Headlines

Vice President Kamala Harris spent Thursday afternoon [Sept. 14, 2023] lecturing college students about how the government must ensure “equal outcomes.” “If we want equal outcomes, we need to take into account not everybody starts out on the same base, and we have to make adjustments,” Harris told a crowd at Hampton University in Virginia on her month-long college tour called “Fight for Our Freedoms.” She told students that “if we want fair outcomes, we must understand what are disparities, and then accommodate and adjust for those disparities if we want equal outcomes.”

A video made and shared by Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris [Nov. 2020] is causing a stir on Twitter — for arguing in favor of the Communist principle of equality of outcome. The cartoon video, shared on Harris’ Twitter shared on Harris’ Twitter Sunday afternoon, featured two men — one white and one black — who were staring up at a mountain they were attempting to climb … The California senator narrates the video, in which she begins by saying, “So there’s a big difference between equality and equity” … “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place,” she said as the video ended. Harris has taken some heat in the hours since sharing the video …

The top U.N. court said Friday that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is “unlawful” and called on it to end and for settlement construction to stop immediately, issuing an unprecedented, sweeping condemnation of Israel’s rule over the lands it captured 57 years ago. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly denounced the nonbinding opinion issued by the 15-judge panel of the International Court of Justice, saying the territories are part of the Jewish people’s historic “homeland.” … The judges pointed to a wide list of policies, including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians, all of which it said violated international law.

The Knesset [Israel parliament] late Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state. The resolution was co-sponsored by parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition together with right-wing parties from the opposition, and even received support from Benny Gantz’s centrist National Unity party … This resolution — passed 68-9 — altogether rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state, even as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel. “The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region,” the resolution stated.

Emily Hobhouse played a crucial role in exposing some of the worst atrocities of the British Empire, bringing into public view the shocking conditions of the concentration camps set up in South Africa during the Second Boer War. A fierce campaigner, she launched a sensational attack on the British parliament in 1901, in the middle of one of the most controversial wars in the country’s history … During the Second Boer War, British forces rounded up Boer men, women and children from the South African countryside and placed them in concentration camps … These camps, which had sprung up around the two republics and housed thousands of people, 115,000 in the period between June 1901 and May 1902, represent one of the biggest atrocities in British history.

The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 was more than the first major military clash of the 20th century. Pitting as it did the might of the globe-girdling British Empire, backed by international finance, against a small pioneering nation of independent-minded farmers, ranchers and merchants in southern Africa who lived by the Bible and the rifle, its legacy continues to resonate today. The Boers’ recourse to irregular warfare, and Britain’s response in herding a hundred thousand women and children into concentration camps foreshadowed the horrors of guerilla warfare and mass detention of innocents that have become emblematic of the 20th century.

Businessman Elon Musk on Friday claimed that the European Commission offered his X platform an “illegal secret deal” to “quietly” censor speech after the commission accused it of breaching EU digital laws. “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us,” Musk wrote on X. “The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not,” he said.”We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth,” Musk wrote later. Musk’s statement came in response to the European Commission saying earlier Friday that X is in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to “dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.” … The European Commission firmly denied Musk’s claim

James David Vance, a freshman US senator who has made support for Israel an exception to an “America First” foreign policy vision, was tapped on Monday as former US president Donald Trump’s running mate for the upcoming presidential election. The selection of the 39-year-old Vance represents a full embrace of the growing isolationist wing of the Republican Party, which has pushed back against US military aid for Ukraine while maintaining support for security assistance to Israel. …  While he has pushed back at efforts to criticize Israel, he has voiced concern regarding its future following the October 7 onslaught. “I’m very worried about Israel – very worried about it as a country [because] I think what’s happened the last couple months has revealed deep fissures in Israel’s support around the world,” Vance told Politico in March.

Last week, NATO held a summit in Washington celebrating its 75th anniversary. As at other recent summits, the alliance reaffirmed its promise that Ukraine will become a member of NATO at some undisclosed future date. While Ukrainians have shown admirable courage resisting Russia’s invasion of their country, NATO’s insistence that Ukraine will one day join the alliance only incentivizes Russia to continue its aggression. Rather than working to bring about a negotiated settlement, NATO’s policy, driven largely by the Biden administration, will ensure the slaughter in Ukraine continues. For decades, Russian officials made clear that putting Ukraine in NATO would cross a red line.

It’s commonly cited that undergraduates are significantly smarter than average, with IQs ranging from 115 to 130. But as a team of Canadian researchers showed in a recently published meta-analysis, that “fact” is woefully out of date … The results showed that undergraduates’ IQs have steadily fallen from roughly 119 to a mean of 102 today — just slightly above the population average of 100. In short, undergraduates are now no more intelligent on average than members of the general population … The recent findings also reflect the notion that being accepted to college today no longer requires the intelligence that it used to … “Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.” … Long gone are the days when universities were vaunted places of learning for inquiring minds.

An influential British author and columnist takes a critical look at the widely accepted view of World War II as the “Good War,” and the mythologized portrayal of Britain’s role in it. Peter Hitchens speaks about his recent book, Phoney Victory, to a large audience at the 2019 Edinburgh International Book Festival. Runtime: 56 mins. Although Britain came out of the war on the winning side, he stresses, Britain was hardly a “winner.” As a result of the war, Britain lost its empire and its wealth, and became a poor vassal of the USA. Britain’s fateful 1939 “guarantee” to Poland, he says, was made by British leaders who knew that it made war inevitable, or at least much more likely.

An award-wining American journalist and historian takes a close, critical look at the origins, course and consequences of the US role in World War II. In this lucid and well-researched survey, he examines President Roosevelt’s illegal efforts to push the US into war, the hidden background story of the Pearl Harbor attack, United States betrayal of its proclaimed principles, America’s wartime alliance with the Stalinist Russia, the British-American stab in the back of Poland, the hypocrisy and injustice of the Nuremberg trials, and more. With bibliography and index. The great American historian Harry Elmer Barnes praised this book as “the ablest revisionist study of the background, course and results of the Second World War. It will long remain the best survey for the general reader.”

The Republican Party posted its new platform last week … Israel is the only foreign country mentioned by name as one that the GOP vows to support. “We will stand with Israel, and seek peace in the Middle East,” the platform says. Referring to NATO allies, the platform reads, “Republicans will strengthen Alliances by ensuring that our Allies must meet their obligations to invest in our Common Defense and by restoring Peace to Europe.” A report from Israel Hayom notes that the same standard of allies investing more money in defense is not applied to Israel. … The GOP platform also targets pro-Palestinian protesters at college campuses, listing as one of its promises in all caps: “DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN.”

The philanthropist and billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman cut off millions of dollars in funding to Columbia University citing the school’s failure to address rising anti-Semitism, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. Zuckerman pledged $200 million in 2012 to endow an institute focused on interdisciplinary neuroscience research … Zuckerman founded Boston Properties, a real estate investment trust, and ran it for nearly 50 years before stepping down as chairman in 2016. In addition to U.S. News & World Report, where he serves as editor in chief and publisher, Zuckerman also owned the New York Daily News for 24 years until he sold it in 2017. The son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, Zuckerman has consistently donated to a variety of Jewish and pro-Israel causes.

Yered, who is suspected of involvement in the killing of Palestinian teen Qosai Mi’tan, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday that spitting at Christians is “an ancient Jewish custom.” The comment comes amid several incidents of Jews spitting on or near Christian worshippers in Jerusalem’s Old City, which were filmed on Sunday and Monday. This gives more evidence to the fact that these attacks have become widespread … Most of the individuals filmed in the act were Jewish youths who spat on church buildings or at Christian worshipers they encountered. Yered’s post says that “It’s a good time to mention that spitting near priests or churches is an ancient Jewish custom, and there’s even a special blessing in Jewish law that should be recited when you see a church” …

Leftists appear conflicted about Western history. On the one hand, they have endeavored to sever ties with it, tearing down statues, renaming places and species, and digging up graves. Yet, they also appear keen to transmogrify Western history — to rewrite it and reimagine it in order to bolster their contemporary worldview, advance their agenda, or to accommodate the sensitivities of their peers … The British Broadcasting Corporation has contributed to this genre … A forthcoming BBC historical drama series about the Battle of Hastings — between Anglo-Saxons and Norman-French forces for control of England in 1066 — will be played by a “diverse cast.” “King and Conqueror,” a CBS Studios coproduction picked up by the BBC, will apparently feature non-white actors as Anglo-Saxon characters.

It was September 1983, and a young senator named Joe Biden had a message for President Ronald Reagan. “I would not support any authorization for troops in Lebanon of any duration absent much more clearly defined goals and a reasonable prospect of attaining those goals,” Biden said, commenting on a proposed congressional war powers resolution. U.S. Marines had been deployed to Lebanon as part of peacekeeping mission in the wake of an Israeli invasion aimed at destroying Palestinian militias, and Congress was debating whether to continue the mission. A month after Biden’s warning, a truck bomb killed 241 American and 58 French peacekeepers in their barracks, and Reagan pulled out the Americans. Today, Biden is considering sending U.S. forces back into the fray … with far less permission from Congress.

… [In his book Uprising!, David Irving] discovered that the Communist regime and its terror machinery was viewed by the Hungarian people — and, it turns out, the U.S. State Department — as being almost entirely in the hands of Jews. A “Jewish Quartet” ruled the country … He cites the work of an American sociologist, Jay Schulman, who interviewed many Hungarian refugees after the events of 1956 and found that “the Communist leaders were perceived as Jews by almost 100 percent of the people we have seen.” … Uprising! is vintage Irving. Once again, the conclusions he draws after years of diligent research challenge critics to revise long-accepted interpretations.

… What is left is one of Europe’s ropiest nations, bowed by decades of poor political decisions, bad management and artistic and industrial decline. Fans in Frankfurt for the Euros have found a city of drug-addled zombies, broken fountains and unbridled crime. From Volkswagen, which never recovered from the emissions scandal of 2015, to Deutsche Bahn [national railway], which has some of the worst punctuality records in Europe (only 52 per cent of trains run on time) and a rolling stock whose problems make Britain’s railways seem advanced, Germany’s traditional once-great industrial prowess has been replaced by shambolic third-ratism.

The social media giant Meta announced Tuesday that it would ban derogatory or threatening references to “Zionists” in cases where the term is used to refer to Jews or Israelis rather than supporters of the movement to establish a Jewish polity. The change means that posts on Facebook and Instagram will now be removed if moderators determine they use “antisemitic stereotypes, or threaten other types of harm through intimidation or violence directed against Jews or Israelis under the guise of attacking Zionists,” Meta said in a blog post. Under Meta’s hate speech policy, users are not allowed to attack people on the basis of characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, disability and gender identity.

You cannot understand a conflict without understanding its history. That’s why historical context is routinely suppressed by corporate media, such as in the Palestinian-Israel conflict and the war between Russia and Ukraine. They don’t want you to understand. For establishment journalists, the violence in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023 and in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Understanding the Palestinian conflict from 1948 forward, and the Ukraine war from the 2014 overthrow of the Ukrainian government and the start of the civil war completely changes one’s perception. So establishment media suppresses this history because it’s a perception they don’t want you to have. It goes against its agenda to promote Western foreign policies, rather than reporting on them. 

Europe is experiencing “a wave of antisemitism” caused partly by the conflict in the Middle East, the EU’s leading rights agency has said, as it published a survey finding that nearly all respondents reported recent anti-Jewish prejudice. The survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found that 96% of respondents had experienced antisemitism in the year before the survey, which was carried out between January and June 2023. A total of 84% considered antisemitism to be a “very big” or “fairly big problem” in their country, while fewer than one in five (18%) thought governments were handling it effectively … The survey – of 8,000 Jewish people aged over 16 – was completed before the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel that led to ferocious reprisals on Gaza …

… In 2022, more than 105,000 cars were stolen in Canada – about one car every five minutes. Among the victims was Canada’s very own federal justice minister, whose government-issued Toyota Highlander XLE was taken twice by thieves. Early this summer, Interpol listed Canada among the top ten worst countries for car thefts out of 137 in its database … Interpol says it has detected more than 1,500 cars around the world that have been stolen from Canada since February, and around 200 more continue to be identified each week, usually at ports in other countries. Car theft is such an epidemic that it was declared a “national crisis” by the Insurance Bureau of Canada …

In early June, Al Jazeera aired a series of disturbing videos revealing what it described as “summary executions”: Israeli soldiers shooting dead several Palestinians walking near the coastal road in the Gaza Strip … These executions, which did not appear to have any security rationale, are consistent with the testimonies of six Israeli soldiers … Corroborating the testimonies of Palestinian eyewitnesses and doctors throughout the war, the soldiers described being authorized to open fire on Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians. The six sources — all except one of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — recounted how Israeli soldiers routinely executed Palestinian civilians simply because they entered an area that the military defined as a “no-go zone.” The testimonies paint a picture of a landscape littered with human corpses …

Columbia University said Monday that it has removed three administrators from their positions and will keep them on leave indefinitely after finding that text messages they exchanged during a campus discussion about Jewish life “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.” In a letter to the Columbia community, university president Minouche Shafik and provost Angela Olinto said the administrators have been permanently removed from their positions at the university’s undergraduate Columbia College … The university will also launch a “vigorous” antisemitism and antidiscrimination training program” … Among them was a message suggesting that a panelist could have used recent campus protests as a fundraising opportunity and another that appeared critical of a campus rabbi’s essay about antisemitism.

Political moderation has won a victory in Iran. Cardiac surgeon and former health minister Masoud Pezeshkian defeated stalwart conservative Saeed Jalili in a presidential runoff election, by a margin of 16.3 million votes to 13.5 million votes. Much of Pezeshkian’s platform centered on domestic issues such as loosening strictures regarding female dress. But he also called for engagement with the West in the interest of loosening sanctions against Iran — a contrast with Jalili’s message of self-reliance … The Iranian president is a power center in his own right and has influence over a wide range of policy. The ideological orientations of past Iranian presidents, which have ranged from hardliner to reformist, have made visible differences in Tehran’s foreign policy.

… We hear a lot about the evils of “Holocaust denial.” But those who question the conventional version of Nazi history are only retrospective and speculative. They don’t influence events. That can’t be said for those who assisted and glorified the Soviet Union under Stalin while it was still active and thereby facilitated its enormous crimes. I don’t mean Warner Brothers. I mean Joseph Davies. I mean Walter Duranty. And I especially mean the man who inspired this movie, Franklin Roosevelt. Stalin’s victims were in part his victims too. The cynical and mendacious Roosevelt had a strange soft spot for Stalin and Communism.

In the weeks before he found Jesus, the evangelist formerly known as General Butt Naked reckons he was sacrificing four or five children a day … Never had he killed with such intensity and ferocity as during those weeks in mid-1996 when Liberia’s first civil war reached its calamitous climax … Several times a day, the warlord and his battalion of boys, all as naked as he was, would emerge into the maelstrom, firing wildly as they added their own breed of terror to the chaos. Yet the blood-letting always began before a single bullet had been fired. Before each engagement, Butt-Naked, pagan priest and holy warrior, would lay a child face-down on the sacrificial table, slice open his victim’s back and pull out their still-beating heart, thus ensuring magical protection for the coming battle.

Prominent French Jews on Sunday lamented the electoral success of a political bloc that features a far-left party widely regarded as antisemitic in the country’s parliamentary elections. This reaction came in response to news that the New Popular Front, which includes the Socialist Party and the France Unbowed far-left party, or LFI, was predicted to have garnered the highest share of the vote in today’s final round, with 175 to 205 seats according to a preliminary count, followed by the French President Emmanuel Macron’s Together bloc (150 to 175) and then the far-right National Rally (115-150). Moshe Sebago, a rabbi for the Synagogue de la Victoire, told The Times of Israel that “it seems France has no future for Jews,” and said he advises young French Jews to leave for Israel.

Medical experts have estimated that as many as 186,000 Palestinian deaths could be attributed to Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the Gaza Health Ministry states that 37,396 people have been killed in Gaza. While the figures are disputed by Israeli authorities, they are widely considered to be accurate by the United Nations and World Health Organisation. However, according to medical researcher Rasha Khatib, public health expert Professor Martin McKee, and epidemiologist Professor Salim Yusuf, the conflict may be responsible for as many as four times as many deaths as currently reported. In an article published by medical journal The Lancet, they state that “armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence”. “Even if the conflict ends immediately,” …

… A sweeping new public opinion survey by pollsters affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has revealed how the Oct. 7attack on Israel solidified a national consensus on what used to be the country’s main political disagreement. When it comes to the Palestinians, the survey found, almost everyone is a right-winger now. “Oct. 7caused a complete collapse of the old Israeli left,” Hebrew University political psychologist Nimrod Nir, who led the survey, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Until a few years ago, I could find out which political camp you were in by asking you one question: Palestinian state, yes or no? Today, that question doesn’t really differentiate the two camps because no one supports the old idea of a Palestinian state.”

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Catholic authority in the Middle East, has strongly condemned the Israeli bombing of a Catholic school in Gaza City, which killed at least four Palestinians. “The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem is monitoring, with grave concern, the news of the raids, apparently launched by the Israeli army against the Holy Family School in Gaza this morning. Footage and media reports from the place include scenes of civilian casualties and of destruction in the compound,” the Latin Patriarchate said in a statement on Sunday. The statement says that the school, which is the property of the Latin Patriarchate, has been “a place of refuge for hundreds of civilians” and that “no religious personnel” currently reside there.

The U.S. reassured its reckless client that it will still bail them out in a war in Lebanon: “Senior US officials reassured a delegation of top Israeli officials visiting Washington this week that if a full-out war were to break out on Israel’s northern border between Israel and Hezbollah, the Biden administration is fully prepared to back its ally, according to a senior administration official.” Escalation with Hezbollah would be disastrous for Israel and Lebanon, but it seems increasingly likely that Netanyahu will do this … Supporting a new war in Lebanon would be terrible for U.S. interests and regional stability … Israel is on the brink of another major war, and instead of trying to pull them back from the edge the Biden administration is reassuring them that they will continue to have U.S. backing no matter what.

A decades-long trend toward secularization, which has come more slowly to America than many other developed countries, appears to be picking up speed in the United States, according to polling and other evidence. In 1965, a Gallup poll found that 70% of respondents said religion is “very important” in their lives. Today, fewer than half of Americans (45%) say religion is “very important.” … One-fourth of Americans (26%) said they were religiously unaffiliated in 2023, which is up from 21% in 2013, according to the Public Religion Research Institute … A Pew Research poll finds that 28% of U.S. adults describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when it comes to religion.

A Public Religion Research Institute poll has found that a slight majority of Americans are in favor of preserving Confederate history in the country. Support for the conservation of the “history and legacy” of the Confederacy came in at 52 percent, while 44 percent said they were opposed to efforts to uphold its legacy. In regards to monuments, only 9 percent of Americans said the monuments commemorating Confederate figures should be “destroyed,” while 26 percent said they should be “left in place as-is.” The vast majority were in favor of keeping them in place “with added information on the history of slavery and racism,” or moving them to museums, at 35 and 28 percent, respectively.

… Menachem Begin, who held that job [as Israel’s prime minister] in the late 1970s and early 1980s … had an earlier career as a hard-core terrorist. As leader of the Irgun group during World War II, Begin conducted a campaign of attacks, focused principally on British government and police targets, intended to drive the British out of Palestine … Begin’s terrorist campaign continued after the war … An especially notorious operation was the massacre in the village of Deir Yassin … Begin’s successor as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, had a similar history. He was co-leader of another Jewish terrorist group of the 1940s: Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang after its founder, which was considered even more extreme than the Irgun … Terrorism is a tactic. It is not a fixed set of bad guys, bad states, or bad groups.

… The Irgun was not the only Jewish terrorist group but it was the most active in causing indiscriminate terror in pre-Israel Palestine. Up to the time of the Jaffa attack, its most spectacular feat had been the July 22, 1946, blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, with the killing of 91 people – 41 Arabs, 28 Britons and 17 Jews. The other major Jewish terrorist group operating in Palestine in the 1940s was the Lohamei Herut Israel – “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel,” Lehi in the Hebrew acronym – also known as the Stern Gang after its fanatical founder Avraham Stern.

… By Blood and Fire is virtually a scenario of one of the most contemptible acts of unmitigated murder by terrorism of the Twentieth Century; the 1946 deliberate bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Author Thurston Clarke, who’s other literary credits are The Last Caravanand Dirty Money, has done a masterful job in research of a painful subject that places the blame for this horrible terrorist attack on the present [1982] Prime Minster of Israel, Menahem Begin. At just past noon on July 22, 1946, six members of Begin’s Irgun zvai leumi organization crept into the basement entrance of the King David Hotel, placed seven steel milk churns filled with gelignite and TNT in the popular Regency Bar, which then blew up the entire south wing of the hotel, killing 91, including British civil servants, Arabs and Jews, and injuring 46.

… The German economy is facing a fundamental challenge to its business model which cannot be addressed by removing regulations and cutting taxes. What is needed is a comprehensive transformation, which above all requires a new economic paradigm … The major decline in construction caused by high interest rates would provide an ideal opportunity for investment in social housing. Migration has made it very difficult, if not impossible, to find housing at reasonable prices in Germany’s major cities … As things stand Germany does not play a dominant role in high-tech research. In a recent ranking of research efforts in 64 innovative technologies … Germany finished behind India, South Korea and the UK.

Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian has been elected as Iran’s new president, beating his hardline conservative rival Saeed Jalili. The vote was declared in Dr Pezeshkian’s favour after he secured 53.3% of the more than 30 million votes counted … Dr Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old heart surgeon and member of the Iranian parliament, is critical of Iran’s notorious morality police, and caused a stir after promising “unity and cohesion”, as well as an end to Iran’s “isolation” from the world. He has also called for “constructive negotiations” with Western powers over a renewal of the faltering 2015 nuclear deal in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in return for an easing of Western sanctions.

… The danger posed by our foreign policy seemed to escape both candidates, who each tried to convince us they were “tougher” than the other. Despite Donald Trump’s sober and accurate warning that Joe Biden has taken us to the brink of World War III, his solution to the problem is doing more of the same. His stated foreign policy seems to be that were he in office the rest of the world would not dare do anything against his will … But the world does not work that way. Decades of US sanctions placed on any country that fails to do what Washington demands have backfired and led to the emergence of a block of countries united in their resistance to American dictates. Being “tough” on less-powerful countries may work…until it doesn’t. That’s where we are today. Neither candidate seems to realize that the world has changed.

This week’s presidential debate [June 27] made me both horrified and dismayed. Here was the world’s most powerful nation trying to decide which elderly candidate to select as its presidential candidate. Maybe the best expression is ‘cringe-worthy.’ Joe Biden was left looking feeble and halting before the bombastic Trump … The former president’s mouth is his biggest enemy as well as his strongest point. Biden was shockingly inarticulate. Few should doubt that President Biden is much too old for a second term … The Biden White House is under the thumb of a cabal of pro-Israel neocons allied to the extreme right wingers now in power in Israel … What a dark time in US history. America seems to be going the way of the old Soviet Union, with a decrepit leadership sitting atop a sea of corruption.

• … The ever more obvious symptoms of social decay are inevitable in a nation as unhealthy as today’s America. We understand that a nation guided by false principles, wishful thinking and unrealistic notions about society and history cannot and will not survive; that a society as inwardly sick as this one will not last … On this anniversary of American independence, it is altogether fitting that we recall the sacrifices and the outlook of the men who acted boldly out of principle, and risked everything in following the dictate of their conscience.

For the third year in a row, Vienna, the capital of Austria, is the world’s most livable city, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. The annual report, which aims to show how comfortable or livable a city is, examined 173 cities globally based on 30 indicators organized into five categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Boosted by its perfect scores for stability, health care, education and infrastructure, Vienna led this year’s list, followed closely by its Western European counterparts: Copenhagen, Denmark, in second place and Zurich, Switzerland, in third.  Vienna’s overall score took a minor hit in the culture and environment categories, “owing to a lack of major sporting events” …

… After these victories, the pro-Israel lobby radically changed its approach. Instead of showering funds on candidates in general elections, it moved to defeat progressive candidates in primaries, thus preventing them from sure victories in their urban safe seats in Democratic strongholds. AIPAC devised two major Political Action Committees (PACs) with names that sounded like they supported Democratic Party candidates: United Democracy Project and Democratic Majority for Israel. In fact, these were money machines funded largely by Republican billionaires and designed to defeat any Democrats who were too independent of AIPAC … The pro-Israel lobby has access to unlimited funds provided by Wall Street and CEO right-wing billionaires, many of whom donate to Donald Trump’s campaign.

… The defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) by Westchester County Executive George Latimer in the Democratic primary [June 25] was an undeniable victory by moderate Democrats who sought to retake Bowman’s seat … But Latimer’s win also provided the most dramatic proof of concept for a controversial new strategy by AIPAC, the country’s biggest pro-Israel lobby: using its super-PAC, United Democracy Project [UDP], to funnel millions of dollars in Republican donor funds into a Democratic primary … WhatsApp founder and billionaire Jan Koum donated $5 million to the UDP in this cycle, making him the UDP’s single biggest funder … Other than the UDP, Koum is a down-the-line Republican donor over the course of his political giving.

… Even though the Germans were the foe, more often than not, they treated us better than Stalin’s Reds. My dad was picked up by the Germans after being left for dead by Stalin’s troops, and was taken to one of their field hospitals. When he felt strong enough he left with the help of peasants and made his way home … For many in the West it may seem hard to believe, but Nazi occupation, despite reprisals, was better than being under Stalin. Because, for the first time, farmers could work the land free of the disastrous Bolshevik collective system, bumper crops were harvested. The Germans organized efficient food distribution. At last there was no starvation in the land.

A notorious German pensioner known as the “Nazi grandma” who has been jailed several times for denying the Holocaust was sentenced to another 16 months at her latest trial on Wednesday. A Hamburg court convicted Ursula Haverbeck, 95, of denying the Nazi genocide on several occasions, including in 2015 during the trial of a former Nazi camp guard. In their sentencing, the judges took into account her previous convictions and the fact she had “also used the proceedings to further disseminate her views”, a court spokeswoman told AFP. Haverbeck repeated her remarks on the Holocaust several times at the trial. Supporters of the pensioner showed up on Wednesday and repeatedly interrupted proceedings with heckling, the spokeswoman said.

… The Guardian has uncovered evidence showing how Israel has relaunched a controversial entity as part of a broader public relations campaign to target US college campuses and redefine antisemitism in US law … It included 80 programs … designed to carry out what Israel called “mass consciousness activities” targeted largely at the US and Europe … Its latest incarnation is part of a hardline and sometimes covert operation by the Israeli government to strike back at student protests, human rights organizations and other voices of dissent. Voices’ latest activities were conducted through non-profits and other entities that often do not disclose donor information. From October through May, [Israeli minister] Chikli has overseen at least 32 m shekels, or about $8.6 million, spent on government advocacy to reframe the public debate.

If one was hoping to distinguish how the two major presidential candidates view the most critical foreign policy issues of our time, the debate last night was a shattering disappointment. If one’s expectations were so low as to believe nothing but second-hand embarrassment would be gained from the exchanges last night, then maybe not so much. On Ukraine and Israel, President Biden and former President Trump inflated, conflated, and bloviated their way through 11 minutes of foreign policy discussion, only turning back to the topics in fleeting moments of taunting incoherence during the rest of the time on the stage.

Israel’s war on Gaza was a central feature of the first US presidential debate, with both current President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, trying to outdo the other in positioning themselves as a champion of Israeli interests … The incumbent and his challenger, on Thursday night, traded barbs and bragged of all the ways they have helped Israel, along with pledges of continued support and remarks that drew outrage for their racist connotations. Biden inaccurately claimed that all parties, except Hamas, had agreed to the ceasefire proposal he announced on 31 May and had secured a comprehensive agreement for the three-part ceasefire plan, including from Israel. … Trump criticised Biden’s stance, calling him a so-called “bad Palestinian” and accusing him of preventing Israel from “finishing the job” against Hamas.

People applying for naturalization in Germany will now be required to affirm Israel’s right to exist, under changes to the country’s citizenship law … The country’s naturalization exam will now include a number of new questions, according to a statement from the interior ministry. “In response to increasing antisemitism in Germany, the list of questions in the naturalization test has been expanded. New exam questions have been added on the topics of antisemitism, the right of the state of Israel to exist and Jewish life in Germany,” it said … In the aftermath of the October 7attacks, German lawmakers, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reiterated that Israel’s security is Germany’s “reason of state,” or matter of national interest.

A woman in Germany has been given a harsher sentence than a convicted rapist after she was found guilty of defaming him. Maja R, a 20-year-old from Hamburg, called him a “disgraceful rapist pig” and a “disgusting freak”, defamatory under German law. He was one of nine attackers who gang-raped a 15-year-old girl in a Hamburg park in 2020, in a case that shocked the city. Maja R was sentenced to a weekend in jail for her verbal attacks. The rapist was given a suspended sentence and served no prison time due to his age. The sentence has sparked anger over what critics see as the flaws in Germany’s judicial system, with disproportionate punishment for defamation.

The New York Times bestseller list is less likely to include works published by conservative authors even if their books posted sales figures that matched those of left-leaning writers, according to a study. An analysis conducted by The Economist magazine found that books published by conservative printing houses are 7% less likely to make it onto the Gray Lady’s weekly bestseller list, even if those books sell at the same rate as works put out by other publishers … The magazine found that among book titles that sell fewer than 5,000 copies per week, those from conservative authors are much less likely to crack the Times’ bestseller list … Conservative authors who do manage to get their work touted on the Times’ bestseller list for non-fiction rank on average 2.3 notches below other authors with similar sales figures.

The IHR has obtained from the U.S. National Archives a copy of a document dating from 1945 that provides new evidence that famed “Nazi hunter” Simon Wiesenthal collaborated with the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The author of the document, a “curriculum vitae” submitted to American military authorities at the former concentration camp at Mauthausen, in Upper Austria, is Wiesenthal himself. He claims in this autobiographical statement that he served the Soviet occupation regime in the east Galician city of Lwów (today Lviv) as an engineer and was well rewarded for his services to the Communist government. Wiesenthal’s 1945 account offers strong corroboration of a sworn statement he made to U.S. authorities in 1948 … that he had functioned as a “Soviet chief engineer” in Lwów during the 1939-41 Soviet occupation.

… In my view, Simon Wiesenthal was a liar and a fraud. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he was one of the biggest conmen of the 20th century. I spent four years working on a history of Nazi-hunting that was published last year, and the material I gathered on Wiesenthal was enough to make me scream out loud. When I started my book, I too believed that the great man was just that — great. But when I looked at all his memoirs, biographies and original archive material, I realised that, like so many others, the image I had built up of Simon Wiesenthal was hopelessly incorrect.

… Wiesenthal’s reputation as a moral authority is undeserved. The man whom The Washington Post has called the “Holocaust’s Avenging Angel” has a little known but well-documented record of reckless disregard for truth. He has lied about his own wartime experiences, misrepresented his postwar “Nazi-hunting” achievements, and has spread vile falsehoods about alleged German atrocities.