Headlines

More than 100,000 people in the U.S. died of a drug overdose during the first year of the pandemic, a nearly 29 percent increase from the same time period in 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday. The vast majority of those deaths were due to opioids, particularly synthetic opioids like fentanyl. “An American dying every five minutes — that’s game-changing,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said at a media briefing … The CDC previously warned that the rate of overdose deaths accelerated during the pandemic — driven largely by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The US is growing impatient waiting for Iran to return to the JCPOA nuclear talks, which is odd since they’re the ones who left the agreement, and they’re the ones who have done nothing to return to it, including returning the required sanction relief. Secretary of State Antony Blinken admonished Iran and said that “time is running short.” … But as the US grows unfairly impatient, Iran is growing increasingly patient. As time goes by, the reasons may be mounting why Iran is feeling less urgency than they did to rush back into the nuclear agreement. There are at least four reasons. Iran already signed a nuclear agreement. And they fully complied with their agreement. It may not be consistent with Iran’s logic that they should get punished for the US illegally breaking the agreement. But that is exactly what the US is demanding.

Top Israeli defense officials say the country is preparing for the possibility of an armed conflict with regional arch-rival Iran and its proxies. Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi said Tuesday [Nov. 9] that the Israeli military was “speeding up the operational plans and readiness for dealing with Iran and the nuclear military threat.” Israel considers Iran an existential threat, and has warned that it would act with military force if needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Last month Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that “if a terror regime is going to acquire a nuclear weapon we must act.” Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Workers are quitting their jobs in record numbers, with the figure approaching 3.9 million in July – a hair shy of the record set in April in what has come to be known as “The Great Resignation.” But a new global study of 5,500 workers and small-business leaders finds the mass exodus is being driven mainly by members of Generation Z, those who have spent the least time in the workforce, and millennials. The study by software and data analytics company Adobe found that more than half of Gen Z respondents reported planning to seek a new job within the next year. The generation also reported being least satisfied with their jobs, 59%, and with their work-life balance, at 56% … The study suggests the trend will continue, with 35% of workers surveyed saying they plan to switch jobs in the next year.

… While [Kyle] Rittenhouse’s decision to go to Kenosha may have been unwise, it was also unselfish and, indeed, brave. He was risking his life in a riot to defend another man’s property, and do his civic duty in a situation of lawlessness. He could have stayed home, as almost everyone in Kenosha did that night, while their city was burned and pillaged … Whatever one thinks of Rittenhouse’s entering a volatile situation, he emerges as one of the good guys. His actions were taken for commendable goals, whereas his assailants’ purposes were to engage in a criminal rampage and riot. … President Joe Biden implied that the Kenosha shootings were the work of white supremacists. The president’s statement was as ignorant as it was malicious.

… This week marks the 65th anniversary of Israel’s invasion of Sinai [Oct.-Nov. 1956]. The invasion was part of a conspiracy with Britain and France to give the two European powers control over the Suez Canal and cripple the Nasser regime in Egypt along the way … [US President ] Eisenhower refused to go along with the plan, threatened sanctions against Israel, and eventually forced it to withdraw from all the territory it had conquered … In a line that today would get any politician denounced as an anti-semite, he added: “I gave strict orders to the State Department that they should inform Israel that we would handle our affairs exactly as though we didn’t have a Jew in America. The welfare and best interests of our own country were to be the sole criteria on which we operated.”

Poland’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that the European Union nation will have no ambassador in Israel for the time being, bringing the mission level down to that of Israel’s mission in Poland. The traditionally sensitive bilateral relations soured in the summer after Poland adopted legislation seen as banning claims for restitution of some seized property, including that of Holocaust victims. Israel protested. The Polish ministry decided then that its ambassador, Marek Magierowski, was not to return to his Tel Aviv post after vacation. He has since been appointed to Washington. Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina told The Associated Press that “there are no plans at the moment to propose a new person for the position of ambassador” in Tel Aviv.

… The day was Friday October 16th, 1936, and the German side were set to take on the Irish Free State in a much-anticipated clash at Dalymount Park [Dublin] the following day … Hitler and the Nazi Party were at their most popular having rebuilt the economy out of the ruins in which it lay following the first World War. The rest of Europe was still struggling economically while Germany flourished … Three years later the Irish players themselves would have to raise their right arms in solidarity with the Germans when they played a return fixture at the Weser Stadium in Bremen … Such was the jubilation of the Irish supporters that they stormed the pitch at the end of the game and, according to The Irish Times, “took up position in front of the grandstand, and lustily cheered the visitors, hundreds of arms being raised to the Nazi salute.”

Hundreds of international scholars have begun a fightback against pro-Israel lobbyists who have been scoring increasingly high-profile victories on UK campuses as they seek to curb academic freedoms under the guise of stamping out antisemitism. Glasgow university officials have found themselves in the eye of a storm this week, accused of “capitulating” in two separate cases that have undermined academic research into the activities of Israel and its supporters. More than 500 scholars from around the world, including a Nobel prize winner, Royal Society fellows, and former and current presidents of major academic bodies, signed a petition delivered to the university this week in protest.

The government of Austrian capital city of Vienna has denied requests to remove a towering sculpture of Vienna’s former Mayor Karl Lueger, whose populist views were said to have inspired future Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Instead of removing the monument, Vienna’s incumbent mayor, Michael Ludwig, said that he is favoring the process of ‘artistic contextualization.’ … The decision to keep the statue of Lueger, who controlled the Austrian capital from 1897 to 1910, followed discussions with various city stakeholders about how to deal with the mayor’s controversial legacy … Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who spent three years in the Austrian capital while Lueger was in charge, described the mayor as “the most terrific German mayor of all time” in his autobiographical manifesto ‘Mein Kampf’.

… This column has long maintained that the US has been deeply involved in massive international corruption. Chief tawdry examples are the largest recipients of US ‘aid,’ Israel, Afghanistan and Jordan. Washington spent over two trillion dollars on the now lost, 20-year Afghan conflict. All that money has vanished … The third recipient of US largess, Jordan, has gotten $22 billion from the US since the 1950’s. Last year it received $1 billion alone from Washington, mostly to support the Trump administration’s crude attempts to buy, threaten and cajole Arab dictatorships into a security pact with Israel that seriously screws the Palestinians. In addition, the US has also given $ 1.7 billion to Jordan to care for the large numbers of Syrian refugees it shelters.

… Eduard’s daughter Trude later remembers that the following day a town councillor, Adolf Eigl, recounted Hitler’s very words to her: “Tell me, is my good old house doctor, Dr. Bloch still alive? Yes, if all Jews were like him, then there would be no antisemitism.” … In truth, this is not a new revelation. Eduard [Bloch] has already heard messages about Hitler’s continued fondness for him … Two old postcards, which a grateful young Hitler had sent Eduard from Vienna before the First World War. As Eduard later described, one was a “penny postcard” view of Vienna inscribed with the words: “From Vienna, I send you my greetings. Yours always faithfully, Adolf Hitler.” The second was the one with Hitler’s own artwork inscribed: “Cheers Happy New Year.”

… What kind of boy was Adolf Hitler? Many biographers have put him down as harsh-voiced, defiant, untidy; as a young ruffian who personified all that is unattractive. This simply is not true. As a youth he was quiet, well-mannered and neatly dressed … In the practice of my profession it is natural that I should have witnessed many scenes such as this one, yet none of them left me with quite the same impression. In all my career I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler.

At least 440 narrative films have been made about the Holocaust — and Rich Brownstein has seen just about every single one of them. As a lecturer on Holocaust film for Yad Vashem’s international school, Brownstein has both a personal and professional interest in viewing and cataloguing so many depictions of Jewish suffering … “We just know about Holocaust films because 25% of all American-made Holocaust films have been nominated for an Academy Award. And from 1960 through 2015, every other year, one of the best foreign language films nominated [at the Oscars] was a Holocaust film … They’re just very well targeted and very well marketed, and we have a hunger, especially in the Jewish community, for this story to be told properly.

A listing of films, from the 1940s to the present, that deal with the Holocaust in Europe.

Decades of deceitful motion pictures have done much to produce a misinformed and compliant American public. A notable example of such film deceit is “Mission to Moscow,” a major Hollywood production made with White House backing, that portrays Soviet dictator Stalin and the Soviet Russian regime as benevlolent, peace-loving and trustworthy. Another good example is the “Why We Fight” series of documentary-style films produced by the US War Department, which have been viewed by millions. Made during World War II, these seven films use staged scenes and fake quotations to present a grossly distorted view of history and the world.

… The traditional American notion of war and peace is non-Clausewitzian. It rejects the Prussian theorist’s concept of war as an extension of politics by other means … Clausewitz was right: war ought to be thought of not as an isolated phenomenon with its own standards of success and failure but instead as one more instrument for pursuing national objectives that also get pursued through diplomacy or other instruments. As with any other political matter, the pursuit rarely involves absolutes of victory and defeat but rather compromises, negotiation, recognition of competing interests, calculations of costs versus benefits, course corrections, cutting of losses, and partial fulfillment of objectives … When the United States ends most wars, it is the dominant American patterns of thought rather than the wisdom of Clausewitz that prevails.

In an Israeli classroom, Jewish boys are encouraged to express hateful and murderous attitudes toward non-Jews. Runtime: 1:09 mins.

… Jews learn at a very tender age that they are God’s chosen people. Unconsciously, this knowledge remains anchored in their “soul” throughout their life, even though many of them become total atheists … We are special. The language reflects this. There are Jews and there are the others … That is where we are now. A domineering regional power and a global crybaby, ruling a colonized population deprived of all rights while being convinced that dark forces are out to exterminate us at any moment, considering ourselves a very special people and an eternal victim. All this quite sincerely. And all this together. When somebody dares to suggest that anti-Semitism in the West is dying, and that anti-Islam is on the rise instead, the Jewish reaction is furious. We need anti-Semitism for our mental equilibrium. Nobody is going to steal it from us.

… The ability of a relatively small number of agitated and energetic Jews to police the acceptable boundaries of historical narratives may have enormous consequences for our larger society, deterring scholars from objectively reporting historical facts and preventing students from discovering them … A cohesive, organized group generally possesses huge advantages over a teeming mass of atomized individuals … Traditional Jewish religious doctrine seems to consider Jews as being in a state of permanent hostility with all non-Jews, and the use of dishonest propaganda is an almost inevitable aspect of such conflict.

The conclusion of the recent Communist Party congress in China has turned the world’s spotlight on a hitherto elusive figure, the 62-year-old scholar-turned-official, Wang Huning … Wang’s writing over the years is so strikingly parallel to the policies Xi has adopted that he is regarded by many as the brain behind the throne, the mandarin behind the emperor. What Wang has written offers huge clues to understanding where China is headed … From his diaries and notes on that six-month sojourn [in the US], he produced a book in 1991 titled “America Against America” in which he surveys the contradictions he saw in American society. Citing examples from his firsthand observations, Wang pits the actual America as he saw it against the imagined America many have idealized.

Published in 1991 and based on a visit a few years previous, this [book, “America Against America”] is a collection of sometimes brutal, sometimes amusingly honest observations about American society from a Chinese perspective. Although it was drawn from a relatively optimistic, prosperous and peaceful time, he [Wang Huning] already perceives the “unstoppable undercurrent of crisis” produced by the contradictions of the “American spirit” – a modern future oriented individualism producing admirable material prosperity but also ultimately nihilism.

… In 1923, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded jointly to Sir Frederick G. Banting, a Canadian, and John J. R. Macleod, a Scotsman, for the discovery of insulin, one of the greatest medical advances of modern times … A substantial body of persuasive evidence indicates that the Nobel Committee made a major error in 1923, and that the award should rightfully have gone to an almost forgotten Romanian physiologist, Nicolae Paulescu … Paulescu’s most important achievement was his successful isolation of the pancreas hormone that regulates the blood sugar level. He began work in this field in 1916, but the First World War interrupted his investigation. In 1921 he announced the discovery of the hormone extract, which he called “pancreine,” now known universally as insulin.

Taiwan has become a flashpoint between Washington and Beijing, so much so that The Economist now judges the island state to be “the most dangerous place on earth.” Formally the Republic of China, Taiwan is claimed by the People’s Republic of China. Beijing is threatening — without apparent plans to do so in the near-term — to use force to impose its authority over territory that has unofficially acted as a separate nation since 1949 … There appears to be increasing support in Washington for ending the policy of strategic ambiguity and forthrightly promising to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack … Before President Joe Biden or his successors commit themselves to defending Taiwan, they should recognize that doing so wouldn’t be cheap. Beijing wouldn’t back down. Once the PRC began military action, it wouldn’t quit voluntarily.

Imgard Furchner, a 96-year-old resident of a special care facility in Germany, is being investigated as a war criminal … The [Swiss journal ] Weltwoche commented mockingly that the German justice system is now treating a very old lady “who never held a gun” as a war criminal. Weltwoche explains that while in the 1950s and 1960s the German government went after murderous Nazis who committed true atrocities, it now seems motivated by a “changed disposition” affecting the entire system of justice … We might contrast how the Germans are harassing senile workers who were stenographers in the Third Reich with post-Soviet Russia’s treatment of Communist mass murderers.

Our “present” has to a large degree been shaped by the events of 1939-45. The outcome of the contest between Stalin and Hitler, as “relevant” to so many of our contemporaries as those earlier struggles between Persia and Greece or Carthage and Rome, does cast its shadow over our lives … Stalin was haunted by the fear that the Communist state was essentially a house of cards that could easily collapse. His overriding concern was to shore up the position of the regime, largely through a policy of terrorizing the various peoples who inhabited the USSR.

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

Campus Reform reporter Ophelie Jacobson talked to students at the University of Florida on game day about diversity quotas. She first asked students if they support diversity quotas in hiring decisions and in college admissions processes. Most of the students said yes … Jacobson then asked students if they support diversity quotas for sports teams. Most of the students said they would not support these quotas in sports. “We want to win no matter what you are,” one student said … Students didn’t think it would be fair to implement the quota for the team. Did students change their mind on diversity quotas in the workplace and in college after seeing it from the perspective of college sports?

Two thousand years ago, a Greek mechanic set out to build a machine that would model the workings of the known Universe. The result was a complex clockwork mechanism that displayed the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets on precisely marked dials. By turning a handle, the creator could watch his tiny celestial bodies trace their undulating paths through the sky. The mechanic’s name is now lost. But his machine, dubbed the Antikythera mechanism, is by far the most technologically sophisticated artefact that survives from antiquity.

New interpretations of the Antikythera Mechanism reveal that it could be used to predict eclipses, and that it had a dial recording the dates of the ancient Olympiads. The 2,000-year-old box of intricate gearwork provides a glimpse of the engineering prowess of the Hellenic world. The team discuss their results here.

As Pew Research Center surveys have documented, the United States’ global reputation has shifted dramatically over the past two decades … Few believe U.S. democracy, at least in its current state, serves as a good model for other nations. A median of just 17% say democracy in the U.S. is a good example for others to follow, while 57% think it used to be a good example but has not been in recent years. Another 23% do not believe it has ever been a good example. Americans largely share the view that their democracy is no longer a model: 72% say U.S. democracy used to be a good example for others to follow but has not been recently … Americans are also critical of other aspects of their society … Young Americans are often less positive about the aspects of their society included on the survey.

The world’s advanced economies still look with envy at America’s military strength, its technological prowess, its universities and its high-quality entertainment – but much less so nowadays at perhaps the most famous US export of all: democracy. These were the results of a new survey from the Pew Research Centre, which found that opinions of America’s political system have declined overseas … More than half of the global respondents – 57 per cent – said that US democracy used to be a good example, “but has not been in recent years”, the report said. Americans themselves share those views, the report added: “72 per cent say US democracy used to be a good example for others to follow but has not been recently.”

… Do parents have no right to object if the tenets of critical race theory — that America is shot through with “systemic racism,” that whites are privileged from birth and blacks oppressed — are taught as truth about the country to which they have given their loyalty and love? For generations, statues to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson stood on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Now that the statues are torn down, both are reviled as “traitors.” … President Dwight Eisenhower regarded Lee, whose portrait he hung in the Oval Office, as among the greatest of all Americans. Whose view of Lee should be taught? Eisenhower’s or Harvard’s? The question raised by McAuliffe is: Who decides? Who, in the education of America’s children, decides what is historically, morally and socially true? And who is allowed to participate in those decisions?

The Jewish co-creators of the comic book superhero Superman will be posthumously inducted into the Jewish American Hall of Fame (JAHF) in a virtual ceremony that will take place in November. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster developed the superhero as well as his companion characters Clark Kent, Lois Lane and others … In 1924, Shuster’s family moved to Cleveland, where he met Siegel in high school and the two became friends. Siegel died in 1996; Shuster in 1992. They will be inducted into the JAHF on Nov. 14 in a ceremony that will take place via Zoom. The event will include speeches by former U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Elan S. Carr …

It’s been a slow walk toward respectability for comic books, a medium that in the 1930s and 1940s was disreputable and lowly enough that it accepted Jews. Of course, the industry didn’t just accept them — it was created by Jews who ran every aspect of the business. Two such young men who singlehandedly invented the concept of the superhero comic are Cleveland’s Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. To find scribes with a greater impact on culture, one may have to travel all the way back to Mount Sinai. … Roy Schwartz’s recent, massive tome “Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero” is one of the best volumes that devote serious thought to what a previous generation of thinkers may have shrugged off as nonsense.

We’re out of Afghanistan. Good. We should have gotten out before … Now what? Will we continue to try to police the world? Probably. Washington defines U.S. national interests so broadly, says the Cato Institute’s John Glaser, “that virtually no region of the world (is) considered nonvital.” This grandiosity started after WWII. “No longer would we canonize George Washington’s warning against entangling alliances,” writes Glaser. “Or extol the counsel of John Quincy Adams that America ‘goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy’.” Now we repeatedly go abroad, searching for monsters … “The United States has engaged in more military interventions in the past 30 years than it had in the preceding 190 years altogether,” Glaser points out. … We spend more on defense than the next ten countries combined. We can’t afford to keep doing that.

Some might recall candidate Joe Biden’s pledge to work to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was a multilateral agreement intended to limit Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon … Iran for its part insisted that the agreement did not need any additional caveats and should be a return to the status quo ante … Biden, like Trump, has also made his true sentiments clear by surrounding himself with Zionists. Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland have filled the three top slots at State Department, all are Jewish and all strong on Israel. Nuland is a leading neocon … Israeli officials have been warning for over twenty years that Iran is only one year away from having its own nukes and needs to be stopped …

In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken would not rule out the idea of military action against Iran if the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, isn’t revived. Blinken said the US and its allies prefer diplomacy but are considering “other options” if JCPOA isn’t restored. When asked if that the options include military action, Blinken said, “As we always say, every option is on the table.” The threat comes less than a week after Iran said it was ready to return to JCPOA negotiations in Vienna by the end of November … Sunday’s interview was not the first time Blinken hinted at attacking Iran … The Israelis are constantly threatening Iran …

Former President Donald Trump told a conservative Jewish radio host that Israel until recently “literally owned Congress,” a claim similar to those that have triggered accusations of antisemitism against other politicians. The comments came during Trump’s interview with Seattle-based talk show host Ari Hoffman … “The biggest change I’ve seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress — you understand that. Ten years ago, 15 years ago, and it was so powerful …,” Trump said … The claim that Israel controls Congress has historically been treated as an antisemitic slander by antisemitism watchdogs … Trump suggested that he did not have a problem with the notion that Israel had once controlled Congress, saying, “Israel had such power, and rightfully over Congress, and now it doesn’t.”

Poland is spearheading a “counter-revolution” in the European Union that is garnering the support of other countries, according to a columnist for the Austrian daily Die Presse … Journalist and author Karl-Peter Schwarz questioned the rationale of politicians and journalists who “intend to give the Polish, Hungarian and Slovenian people lessons in democracy and the rule of law” … “The EU is facing a veritable democratic counter-revolution, a counter-revolution that submits for discussion the old, only superficially solved, problem of national sovereignty in the context of a confederation of countries,” he was quoted as saying. “This counter-revolution emanates from the states of the Visegrad Group (comprising Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), but it is receiving backing in other countries, as well,” Schwarz concluded …

… On issues such as homosexuality, abortion and the media, the Polish government has taken stands more consistent with its Catholic traditions than with the social agenda of a secularized Europe. The same holds true for the Hungary of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Poland and Hungary are ostracized as “illiberal democracies.” … Moscow released excerpts of Putin’s blistering attack on a woke West at last week’s gathering of the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi: “We’re surprised to see things happening in countries that see themselves as flagships of progress,” said Putin. “The struggle for equality and against discrimination turns into aggressive dogmatism verging on absurdity.”

Jewish groups in Hungary have condemned a new law in the country that forbids sharing content on homosexuality with minors. Called the “gay propaganda law,” the legislation passed last week in parliament follows similar moves in Russia in 2013 that define written or visual materials pertaining to sex reassignment or homosexuality as propaganda that should not be allowed to reach children. The measure, which President Janos Ader signed Wednesday, has triggered a diplomatic spat between Hungary and other member states of the European Union.

Janez Janša, prime minister of Slovenia, has labelled the far-left extremist group Antifa an “international terrorist organisation” following violence in France over the weekend Prime Minister Janša made his comments on social media network Twitter, saying: “Antifa is a global terrorist organization. Supported by the capital of financial speculators forging profits at the expense of the chaos caused by the operation.” The Slovenian leader was reacting to a post by American journalist Andy Ngo which highlighted Antifa violence over the weekend in the French city of Nantes which saw the far-left extremists attempt to disrupt a meeting of the conservative writer and French presidential hopeful Eric Zemmour.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation Tuesday that bans the selling or displaying of hate symbols on public property and taxpayer-funded equipment. State Sen. Anna M. Kaplan and Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, both of Long Island, introduced the legislation after an incident last year in which a Confederate flag was displayed on a fire truck in Long Island, and another in which a Confederate flag was hung from a fire department window. The bill defines symbols of hate as including, but not limited to, symbols of white supremacy, neo-Nazi ideology or the Battle Flag of the Confederacy. Excluded are symbols that serve an “educational or historical purpose,” such as in a museum or book.

Equating the leadership of the Soviet Union with Adolf Hitler’s wartime regime could lead to arrests and hefty fines in Russia, under new plans currently being drawn up by the country’s parliament to protect historical memory. On Wednesday, State Duma deputies published a new draft bill on the lower chamber’s website that would see anyone equivalating the actions of the two historical powers face financial penalties and even jail time … The bill would target … “the humanitarian mission of the USSR during the liberation of European countries.” … In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a law banning the drawing of equivalence between the aims and actions of the USSR and those of Nazi Germany during World War II, or the denial of the Soviet Union’s role in defeating fascism.

Donald Trump says in a recent interview that Israel “literally owned Congress,” and “rightfully” so, until about ten years ago. That hold on Congress has since weakened, he goes on to tell Ari Hoffman, a staunchly pro-Israel talk show host with Seattle radio station KVI (Oct. 28, 2021). “Israel had such power, and rightfully, over Congress, and now it doesn’t,” the former president adds (at 10:26 to 11:08 mins.) Trump’s acknowledgement of Jewish-Zionist power in American political life is unusual, because Jewish groups routinely criticize those who speak openly about this clout, claiming that such talk is “anti-Semitic.” Nonetheless, all prominent US politicians are very aware of this reality and adapt themselves to it.

New York State’s state pension fund will divest its holdings in Unilever in response to the July decision by the conglomerate’s affiliate Ben & Jerry’s to restrict ice cream sales in the West Bank. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s announcement Thursday makes New York the fourth state to move to sanction the Ben & Jerry’s corporate parent over its Israel stance, following New Jersey, Arizona and Florida. At least four other states have launched reviews investigating whether the Ben & Jerry’s decision could result in sanctions on the company under state laws meant to combat the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel … The New York state pension fund currently holds $111 million in shares of Unilever. Marc Stern, chief legal officer of the American Jewish Committee, praised the decision.

On Thursday, called on Washington to abide by the “one-China principle” in response to Taiwan’s president confirming the presence of US troops on the island that are training Taipei’s military. “The one-China principle is the political foundation of China-US relations,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin. “On the Taiwan question, the US should abide by the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-US joint communiqués, rather than unilaterally concoct anything.” … In 1979, Washington formally recognized Beijing as the sole government of China and severed diplomatic ties with Taipei. Under the 1982 communiqué, the US said it would gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan, but instead, the weapons deals have steadily increased over the years.

America’s crisis at the border is now a crisis in New York public schools. The Biden Administration is flooding New York City and Long Island communities with thousands of unaccompanied immigrant minors captured crossing the Mexico-US border, often arriving here, as The Post recently reported, via clandestine flights in the middle of the night. Data from the US Department of Health of and Human Services confirms that the New York area is a hotspot for shipping children rounded up illegally crossing the border without guardians … The arrival of these children, mostly teenage boys, in local schools is creating a classroom crisis that is strapping educational resources, costing taxpayers millions in un-budgeted dollars, and aiding gang-recruiting efforts, argue parents, teachers and immigration experts.

… The tale of “the holocaust” is essentially a contrived bit of history that serves a political objective wrapped up in what purports to be a powerful statement regarding man’s inhumanity to man. Jewish groups generally speaking consider the standard narrative with its highly questionable six million dead, gas chambers, extermination camps, and soap made from body fat to be something like sacred ground, with its memorialization of the uniqueness of Jewish suffering … One of the “textbooks” frequently used in public schools that mandate holocaust education is Night by Elie Wiesel, whom Finkelstein has dubbed “the high huckster of the holocaust.” “Night” claims to be autobiographical but is full of errors in time and place. It is at least in part a work of fiction.

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

Politico’s new owner, Germany’s Axel Springer, expects the U.S. website to adhere to the parent company’s principles including support for Israel’s right to exist, Springer’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal Friday. Axel Springer said in August it was buying Politico for more than $1 billion. The chief executive of the Berlin-based company, Mathias Döpfner, has long said that support for Israel is “a German duty.” … Employees who disagreed “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly.” … He said he expected Politico, which was launched in 2007, and Axel Springer to shun activist journalism, which he said was helping polarize the United States and other countries.

Ahead of France’s elections this spring, Éric Zemmour could become the country’s first major Jewish presidential candidate in the post-war Fifth Republic era. Recent polls have him pulling 16 percent of the vote, placing him on equal footing with the top challengers to President Emmanuel Macron. But there’s a catch: The far-right journalist, public intellectual and consistent provocateur Zemmour hasn’t announced that he is officially running yet. And most of France’s Jews want nothing to do with him … Zemmour, 63, has cultivated a strong conservative following through a staunch nationalist and anti-immigrant philosophy that describes French society as under siege from Muslim and other foreign influence. Some of his language has even led to hate speech convictions and fines …

Israel approved about 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday [Oct. 27], a day after the United States issued its strongest rebuke yet of such construction. It was the biggest announcement of settlement plans during the Biden administration. The plans were approved by a Defense Ministry committee, according to a security official who was not authorized to speak publicly and did not provide further details. The anti-settlement group Peace Now also confirmed the approvals. The decision marked the latest boost for Israel’s half-century-old settlement enterprise on occupied lands the Palestinians seek for a state. Successive Israeli governments have expanded settlements, making an internationally backed two-state solution — a state of Palestine arising alongside Israel — increasingly impossible.

President Biden took a predictable hit on the Afghan crisis, but the war’s flawed beginnings and mis-guided execution were caused by many of his current critics who were pitchmen for deepening our involvement. This fiasco lasted twenty years because all presidents and power players were vested in this atrocity, willing to cover up its failure with deceptions and bureaucratic lies, insulating Americans from casualties in order to continue the war indefinitely … Here we’re conditioned indirectly, subliminally … to hate the enemies of the moment, the rogue nations, “terrorists” we don’t negotiate with, the full axis of evil, and to make firm distinctions between us and them, the good guys and the bad guys … We’ve justified this behavior with the idea that we’re exceptional. The rules and regulations that bind others don’t apply to us.

… In 40 years in journalism, I’ve dealt with some smart and powerful lobby groups. But none compares to the pro-Israel lobby in Australia. It is formidable, well-funded and effective … The lobby has been spectacularly successful in framing the perception of Israel’s strategic and political situation as vulnerable … It is the superpower of the Middle East, complete with a major arsenal of nuclear weapons … I’ve visited the West Bank hundreds of times. I can therefore state that the picture the lobby in Australia paints for journalists on their wining-and-dining trips to Israel is so far from authentic that it is worse than meaningless. It is damaging because it fills the heads of influential editors with a distorted reality.

Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed during a speech on Thursday the far-left woke ideology that he said is causing societal ills throughout the Western world, saying that it is no different than what happened in Russia during the 1917 revolution … “The recipes they come up with are nothing new [Putin said]. “Paradoxical as it may seem, but this is something we saw in Russia. It happened in our country after the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks followed the dogmas of Marx and Engels. And they also declared that they would go into change the traditional lifestyle, the political, the economic lifestyle, as well as the very notion of morality, the basic principles for a healthy society … It was hailed as the march of progress. And it was very popular across the world and it was supported by many, as we see, it is happening right now.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former lieutenant colonel in the KGB, strongly criticized the “woke,” social justice warriors in the United States and Europe, arguing that they behave just like the Bolshevik Communists did in the former Soviet Union. They are ruled by a “dogmatism bordering on absurdity,” he asserted, noting that “cancel culture” is nothing more than “reverse discrimination” … “The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness,” said Putin … “I repeat, this is nothing new; in the 1920s, the so-called Soviet Kulturtraegers [culture bearers] also invented some newspeak believing they were creating a new consciousness and changing values that way. And, as I have already said, they made such a mess it still makes one shudder at times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sharply criticized the social-cultural campaign for “social justice” and “equality” that has taken hold in the US and western Europe. “We look in amazement at the processes underway in the countries which have been traditionally looked at as the standard-bearers of progress,” he said at the Valdai Discussion conference in Sochi on Oct. 21 … “The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness … The destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family … – all this was proclaimed progress [by the Bolsheviks] and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then, and was quite fashionable, same as today.”

The priest quickly sliced into the captive’s torso and removed his still-beating heart. That sacrifice, one among thousands performed in the sacred city of Tenochtitlan, would feed the gods and ensure the continued existence of the world. Death, however, was just the start of the victim’s role in the sacrificial ritual, key to the spiritual world of the Mexica people in the 14th to the 16th centuries … Human sacrifice occupied a particularly important place in Mesoamerica. Many of the region’s cultures, including the Maya and the Mexica, believed that human sacrifice nourished the gods … And sacrificial victims earned a special, honored place in the afterlife.

In recent years archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered hundreds of human skulls that were displayed in a structure built by the Aztecs about 500 years ago. The skulls are of men, women and children who were killed as part of religious sacrifices to the Aztec gods. The structure was built in Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), the capital of the large empire that spanned what is now central and southern Mexico. When Spanish explorers subdued the Aztec empire, 1519-21, they destroyed nearly all the skull structures, which had been symbols of power and prestige.

An aristocrat has been jailed for four months and ordered to pay over £20,000 [US $27,589] after calling the head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism “Jewish scum.” Piers Portman, the youngest living son of the 9th Viscount Portman and heir to 110 acres of [London] West End real estate, was found guilty last month of making the remarks to Gideon Falter at a courthouse following the 2018 sentencing of notorious Holocaust denier, Alison Chabloz. Sentencing Portman today at Southwark Crown Court [London], HH Judge Gregory Perrins said he has “strongly-held antisemitic beliefs” … HHJ Perrins imprisoned him for four months, with the possibility of release on licence after two months, and ordered him to pay a £10,000 fine. He must also pay an additional £10,000 compensatory payment to Mr Falter, as well as court costs.

Much of what we’re told about the how World War II began is misleading, distorted or just plain untrue. It’s often claimed, for example, that after taking power Hitler moved quickly to build a large army and air force to conquer Europe. In fact, and as reputable scholars have quietly acknowledged, Third Reich rearmament in the years before the outbreak of war in 1939 was remarkably modest. Hitler neither wanted nor planned for a major war. The British and French declarations of war against Germany, which were secretly encouraged by US President Roosevelt, transformed the limited German-Polish conflict into a major, European-wide war.

One of the largest newspapers in Chile published a tribute feature to Nazi Hermann Göring on Sunday, sparking an outcry from politicians and the Chilean Jewish community. The article, which was timed to the 75th anniversary of Göring’s death and resembled a eulogy, included details about the Nazi leader’s youth, military career and close relationship to Adolf Hitler, accompanied by various photos. In a statement posted to Twitter, the Jewish Community of Chile organization called the article “an apology for Nazism.” “In Europe, this publication would be considered a crime,” the organization said, referring to countries that outlaw Nazi sympathizing.