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… What is now America’s goal with our massive infusion into the Ukraine war of new and heavier NATO weapons? … Thus, the new, or newly revealed, goal of U.S. policy in Ukraine is not just the defeat and retreat of the invading Russian army but the crippling of Russia as a world power… Putin’s Russia is not to recover soon or ever from the beating we intend to administer, using Ukrainians to deliver the beating, over an extended period of time … To increase steadily and substantially the losses to Russia’s economy, as well as its military, the war must go on longer. And a long war translates into ever-greater losses to the Ukrainians who are alone in paying the price in blood of defeating Russia. Is Austin committed to fighting this war to the last Ukrainian?

“War is a racket, wrote US Maj. General Smedley Butler in 1935 … Gen. Butler’s observation describes the US/ NATO response to the Ukraine war perfectly. The propaganda continues to portray the war in Ukraine as that of an unprovoked Goliath out to decimate an innocent David unless we in the US and NATO contribute massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine to defeat Russia. As is always the case with propaganda, this version of events is manipulated to bring an emotional response to the benefit of special interests. One group of special interests profiting massively on the war is the US military-industrial complex …The US has been meddling in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War, going so far as overthrowing the government in 2014 and planting the seeds of the war we are witnessing today.

A classic polemic against war and US military interventionism. Butler joined the Marine Corps when the Spanish American War broke out, earned the Brevette Medal during the Boxer Rebellion in China, saw action in Central America, and in France during World War I was promoted to Major General. He served his country for 34 years, yet he spoke against American armed intervention into the affairs of sovereign nations.

During the years when he was building his political movement, and later after taking power, Hitler made numerous public appearances before large crowds. These appearances were also occasions of greatly heightened risk of death at the hands of a determined assassin. This video focuses on Hitler’s public appearances in 1938-1939, including in open-car motorcades and in visits with German troops at the front. As the narrator explains, Hitler’s disregard for his personal safety on such occasions caused anxious concern and difficult challenges for the men responsible for their leader’s security. In modern-day America, similar public appearances by a US president are all but unthinkable.

Relief was the first emotion expressed by French-Jewish community leaders after centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen in the presidential runoff on Sunday. “It’s a relief to see that Marine Le Pen was blocked from reaching power — but this time we were seriously worried,” said Francis Kalifat, head of the French Jewish umbrella body Crif … National Rally leader Le Pen’s 41.5 percent was the highest ever achieved by a far-right party in France. Samuel Lejoyeux, head of the Union of Jewish Students of France, said that while he also felt relief at the result, “this is no victory. The main thing is that Marine Le Pen and her racist and antisemitic project have been kept out of the Élysée Palace, but the progress she has made is frightening.”

Reacting to the release of preliminary results of the second and final round of the French presidential election, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said: “Together with all supporters of freedom and democracy across the globe, I am profoundly gratified by President Macron’s projected re-election. He has demonstrated himself to be a stalwart advocate of all that is decent in our turbulent world and an enemy of all forms of antisemitism, xenophobia, and all other bigotries and hatreds … I congratulate President Macron and the nation and people of France on this tremendously important victory.”

Over the past few years, as the wife of Israel’s Ambassador to the Federal Republic and as a child of two Holocaust survivors, one of whom was born in Germany, I attended and participated in countless Holocaust remembrance ceremonies in Berlin and throughout Germany … In Germany, official Holocaust remembrance ceremonies are always attended by the top political, civic, and religious leaders of the country. Every anniversary is officially marked. International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel’s Yom HaShoah, the end of WWII, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and just the fact that it happened is commemorated at art retrospectives, concerts, museums, churches, and in all mass media. Always, even if one is not seeking it out … It is a cornerstone of the relationship between Israel and Germany.

A new survey has found that well over one-quarter of people currently living in Germany are either foreign-born or have at least one immigrant parent. The latest numbers, published by Germany’s statistics agency Destatis on Tuesday, show that “people with migrant background” make up 27.2% of Germany’s population. With some 82 million people living in the EU country, officials estimate that about 22.3 million are foreign-born or people with foreign roots — the highest number since the survey was first conducted in 2005. Foreign nationals make up just under one half of the group. Most of the people with migrant background trace their origin to Europe and Asia. Around 7.5 million have links to other EU nations, 3.5 million to the Middle East and 1.1 million to Africa. When looking to individual countries, Turkey remains the largest point of origin …

… Karl Doenitz, the head of Germany’s U-Boat program during World War II, stood trial at Nuremberg for war crimes, specifically, unrestricted submarine warfare against civilian shipping. Doenitz, in his defense, raised the fact that the Allies practiced much the same style of war at sea. He even sought testimony from U.S. naval personnel as part of his defense … Doenitz was found guilty, but his testimony sharply resonated with other combatants. Over 100 senior Allied officers sent letters conveying their disappointment over the guilty verdict … We look at those horrible photos again from Ukraine. Who are the dead? … None of that matters. The media tells us to react.

… Quite a lot of my testimony was devoted to the Nuremberg Tribunal testimony of Konrad Morgen, an SS judicial official … From July 1943 until the end of the war, Morgen investigated some 800 cases of corruption and murder within the SS, which resulted in about 200 trials. Five concentration camp commanders were arrested, and two of them were shot. For example, Buchenwald commandant Karl Koch was executed by the SS for corruption and murder. After the war Morgen established himself as a successful attorney in Frankfurt. I quoted from Morgen’s description of Buchenwald, where he lived for eight months …

Murders of police officers rose by nearly 60% during 2021, amid a wider rise in violent crime across the US, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Mr Wray said 73 officers were killed in the line of duty last year. Murders of all kinds across the US have risen dramatically since 2019. Mr Wray said violence against police was a “phenomena” that “doesn’t get enough attention”. He said it amounted to an officer killed every five days. Around 1,000 people are killed in the US by police each year, although only a small proportion of cases lead to criminal charges. Mr Wray said that “some” of the violence against police is “tied to the violent crime problem as a whole”.

Late last year, a Gallup poll showed that Americans’ trust in the mainstream media has fallen to its second lowest level on record. Only seven percent of Americans responded that they have a “great deal” of trust in the media … Last week an extraordinary article appeared in, of all places, NBC News, reporting that the US intelligence community is knowingly feeding information it does not believe accurate to the US mainstream media for the American audience to consume. In other words, the article reports that the US “deep state” admits to being actively engaged in lying to the American people in the hopes that it can manipulate public opinion.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced an excruciatingly delicate task. Although he had promised — and campaigned on — a policy of American neutrality in World War II the year before, Roosevelt ached to help the Allies … How, exactly, could he about-face and sell the war to his people? In October of that year, he masterfully managed the feat. In his nationally-broadcast Navy Day address, Roosevelt made an extraordinary claim … The map — presented as clear evidence of the Nazis’ hostile aspirations in what was (under the century old Monroe doctrine) still considered “America’s backyard” — had its intended effect. Although the Germans vehemently denied the map’s existence, the American people largely rallied behind what could now be pitched as a preemptive war of self-defense.

… In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to use U.S. forces to intervene to halt Russian tanks from crushing the Hungarian Revolution that had risen up against Soviet occupation and rule. Ike was unwilling to cross the Yalta line dividing Europe and chose to let the Hungarian Revolution fail rather than potentially ignite a war in which our own soldiers and nation would be at risk. Ike literally put America first, ahead of the Hungarians … Neocons and war hawks are taking the position that the visible defeat of the Russian army and its expulsion from Ukraine, and Putin’s humiliation and ouster, must be America’s goals. And these goals should be nonnegotiable. Failure to achieve these ends, it is said, would amount to a defeat for NATO and the United States … The sooner this war ends, the better for all.

US President Joe Biden on Friday vowed to step up efforts to combat Holocaust denial as he made the annual proclamation of Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust … The proclamation is an annual event and the dates coincide with the week when Israel marks Yom Hashoah, which falls on the Hebrew anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising … In his proclamation, Biden vowed to honor the memory of the victims and called for increased efforts to combat Holocaust denial. “WBottom of Forme must reject those who try to deny the Holocaust or to distort its history for their own ends. We recognize that, just as the Holocaust was an act of pure antisemitism, so too Holocaust denial is a form of antisemitism,” Biden said.

Like many Holocaust survivors, I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the way the memory of the Holocaust has been shaped. The myth of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is an excellent example. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – the very name is deceptive. The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto never revolted … Only a small group of young people revolted, whose size and efforts were inflated to mythic proportions in Israel after the state was established in 1948. More importantly, the uprising, which started on April 19, 1943, contradicted the survival strategy of the masses of Jews who remained in the ghetto … The figures on the length of the real fighting were also inflated.

Each year, around April 19, the media and politicians commemorate what they call the Warsaw ghetto ‘uprising,’ ‘revolt’ or ‘insurrection.’ In journalistic accounts the affair has taken on increasingly epic and symbolic proportions. At a Holocaust ceremony in New York in April 1993, American Vice President Al Gore declared: ‘The story of the Warsaw ghetto is sacred text for our time.’ In fact, this ‘story’ is a legend based only partially on historical reality.

What can a Holocaust museum accomplish with $18 million? Cincinnati’s is about to find out. The anonymous gift, the largest ever for the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, comes as the museum’s administrators warn about the waning numbers of living Holocaust survivors as well as “divisive concepts” legislation that could put a chill on how the Holocaust is taught in schools … Cincinnati is not the only American city to see resources recently poured into its Holocaust memorial efforts. Just this week, donors announced the purchase of a prominent building to be used as Boston’s first Holocaust museum. It will be located on the city’s historic “Freedom Trail,” a tourist destination filled with museums and cultural institutions.

Ukraine’s government has placed Vadim Rabinovich, a lawmaker and Jewish community leader, on a list of 111 people it called traitors in the war with Russia. The list was published last week by Rukh Chesno, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to promoting honest governance, and Ukraine’s National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption. It includes bureaucrats, journalists and mayors accused of collaborating with Russia, which invaded Ukraine on February 24 … Rukh Chesno’s website called Rabinovich a “collaborator, pro-Russian politician” … In 1997, he founded the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, which has been one of the main local Jewish groups active in the country.

… According to a recent report, California now leads the country in illiteracy. In fact, 23.1 percent of Californians over age 15 cannot read this sentence. While the problem has many causes, much of the blame falls on the state’s failing public schools. The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that just 30 percent of California eighth-graders are proficient in reading. And those numbers reflect results gathered before the Covid-19 lockdowns. Voters’ attitudes toward California’s government-run schools have tumbled accordingly … It’s hardly a surprise, then, that public school enrollment is sinking. In 2018–2019, the system lost about 23,000 students, but between the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 terms, California public schools saw more than 160,000 students leave – a sevenfold increase.

Mark Weber joins host Keith Knight in a fast-paced look at the Ukraine War, the US-Russia clash, and American foreign policy. If US leaders had acted with wisdom and prudence, says Weber, the terrible war now raging in Ukraine could have been prevented. Weber traces the origins of the conflict, and looks at how it might be resolved. For years American leaders have ignored Russia’s legitimate security concerns, Weber emphasizes in this hour-long session. Weber and Knight review the role of deceitful and alarmist propaganda in generating popular support for war. Weber stresses the danger of foreign policy by political leaders such as Joe Biden, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, and so forth, who see America’s international mission as a kind of global “Superman” who is forever fighting “bad guys.”

… Is “democracy” really America’s cause? … To make global democracy our goal in this century’s great “battle” is to allow America’s success or failure as a nation to be judged and measured by what other nations, not our own, succeed or fail in doing. America’s founding mission was not democracy, nor any other ideology … “Democracy” is not even mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. If whether other nations are democratic or autocratic is the measure by which we judge America’s success, this must lead invariably to U.S. interference in the internal affairs of those nations not our own — to ensure success in the great struggle. To pursue global “democracy” is thus a formula for endless interventions in the internal affairs of other nations, endless conflicts and eventual war.

Elon Musk has reportedly attempted to purchase Twitter, and I have no idea whether his influence on the company would be positive or not. I do know, however, what other media figures think Musk’s influence on Twitter will be. They think it will be bad — very bad, bad! How none of them see what a self-own this is is beyond me. After spending the last six years practically turgid with joy as other unaccountable billionaires tweaked the speech landscape in their favor, they’re suddenly howling over the mere rumor that a less censorious fat cat might get to sit in one of the big chairs … A few of the more prominent Musk critics are claiming merely to be upset at the prospect of wealthy individuals controlling speech … Media figures everywhere are openly complaining that they dislike the Musk move because they’re terrified he will censor people less.

Next to starting a war, the most reprehensible act would be keeping one going when more people will die with little hope the outcome will improve. Yet, there are several lines of evidence that suggest that the U.S. is inhibiting a diplomatic solution in Ukraine. Years prior to the war, when diplomatic avenues were open to prevent war, the United States already seemed to be setting up roadblocks … Lieven added that France and Germany were interested in that diplomatic path but also did not propose a treaty of neutrality because they feared a split with the U.S … From events that led to the war to the latest peace talks, the United States may be hindering negotiations rather than encouraging and facilitating them, seeming to hold out for a preferred outcome while the violence rages on the ground and more people suffer.

Russia’s war against Ukraine rages on. The U.S. and Europe continue to support Kiev. But not, it seems, to make peace. Rather, the allies are prepared to back the Zelensky government as long as it fights Moscow to the last Ukrainian … Most disturbing is the apparent failure of the allies to support what the Ukrainian people need most, peace … Obviously, a clean repulse of Russia would be the best outcome for Ukraine. However, that is impossible … It is Ukrainians that most need to halt the ongoing conflict. Moreover, they most need a permanent, stable settlement. That is best achieved with an agreement that addresses the causes of the conflict, particularly Russian security concerns. The West wantonly and recklessly ignored both Russian interests and consequent threats, leaving Ukrainians to pay the price.

The umbrella organization representing the Jewish community in France has called for a “massive” turnout in favor of incumbent Emmanuel Macron for the second round of the presidential election on April 24. Macron will face off against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (RN) — previously the National Front (FN), which became the most influential neo-fascist party in postwar Europe under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s estranged father. In Sunday’s first round involving 12 candidates, Macron won 27.8 percent of the vote against 23.2 percent for Le Pen. The two candidates faced off in the second round of the 2017 election, with Macron trouncing his opponent. However, pollsters believe Le Pen can expect a much stronger showing this time …

More than a thousand book titles, most addressing racism and LGBTQ issues, have been banned from U.S. classrooms and school libraries in the last nine months, many under pressure from conservative parents and officials, the writers’ organization PEN America said on Thursday … “What is happening in this country in terms of banning books in schools is unparalleled in its frequency, intensity, and success,” he said. In recent months, conservative parents have addressed school board meetings in numerous states to assail books they view as sexually explicit or as addressing racism in a way to make white children feel bad about themselves.

The past few years have seen an increase in partisan political attempts to restrict the public education curriculum and to portray some forms of public education as a social harm. Two targets are particularly evident: teaching about the history, policies, and actions of the state of Israel, and teaching about the history and perpetuation of racism and other accounts of state-enabled violence in the United States. In both cases, conservative politicians have justified restrictive legislation under the guise of protecting students from harm … In the first case, legislation defines antisemitism to include political criticism of the state of Israel. In the second, legislation defines critical analysis of the history of slavery and its legacies in US society as being itself racially discriminatory against whites.

The proportion of Russians who trust President Vladimir Putin has risen to 81.6% from 67.2% before he ordered troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to a survey by the state-run pollster VTsIOM published on Friday. The conflict has displaced more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes, killed or injured thousands, turned cities into rubble and led to sweeping Western sanctions that will push down Russian living standards. VTsIOM said 78.9% of respondents in its latest survey said they approved of Putin’s actions, compared to 64.3% in the last poll before the start of what Russia calls its “special military operation”. The proportion who disapproved of his actions fell to 12.9% from 24.4%.

Following Moscow’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, an overdue wave of attention has been focused on where Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs hide their wealth in the West — from real estate to private equity to the art market. Until the past few weeks, however, less attention had been paid to how these oligarchs launder their reputations (in addition to their illicit assets) and gain access to the highest rungs of western policy-makers in the process … As we found, oligarchs had donated anywhere between $372 million and $435 million to these nonprofits … These oligarchs from Russia (and elsewhere) aren’t simple businesspeople looking to create jobs or revitalize local economies. As people in Russia well know, the oligarchs are little more than parasitic figures extracting wealth and hiding it in the West …

The evening news programs of the three dominant U.S. television networks devoted more coverage to the war in Ukraine last month than in any other month during all wars, including those in which the U.S. military was directly engaged, since the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, according to the authoritative Tyndall Report. The only exception was the last war in which U.S. forces participated in Europe, the 1999 Kosovo campaign … The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in late February, “has overturned all normal patterns of journalistic response.” … The fact that all three networks sent their anchors to Lviv or Poland to cover the displaced and the refugees underlined both the importance of the story and the side that they were effectively taking, according to Tyndall.

… Sanctions have become the knee-jerk U.S. government response to any real or claimed foreign misdeed. According to the U.S. Treasury department, the number of U.S.-imposed sanctions soared 933% between 2000 and 2021. Where today’s Ukraine invasion-prompted sanctions are concerned, civilians in Russia and all around the world are already feeling the effects, via increasingly expensive and scarce food, fuel and other goods. In the end, however, the greatest damage may be inflicted on the United States government and its citizens: By incentivizing Russia and other countries to stop using U.S. dollars for trade, the sanctions regime threatens to topple the dollar from its position of global preeminence. That could spell disaster for the American economy and hasten the end of the U.S. empire.

… Le Pen has a fair chance of scooping up the neglected constituency of the old left, and that could swing the final outcome on April 24. Her economic agenda is a celebration of the welfare state and the French social model … Her plan is a mix of Keynesian big spending and redistribution towards the working poor and young families, those suffering an erosion of real living standards long before commodity inflation hit them with a hammer blow. She has married left-wing economics with law-and-order nationalism to make a very potent political brew … One might argue that her agenda smacks of national socialism, but there is no mileage in trying to evoke loose parallels with the 1930s. Le Pen is competing at the ballot box and under the rule of law.

Canada is set to outlaw Holocaust denial, a move that has the backing of the governing Liberal Party government coalition and the opposition Conservative Party. The CTV reported on Saturday that language adding Holocaust denial to the criminal code is in the must-pass government budget. Coalition officials cast the change as consistent with existing Canadian laws criminalizing incitement to hatred and promotion of genocide. “There is no place for antisemitism and Holocaust denial in Canada,” Marco Mendicino, the public safety minister, told CTV. “That’s why we’ve pledged to prohibit the wilful promotion of antisemitism through condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.” … Canada joins a number of European nations, including Germany, that have criminalized Holocaust denial.

A close, critical look at the campaign against “Holocaust denial,” including the bizarre laws in some countries that punish dissidents as “thought criminals.” The IHR director reviews the outrageous treatment of Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf, and many others who have been imprisoned, fined and forced into exile for non-conformist views on this politicized chapter of history. This well-organized global campaign, explains Weber, underscores a well-entrenched Jewish-Zionist bias in the cultural life of modern Western society, and points up the power behind that bias.

… Those who challenge the Western world’s most important social-political taboo — on the Second World War treatment of the Jews — are routinely punished for their apostasy. France’s Fabius-Gayssot law of July 13, 1990, makes it a crime to “contest” the “crimes against humanity” as defined by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal of 1945-46 … Faurisson and Le Pen are hardly the only ones whom Jewish groups and French officials have targeted for expressing skepticism of the officially sanctioned version of 20th century history. Other victims include Philippe Costa, Alain Guionnet and Fabrice Robert. Between July 1990 and January 1993 alone, the Fabius-Gayssot law had already been applied 27 times.

… In 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 nations, a newly independent Ukraine controlled its own large arsenal of nuclear weapons. At the behest of the United States and in return for U.S. security guarantees, Kyiv gave them up and sent them all back to Russia. Ukraine is living today with the consequences of that decision. It is a victim of aggression by Russia, while the U.S. is inhibited in what it will do to assist Kyiv by an awareness that Russia has hundreds of tactical nuclear weapons, which Putin has signaled that, in the event of a true “existential” crisis, he may use. Ukraine is in its present crisis because Moscow has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, while Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s. The world is surely taking note of this fact.

During debate over a bill that passed the Tennessee state Senate Wednesday that would allow misdemeanor charges to be filed for unauthorized camping on public property, one senator made a distinct comparison to outline the potential future lives that could be led by homeless people. “I wanna give you a little history on homelessness,” Republican state Senator Frank Niceley said. “In 1910, [Adolf] Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books. So a lot of these people, it’s not a dead end. They can come out of this, these homeless camps, and have a productive life, or in Hitler’s case a very unproductive life.”

Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine. The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such. [“What should Russia do with Ukraine?,” by Timofey Sergeytsev.] It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated several times into English. As I have been saying since the war began, “denazification” in official Russian usage just means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation. .. … According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “nazification of Ukraine.” … Ukrainians are “Nazis” because they fail to accept “the necessity that the people support Russia.” … It postulates that the “majority of the population” of Ukraine are “Nazis,” which is to say Ukrainians.

Leave it to GOP hawks to use the Russo-Ukraine war to score political points. Having spent two decades pushing NATO east and advancing regime change on Moscow’s doorstep, these charter members of the Washington War Party would risk expanding the ongoing conflict to NATO by intervening on Kiev’s behalf … Ultimately, Washington must make its decision on the basis of American rather than Ukrainian interests. Most importantly, the U.S. should not voluntarily enter the Russo-Ukrainian war … Russia’s aggression is inexcusable and the U.S., along with its European allies, should aid Ukrainians in defending themselves. However, Washington’s principal obligation remains the defense of the American people. U.S. policy toward the Russo-Ukraine war should be shaped accordingly.

Military do-somethingism is running amok in Washington once again. Despite Russian military reverses and the withdrawal of Russian forces from the vicinity of Kyiv, there is an increasing clamor for some form of Western military intervention in the war in Ukraine from quite a few prominent analysts, pundits, and even some reporters. According to the interventionists, the United States and its allies are either already “at war” with Russia in a grand ideological struggle, or they shouldn’t be afraid to escalate and widen the conflict, or some combination of the two … The conceit that Russia is already “at war” with the United States and its allies is useful to militarists in the West and hardliners in the Kremlin, but it is not true.

Three separate, deadly Palestinian attacks in Israeli cities in a week have elicited a predictable response. The Israeli army has drafted large numbers of extra soldiers into the West Bank and around Gaza, Palestinian territories already under decades of brutal military occupation. … In the occupied territories, armed settlers operate effectively as militias, terrorizing nearby Palestinian communities, watched impassively, or sometimes assisted, by the Israeli army … They smashed Palestinian shops, chanted “Death to the Arabs,” and beat up Palestinian citizens who crossed their path. At the same time, Israeli politicians from across the spectrum incited against the Palestinian minority … Bennett and Dayan represent a vast swathe of opinion in Israel that views Palestinians – even Palestinian citizens – as the enemy.

… The territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, while a declared goal of US policy, is not a vital US interest to justify risking a calamitous war with Russia. Proof of that political reality lies in political facts. For 40 years of the Cold War, Ukraine was an integral part of the Soviet Union … Looking at a cost-benefit analysis of continuing this war, it would appear that the sooner it ends, the better. For who would be the likely winners and the losers of Milley’s “protracted conflict” that will last “at least years for sure”? The greatest losers would be the nation and people of Ukraine … The sooner this war ends, the better for us and our friends — even if it means having to talk to the man Biden cannot stop calling a war criminal and clamoring for his prosecution.

… Warren Gamaliel Harding was a kind and generous man with a heart, a president who loved people, adored animals, and hated violence, bloodshed, and war. Yet he is often ridiculed as America’s worst president by the nation’s “scholars.” Despite these erroneous opinions, he was a president of great achievements … When Harding came into office in 1921, America’s international relations, like the economy, was in shambles … Very few scholars have acknowledged Harding’s achievements on the world stage in just 882 days in office … The achievements of Warren Harding in foreign affairs were a triumph. He reversed the dangerous internationalism of Woodrow Wilson and put America back on the path of a traditional, non-interventionist policy. It is a record that is deserving of a higher ranking in the pantheon of American Presidents.

The struggle for Ukraine, July-Sept. 1941, was one of history’s most monumental military campaigns. This video is of contemporary German and Soviet film footage, colorized. Runtime: 4 mins. German armed forces struck against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, together with soldiers of Finland and Romania, and, later, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, and other European countries. In the Kiev (Kyiv) area, German forces concluded in September 1941 one of the greatest military operations ever – an unprecedented encirclement that took some 660,000 Soviet prisoners of war, along with more than 800 tanks and 3,000 artillery pieces. Moreover, and as footage here shows, Ukrainians greeted German soldiers as liberators from Bolshevik oppression.

In the vision of the German army as laid down in the concept of Auftragstaktik [something like “task oriented tactics”], officers and their men had to develop a maximum amount of their own initiative in order to be able to respond to the fast-moving battlefield … Personal qualities – a good character and strong will – were one of the most important criteria for becoming an officer … Playing wargames, students were tested for flexibility in thinking and leadership, and a free exchange of ideas was key. The cadets were also taught not to follow orders ‘when justified by honor and circumstances’. The Germans found good personal relationships and an atmosphere of openness and trust within the vertical hierarchy of great importance … Being up front and leading up front was the norm in the Prussian/ German army.

As World War II comes to an end in Europe, a German general speaks to the men of his battered unit, who have surrendered to US Army forces. This is a scene from the 2001 US dramatic miniseries “Band of Brothers.” This YouTube clip has garnered more than 17 million views. Runtime: 2:32 mins. The General’s remarks are brief: “Men! It’s been a long war, a tough war. You have fought bravely and proudly for your fatherland. You are a special troop, which has found a bond that can develop only in combat, among comrades who have shared foxholes, who have supported each other in terrible moments, who have seen death together, and have suffered together. I am proud to have served with you. You all deserve a long and happy life in peace.”

The German soldiers of World War II have often been portrayed, both during the war and in the decades since, as simple-minded, unimaginative and brutish … As specialists of military history who have looked into the matter agree, the men of Germany’s armed forces — the Wehrmacht — performed with unmatched ability and resourcefulness throughout the nearly six years of conflict … High-ranking British military figures were similarly impressed with the skill, tenacity and daring of their adversaries. “Unfortunately we are fighting the best soldiers in the world – what men!,” exclaimed Lt. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the 15th Army Group in Italy, in a March 1944 report to London … It was the superiority of numbers that was ultimately decisive. The Second World War in Europe was a victory of quantity over quality.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds on and the two sides continue negotiations, the Washington Post reports that some NATO states prefer Ukrainians continue “fighting and dying” over “a peace that comes too early,” rejecting any outcome that could be sold as a “victory” for Moscow. Though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly acknowledged that his country will not join the NATO alliance in recent weeks, some members are loath for Kiev to accept that key Russian demand, according to officials and diplomats cited by the Post. “Even a Ukrainian vow not to join NATO could be a concern to some neighbors,” the outlet reported. “… For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”

… Biden’s budget estimates an increase in the federal debt to 44.8 trillion dollars in ten years. Of course, the final spending bill approved by Congress will likely spend more on welfare and warfare then Biden is proposing … America may soon pay the price for attempting to fund a massive welfare-warfare state with fiat currency, America’s ham-fisted intervention in the Ukraine-Russian conflict has caused more countries to seek alternatives to the dollar. This increases pressure for the dollar to lose its world reserve currency status. When that happens, the US will face a major economic crisis featuring hyperinflation, massive unemployment, and the growth of authoritarian political movements.

In 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, there were 2,515,427 babies born in this country. Of those babies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 95,700 — or 3.8% — were born to unmarried mothers … By 1969, as this column has noted in reviewing these numbers before, 10% of American babies were born to unmarried mothers. In 2008, it surpassed 40%. In 10 of the last 13 years on record (2008 through 2020), it has surpassed 40% — and in the three years that it did not surpass 40%, it never dropped below 39.6% … If America continues on a long-term trend in which 40% or more of the babies born each year are born to unmarried mothers and even more than that are born on Medicaid, it is hard to see how this country will prosper.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that post-war Ukraine will be like a “big Israel” and won’t be “liberal” like Europe. “Ukraine will definitely not be what we wanted it to be from the beginning. It is impossible. Absolutely liberal, European — it will not be like that. It [Ukraine] will definitely come from the strength of every house, every building, every person,” Zelensky said. “We will become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.” The Ukrainian leader said he expects society to be highly militarized … Zelensky insisted that such measures wouldn’t threaten democracy and wouldn’t turn Ukraine into an authoritarian state … However, since the war started, Zelensky has prohibited military-age males from leaving Ukraine, banned 11 opposition political parties, and nationalized the media.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he wants his country to become a “‘big Israel’ with its own face” after the Russian invasion ends, stressing that security would likely be the main issue in Ukraine during the post-war period. In comments to local media posted on the president’s official website on Tuesday, Zelenskyy stressed that his vision for Ukraine’s post-conflict future included having armed forces in “all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons”. In Israel, images of armed civilians, settlers and soldiers are commonplace, and the government invokes security frequently. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, has on several occasions stressed the importance of maintaining close ties with Israel, which he hailed as a model for Ukraine.

… A recent survey by the independent pollster Levada showed that more than 80 percent support Russian military’s actions in Ukraine. As some observers noted, opinion polls might be skewed by the political climate. Prison terms for spreading “disinformation”, for instance, may have left respondents less-than-honest. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to dismiss these numbers entirely. Back in 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, President Vladimir Putin’s popularity surged to a record 89 percent – although that was a relatively bloodless and less messy campaign … Putin has in the past enjoyed popularity for bringing stability and relative prosperity to Russians after the chaotic, crime-ridden 1990s … And Putin is seen as challenging the US’s self-appointed role as the world’s policeman.

More than a month on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggesting that the wheels have fallen off Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine has become commonplace. … Despite this, it’s far too early to declare information victory. If anything, this apparent consensus — that Ukraine has won the online war — might be obscuring where battles over the invasion are really raging … Look beyond the West, and the information war feels a lot different … The blunt reality is that in many parts of the world, antipathy for the West is deep and sympathy for Russia is real … A mistake we in the West too often make is to suppose that our information spaces — English, French, and German Twitter and Facebook, for example — are far more universal than they are.

Russian billionaire Moshe Kantor, who heads the European Jewish Congress and other prominent Jewish organizations, was sanctioned by the United Kingdom on Wednesday. “Our latest wave of measures will bring an end to the UK’s imports of Russian energy and sanction yet more individuals and businesses, decimating [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war machine,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement … Kantor, whose net worth is estimated at $7.6 billion, according to Forbes, also serves as president of the World Holocaust Forum, chairman of the European Jewish Fund and chairman of the World Jewish Congress Policy Council.

Recently, European officials have indicated that the Vienna talks toward the Iran nuclear deal are very close, and they’re working with the US and Iran, who are indirectly talking, to get things settled. Iran indicated that they consider negotiations finished, and are just waiting for the US to make a “political decision” to accept the deal or not. US officials had tried to put the onus on Iran, but also seemed to think a deal was attainable. Then Secretary of State Tony Blinken chimed in. In an interview with MSNBC, Blinken said he is not optimistic that a deal with Iran will necessarily be reached at all, claiming he’s not confident Iran will return to compliance under the deal. That’s a confusing claim, as all indications are that returning to compliance is the core of the deal, and that no alternative to that has even been broached.

Today the use of nuclear weapons is a near-unthinkable military option of last resort. But back in the 1950s, that norm had yet to be established. The U.S. Army believed then that in the event of war with the Soviet Union, tactical nukes would be landing left and right across the battlefield. It therefore fielded the “Pentomic” division to fight on the anticipated nuclear hellscape. It even gave battalion-level commanders access to short-range nuclear shells, which risked blasting the units that fired them … The Pentomic divisions fortunately never saw combat, though they came close to doing so in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Mark Weber joins host Frodi Midjord to bring informed, reasoned perspective to the Ukraine war and the US-Russia clash. Weber traces the background and origins of the conflict, and looks at how it can be resolved. US leaders for years have ignored Russia’s legitimate security concerns, he says in this 105-minute session. Instead, American politicians and the mainstream media have promoted an arrogant and insultingly hostile view of Russia and its President. Wise diplomacy by American leaders could have prevented this war. The US has been more hostile to Putin and today’s Russia than they were toward Soviet leaders and the USSR, Weber notes.

A Berlin court has sentenced a 93-year-old German woman to 12 months in prison for denying that Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. The Berlin regional court on Friday rejected an appeal by notorious neo-Nazi Ursula Haverbeck against two convictions for Holocaust denial in 2017 and 2020. Judges ruled that the sentence could not be suspended because Haverbeck had shown no remorse or signs of changing her views during the appeal hearings. Haverbeck has repeatedly asserted that the Auschwitz death camp was just a work camp. In fact, historians say at least 1.1 million Jews were murdered there by the Nazis. Haverbeck has already paid several fines and served at least 30 months for similar crimes.

… Millennials [age 26 to 41] … are the least engaged generation in the workforce and change jobs more often than other generations. Anecdotally, they also have a reputation for being whiny, entitled, and requiring constant positive reinforcement … They are depressed, distrustful, distracted, and disconnected. More than half of millennials reported feeling overwhelming anxiety in 2020. A majority of them believe “most people can’t be trusted.” Many are addicted to their smartphones and pornography. They are marrying less … The retired professor intimates that his generation, the boomers, failed millennials because they indulged and perpetuated the latter’s narcissistic adolescence. … The sad irony is how terribly unhappy these millennials are. … They are what Bauerlein labels “utopians” …

At the outbreak of the Second World War, The New York Times bureau chief in Berlin, Guido Enderis, was known to sit in the bar of the city’s famous Adlon Hotel spouting “a loudmouthed defense of Nazism” … To be clear, the Times had no agenda to bolster Nazism. In fact, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the Times publisher during most of the Nazi era, detested Hitler and advocated U.S. intervention to stop German aggression. Nor was Enderis a Nazi collaborator … The biggest failing of Enderis’ reporting throughout the Nazi era was to offer up, without hesitation or qualification, Nazi refutations of criticisms of the regime … Enderis wrote again and again of Germany’s peaceful intentions despite its expansion into the Saar and Rhineland regions, annexation of Austria, and takeover of Czechoslovakia.

The United States continues to violate a United Nations resolution that enshrines a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, despite its claims of wanting to revive the pact, foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Thursday. On Wednesday, the United States applied sanctions on a procurement agent in Iran and his companies for their role in supporting Tehran’s ballistic missile programme. “This move is another sign of the U.S. government’s malice towards the Iranian people, as it continues the failed policy of maximum pressure against Iran,” the spokesperson added. U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 enshrines the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran and world powers have sought to revive through negotiations in Vienna.

Israel was ranked the 10th-largest international weapons exporter in the past five years by an independent global security think tank. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest report, measuring weapons trade from 2017 to 2021, said arms trade to Europe surged, the Gulf states were leading importers and Israel remains a major player. The report released last month said Israel accounted for 2.4% of international arms exports in the years 2017 to 2021, with the main recipients being India, Azerbaijan and Vietnam. Israel’s volume of exports dropped by 5.6% during the time frame, compared to the previous five years … The five leading countries dominated the global trade, accounting for 77% of all exports. Those countries were the US, with 39%, followed by Russia, 19%, then France, China and Germany.

Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee to the position of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, was officially confirmed to the position by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday night … Lipstadt, 75, a top Holocaust historian and the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University, was finally approved by the committee on Tuesday in a 13-9 vote, with Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) joining the Democrats to vote in favor of her nomination … Jewish organizations had pushed for the swift approval of her nomination, and her confirmation was applauded on Thursday.

Chinese universities have surpassed U.S. institutions in the number of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) PhDs being produced. Based on current trends, it appears that gap will grow wider in the years to come. Those are two of the main conclusions in a just-released [2021] report by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) … Even after removing health sciences from the number of STEM PhDs, China still maintains its lead over the U.S. in producing PhDs … Over the last decade, China has increased its lead. In 2019, Chinese universities produced 49,498 PhDs in STEM fields, while U.S. universities produced 33,759. Based on current enrollment patterns, the report projects that by 2025, China’s yearly STEM PhD graduates (77,179) will nearly double those in the U.S (39,959).

Since the mid-2000s, China has consistently graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields … China has consistently produced more STEM doctorates than the United States since the mid-2000s, and that the gap between the two countries will likely grow wider in the next five years … Our findings also suggest the quality of doctoral education in China has risen in recent years … The Chinese government views human capital as an important component of “comprehensive national power,” and over the last two decades it has sought to expand the country’s educational capacity through substantial state investment.

The US used the name of “democracy” to hold a “Summit for Democracy” last year to exclude half of the countries around the world, openly draw lines to split the world based on ideology, and create separation, which is an abuse of the spirit of democracy, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi … US elections, trumpeted by US elites as a symbol of US democracy, has failed to prevent the country from falling into polarization and struggles between the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans, White and Black people, as well as the rich and the poor, Li said … Chinese analysts said the sickness in US democracy has been caused by the long-existing problems in its political system, and will be impossible to heal soon.

With regard to the illegal war being waged by Russia against Ukraine, no one has any right to be surprised … Any proper accounting of the history of the downturn in US-Russia relations must include Putin’s 2007 address to the Munich Security Conference. To many, this was a kind of point of no return, with Putin putting the US and its European allies on notice: there are red lines not to be crossed … Putin, in line with his immediate predecessors, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, also voiced grave concern over the project of NATO expansion … By 2015, it was clear that Putin’s patience with the US was at its limit … In the end, the period between 2007 and 2022 may come to be regarded, in the light of history, as years of missed opportunity.

As the curses and screeches subside – Amnesty are antisemites, the report is full of lies, the methodology is absurd – one must ask: What, precisely, is incorrect in the apartheid report? Was Israel not founded on an explicit policy of maintaining Jewish demographic hegemony, while reducing the number of Palestinians within its boundaries? Yes or no? True or false? Does this policy not exist to this day? Yes or no? True or false? Does Israel not maintain a regime of oppression and control of Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories for the benefit of Israeli Jews? Yes or no? True or false? … The world will continue to hurl the invective, Israel will continue to ignore it. The world will say apartheid, Israel will say antisemitism. But the evidence will keep piling up.

Newly unearthed Israeli historical records reveal officials’ relentless efforts to forcibly empty Palestinian lands of their Bedouin inhabitants in the Negev during the 1950s. Haaretz reported that the records were revealed as part of a legal case over land ownership pursued by Palestinian citizens of Israel in al-Araqeeb, one of the dozens of villages deemed illegal by Israel … Araqeeb’s case has been followed with an opinion and appendix by Gadi Algazi, an Israeli history professor at Tel Aviv University, who spent the past eight years studying the government memos, records and letters regarding the Negev, the largest region in the country. Algazi had revealed documents as part of the legal case of numerous plans to push Palestinians, who remained in what became Israel after the 1948 war, out of their lands.

I was recently carrying out research into the Dewey Commission that took place in April 1937. It is a long-forgotten event and when I typed in the words “Dewey Commission” at Google I got a short list of relevant pages. Top of the list was of course Wikipedia. When I read the entry I was deeply shocked. In my opinion it had been written from the perspective of a Joseph Stalin apologist. However, if someone did not know too much about the subject, they would be totally unaware of it. As far as I can see there is not one inaccurate fact on the page. It is the information that the entry leaves out that is important … Anyone who read Wikipedia’s entry would get the impression that the Dewey Commission was a “pro-Trotsky clique” and that the report published in September 1937 was of little value.

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, published a blog post this month declaring that the online encyclopedia’s “neutral point of view” policy is “dead” due to the rampant left-wing bias of the site. Noting the article on President Donald Trump, Sanger contrasted its extensive coverage of presidential scandals with the largely scandal-free article on former President Barack Obama. Sanger also criticized Wikipedia’s coverage of religion and other controversial topics … On May 14, Sanger published a blog piece titled “Wikipedia Is Badly Biased,” and started by declaring Wikipedia’s “Neutral Point of View” policy dead. Having founded the online encyclopedia with Jimmy Wales and having been involved in the original drafting of the policy, Sanger offered particular insight into its development and its practice in recent years.

A new museum about the history of Hollywood will have a permanent exhibition devoted to the contributions of Jews after early criticism that Jews were omitted. The change was announced this week in the lead-up to this year’s Academy Awards, which features a slate of nominees more diverse than in the past. It caps a period of intense discussion about how Hollywood includes Jews — and how it does not. Whether in their depictions on screen, the actors cast to play them or acknowledgment of their historic role building up the film industry, Jews over the last few months have been vocal about their impressions of being left out of the current Hollywood conversation.

Previewing President Biden’s trip to Europe last week, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that, “the president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.” That sure didn’t go as planned. This may have been the most disastrous – and dangerous – Presidential overseas trip ever … Speaking to the 82nd Airborne in Poland, President Biden told them that US troops would soon be in Ukraine … A White House spokesman had to clarify that, “the president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.” Clear? Well, not really. He had just said the opposite to our own troops!

… Less than a week into the war, Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Putin confidante and former Russian regional governor, announced that he would sell his thriving Chelsea soccer club, one of the most valuable sports franchises on Earth … Jewish communities face their own dilemma of how and whether to assess culpability for the Ukraine catastrophe, a problem embodied in Abramovich … In total, Abramovich has given an estimated half-billion dollars to Jewish causes. He also holds Israeli citizenship … Abramovich is the best known of the Jewish oligarchs who donate to Jewish causes, but Fridman, Aven, and Khan are perhaps even more deeply embedded in Jewish communal life around the world.

… A closer look at Ben [Franklin’s] life through his relationships to women reveals a different founding father than one found in history books. Ben deeply admired women but found his attraction to them as powerful and dangerous as electricity itself. In his Autobiography, he confessed that as a youth he visited “low women” to satisfy that “hard-to-be-governed passion of youth.” Those encounters, he penned, were “attended with some expense and great inconvenience, besides a continual risk to my health.” Among those “inconveniences” was the birth of his illegitimate son William, whom his shocked bride Deborah Read was obliged to raise … A close look at his personal relations with women suggests that founding father’s traditionally cool demeanor hid the secrets of a churning heart.

I am a Jew. I am an Israeli citizen. I am a veteran of a combat unit in the Israeli army. I left Israel in 2001 and immigrated to Canada where I became a Canadian citizen because I felt that I could no longer be a part of a system that practices apartheid against the Palestinian people. I do not use the word apartheid lightly but instead reluctantly. I choose to use this word to describe the reality the Palestinian people have been enduring for generations because I have seen it in action with my own eyes. I have enforced it during my military service in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip and supported it as an Israeli taxpayer … A system that applies separate laws and practices to one group of people yet denies it to another based solely upon ethnicity is apartheid by definition.

The UN’s human rights body has accused Israel of the “crime of apartheid,” saying it has established a “regime of systematic racial oppression and discrimination” against Palestinians. The conclusion follows a long line of similar findings from Israeli, Palestinian and international organizations. A report issued Monday by [March 21] United Nations investigator Michael Lynk states that Israel’s system “ensures the supremacy of one group over, and to the detriment of, the other,” namely in the occupied West Bank, arguing that it meets the legal definition for apartheid … Lynk’s report mirrors previous findings from a number of humanitarian orgs, among them Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem, which have each similarly accused Israel of apartheid and the persecution of Palestinians.

In late January 2022 the human rights organization Amnesty International released a 278-page evidence-based report entitled Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity … The evidence all points in one direction: Israel constitutes an apartheid state as defined under international law … What Israel really wants is be treated as a special case — one excused from all standards … It is not just the human rights community that the Israeli establishment seeks to discredit. Israel also seeks to discredit the international laws which are the foundation of human and civil rights. Why would that be so? Israel is an abnormal country that wants to be normal.

“Why is Ukraine the West’s fault?” This is the provocative title of a talk by Professor John Mearsheimer – a famous exponent of international relations (IR) realism – given at an alumni gathering of the University of Chicago in 2015. Since it was first posted on YouTube, it has been viewed more than 18 million times … In 2015, Mearsheimer’s stance was already controversial … Students at the University of Chicago launched a menacing open letter demanding to know whether Mearsheimer was on the Russian payroll … Part of the reason why this history is obscure is that it has always been scandalous to liberals. The frank assertion of the claims of power sits poorly with an ideal of universal rights … For the vast majority of analysts, this war has delivered a shock that does not confirm, but puts in question our sense of reality.

An illuminating and prophetic look at the origins and likely impact of the Russia-US dispute over Ukraine by an outstanding American specialist of international relations. This widely-viewed 2015 lecture is particularly relevant now, as war rages in Ukraine. John Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago, reviews the causes of the conflict, and looks how best to resolve it. He warns that the US policy of expanding the NATO military alliance eastward against Russia would inevitably provoke a strong and forceful Russian response. “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path,” he says, “and the end result is that Ukraine is going to be wrecked.” Runtime: 75 mins.

An important look at the powerful pro-Israel lobby, its grip on US foreign policy, and the harmful consequences for America and the world. The exceptional US-Israel relationship, this book shows, is due largely to the efforts of individuals and organizations that actively work to steer US policy in a pro-Israel direction. Two outstanding scholars of international affairs – one a professor at the University of Chicago, and the other a professor at Harvard University – present compelling evidence and persuasive arguments to show that this support has been profoundly damaging to American national interests. They also detail the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides to Israel. With source reference notes, and index.