In a new show dedicated to making sense of current affairs, “Weekly Roundup With Mark Weber,” host Frodi Midjord and historian Mark Weber provide insightful, “big picture” perspective on important events.
IHR NEWS AND VIEWS
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Secretive and unlawful collusion by an American leader with a foreign power that subverts the US political process is not new. The most far-reaching and flagrant case was by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940-41. In the months before the US formally entered the war in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt did everything he could to get America into the global conflict without actually declaring war. The cooperation with British intelligence by the President and other high-ranking US officials during that period was quite illegal. Such collusion by the nominally neutral US to further the war aims of a foreign government was contrary to both US law and universally accepted international norms.
Revisionism as applied to World War II and its origins (as also for previous wars) has the general function of bringing historical truth to an American and a world public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda ... Revisionism brings to the artificial frenzy of daily events and day-to-day propaganda, the cool but in the last analysis glorious light of historical truth. Such truth is almost desperately needed in today's world.
... Unless and until we can break through the historical blackout, now supported even by public policy, and enable the peoples of the world to know the facts concerning international relations during the last quarter of a century, there can be no real hope for the peace, security and prosperity which the present triumphs of science and technology could make possible. The well-being of the human race, if not its very survival, is very literally dependent on the triumph of revisionism.
… Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The “Jewish lobby” is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. As long as the “very powerful” Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the Jewish-Zionist grip on the US political system and the American media, the Zionist oppression of Palestinians, and the Israeli threat to peace.
Mark Weber explains why the work of the IHR in countering the forces of historical deceit, bigotry and cultural distortion is vitally important. An awareness of factual history is essential to an understanding of ourselves and the great issues of our age, says the IHR director in this five-minute video presentation. Unless and until the interests that have gripped our nation are clearly identified and discredited, he says, there will be no change in basic policies or direction.
In a remarkable but under-reported address, one of America’s most prominent and influential political figures has acknowledged the “immense” and “outsized” Jewish role in the US mass media and cultural life. Joe Biden – now President of the U.S. – said that this has been the single most important factor in shaping American attitudes over the past century, and in driving major cultural-political changes. “Jewish heritage has shaped who we are – all of us – as much or more than any other factor in the last 223 years. And that’s a fact,” Biden told a gathering of Jewish leaders in Washington, DC.
In an age when vast amounts of information from a wide range of sources are instantly available online, it can be difficult to sort out what’s reliable, useful, and trustworthy. In response to many inquiries over the years, here are recommended books on five important historical topics: The Second World War, American History, International Relations, Communism, Marxism and the Soviet Union, and, Zionism, US-Israel Relations, and the ‘Jewish Question.’ This listing is neither exhaustive nor final. Additional subject categories and titles are planned, and descriptions may be revised or updated.
We’ve always understood that our work promoting historical awareness and unmasking the enemies of peace and understanding enrages powerful groups that smear us, and keep trying to take us down. We’re not discouraged by the hate campaign against us. We regard it as a badge of honor. They target us because we’re effective. Now we’re up against what may be the greatest threat we’ve ever faced … In spite of such difficulties, we continued throughout the past year to reach a large, global audience … Now, during this time of rampant media bias, new assaults against free speech, routine historical distortion, stifling “political correctness,” and social and racial discord, the need for a vital and effective IHR has never been greater.
On Nov. 27, 2020, Facebook removed the Institute for Historical Review from its popular social media platform. No reason was given for the abrupt measure, but it was hardly a surprise. It came right after the publication of three widely distributed media items that complained that Facebook had still not dropped the IHR. These articles were in line with a decade-old campaign by Jewish-Zionist groups to get social media platforms to remove the IHR and other organizations they regard as harmful to their interests and agenda … People who care about accuracy and fairness in the media should understand the methods used by those who, in the name of “fighting hate,” work to silence voices they don’t like.
Mark Weber, an American historian and director of the Institute for Historical Review, was banned from Britain in April 2015 by order of Theresa May, who later became the country’s Prime Minister. The decision to ban him was “taken personally” by May while she was serving as Home Secretary ... The Home Office finally ... accepted that the reasons for the 2015 exclusion order were insufficient, but cited new justifications to support a continued ban ... Weber explained in some detail just why the new examples of allegedly “unacceptable behavior” presented by the agency to justify a continued ban against him “lack any reasonable basis in fact,” are “weak, unconvincing or irrelevant,” and are “applied in an arbitrary way.” ... May has been one of the most ardently pro-Zionist political figures in modern British history.
… The development of a working philosophy of history is the most urgent, as well as the most difficult, task of Twentieth Century thought … The future will always resemble the past because human nature does not change; men will always be actuated by the same basic desires and motives … The social and political questions of our day are all primarily historical problems. To think about them rationally, we must begin by consulting the record of human experience in the past. And we soon realize that if only we knew enough about history – and understood it – we should have the answers to all our questions.
American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? ... The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere -- among those who support Israel but don't really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel - and Zionism - often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives ... General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."
Nine-Eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the 9/11 catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president in recent decades had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people.
In this five-minute video presentation, IHR director Mark Weber explains the Institute’s mission and record. “We strive to provide factual information and sound perspective on US foreign policy, World War Two, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Middle East history, the Jewish-Zionist role in cultural and political life, the ‘Holocaust’ remembrance campaign, war propaganda, and much more.” The IHR, is also explains, is an “independent educational center and publisher that works to promote peace, understanding and justice through greater public awareness of the past, and especially socially-politically relevant aspects of modern history.”
The most widely anticipated speech ever given by Adolf Hitler was his address of April 28, 1939. It’s also widely regarded, even by his most vehement critics, as perhaps his most impressive address ever. It was a response to a much-publicized message from US President Franklin Roosevelt, who had called on the Chancellor to promise not to attack 31 countries. Broadcast on radio stations around the world, Hitler’s two-hour Reichstag speech was heard by millions. In the US, major radio networks broadcast it live. The next day, it was the leading news item on the front page of every major US daily newspaper. In his address, Hitler laid out his view of Germany’s place in the world, lucidly reviewed his government’s foreign policy objectives and achievements in recent years, and concluded with an eloquent, imposing retort to the US President.
To deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression, both the US and German governments launched innovative and ambitious programs. Although President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” measures helped only marginally, the Third Reich’s much more focused and comprehensive policies proved remarkably effective. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was flourishing. And while Roosevelt’s record in dealing with the Depression is pretty well known, the remarkable story of how Hitler tackled the crisis is not widely understood or appreciated.
... I’m going to try to extract from my experience certain basic sort of tactics that I think the Jewish lobby has used over the years pertaining to my particular situation ... The first and major tactic that I discovered in their attack on me was their reliance on lies -- just straight-up lies. There’s no other way to describe it, just telling lies. Many of the categories that I will enumerate overlap, and many of them could also come under this general rubric of telling lies. But I think that if one had to isolate a single tactic, it was a tactic of telling lies. I think they’ve elevated telling lies to a very high artistic form.
... While it’s an artistic achievement and grand entertainment, “Darkest Hour” is badly flawed history ... “Darkest Hour” reinforces the widespread belief that Churchill’s speeches played a crucial role in sustaining British morale. A scholar who has carefully looked into the matter has found that this view is largely a myth ... “Darkest Hour” reinforces the widely held impression, which Churchill himself encouraged, that an honorable or lasting peace with Hitler was simply not possible. But as he himself later acknowledged, that’s simply not true ... The British leader’s famous “We shall never surrender” speech was little more than “sublime nonsense,” says British historian John Charmley.
A public service ad by the Institute for Historical Review at San Francisco transit stations has generated wide media attention. The electronic display board, which proclaims “History Matters!,” went up on Sept. 3 at two downtown stations, where it’s scheduled to remain until the end of the month. The Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority (BART) has come under criticism for accepting the billboard, but the agency explains that it has no legal basis for rejecting it. The ad has prompted considerable media coverage, including reports by several California daily newspapers, local television stations, Fox News, Jewish community outlets, and other US based media, as well as by three major British newspapers. The “History Matters!” message is very much in keeping with the Institute’s work and purpose, says the IHR director.
We’re looking for a suitable person to join our team here in southern California, on a part-time or full-time basis. He or she will work on publishing and outreach, including social media, and will handle some website formatting, and office tasks. He or she must be able to write and edit with skill and discernment. He or she must have good communication skills, a responsible attitude, initiative, and regard for the ideals and goals of the IHR.
As dawn was breaking on Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, military forces of Germany, Finland and Romania suddenly struck against the Soviet Union. The stunning news of this attack was announced to the world by German radio at 5:30 that Sunday morning, when Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels broadcast the text of a proclamation by Adolf Hitler to the German people that laid out his reasons for the historic offensive. Following that was the broadcast of Germany's declaration of war against the Soviet Union. This was in the form of a diplomatic note to the Soviet government. Because Hitler's proclamation and the German Foreign Office declaration explain at some length the reasons and motives for the fateful decision to strike against the USSR, these are documents of historic importance. With a foreword by Mark Weber.
In line with a recent crackdown policy, YouTube has “restricted” a number of independently produced videos of IHR talks and presentations. To watch a “restricted” video, the viewer must first click through a warning screen. Also, comments on the video are not allowed, and the number of views is not given. Even worse, YouTube will never “suggest” a “restricted” video to viewers, which is how many people find our videos. While YouTube claims that its “restriction” policy is aimed at videos with “inflammatory religious or supremacist content,” applying it to IHR videos is absurd. YouTube restricts our voice not because we have violated any objective standards, or because we have done anything wrong or illegal -- but because it doesn’t like what we say.
... In Andernach about 50,000 [German] prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement ... I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty.
… In August 1941 Hitler permitted a Red Cross delegation to visit the camp for Soviet POWs in Hammerstadt. It is these contacts that resulted in an appeal to the Soviet government, requesting that it should send food parcels for our officers and men. We are prepared to fulfill and comply with the norms of the Geneva convention, Moscow said in its reply, but sending food in the given situation and under fascist control is the same as making presents to the enemy … How great was Stalin's hatred for those who had found themselves behind enemy lines. It made no difference: who, where, how and why? Even the dead were considered to be criminals.
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.
The German soldiers of World War II have often been portrayed, both during the war and in the decades since, as simple-minded, unimaginative and brutish ... As specialists of military history who have looked into the matter agree, the men of Germany’s armed forces -- the Wehrmacht -- performed with unmatched ability and resourcefulness throughout the nearly six years of conflict ... High-ranking British military figures were similarly impressed with the skill, tenacity and daring of their adversaries. “Unfortunately we are fighting the best soldiers in the world – what men!,” exclaimed Lt. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the 15th Army Group in Italy, in a March 1944 report to London.
… Little as we know about the events of the future, one thing is certain: the moving forces of the futures will be none other than those of the past – the will of the stronger, healthy instincts, race, will to property, and power.; Society is based on the inequality of men. This is a fact of nature.; Who would have thought that history lessons and the political education of the people are one and the same?; The great man lives in such a way that his existence is a sacrifice to his idea.; This is our task: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us, this reality with which fate has surrounded us; to live in such a way that we be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.; The essence of religion is perhaps most clearly recognized in what it does not tolerate.
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.
The grim fate of the 15 million German civilians who found themselves trapped in the path of the Red Army in the closing months of World War II, or on the wrong side of the re-drawn postwar borders, is not a topic that has tended to excite the interest of historians. And the general public, which is subjected to constant reminders about wartime Nazi brutality, is certainly not aware that at least two million Germans lost their lives in the course of flight and mass expulsion from their ancestral homes in Eastern Europe. Alfred de Zayas, a graduate of Harvard Law School who earned a doctorate in history at the University of Göttingen in Germany, has devoted much of his professional career to setting the record straight.
... I learned that the Office of State Security [in Poland] ran 227 prisons for German civilians like Lola's. It also ran 1,255 concentration camps, and I interviewed four of the commandants. They were also Jews ... He picked up a wooden stool and he started beating the Germans to death. For this one camp, I found the death certificates for 1,583 Germans. In other camps and other prisons, thousands of German civilians died. German men, women, children, babies. At one camp there was a barracks for fifty babies.
… The American public has long thought of the Allied effort in World War II as a “great crusade” that pitted good and decency against Nazi evil. Even after all these years, it is likely that the last thing the public wants to learn is that vast and unspeakable wrongs were committed by both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during the war and its aftermath. It flies in the face of that reluctance for MacDonogh to tell “the brutal history” at great length [in his book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation]. That willingness is commendable for its intellectual bravery.
... Even many of those who readily acknowledge the tremendous influence of American film and television seem not to fully comprehend the formidable scope of the power behind Hollywood, or the outlook and agenda of those who wield that power ... Hollywood, together with the rest of the Jewish-Zionist dominated US media, sensationalizes and distorts current events, systematically falsifies history, promotes debased “entertainment” and perverse cultural standards, and makes possible the Jewish-Zionist hold on American political life ...
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, based in Los Angeles, is one of the most influential Jewish organizations in the world ... Although it claims to promote "tolerance," and makes a pretense of concern for humanity, the Center's real agenda is a narrowly Jewish-Zionist one. The Wiesenthal Center is a staunch supporter of Israel and its Jewish supremacist regime. It fervently defends Israel’s policies of oppression, occupation, dispossession, and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews.
Fraudulent quotations attributed to Hitler and other Third Reich leaders have been widely circulated for years. Such quotes are often used by polemicists -- of both the left and the right -- to discredit their ideological adversaries by showing that Nazis held similar views. Here's a look at a few of the many remarks falsely attributed to Hitler and other top Nazis.
... If I'm known for anything as a historian, apart from being a pain in the neck, it's because I uncover things. And uncovering things does not necessarily mean you go into the archives and see something and say: "Look at this, this is something quite extraordinary." If you go into the archives long enough, ten or twenty years, you become what I would call a "gap-ologist" ... Now what a scandalous statement that is! Here's the one country, Germany, trying to prevent anwar and the other country -- Roosevelt, neutral -- trying to fan the flames of anti-German feeling to fuel the war. Yet it is the Germans who are called the criminals, and the Americans who do the prosecuting.
NEWS AND COMMENT
The country’s cultural divides and political divides have become one and the same, according to a new national NBC News poll. The poll finds stark partisan differences on major cultural issues — racism, accepting LGBTQ people, the term “woke,” and even the fundamental goals of American society. Half of Americans — 50% — believe society should be promoting greater respect for traditional social and moral values, while 42% say society should be encouraging greater tolerance of people with different lifestyles and backgrounds. That perspective has stayed almost completely stagnant since the poll asked the same question in 2013. Digging into those numbers reveals a deep partisan divide.
The state of California is one step closer to paying reparations to Black residents whose ancestry goes back to the American slave trade. The California Reparations Task Force released estimates, as well as breakdowns of the methodology used to determine the amounts, on Monday ahead of a critical vote that will take place later this week … As outlined by the San Francisco Chronicle, an eligible resident who lived in California their whole life and was 71 or older could, in theory, receive as much as $1.2 million … Those who qualify could receive various payments to compensate for the injustices of “over-policing” of Black communities, discrimination in housing, and inequity in the health care system …
… On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal … So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign - using their high-level government titles - to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.” In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election.
… Tucker Carlson was one of a kind among commentators in the vast journalistic wasteland otherwise known as television news. Indeed, on issue after issue in recent years Tucker treaded forthrightly where his MSM competitors in both print and broadcast media feared to go. Perhaps that was because he was deeply informed, historically read and literate and possessed of an incisive, open, inquisitive mind that was not about to play passive stenographer to either the Deep State or the lobbies and corporate interests that suffuse the Washington beltway. Accordingly, Tucker has been nearly alone in smoking out the big issues of our time with a unique breadth, edge and consistency that neither Republican shills like Sean Hannity nor DNC conduits like Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow could hope to approach.
Two members of New Hampshire's Executive Council are calling for the removal of a historical marker, saying they're appalled by a decision to commemorate a woman who was a staunch member of the Communist Party. The historical marker for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was installed earlier this week. Flynn was a feminist and labor activist, and founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, who joined the Communist Party in 1936, causing her expulsion from the ACLU in 1940. "She's a figure of great significance in terms of history," activist Arnie Alpert said. She was sent to prison in 1951 under the Smith Act, which set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. The two Executive Council members said it promotes communist propaganda because of Flynn's ties to the former Soviet Union.
Harry Belafonte, who died April 25 at age 96, looked to Jewishness at first to express his hope for America, and eventually to convey his bitter disappointment in the nation’s destiny. Born in Harlem, Belafonte joined the U.S. Navy as a teenager where he learned about antisemitism and “Jews being crucified in gas chambers,” as he told a gathering at Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple, New Jersey, in 2016. Postwar drama studies at Manhattan’s New School for Social Research acquainted him with a group of talented Jewish contemporaries … His pride may be linked to the fact that as he revealed belatedly in a 2011 memoir, he had a Dutch Jewish paternal grandfather … He persisted in engaging with Hebrew and Israeli culture, despite occasional disappointments with Jewish professional colleagues.
The Israeli authorities are using an experimental facial recognition system known as Red Wolf to track Palestinians and automate harsh restrictions on their freedom of movement, Amnesty International said today. In a new report, Automated Apartheid, the organization documents how Red Wolf is part of an ever-growing surveillance network which is entrenching the Israeli government’s control over Palestinians, and which helps to maintain Israel’s system of apartheid. Red Wolf is deployed at military checkpoints in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, where it scans Palestinians’ faces and adds them to vast surveillance databases without their consent. Amnesty International also documented how Israel’s use of facial recognition technology against Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem has increased …
More murders across America are going unsolved, exacerbating the grief of families already reeling and worsening the largely cracked trust between police and the public, especially communities of color most affected by gun violence … While the rate at which murders are solved or "cleared” has been declining for decades, it has now dropped to slightly below 50 percent in 2020 -- a new historic low. And several big cities, including Chicago, have seen the number of murder cases resulting in at least one arrest dip into the low to mid-30% range … That makes the U.S. among the worst at solving murders in the industrialized world. Germany, for example, consistently clears well over 90% of its murders.
… The second and third biggest bank failures in US history have followed in quick succession. The US Treasury and Federal Reserve would like us to believe that they are “idiosyncratic”. That is a dangerous evasion. Almost half of America’s 4,800 banks are already burning through their capital buffers … Somebody will take those losses. “It’s spooky. Thousands of banks are underwater,” said Professor Amit Seru, a banking expert at Stanford University … The full shock of monetary tightening by the Fed has yet to hit. A great edifice of debt faces a refinancing cliff-edge over the next six quarters … A Hoover Institution report by Prof Seru and a group of banking experts calculates that more than 2,315 US banks are currently sitting on assets worth less than their liabilities.
After a San Francisco Target store was forced to lock down its entire inventory due to skyrocketing theft, a California business leader has slammed the state’s ultra-soft on crime policies for letting brazen shoplifters and drug addicts get away with crimes time and again … Michelin says the root of the problem lies with the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, also known as Prop 47, which downgraded crimes like theft of goods under $950 from felonies to misdemeanors. Many have criticized the policy as a free pass for shoplifters to keep stealing while barely getting a slap on the wrist as punishment. These repeated offenders have plagued California retail chains in recent years …
The state of Arkansas is refusing to pay a Jewish doctor for a talk he delivered at a public university because he declined to promise not to boycott Israel. Dr. Steve Feldman, a dermatologist, delivered a Zoom lecture to University of Arkansas at Little Rock medical students in February, for which he was entitled to a $500 honorarium from the state. But Feldman said that the state is withholding payment because he refused to sign a pledge, required for public contractors under Arkansas law since 2017, to commit to not boycotting Israel … Arkansas is one of dozens of states that have passed laws aiming to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. The laws either bar the state from investing in companies that boycott Israel or, as in Arkansas’ case, mandate that state contractors promise not to boycott the country.
… The only reason the US government is able to run up such huge deficits without experiencing a complete economic meltdown is the dollar’s world reserve currency status. But the growing de-dollarization movement-fueled by the US government’s fiscal recklessness and hyper-interventionist foreign policy should be a wake-up call to Congress … The government’s fiscal situation will soon worsen, as both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will likely be bankrupt within the next decade, forcing Congress to find an additional $116 trillion to fully fund them. The looming economic crisis is a symptom of our moral and philosophic crisis.
While the left is busy hating on Tucker Carlson, and not without reason, it is missing the bigger picture. Carlson was a genuine aberration in US corporate media. Which is why he is gone – sacked by media “titan” Rupert Murdoch. Yes, over the years Carlson played on white fears, placing him firmly on the right. But he also gave over his massive corporate platform at Fox News to some of the most critical and thoughtful independent journalists and pundits around – from Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate to Jimmy Dore … In that way, he exposed ordinary Americans to critical perspectives, especially on US foreign policy, that they had no hope of hearing anywhere else – and most certainly not from so-called “liberal” corporate media outlets like CNN and MSNBC. And he did so while constantly ridiculing the media’s craven collusion with those in power.
Today [April 28], Governor Ron DeSantis visited Israel as part of his international trade mission where he signed House Bill 269 to provide law enforcement agencies with new enforcement mechanisms to punish perpetrators of antisemitic incidents and those who target religious communities. By signing HB 269, Governor DeSantis has once again made Florida a leader on protecting religious liberty and the State of Israel both in the United States and around the world. Governor DeSantis also signed a proclamation to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Israel’s independence “In 2019, I had the opportunity here in Israel to sign into law groundbreaking legislation to root out antisemitism from our public education system, establishing Florida as a leader in protecting religious liberty,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.
Florida governor and presumptive presidential nominee Ron DeSantis was spotted dining in Jerusalem this week with Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson. She was among several major Republican donors at the dinner hosted Wednesday by Larry Mizel, an American businessman who helped found the Museum of Tolerance where the meal was being held. Mizel was the finance chairman for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign office in Colorado during the 2016 race. DeSantis sat in between Mizel and Adelson, according to Axios, which broke the story. Miriam and her late husband, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, backed DeSantis during his successful 2018 gubernatorial run, donating $500,000 to the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC. DeSantis is likely seeking Adelson’s support once again …
… A recent survey found that the majority of Americans have fewer friends than they did three decades ago. “Signs suggest that the role of friends in American social life is experiencing a pronounced decline,” according to a May study published by the Survey Center on American Life. Study authors revealed that “Americans report having fewer close friendships than they once did, talking to their friends less often, and relying less on their friends for personal support.” The alarming findings were based on interviews with 2,019 Americans, aged 18 and up, from all 50 states as well as Washington, DC … Nearly half of all Americans — 49% — reported having fewer than three close friends … A mind-boggling 12% of interviewees claimed to have zero friends today, four times as many as 30 years ago, per the survey.
The Ukraine war documents leak is a very big deal. Among other things, the documents reveal that the Biden administration has been misleading the public about its upbeat assessment of the Ukrainian war effort … Rather than the jaw-dropping disclosures, which this brief list only scratches the surface of and which have major implications for US security, the political establishment has instead fixated on the leaker, his motives, his personal faults, and what the government is doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again … The more time you spend talking about whether the leaker is a good person, the less you’re devoting to the official deception and misbehavior the leaks have shed light on.
… As the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar is essentially the default currency in international trade and a global unit of account … The dollar, in some shape or form, will likely be around for a long time. Perhaps very long. But by weaponizing dollar dominance and permitting expanding mandates to disorient US monetary policy, the dollar’s fate as the lingua franca of world commerce over the long haul may already be sealed … Slower or more quickly, the dollar will lose ground abroad.
As the Australian Federal government contemplates the prohibition of the Swastika, it is crucial to address the inherent tension between upholding free speech and curbing repugnant ideologies ... The Swastika ban forms part of the left’s strategy to demonise all non-compliant ideologies. Anyone who may disagree with such bans on free-speech or similar grounds can be labelled a Nazi sympathiser by power-hungry leftists, meaning non-leftists can either conform or be tagged with the worst possible label in modern society. And while conformity is the left’s preference, character assassination is their speciality. So assuming we are to ban the Swastika, then the hammer and sickle must also be prohibited. Marxist regimes have caused millions more deaths than Hitler …
Shakespeare has long been dismissed, with others in the Western canon, as a dead white male. Now, there’s another, worse charge against the bard — he created the concept of whiteness … The authors of “White People” are particularly interested in the word “fair,” which they count more than 900 times in Shakespeare. “Fair” often refers to a woman and her beauty, but it had a rich variety of meanings … But it makes as much sense to try to argue the literary racialists out of their take on Shakespeare as trying to convince a Marxist of the usefulness of capital markets. For them, to be white or not be white is the only question.
In 2019, and for a couple of years after, we all heard about the “Holocaust-denying” high-school principal William Latson. Most who heard about that of course never checked whether the characterization was accurate. Even some politicians who stated forceful opinions on the matter, it turns out, apparently never bothered to check what they were saying. On the whole it seems that most people who had anything to say about the matter had an oversimplified and distorted picture of the dispute. The instigation of the public controversy was a story that appeared in the Palm Beach Post on 5 July 2019. It was based on information supplied to journalist Andrew Marra by a perpetually unidentified Jewish woman … The complaint about Latson himself however was his refusal to confront parents who did not believe in the Holocaust …
Gift. Bunny. Female. America. Christmas tree. Do any of these words offend you? They should — at least according to Michigan State University. If you’re confused as to why these deceptively innocent terms are actually very offensive, the school’s Inclusive Guide is here to help get your vocabulary into “alignment with strategic efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion.” … Evidently, the word female is a “pejorative term [that] reduces women to their assumed biological anatomy.” … This list of “offensive” words, which MSU has published on its website “to inform general communications” at the school, is just the latest symptom of the war on free speech that’s being waged on campuses.
“Bilingual road signs are a symbolic expression of social inclusion. They show that people identify with their district and diversity." Thus Samy Charchira, councilor of the Greens in Düsseldorf, where for the first time in Germany road signs in Arabic have been inaugurated … Multiculturalism is the end of nation state and Europe seems determined to go down that road all the way … Since 2020, four mosques in the city (out of a total of eight) invoke the muezzin's prayer over loudspeakers … According to the FAZ, 18.9 million people, or 23 percent of the German population, have immigrated to the country since 1950 or are children of immigrants, said the German Federal Statistical Office.
In a move that shocked many, Fox News announced on Monday that it had “parted ways” with Tucker Carlson, the US network’s most-watched host … The channel did not give a reason for Carlson’s departure in its press release … The Los Angeles Times reported that Carlson had been fired and that the decision to fire him had come from Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch himself … To the Anti-Defamation League, the firing was long overdue. The group’s leader Jonathan Greenblatt called for Fox to fire Carlson in 2021, after the host first promoted the white-supremacist Great Replacement theory on air … For years, Carlson had evaded any discipline from Fox over his airing of such views. But the Dominion case exposed how he had been openly lying to viewers about other news issues, as well.
In the closing address at last month’s Summit for Democracy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken piously proclaimed, “As President Biden has said, democracy doesn’t happen by accident. “It requires constant effort.” Or in the case of the 2020 election, it required deceiving American voters. The House Judiciary Committee revealed that Blinken, then a top Biden adviser, orchestrated the letter from 51 top intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was nothing but a Russian disinformation campaign. Blinken contacted former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, who swayed scores of other former top officials — including three ex-CIA chiefs — to sign that letter to debunk the biggest threat to the Biden presidential campaign … Polls show that Biden would have lost the election if the media had accurately reported the contents of that laptop.
Mike Morrell, the former acting CIA director, revealed to the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, that he played a key role in rallying former intelligence officials to sign a letter which sought to discredit reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 presidential campaign … Morell explained that his role in the suppression of the key story was done on behalf of the Joe Biden campaign and at the behest of now Secretary of State Antony Blinken who was then a senior campaign official … Twitter, Facebook, and other major platforms outright censored or took actions to suppress the reach of the story immediately … Echoing statements made by the Biden campaign, the letter claimed the Post’s reporting "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
The remains of a fascist leader whose movement supported Gen. Francisco Franco’s dictatorship were dug up and reburied Monday, reigniting Spain’s debate over its complex past and enraging far-right activists. The Spanish government ordered the exhumation of the body of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who founded the fascist Falange movement, from its resting place in an enormous mountainside mausoleum 40 miles from the capital, Madrid. He was then reburied at a city cemetery in a private family ceremony. The move — carried out as a small group of sympathizers chanted and gave fascist salutes — is part of an effort to prevent the glorification of the country's totalitarian past as the far right seeks political breakthroughs across Europe.
… In October 1933 Primo de Rivera established the Falange Española (Spanish Falange [Phalanx]). In its manifesto published later that year the Falange condemned socialism, Marxism, republicanism and capitalism and proposed that Spain should become a Fascist state similar to the one established by Benito Mussolini in Italy … [Falange Manifesto] … 11. The National-Syndicalist State will not stand cruelly aloof from economic conflicts between men, nor will it look on impassively as the strongest class subjugates the weakest … 12. The primary purpose of wealth is to improve the standard of living of all the people - and this will be the declared policy of our State. It is intolerable that great masses of people live in poverty while a few enjoy every luxury … 15. All Spanish citizens have the right to work.
If those leaked documents from the Pentagon are to be believed — and I think they are — the United States needs a plan B for Ukraine … What Ukraine needs is peace, not a protracted war of attrition against a more populous adversary whose leader does not much care about how many lives are sacrificed in the maelstrom. I suspect most top officials in the Biden administration understand this cruel reality, whatever they may say in public … So here’s a wild idea: Given that both Beijing and Washington have an interest in ending the war, the Biden administration should invite China to join it in a joint effort to bring the two sides to the bargaining table.
The U.S. corporate media’s first response to the leaking of secret documents about the war in Ukraine was to throw some mud in the water, declare “nothing to see here,” and cover it as a depoliticized crime story about a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who published secret documents to impress his friends. President Biden dismissed the leaks as revealing nothing of “great consequence.” What these documents reveal, however, is that the war is going worse for Ukraine than our political leaders have admitted to us, while going badly for Russia too, so that neither side is likely to break the stalemate this year, and this will lead to “a protracted war beyond 2023,” as one of the documents says.
U.S. Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, journalist Evan Gershkovich, author Judy Blume and more than a half-dozen other prominent Jews are on Time magazine’s list of “The 100 Most Influential People of 2023.” Others on the list include comedian Nathan Fielder, rapper Doja Cat, author Neil Gaiman, economist Janet Yellen, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, Disney CEO Bob Iger and actress Natasha Lyonne … The tribute to Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar and U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, is written by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. He calls Lipstadt an eshet chayil, a Hebrew term from the Book of Proverbs for a woman of valor.
On April 7, after three days and several hours of meetings, Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron issued a joint declaration between France and China ... The most important line … appears early in the document. In a section on “promoting global security and stability,” China and France declared that “They seek to strengthen the multilateral international system under the aegis of the United Nations, in a multipolar world.” … This potentially seminal statement suggests a fundamental divide between France and the U.S. The U.S. seeks to maintain a unipolar world with America at its head, with no “potential future global competitors” — in the language of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance — and Europe as its subordinate partner. The joint declaration suggests that France seeks to break from that project.
Zero asylum. Send them back to Syria. Claims should be sorted somewhere else. It may sound like the rhetoric of the far right, but in this wealthy, Scandinavian welfare state, it has become the political center. Denmark, polite and progressive, is profoundly skeptical of asylum seekers. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, of the center-left Social Democrats, has touted a vision of “zero” people arriving to Denmark outside the United Nations resettlement system. A key priority for her government: working with European Union allies to set up claims-processing centers far away … The Danish case offers a vivid example of how far-right ideas are flourishing, even where the far right has struggled to gain power.
… One of the first moves when Russia intervened in Ukraine was to block and eventually confiscate Russia’s 300 billion dollars-worth of foreign reserves in banks in the US and Europe. That sent a shock wave across currency markets all around the world. Biden and Yellen had weaponized the US’s own national currency, which hitherto had been an untouchable step in international relations for nations that were not actually at war. Countries like China and India with large economies then realized that the US Treasury Department and the dominance of the dollar as an exchange currency had now become a weapon of war and a serious threat to the economies of all other nations. As a consequence, the US Dollar is right now being rejected by many nations as the world’s reserve currency.
… For the past 25 years, administrations of both parties have caved to the "crazies" at every turn. Albright and the neocons' exceptionalist rhetoric, now standard fare across the U.S. political spectrum, leads the United States into conflicts all over the world, in an unequivocal, Manichean way that defines the side it supports as the side of good and the other side as evil, foreclosing any chance that the United States can later play the role of an impartial or credible mediator … It also applies, most notoriously, to the U.S. blank check for endless Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, which doom its mediation efforts to failure. For China, however, it is precisely its policy of neutrality that has enabled it to mediate a peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia … The tragedy of American diplomacy today is that it is diplomacy for war, not for peace.
… For the political Left, the narrative of white supremacy must be maintained. What’s more, shocking examples of that narrative must be found … The truth is far more troubling: In America, while most violent crime is intra-racial (white on white or black on black, for example), in cases in which blacks and whites have violent interaction, blacks are overwhelmingly the perpetrators, not the victims. In 2019, for example, 3,299 white Americans were murdered; 566, or 17%, were killed by black perpetrators. That same year, 2,906 black Americans were murdered; 246, or 8%, were killed by white perpetrators … The media routinely ignore these facts, since they don’t fit the narrative. In fact, the media have a general tendency not to even mention the race of perpetrators of crimes if those perpetrators are black.
… In the last ten days, Washington has been rocked by leaks of top secret information on Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and a few other topics … The Washington press corps showed vastly more enthusiasm for tracking down the leaker than for discovering who bombed the Nord Stream pipeline. At a Pentagon press conference, journalists showed far more indignation about the breach of federal secrecy than about the lies that the documents exposed … Almost no one who condemns leaks of confidential information offers any alternative for Americans learning what “their” government is doing … If democracy is now little more than a system where insiders deceive people for their own good, how is it different than all the other regimes that oppressed people throughout history?
Blazoned in huge black letters across page one of the December 4, 1941, issue of the Chicago Tribune was the headline: F.D.R.’S WAR PLANS! … Chesly Manly, the Tribune’s Washington correspondent, revealed what President Franklin D. Roosevelt had repeatedly denied: that he was planning to lead the United States into war against Germany. The source of the reporter’s information was no less than a verbatim copy of Rainbow Five, the top-secret war plan drawn up at FDR’s order by the Joint Board of the Army and Navy … Rainbow Five called for the creation of a ten-million-man army, including an expeditionary force of five million men that would invade Europe to defeat Hitler.
Fifty years ago, in the wake of the October War of 1973, the United States emerged as the principal outside actor in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf … Fast forward to the present, and it is the United States that is on the outside looking in. Russia was central to keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power, and China boldly orchestrated the restoration of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Arab states are reaching out to improve relations with both Russia and China, ignoring U.S. pressure to back away from Moscow and Beijing … Beijing realizes that Washington’s one-sided support for Israel as well as its policy of non-recognition of Iran provided an opening to negotiate a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
… It has just become almost impossible for a country to have a nice, home-talent little revolution among themselves, without us butting into it. But here we go again. If we ever pass out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: “America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership.”; … America has a great habit of always talking about protecting American interests in some foreign country. Protect them here at home. There are more American interests right here than anywhere. What would we say if the Chinese was to send a gunboat up the Mississippi?; … Seven thousand miles is a long way to go to shoot somebody, especially if you are not right sure they need shooting, and you are not sure whether you are shooting the right side or not. You see, it's their war and they have a right to fight it as they see fit, without any advice from us.
Bryn Mawr College will remove the inscribed name of former president M. Carey Thomas from the campus building known as Old Library, the Board of Trustees announced Tuesday in an email to the community. Thomas, who served as president from 1894 to 1922, was a staunch supporter of women’s education but also promulgated racist and antisemitic views. “Even as M. Carey Thomas was steadfast in her drive to build a first-rate academic institution for the education of women, the limitation of her vision to the education of wealthy white women, her embrace of eugenics, and her outspoken racist and antisemitic beliefs have caused pain for generations of students, staff and faculty,” read the letter from the board.
The city council in Kyiv, Ukraine supported and planned to vote in favor of naming a street after a notorious Nazi collaborator last week, but the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, stopped the vote after an unscheduled meeting with Israel's ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, reported The New York Sun. Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine. It is the most populous city in the country and is the seat of government. The Kyiv City Council passed a motion on April 11 to name a street after Volodymyr Kubiyovych, "who during the Holocaust was heavily involved in the formation of the Waffen-SS Galizien, a Nazi military force made up of Ukrainian volunteers” … After the mayor met with the Israeli ambassador, though, the situation changed.
All Danish schoolchildren will know about the Holocaust. The topic will become a mandatory part of the history lessons starting next school year. If the rule comes into force, all teachers in primary schools must dedicate part of their history lessons to the infamous genocide of the Second World War, Kristeligt Dagblad reports. Currently, a draft for an executive order from the Norwegian Agency for Education is out for consultation. On April 24, all responses must be in so the order can enter into force on July 1. That means that Holocaust education must be incorporated into the curriculum next school year.
The dollar is losing its reserve status at a faster pace than generally accepted as many analysts have failed to account for last year’s wild exchange rate moves, according to Stephen Jen. The greenback’s share in global reserves slid last year at 10 times the average speed of the past two decades as a number of countries looked for alternatives after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered sanctions, Jen and his Eurizon SLJ Capital Ltd. colleague Joana Freire wrote in a note. Adjusting for exchange rate movements, the dollar has lost about 11% of its market share since 2016, and double that amount since 2008, they said.
A series of videos showing ultra-Orthodox youths spitting at Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City is making the rounds through Israeli social media, calling attention to a phenomenon Christian clergy have been speaking out against for years with little result. The clips, aired Sunday on Channel 12, show groups of young men in the Old City, dressed in suits and black hats, some wearing or carrying prayer shawls. In one video, as six boys and young men walk by two Catholic nuns at the Church of the Flagellation on Via Dolorosa, one turns and spits in the direction of the nuns. In another, a lone young man spits as pilgrims walk up the Via Dolorosa carrying a wooden cross. A third clip shows three ultra-Orthodox youths walking by a church in the Muslim quarter. One of the men, smoking a cigarette, spits at the door of the church.
Along with high rates of crime relative to other developed nations, the United States’ crime clearance rates — the rates at which crimes are solved — are alarmingly low … A new study examined the effect of diversification of police departments on clearance of aggravated assaults in U.S. police agencies. None of the measures of representation studied were significantly associated with clearance of victims’ assaults. The study, by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM), appears in Criminology & Public Policy … “Less than half of crimes in the United States are cleared,” explains Aki Roberts, associate professor of sociology at UWM, who led the study … The study found that none of the diversity measures examined vis a vis Black officers were significantly associated with the clearance of aggravated assaults of Black victims.
When asked “if we should stop non-European immigration to France,” more than six out of ten French people (64%) answer “yes,” according to a poll for CNEWS by Consumer Science & Analytics (CSA) published on Wednesday, April 12. According to the same survey, 36% of respondents answered “no,” thus opposing this idea. The latest poll generally aligns with previous polls on the topic of immigration in France, which show the French are overwhelmingly opposed to mass immigration. However, this poll also shows that women are slightly more in favor of the idea of stopping non-European migration flows than men (61 percent), a finding that generally contrasts with polls from other countries like the United States, Germany, Sweden and Finland.
… I have recently returned from a three-week trip that included stops in seven countries in Eastern Europe. In preparation for the journey, I arranged for contact with a number of local journalists, politicians and academics in the various countries. … While there were some variations in the responses of my interlocutors, I quickly learned that the war in Ukraine, if not popular, was considered to be a necessary step to limit what was described repeatedly as an allegedly autocratic if not kleptocratic Putin’s desire to recreate the old Soviet Union, using military force as necessary … The anti-Russian sentiment surprised me … Several contacts provided a more plausible reason for the tilt towards Ukraine: they wanted to prevent any return to Russian dominance of the region …
Israeli actor Topol was an international film star celebrated for roles including milkman Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and Bond villain-turned-collaborator Milos Columbo in For Your Eyes Only. Now, his family have said that, between acting gigs, he worked as a secret Mossad agent, living a secret double life of “adventure and courage.” The actor died last month aged 87, and his family have spoken to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, saying Topol used his London home as a base from where he targeted embassies, airports and airlines of his country’s Arab enemies.
Sirens wailed, church bells rang and the presidents of Germany, Israel and Poland bowed their heads Wednesday before a memorial to Jewish insurgents who fought a mismatched, desperate battle against Nazi German forces in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Celebrations of the uprising’s 80th anniversary honored the hundreds of young Jews who took up arms in the Polish capital in 1943, choosing to fight and die at a time and place not dictated by the Nazis … “I stand before you today and ask for forgiveness,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at the site of the former ghetto.
Like many Holocaust survivors, I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the way the memory of the Holocaust has been shaped. The myth of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is an excellent example. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – the very name is deceptive. The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto never revolted ... Only a small group of young people revolted, whose size and efforts were inflated to mythic proportions in Israel after the state was established in 1948. More importantly, the uprising, which started on April 19, 1943, contradicted the survival strategy of the masses of Jews who remained in the ghetto ... The figures on the length of the real fighting were also inflated.
Young women fighters rounded up during the 1943 German action against the Warsaw ghetto are shown in this widely-reproduced photograph. Like the famous “ghetto boy” photo, this was included in the 1943 “Stroop report.” The original caption read: “Women of the He-halutz movement, captured with weapons.” … The young woman at the right is Malka Zdrojewicz. Years later, she recalled the circumstance behind the taking of this photograph.