - Mondoweiss
… “Democrats get half their campaign funding from Jewish sources,” a leading Israel advocate said in 1996. The role of Jewish Democratic donors is “gigantic” and “shocking,” two experts told J Street in 2016 … The New York Times called Jewish donors “the elephant in the room” in 2019: “Of the dozens of personal checks greater than $500,000 made out to the largest PAC for Democrats in 2018, the Senate Majority PAC, around three-fourths were written by Jewish donors.” … Our media have accepted the view that it is antisemitic to discuss the role of the organized Jewish community because it’s a discussion of Jewish power … The bad news is that lobby still has a “stranglehold” over policymaking because it has the overwhelming backing of the organized Jewish community, and a lot of money to spend on political races.
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One of America’s most influential political figures recently expressed allegiance to Israel in language that’s extravagant even by the hyped standards that often prevail today. At an important Zionist conference, Nancy Pelosi pledged: “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid … and I don’t even call it aid … our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.” Pelosi, who is speaker of the US House of Representatives, was addressing the annual conference of the Israeli-American Council, Dec. 2, 2018. Together with her were two powerful Jewish-Zionist figures: US Senate Democratic Party leader Chuck Schumer, and Haim Saban, a billionaire Israeli-American businessman and leading financial backer of Democratic Party candidates.
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Let’s Talk About Those Chinese Incursions Into Taiwan’s Air Defense Zone
Daniel Larison - Responsible Statecraft
Dozens of Chinese military flights through parts of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the past month have caused an unwarranted panic that hawks in the U.S. have stoked and exploited for their own purposes. Media hysteria and misinformation about these events have served to ratchet up tensions unnecessarily and to create an impression with the public that China is behaving far more aggressively than it is. The eagerness with which some national security analysts and reporters have mischaracterized what these flights represent has been alarming, because it shows how quickly any Chinese actions can be used to create a crisis atmosphere when there is no reason for it.
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Are China’s Threats to Taiwan a Bluff?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… What is China, dispatching bombers and fighters around the southern and eastern coasts of Taiwan, up to? This is an unmistakable message to America that, about Taiwan, Beijing is serious. China is warning the U.S. and its allied and associated powers — Australia, Japan, India — that it will, in the last analysis, fight to prevent an independent Taiwan. Taiwan is a red line for China. Is it for us? … If it is hard to see any benefit to China to come out of war with the United States, it is equally hard to see any benefit for the USA. China will never relinquish its claim to Taiwan, whose independence is recognized today by only a handful of nations. China is a nation many fear and respect, but whose regime few see as a friend.
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New York State will release $25 million in additional funding to boost security for Jewish and other religious and ethnic institutions amid a rise in hate crimes, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage on Wednesday. The money is on top of $43 million already awarded to 362 nonprofits across the state. In total, the grants will support 1,672 projects aimed at protecting ethnic and religious communities against acts of hate … Antisemitic incidents in New York City increased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2020, according to the NYPD crime statistics released last month. The governor said the additional money is just way to counter the rise in attacks against Jews. Hochul said the state will also be launching a new online reporting system for bias crimes.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the formation of a council on Holocaust and genocide education on Wednesday at the [Wiesenthal Center’s] Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The council will provide educational resources regarding the Holocaust and other instances of genocide to students at California schools and “provide young people with the tools necessary to recognize and respond to on-campus instances of antisemitism and bigotry” … In the 2021 state budget, California allocated $10 million to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, as well as $2.5 million for an expansion of the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles. It also allocated $1 million for the renovation of the Tauber Holocaust Library and Archives at the Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center in San Francisco.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the launch of the Governor’s Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education on Wednesday in Los Angeles, citing “xenophobia, the antisemitism on the rise, the hate [and] the bigotry” as the impetus for its “long overdue” creation … As part of the state’s massive $196 billion 2021 budget, more than $13 million was allocated to Holocaust education institutions around the state, including $10 million to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, which will fund a new exhibition on antisemitism. Newsom announced the council’s launch at an event hosted by the museum on Wednesday morning … Rabbi Meyer May, the executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which oversees the Museum of Tolerance, said the council would be a “major game-changer for California.”
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center: A Bastion of Jewish-Zionist Power
M. Weber - Institute for Historical Review
Since its founding in 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has grown to become one of the most important and influential Jewish organizations in the world … The Wiesenthal Center has a long record of reckless propaganda for war. Long before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it had been pressing for an American attack against the Middle East nation, backing its effort with alarmist “Big Lie” claims about the supposed danger posed by the Baghdad regime.
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The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) announced that an additional $767 million have been secured to help Holocaust survivors as the result of a new agreement with the German government. The Claims Conference said on Wednesday that first-time pensions have been allotted for Holocaust survivors [sic] who survived the more than two-year Nazi siege of Leningrad — now St. Petersburg, Russia — as well as survivors who hid in France and those who survived persecution in Romania, who are not already receiving Holocaust-related pensions.
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Jews Who Lived Through WWII Leningrad Siege, and Others, Now Eligible for German ‘Holocaust’ Pensions
The Times of Israel
Some 6,500 Holocaust survivors who lived through the siege of Leningrad, hid in Nazi-occupied France or survived persecution in Romania are newly eligible to receive pension allowances from Germany, it was announced Wednesday. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), which negotiates reparations, restitution and other compensation claims on behalf of Holocaust victims, said in a statement that the survivors will receive a monthly stipend for the first time with a value of $443. The organization said that payments would be made to Jewish victims of the Nazis who lived for at least three months in the Siege of Leningrad or lived for at least three months between April 1, 1941 and August 31, 1944 under occupation in Romania.
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Historian Hilberg Denounces Jewish 'Blackmail' Against Switzerland
Institute for Historical Review
For several years now, the World Jewish Congress and other major Jewish organizations have waged a fierce and much-publicized campaign to force Switzerland to pay millions to Jewish organizations and Holocaust survivors … Among those who have spoken out against it is Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg. “I was nearly alarmed when I heard that the Swiss banks would pay 1.25 billion dollars,” he said in a recent [1999] interview published in the respected Swiss weekly Weltwoche. In the campaign against Switzerland, Hilberg went on, “the Jews have used a weapon that can only be described as blackmail.”
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Is Democracy Versus Autocracy the New Cold War?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… President Joe Biden has defined the global struggle as between democracy and autocracy and said, “Democracy will and must prevail.” … But where did America acquire the right to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations to change them to conform to our own? If our goal is to democratize Russia and China, i.e., change their political systems to conform more closely with our democratic one, is that not tantamount to a declaration of ideological war by us? Is this not the essence of ideological warfare? And who, then, is the aggressor in this new ideological war?
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750 Bases in 80 Countries Is Too Many for Any Nation: Time for the US To Bring Its Troops Home
Doug Bandow
President Joe Biden did what his three predecessors could or would not: halt a seemingly endless war. It took two decades, but American troops no longer are fighting in Afghanistan … However, some 750 American military facilities remain open in 80 nations and territories around the world. No other country in human history has had such a dominant presence … A new Quincy Institute study … details the global US military presence … America also has three times as many installations as all other countries combined. The United Kingdom has 145. Russia two to three dozen. China five … The administration should rethink the underlying commitments used to justify the bases. Europe has no need of a US military presence for defense: the continent enjoys an 11-1 economic advantage and more than 3-1 population edge over Russia.
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A former SS guard, now 100 years old, hobbled into a German courtroom on a walking frame on Thursday to face charges of helping to send more than 3,000 people to their deaths in a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two. Prosecutors say Josef S., a member of the Nazi party’s paramilitary SS, contributed to the deaths of 3,518 people at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by regularly standing guard in the watchtower between 1942 and 1945. Doctors have said that the man, whose full name was not disclosed due to German trial reporting rules, is only partially fit to stand trial: sessions will be limited to just two and a half hours each day. As the trial began, his lawyer held up a blue folder to conceal his client’s face as he was brought into the court in Neuruppin, near Berlin.
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German Court Set to Try Woman, 96, Who was Secretary at Wartime Camp
Associated Press
A 96-year-old former secretary for the Stutthof concentration camp’s SS commander was released from detention on Tuesday, five days after she was taken into custody for skipping the start of her trial in northern Germany. The German woman was picked up by police on Thursday, a few hours after leaving her home in Hamburg in a taxi on the morning her trial was due to start on more than 11,000 counts of accessory to murder … The court has said that the defendant allegedly “aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 in her function as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant’s office.” Despite her advanced age, the woman is being tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes.
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Behind the Hunt for 'Nazi War Criminals'
Mark Weber – Podcast
A look at the decades-long ordeal of John Demjanjuk, and the outrageous record of fraud and vengeful, one-sided “justice” of the US government’s “Nazi hunting” agency. In this broadcast, Weber also looks at Washington’s shameful campaign against Kurt Waldheim, Frank Walus, and other “Nazis.” This entire campaign, says Weber, is an expression of the privileged status in the US for Jewish concerns and interests, and of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America’s cultural and social-political life. Runtime: 31 mins.
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'Everyone Here Hated the Americans': Rural Afghans Live With the Taliban and a Painful U.S. legacy
The Washington Post
The white flags flutter in the apple orchards of this serene hamlet ringed by oatmeal-colored mountains. They mark the precise spots where U.S. airstrikes killed Afghans … Together, they’re reminders of the legacy the United States has left in many rural areas across Afghanistan. “Everyone here hated the Americans,” said Zabiullah Haideri, 30. His shop was shattered by an airstrike in 2019 that killed 12 villagers. “They murdered civilians and committed atrocities.” In Kabul and other Afghan cities, the United States will be remembered for enabling two decades of progress in women’s rights, an independent media and other freedoms. But in the nation’s hinterlands, the main battlegrounds of America’s longest war, Afghans view the United States primarily through the prism of conflict, brutality and death.
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Inside the CIA’s Secret Kabul Base, Burned Out and Abandoned in Haste
E. Graham-Harrison - The Guardian
The cars, minibuses and armoured vehicles that the CIA used to run its shadow war in Afghanistan had been lined up and incinerated beyond identification before the Americans left … All formed part of the CIA compound that for 20 years was the dark, secret heart of America’s “war on terror”, a place where some of the worst abuses to sour the mission in Afghanistan would fester … Now the Taliban’s special forces have moved in and recently, briefly, opened up the secret compound to journalists … Other torture techniques recorded at the site included “rectal feeding”, shackling prisoners to bars overhead, and depriving inmates of toilet “privileges”, leaving them naked or wearing adult diapers.
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Florida to Boycott Ben & Jerry’s Parent Company Over Israeli Settlement Ban
D. DeCamp – Antiwar.com
Florida has announced that it will add Ben & Jerry’s parent company to a list that will restrict state investment in the firm over the ice cream company’s decision to stop selling its product in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank … Other states have moved to divest entirely from Unilever on behalf of Israel, including New Jersey and Arizona … US states are able to punish foreign companies at the behest of Israel due to laws against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for international boycotts to put pressure on Israel over its crimes against the Palestinians. Over 30 US states have anti-BDS laws on the books. Besides prohibiting investments in companies that “boycott Israel,” the laws also require contractors doing business with the state to sign what is essentially a loyalty oath to Israel.
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Bitter scoop: Passengers on a Delta flight from New York to Tel Aviv on Wednesday were displeased when they discovered that the in-flight service included a less-than-sweet treat — Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. Many of the passengers on the flight handed the dessert back to the flight attendants, who said that they had warned the airline that it was an “inappropriate” choice, given the company’s recent decision to stop selling its products beyond the Green Line. The decision caused an international controversy and much concern in Israel, where it was seen as a capitulation to the BDS movement.
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Remembering the Crime of War
Daniel Larison
… “We fight war crimes but have forgotten the crime of war,” Moyn writes, and our recent history of illegal wars confirms that. Moyn insists that we remember that war itself is the great crime. The Iraq war is a case in point. The illegality of the Iraq war was flagrant and undeniable, but that crime is rarely acknowledged, and it has never been punished. The crimes and abuses that took place during the war have received almost all the attention and criticism, while the war itself is most often described as a blunder or a mistake … Americans have become so accustomed to their government waging war in other parts of the world that we have come to take it as a given. That is one reason why we have come to treat warfare as a seemingly permanent institution …
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The University of Bristol has fired Professor David Miller, a leading UK critic of Israel and its lobby. After a years-long campaign of smears by that same lobby, the university said on Friday that, “Professor David Miller is no longer employed by the University of Bristol.” The statement said only that Miller “did not meet the standards of behavior we expect from our staff,” though it did not elaborate … The statement appeared to exonerate Miller from the Israel’s lobby’s deliberately false allegations of anti-Semitism … For his part, Miller said that the decision to fire him was “taken under pressure from the Israel lobby” which he said “lobbies for a hostile foreign state. The university has embarrassed itself.” … At the start of 2021, pro-Israel lobby groups ramped up their campaign against him.
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A University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor who was suspended and later reinstated for refusing to give Black students leniency on their final exams following the death of George Floyd has filed a lawsuit against the school. Gordon Klein, who teaches financial analysis, law, and public policy at UCLA, filed a lawsuit Monday claiming that he suffered financially and emotionally because of the incident. Although he retained his position, Klein alleged he was dropped from consulting jobs at law firms and other corporations and that his reputation was tarnished as a result.
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Polish Journalist Refused Entry to UK
The First News (Poland)
A Polish right-wing journalist was refused entry to the United Kingdom on Saturday due to his “conduct and views” which according to the British Border Force “are at odds with British values.” Rafal Ziemkiewicz was detained at Heathrow Airport on Saturday. He was travelling with his wife and daughter, who is about to start studying at Oxford University. In an official refusal of entry issued by the Border Force, as quoted by British MP Rupa Huq on Twitter, Ziemkiewicz was told that his conduct and views “are at odds with British values and likely to cause offence.” … According to Ziemkiewicz, his detention was due to his place in a report created in 2018 by Rafal Pankowski, a co-founder of the Never Again Association, a group fighting racism, neo-Fascism, xenophobia and discrimination.
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Sarah Silverman Says Hollywood Has a 'Jewface' Problem
New York Post / Page Six
Sarah Silverman called out Hollywood’s tendency to cast non-Jewish actors to play Jewish characters, referring to the practice as “Jewface.” The comedian, 50, pointed to Kathryn Hahn as the most recent example after the Catholic-raised actress, 48, was tapped to portray the late Joan Rivers, who was Jewish, in an upcoming limited series. “There’s this long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews, and not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being,” Silverman said … The “School of Rock” actress pointed out common anti-Semitic tropes that so often get thrown around like “Jews run Hollywood,” “Jews are rich” and “Jews are powerful,” which she said then “renders people very righteously unsympathetic toward Jews.”
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A look at some of the many Jewish actors who portrayed German World War II soldiers and officers, Hitler, and other “Nazis” in American television and cinema. These portrayals have included the sinister “Major Strasser” in the enduring World War II movie “Casablanca,” and “Colonel Klink,” “Sergeant Schultz” and “General Burkhalter” in the popular television series “Hogan’s Heroes,” which ran from 1965 to 1971. Runtime: 8:31 mins.
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The Jews of ‘Star Trek’
G. Geselowitz - Jewcy
… While series creator Gene Roddenberry was probably not Jewish (it’s never been definitively decided), many of the original writers were … As for onscreen work, the two highest-ranking officers in the original series were both played by Jewish actors. Captain James T. Kirk is beloved Canadian Jewish actor, song-stylist, and all-around treasure William Shatner. Spock, you know, the guy with the pointy ears (yes I know he’s half-Vulcan – don’t send me angry emails), was Leonard Nimoy, who not only was Jewish, but was very invested in his identity … Also Jewish in the original series was Walter Koenig, who played Pavel Chekov, the Russian-born character in the main roster …
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Europeans Whine That US Is Unreliable: Time for Them To Take Over Responsibility for Their Own Security
Doug Bandow
… Seventy-six years after the end of World War II the continent remains embarrassingly dependent on America for its security … Like the child who still lives with his parents at age 50, US allies never grow up. Decades after recovering from war, developing sophisticated economies, challenging America commercially, and following independent foreign policies, virtually every member of every US alliance still claims to be helpless in the face of most military challenges. The most recent failure by Europe was the inability of any state to evacuate its citizens from Afghanistan … Under such circumstances, why would the US be anything but arrogant in dealing with such “allies”? … The US should politely tell the Europeans that they are on their own.
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'Israel Was Born in Sin. I’m Collaborating With a Criminal Country,' Says Former Prime Minister’s Son’s Son
Haaretz (Israel)
… Yaakov Sharett, the son of Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister, Moshe Sharett, feels no need to mince his words … The son of the man who signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948 is ending his days as an anti-Zionist who opposes Aliyah [migration of Jews to Israel], and encourages emigration from Israel, predicts dark days for the country … “The State of Israel and the Zionist enterprise were born in sin. That’s the way it is,” says the man … “This original sin pursues and will pursue us and hang over us. We justify it, and it has become an existential fear, which expresses itself in all sorts of ways. There is a storm beneath the surface of the water,” he says. … “I describe myself as a collaborator against my will. I’m a forced collaborator with a criminal country.” …
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Evangelical Support for Israel is Neither Permanent Nor Inevitable
W. Robins - The Conversation
… American Christian Zionists are evangelicals who believe that Christians have a duty to support the Jewish state because the Jews remain God’s chosen people. During the Trump years, Christian Zionists were crucial allies for former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government … However, the alliance’s future may be in doubt. Recent polling shows dramatic declines in support for Israel among young American evangelicals. Scholars Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin found that between 2018 and 2021, rates of support fell from 69% to 33.6% among evangelicals ages 18-29. While these polls speak most immediately to the current context, they also underline a larger historical point: Evangelical support for Israel is neither permanent nor inevitable.
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Classical Music’s Suicide Pact - Part 1
Heather Mac Donald - City Journal
Classical music is under racial attack. Orchestras and opera companies are said to discriminate against black musicians and composers. The canonical repertoire — the product of a centuries-long tradition of musical expression — is allegedly a function of white supremacy. Not one leader in the field has defended Western art music against these charges. Their silence is emblematic. Other supposed guardians of Western civilization, whether museum directors, humanities professors, or scientists, have gone AWOL in the face of similar claims, lest they themselves be denounced as racist. The campaign against classical music is worth examining in some detail, for it reveals the logic that has been turned against nearly every aspect of Western culture over the last year.
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Who Is Killing 10,000 Black Americans Every Year?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… With this week’s release of FBI statistics on violent crime in America, showing a record 30% surge in homicides in 2020 over 2019, questions arise. What caused the number of U.S. victims of murder and manslaughter to explode by almost 5,000 last year to reach a total of 21,500? … That number of killings, 21,500 in 2021, is three times the number of U.S. soldiers dead in 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq … Black Americans are being shot, stabbed and beaten to death at a rate six to seven times that of whites. And by the end of this year, well over 10,000 Blacks will have been made the victims of homicide in America … If, as the slogan proclaims, “Black lives matter,” why is there not greater public alarm at BLM in who is killing so many Black people?
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Portland State Professor Resigns, Accuses School of Becoming ‘Social Justice Factory’
Oregon Live / The Oregonian
Peter Boghossian, a longtime and controversial assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, resigned last week, accusing the school of becoming a “social justice factory” and failing to protect him from “continued harassment” he experienced on campus … Boghossian says he felt “morally obligated” to resign from the university, where he said a focus on values that sound good, like diversity, inclusion and equity, led to the opposite of intended goals. He said this same situation is playing out at colleges across the country … Boghossian is best known for being one of the academics behind a series of “hoax papers” published in various journals in 2018, that he said were designed to show the flaws in peer-reviewed studies in academia.
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The Church of Anti-Fascism
J. McElroy – Washington Examiner
… Anti-fascism, [Paul] Gottfried argues [in his new book], is the ideological foundation of our society. Our regime legitimizes itself by claiming that fascism is a permanently lurking evil that can remerge at any moment, even as it constantly expands the definition of “fascism” to include any political opposition … Gottfried argues that anti-fascism is the ideological bedrock of today’s post-Marxist Left … “Fascism is no longer considered something firmly anchored in time and place but as a ubiquitous, continuing danger to democratic societies.” The word “fascism” operates on an almost theological plane, where it is a synonym for absolute evil or simply just a curse word … The connection between America’s Left and the de-Nazification efforts is incredibly disconcerting because it highlights how similar the Left’s cultural push is to a reeducation program.
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Do Many Neocons Just Hate All Europeans?
Paul Gottfried - Unz Review
… Despite the hate-speech I heard several months ago, I naively assumed until I listened to the Fox-Allstars on Tuesday evening that neoconservatives do their worst venting in private, or among other Jews or in the company of gentile underlings. Then I listened to Charles Krauthammer … According to Krauthammer, anti-Semitism is the defining characteristic of European civilization (believe me that I’m not exaggerating the intensity of this outburst!) … Jewish organizations and Jewish activists in France, Germany, Sweden and Italy were long in the forefront of this “grand remplacement,” the result of which has been the creation of “no-go “regions in European urban areas.
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Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed Friday that the Soviet invasion of Poland during World War II was an act of liberation … “On Sept. 17, 1939, the Red Army began a liberation campaign on the territory of Poland,” it tweeted, noting that it prevented Nazi forces from invading Soviet Belarus. “The peoples of western Belarus and western Ukraine greeted the Soviet soldiers with jubilation,” the ministry said, eliciting angry responses from users. The claim echoes Moscow’s stance over the Soviet occupation of Polish territory two weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland, and mutual recriminations with Warsaw over who started World War II … President Vladimir Putin has in recent years blamed Poland for the outbreak of the war … and rejected assertions that Stalin and Hitler were equally to blame for the war.
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Profits of War: Corporate Beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge
Watson Institute – Brown University
Pentagon spending has totaled over $14 trillion since the start of the war in Afghanistan, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors. A large portion of these contracts — one-quarter to one-third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years — have gone to just five major corporations: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. The $75 billion in Pentagon contracts received by Lockheed Martin in fiscal year 2020 is well over one and one-half times the entire budget for the State Department and Agency for International Development for that year, which totaled $44 billion. Weapons makers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying over the past two decades, employing, on average, over 700 lobbyists per year over the past five years.
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Pentagon Paid the Arms Industry at Least $4.4 Trillion Since 9/11
Dave DeCamp – Antiwar. com
Brown University’s Costs of War Project released a new report detailing post-9/11 spending by the Pentagon. The study found that of the over $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon since the start of the war in Afghanistan, one-third to one-half went to private military contractors. The report, authored by William Hartung of the Center for International Policy, said $4.4 trillion of the total spending went towards weapons procurement and research and development, a category that directly benefits corporate military contractors. Private contractors are also paid through other funds, like operations and maintenance, but those numbers are harder to determine … The report explained how China is the new justification for military spending.
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The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2020 was published Monday, showing homicides increased nearly 30 percent last year from 2019. This data marks the first time in four years that the estimated number of violent crimes in the U.S. increased from the previous year, the FBI said in a statement. Violent crime increased by 5 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to the FBI, while overall crime was down 6 percent during the same time period … There were 21,570 reported homicides last year … The information is considered far from comprehensive as submitting data for the report is optional. About 85 percent of agencies that were eligible to participate in the report submitted data, according to the FBI. Some of the cities that did not submit data included New York, Chicago and New Orleans …
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This August, Israeli consular officials in the southeast U.S. arranged meetings with a dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to discuss a graduate student teaching a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to two UNC professors with knowledge of the meetings, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution, the Israeli official accused the Ph.D. student of antisemitism and said she was unfit to teach the course. The intervention by an Israeli government official, Consul General to the Southeastern United States Anat Sultan-Dadon, followed a pressure campaign by right-wing pro-Israel websites and an advocacy group to remove the graduate student, Kylie Broderick, from teaching the history department course called “The Conflict over Israel/Palestine.”
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A former secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp skipped the planned start Thursday of her trial in Germany on more than 11,000 counts of accessory to murder, officials said. She was picked up several hours later after the court issued an arrest warrant. The 96-year-old woman left her home near Hamburg in a taxi on Thursday morning, a few hours before proceedings were due to start at the state court in Itzehoe … Prosecutors argue that the woman was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi’s Stutthof camp function during World War II more than 75 years ago … Despite her advanced age, the German woman was to be tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes.
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Looking Back: 50 Years of Foreign Policy
Conn Hallinan - CounterPunch
… The illusions of Empire are stubborn. The US still thinks it can control the world, when every experience for the past 50 years or more suggests it can’t: Vietnam, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq … The US should also end Israel’s “special status.” Why are we not as outraged with apartheid in Israel as we were with apartheid in South Africa? Why do we ignore the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons? When Americans lecture other countries about maintaining a “rules based” world, can you blame them if they roll their eyes? Why is it “illegal” for Iran to acquire nukes when Tel Aviv gets a pass? … American exceptionalism is an albatross around our necks, blocking us from seeing that other countries and other systems may do things better than we do. No other country accepts that Americans are superior …
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The UK Labour Party Conference has today voted in favour of a motion to identify Israel as a state practicing the crime of apartheid, making it the first major political party in Europe to adopt such a position. The motion commits the Labour party to implementing sanctions including ceasing UK-Israel arms trade and trade with illegal Israeli settlements … The motion noted reports by Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, which earlier in the year reached a landmark conclusion that Israel was practising the crime of apartheid as defined by the UN. The two reports highlighted how Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinian people amounted to the crime of apartheid. Their conclusions echoed the findings of the UN and prominent experts on international law as well as two former Israeli ambassadors.
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From Marshall to Milley
Douglas Macgregor - The American Conservative
… In February 1943, 11,000 German troops smashed through the 30,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army’s II Corps at Kasserine Pass. The U.S. commander, Major Gen. Lloyd Fredendall, a swaggering blowhard, was relieved and sent home. It was not the last time that a cigar-chewing imitation of a real general would fail in action against the German onslaught … Unfortunately, the practice of tolerating mediocre officers with friends and sponsors in the four star ranks persists today … The point is that General Mark Milley is not an isolated example. He’s the product of an environment that has existed for nearly 30 years, if not longer. Behind Mark Milley stand another two dozen four stars ready to take his job that are indistinguishable from him in their attitudes and career patterns.
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… The very same liberals who now pretend they’re against the Afghan disaster stood by when it mattered and did nothing to defend war critics because Democrats – political leaders and voters alike – went far beyond tacit consent. They were actively complicit with the Republicans’ war, at the time of the invasion and throughout the decades-long occupation of Afghanistan … Twenty years later, it is difficult for some to believe that the United States responded to 9/11 by cultivating closer ties to the two countries with the greatest responsibility for the attacks, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and attacking a country that had nothing to do with it, Iraq and another one that had tenuous links, Afghanistan. Yet that’s what happened. And Democrats participated enthusiastically in the insanity.