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World Leaders Misdiagnose the US With a Crisis of Confidence
Daniel Larison – Responsible Statecraft
… One of the biggest problems with our foreign policy is that U.S. policymakers remain enthusiastic about a “leadership” role that is ill-suited to current realities. American power is in relative decline, but our foreign policy is still defined by the pursuit of dominance in every region. Our political leaders are eager to reaffirm and expand U.S. commitments without any real debate over the risks or the resources that will be needed to make good on those commitments … Far from suffering from a crisis of confidence, the U.S. still seems far too sure of itself. The U.S. doesn’t need to hear self-serving cheerleading from allies about how “indispensable” it is. It needs sober advice on how it can responsibly unwind the many unnecessary commitments it has accumulated over generations … A thorough reassessment of our foreign policy is long overdue.
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Netanyahu Calls for Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protesters in the US
D. DeCamp - Antiwar.com
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called for a crackdown on Americans protesting against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza at college campuses across the United States. “What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities,” Netanyahu said. His comments echoed President Biden, who labeled the demonstrations “antisemitic protests.” At some American universities, police have arrested and dispersed protesters, but Netanyahu said more should be done … “We see this exponential rise of antisemitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists, genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians,” Netanyahu said.
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Netanyahu Likens US Campus Encampments by ‘Antisemitic Mobs’ to 1930s Nazi Germany
The Times of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted “an antisemitic surge” in the United States in an English-language video message Wednesday, amid widespread anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses across the US … “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel, they attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty,” Netanyahu charged in his statement, which likened the scenes to those that preceded the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. “This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned unequivocally,” the Israeli premier said.
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Is Putin Bent on Conquering Europe?
Ted Snider – American Conservative
… President Joe Biden told Congress on December 6 that “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there … He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned that “Putin will not stop at Ukraine.” … The insistence that Putin’s ambitions are not limited to Ukraine but have their sights on Europe is based on two historical myths … The historical record shows that, in his over two decades in power, Putin has not “kept going.” When Russian forces have been deployed, they have been limited to specific objectives when they could have easily kept going, as in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, when military conquest could have been accomplished with ease.
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German Reparations for Holocaust Reveal Complexities of Atonement
Christian Science Monitor
Germany is considered a global model when it comes to atonement, having paid out nearly 90 billion euros [US$ 96 billion] to Holocaust survivors around the world over the past 70 years. The government has constructed world-class memorials and museums to highlight Nazi Germany’s role in the murder of six million Jews. Holocaust education is mandated in the public school curriculum, and the federal government staunchly allies itself with Israel … There are an estimated 245,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust era left. Germany has made some form of payments to survivors since the 1950s, when the Claims Conference first began negotiating on behalf of survivors and administering the resulting payments … Last year’s negotiation resulted in $1.4 billion for 2024, with additional one-time funds for some of the poorest survivors …
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Final Nail in America’s Coffin?
Ron Paul
When future historians go searching for the final nail in the US coffin, they may well settle on the date April 20, 2024. On that day Congress passed legislation to fund two and a half wars, hand what’s left of our privacy over to the CIA and NSA, and give the US president the power to shut down whatever part of the Internet he disagrees with. The nearly $100 billion grossly misnamed “National Security Supplemental” guarantees that Ukrainians will continue to die in that country’s unwinnable war with Russia, that Palestinian civilians will continue to be slaughtered in Gaza with US weapons, and that the neocons will continue to push us toward a war with China. It was a total victory for the war party. The huge spending bill is all about politics for Biden, yet so many Republicans simply went along with it.
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Quotations From Chairman Maher, NPR’s New CEO
Christopher F. Rufo – City Journal
Katherine Maher has a golden résumé … As of last month, she is CEO of National Public Radio … On every topic, Maher adopts the fashionable language of left-wing academic theory and uses it as social currency, even when her efforts veer into self-parody … Maher’s general policy at Wikipedia, she tweeted, was to support efforts to “eliminate racist, misogynist, transphobic, and other forms of discriminatory content” … The new CEO of NPR, then, is a left-wing ideologue who supports wide-scale censorship and considers the First Amendment an impediment to her campaign to sanitize the world of wrong opinions. Maher is no aberration. She is part of a rising cohort of affluent, left-wing, female managers who dominate the departments of university administration, human resources, and DEI.
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As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
F. Sidhwa, M. Perlmutter – Common Dreams
On March 25 the two of us, an orthopedic surgeon and a trauma surgeon, traveled to the Gaza Strip to work at Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis … As humanitarian surgeons we thought we had seen all manner of cruelty in the world, but neither one of us has ever experienced anything like what we found when we arrived in Gaza … We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence of horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even children … As we got to work we were shocked by the violence inflicted on people. Incredibly powerful explosives ripped apart rock, floors, and walls and threw them through human bodies, penetrating skin with waves of dirt and debris.
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China Has Over 200 Times the U.S.’s Shipbuilding Capacity
Video - The Wall Street Journal
China has transformed into a shipbuilding powerhouse over the past two decades, cementing its status as a major maritime power. In 2023, more than half of the world’s commercial shipbuilding came from China, while the U.S. accounted for less than 1%. Runtime: 8:24 mins.
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David Cole lays out his considered view about “the Holocaust,” “gas chambers,” and the “six million” in this two-hour interview with Frodi Midjord, and looks back at how his views on this emotion-laden subject have evolved. Cole, who is Jewish, was famous or notorious especially during the 1990s as a prominent “Holocaust revisionist.” His widely viewed “Cole-Piper Auschwitz video,” based on his 1992 visit to the camp site, exposes some of the deceit of the familiar Holocaust narrative. During those years Cole also presented his provocative views on national television. He was a victim of physical violence by Jewish Defense League thugs. In recent years he has been a regular columnist for Taki’s online magazine.
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Breaking Silence: My Secret Life, and Why I’m Still a Holocaust Revisionist
David Cole; Audio CDs. Two disc set.
David Cole breaks 18 years of silence to speak publicly for the first time about his challenges, achievements, and mishaps during the 1990s, and his remarkable new career under an assumed name. His articulate presentation at a special IHR meeting is packed with colorful anecdotes, humorous asides and eye-opening insights. This two-disc IHR recording includes an introduction by Mark Weber, and the meeting’s lively question-and-answer session.
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Iran’s Foreign Minister Claims Nuclear Weapons Have ‘No Place’ in its Nuclear Doctrine
Reuters / The Times of Israel
Nuclear weapons have no place in Iran’s nuclear doctrine, the country’s foreign ministry said on Monday, days after an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander warned that Tehran might change its nuclear policy if pressured by Israeli threats. “Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program serves only peaceful purposes. Nuclear weapons have no place in our nuclear doctrine,” ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said during a press conference in Tehran. Tehran has always insisted its nuclear program was strictly for peaceful purposes … Following its unprecedented attack on Israel last week, the IRGC commander in charge of nuclear security Ahmad Haghtalab said last week that threats of a counterattack by Israel could lead Tehran to “review its nuclear doctrine and deviate from its previous considerations.”
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The Fantasy of an Iranian Bomb
Seymour Hersh
It remains a classic moment in United Nations history. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the dignified setting of a General Assembly speech in the fall of 2012 to raise the specter of an Iranian nuclear bomb … In a report for the New Yorker [May 2011], I disclosed that a highly secret National Intelligence Estimate, whose conclusions were unanimously approved by delegates from seventeen American intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, found that there was no conclusive evidence that Iran had made any effort to build the bomb before or after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 … As in 2012, there is still no evidence that Iran … has the capacity to produce the needed amounts of highly enriched uranium for a bomb … None of this has altered the view of the Israeli leadership that Iran … is a soon-to-be nuclear power.
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Anti-Semitic Incidents in US Soared in 2023, Breaking All Previous Records, Reports Zionist ADL
Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
Driven in part by a massive spike in antisemitic reactions to the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza, the U.S. Jewish community last year experienced an unprecedented increase in antisemitic incidents, far exceeding any other annual tally in the past 45 years. ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) today released the final statistics for antisemitic incidents in 2023, reporting a total of 8,873 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism across the country. The total represents a 140-percent increase from 2022 – already a record-setting year … ADL today called on governor’s offices across the country to create their own state-level versions of the White House’s landmark National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, the first of its kind, comprehensive effort to address antisemitism from across the political spectrum.
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Biden Should Not Follow Netanyahu Into War With Iran
Daniel Larison - Responsible Statecraft
… The U.S. is at considerable risk of becoming involved in a direct conflict with Iran thanks to the reckless actions of the Netanyahu government and the president’s lockstep support. This does not serve legitimate U.S. security interests. The U.S. cannot afford another conflict in the Middle East, and siding with Israel exposes U.S. forces to significant unnecessary dangers. The U.S. is under no obligation to come to Israel’s defense if Iran retaliates against an Israeli strike, and the president has no authority to commit the U.S. to fight a war for another country, especially when that country is not a treaty ally … This support makes the U.S. complicit in Israeli violations of international law, exposes the U.S. to intense regional hostility, and puts U.S. forces at greater risk in exchange for very little.
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Netanyahu Wants War With Iran. Biden Can Prevent It.
Trita Parsi - Foreign Policy
… A broader war with Iran is exactly what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been seeking for more than two decades. Early in the war between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration worried that Israel was set to expand the war into Lebanon … What neither Biden nor the Washington establishment fully appreciated was that Netanyahu has, since the late 1990s, sought to drag the United States into war with Iran. Netanyahu has an interest in prolonging the ongoing war with Hamas since the moment it ends, his political career is likely to end as well—and a prison sentence may soon follow if his corruption trial proceeds. Likewise, the hard-line Israeli leader also has a long-standing desire to enlarge the conflict to deal with what he perceives to be Israel’s biggest strategic threat: Iran.
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How accurate is this hallowed portrayal of America’s role in World War II? As we shall see, it does not hold up under close examination … The three Allied leaders accomplished what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany, Italy and Japan of conspiring to achieve: world domination … Presidential deception to justify war did not start with George W. Bush. Americans who express admiration for the US role in World War II, and for Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential leadership, have little moral right to complain when presidents follow his example and lead the country into war by breaking the law, subverting the Constitution, and lying to the people.
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The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent. The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution. The strong support the Palestinians received reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their statehood but almost certainly the global support for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month … Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, likely by a much higher number of countries.
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British Ex-Foreign Minister Calls Out Fellow Tories for Supporting Israel
Video - LBC (Britain)
Sir Alan Duncan, who served as a Minister in two British governments, has sharply criticized his Conservative Party colleagues for their support of Israel. Arms sales to Israel should be halted “immediately,” he says, because it is “morally unacceptable” to support “what is becoming a total catastrophe in Gaza.” Duncan wants pro-Israel “extremists” in his party removed from power. “The time has come” for them to be “flushed out,” he says in this LBC television interview with Nick Ferrari. As a result of these remarks, which Jewish groups have strongly condemned, Duncan is now “under investigation” by his own party. Runtime: 7 mins.
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British Ex-Minister Urges UK to ‘Flush Out Extremists’ in Government Who Back Israeli Settlements
Politico
The Conservative Party is investigating a former minister who accused his Tory colleagues of “doing the bidding of Netanyahu,” and demanded the firing of Britain’s security minister. Alan Duncan, an ex-foreign office minister, on Wednesday took aim at British politicians who support Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank, and blasted the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) parliamentary group. He argued that the group, which includes several MPs, Lords and ministers and aims to promote ties to Israel, has too much influence on the government and does the “bidding” of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Stunning Roman frescoes have been uncovered by archeologists in Pompeii, the ancient city destroyed by an eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 AD. Experts say the newly discovered frescoes are among the finest ever to emerge at the renowned archeological site … Two pieces dominate the hall; one depicts the Greek god Apollo trying to seduce the priestess Cassandra. The second piece shows Prince Paris meeting Helen of Troy … The team’s discovery was just one of a number of recent revelations from the site, after they found other mythological-themed frescoes in early March and then, just weeks later, a construction site that was being worked on right up until the eruption.
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Iran’s Jewish Population Belies Claims of Tehran’s Genocidal Intent
Brian McGlinchey
For decades, Israeli government officials — chief among them, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have accused Iran of plotting a new Holocaust against the millions of Jews who call the Zionist state home. Netanyahu has said Iran is “planning another genocide against our people,” and wants to “destroy another six million plus Jews.” Western journalists are quick to quote these claims, yet slow to publicize contradictory evidence — such as the fact that Iran is home to the Middle East’s second-largest population of Jews, who freely practice their faith, peacefully coexist within the Islamic republic and even have a seat in the legislature … There are 9,000 to 20,000 of them [Jews] in a land [Iran] where the Jewish presence goes back nearly 3,000 years.
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Biden Must Walk Back From Netanyahu’s Iran Trap
Daniel Larison - Responsible Statecraft
… The Israeli government appears to want to goad Iran into a military response to divert attention from the slaughter and famine in Gaza and to trap the U.S. into joining the fight. The president has made it that much easier for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by volunteering to walk into the trap. The U.S. is at considerable risk of becoming involved in a direct conflict with Iran thanks to the reckless actions of the Netanyahu government and the president’s lockstep support. This does not serve legitimate U.S. security interests. The U.S. cannot afford another conflict in the Middle East, and siding with Israel exposes U.S. forces to significant unnecessary dangers.
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Netanyahu is Trying to Drag the U.S. Into War With Iran
James W. Carden – The American Conservative
… Having destroyed the open-air prison that was Gaza (though without, it should be pointed out, doing much in the way of degrading Hamas) Netanyahu has set his sights on bigger things. What Bibi now wants is to provoke a wider war in order to bring the U.S. in and place American power in the service of his long-held dream of striking Iran … The IDF has slaughtered over 33,000 thousand civilians, including over 25,000 women and children, while barely making a dent against Hamas. But the last point matters little because the war was always about ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. And once that goal is in the rearview, Bibi’s war aims will transform and become about Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah. As it happens, this is a war that Netanyahu and his neoconservative supporters have been thirsting over for many years.
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`The Nasty Little Sparta’
Eric Margolis
… The current Gaza Conflict tells us just how much Israel now dominates Congress and the Democratic Party which gets a likely 50% of its fundings from pro-Israel donors. Moderate pro-Israel groups have been marginalized. Those in the media have been sidelined or fired. It’s the McCarthyism of the 21st century … No one in the tightly controlled US media or the Rothschild-dominated British Conservatives party would dare bring up the fact that the Warsaw Ghetto ravaged by the Nazis had 50,000 people as compared to Gaza’s 2.1 million trapped people … While Palestinians are being slaughtered or starved, Israel is busy trying to goad Iran into a major war … America has become the champion of Israeli expansionism. The Israeli tail continues to wag the bumbling American dog … The rest of the world will remember this.
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Walt Disney: How Ireland Shaped an American Icon
A. Murray - BBC News
The title of Walt Disney’s definitive biography describes him as An American Original, but how much do you know about his Irish roots? … “The Disney family history starts in France, with a little detour into England and then landing in Ireland,” explained Paula Sigman-Lowery, a historian who has spent her career looking into the history of the company and the life of its namesake … The D’Isgny name was anglicised to Disney when the family moved [from France] to England in the 11th century. In the 1600s Walt Disney’s direct ancestors moved on to settle in Ireland, where they remained for two centuries … Mr Kavanagh said that despite their French origins, the Disney family were Irish through and through.
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Walt Disney: A Great Artist
Jonathan Jones - The Guardian
Walt Disney was one of the great American artists of the 20th century. This needs to be recognised. So here I am, Walt, coming to the rescue, aided by an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris that celebrates Disney’s films as visual art… What Disney actually achieved was not to diffuse an American banality worldwide but, in a world that was becoming ever more banal and forgetful, to preserve the old oral storytelling of the pre-industrial world. Few artists have done as much as Disney to humanise modernity; the magical proof of this is one of his last films.
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Subverting the Disney Legacy
Mark Weber
For more than 40 years, the company founded and built by Walt Disney offered popular, well-crafted entertainment that upheld American values and traditions. Its films and television programming — even if sometimes sugary — epitomized, to use the much-mocked phrase, wholesome family entertainment. It was the work largely of one man, Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966), a gifted illustrator, brilliant filmmaker and genial entrepreneur who left a lasting mark on American popular culture.
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Germany’s government vowed on Tuesday to tackle rising crime, in particular a jump in the number of suspects with non-German backgrounds, as it tries to stem the appeal of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in state elections this year. Presenting data showing a 5.5% rise in overall crime last year and a 13.5% increase in the number of suspects with foreign backgrounds, the interior minister said Germany must improve integration and speed up deportations. “Foreign offenders must leave Germany much more quickly. The strict deportation rules we have created must now be enforced,” said minister Nancy Faeser, a Social Democrat in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s uneasy three-way coalition. “Anyone who doesn’t stick to the rules must leave,” she said, adding she also had zero tolerance for violent crime which was up 8.6% last year.
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… If we condemn Israel for its actions since then, we might be accused of antisemitism … Because of federal laws and minimal decency, the U.S. should have cut off all military aid to Israel long ago. A single standard of human rights should apply. But adhering to that simple, basic precept can provoke the virulent epithet of “antisemitism.” … The gist of the trick is to equate Israel with the Jewish religion – and then to equate opposition to Israel with antisemitism … While Israel continues to slaughter children, women and men … the extreme misuse of the “antisemitism” charge often boils down to: Be quiet. Don’t protest. Don’t even speak up … There’s a word for seeing – and saying – that Israel is engaged in large-scale crimes against humanity. And that word isn’t “antisemitism.” It’s realism.
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Donald Trump’s mention of the “beautiful” Battle of Gettysburg during a campaign rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday got the former president some attention on social media, with users wondering what his rambling “rant” was about. “Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was,” Trump said while addressing the crowd in the town and wearing a Make America Great Again hat. “It was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways — it represented such a big portion of the success of this country,” he continued. “Gettysburg, wow — I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch,” he said. “And the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor — did you ever notice it? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill,” …
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British WWII Veterans: Unhappy With What’s Become of the Country They Fought For
Review by F. Roger Devlin – Institute for Historical Review
More than once I have come across the view that if British lads of the 1940s could have foreseen the state of their country today, they would never have bothered to fight the Second World War. Few of those who have heard that view may realize that there is empirical evidence to support it … The prevailing tone of their letters is one of bitterness over what had become of the county they once cherished. Of the four or five most often voiced complaints, the most common is over mass migration from other countries and continents, and how that has drastically changed British life, culture and society … “The men who offered their lives have been betrayed and gave their lives in vain. Most of the older people say thank goodness we are ending our lives. It is no longer the Britain that we fought for.”
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Even Republican stalwarts like current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are starting to notice that something is shifting in the party … What McConnell deems to be “isolationism” had for much of our history been called America’s traditional foreign policy … What we are now seeing – and it is evident in the polls as well as in speeches of our politicians – is a shift away from interventionism. The mood has changed, and more Americans are tired of being told they must sacrifice to save the rest of the world from itself … All of a sudden interventionism is a loser with more of the American people, and politicians are paying attention. McConnell may think that he can stem the tide by preaching more intervention, but not even the Senate Republican leader can stop an idea whose time has come.
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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Tells Schoolkids That Moon is a ‘Planet’ and ‘Made Up Mostly of Gases’
New York Post
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) stunned attendees at a high school solar eclipse event Monday by claiming the rock-solid moon is a “planet” that is “made up mostly of gases” … The former top Democrat on the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee badly botched elementary lunar facts while speaking during the gathering at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston … “Sometimes you need to take the opportunity just to come out and see a full moon is that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases,” Jackson Lee, 74, told teenage pupils … “And that’s why the question is why or how could we as humans live on the moon? Are the gases such that we could do that?” the congresswoman said. “The sun is a mighty powerful heat, but it’s almost impossible to go near the sun. The moon is more manageable.”
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Israel’s Security at Core of German Foreign Policy Due to Holocaust, ICJ Tribunal Hears
The Guardian
Germany has said Israel’s security is at “the core” of its foreign policy because of the history of the Holocaust, but denied accusations at the UN’s highest court that is aiding genocide in Gaza by arming Israel. Nicaragua has brought a case against Germany at the international court of justice (ICJ) urging judges to order a halt to German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is in breach of its obligation to prevent genocide and ensure respect of international humanitarian law. On Tuesday, Germany had its chance to respond to the accusations levelled against it after Nicaragua’s legal team opened the case on Monday. Nicaragua told the ICJ that it was “pathetic” for Germany to provide Palestinians with humanitarian aid while supplying the arms that killed them, and that Germany seemed “not to be able to differentiate between self-defence and genocide”.
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The World Court Will Rule on Germany’s Support for Israel. That Shows How Geopolitics Has Changed
S. Crawshaw – The Guardian
The case brought by Nicaragua against Germany at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague this week is a powerful example of the unprecedented political impact that the Gaza conflict is having around the world … Nicaragua’s case focuses on Germany’s supply of arms to Israel – the country supplied more than 326 million euros [$349 million] last year, which equated to more than a quarter of Israel’s military imports … Nicaragua says the arms sales mean Germany is “facilitating” genocide … The good intentions that underlie that philosophy – Israel as Germany’s “raison d’état,” in the words of Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel – are clear. But Germany’s unquestioning support for Israel is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
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… The Russian authorities are aggressively pushing the line that Ukraine and the West were behind last month’s Crocus City concert hall massacre outside Moscow which left 145 people dead. The Islamic State group quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. But soon after the suspected gunmen were detained President Vladimir Putin hinted at a Ukrainian connection. At the weekend Russian state TV broadcast interrogation videos of the four suspects, all citizens of Tajikistan … Not only had the [Islamic State] group announced that it was behind the attack, it had released video of the shooting. By contrast, Ukraine had denied any involvement. What’s more, both America and, reportedly, Iran had warned Moscow of possible attacks on Russian soil.
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U.S. Complicity in Israel’s ‘Plausible’ Genocide
Daniel Warner – CounterPunch
… A court case in California … is worth noting; the case directly challenges the United States’ support for Israel. Although the case will not force Israel to withdraw from Gaza, it does raise serious issues about the United States’ complicity in Israel’s continuous violation of human rights and humanitarian law as well as its egregious non-compliance with the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) … In the California case, United States leaders are accused of illegal complicity in not preventing genocide as well as contributing to Israel’s genocidal actions. Over thirty eminent legal scholars and practitioners, including Richard Falk, Philip Alston, and Andrew Clapham, presented a brief (Amicus curiae) supporting the case before The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth District.
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The Nuclear Explosion That Made US Aid to Israel Illegal
James Bamford
… Under US law, Israel must be banned from receiving its annual package of billions of dollars and arsenal of bombs … For decades, US presidents and members of Congress have willfully turned a blind eye to Israel’s extensive violations of American laws … Americans are being deliberately lied to by their own government as to Israel’s vast and deadly nuclear stockpile, largely built with nuclear materials stolen from the United States. For those on Capitol Hill and in the White House, the incentive for keeping Israel’s secret — and thus allowing it to avoid US laws — is money and power. Millions in campaign donations from wealthy pro-Israel supporters and PACs, and power from lobbies like AIPAC.
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‘Lavender’: The AI Machine Directing Israel’s Bombing Spree in Gaza
Y. Abraham - +972 (Israel)
… The Israeli army has developed an artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender,” unveiled here for the first time. According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war … The army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians … In the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.
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Gaza War Is Pushing Support for Israel to Historic Lows
Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr.
… Clearly, almost all the Republicans in Congress, all of who I hope will be re-elected, are scared to death of money from the Israel Lobby being used against them. They are seemingly afraid to say the word “Israel” without first saying the words “our ally.” However, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, longtime chief of staff to General and Secretary of State Colin Powell, said recently on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s podcast: “Israel is a significant strategic liability for the U.S.” I have nothing against Israel. I have been there twice and have been treated very well both times … My hope for Israel and all countries is for peace and prosperity, but my first obligation is to my own country … There will never be peace in the Middle East unless and until the U.S. adopts a more even-handed neutral policy in that part of the world.
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George Soros Fund Buys $400 Million Stake In 227 US Radio Stations Going Into 2024 Election
Benzinga
Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros has been the target of controversy recently after a recent move to become a controlling shareholder in the second-largest owner of radio stations in the U.S. This isn’t the first media brand Soros has bought a substantial stake in, but it worries some people going into the 2024 election. Last year, Soros bought a substantial stake in Vice Media Group. Vice was once worth nearly $6 billion, but Soros bought a stake in the company for pennies on the dollar following its surprise bankruptcy in 2023. The deal valued Vice at roughly $350 million with Soros owning an undisclosed stake in the company. Audacy, the No. 2 U.S. radio broadcaster behind iHeartMedia, recently filed for bankruptcy. The company owns 227 major radio stations in 27 states and 45 cities across the U.S.
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In Scotland, Police Hit With Almost 4,000 Complaints in First Two Days of New `Hate Crime’ Laws
Daily Mail
Police Scotland was deluged with almost 4,000 complaints in the first 48 hours of Humza Yousaf’s controversial hate crime laws coming into force. Officers are said to have received a hate crime complaint every two minutes during the first days of the legislation. Calum Steele, the former general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers within Police Scotland, said he understood that the number of complaints received so far could be as high as 3,800. He said that ‘more than half’ are yet to be processed. Police Scotland said it would consider every report made under the law, which became active on Monday.
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Last week, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, told a group of European journalists visiting Israel that London has become the most anti-Semitic city in Western Europe thanks to a mix of the ‘’radical Left’’ and ‘’Islamic extremism.” “The antisemitism we see today in the West is the worst since the 1930s and it is because of a ‘red and green’ alliance – the combination of the radical Left and the radical Islam groups that work together,’’ the Likud minister said. He was speaking during a press briefing at the Israeli foreign ministry in Jerusalem for a group of visiting journalists …
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The test for German citizenship will in future include questions on the Jewish religion and the state of Israel in a move designed to filter out anti-Semites among applicants … In the new citizenship test, which applicants must pass to acquire German nationality, candidates could be asked the name of the Jewish place of worship, the founding year of Israel, or Germany’s particular historical obligation to it, according to Spiegel. The punishments for Holocaust denial and the membership requirements for Jewish sports clubs would also be among the possible questions, according to the magazine … In addition to a commitment to the constitution, applicants will now also be required to make a commitment to protecting Jewish life in Germany.
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Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) has come under fire for saying Gaza should be handled like “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” suggesting that he was calling for a nuclear bomb to be dropped on the Strip, which could kill millions of Palestinians. Walberg made the comments at a town hall last week when asked about the US funding the construction of a port in Gaza, supposedly to bring in more aid. “We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,” he said. “It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.” The genocidal comments became public when they surfaced in a video on social media.
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Blame the Fed for ‘Shrinkflation’
Ron Paul
President Biden may have recently made history as the first president to discuss snack chips in the State of the Union message … If Biden wanted to stop inflation, he would start by reducing federal spending and paring down the over 35 trillion dollars national debt. These steps would allow the Federal Reserve to reduce its efforts to monetize the federal debt in order to keep borrowing costs low. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, President Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget fails to cut spending. It also proposes the government borrow nearly two trillion dollars a year for the next decade. While congressional Republicans have declared President Biden’s “big spending budget” dead on arrival, the fact is that, with few exceptions, Republicans are just as addicted to welfare-warfare spending as their Democratic counterparts.
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Most Americans Now Oppose Israel’s War in Gaza, New Gallup Poll Finds
The Washington Post
Most Americans disapprove of Israel’s war in Gaza, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday – a downward shift in Americans’ opinions on the war. More than half of Americans – 55 percent – said they disapprove of Israel’s military action in Gaza, while 36 percent approve of it, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,016 U.S. adults this month … The poll shows growing discontent among Americans with Israel’s war in Gaza … Approval of the war fell among both Republicans and Democrats, although those groups remain split: 64 percent of Republicans and 18 percent of Democrats approve of Israel’s military action, according to the March poll. Such sentiments have fallen since November among adherents of both parties …
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Why I’m Resigning From the State Department
Annelle Sheline
… For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office. However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible … My colleagues and I watched in horror as this administration delivered thousands of precision-guided munitions, bombs, small arms and other legal aid to Israel and authorized thousands more, even bypassing Congress to do so. We are appalled by the administration’s flagrant disregard for American laws that prohibit the US from providing assistance to foreign militaries that engage in gross human rights violations or that restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.
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US President Joe Biden has secretly authorized billions of dollars in new bombs and fighter jets for Israel in recent days, according to a report published Friday. Israel’s war on Gaza continues to rage with widespread destruction, displacement and death throughout the coastal enclave … The arms approved this week by the US president include 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, anonymous State and Defense Department officials told the Washington Post newspaper. The State Department last week approved the transfer of 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines, a US official added. The planes and engines are estimated to be worth around $2.5 billion.
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What Identical Twin Research Reveals About Criminality
R. Pomeroy - Big Think
… Is criminal behavior tied to one’s genes? Studies comparing identical and fraternal twins indeed suggest that the inclination to engage in criminal behavior is partly tied to one’s genes, though upbringing and environment also play a role. / … Studies dating back to 1930 show that identical twins are more likely than fraternal twins to both be criminals or both be law-abiding, suggesting at least some genetic basis. Scientists behind those early studies often opined that criminal behavior was almost entirely heritable … Modern twin studies, conducted after the stain of eugenics was wiped away, have tended to find that the inclination to offend is around 50% heritable. While genes do predispose a person to criminality, environment and upbringing also play significant roles.
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A range of Jewish and pro-Israel figures, including Israel’s antisemitism envoy, accused Sen. Jeff Merkley of advancing a “blood libel” for linking Easter to what he called Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza. Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, had already marked Easter Sunday on X (formerly Twitter) with a generic wish for a “blessed holiday.” He followed up with a post citing the holiday in his call to cut arms shipments to Israel and to pressure the country to facilitate the entry of more humanitarian assistance into Gaza. “On this Easter, let’s ponder [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which has killed more than 20,000 women and children, and his restriction of humanitarian aid, which has pushed Palestinians to the brink of famine,” Merkley said in a three-post thread on X.
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Palestinian Christians marked a sombre Easter in northern Gaza on Sunday, as Israeli forces continued to lay siege to the enclave’s largest hospital and bombed several targets across the embattled territory. Around 100 Christians gathered by candlelight on Saturday night at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, in an area where the global authority on food security says a full-scale famine is imminent. The church has become a sanctuary for those displaced by Israeli bombing and currently hosts more than 500 Palestinians, whilst some 300 others are believed to be staying at the nearby Saint Porphyrius church. Both churches have been attacked by Israeli forces in the last six months of war, with an Israeli bombing raid in late October killing 18 people at the Saint Porphyrius church.
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This Easter, Gaza’s Christian Community is on the Brink of Extinction
K. Sayegh – New Arab
For the first time in its history, Gaza’s Christian Community is under threat of extinction. Gaza is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, dating back to the first century, and the third oldest church in the world. Despite constant threats to survival, the community has persisted for two millennia. But now, extinction may be unavoidable this time due to Israel’s indiscriminate war and imposed famine, which has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza. There are only about 800 Christians left in Gaza … Since the beginning of the Israeli attack on Gaza, the small Christian minority has been impacted in the same way as their fellow Palestinians.
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President Biden used the bully pulpit of the annual State of the Union address to describe a world that significantly differed from the picture presented just a month earlier in the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community … That the president’s pronouncements diverge from the conclusions reached by his own intelligence community highlights the chasm between what is foisted on the public compared to what is understood within the bowels of the state … Contrary to his bravado about “we’re in a stronger position to win the competition for the 21st Century against China,” the World Bank predicts 4.5% GDP growth in China compared to 1.6% for the US in 2024. China has surpassed the US as the largest world economy by purchasing power parity.