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Without seeking approval of the San Francisco Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools Maria Su plans to unveil a new Grading for Equity plan on Tuesday that will go into effect this fall at 14 high schools and cover over 10,000 students … Grading for Equity eliminates homework or weekly tests from being counted in a student’s final semester grade. All that matters is how the student scores on a final examination, which can be taken multiple times. Students can be late turning in an assignment or showing up to class or not showing up at all without it affecting their academic grade … Under the San Leandro Unified School District’s grading for equity system touted by the San Francisco Unified School District and its consultant, a student with a score as low as 80 can attain an A and as low as 21 can pass with a D.

… The Great Gatsby, unlike Fitzgerald’s first two novels, is as carefully and closely composed as a lyric poem. This time, Fitzgerald wrote slowly, with painstaking attention to each word, and the text is accordingly about a third the length of its rapidly written semi-potboiler precursors. Like a lyric poem — like his beloved Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” — The Great Gatsby is narrated by a sensitive speaker circling a magnetic and mysterious object, in this case Gatsby’s (corruptly) self-made prominence and doomed attempt to win Daisy from her cruel husband Tom, a situation radiant with both ecstatic desire and grisly violence, frozen in a frieze of evocative language and elusive symbols the meaning of which the narrator finally leaves for us to decide.

Mark Weber joins host Fróði Midjord in this probing look at one of the most influential and enduring of American novels. Although its story is set in the 1920’s “Jazz Age,” The Great Gatsby is uncannily relevant for our age. In this episode of the “Guide to Kulcher” series, Weber explains why F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is not only a brilliant and elegantly crafted work of literature, it’s also important for what it says about American society and the trajectory of American history. Runtime: 85 mins. Many more people are familiar with film versions than with the book, especially the glittery, sprawling adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and the mellower version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. But these screen adaptations fail to convey the novel’s deeper social-cultural message. Runtime: 90 mins.

The former prime minister of Israel Ehud Olmert has said Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, and that “thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed, as well as many Israeli soldiers”. Olmert, who was the 12th prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, wrote in an opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper and website Haaretz that “the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success”. He added: “Never since its establishment has the state of Israel waged such a war … The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.

Deal-making is said to be President Trump’s specialty, yet after five rounds of indirect talks with Iran – most recently just days ago – we seem as far away from an agreement as ever. The fifth round ended last Friday with no breakthrough, but at least no breakdown. However, each day that passes without a document signed on the table is another day for the neocons to maneuver the US president toward an attack on Iran. One way the war party does this is to continuously move the goal posts and change the rules of the game … Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in league with US neocons, has been warning us for 20 years that Iran is “months away” from a nuclear weapon – even though our own Intelligence Community recently re-affirmed that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon at all.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening to upend negotiations between the US and Iran by potentially attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. The report said that the threat from Israel led to a recent tense phone call between Netanyahu and President Trump and a series of meetings between senior US and Israeli officials … Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran if a deal isn’t reached, even though US intelligence agencies have recently reaffirmed there’s no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon … US officials are concerned that Israel could strike Iran with little notice, and a unilateral attack could still get the US involved.

In response to the killing of two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, DC, Republican Congressman Randy Fine suggested on Fox News that Gaza should be “nuked” like Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Fine was asked whether the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington should impact Gaza ceasefire talks, and he implied the enclave should be totally eliminated in response to the shooting, like the Japanese cities during WWII. “That needs to be the same here,” Fine said.

… The Republican US Representative from Brevard County, Florida, has repeatedly expressed extreme hatred toward Palestinians specifically and Muslims in general. His remarks on social media have been particularly inflammatory, including the use of hashtags such as “#BombAway,” “#StarveAway,” …. targeting Palestinians and those who stand with Palestinians’ rights. … The self-proclaimed “Hebrew Hammer”, Zionist and Jewish, Fine called Palestinians “Muslim occupiers” …

Kingsley Wilson, a Department of Defense official who has repeatedly echoed antisemitic rhetoric online, will serve as the Pentagon’s new press secretary, according to an announcement Friday. “Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DoD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President Trump!,” said Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman and a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a post on X Friday. … Wilson was appointed in January as deputy press secretary at the Pentagon and faced backlash from the Anti-Defamation League as well as several senators for a history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories. Last year, Wilson tweeted a neo-Nazi talking point about Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank, whose murder spurred the ADL’s creation.

Last week, Moody’s Ratings lowered the United States credit rating. Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings had already lowered the US rating. This new downgrade was driven by Congress’s failure to make any efforts to reduce the almost 37 trillion dollars national debt … According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the “big beautiful bill” would increase the national debt by at least 3.3 trillion dollars over ten years. This number is likely to rise because several moderate Republicans are threatening to vote against the bill unless the Medicaid and food stamps “reforms” are limited or dropped … President Trump and congressional Republicans will never cut spending until they stop pretending they can pay down the national debt, cut taxes, and continue massive spending on militarism.

The UN’s Under-Secretary-General just warned that 14,000 Palestinians children risk starving to death in the coming hours due to the total Israeli blockade of food, medicines and water. Thousands of other adults will also die due to famine or Israeli bombing in coming days. No amount of running old documentaries on Auschwitz or threatening pro-Palestinian protestors will cover up what the UN calls a `war crime.’ Nor will threatening financial hardship on those who protest Israel’s savage repression of Gaza. So far, Israel’s extreme right-wing government led by Benyamin Netanyahu has rejected all calls to aid the 2.2 million starving or injured Palestinians in the hellhole of Gaza. His government will eventually bend a little in the face of outrage from France, Canada, the UK, Australia and other western powers. Meanwhile, Israel has run amok …

The latest phase of slaughter and seizure on the part of Israeli forces in Gaza has commenced. Following relentless airstrikes that have left hundreds of Palestinians dead, Operation Gideon’s Chariots is now in full swing … The intention, according to the Israeli Defence Forces, is to expand “operational control” in the Strip while seeking to free the remaining Israeli hostages … Just prior to the latest assault, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in leaked quotes, revealed another dark purpose of the new military operation. “We are destroying more and more homes. They have no nowhere to return to,” he said … “The only inevitable outcome will be the desire of Gazans to emigrate outside the Gaza Strip.”  Here was a state official’s declaration of intent to ethnically cleanse a population.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Israel lobby have enlisted another partner in the frenzy to promote Holocaust education during nationwide protests over Israel’s genocide in Gaza … Since 1985 California has required HGE [Holocaust and genocide education] (HGE) as part of the school curriculum. Eighth grade English students read and discuss Anne Frank’s, “The Diary of a Young Girl. Tenth grade history standards require students to analyze the “Nazi policy of racial purity, its evolution into the ‘Final Solution,’ and the resulting murder of six million Jewish civilians.” … According to West Ed, the state has spent $34 million since 2019 to fund Holocaust-centered organizations promoting more HGE in K-12.

American and other Western elites complain ad nauseam, decrying the Iranians’ intransigent, devious, aggressive, and unreliable behavior. They claim Iran will not make or keep an agreement. Never forget, however, that Iran is more than five millennia old with a long history of diplomacy … The Iranians may be difficult, but one of the barriers to an agreement could be the Iranians’ wariness of the United States’ long pattern of broken agreements … U.S. intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE), which participated in extensive inspections as enforcement of the JCPOA, have consistently reported that Iran is not making nuclear weapons. On the other hand, the U.S. has for decades enabled the Israeli nuclear arsenal, which both the U.S. and Israel have consistently refused to acknowledge.

As U.S.-Iran talks continue, new polling finds that nearly two-thirds of Republicans support a negotiated deal on Iran’s nuclear program over military action intended to destroy it. Indeed, polling published by the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll program … showed that a majority of Americans, 69% — including 64% percent of Republicans — view a negotiated agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, with monitoring, as the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. In contrast, 14% of respondents, including 24% of Republicans, preferred the U.S. take military action to inhibit or destroy Iran’s nuclear program. At 78%, Democrats remained more likely to support a negotiated deal over military action overall.

Israel on Monday crowned Canada the “champion of antisemitism” and published a report blaming world leaders, universities, media outlets, and social networks for allowing or encouraging skyrocketing anti-Jewish sentiments around the world last year … Publication released Monday found that Jewish communities around the world were  increasingly threatened due to a rising tide of anti-Israel criticism from friend and foe alike … Among those singled out in the 153-page English-language report were the governments of South Africa, Ireland and Spain, which were accused of leading the way in antisemitic rhetoric by voicing opposition to Israeli actions or policies. Political leaders speaking out against Israel were accused of bolstering anti-Jewish sentiments, as were the United Nations, the TikTok social network, and Columbia University.

The Spanish prime minister on Wednesday described Israel as a “genocidal state” and said Spain “does not do business with such a country,” marking his strongest language yet on the issue. During a parliamentary question-and-answer session in Madrid, Pedro Sanchez responded to criticism from Gabriel Rufian, a Catalan member of parliament, who accused the Socialist leader of maintaining trade ties with Israel despite the Gaza war. “I want to make one thing clear here, Mr. Rufian. We do not do business with a genocidal state, we do not,” Sanchez stressed.

The Pentagon has ordered military leaders to remove and review library materials related to diversity, anti-racism and gender issues within the next two weeks … Military leaders must identify any library materials at their educational institutions that are “potentially incompatible with this core mission” and “appropriately sequester those materials” by May 21, according to the order … A temporary panel, the Academic Libraries Committee, will provide guidance on process and developed a list of search terms to help identify the materials requiring review. The terms include “affirmative action,” “allyship,” “anti-racism,” “critical race theory,” “discrimination,” “diversity in the workplace,” “gender identity,” “transgender people” and “white privilege,” among others.

… A national mythology has emerged that in 1941 the United States, appalled by the horrific policies of the Nazis, deliberately embarked on a crusade to rid the world of Hitler and to stop the Holocaust. D-Day was, according to this version of events, the decisive point in the “Good War,” when American troops, piously aware of the noble cause for which they fought, began the military operations that defeated Nazi Germany. Having beat Hitler and made possible a better world, the United States remains to this day what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declares “the indispensable nation.” … Stopping the mass murder of the Jews didn’t figure in any way in either American war aims or conduct … The main scene of the Nazis’ defeat wasn’t Normandy or anywhere else Americans fought, but rather the Eastern Front …

… On a recent visit to the USA I picked up two new books that are going to make a lot of people in Britain very angry … We were told that the 1939-45 war was a good war, fought to overthrow a wicked tyrant, that the war in Iraq would be the same, and that those who opposed it were like the discredited appeasers of 1938 … The two books … are Patrick Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler And The Unnecessary War and Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke … Many believe the 1939-45 war was fought to save the Jews from Hitler. No facts support this fond belief. If the war saved any Jews, it was by accident.

“Hitler never wanted war with Britain. He never wanted a world war,” says Pat Buchanan in this video clip from an interview at his home. The points he makes in this video clip in support of this view are explained in much greater detail in his book Churchill, Hitler and the `Unnecessary War’. Buchanan was a senior advisor to two American presidents. He was also a syndicated columnist, and founding member of three of America’s foremost public affairs shows. He is the author of ten books. Runtime: 4:22 mins.

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.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in an opinion piece, addressed US President Donald Trump and argued that the current Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is actively undermining core US interests in the Middle East and should no longer be considered an ally. Friedman asserted that this Israeli administration’s actions diverge significantly from US policy goals. “This Israeli government is behaving in ways that threaten hard-core U.S. interests in the region. Netanyahu is not our friend,” he wrote … The columnist also suggested Netanyahu placed personal political survival above national and US interests.

A replica of a monument to Joseph Stalin removed more than 50 years ago has been unveiled in a Moscow metro [subway] station in the latest move by President Putin’s government to encourage the veneration of the Soviet dictator. The original of the life-sized bas-relief was called “the People’s Gratitude to the Leader and Commander” … More than 100 monuments of Stalin have appeared across Russia since Putin, an ex-KGB officer, came to power in 2000, opposition journalists have calculated. Most of them have been erected since 2014 … However, the appearance in central Moscow of such a prominent monument to Stalin, who was responsible for the deaths of millions in labour camps known as gulags, is unprecedented. Videos posted online showed passers-by laying flowers there.

Almost everyone in the MAGA movement wants President Donald Trump to pursue an America First foreign policy. The only problem is that we haven’t even begun to define what that means … Knowing what you’re against is a start. But to govern we must transform America First from a reaction to past events into a prescription for present policy. This will take hard work and extensive deliberation. Before we can even begin debating specific policies, we must first agree upon the core principles that should undergird these policies. There are four basic principles that should inform an America First foreign policy … Right now, America First foreign policy is a pendulum swinging sharply away from neoconservative excess. These four principles can provide the grounding we need to stop the swing before we reach the other extreme.

… The long-standing belief that World War II was America’s last “good” war is receding as well. That point is further reinforced by a YouGov poll released Tuesday that sampled the opinions of Americans and residents of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain … The result in the United States shows a partisan split, with three-quarters of Republicans (76%) inclined to be proud of the U.S. [role in the war], compared to a clear majority of Democrats (56%) … There is a similar division of partisan sentiment about the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in late 1945 that hastened the war to a close. Fifty-four percent of Republicans called the atomic bombings justified, compared to 25% of Democrats.

In a presentation packed with startling facts and provocative observations, Weber takes aim at the conventional view of World War II as conflict between Good and Evil. He reviews and quotes from two recent revisionist books: Human Smoke, by Nicholson Baker, and Churchill, Hitler and `The Unnecessary War’, by Patrick J. Buchanan. Weber tackles a range of widely accepted myths, including the “Big Lie” that Hitler was trying to “conquer the world,” and discredits the iconic image of Winston Churchill as a great statesman. Runtime: 30 mins.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 2 that “Israel has decided to stop letting goods and supplies into Gaza,” where the ongoing Israeli genocide, with the loyal backing of the United States, has officially killed more than 51,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The announcement regarding the total halt of humanitarian aid amounted to yet another explicit declaration of the starvation policy that Israel is pursuing in the Gaza Strip, a territory that — thanks in large part to 17 consecutive years of Israeli blockade — has long been largely dependent on such aid for survival. Of course, this was not the first time that senior Israeli officials had advertised their reliance on the war crime of forced starvation in the current genocidal assault on Gaza.

… In recent weeks, the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has become strained as the two leaders are increasingly at odds over a strategy for tackling these challenges now that Hamas has been significantly degraded and Iran weakened, according to two U.S. officials, two Middle Eastern diplomats and two other people with knowledge of the tensions. Where Netanyahu sees an opportunity to finally take out Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump sees an opportunity to remove the threat of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon by making a deal … Twice in just this past week alone, Trump made public comments that rankled Netanyahu, the two U.S. officials, the two Middle Eastern diplomats and two other people with knowledge of the tensions said.

There is a dawning realization in official Israeli circles that President Donald Trump may not be quite the pushover that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had assumed. After all, the Netanyahu camp greeted Trump’s presidential victory with barely concealed glee … How quickly things appear to change … Now, he’s skipping Israel on the first Middle Eastern visit of his new presidency, and has reportedly stepped back from his once-close relationship with his Israeli counterpart. . … Though there have been no public declarations of a rift, the signs are increasingly visible. … What Trump seems to have realized — perhaps more clearly than many Israelis themselves — is that the current government in Jerusalem is not a true ally of the U.S.

Janice Fiamengo, a professor with the University of Ottawa, explains how feminists have re-written history to exclude Male Suffrage from the public consciousness to such a degree that most people believe that all men always had the right to vote. A distorted presentation of history has persuaded even university students and professors to believe that men withheld women’s voting rights for thousands of years. Runtime: 6:09 mins.

On Tuesday, the British government surprised everyone by making an extraordinary change in its position towards Israel as the minister, Hamish Falconer, condemned Benjamin Netanyahu’s move to ethnically cleanse Gaza. This followed a rare display of unity amongst MPs across party lines to demand that the government to immediately recognise the independent State of Palestine. One Tory MP, Mark Pritchard, said he was wrong to have supported Israel for the last 20 years. Here are highlights of the proceedings. Runtime: 12:53 mins.

More than a dozen senior Conservative MPs and peers have written to the prime minister calling for the UK to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, breaking ranks with their own party to do so. Seven MPs and six members of the House of Lords have signed the letter to Keir Starmer urging him to defy the Israeli government and give formal recognition to Palestine in advance of key UN talks next month. The letter, which has been seen by the Guardian, was written in late March soon after Israel broke its ceasefire with Hamas, diminishing hopes of an eventual two-state solution. On Monday, the Israeli cabinet went one step further, approving a plan to “conquer” the Gaza Strip and occupy most if not all of it.

… The alliance between the two countries had been thrust into the international spotlight after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s offensive in Gaza that followed. During that war, the administration of President Joe Biden sent some $18 billion worth of weapons to Israel, maintaining unprecedented levels of US backing … But opinion polls suggest support for Israel among the American public is dwindling … Currently, these shifts in public opinion haven’t yet prompted a major change in US foreign policy … Those who see a fraying relationship are paying particularly close attention to the views of younger Americans – a group that has shown the most marked shift in opinion since 7 October.

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe. In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide”. Israel has rejected accusations of “genocide” from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza … Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard … “States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools,” she added.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump — and many of his most prominent right-wing supporters — are directly linked to some of the most radically pro-war, pro-Israel organizations in the country. These connections form a sprawling web of lobbying groups, tech billionaires, and media figures who consistently promote Israeli interests above those of ordinary Americans. Why has the pro-Trump right suddenly pivoted from branding itself as a bastion of free speech to openly supporting censorship and state-led crackdowns? This MintPress News investigation uncovers a donor-driven advocacy network driving that ideological shift … This same network, once obsessed with defending free expression, now embraces censorship, blacklists, and government surveillance — so long as it targets their ideological opponents.

In years when so many politicians and foreign policy experts waxed poetically about their vision of a “rules-based international order” of enduring global harmony, John Mearsheimer persistently warned against the delusions and dangers of this outlook. For years he has been a leading voice for a realist foreign policy, an outlook impressively laid out in his most important work, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics … a hard-nosed examination of international politics rooted not in sentiment or presumed idealism, but in the immutable realities of power politics … While liberals speak of economic interdependence and international norms, and neoconservatives push regime change in the name of “democracy,” Mearsheimer contends that material power, not ideology, drives the foreign policy decision-making of government leaders.

The Second World War is often called “the good war.” … That description comes from the war’s popular portrayal as a necessary Manichean struggle between the good Allied powers and the evil Axis powers … It is understandable that many would see the Second World War as a morally clear-cut conflict between good and evil. This view has persisted for almost 70 years, particularly in the United States — reinforced by countless motion pictures, documentaries, and books … Since 1945, American political leaders have frequently invoked the mythology of the good war to justify their bellicose, reckless, and arrogant foreign policy. Those expressing misgivings or skepticism toward Washington’s wars have often been accused of “appeasement” or forgetting the “lessons of Munich.”

… Despite the rhetoric of modern neoconservatives, there is a long history of conservative skepticism about cheek-by-jowl U.S.-Israel relations. Throughout the early Cold War, conservatives in Congress — including Republicans — opposed American entanglements in the Middle East, drawing on an earlier noninterventionist consensus that valued restraint overseas and fiscal prudence at home … The growing conservative critique of unquestioning U.S. support for Israel and continued entanglement in the Middle East reflects a broader rejection of neoconservative orthodoxy, echoing the principled stands of past dissenters.

… The Israeli military has expanded its wars to the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, killing thousands more. These wars are creating many more enemies for the U.S. President Trump received approximately $100 million for his campaign and another $100 million for his Inauguration, according to press reports, from Miriam Adelson, widow of a Jewish multi-billionaire, apparently for a promise of total support for the Netanyahu government in Israel.

… For years, a vocal strain of American Christian Zionist leaders have supported policies that do precisely that — enabling the starvation and slaughter of Palestinians while underwriting broader wars that have decimated ancient Christian communities across the Middle East … What kind of religious leaders cheer the bombing of Gaza’s widows and orphans, left destitute by policies supported by American and Israeli leaders? Decades of war propaganda have numbed many Americans to the atrocities committed in their name. Yet a growing awareness is stirring both here and abroad … For decades, some American Christian Zionist leaders have backed Israel’s destructive actions, often at the expense of the very people Jesus called us to protect.

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the United States and Israel have been zealous in their efforts to disempower it. Israel has used its powerful hasbara (propaganda) machine to peddle absurdities about Tehran as a nuclear threat to the region and the world … Unlike Israel and the United States, it has not threatened nor bombed, invaded or occupied its neighbors … It is important to establish that the U.S. intelligence community — the collective work of America’s 18 spy organizations – has determined that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. It stated as much in its “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community” 2024 report: “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Israelis that “we are on the eve of an intense entry into Gaza.” Israel would, he said, capture territory and hold it: “They will not enter and come out.” … It is more likely that the offensive will sharpen everything that makes the Gaza war so controversial … Prolonging the war divides Israelis, kills even more Palestinian civilians and horrifies millions around the world, including many who describe themselves as friends of Israel. While the IDF attacks Hamas in Gaza, the government’s plan is that its soldiers will force some or all of the more than two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza into a small area in the ruins of the south … A new offensive will kill many more Palestinian civilians, deepen the misery of the survivors and bereaved inside Gaza, and widen the toxic rifts within Israel.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says that within half a year the Gazan population will be “concentrated” in a narrow strip of land … He adds that Gaza will “totally destroyed,” that the entire territory north of the Morag Corridor will be “empty,” and that in six months Hamas will not be a functioning entity … “Within a few months we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed,” Smotrich says … Adds the finance minister: “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

… Most Americans view World War II as the “good war” because the Allies defeated a regime bent on world domination … This is the World War II celebrated in so many Hollywood films … It is no wonder that this is the version of World War II most people know. But the actual war is one thing and our memory is another. The Western Allies’ D-Day heroics notwithstanding, it was the Red Army that defeated the Nazis, not the Americans … During WWII, there was a marked difference, for example, in how the ordinary soldier saw the conflict and how our government leaders understood it …. That war turned the United States from a republican, continental empire into a global, liberal one … Once you make egalitarianism part of a global crusade, it becomes nigh impossible to stop pursuing it, at home or abroad …

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.

Carthage is famed for its vast Mediterranean empire and its three bloody wars with Rome, which ultimately ended in utter destruction. But who were the Carthaginians? … We know precious little about the origins and distant past of the Carthaginians, or Punic people, as the Romans called them. Now, a team of researchers has extracted the DNA of scores of people buried in ancient Punic settlements across the western and central Mediterranean, including Carthage itself, and has made a startling discovery … But by the time Carthage became a major power, its people had almost no genetic link to their Levantine founders … Instead, it seems the Punic people were exceptionally diverse, and derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of ancient people from Sicily and Greece.

Wall Street firms have taken over the manufacturing industries for first-responder vehicles in the United States, reports Kevin Walmsley, an American businessman who lives and works in China. After years of consolidation and the closure of dozens of production lines, he notes, three companies control 80% of the US industry. Costs for fire trucks of all types have soared, along with delivery times. Ladder trucks, for example, jumped from $1.3 million to $2.3 million each in just two years. Cities typically wait over four years to receive their rigs, after placing deposits for them. Firms also cut back on supply of replacement parts … These were contributing factors in the Pacific Palisades fires, which ravaged Los Angeles and caused over $52 billion in damages.  Runtime: 12 mins.

… Despite these expenditures, the Ukraine War has exposed some dramatic inadequacies. We have learned that America’s arsenal as it stands today would be quickly depleted in any future sustained conflict. And we’ve learned that our allies are in far worse shape. This raises the question of how we can spend so much on our national security but still have a military that seems so woefully underprepared for a major conflict … Consider the fact that most of the first-person view (FPV) drones — drones controlled by a remote pilot using video cameras — that are being used on the battlefield in Ukraine and elsewhere are built with parts made primarily in China … We learned very early on in the Ukraine War … that the incredibly expensive tanks we gave to the Ukrainians were defenseless against very inexpensive FPV drones.

California’s economy has overtaken that of the country of Japan, making the US state the fourth largest global economic force. Governor Gavin Newsom touted new data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis showing California’s growth. The data shows California’s gross domestic product (GDP) hit $4.10 trillion (£3.08 trillion) in 2024, surpassing Japan, which was marked at $4.01 trillion. The state now only trails Germany, China and the US as a whole. “California isn’t just keeping pace with the world – we’re setting the pace,” Newsom said.

Millennials lack basic knowledge of World War II, with nearly half of 18-34-year-olds not knowing Britain fought for the Allies and more than one in ten thinking the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ refers to when the Nazis surrendered, researchers claim … While nearly two-thirds of millennials (61%) claim to have good knowledge about the Second World War, 41% did not know that the UK fought on the side of the Allies … Two-thirds of millennials are not even aware which countries emerged victorious from the conflict … Indeed, millennials are more interested in who is top of the music charts (22%), the names of celebrity babies (20%), and how many followers they have on social media (20%), than what happened during World War II.

“Celebration? What celebration? It feels more like a funeral” – the damning words of a former senior Nato figure to describe this week’s ceremonies marking Victory in Europe Day … VE Day was a joint Allied triumph over Nazi Germany … But 80 years on, we’re surrounded by countless news and academic analyses breathlessly singling out Donald Trump as the modern day nail in the coffin of the strong transatlantic bonds forged back then. In Europe, the American president is viewed by many as the slayer-in-chief of decades-old common values; shared visions of security, democracy and rule of law … A YouGov poll in March indicated that, 80 years on from VE Day, a large majority of Western Europeans (78% in the UK, 74% in Germany, 75% in Spain) now view the White House as a big threat to peace and security in Europe.

US President Donald Trump says he plans to rename Veterans Day – known as Remembrance Day in the UK – as “Victory Day for World War I” to celebrate American contributions to the conflict. The president also wants to name VE Day on 8 May as “Victory Day for World War II”, he said on his Truth Social social media platform … The days mark the end of World War I in 1918 and Germany’s surrender to the allies in 1945, respectively. In his late-night post, Trump said that “many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result” in the Second World War … The US has not historically recognised VE Day. The country was still at war with Japan on the Pacific front for several more months after conflict ended in Europe.

The US played the most significant role in achieving victories in the two world wars, President Donald Trump claimed on Friday. Trump made the claim while announcing he has designated May 8 as Victory Day for WWII and November 11 Victory Day for WWI. Nazi Germany officially capitulated to the Allied forces on May 8, 1945, shortly after Soviet troops captured Berlin … “Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Thursday.  “Nobody was close” to the US “in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance,” Trump claimed. “We won both Wars,” he wrote, adding that “We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”

… 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.

Germany’s defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era that, in many ways, was worse than the destruction wrought by war. In a sobering and courageous new book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the ruined and prostrate Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or starvation.

… Between 1945 and 1950, Europe witnessed the largest episode of forced migration, and perhaps the single greatest movement of population, in human history. Between 12 million and 14 million German-speaking civilians — the overwhelming majority of whom were women, old people, and children under 16 — were forcibly ejected from their places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are today the western districts of Poland … Most disturbingly of all, tens of thousands perished as a result of ill treatment while being used as slave labor (or, in the Allies’ cynical formulation, “reparations in kind”) in a vast network of camps … By any measure, the postwar expulsions were a man-made disaster and one of the most significant examples of the mass violation of human rights in recent history.

… The media and big spenders in both parties are screaming about how President Trump’s budget proposal contains large reductions in federal spending … While President Trump is proposing many necessary cuts in federal agencies and programs, including those concerning the use of taxpayer money to promote “wokeness,” his budget increases military spending to around a trillion dollars. It also makes no changes to Social Security or Medicare. This means President Trump’s supposed radical spending plan does not reduce spending on three of the four largest items in the federal budget … The truth is that, if the president and Congress were serious about cutting spending, they would start by slashing the Pentagon’s budget. Very little of the military spending actually goes to defending the American people.

Hundreds of companies are deliberately shunning white men for jobs amid pressure to make workplaces more diverse, a survey has found. A poll of 1,216 of American businesses with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies found that one in ten avoid hiring white men altogether and six in ten human resource (HR) managers put diversity over qualifications when selecting candidates. The study, conducted by website Resume Builder, also found that one in three HR managers believe that “reverse discrimination” occurs because of DEI policies. Three-quarters suspect that these policies were introduced “in part for appearances”.

Amnesty International said in its annual human rights report that Israel is carrying out a “live-streamed genocide” as the world looks on. “Since 7 October 2023 – when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages – the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,” Amnesty Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said in an introduction to the report. “States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals, and schools,” Callamard added.

Last month, a report for the UN Human Rights Council affirmed — as Palestinians have long asserted — that Israel has systematically employed sexual violence and gender-based crimes against Palestinian women, men, and children since October 7. The investigation, released alongside harrowing testimonies from survivors and witnesses, civil society representatives, academics, lawyers, and medical experts during a two-day hearing in Geneva, reached several key conclusions that, in my view, demand immediate global attention and action. First, Israeli forces’ use of gender-based violence has escalated dramatically in both scale and intensity since October 7, becoming “systematic.”

China’s industrial proficiency is shocking to manufacturing experts. Their degrees of automation, of engineering expertise, and supply chain domination have no close peer across other modern economies. China’s latest innovation is “dark factories”, massive production centers that produce complex products with no humans involved … Chinese smart manufacturing is likely the largest in the world, today, and will more than double in size by 2030. Chinese artificial Intelligence systems are already in place, cost little, and its engineers are strongly proficient in their applications. Chinese electricity costs far less than peer countries. And, here again, China’s monopolistic control over the global raw materials and logistics chains is probably an insurmountable hurdle for North America, Europe, and other Asian countries. Runtime: 11 mins.

… Jewish advisers in Trump’s second term are helping to undo whatever moderation characterized his first term. They are driving key initiatives, including detaining and deporting foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests … Here is a look at the key Jewish figures in Trump’s inner circle: Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East … Howard Lutnick, secretary of commerce … Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser … Will Scharf, White House staff secretary … Laura Loomer, the far-right influencer with access to Trump.

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler killed himself in a bunker in the German capital Berlin as Soviet Red Army soldiers closed in. But first he married his lover, Eva Braun, and dictated a final will and testament to Traudl Junge, who typed several copies for posterity. In 1989, Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s secretaries who was in the bunker when he died, shares her testimony in this BBC “Witness History production. She talks about Hitler as a boss and as a human being, the situation in Berlin at the time, and how she survived. Runtime: 9:11 mins.

A day before his death in his beleaguered command center in central Berlin, Adolf Hitler summoned Traudl Junge, his youngest secretary, for an important task. Standing at a large table in the conference room of the cramped underground concrete bunker complex, he paused a bit before he began dictating “My Political Testament,” a declaration that would be his final words to the German people, as well as a statement for coming generations … Hitler also sought to explain why things had turned out so calamitously, and he anticipated accusations that would be made against him in the years ahead.

… Like many others who came into contact with Hitler before the Second World War, [Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie] King was plainly in awe of him, as is clear in the approximate 7,400-word moment-by-moment assessment of the meeting [in June 1937, in Berlin] he dictated to [secretary] Pickering for his diary. He praised Hitler more than once: “I spoke … of what I had seen of the constructive work of his regime, and said that I hoped that that would continue … That it was bound to be followed in other countries to the great advantage of mankind.” … “He has a very nice, sweet, and one could see, how particularly humble folk would come to have a profound love for the man… As I talked with him, I could not but think of Joan of Arc. He is distinctly mystic.” … “I believe the world will yet come to see a very great man … in Hitler.”

Lyndon B. Johnson led the nation in an untraditional manner at times, going so far as to conduct meetings with his advisers while seated on the toilet. The 36th U.S. president was known for a method of persuasion called the “Johnson treatment,” in which he won political victories either through flattery or bullying. One of LBJ’s most common tactics was inviting people into the bathroom and continuing the conversation, often leaving the door wide open and creating an awkward environment … He was known to have aides stand just outside the shower, and he kept the conversation going while drying himself off afterward … The president’s eccentricities weren’t limited to just the toilet, either. LBJ once completely stripped down while conducting an interview with reporters aboard Air Force One, continuing the conversation as normal.

The U.S. government has banned American government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential new directive. Though some U.S. agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “non-fraternization” policy, as it is known, has been unheard of publicly since the Cold War. It’s not uncommon for American diplomats in other countries to date locals and even marry them.

New figures from the City of Vienna show that children of Islamic faith now make up the largest single religious group in the city’s primary and secondary schools, accounting for 41.2 percent of all pupils. It’s a slight but noticeable increase from 39.4 percent last year – and it’s already fueling new discussions about diversity, integration and how schools can help shape shared values in an increasingly pluralistic city … The numbers reflect how Vienna’s student population has been changing over time. While the proportion of Muslim students has grown, Christian faiths now account for a combined 34.5 percent, including 17.5 percent Roman Catholic and 14.5 percent Orthodox. A further 23 percent of pupils declare no religious affiliation at all.