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The finest modern military thinker, Maj. Gen J.F.C. Fuller, wrote “the true objective of war is not military victory but the peace that follows it.’ Amen. Besotted by tribalism and propaganda, we often forget why we are fighting and what changes the current war will bring. We think killing fellow humans is a noble quest rather than the basest Stone Age behavior. Case in point, the current war in Ukraine. … Getting America so deeply involved in the obscure Ukraine War was thanks to truly monumental propaganda produced by the six US government-controlled TV channels and court newspapers. Its 24-7 happy news about Ukraine and constant vilification of re-demonized Russia … Germany, the keystone of NATO power, is caught between its sensible goal of keeping good relations with Moscow and its subservience to Washington.

Why did Russia make the decision to go to war in Ukraine in 2022? … Russia has, from the beginning, had two stated reasons for the invasion: the insistence by the West that Ukraine will become a member of NATO and the failure of the West to pressure Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements … But the reason Russia made the decision to go to war on February 24 may not have been either of those reasons individually but the combustible confluence of the two. What Putin may most have feared is an anti-Russia Ukraine dressed in full NATO membership and armed at once with Article 5 guarantees and a formal policy of retaking Crimea and an exclusively military solution to the situation in the Donbas launching an attack on one of the two regions in accordance with their policy and drawing Russia into a war with NATO with their Article 5 guarantee.

NATO marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a solemn ceremony at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Friday (27 January). Addressing the event, Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană called this year’s act of remembrance “particularly poignant for all of us here in Europe” … On Thursday, President Isaac Herzog became the first Israeli head of state to address Allies in the North Atlantic Council. Welcoming President Herzog to NATO Headquarters, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg underscored the importance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, saying “we will never forget” the victims of World War II … Following a poetry reading on the Holocaust, a visitation stone was unveiled as a symbolic act of remembrance … The flags of all 30 NATO Allies are at half-mast today.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres decried rising antisemitism and issued an “urgent” call to combat online hate speech in an address to the General Assembly marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday. He likened today’s climate to the rhetoric in 1930s Germany that led to the Holocaust … “The painful truth is antisemitism is everywhere. In fact, it is increasing in intensity,” he said … He said discontent fueled by the economic downturn, populist politicians, conspiracy theories, hate speech, white supremacists and neo-Nazi ideologies were some of the factors driving hatred. Guterres was especially critical of rhetoric on the internet and the entities responsible …. The speech came after several events marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at the UN.

For the Jews, the term “Holocaust” does not simply denote a single catastrophic era in history, but is a grim metaphor for the meaning of Jewish history. The “Holocaust” lies at the heart of the Jewish experience of time itself. One is either anxiously awaiting persecution, experiencing persecution, recovering from it, or living in a period that is a temporary reprieve from it … Thus the “reality” of the Holocaust is inextricably part of the myth in which it is woven — and for which myth it serves as further confirmatory evidence for the timeless Jewish theme that the world is in conspiracy to annihilate them, one way or another, at least eventually.

… Holocaust remembrance is not, as its supporters claim, a noble effort motivated by sincere concern for humanity. Instead, this relentless campaign is an expression of Jewish-Zionist power, and is designed to further Jewish-Zionist interests … Jewish death and suffering do not deserve to be venerated more than the death and suffering of non-Jews. The Holocaust remembrance campaign deserves scorn, not support, because it is a one-sided effort that serves narrow Jewish and Israeli interests and bolsters Jewish-Zionist power.

A major new report from investment banking and wealth management giant Credit Suisse has found that the average Chinese adult is now wealthier than the average European … It found that Chinese median wealth per adult, at $26,752, now outstrips Europe, where the average adult has a wealth of $26,690. The European figure takes into account the whole of the continent, which includes many less wealthy nations in its southern and eastern regions. Median wealth in China was more than four times greater than in Russia, where median wealth was $6,379 in 2021. China’s average wealth, however, was still less than a third of the wealth of the median American ($93,271) — and only about 10% of the wealth of the median Belgian ($256,336).

“The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama about his Jewish upbringing, had an expected strong haul of Oscar nominations, picking up seven nods Tuesday morning. A remake of a movie once targeted by the Nazis, a blockbuster embroiled in a lawsuit with an Israeli family, and a documentary by the program director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival also got recognized in a list jam-packed with Jewish characters, stories, and artists … The film also scored acting nods for Judd Hirsch, who is Jewish, and Michelle Williams, who recently said she is planning to raise her two children with Judaism. “The Fabelmans” was the best picture nominee with the strongest Jewish themes, but it wasn’t the only one.

It’s been 80 years since the Hollywood classic Casablanca opened nationwide … It is a film about, and stocked with, the waves of refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe during wartime. And many of the actors playing those roles were, in fact, refugees … Today, many viewers see these on-screen refugees as Jewish, but they are never identified as such … “The Hollywood moguls, the boards in Washington, none of these people wanted the American public to think of World War II as a war for the Jews,” Leslie Epstein told Radio Diaries … “Casablanca is a propaganda film,” says Noah Isenberg, author of We’ll Always Have Casablanca. “It’s a propaganda film because the American public were not fully convinced of the moral imperative of fighting this war; and the message is, this is a fight worth fighting.”

… There is a crisis in how men, particularly young men, see themselves – and how society views them … A prevailing view of men as useless and problematic … Young boys no longer enjoy many of the traditional milestones of development; with fewer fathers living at home, fewer jobs that can sustain a family … Today, alarming numbers of young men cannot even exist independently; 27 percent of men still live with their parents at age 27, compared to only 13 percent of women. Contemporary culture has alarmingly little to say about these developments … We can no longer ignore the chaotic gulf at the heart of so many young men’s lives. When “serious” people retreat from these conversations, grifters and charlatans will fill the void.

Nearly half of young adults in the US use marijuana in some capacity, a federally-funded study suggests. Just over 42 per cent of Americans 19 to 30 reported either smoking or consuming cannabis in the last year — the biggest proportion since records began in 1988. Around three in ten said they had used the drug in the last month, and one in 10 admitted to being a daily user. The startling survey results came from the annual Monitoring the Future report, carried out by the University of Michigan. The report showed use of hallucinogens — such as LSD and magic mushrooms — have also spiked in recent years … A total of 19 states have now legalized cannabis for recreational use, which many critics believe has normalized the drug.

… There is a growing belief in medical academia that identifying the race of the patient or prescribing race-specific treatments may lead to “systemic racism” on the part of healthcare professionals or the perpetuation of existing health disparities. In the past, race was used in presentations precisely because it was helpful to the patient. Now, any mention of race in a case presentation is strongly discouraged in medical education … Those who argue that “Race-Based Treatment Decisions Perpetuate Structural Racism” typically provide no evidence in support of that claim. Such arguments appear to be based on ideology alone and simply ignore a growing body of empirical evidence to the contrary … If we wish to reduce health disparities, we will have to begin by acknowledging the biological reality of race.

Is white paint racist? Norway’s University of Bergen is exploring that question, asking how the aesthetic of white paint helped the nation contribute to white supremacy and helped “[make] the world whiter.” “Whiteness is not only a cultural and societal condition tied to skin color, privileges, and systematic exclusion, but materialize everywhere around us,” a rundown of the study read. “Although Norway is not a conventional colonial power, this project will show how the country has played a globally leading role in establishing white as a superior color,” it said … The study on whiteness and paint, dubbed NorWhite, observes the Norwegian-developed paint pigment titanium white through “historical, aesthetic, and critical” lenses …

Israel is one of the ten most powerful, politically influential, and militarily strong countries in the world, according to a roundup for 2022 published by US News & World Report. The outlet also found that the Jewish state has among the strongest international alliances. Overall, Israel ranked 37th “best” country in the world out of 85 on the yearly list, now in its seventh year. Among countries considered most powerful because they “consistently dominate news headlines, preoccupy policymakers and shape global economic patterns,” US News & World Report put Israel in tenth place. Top of the list was the United States, followed by China and then Russia. … Israel’s highest ranking was for its military, which was placed fourth, behind Russia, the US, and China.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in Israel has ushered in a government more dominated by religious and ultra-nationalist extremists than any ruling coalition in the country’s 74-year history. While that fact has been well-reported, most Americans are oblivious to a grim implication: The new Israeli government’s extreme policies toward Palestinians and regional rivals will imperil American lives at home and abroad. Americans aren’t jeopardized by those policies per se, but rather by the U.S. government’s unconditional military, financial and diplomatic support of Israel, which are seen as enabling such policies. Anger over that support is a principal motivator of terror attacks on American targets, and it intensifies when Israel’s actions grow more extreme.

The vast majority of Arabs oppose normalization of relations with Israel, recently released poll results from the 2022 Arab Opinion Index show. When asked, “Would you support or oppose diplomatic recognition of Israel by your country?” 84% of respondents said no. This lack of support for normalization of relations was consistent across the 14 countries surveyed … Support for the Palestinian cause remains strong among the Arab population, with little change over time …The poll further revealed that a majority of surveyed Arabs see Israel as a threat to the stability and security of the region. Eighty-four percent of respondents indicated that they see Israel as a threat, while 78% see the United States and 57% see Iran as a threat.

Stalwart conservative and three-time presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, 84, has announced his retirement from writing a weekly syndicated column … After making a national name as broadcaster and author, Buchanan ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996. He became the Reform Party nominee in 2000, espousing his strong opposition to outsourcing and illegal immigration. On television, Buchanan was a regular panelist on Sunday morning’s long-running “The McLaughlin Group,” and was an original host of CNN’s “Crossfire.” A prolific writer, he authored 14 books including “The Death of the West,” “State of Emergency,” and “Suicide of a Superpower.”

Three-time presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan announced his retirement from writing his weekly syndicated column … Buchanan became a household name as a regular panelist on NBC’s “The McLaughlin Group” and CNN’s “Crossfire,” building his political reputation through media rather than public service … In the 1990s, this resulted in him running for the GOP nomination in 1992 and 1996, before running a third time as a candidate for the Reform Party in 2000 … Buchanan has been credited with coining the familiar phrase “silent majority,” Newsmax stated. In addition to his lengthy career as a political advisor, politician and media host, Buchanan authored ten books, including four New York Times best sellers. He also served as a political analyst for MSNBC and helped found “The American Conservative” in 2003.

A carefully researched and persuasive debunking of the widely-accepted “official” story of the origins of World War II, by one of America’s most astute and influential public affairs commentators. In this masterful and provocative book, Buchanan draws on the work of more than a hundred historians to trace the fateful failures of judgment that consigned millions to decades of subjugation under Soviet Communist tyranny, and ended Europe’s central role in world affairs. This is also an important dissident treatment of the origins and consequences of the First and Second World wars, and a devastating critique of the “cult” image of Winston Churchill. Buchanan concludes with timely warnings about US foreign policy today. With 36 photos, source references, bibliography and index.

Tuesday report by the Government Accountability Office revealed that the Department of Defense failed its fifth audit in a row after it could not account for at least $220 billion in government-furnished property, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported … Since launching its first independent audit in 2017, the Pentagon has never passed. The Pentagon failed its fifth audit in November after the agency could not prove expenditures for 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets. To perform this year’s overall audit of the DOD, which was expected to cost $218 million, the agency aggregated 27 separate audits conducted by approximately 1,600 auditors. According to Military.com, the auditors performed 220 in-person site visits and 750 virtual site visits.

A bill introduced in Congress earlier this month would expand the definition of “hate crime” so wide it could potentially include content that is found to have “inspired” a racially-motivated crime … The legislation sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) … sets out two new offenses, the first being “white supremacy inspired hate crime” and the second being a related conspiracy charge. To be guilty of the latter, one need only “publish material advancing white supremacy, white supremacist ideology, antagonism based on ‘replacement theory,’ or hate speech that vilifies or is otherwise directed against any non-white person or group” to social media … Because the bill only protected nonwhite people from “hate speech,” it was technically racist itself and thus unconstitutional.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee is at it again … She proposed a bill making “conspiracy to commit White supremacy” a federal crime, complete with jail terms. A special focus of the bill is “replacement theory,” which points out the obvious, which is that a constant stream of illegal aliens heading across the Southern border will inevitably outnumber — that is, replace — America’s homegrown population. Notably, the bill doesn’t define what constitutes “White supremacy.” … Lee’s legislative proposal is … just one more piece of propaganda on the fake narrative of the scourge of White supremacy. That is, Democrats claim that White supremacists created policies enabling whites to maintain power over other races.

Life expectancy for Americans fell for the second straight year in 2021, largely driven by increases in deaths from Covid-19 and drug overdoses, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention … Age-adjusted death rates for drug overdose rose by about 14% from 2020 to 2021. The rates spiked significantly in all groups aged 25 and over … Broken down by racial demographics, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native people had the highest drug overdose death rates in both 2020 and 2021. Non-Hispanic Black people had the second-highest rates for both years … One of the major reasons for the overall surge in overdose deaths is the spike in access to fentanyl — which is much more potent, addictive, and cheaper than other opioids …

When the history of America’s long, devastating opioid crisis is finally written, 2022 may be remembered as both a low point and a turning point. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests the avalanche of overdose deaths — driven largely by the spread of illicit fentanyl — may have crested in March. Researchers found a staggering 110,236 people died in a single 12-month period, a stunning new record. But there are signs help may finally be on the way. The avalanche of drug deaths spurred a series of major reforms in 2022 to the way drug addiction is treated in the U.S., changes designed to reduce stigma and improve access to care … Street drugs in America got even more toxic in 2022 with the spread of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Many of those dying are young, under the age of 40.

Third Reich Germany was a world leader in public health policy and medical research. The regime’s “war on cancer,” for example, was the most vigorous anywhere, and included restrictions on the use of asbestos, bans on carcinogenic pesticides and food dyes, and restrictions on public smoking and cigarette advertising. Years ahead of their colleagues in the US, Third Reich researchers were the first to prove definitively that smoking was the major cause of lung cancer. Hitler’s Germany was also a pioneer in promoting healthier and better-quality foods, environmentalism, holistic medicine, animal welfare, and healthier living generally. generally. Runtime: 48 minutes.

… This rosy picture of colonialism conflicts dramatically with the historical record. According to research by the economic historian Robert C Allen, extreme poverty in India increased under British rule, from 23 percent in 1810 to more than 50 percent in the mid-20th century. Real wages declined during the British colonial period, reaching a nadir in the 19th century, while famines became more frequent and more deadly. Far from benefitting the Indian people, colonialism was a human tragedy with few parallels in recorded history. Experts agree that the period from 1880 to 1920 – the height of Britain’s imperial power – was particularly devastating for India … It is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism.

With each new release of the “Twitter Files” we learn more and more about the deep corruption in Washington … In the latest release, thanks to the excellent reporting of independent journalist Matt Taibbi, we see outgoing Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), continuously pressuring Twitter to validate his fantasies of “Russian bots” manipulating US politics … Schiff was not alone. Fellow “Russiagate” hoaxers like Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also pressured Twitter to find Russians behind the demand to release Nunes’ findings … For political gain the Democrats – and plenty of Republicans – have been pushing the “Russiagate” hoax and in so doing have fertilized the ground for the obsessive Russia hatred prevalent in the US today.

The number of Americans who believe antisemitic stereotypes has doubled since 2019 to the highest level in decades, the Anti-Defamation League said Thursday, calling the findings “stunning and sobering.” A poll carried out by the organization surveyed the extent to which Americans agreed with various anti-Jewish tropes used since 1964, the year the ADL began monitoring opinions on the matter … Meanwhile, 85% of Americans believe at least one anti-Jewish trope, compared to 61% in 2019 … Among the findings was that 39% of respondents believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States. Also, 20% believe that Jews have “too much power” in the US, 26% say Jews have “too much power in the business world, and 21% agree that Jews “don’t care about anyone other than themselves.”

A majority of Americans believe it is at least partly true that Jews “stick together more than other Americans,” and seek to hire other Jews, a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League found. At the same time, 39% think Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States, and 20% say that Jews “have too much power” in the United States. And adults 30 and under reported almost the same share of antisemitic beliefs as older Americans … The findings come at a time when concern over antisemitism is rising among American Jews, and several celebrities have sparked controversies related to antisemitism.

Oh my god! I went home to visit and where I grew up is ruined! San Bernardino, California, once a blue-collar town with a solid middle class, has become the poorest and most dangerous city in California. Every time I come home, I see something new. I’m here for one reason or another about once a year … It used to be that you’d have to go out of your way to see rundown and ghetto here. Not anymore … A lot of it’s just blight, poverty and drugs. If you know the area, you’d remember that San Bernardino was a really nice place to live back in the day. In the 50s and 60s, this was America at its finest. Cruisin USA. It’s an hour east of Los Angeles. . Runtime: 50 mins.

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 would result in thousands of casualties among Chinese, United States, Taiwanese and Japanese forces, and it would be unlikely to result in a victory for Beijing, according to a prominent independent Washington think tank, which conducted war game simulations of a possible conflict that is preoccupying military and political leaders in Asia and Washington. A war over Taiwan could leave a victorious US military in as crippled a state as the Chinese forces it defeated. At the end of the conflict, at least two US aircraft carriers would lie at the bottom of the Pacific … Those are among the conclusions the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made after running what it claims is one of the most extensive war-game simulations ever conducted on a possible conflict over Taiwan …

Chris Miller’s Chip Wars tries to combine a chatty history of the chip industry with a strategic assessment of Sino-American tech rivalry and fails at both … What, then, is the object of America’s chip war against China? In his report on Washington’s campaign to suppress Huawei, China’s national champion in telecommunications, Miller gets the story right: the issue was not Huawei’s alleged spying, but American chagrin at China’s preeminence in a decisive field of technology … China may be two generations behind in its domestic production of semiconductors, but it is ahead of the United States in semiconductor applications to industry. That’s what US policymakers should worry about.

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic on Sunday said the US and NATO are waging a proxy war against Russia and criticized the Western sanctions campaign against Moscow, offering rare criticism of the policy from a leader of a NATO country. “Washington and NATO are waging a proxy war against Russia with the help of Ukraine,” Milanovic said, according to Croatia’s HINA news agency. “The plan cannot be to remove Russian President Vladimir Putin. The plan cannot be in sanctions. Sanctions are absurd, we will not achieve anything with their help,” he said. “They did not even break Slobodan Milosevic with sanctions. They go from war to war. And what am I supposed to be, a slave of America?” … Explaining his opposition to training Ukrainian troops, Milanovic said he didn’t want to get his country involved in the war.

Backlash ensued soon after a monument meant to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King’s legacy in Boston was unveiled. The 20-foot tall, 40-foot wide “The Embrace” statue was unveiled Friday on Boston Common … The art piece, designed by Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas, only features the couple’s arms during the embrace and not their heads, which has sparked criticism and mockery online. Some people described it as hideous or disrespectful while others posted memes and said it resembled a sex act.

… But if Hitler was out to conquer the world – Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia – why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? … Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell? Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser’s fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez?

Streets in Virginia and Bosnia that honored Nazi collaborators have been renamed. An art gallery in Australia no longer bears the name of a Lithuanian who worked as an intelligence officer for the Third Reich. And, nearly a year after pledging to remove a monument celebrating Latvian soldiers in the military wing of the Nazi Party, a Belgian town finally did so this summer. These are among the changes that have occurred amid the Forward’s ongoing, award-winning investigation documenting some 1,500 instances in which cities and towns around the world continue to uplift people who were complicit in the Holocaust.

… To those of King’s own political views, then, the true meaning of the holiday is that it serves to legitimize the radical social and political agenda that King himself favored and to delegitimize traditional American social and cultural institutions … By placing King at the center of the American national pantheon, the holiday also serves to undermine any argument against the revolutionary political agenda that it has come to symbolize. Having promoted or accepted the symbol of the new dogma as a defining — perhaps the defining — icon of the American political order, those who oppose the revolutionary agenda the symbol represents have little ground to resist that agenda.”

For the past forty years (officially since 1986) the third Monday in January has been celebrated as a federal holiday, Martin Luther King Day. Federal and state offices and many businesses either close or go on limited schedules. We are awash with public observances, parades, prayer breakfasts … Celebrating King becomes a means for the modern “conservative” movement to demonstrate its “civil rights” and “egalitarian” bona fides. … King Day becomes, then, for the modern Conservative Movement an opportunity for it to beat its chest, brag about its commitment to civil rights and “the American dream, the unrealized idea of equality” (that is, to distort and re-write the history of the American Founding), and to protect its left flank against the ever increasing charges that it could be, just might be, maybe is —“racist.”

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now has a guide for how individuals should speak and write. The arm of the U.S. Government tasked with disease control and prevention seems to now have its focus placed on wrong-speak as it discourages the use of some words believed to hurt people’s feelings. There is now a section on the organization’s website titled “Preferred Terms.” … As posited by the CDC list, terms like “prisoner,” “inmate,” “criminal,” “parolee,” “detainee,” “convict,” or “ex-convict’” can wreak mental havoc on people who are incarcerated. Instead, it recommends longer versions of the terms like “people/persons who are incarcerated or detained,” “persons in pre-trial or with charge,” “persons on parole or probation,” or “people who were formerly incarcerated.”

The University of Southern California’s school of social work will no longer use the word “field” in its curriculum, saying it may have racist “connotations.” USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work said the change was critical to support anti-racist social work and inclusivity. The department specifically decided to remove the word “field” from its curriculum and replace it with “practicum,” according to the letter, which was dated Jan. 9 and shared to Twitter. “This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that would be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” the letter said. The letter continued: “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ maybe have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”

With a new right-wing government in Israel raising alarm bells among many in the United States, the timing seemed ripe for a gathering by AIPAC, which regularly convenes bigwigs to talk about the US-Israel relationship. But the group’s conference this week in Washington is focusing not on that relationship but on American electoral politics. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s “Political Leadership Forum” on Monday and Tuesday [Jan. 9-10] was closed to press. But it offers the latest signal of how the group’s activities have evolved from the days when its policy conferences were feel-good affairs that sought to elevate pro-Israel policy above nitty-gritty politicking. The forum brought in “1,000 of our top political leaders to strategize for the 2024 election cycle,” an AIPAC official told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned in an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Saturday that “time is not on Ukraine’s side” as its economy is in shambles and the country is entirely reliant on foreign aid. The former officials said Russian President Vladimir Putin believes “that he can wear down the Ukrainians and that US and European unity and support for Ukraine will eventually erode and fracture.” They said while Russia’s economy will “suffer as the war continues,” Russians “have endured far worse.” … Rice and Gates said that absent any major Ukrainian “breakthroughs,” the West will pressure Kyiv to negotiate a ceasefire.

… Her 18-year-old son was one of 101 people killed in Portland in 2022, making it the deadliest year in the city’s history. It surpassed the record of 92 homicides set only the year before. Both 2022 and 2021 far exceeded the previous peak of 70 people who died in homicides in Portland in 1987 … Both retaliatory gang shootings and shootings involving people living on the street drove up the killings here, police said … Roughly a third of 2022′s killings involved homeless people — both as victims and perpetrators … Police recorded 1,308 shootings throughout the city last year, slightly below the 1,319 shootings in 2021. That’s still more than three times the 413 shootings reported in 2019. Slightly more people – 394 — were injured last year, compared to 391 in 2021.

Germany’s public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, has revised its code of conduct to require support for Israel’s right to exist, and employees who fail to do so may now be fired … DW is not the only German media company to expressly endorse Israel’s right to exist. In 1967, the Axel Springer company, one of Germany’s biggest media conglomerates that now owns Politico and Insider, established “corporate principles” that include “support [for] the Jewish people and the right of existence of the State of Israel.” The DW code made public on Sept. 1 declares that “Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust is also a reason for which we support the right of Israel to exist.”

An in-depth report from The New York Times has revealed the scale of Germany’s prosecution of “online speech-related crimes” and provided a behind-the-scenes look at the units who are tasked with surveilling social media to build cases against German citizens for what they post online. The Times said that after reviewing German state records, it found that there were more than 8,500 cases related to alleged online speech-related crimes and more than 1,000 people have been charged or punished since 2018. However, no national figures exist on the total number of people charged with online speech-related crimes, and experts that spoke with The New York Times said the true figure is probably much higher.

… For the United States Congress, the week began as a feel-good movie, turning into a slapstick farce and finally a taut political thriller. The basic plot was simple: the election of a speaker in the House of Representatives — in normal times a routine formality … The fun and games started on Tuesday in a festive, back-to-school-like atmosphere … On Thursday, it was a pet’s turn when Republican Nancy Mace voted with her dog Libby tucked under her arm. The scene was quickly turning absurd … “I love it,” declared rebel Republican Lauren Boebert, for whom the chaos was a hallmark of a healthy democracy … On Friday morning, after yet another night of negotiations, some Republicans were seen praying at the foot of the rostrum — seemingly seeking a divine intervention to break the deadlock.

The dean of one the US’s leading schools of government blocked a position for the former head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) over his organisation’s criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy offered Kenneth Roth a position as a senior fellow shortly after he retired as director of HRW in April after 29 years. Roth is highly regarded within the human rights community … The Harvard Kennedy School dean, Douglas Elmendorf, allegedly bowed to pressure, according to The Nation, which revealed the move, at a time when major donors and prominent Jewish organisations were particularly unhappy that HRW has accused Israel of practicing a form of apartheid in the occupied territories.

Jerusalem’s Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum has called the desecration of a Protestant cemetery in Jerusalem a “clear hate crime,” days after Israel swore in the most far-right government in the country’s history … “This really shows a clear hate crime towards Christians in Jerusalem which we absolutely reject and condemn,” he added. Two unidentified men broke into Jerusalem’s Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery and desecrated more than 30 graves on Sunday, local media reported. Security footage circulated on social media shows one man of Orthodox Jewish appearance entering the graveyard, pushing over a cross-shaped tombstone and smashing it with rocks with the help of a second man.

Northern Ireland was designed just over a century ago as “a Protestant state for a Protestant people” … Unionist politicians spoke of “the majority” as a shorthand which legitimised the dominance of the Protestant community. The phrase can never be used in this sense ever again. The latest census shows that, for the first time, there are more Catholics than Protestants in the 1.9 million population of Northern Ireland … There are 45.7 per cent of people in Northern Ireland with a Catholic background as opposed to 43.5 per cent who are Protestant or belong to other Christian faiths … On the question of identity, the proportion of people who say that they are British only fell from 40 to 32 per cent, and the number who say they are Irish only rose from 25 to 29 per cent. The number who say Northern Ireland only was steady at 20 per cent.

The vast majority of those arrested for riots in Berlin on New Year’s Eve are migrants, local police have confirmed. On Tuesday evening, Berlin police provided an update on the situation of those arrested in connection with the civil disorder witnessed across the German capital on Saturday … A total of 18 different nationalities were recorded among the transgressors, a police spokesperson revealed. The largest migrant contingent of 27 suspects originated from Afghanistan, while 21 were Syrian. All suspects, the majority of whom were men, have now been released following the completion of required police measures. More than 20 suspects were also detained in the port city of Hamburg during a celebratory evening that swiftly descended into chaos, resulting in injuries to police officers and the torching of emergency service vehicles.

Attacks on police and emergency services during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in ethnically diverse urban areas across Germany have given rise to a new immigration debate. The dramatic scenes of streets ablaze to the sound of gunfire from blank-firing pistols as fireworks, stones and bottles were hurled at the police and emergency service workers shocked many … Eyewitnesses among police and firefighters spoke of unprecedented violence against them, calling for better protection. But the fact that the multi-national, ethnically diverse district of Neukölln in Berlin was one of the main hotspots for the violence — local police described the intensity of the violence there as far worse than in previous years — was quickly seized upon by politicians and commentators.

Authorities have confirmed that 70 per cent of those arrested for riots in Berlin on New Year’s Eve, during which firefighters and ambulance workers were attacked, have a migration background. As part of what has now become virtually an annual occurrence, mobs of migrant youths caused bedlam, throwing fireworks at people and setting fire to hundreds of vehicles in what eyewitnesses described as scenes akin to a war zone. Authorities recorded 3,943 incidents across the city, with 15 firefighters and 18 police officers suffering injuries. Bild newspaper reported that the unrest was “particularly bad attacks in the hotspot neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln with a high proportion of migrants.” One video showed a group of migrants throwing bricks into an open ambulance at people inside … Fires were also started in apartment blocks …

Two-thirds of Germans no longer retain any trust in their political representatives, as the disconnect between the public and elected officials has become even greater, the latest polling reported by German news outlet Junge Freiheit revealed. According to a Forsa survey, “Institutions Trust Ranking,” trust in all political institutions at the European, federal, and local levels has fallen to a new low. Just 33 percent of respondents revealed they still trust the position of the federal chancellor, currently occupied by Olaf Scholz (SDP), down by 24 percentage points from the previous year. Similarly, only 34 percent say they trust the federal government in general, a decrease of 22 percentage points. Less than four in 10 Germans (37 percent) claim to still trust the German parliament, the Bundestag.

Israeli occupation authorities arrested 410 Palestinians, including women, children, journalists, activists and community leaders, for expressing their opinion on social media, according to a report by the Palestine Centre for Prisoners Studies (PCPS) … Director, Riyad Al-Ashqar, said the Israeli courts charged the detainees with “incitement” for simply expressing their opinion on social media, including posting a picture of a martyr or merely mentioning his/her name, or issuing an invitation to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque. Palestinians have been sentenced to between several months and several years in jail by the occupation’s courts on charges of incitement, while some were being held under administrative detention without charge or trial.

The State Department on Tuesday said that the US opposes other countries normalizing relations with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad following high-level talks between Syria and Turkey. The defense ministers of Syria and Turkey met in Moscow at the end of December, marking the first time Ankara and Damascus held talks at that level since 2011 … The Turkish rapprochement with Syria represents a significant shift … Even though it’s clear Assad isn’t going anywhere, the US opposes Syria’s neighbors normalizing with his government … The current US policy against Syria, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has put it, is to “oppose” the country’s reconstruction after over a decade of war.

Lines, dots and other symbols painted in caves during the last Ice Age may be the earliest example of proto writing — symbols that communicate a small amount of information like an emoji. Published in the Cambridge Archeology Journal on Thursday, the study shows that 20,000-year-old markings made by hunter-gatherers alongside drawings of prey animals recorded animal behavior “critical” to people’s survival. The markings — lines, dots and “Y” marks — were found in more than 600 Ice Age images on cave walls and portable objects across Europe … The findings also reveal that people in Ice Age Europe were using a calendar based on lunar cycles rooted in seasonal observation.

Israel condemned and the Palestinians welcomed on Saturday [Dec. 31] a United Nations General Assembly vote asking the International Court of Justice to provide an opinion on legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Friday vote presents a challenge for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who this week took office at the head of a government which has set settlement expansion as a priority and which includes parties who want to annex West Bank land on which they are built … Along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, the Palestinians seek the occupied West Bank for a state. Most countries consider Israel’s settlements there illegal, a view Israel disputes citing historical and Biblical ties to the land.

Controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has launched a legal challenge against the College of Psychologists of Ontario after he said the governing body threatened to pull his practicing license if he doesn’t complete social media re-education for comments he made on Twitter and the Joe Rogan podcast. Peterson, 60, filed an application for judicial review with the Ontario Divisional Court, the Toronto Sun reported Wednesday, as the clinical psychologist has said he will refuse to comply with the regulatory body’s demands.

Many New Year’s celebrations this weekend ended in bloodshed with at least eight people killed in shootings across the country. Shootings in Wisconsin, Alabama, Virginia, Chicago, Oklahoma, and Michigan have injured upwards of 25 people.

It was another violent year for Baltimore city. Year-to-date homicide and non-fatal shooting rates shared by the Baltimore Police Department on Friday provide a glimpse of the pace of the city’s violence. There were 332 people killed in Baltimore in 2022 as of Friday, according to authorities. In comparison, there were 334 fatal shootings in the city in 2021, police said. Nonfatal shootings appeared to have decreased though. There were 687 who were shot yet survived their injuries in Baltimore, police said on Friday. In comparison, there had been 724 people were shot in the city in 2021, according to authorities.

… Fox News Digital examined five cities that have experienced continued crime spikes and issues this year [2022], most notably record-breaking homicide numbers, homicide rates that remain higher than pre-pandemic levels and increases in other violent crimes. New Orleans is one of America’s most beloved cities and party towns, but this year it was battered by violent crimes … Milwaukee will end 2022 by breaking its homicide record for the third year in a row. There have been 211 homicides as of Dec. 19, compared to the 193 homicides in 2021 and 190 in 2020 … Carjackings this year have also increased by nearly five percent …

Philadelphia has recorded more than 500 homicides this year [2022] as the city’s gun violence crisis continues to rise dramatically. The city has only ever recorded this large loss of human life twice in its history, matching the record of 500 deaths during the crack cocaine epidemic in 1990. Since Tuesday, the total has risen to 502, a 7% reduction from 2021, per the city’s dashboard. The total in 2022 only pales slightly in comparison to last year’s record-breaking total. In 2021, Philadelphia recorded 562 homicides, with 501 of the deaths due to gun violence alone, per Axios.

Hundreds of the radical Nazis and right-wing extremists online are actually German domestic intelligence agents, and many of them may be responsible for “inciting hatred” and even violence. These agents, who once needed to drink and directly socialize with members of the extreme right to gain information on their targets, are now running right-wing extremist accounts online in Germany. Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) argues that these accounts are needed to effectively monitor the extreme right, but critics say that they may also be promoting and actively encouraging radicalism … According to research by the newspaper, the authority has invested heavily in “virtual agents” since 2019, which it finances with taxpayers’ money.

Armin Mohler, the Swiss-born author who has lived for many years in Germany, begins this well-written look at the Third Reich and its historical legacy by telling the fascinating story of his experiences as a 22-year-old in wartime Berlin … “The Third Reich was not as I had expected,” he recalls. Life in wartime Germany was much more complex and multifaceted than was portrayed … Mohler was struck, for example, by the self-confident style and attractive, even rather erotic appearance of Berlin’s women … Even membership in the National Socialist party did not imply a uniformity of thinking and behavior … “The greatest surprise for me was the intensity of the intellectual disputes.” … Most of this book is devoted to a forthright, dissident treatment of the highly emotion-laden issue of Germany’s burdensome Third Reich legacy.

This is nuts! 17,000 people on the streets here without a plan. If you’ve ever been to San Francisco in the last ten years, there’s no doubt you probably saw a lot of homeless people. But unless you actually go into certain parts of town, you won’t actually see just how bad the homeless problem is in one of the richest cities in the nation … Almost 100% of the homeless issue in San Francisco is due to two main problems – drug addiction and mental illness and the cost of living.

According to the preliminary numbers from the SFPD, San Francisco looks to have had the exact same number of homicides in 2022 as in 2021 — a total of 55 — as of the end of the calendar year … After hitting a 56-year low in homicides in 2019, a year in which 41 people were killed in the city, San Francisco’s numbers have climbed since the pandemic began — though not as dramatically as they have in nearby Oakland. SF saw 48 homicides within the city borders in 2020, a 17% jump from the previous year but about on par with the year before that. And that number climbed another 14.5% in 2021 to 55.

As 2022 comes to a close we can recap many historic milestones of the year … In this chart, we visualize the world’s GDP using data from the IMF, showcasing the biggest economies and the share of global economic activity that they make up … The global economy can be thought of as a pie, with the size of each slice representing the share of global GDP contributed by each country. Currently, the largest slices of the pie are held by the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India, which together account for more than half of global GDP. Here’s a look at every country’s share of the world’s $101.6 trillion economy …

Christopher Duffy, who has died aged 86, was an English military historian and prolific author who wrote extensively on the military powers of “Old Regime” Europe and also published ground-breaking work on the two world wars and the Jacobite rising of 1745 … No armchair historian, as well as beavering away in the archives (he could read six languages) he was known for extensive fieldwork … In Red Storm on the Reich (1996) Duffy drew on newly released records from Moscow archives, cross-referenced with German accounts, to describe the Soviet Union’s brutal final push against Germany in 1945, during which 30 million lives were lost. He revealed that such was the terror the Red Army wrought in the last few months that even PoWs, including 32 British officers, chose to join retreating Panzer regiments rather than stay with their Russian “liberators”.

A “dark and disturbing” letter typed and signed by Second World War hero General S. Patton exposing his deep antisemitism is up for sale on a historical memborabilia website. The letter, dated 4 October 1945 … just two months before Patton’s death from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident … reads: “So far as the Jews are concerned, they do not want to be placed in comfortable buildings. They actually prefer to live as many to a room as possible. They have no conception of sanitation, hygiene or decency and are, as you know, the same sub-human types that we saw in the internment camps.” The letter also refers to the people of the Soviet Union as “the degenerate descendants of Genghis Khan,” and says the envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness in Europe “passes beyond belief.”

… In Britain we remember the great crusade against the Nazis as our finest hour. But as the historian Keith Lowe shows in an extraordinary, disturbing and powerful new book, Savage Continent, it is time we thought again about the way the war ended. For millions of people across the Continent, he argues, VE Day marked not the end of a bad dream, but the beginning of a new nightmare … In Prague, captured German soldiers were ‘beaten, doused in petrol and burned to death’. In the city’s sports stadium, Russian and Czech soldiers gang-raped German women.

… On April 15, 1945, British troops liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The anniversary was widely remembered in official ceremonies and in newspaper articles that, as the following essay shows, distort the camp’s true history … Ghastly images recorded by Allied photographers at Belsen in mid-April 1945 and widely reproduced ever since have greatly contributed to the camp’s reputation as a notorious extermination center. In fact, the dead of Bergen-Belsen were, above all, unfortunate victims of war and its turmoil, not deliberate policy.

The number of murders committed with firearms in Sweden has reached a record high this year, the Stockholm government said on Monday. “The number of fatal shootings has increased and has reached another bloody peak this year,” said Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer. According to the minister, 60 people have been killed by firearms so far in 2022. The number has already surpassed last year’s previous record of 48. At the time, Reuters reported that there were 61 areas across Sweden, “all with a high proportion of immigrants, listed by police as risk areas for rising gang violence.” Among other countries in the region, four murders were committed with firearms in Norway, four in Denmark, and two in Finland … Most of the gun violence has been attributed to Sweden’s large migrant population.

In Hamburg’s general education schools, of the around 257,000 children in the 2020-21 school year, 51.4 percent had a migration background. While the demographic transformation in Hamburg is significant, the rest of Germany is also undergoing the same transformation, albeit at a slower rate … It is noticeable that in some federal states young Germans without foreign roots only form a narrow majority. In Hamburg’s general education schools, the ratio has already turned against them… In Bremen, 44.8 percent of children and adolescents in general education schools had an immigrant background … The quota of students with foreign ancestry at secondary schools was 62.5 percent, followed by comprehensive schools (45.8 percent). In elementary schools, this proportion was 44.9 percent.

Germany is inching closer to a major overhaul of citizenship and immigration laws that could see two million immigrants become citizens overnight, with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, both of the Social Democrats (SPD), driving forward with their plan even as the country deals with a crisis that has seen 1.2 million migrants arrive just in 2022. The new law features a number of radical changes that will shape Germany’s demographic and political future for generations.

More than 100 former Israeli diplomats and ambassadors on Wednesday signed a letter to incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning of damage to Israel’s global standing if the new government implements hard-right policies. In the letter … the signatories expressed “profound concern at the serious damage to Israel’s foreign relations, its international standing and its core interests abroad emanating from what will apparently be the policy of the incoming government.” … The former Foreign Ministry employees said they were concerned about a backlash that could harm Israel’s alliance with the US and undo the progress of the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. They also warned Israel could face sanctions and prosecution in international courts.

The United Nations General Assembly approved on Friday a resolution requesting the International Court of Justice to weigh in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli “annexation” and the “legal status of the occupation.” The resolution passed by a vote of 87 in favor, 26 against, with 53 abstentions. The resolution is titled “Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories,” and calls on the Hague-based ICJ to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory.” It also calls for an investigation into Israeli measures “aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem,” and says Israel has adopted “discriminatory legislation and measures.”

More than 330 American rabbis, including some who occupy prominent roles in major cities, are pledging to block far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming government from speaking at their synagogues, and will lobby to keep them from speaking in their communities. An open letter said they will not invite members of the far-right parties “to speak at our congregations and organizations. We will speak out against their participation in other fora across our communities … The letter’s uncompromising tone and the breadth of the signatories is a signal of a burgeoning crisis in relations between Israel and the US Jewish community triggered by the elevation of the far-right parties.

Top economist Nouriel Roubini has painted a gloomy picture on what 2023 has in store for the global economy. In an interview with the Financial Times, Roubini, often dubbed “Dr Doom” for his pessimistic predictions, said a convergence of old and new problems pose risks to the world. “I think that really the world is on a slow-motion train wreck. There are major new threats that did not exist before, and they’re building up and we’re doing very little about it,” he said … He warned that the oncoming economic downturn will be severe. “No, this is not going to be a short and shallow recession, it’s going to be deep and protracted,” he said … Earlier this month, Roubini sounded the alarm on potential stock market losses given the likelihood of a US recession. He predicted the S&P 500 could crash as much as 25% if the US economy contracts next year.

Fraudulent claims of college degrees, a non-existent real estate portfolio, and confusion over whether he’s Jewish – or merely “Jew-ish” – are just some of the controversies New York Republican congressman-elect George Santos is facing just days before he’s due to be sworn in on 3 January. Before winning his race in the November midterm election, the 34-year-old billed himself as “the full embodiment of the American dream”: An openly gay child of Brazilian immigrants who rose to the upper echelons of Wall Street before entering the world of politics. His victory lap, however, has been short-lived. Mr Santos’s narrative of his life has fallen into tatters, with the embattled soon-to-be representative admitting that large portions of it were entirely made up. He now faces calls to resign amid federal and local investigations …

Israel could launch a military offensive targeting Iran’s nuclear sites within a two to three-year timeframe, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told a class of graduating Israeli Air Force cadets on Wednesday, boasting that the country had “significantly increased its preparedness in recent years and is preparing for the possibility of an attack on Iran.” Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid clarified that such an attack would be a response to “threats that we see as existential” … Israel’s longest-serving prime minister until he was unseated last year, Netanyahu is a committed Iran hawk who has been predicting the Islamic Republic would have a nuclear bomb within three years since 1992. Israel’s own military intelligence forecast does not include Tehran getting the bomb anytime soon, however.

The Austrian city of Linz said Thursday it planned to rename a street honoring [Ferdinand Porsche] the founder of the luxury carmaker Porsche after a commission probing controversial names found his Nazi past “problematic.” The renaming of streets and other public places is still a hotly debated issue in Austria — Adolf Hitler’s birthplace — which Nazi Germany annexed in 1938 and which long cast itself as a victim. Only in the past three decades has the country begun to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of about a third of Austria’s Jewish population of 200,000. The Porscheweg and three other streets are to be renamed in Linz …