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NATO as Religion
Alfred de Zayas - CounterPunch
The US/ NATO/ Ukraine/ Russia controversy is not entirely new … The 2021-22 crisis is a logical continuation of the expansionist policies that NATO has pursued since the demise of the Soviet Union … NATO’s approach implements the US claim to have a “mission” to export its socio-economic model to other countries, notwithstanding the preferences of sovereign states and the self-determination of peoples … Who bears the responsibility for this massive betrayal of the world? The late President George H.W. Bush and the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, together with their successors and all their neo-con advisors and proponents of “exceptionalism”, together with the think tanks and pundits that cheered them on. How was this betrayal possible? Only through dis-information and propaganda.
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Germany’s Newest Intellectual Antihero
C. Caldwell - The New York Times
After German historian Rolf Peter Sieferle took his own life last September at age 67, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the country’s progressive paper of record, called his erudition “breathtaking.” … But last month, a posthumous collection of Mr. Sieferle’s observations on Germany’s political culture, “Finis Germania” (the title plays on a phrase meaning “the end of Germany”), hit No. 9 on the prestigious Nonfiction Book of the Month list — and a scandal erupted. Certain passages on Germany’s way of dealing with the Holocaust horrified reviewers …Sieferle is critical of Germany’s postwar culture of Holocaust memory, which he argues has taken on the traits of a religion … He believed that Germany’s self-demonization had left it unable to say anything but yes to a million or so migrants seeking entry to Europe in 2015 …
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A technical glitch in Israel’s State Archives has revealed quotations from Israel’s founder David Ben-Gurion and Israel’s first agricultural minister Aharon Zisling stating that “we must wipe them [Palestinian villages] out,” and that forgiveness was to be offered to Jewish forces found to have committed “instances of rape” against Palestinian women. These long-censored writings illustrate the brutal reality Palestinians have testified to, and been subjected to, since Al Nakba, or The Catastrophe, in 1947-48 … During the Nakba, Zionist forces violently expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their native lands, razed over 530 villages, cities, and towns, conducted numerous massacres (often hundreds of women, children, and men, per massacre), and raped countless native women …
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The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
Jews for Justice in the Middle East
As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational “terrorists” who have no point of view worth listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance … This paper outlines the history of Palestine to show how this process occurred and what a moral solution to the region’s problems should consist of. If you care about the people of the Middle East, Jewish and Arab, you owe it to yourself to read this account of the other side of the historical record.
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The Founding Myths of Modern Israel
Roger Garaudy – Book available from IHR
In this headline-making work, a prominent French scholar delivers one powerful blow after another to the pernicious historical myths cited for decades to justify Zionist aggression and repression, including the Israeli legend of a “land without people for a people without land,” and the most sacred of Jewish-Zionist icons, the Holocaust extermination story. For financial gain, as an alibi for indefensible policies, and for other reasons, Jews have used what the author calls “theological myths” to arrogate for themselves a “right of theological divine chosenness.” The wartime suffering of Europe’s Jews, he contends, has been elevated to the status of a secular religion, and is now treated with sacrosanct historical uniqueness.
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Israel Reaches Worst Score Ever in Annual Corruption Index
The Times of Israel
An anti-corruption watchdog on Tuesday gave Israel its worst-ever score in a global ranking of how countries tackle government graft. Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures the perception of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, gave Israel a score of 59 out of 100. It received a score of 60 in 2020, and scored 64 in 2016. The highest scores are awarded to countries adjudged to have the lowest level of corruption. Israel is ranked 36th out of 180 countries in the 2021 report, after ranking 28th five years ago. Among 37 OECD countries, Israel is ranked 29th, dropping four places compared to the 2020 report.
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Israel’s Deepening Slide Into Corruption
David Horovitz - The Times of Israel
Israel this week recorded its worst-ever score in Transparency International’s ranking of public sector corruption worldwide … Presumably our ranking was harmed by the fact that the prime minister was on trial for corruption, and fell from power, in the period under review — indicating either that we were led by a criminal, or that the state prosecution subverted the democratic process by helping oust our elected leader with charges that it could not prove; the judges have yet to determine which … There’s no knowing whether the roaring business of private-sector financial corruption in Israel — the innumerable fraudsters who use skewed trading tools, investment scams, fake cryptocurrency schemes and all manner of other ruses to fleece vast sums from victims worldwide — is a factor in Transparency International’s considerations.
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Survivors recalled their agony to a world they fear is forgetting, Israel’s parliamentary speaker wept in the German parliament, and politicians warned of a resurgence of antisemitism on Thursday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day falls on the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of Auschwitz-Birkenau … Commemorations everywhere took place amid a rise of antisemitism that gained traction during lockdowns as the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated hatred online. German parliament speaker Baerbel Bas said the pandemic has acted “like an accelerant” to already burgeoning antisemitism. “Antisemitism is here — it isn’t just on the extreme fringe, not just among the eternally incorrigible and a few antisemitic trolls on the net,” she said. “It is a problem of our society — all of society.”
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European Union leaders pledged Wednesday to confront the rise of antisemitism and Holocaust denial witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic, on the eve of the annual commemorations of Auschwitz’s liberation. European Council President Charles Michel said the lessons of the Holocaust are now “more relevant than ever.” … Michel spoke at an online event organized by the European Jewish Congress, which was also attended by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. The Commission — the EU’s executive branch — presented last year a new strategy to better tackle hate speech, raise awareness about Jewish life, protect places of worship and ensure that the Holocaust isn’t forgotten.
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A school board in Tennessee has banned a Pulitzer prize-winning novel about the Holocaust from being taught in its classrooms. Board members voted in favour of banning the novel because it contained swear words and a naked illustration. The graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale depicts how the author’s parents survived Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Author Art Spiegelman said he was “baffled” by the decision … Mr Spiegelman’s parents were Polish Jews who were sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War Two. His novel Maus, which features hand-drawn illustrations of mice as Jews and cats as Nazis, won a number of literary awards in 1992.
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Stop the Neocons From Starting a War
Eric Margolis
… Germany, Europe’s leading military force and mainstay of NATO, has hollowed out its military power … Polls show Germans have very little interest in confronting Russia. Memories of World War II are still raw. Today’s Germans live in a nation that was 50% destroyed by US and British bombing … Germany’s US-dominated media and government support Washington’s hard line on Ukraine, but many ordinary Germans and French don’t agree … US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, a rising star among the pro-war neocons, is pushing the confrontation with Russia – yet another bureaucrat with no military experience. Military men quickly understand the logistic and climactic problems of fighting in the Black Sea region, but not Washington’s desk warriors and their European satraps … Washington’s sofa samurais are playing with fire.
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Age of Intolerance: Cancel Culture’s War on Free Speech
John W. Whitehead, Nisha Whitehead
Cancel culture … has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs. Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive, provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint. In the past few years, for example, prominent social media voices have been censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that were deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.
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University in England Warns That Orwell’s `1984’ Is `Potentially Offensive’
C. Marie - Newsbreak
A British university slapped George Orwell’s novel 1984 with a trigger warning following concerns that some students might find it “offensive and upsetting.” The novel examines how the role of truth and facts in a society can be manipulated under a dictatorship. The school decided the materials in the book could be upsetting to some students and labeled it as “explicit materials” on the cover of the book … The English department at the University of Northampton warned students taking the class, “Identity Under Construction,” they might find the subject matter upsetting or offensive. The school decided the fragile generation might have a problem with the novel’s anti-totalitarianism ideals … The primary focus of the class was examining the “constructions of identity, around issues such as race, class, gender and sexuality.”
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A new poll found a decline in support among Americans for the Black Lives Matter movement, a year and a half after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other high-profile deaths of Black people in encounters with police sparked a global outcry. According to a national poll conducted by Civiqs, a nonpartisan online survey firm affiliated with the progressive media group Daily Kos, 44 percent of respondents, overall, said they support the Black Lives Matter movement. Another 43 said they oppose it … Support for the Black Lives Matter movement peaked in June 2020 at 52 percent, a month after Floyd was killed … While 82 percent of Black respondents said they support the Black Lives Matter movement, 53 percent of white respondents said they opposed the movement …
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UN General Assembly Adopts Israeli Resolution Aimed at Combating `Holocaust Denial’
The Times of Israel
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution aimed at combating Holocaust denial on Thursday, in what was just the second time since Israel’s establishment that a measure its delegation brought before the forum managed to pass. The resolution provides a specific classification for Holocaust denial, using the working definition put together by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. It also provides actions expected to be taken by signatory countries in order to address the phenomenon, and demands social media networks remove posts that fall under the IHRA definition. One hundred and fourteen countries co-sponsored Resolution A/76/L30 and only Iran publicly voiced its opposition.
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First They Came for the Holocaust Deniers, and I Did Not Speak Out: Europe’s Well-Intentioned But Problematic `Denial’ Laws
J. Mchangama - Foreign Policy
… It is, of course, the Holocaust that has been the driver of European memory laws … This is where the story becomes complicated. Despite pressure from former communist states, the EU has rejected including the denial of communism’s crimes in its 2008 framework decision … European memory laws have spread and metamorphosed to the extent that they now serve as the model for criminalizing accurate but nationally inconvenient historical accounts, as well as entrenching deeply flawed histories used as foundations for specific national ideologies and repressive political agendas … Given the role that memory laws have come to play in undermining both academic freedom and political speech, the EU should urgently reconsider its approach.
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Dozens of freight cars are broken into every day on Los Angeles’s railways by thieves who take advantage of the trains’ stops to loot packages bought online, leaving thousands of gutted boxes and products that will never reach their destinations. According to the tags found Friday by an AFP team on a track near the city center ― which was easily accessible from nearby streets ― many major US mail order and courier companies such as Amazon, Target, UPS and FedEx are being hit by the thefts, which have exploded in recent months … According to figures reported by UP, more than 90 containers were vandalized every day on average in Los Angeles County in the last quarter of 2021.
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Overwhelming majorities of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, that their household income is falling behind the cost of living, that political polarization will only continue, and that there’s a real threat to the nation’s democracy and majority rule. What’s more, the nation’s top politicians and political parties are more unpopular than popular … When Americans were asked to describe where they believe America is today, the top answers were “downhill,” “divisive,” “negative,” “struggling,” “lost” and “bad.” … According to the poll, 72 percent of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction — essentially unchanged from the 71 percent who held this view in October’s NBC News poll.
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Associated Press = Associated Propaganda
Michelle Malkin
… As a member of the print, broadcast and internet media for the past 30 years, I cannot emphasize enough how complicit so-called mainstream journalists are in perpetuating such double standards and stoking hatred of dissidents … I remind you that it was the AP that issued “stylebook” guidelines four months after BLM and antifa set America on fire after the George Floyd incident ordering its journalists not to use the term “riot” to describe the mayhem because it “suggests uncontrolled chaos and pandemonium” instead of focusing on the “underlying grievance” of black protesters against the system. The AP pooh-bahs advised their minions to employ the kinder, gentler euphemism “unrest” to describe “a condition of angry discontent and protest verging on revolt.”
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Why US Diplomacy Fails
Daniel Larison – Antiwar.com
The nuclear deal with Iran is not dead yet, but the prospects for its revival and longer-term survival are bleak … It is possible that the talks might still yield something of value, but it is more likely that the most successful nonproliferation agreement in recent history will be consigned to the ash heap because the US cannot make durable, credible diplomatic commitments … Iran is expected to adhere to the restrictions contained in the nuclear deal without exception, but the US and the other major powers are effectively free to flout their obligations without suffering any penalties. The US now disingenuously cites Iran’s reduced compliance since 2019 as justification for keeping in place all the sanctions that spurred Iran to take those actions, and that means that the upfront sanctions relief that could break the current impasse won’t even be considered.
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The head of the German navy has resigned over controversial comments he made over Ukraine. Kay-Achim Schönbach said the idea that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine was nonsense. He added that all President Vladimir Putin wanted was respect. A number of countries have supplied weapons to Ukraine, including the US and UK. But Germany has refused Ukraine’s request for ammunition. Russia has denied claims that it is planning to invade Ukraine. But President Putin has issued demands to the West which he says concern Russia’s security, including that Ukraine be stopped from joining the military defence alliance Nato. He also wants Nato to abandon military exercises and stop sending weapons to eastern Europe, seeing this as a direct threat to Russia’s security.
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The most pressing threat to global security right now isn’t so-called “provocations” by either Russia or China. It is the United States’ misplaced obsession with its own “credibility” … The picture is the same with Iran. US “credibility” is being cited as the reason why Washington needs to take a hard line against Tehran – goaded, as ever, by Israel – on its presumed ambitions to build a nuclear bomb. Israel, of course, has had its own large arsenal of nuclear weapons for decades – entirely unmonitored and in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both the US and Israel fear Iran wants to level the nuclear playing field in the Middle East. Israel is determined to make sure that only it has the power to make nuclear-backed threats, either against others in the region or as leverage in Washington to get its way.
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Jewish History, Jewish Religion: A Review
S. J. Quinn - Occidental Observer
For a thorough airing of Jewish dirty laundry, one cannot do much better than Israel Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (JHJR). First published in 1994, JHJR, represents a humanist critique of classical and modern Judaism which extends to the pervasive anti-gentile attitudes of Jews throughout history. Much of Shahak’s critique leads to his condemnation of Israel’s current treatment of the Palestinians, but he also offers the gentile’s perspective whenever discussing historical conflicts between Jews and gentiles. Most importantly, however, Shahak underscores the blatant hypocrisy, the niggling legalism, and the chauvinistic ethnocentrism behind classical Judaism, as expressed in the Talmud and other post-biblical writings.
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Jewish History, Jewish Religion
Israel Shahak - Book available from IHR
The author, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, shows how the arrogant and invidious Jewish chauvinism of modern Israel is rooted in the Talmud and Jewish rabbinical laws. Shahak, who came to Israel in 1945 after surviving the notorious German concentration camp of Belsen during World War II, condemns Israel’s systemic discrimination against the non-Jews under its rule. He insists that the Jewish religion, especially in its classical and Talmudic form, is “poisoning minds and hearts.” Israel’s identity as an emphatically Jewish ethno-religious state, and policies based on that outlook – he contends – constitute a danger not only to itself and its inhabitants, but to Jews everywhere, as well as to the peoples and states of the Middle East.
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Pioneering biologist, environmental activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson has died [Dec. 26]. He was 92. The influential and sometimes controversial Harvard professor first made his name studying ants — he was often known as “the ant man.” But he later broadened his scope to the intersection between human behavior and genetics, creating the field of sociobiology in the process … He first gained wide notoriety for his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in which he expounded on evidence that human behavior was influenced by genetics. Wilson argued that our genes guided our social behaviors — everything from warfare to altruism. That idea prompted a sharp backlash from fellow academics and activists who equated biological determinism with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century and Nazi Germany.
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… I read Wilson’s 1975 masterpiece Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, and it effectively changed my life … It cogently argued that animal behavior, personality and intelligence, and any inter-species differences in these, were very substantially genetic, and that was as true with humans as it was with any other similar animals … In other words, we are evolved to be with people who are genetically similar to us, and will feel dysphoria if we are not. As many readers will know, due to Wilson’s fearless pursuit of biology while working at Harvard (from where he retired in 1996), he was subject to one of the first serious cancellation attempts at the hands of the Leftist anti-science mob … In Edward O. Wilson, science has lost a truly brilliant man; one of the last geniuses of the twentieth century.
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Russia-bashing is a bi-partisan activity in Washington. Both parties think it makes them look “tough” and “pro-America.” But while Republican and Democrat politicians continue to one-up each other on “risk-free” threats to Russia, they are increasingly risking a devastating nuclear war … In this case we are risking total destruction over who governs eastern Ukraine! Has so much ever been risked for so little? … When US politicians talk about Russia massing troops on the Ukrainian border, for example, they leave out the fact that these troops are actually inside Russia. With US troops in some 150 countries overseas, you’d think Washington might pause before criticizing the “aggression” of troops inside a country’s own borders … What to do about Russia? … It’s really not that complicated: stop trying to rule the world.
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Biden Should Declare NATO Membership Closed
Patrick J. Buchanan
… This is the real world. And as Ukraine is not a NATO ally, and we are not going to invite it to become a NATO ally, Biden should declare so publicly, urbi et orbi, to remove Putin’s pretext for any invasion … The purposes of the Biden declaration would be simple: to tell the truth about what we will and will not do. To remove Putin’s pretext for war. To give Putin an off-ramp from any contemplated invasion, if he is looking for one. A Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war that would inevitably follow would be a disaster for Ukraine and Russia, but also for Europe and the United States …Thus, to avert a war, Biden should declare what is the truth: “Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and neither we nor our allies have any intention or plans to bring Ukraine into NATO or to give Kyiv an Article 5 war guarantee.”
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A section of the Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles has been littered with thousands of shredded boxes, packages stolen from cargo containers that stop in the area to unload. Thieves have been raiding the cargo containers, taking packages that belong to people from all over the country from retailers like Amazon, REI and others. The refuse left behind, like home COVID test kits, are items that the robbers did not want or did not think were valuable enough to take … A source with knowledge of the issue told CBSLA that Union Pacific cleaned up this area of tracks three months ago, and again only about 30 days ago, though the area is already littered with new discarded boxes.
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Thousands of parcels have been scattered across the railway tracks in east Los Angeles. According to locals, thieves have been targeting trains, both moving and stationary, to steal packages. This section of railway is being cleared by Union Pacific who operate the line – they’ve had to do so multiple times over the last three months.
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Elections, Plebiscites, and Festivals: Voting in Third Reich Germany
Hedwig Richter and Ralph Jessen
… Why did the Nazis hold these elections? Did not elections fundamentally contradict the dictatorial ‘leadership principle’ and the claim to total power? Why did they take the risk inherent in elections, even when held under dictatorial conditions? A total of four Reichstag elections and five plebiscites took place after Hitler’s seizure of power in January 1933 … The success of the NSDAP cannot be understood without recognizing the effectiveness of the party’s role in mobilizing voters … In 1933 and 1934 even Jewish citizens were allowed to vote … Concentration camp prisoners were allowed to vote, at least in the first elections, and, thanks to the secrecy imposed, were able to express their opposition.
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Hitler’s 1932 Election Campaign 'Stump' Speech
Institute for Historical Review
This recorded address by Adolf Hitler was distributed on 50,000 phonograph discs during Germany’s fiercely contested national parliament election campaign of July 1932, in which his National Socialist movement emerged as the country’s largest party. This “Appeal to the Nation” is similar in content and tone to many other speeches he gave in 1932, which for Germans was a year of mass unemployment, economic paralysis, and a broken, unresponsive political system. Translation of the complete text, with a foreword by Mark Weber, who examines how and why Hitler and his party won such broad popular support.
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Israeli PM Vows No Peace Process With Palestinians
J. Ditz – Antiwar.com
When speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett reiterated his long-standing opposition to peace with the Palestinians, saying that his government would not engage in any peace process with them no matter what happens. Bennett has been saying he is averse to the two-state solution for years, and his coalition government is sticking with that … What this means for US-Israel relations still remains to be seen. Former President Trump was so determined to be seen as pro-Israel he went along with Netanyahu’s positions. A number of US officials, however, remain tied to the two-state solution plan, and Bennett’s absolute dismissal of that could easily be a long-term issue.
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China said Saturday it would begin implementing a strategic agreement with Iran, strengthening economic and political cooperation between the two countries as Beijing blasted Washington’s sanctions on Tehran. China and Iran signed the agreement last year after years of talks, with the wide-ranging partnership set to span areas including energy, security, infrastructure, and communications … China is Iran’s leading trade partner and was one of the biggest buyers of the country’s oil before then-United States president Donald Trump reimposed sweeping unilateral sanctions in 2018 … Beijing has long sought to boost ties with Tehran, with Chinese President Xi Jinping describing Iran as “China’s major partner in the Middle East” on a rare visit to the country in 2016.
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Washington Post Launches Database of 1,700 Members of Congress Who Owned Slaves
The Washington Post
From the founding of the United States until long after the Civil War, hundreds of the elected leaders writing the nation’s laws were current or former slaveowners. More than 1,700 people who served in the U.S. Congress in the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries owned human beings at some point in their lives, according to a Washington Post investigation of censuses and other historical records …The Washington Post created a database that shows enslavers in Congress represented 37 states, including not just the South but every state in New England, much of the Midwest, and many Western states … Enslavers came from all parts of the political spectrum.
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Myths of Martin Luther King
Marcus Epstein
There is probably no greater sacred cow in America than Martin Luther King Jr … King supported black power, reparations, affirmative action, and socialism … He also deals frankly with King’s philandering and plagiarism … King openly advocated quotas and racial set-asides. He wrote that the “Negro today is not struggling for some abstract, vague rights, but for concrete improvement in his way of life.” When equal opportunity laws failed to achieve this, King looked for other ways … King was even an early proponent of reparations … King started plagiarizing as an undergraduate. When Boston University founded a commission to look into it, they found that that 45 percent of the first part and 21 percent of the second part of his dissertation was stolen … Many of his major speeches, such as “I Have a Dream,” were plagiarized …
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A New Israeli Film Tackles the Taboo: Did Six Million Jews Die in the Holocaust?
The Times of Israel
A new documentary film by Israeli filmmaker David Fisher is provoking controversy for its attempts to confirm whether six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The film, titled “The Round Number,” played at the Jerusalem Film Festival last year and aired on Sunday evening … The film deals with the round number of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, how it was established and why it has become so untouchable, despite obviously not being an exact figure … Fisher speaks with a wide range of historians and other figures in the film, in an attempt to answer the question. “Nobody responsible or no self-respecting historian will tell you that six million [Jews] were killed in the Holocaust,” Hanna Yablonka, a professor of Holocaust studies at Ben-Gurion University, tells Fisher in the film.
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Trailer of the new Israeli documentary film by David Fisher. Is the number six million – the sacred tally of Jews killed under Nazi rule – a symbol in our collective memory that we should not question, or, is understanding it the only way to defend it? Trailer runtime: 1:50 mins.
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… None of the scholars he spoke with was prepared to confirm the number. In fact, most of them are seen trying to distance themselves from it to some degree, and implying that, historically, it may not be that accurate … The importance of this number long ago exceeded the issue of historical accuracy, the experts tell him. It long ago became one of the symbols most closely identified with the Holocaust, and it is very important that a symbol like that be preserved; it must be defended … “I was surprised to discover that there is a fairly well-known British scholar, Gerald Reitlinger, who says the number of Jewish Holocaust victims was 4.2 million. And that one of the biggest scholars, Raul Hilberg, says 5.1 million.
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Israel Pushes UN General Assembly to Condemn `Holocaust Denial’
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Israel is pushing the UN General Assembly to condemn Holocaust denial by unanimously supporting a resolution that it authored. It wants the GA to take a stand on Holocaust denial on January 20, the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazi “Final Solution” was approved. “The passing of this resolution is of great importance so that the shocking phenomenon of Holocaust denial becomes a redline in the international arena,” Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan told reporters on Wednesday. The Israeli resolution “urges all member states to reject without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, in either full or in part, or any activities to this end.” It asks “member states and social media companies to take active measures to combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial” …
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What is `Holocaust Denial’?
Barbara Kulaszka
In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to the supposed danger of “Holocaust denial.” Politicians, newspapers and television warn about the growing influence of those who reject the Holocaust story that some six million European Jews were systematically exterminated during the Second World War, most of them in gas chambers. In several countries, including Israel, France, Germany and Austria, “Holocaust denial” is against the law, and “deniers” have been punished with stiff fines and prison sentences … Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question: Just what constitutes “Holocaust denial”?
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Anne Frank may have been betrayed by a Jewish notary who became an informant for Nazi occupiers in order to save his own family’s lives. It has long been theorized that the young Jewish diarist and her family were discovered by Gestapo officers in 1944 after a tip-off from an unknown informant, but now a retired FBI agent believes he has come up with the name of the man who revealed where the Franks were hiding: Arnold van den Bergh. For the last six years, Vince Pankoke, who worked for the FBI for 30 years targeting Colombian drug cartels, has worked with a team of investigators and attempted to try to crack the case using modern crime-solving techniques. His findings were aired on 60 Minutes on Sunday night.
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A prominent Jewish businessman in occupied Amsterdam has emerged as the prime suspect for betraying Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis. The results of a painstaking investigation, using 21st-century detection techniques, were revealed by CBS in its flagship documentary series, 60 Minutes, naming Arnold van den Bergh, who died in 1950, as the individual most likely to have been responsible for the betrayal … Led by retired FBI detective, Vince Pankoke, the team used artificial intelligence to comb through voluminous records to reach its conclusion … The last entry in Anne Frank’s diary, which became an international bestseller, was dated August 1, 1944. She died aged 15, at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945, possibly from typhus.
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Beijing’s Movie War Propaganda — and Washington’s
R. Andersen – FAIR
To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party, the powerful Chinese Central Propaganda Department commissioned a blockbuster film that depicts a US defeat in the Korean War … The Battle at Lake Changjin has grossed more than $900 million to date at the box office, making it the second–highest-grossing film in the world in 2021… Each aspect of Chinese propaganda the Times complains about is routinely employed by US media, and they have been for years. But such facts are not mentioned … Media scholars have long understood that stealth tactics of persuasion, able to deliver propaganda messages under the cover of entertainment, enhance those messages’ effectiveness … He uncovered a blizzard of recently released documents that together show about 3,000 films shaped by Pentagon censors.
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If America’s so free and fair, why is Julian Assange, innocent in natural law, so terrified of being extradited to the USA? … American heroes living abroad for fear of the American Security State? … Contrary to what you’d been told by officials under oath, “the world’s largest surveillance organization” can and does “obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.” This is contrary to the Bill of Rights, and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution … WikiLeaks operators have committed no crime in publishing what is undeniably true, newsworthy information, with probative value. Besides, why has America any jurisdiction over a foreign entity (WikiLeaks) and a foreign national (Julian Assange)?
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America is Falling Apart at the Seams
David Brooks - The New York Times
… Something darker and deeper seems to be happening as well — a long-term loss of solidarity, a long-term rise in estrangement and hostility. This is what it feels like to live in a society that is dissolving from the bottom up as much as from the top down. What the hell is going on? The short answer: I don’t know … There must also be some spiritual or moral problem at the core of this. Over the past several years, and over a wide range of different behaviors, Americans have been acting in fewer pro-social and relational ways and in more antisocial and self-destructive ways. But why? As a columnist, I’m supposed to have some answers. But I just don’t right now. I just know the situation is dire.
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Mark Clark, commander of US Army forces in Italy during World War II, is rated by many historians as one of the worst American Generals of the conflict. This “Tales of the American Empire” video also takes a critical look at the overall Allied military campaign in Italy, which was strategically wrong-headed, poorly planned, and badly executed. Runtime: 13:14 mins.
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Iraq War: Secret Memo Reveals Bush-Blair Plans to Topple Saddam Hussein
D. Hearst - Middle East Eye
George W Bush told Tony Blair he did not know who would replace Saddam Hussein in Iraq when they toppled him and that he “did not much care”, according to an explosive top secret account of the meeting seen by Middle East Eye. The former US president was blithe about the consequences of launching an invasion at a crucial meeting with the British prime minister at his Texas ranch in 2002, almost a year before the war was launched. “He didn’t know who would take Saddam’s place if and when we toppled him. But he didn’t much care. He was working on the assumption that anyone would be an improvement,” the British memo, written by Blair’s top foreign policy adviser at the time, reads.
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The Lies and Conspiracy Theories From Neocon ‘Crazies’ That Fueled Iraq War Are Subject of New History
Philip Weiss
… That’s what makes Scott Horton’s new book such essential reading. “Enough Already” is the radio host/ libertarian/ antiwar.com editor’s meticulous analysis of how the U.S. “war on terrorism” has generated unending suffering in the Middle East. A million lives lost in Bush’s war on Iraq alone, as Horton said … The neocon logic was that toppling Saddam would strengthen Israel’s position … Neocons bought this “bill of goods,” Horton relates, because of Israel’s presumed interest. “Israel’s interests had always been the purpose of the neoconservatives’ advocacy of American militarism.” … The broader Israel lobby also pushed for the war … The neocons haven’t gone away. Their think tanks continue to push for war, and they have publications to get out the word.
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Iraq: A War For Israel
Mark Weber
So, if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack? Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush’s decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America’s Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish “neo-conservatives” holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush — who was already fervently committed to Israel — resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel’s chief regional enemies.
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Sunday service attendance has nearly halved in 30 years, The Telegraph can reveal, as clergy warn that priests covering more than one parish has sparked a “loss of confidence” in the Church. The only area of the country to see an increase in the number of worshippers was London, where the diocese has stuck to the “one-priest-one-parish” model. All 43 other dioceses have seen an average decline of 40 per cent in the number of regular Sunday worshippers, a new analysis of Church of England data shows. Between 1987 and 2019 the number fell from around 1.2 million to 679,000 … More than 400 churches have been shut down in less than a decade.
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Jewish, Pro-Israel Groups Urge US Senate to Approve $1 Billion Funding for 'Iron Dome'
Middle East Eye
Several pro-Israel groups in the US have pressed the Senate leadership to move forward with $1 billion in funding to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system, and blasted a prominent Republican for blocking the legislation. The eight organisations – which include Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the Jewish Federations of North America, and the Anti-Defamation League – urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday to “urgently move forward” with the funding that has been stagnant in the Senate since September. In September, the House of Representatives approved a stand-alone bill to provide Israel with $1 billion for replenishing the anti-missile system. The vote passed with an overwhelming majority, with 420 members voting in favour and only nine against it.
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New program will help “make the Jewish catastrophe a firm fact in the international consciousness, a fact beyond denial” / … The academy was born of a concern over reports that fewer people the world over know much about the Holocaust 80 years after it destroyed a third of world Jewry. It’s also a time when anti-Semitism and Holocaust distortion are gaining traction, especially online, and survivor witnesses are dying off … The academy is the newest initiative out of the International School for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center that has trained hundreds of thousands of educators from more than 50 countries over the last nearly 30 years and supplied teaching materials for countless more. The figure of students reached, they report, exceeds 12 million.
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Jewish groups in Canada are decrying an Arabic-language magazine and human-rights organization for two separate incidents of anti-Israel activity. B’nai Brith Canada has called for the Canadian government to “dissolve” the not-for-profit corporation “Canadian Defenders for Human Rights” after that group’s leader, Firas al-Najim, was caught on film in Arabic praising the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and chanting “Death to America.” Al-Najim made his remarks during a small rally outside the U.S. consulate in Toronto on Jan. 2 to mark the anniversary of the death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, who was assassinated last year in a U.S. drone strike.
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Where Does NATO Enlargement End?
Patrick J. Buchanan
… These 14 newest members of NATO represent an expansion of U.S. war commitments riskier in ways than the original creation of NATO … Today, we defend 29 nations, stretching far into Eastern Europe. Still, further NATO expansion may be in the cards … Apparently, “the North Atlantic area” now extends to the eastern Baltic and the Balkans. If Ukraine and Georgia are admitted to NATO, the North Atlantic area would include the Caucasus, and five of six nations on the Black Sea … There is no requirement that the U.S. admit to NATO any or all nations that apply for admission. For whatever reasons we choose, we can veto any applicant. And avoiding war with Russia might constitute one of those reasons.
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The Insurrection of January 6: The Day of Infamy That Wasn’t
David Stockman
… Not a bit of the Day of Infamy narrative is true, plausible or warranted. In the first place, there was nothing organized about it whatsoever. What preceded the leaderless march of the mob to the Capitol was nothing more than a handful of rightwing whackadoos pinging each other on social media … The fact is, American democracy was not under fire that afternoon. It was not imperiled one little bit by the mayhem in the Capitol which briefly ensued after the Donald has dispensed his usual bombast, self-promotion and rhetorical incoherence to the hyped-up crowd on the Mall … The Capitol riot of January 6, 2021 was the pitiful denouement of a world class narcissist and bumbling Cesarean who never should have crossed the Potomac.
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Pope Francis made some unusually anti-woke remarks during a speech to diplomats when he said that “identity” was being erased in the name of protecting “diversity,” and that “cancel culture” is a form of “ideological colonisation.” Cancel culture “leaves no space for freedom of expression,” the Supreme Pontiff told a gathering of ambassadors at the Vatican. “The cultural roots that constitute the identity of many peoples,” are also under threat from historical revisionism driven by “ideological colonisation,” he warned. The phenomenon of activist groups attempting to rewrite history “is invading many circles and public institutions,” he added, noting that, “In the name of protecting diversity, one ends up canceling out the sense of identity.”
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Christian Presence in Jerusalem Under Threat by Zionist Extremists, Warns Greek Orthodox Patriarch
Mondoweiss
“Our churches are threatened by Israeli radical fringe groups,” wrote Patriarch Theophilos III in a column published in last Saturday’s British daily, The Times. “At the hands of these Zionist extremists,” Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Patriarch said, “the Christian community in Jerusalem is suffering greatly.” Theophilos charged that a rising number of assaults against Christians and church buildings are an attempt to drive the Christian community out of Jerusalem’s Old City, home to Christians, Jews and Muslims and their holy sites. “Our brothers and sisters are the victims of hate crimes,” he wrote.
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Israel Likely Behind 1981 Bombings of German, Swiss Engineering Firms, Prominent Swiss Daily Reports
IntelNews
Israel’s primary external intelligence agency, the Mossad, was likely behind a series of mysterious bombings in 1981, which targeted German and Swiss engineering firms believed to be aiding the Pakistani nuclear program, according to new exposé by a leading Swiss newspaper. Several bomb attacks targeted a number of engineering firms in Switzerland and what was then West Germany in 1981. Alongside these attacks, there were threatening telephone calls that targeted West German and Swiss engineers … One of Switzerland’s leading newspapers, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), claims in a new report that the violent actions against German and Swiss scientists and engineering firms were likely undertaken by the Israeli Mossad.
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Swastika-Draped Casket at Neo-Fascist Funeral in Rome Sparks Outrage
Agencies / The Times of Israel
The local Jewish community and Catholic Church in Rome on Tuesday strongly condemned as “offensive and unacceptable” a funeral procession outside a local church in which the casket was draped in a Nazi flag and mourners gave the fascist salute. Photos and video of the scene outside St. Lucia church following the Monday funeral service were published by the Italian online news portal Open. They showed around two dozen people gathered outside the church as the swastika-draped casket emerged, shouting “Presente!” (“Present!”) with their right arm extended in the fascist salute.
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Fraud is Now Israel’s Top Illicit Cash Crop, Ministry Report Says
The Times of Israel
Fraud, especially the type perpetrated online, has become the most significant source of dirty money for Israeli criminals, according to a new report from the Justice Ministry’s anti-money laundering unit. In its 2021 National Risk Assessment, released in late November, Israeli law enforcement agencies concluded that internet fraud poses the country’s biggest money-laundering risk, in terms of the prevalence of the crime and amount of money generated measured against law enforcement’s capability of thwarting it. The report stands in contrast to the Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority’s (IMPA) previous report from 2017, which pointed to tax evasion, fictitious invoices and drug trafficking as Israel’s biggest money laundering problems.
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Hitler as 'Enlightenment Intellectual'
Mark Weber
A specter is haunting the world — the specter of Hitlerism. That, in short, is the stern warning of this provocative book, Hitler as Philosophe: Remnants of the Enlightenment in National Socialism, by Lawrence Birken… In spite of decades of vehement vilification, says author Birken, Hitler’s views have enduring and dangerous appeal — not because they are bizarre and alien, but precisely because they are rational and well-grounded in Western thought.
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A right-wing political party has caused a stir in Romania for calling Holocaust education, which was recently mandated in high schools there, a “minor topic.” The populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians party, or AUR, issued a statement Monday accusing the government of relegating “fundamental subjects” such as “exact sciences, Romanian language and literature and national history” in favor of “minor topics,” such as “sexual education” and “history of the Holocaust.” Through this, the government is trying “to undermine the quality of the education system in Romania,” the statement read. AUR holds a total of 43 Senate and lower house seats in Romania’s 466-seat parliament.
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The left is furious about “white privilege.” And while it’s true white people have benefited from major advantages over time, it’s a concept that is rapidly fading — especially now, as the reverse is coming true. Minorities are increasingly becoming privileged while growing numbers of white people face discrimination. Diversity initiatives have been around for years, but over the past year and a half, innumerable companies and corporations have ramped up their efforts with the goal of “diversifying” their workforce … In May, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot suddenly declared she will only give interviews to “journalists of color” — something that would be an impeachable offense if the situation was reversed (only giving interviews to “white journalists”).
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At least 16 U.S. cities have set new homicide records in 2021, according to local police departments. It’s a trend police departments have noted from East Coast to West, even as other violent crimes such as aggravated assault and non-violent crimes such as burglary decline in the same areas … Rochester had seen a record 80 homicide deaths in 2021 as of Tuesday. The city’s previous record was 69 in 1991, Alvarado said, adding that the number will “easily” be higher than 80 before the new year. But Rochester isn’t alone. At least 15 other cities have experienced record homicide rates this year, including some cities that surpassed their record-setting years of 2020 … Other cities like Houston, Texas; Oakland, California; Greensboro, North Carolina; and Memphis, are also nearing record homicide highs in 2021.
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A Record 559 Murders in Philadelphia in 2021
NBC 10 Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, 559 people were murdered in 2021, the most in the city’s history. It’s a record everyone saw coming and no one was able to stop. And it has scraped scars into the psyche of Philadelphians … The 559 murders are the most since the city began keeping records in the 1960s. It’s more murders than during the crack epidemic of the early 1990s. It’s more murders than in far more populous cities in 2021, including New York and Los Angeles. And it is an increase from last year’s 499 murders, and a large increase from 2019, when Philadelphia recorded 356 homicides.
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… Rising murder rates in 2020 were only a harbinger of an even worse 2021 in some parts of the region. In the District, the 20 percent increase in murders between 2019 and 2020 was capped off with another 15 percent increase in 2021 as the city soared past 200 homicides in one calendar year. Other parts of the region also saw more violent deaths. Prince George’s County finished the year with over 100 homicides in 2021 … The region also saw a big jump in the number of stolen cars and carjackings reported in 2021. Hundreds more cars were taken last year compared to 2020. In DC, nearly 10 cars get stolen every day on average. In Prince George’s County, on top of an increase in stolen cars, carjackings were also noticeably up in 2021, with almost one per day on average.
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Vienna Seeks to Confront Its Past With Exhibition of Art Created Under 'Nazi Regime'
J. Zappei – AFP
In a Vienna museum, Nazi-era art crams two small rooms, some still in storage boxes … The pieces are part of an exhibit in the Austrian capital aiming to shed light on the politics of art under the Third Reich … Instead of being displayed on the museum’s large walls, the works are packed into just two rooms, as if in a warehouse. “This can’t be like other exhibitions in the classical sense … it had to be broken up,” curator Ingrid Holzschuh told AFP … The show, called “Vienna Falls in Line. The Politics of Art under National Socialism,” is part of a broader trend of reconciling with an ugly chapter of Austrian history … Unearthing art from the period is part of that movement, and a way to learn more about the artists behind the pro-Nazi works — of which often little has been known.
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The Palestinian News and Information Agency (WAFA) said in a report today that a total of 384 Israeli violations against journalists working in the occupied Palestinian Territory were registered in 2021. WAFA said Israeli violations against journalists included attacking journalists with live and metal bullets, firing tear gas, and beating and arresting journalists. It pointed out that such attacks aim to hide the truth and keep the daily Israeli crimes against defenseless Palestinian citizens untold. “Attacking journalists, press crews and institutions using Israeli warplanes and destroying towers that house local and international media headquarters are not something new, but rather a systematic behavior in the Israeli military strategy, and a barbaric behavior targeting the safety of journalists in order to terrorize them,” WAFA said.
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Why the Left Cannot Let Go of Jan. 6
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Was Jan. 6 really the planned coup, the terrorism, the sedition, the armed insurrection, the attempt to overthrow the U.S. government? Was Jan. 6 really comparable to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 … — as Vice President Kamala Harris said yesterday? … Another reason for the left to paint up the horror of that day is that the perpetrators of Jan. 6 were not the radical left who battled cops and burned and looted Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee and scores of other cities in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. They were the “deplorables” of Trump, the populists of the American right, against whom any slander is justified. Question: If the left is so terrified of Trump it feels it must prevent him from even running again, by imposing a criminal conviction, what does that say about the left’s belief in American democracy?
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Israeli Philosophy Journal Scolded for ‘Legitimizing’ Kevin MacDonald by Publishing His Article on ‘Jewish Influence’
The Algemeiner
An Israeli academic journal stirred controversy this week after its publication of a paper on “Jewish influence” by notorious white supremacist Kevin MacDonald, prompting the resignation of its associate editor and a condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). On Sunday, the peer-reviewed Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel journal published the essay by MacDonald, a retired California State University-Long Beach professor and a virulently antisemitic figure influential in the US white supremacist movement. In “The `Default Hypothesis’ Fails to Explain Jewish Influence,” MacDonald responded to a previous article in the journal by researcher Nathan Cofnas, which critiqued and engaged with MacDonald’s earlier work on what he described as the “anti-Jewish narrative.”
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My Paper on Jewish Influence Blows Up
Kevin MacDonald
My paper, “The ‘Default Hypothesis’ Fails to Explain Jewish Influence,” has generated considerable controversy … Of course, there is no attempt to dispute my assertions on these matters. Nothing concrete that I could respond to. We’ll see if anyone else does. But rest assured, the vast majority of academics will be intimidated by such pronouncements and will stay inside their safe spaces. Being labeled an “anti-Semite” is the kiss of death for pretty much everyone these days.
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The Culture of Critique
Kevin MacDonald - Book available from IHR
How have Jews acquired such great power and influence in the United States? In this meticulously referenced and compellingly argued study, a professor of psychology at California State University (Long Beach) explains how Jews have profoundly shaped American society, politics and culture in conformity with Jewish group interests. This is the most important examination of the “Jewish question” to appear in many years. As the author shows, Jews are an unusually self-absorbed people with an extraordinarily strong ethnic-cultural group identity. Throughout history, Jews have played leading roles in campaigns to dismantle and transform the traditional social, political and cultural order. In 20th-century America, MacDonald documents, they have worked diligently and with great success to transform the host society to promote their own group interests.
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Washington’s Real Credibility Problem
Daniel Larison - Responsible Statecraft
The United States is no good at making lasting diplomatic commitments anymore. Other states have no difficulty believing in U.S. threats to use force and impose broad sanctions, but it is much harder to convince them that the U.S. can be trusted to honor its promises in negotiated agreements. Our government has a real credibility problem in that our government’s promises to lift sanctions and make other concessions are not believable. This greatly complicates the ability of our negotiators to strike bargains with other governments to resolve outstanding disputes, because the U.S. has an increasing tendency to go back on its word or to tear up agreements in a fit of pique … No negotiated agreement is safe from being scuttled when diplomacy itself is held in such low regard by many political leaders and policymakers.
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A More Aggressive Israel Lobby Is Coming in 2022
Philip Giraldi
… Jews constitute less than two percent of the US population and they already are hugely overrepresented in elite professions and politics while at the same time reserving to themselves perpetual victimhood to justify the preferential anti-democratic policies that they actually promote … Where does this ever end to satisfy the Jewish lobby? … Jewish groups are rewriting text books to include more on the so-called holocaust, to sometimes include mandatory holocaust instruction at grade school and high school levels … The Anti-Defamation-League (ADL), which leads the pack in its constant cries of anti-Semitism, hypocritically claims blandly that it is working to “Combat Extremism and Hate.” That definition apparently does not include the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of its co-religionists in Israel.
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Top Israeli Diplomat Tells Europeans Their Complaints 'Piss Me Off'
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
A senior Israel diplomat rebuked European ambassadors for protesting Israeli policies in the West Bank and violence by settlers. Fifteen European ambassadors led by the UK Charge d’Affaires Mark Power, came to the Foreign Ministry and met with Deputy Director-General Aliza Bin Noun for a démarche, a diplomatic protest, against Israel on December 8 … Bin Noun told the ambassadors that their litany of complaints “pisses me off,” an Israeli source said. She said that the current government is making gestures towards the Palestinian authority – referring to increased work permits for Palestinians and other forms of cooperation – so the complaints are out of place.
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Haaretz’s investigative report – ‘Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew’ – is a must-read. It should be particularly read by any person who considers himself a ‘Zionist’ and also by people who, for whatever reason, support Israel, anywhere in the world … The Haaretz report of nearly 5,000 words was filled with such painful details, stories of Palestinian elders who could not flee the Zionist invasion and ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine (1947-48), who were lined up against various walls and massacred; of an older woman being shot point-blank with four bullets; of other elders who were crammed inside a home and shelled by a tank and hand grenades; of many Palestinian women raped, and other devastating stories.
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The year of 2021 ended as one of the most violent on record in Chicago, as a rise in the number of shootings left more people dead than in any single year in a quarter century, according to statistics released by the police department on Saturday. According to the department, 2021 ended with 797 homicides. That is 25 more than were recorded 2020, 299 more than in 2019 and the most since 1996. And there were 3,561 shooting incidents in 2021, which is just over 300 more than were recorded in 2020 and a staggering 1,415 more shooting incidents than were recorded in the city in 2019. Other cities have also seen an increase in the number of homicides. But Chicago, as it has in previous years, ended 2021 with more homicides than any other city in the United States, including New York and Los Angeles …
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New York City Recorded 485 Murders in 2021
New York Post
New York City recorded 485 murders in 2021, a four percent increase from the 468 tallied in 2020, police sources said Saturday. Last year’s grim tally occurred in a year that saw a spike in fatal incidents in major cities nationwide, as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on nearly every aspect of life. That trend continued into 2021 with New York City seeing a late-year spike in murders. The surge was driven by a startling surge in gun violence across the city, NYPD data shows. Through Sunday, there had been 1,857 shooting victims in the Big Apple, police data show. Gotham hasn’t recorded more than 500 murders since 2011, when there were 515, according to the data.
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Hundreds of Danish orphans were subjected to examination in a secret experiment supported by the CIA to establish the link between heredity and environment in the development of schizophrenia, a new documentary revealed. According to “The Search for Myself” released by Radio Denmark, some 311 children from various orphanages were brought to the basement of the City Hospital in the Danish capital of Copenhagen for examinations in the early 1960s. Through access to documents from those years as well as the old register, a participator of the experiment and current filmmaker Per Wennick was able to find out that the project had links to the CIA.
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The Zionist state has been pumping billions of dollars into US-based groups to portray Muslims as a community of terrorists / Recent revelations that an anti-Muslim hate group allegedly paid thousands of dollars to two employees of a Muslim advocacy organisation to undermine American Muslim activists on behalf of the Israeli government are undoubtedly shocking but represent only the tip of the iceberg in what is now a decades-long effort by the Jewish State to harass, smear and threaten pro-Palestinian activists in the United States … “Let me say that again. The Israeli government was collaborating with an anti-Muslim hate group,” said Awad. More than that, these are the actions of a rogue and adversarial state, not those of a self-proclaimed democratic ally …
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More than two-thirds of the country’s 40 most populous cities saw more homicides last year than in 2020, according to a CNN analysis of police department data. Ten of those cities recorded more homicides in 2021 than any other year on record. Those are Philadelphia; Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; Portland, Oregon; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Milwaukee; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Tucson, Arizona. Minneapolis tied its previous record number of homicides … Many cities have seen homicides reach near-record highs in the past year … Homicides were also up by 12% in Los Angeles from 2020 and 4% in New York … Almost every major US city saw more homicides in both 2020 and 2021 than in 2019. Homicides rose sharply in the summer of 2020 and have remained at high levels since.
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Going Into 2022, Portland Still Has No Answer For Its Record-Breaking Homicides
Washington Examiner
… In 2021, Portland saw more homicides than San Francisco and more than double the amount of Seattle, despite having a smaller population than both. According to the Portland Police Bureau, the city saw a record 90 homicides last year … The worst part is that this was entirely predictable. Portland, a city that tolerated rioting for years, folded before the “defund the police” movement in 2020, slashing police funding by $15 million and disbanding several specialized units, including one that investigated gun violence. The city did all it could to neuter its own police department, including preventing officers from using riot-dispersal tools, while Multnomah County repeatedly declined to prosecute rioters. Weakening your police department while excusing lawlessness in the streets makes for an unstable environment. Naturally, violence escalated.
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Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors
The Wall Street Journal
The U.S. lost its 20-year campaign to transform Afghanistan. Many contractors won big. Those who benefited from the outpouring of government money range from major weapons manufacturers to entrepreneurs … Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, military outsourcing helped push up Pentagon spending to $14 trillion, creating opportunities for profit as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched on. One-third to half of that sum went to contractors, with five defense companies — Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Technologies Corp. and Northrup Grumman Corp. — taking the lion’s share, $2.1 trillion, for weapons, supplies and other services, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, a group of scholars, legal experts and others…
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Nuclear War Over Ukraine?
Eric Margolis
… It’s very unlikely that Joe Biden or Vlad Putin want a real shooting war in Ukraine. We see lots of breast-beating but no real military action – so far. What neither side will admit is that they both have serious shortages of ammunition, spare parts, fuel, recovery vehicles and guided missiles. Neither Kiev nor Moscow can afford to replace weapons lost even in a short war. Bankrupt America is in no position to fight for Ukraine. The other NATO allies are paper tigers. Most important, Germany has no desire to fight Russia. Unlike the snarling Republicans in the US Congress, Europeans want no new wars. Their boys are not ready to die for Luhansk. But an accidental conflict is always close and growing nearer.
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Russia Is Not the Great Rival; China Is
Patrick J. Buchanan
… There is not now and never has been a vital U.S. interest in Ukraine to justify risking a war with Russia … Moreover, as it is declared U.S. policy not to retaliate militarily to an invasion of Ukraine, Biden should make it clear that Ukrainian membership in NATO is a closed question. Not going to happen … Our great challenge in the 21st century is not Russia. Indeed, in the long term, we want Russia on our side in the long struggle between the U.S. and the West, and Communist China. What the U.S. should do in this Ukrainian crisis is to avoid a war with Russia, avoid an escalation, and leave our adversary with an honorable avenue of retreat. Again, with Russia, time is on our side.
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Toyota Motor has dethroned General Motors as America’s top-selling automaker in 2021, marking the first time since 1931 that the Detroit automaker wasn’t the best-selling car company in the U.S. It also marks the first time a non-domestic automaker has taken the top spot in America. Toyota was able to manage supply chain issues better, allowing it to take away GM’s throne for the first time in 90 years. An ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips caused sporadic shutdowns of plants and led to record-low vehicle inventories in 2021 … GM has been the largest seller of vehicles in the U.S. since 1931, when it surpassed Ford Motor …
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… In the “Harry Potter” world, Gringott’s Bank, the bank that serves wizards and where treasures are stored in a mysterious network of underground tunnels and chambers, is run by goblins, who are depicted as ill-tempered, short-statured creatures with long noses and ears with a love of gold. Jon Stewart, the comedian and former host of “The Daily Show,” called the characters antisemitic caricatures on a recent episode of his new show, “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” … The comparison is not new. Rafael Shimunov, a progressive activist, pointed in a Twitter thread to examples of others who have noted the similarities between the goblins and antisemitic stereotypes. He shared a clip from “Saturday Night Live” in 2020 in which Pete Davidson criticized J.K. Rowling for including antisemitic stereotypes in her stories.
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Israel’s Foreign Ministry launched a new campaign to train a group of Israeli social media influencers on how to respond to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism online. The young influencers, who have a combined following of 30 million, will also learn how to combat comments delegitimizing Israel on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The campaign launched this week with an event in Jerusalem attended by all the influencers who will be participating …Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs and the organizer of the campaign, tweeted on Friday. “With their natural talent for telling a story on the networks and with the training of the ministry, they will be an important part of the war on Israel’s delegitimization in the world.”
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Hundreds of Ukrainians held a torchlight march in the capital, Kyiv, to mark the birthday of the controversial nationalist leader Stepan Bandera … Bandera is revered as a hero by many Ukrainians for leading the political wing of the anti-Soviet independence movement, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Its military wing — the Ukrainian Insurgent Army — waged partisan warfare during and after World War II. But Bandera — who was killed by a Soviet assassin in Munich in 1959 — is regarded as a traitor by others for leading an insurgent war against Soviet forces and collaborating with Nazi Germany. His forces also fought against the Nazis at times during the war and are accused of carrying out murderous campaigns against Poles and Jews.
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Ghislaine Maxwell Convicted
Philip Giraldi
There has been a lot of speculation regarding whether convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell will now “spill the beans” on the folks in power who exploited those young female offerings pedophile Jeffrey Epstein made available. No chance of that, I am afraid, as the trial itself was narrowly construed and limited to certain sex related charges to avoid any inquiry into the names of the actual recipients of the services being provided. Nor was there any attempt made to determine if Epstein was working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, most likely Israeli, which has been claimed in a recent book by a former Israeli case officer … The fact that Epstein and his activities were being “protected” has also been confirmed through both Israeli and American sources.
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‘Greatest Generation’ Survey Reveals US Soldiers’ Views on Race, Sex and Combat During World War II
M. E. Ruane - The Washington Post
… These harsh views, and others, from the segregated Army of World War II, emerge in a new project at Virginia Tech that presents the uncensored results of dozens of surveys the service administered to soldiers during the war … About 500,000 service members were surveyed, but results from about 300,000 survive … They provide a glimpse into the mind-set of the American generation serving in the war … Some of the harshest language came from White soldiers commenting on the segregated army. A general survey found that 75 percent of soldiers from the North and 85 percent of soldiers from the South thought Blacks and Whites should train and serve separately.
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Israel’s Military Presents Government With Plans to Strike Iran
D. DeCamp - Antiwar.com
The Israeli military has presented Israeli leadership with several possible scenarios for striking targets in Iran. Haaretz reported on Tuesday. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has received a budget boost of $2.9 billion to prepare for attacks on Iran. As part of its preparations, the IDF has conducted air force drills, acquired advanced weaponry, and collected data for new strike targets. Israeli military officials told Haaretz that the IDF would be able to strike Iran as soon as the government gave the order. But the IDF stresses that it is difficult to determine the outcome and consequences of bombing Iran and how such strikes would impact Tehran’s civilian nuclear program.
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Israel Is Trying to Push War With Iran — and the US Press Barely Cares
B. Marcetic - Jacobin
Look it up and you’ll find next to no coverage in the US media about top Israeli officials visiting Washington this week to push for military strikes against Iran, raising the risk of sparking war. Yet that’s exactly what happened. It was widely reported in the Israeli press this week that defense minister Benny Gantz and top spy chief David Barnea were meeting with Biden administration officials on Thursday to push for a more aggressive US policy against Iran … For its part, Iran continues to insist its uranium enrichment is for entirely peaceful purposes, that it’s not seeking a nuclear weapon, and that it is still a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, which is known to have at least dozens of nukes and has long rejected any regional antinuclear agreement, is not.
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An ex-teacher from Arizona, known online as “Brant Danger,” recently launched a new homeschool curriculum designed to teach children about “white wellbeing,” and has circulated around the internet. The School of the West is a homeschooling curriculum that offers paid and free lectures for various subjects including the basics: math, science, history, art and language arts. But one field of study unique to the program is “white wellbeing.” … Many believe Williams’ curriculum is an attempt to indoctrinate youth with white nationalist concepts as well as extremist viewpoints … The website also recommends the Institute for Historical Review as a “reliable online source for the study of history.” The IHR has a history of publishing antisemitic concepts and pushing for Holocaust denial.
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BBC and Jewish Group Ranked With Iran and Hamas on Wiesenthal Center’s 2021 Anti-Semitism Top Ten List
Middle East Monitor
This year’s global anti-Semitism list published annually by the anti-Palestinian group, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC), has several surprising inclusions. The BBC, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), social media giants Facebook and TikTok, have been ranked inside the top ten, alongside Iran and Hamas. The inclusion of Germany is also likely to be met with raised eyebrows, given that the list is meant to name and shame groups that pose an existential threat to Jews. Anti-vax conspiracy theorists, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), climate change protest group, Sunrise, the University of Southern California and Unilever, which owns the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, complete this year’s list. Predictably, Iran tops the list.
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Wiesenthal Center Bashes German Antisemitism: Iran, Hamas, BBC, Ben & Jerry’s on 'Top Ten' List
Israel National News
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has ranked the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Palestinian jihadi movement Hamas and British news organization BBC as the three worst offenders on the [Zionist] human rights organization’s annual list of worst outbreaks of antisemitism. Coming in at No. 7 on the Wiesenthal Center’s Global Antisemitism Top Ten list for 2021 is Deutsche Welle, the German government-financed international broadcaster, and German government politician and a civil servant … The experts at the Wiesenthal Center took Deutsche Welle to task for the Jew-hatred unfolding at the news organization in the entry titled “Anti-Semites at German Public Broadcasting.”
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Does ‘A Christmas Carol’ Have an Antisemitic Message or a Jewish Humanist One?
S. Rogovoy - Forward
Over the years, Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” has been variously interpreted .. It has also been mined for its antisemitic tropes, as has other work by Dickens – most famously “Oliver Twist” and its portrayal of the character Fagin … Reading “A Christmas Carol” as antisemitic is pretty easy. The main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is a moneylender who doesn’t celebrate Christmas … “Are we the only ones who’ve noticed that this widely accepted, celebrated piece of literature is actually wildly antisemitic?” Melton asked. “We’re dealing with a cold, greedy Jewish banker sporting a pointed nose. In the end, the miserly, Jewish banker opens his heart to the Spirit of Christ — and then, and only then, is he transformed into a loving human being.”
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Labour Party Leader Starmer’s Apology Skipped Over Britain’s Long History of Antisemitism
J. Massad - Middle East Eye
British antisemitism is as old as Britain itself. Labour leader Keir Starmer saw fit to apologize only for his party’s alleged antisemitism of “recent years”, but did not address overall British antisemitism that has endured for centuries … Starmer could have apologised for the anti-Jewish articles in England’s much-cherished Magna Carta issued in 1215, or perhaps he should have gone back to 1290, when King Edward I issued his “Edict of Expulsion” to expel all Jews from England … Jews were not allowed back into the country until the 17th century … One of Labour’s founders, Keir Hardie, believed Jewish financial institutions were part of a secret cabal that pushed for the Second Boer War of 1899-1902.