... What’s crucial in determining the really important policies and long-term trends of a nation are rarely individual politicians, whatever they may promise, or whatever their fans may hope or believe -- but rather the goals and agenda of those who hold real power. Serious politics is about power ... During this year’s election campaign, the two major presidential candidates, along with all other prominent U.S. politicians, have made very clear, time and again, their loyalty and devotion to Jewish-Zionist power. And that means that, no matter who wins on election day, there will not be -- and there cannot be -- any substantive shift in this country’s power alignment, and therefore no real change in basic direction or policy.
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IHR NEWS AND VIEWS
Three noted writers and activists --- Gilad Atzmon, Kevin MacDonald and Mark Weber -- addressed a spirited, successful meeting on October 1 organized by the IHR at a hotel in southern California. About 80 men and women gathered for thoughtful, provocative talks on the formidable role of Jewish-Zionist power in political and cultural life, and prospects for the future. DVD video discs of the three talks are being prepared for distribution.
Regardless of whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins on Election Day, U.S. support for Israel and its policies of oppression will continue, says American historian Mark Weber in this interview with Iran’s Qods News Agency. That’s because both presidential candidates in this year’s bitter U.S. election campaign are entirely submissive to what the Weber calls “Jewish-Zionist power.” Here are the interview questions and Weber’s answers.
These days everyone is talking about Donald Trump, the clear Republican Party front-runner in this year’s presidential election campaign ... At our March 19 IHR meeting, the Trump phenomenon, and what it means for our future, was the focus of well-presented talks by several speakers, and a lively exchange of views during an open discussion session. This gathering – the first IHR event of the new year – brought together 40-50 men and women who also enjoyed food, drink and good fellowship. ... As we’ve reported, 2015 was an exceptionally active year for us, with productive visits to Britain, Sweden, Turkey and Mexico ... During 2015 I conducted dozens of broadcast interviews with US and overseas media, appearing as a guest on radio and television broadcasts to talk about topical and historical issues.
Several times each week we distribute by e-mail a timely “IHR News and Comment” roundup of news, analysis and commentary items. To subscribe, enter your email below:
In the weeks since our last update newsletter of mid-July [2015] ... I’ve conducted about twenty broadcast interviews, most of them with global television broadcasters that reach vast numbers of viewers ... In August I visited Istanbul, where I was the guest of a retired professor and former UNESCO official. During my week-long stay in the Turkish metropolis, I met with writers, scholars and human rights activists. One result was a lengthy interview with a journalist for a major Istanbul daily paper ... This four-part interview, with photos, appeared on two consecutive days’ issues on the front page, and continuing on inside pages ... In the weeks since our last newsletter, we’ve organized three IHR meetings here in southern California.
During the past half year [Jan.-June 2015], we’ve been exceptionally busy and productive. In April and May, I addressed important meetings of traditionalists, nationalists and “identitarians” in Britain, Sweden and Mexico ... The largest of the three recent meetings I addressed was the “International Identitarian Congress” in Guadalajara, Mexico. More than 200 men and women gathered at a spacious hacienda for presentations by speakers from Argentina, Spain, Germany, Italy, Britain, Mexico and the US. I gave two well-received talks at this impressively organized gathering ... I've conducted more interviews in recent months with US and overseas media, appearing many times as a guest on radio and television broadcasts to talk about topical and historical issues.
... 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.
… Roosevelt was not the first or the last American president to lie to the people. But rarely has a major American political figure given a speech as loaded with brazen falsehood as Franklin Roosevelt did in his Navy Day address of October 27, 1941 … Roosevelt went on to reveal that he also had in his possession "another document made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a detailed plan to abolish all existing religions -- Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike" which Germany will impose "on a dominated world, if Hitler wins."
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.
In a remarkable but under-reported address, Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that the “immense” and “outsized” Jewish role in the US mass media and cultural life 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.
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.
The Balfour Declaration may be the most extraordinary document produced by any government in world history. It took the form of a letter from the government of the largest empire the world has even known to an international financier of the banking house of Rothschild who had been made a peer of the realm … Malcolm's belief in the Balfour Declaration as a means of bringing the United States into the war was confirmed by Samuel Landman, secretary to the Zionist leaders Weizmann and Sokolow, and later secretary of the World Zionist Organization.
... The measures taken by the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1942 aimed not only at furthering the Soviet war effort, but also at harming the German enemy even at the cost of huge losses of life among Soviet civilians. The Soviet scorched-earth strategy included the deportation of millions of men, women and children; the resettlement and reestablishment of thousands of factories; the withdrawal of almost the entire railway rolling stock; the annihilation of raw material depots; the removal of most of the agricultural machinery, cattle and grain stocks; the systematic destruction, burning and blowing up of the immovable infrastructure, inventories of all kinds, factory buildings, mines, residential areas, public buildings, public records, and even cultural monuments; and the intentional starvation of the civilian population which remained behind to face German occupation.
This past year [2014] has been a particularly busy and productive one for us. For one thing, we have revived and expanded our book distribution and publishing operations ... During the past year we organized nine IHR meetings ... In London, Budapest and Paris, I met with activists, writers, and publishers ... Throughout the past year, we continued to broaden our outreach and strengthen our impact, not only here in the US, but overseas as well ... Dozens of IHR talks, interviews and lectures have been made into independently produced videos that are available online.
... The ever more obvious symptoms of social decay are inevitable in a nation as unhealthy as today’s America. We understand that a nation guided by false principles, wishful thinking and unrealistic notions about society and history cannot and will not survive ... On this anniversary of American independence, it is altogether fitting that we recall the sacrifices and the outlook of the men who acted boldly out of principle, and risked everything in following the dictate of their conscience.
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.
This recorded address by Adolf Hitler was distributed on 50,000 phonograph discs during Germany’s fiercely contested national parliament election campaign of July 1932, in which his National Socialist movement emerged as the country’s largest party. This “Appeal to the Nation” is similar in content and tone to many other speeches he gave in 1932, which for Germans was a year of mass unemployment, economic paralysis, and a broken, unresponsive political system. Translation of the complete text, with a foreword by Mark Weber. This historic address is particularly interesting during this 2016 US presidential election campaign, with media commentators claiming that Donald Trump’s appeal and campaign style is similar to that of the German leader.
A man who made headlines during the 1990s as a controversial Jewish "Holocaust denier" has broken 18 years of silence to speak publicly for the first time about the challenges, achievements and mishaps of that era, and his secretive career since then. David Cole - now 45 years old - was in good form as he addressed a spirited, well-attended IHR meeting ... His lively, articulate presentation was packed with colorful anecdotes, humorous asides and eye-opening insights ... He adopted a new identity ("David Stein") and in 1998 began a career as a filmmaker, Republican Party activist and conservative commentator.
We’ve successfully fought back a malicious campaign by an “Israel first” politician that shut down our credit card processing for nearly three months. Earlier this year a New York state legislator with a well-documented record of bigotry and support for Zionist terrorism launched a public campaign to shut down credit card processing by the IHR and several other organizations he calls “hate groups.” MasterCard, a global credit card company, backed this campaign. After considerable effort, we were finally able to restore our credit card processing on Dec. 11, 2013. To everyone whose backing enabled us to carry on during this difficult period, or who sent messages of support, Thank You!
Writers, filmmakers and scholars from the US, France, Italy and other countries, together with Iranian cinema specialists, journalists, officials and others, gathered in north Tehran for a four-day “Hollywoodism” conference to critically examine the often harmful social-political impact of the US film industry, and to discuss how to counter it ... During this visit I gained a greater understanding of this ancient but vibrant nation of 75 million, which Israel and its allies in the US have demonized and threatened with military attack.
At an IHR meeting in southern California, three seasoned speakers provided informed perspective on Iran and Iranian society, the threats of war by Israel and the US, the impact of the US-organized sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic, and the prospects for military conflict. Paul Sheldon Foote, a California professor with years of experience in the Middle East, and Art Olivier, a filmmaker and former mayor in southern California, joined IHR director Mark Weber at the spirited gathering.
... 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.
... 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.
Over the centuries, hostility against Jews has repeatedly erupted in terrible violence. Again and again, Jews have been driven out of countries where they’d been living. Why does anti-Semitism exist? And why has rage against Jews broken out, again and again, in the most varied nations, eras and cultures? ... Anti-Semitism is not a mysterious “disease.” As Herzl and Weizmann suggested, and as history shows, what is often called anti-Semitism is the natural and understandable attitude of people toward a minority with particularist loyalties that wields greatly disproportionate power for its own interests, rather than for the common good.
Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War to free the slaves. While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad.
... 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.
... How did America come to war against Germany, the heart of Europe? Could not Roosevelt have acted as a great peacemaker by mediating the Danzig conflict in 1939, instead of instigating the Poles against Germany? ... The American President could very possibly have saved the peace in 1939. Instead, he fed the American people inventions about a hypothetical German plot to take over the United States and the whole world.
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.
… That atrocities were committed by the Allies against Germans and non-combatant civilians on both the Eastern and Western fronts is not often acknowledged. In large measure this reflects the fact that "victors write the history." … POWs, whether Germans or Axis allies, were often shot out of hand, or shortly after they had been questioned ... When the Red Army invaded German territory in late 1944, civilians who had been unable to flee before their advance were condemned to undergo a regime of ferocious brutality. At such towns as Goldap, Gumbinnen, and Nemmersdorf, even children were raped before being murdered by Russian soldiers.
... As long as the power of what Desmond Tutu calls “the very powerful” Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system and the American media, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace. That’s why no task is more important or pressing than to identify, counter and break this power.
Among the highlights of my nine-day visit to Iran was a guest appearance on an influential prime-time public affairs television show, a memorable meeting with the nation’s President, and a well-received lecture of more than two hours on “The Zionist Lobby in America," given to a gathering of several hundred university students.
... Fascism was touted by Mussolini as a unique combination of thought and action, yet fascism was still seeking an ideology after the Second World War was over. The roots of fascism are many and complex. The fascist leadership, notably Mussolini, admitted the multi-faceted influences of liberalism, marxism, syndicalism, risorgimento, socialism, catholicism and nationalism on their ideology.
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.
... During his lifetime he made a mark not only as a pioneering global aviator, but also as a prize-winning author, environmentalist and anti-war activist. Given the scarcity of truly heroic Americans during the past century, he towers as a man of exemplary accomplishment and courage. He deserves to be remembered today not only as an authentic American hero, but also because much of what he wrote and said is relevant in our own age. Indeed, some of his remarks have proven to be prophetic.
… 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 Sound of Music" is perhaps the most popular American musical picture ever produced. But whatever its merits as entertainment, the film's presentation of history is deceitful. In particular, its portrayal of the 1938 union or Anschluss of Austria with the German Reich is a gross distortion of historical reality.
... America today is a society in denial. The country's political, cultural and intellectual leadership -- both liberal and conservative -- denies social reality and ignores the historical record, and therefore inevitably betrays the interests of the people, leading America down a path that means ever greater anxiety and ever more rapid decline ... The crying need in our nation today is candor, courage and truthfulness -- not childish slogans, simplistic nostrums, or wishful thinking about a mythologized past or a utopian future -- presented by media personalities who are little more than entertainers.
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.
Websense company, a major US supplier of web content filtering software, says that the Institute for Historical Review promotes "racism and hate," and blocks access to the IHR website, on the basis of an unfair standard that deceives the public and its own customers. In a letter to the IHR, Websense Senior Legal Counsel Eric Proul makes clear that the company has no objective basis for its claim that the IHR promotes "racism and hate."
... In 1940, an obscure cypher clerk at the American Embassy in London came across documents which, in his judgment and that of many reputable historians subsequently, proved conclusively that Roosevelt both directly and through his agents was engaged in activities designed to foment a war and eventually to compel American participation in it. I was that cypher clerk ... The new basic law of nations requires only one clause, very simply: "It pays to be on the winning side."
This essay focuses on Roosevelt's secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. It deals particularly with his efforts to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany in 1938 and 1939. Franklin Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war that had already engulfed Europe, he bears a grave responsibility for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time. This paper relies heavily on a little-known collection of secret Polish documents that fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in September 1939. These revealing documents also confirm the crucial role of Jewish power and influence on US foreign policy during these years.
... 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.
Video based on interview with Mark Weber by Daniel Davis, host of the "Beyond 50" radio show. The United States, says Weber, has changed from a republic focused on its own prosperity and well-being to a globally intrusive military power. This worldwide military presence reflects an entrenched American view that the US is a social-political model for all nations, and therefore has a right, based on perceived moral superiority, to intervene everywhere. He traces the evolution of this outlook from the fateful Spanish-American War of 1898, and the false pretexts and promises used since then to justify wars. Going to war to fight "evil" or "terrorism," says Weber, is a recipe for endless strife and conflict.
... We hear a lot about terrible crimes committed by Germans during World War II, but we hear very little about crimes committed against Germans. 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 of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, "ethnic cleansing," and mass killing.
Germany's enemies maintain today [1940] that Adolf Hitler is the greatest disturber of peace known to history, that he threatens every nation with sudden attack and oppression, that he has created a terrible war machine in order to bring misery and devastation everywhere. At the same time they intentionally conceal an all-important fact: they themselves drove the leader of the German people finally to draw the sword. They themselves compelled him to seek to obtain at last by the use of force that which he had been striving to gain by persuasion from the beginning: the security of his country ... A quick look at the most important events provides incontrovertible proof of this.
The news that I would be addressing the Institute of Historical Review came to some people as, well, news. It was mentioned in the Jewish newspaper Forward and on the Zionist Wall Street Journal OnLine. The editors of two conservative magazines called and wrote me to express their concern that I might damage my reputation, such as it is, by speaking to "Holocaust deniers." ... In short, the Holocaust has become a device for exempting Jews from normal human obligations. It has authorized them to bully and blackmail, to extort and oppress. This is all quite irrational, because even if six million Jews were murdered during World War II, the survivors are not entitled to commit the slightest injustice.
... A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to any country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish community ... Zionist Jews and their non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double standard. Jewish-Zionist organizations, along with their non-Jewish allies, support one social-political ideology for Israel and the world Jewish community, and a completely different one for the United States and other non-Jewish countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is evil and bad for non-Jews, while at the same time they vigorously support ethnic nationalism -- that is, Zionism -- for Jews.
Jews played a highly disproportionate and probably decisive role in the infant Bolshevik regime, effectively dominating the Soviet government during its early years ... With the notable exception of Lenin, most of the leading Communists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews ... The US ambassador in Russia warned in a dispatch to Washington: "The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution."
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."
.. By supporting Israel and its policies, the United States betrays not only its own national interests, but the principles it claims to embody and defend. The only country in the world that has a nuclear weapons arsenal, that occupies territory of its neighbors, and which is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions - is Israel. In fact, if the United States were to hold Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq, Serbia, and other countries, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and American troops would seize Israel's leaders and punish them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By Tomislav Sunic
So if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack? Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush's decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America's Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush -- who was already fervently committed to Israel -- resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel's chief regional enemies.
NEWS AND COMMENT
Americans believe the world at large sees the U.S. more unfavorably (57 percent) than favorably (42 percent), their worst assessment of the country's image in ten years. A year ago, Americans' perceptions were more positive than negative. These results are from a Gallup survey conducted Feb. 1-5, about two weeks into Donald Trump's presidency. The 42 percent favorable rating is one of the lowest since Gallup began asking this question in 2000 and may be attributable to the election of Trump, whose sometimes controversial statements and actions have rankled several world leaders ... Fewer than three in ten Americans (29 percent) say leaders of other countries have respect for the new president, with 67 percent saying world leaders do not have much respect for him.
World War II is having a moment, at least in the minds of people doing Google searches. Google Trends, a tool that measures the popularity of search terms over time, shows that there have been dramatic spikes in searches for topics related to the war, including: Reichstag fire, Pearl Harbor, fascism, Kristallnacht, and Nazi Germany... Searches on "Nazi Germany" jumped from typical levels of 25-50 to 100 in the first week of November, right before the US election. Worldwide searches for “fascism” also jumped from a baseline of 10 to 55 the week before the US election, but the authoritarian ideology saw an unprecedented spike in the first week of February, with searches for "fascism" jumping from 15-20 to 100 around the world.
On social networks and talk radio, in classrooms and at kitchen tables, the country’s past is suddenly inescapable ... Trump may or may not make America great again, but he has certainly revived interest in U.S. history ... Historians say the speed and breadth of Trump’s policy pronouncements have prompted the electorate to deploy history as an offensive or defensive rhetorical weapon ... Even Adolf Hitler is hard to avoid ... In the United States, there have been enough Hitler comparisons on social media to inspire satirists. Steve Hely, a former writer for “The Office” and “30 Rock,” recently tweeted several “ways Hitler was better than Trump.” One was “Wrote his own book.” Hely’s satire gets at the concerns scholars have about the recent flood of historical citations. Americans are terrible armchair historians.
Thousands of people have formed a human chain in Dresden in a message of "peace and reconciliation" marking the anniversary of the deadly Allied firebombing of the eastern German city near the end of World War II. The dpa news agency reported that Mayor Dirk Hilbert told the crowd linking hands across the Elbe River bridge to remember the past as they view conflicts today where "human dignity is trampled underfoot." Hilbert placed a white rose on a memorial to the attack by Allied bombers on Feb. 13-14, 1945. Some 25,000 people are believed to have died in the bombing, according to a 2008 official study. Hilbert also recalled the crimes of the Nazis, and said people must remember all "the human suffering that war brings."
Hundreds of neo-Nazis marched through the eastern city of Dresden at the weekend to mark the anniversary of the city’s bombing at the end of World War II. Meanwhile, an art exhibition to remember refugees who lost their lives at sea has divided opinion.
Hundreds of neo-Nazis descended on Dresden on Saturday, two days ahead of the anniversary of the destruction of the city by Allied forces in World War II. In front of about 200 right-wing extremists, convicted neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Gerhard Ittner declared himself to be a "national socialist" and glorified Nazi ideology as a "model for the whole world." Police announced on Twitter that his comments could have legal repercussions. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany ... The neo-Nazis faced opposition from protesters who attempted to block the path of the two marches, but the rallies passed mainly peacefully ... The student group Durchgezählt reported that about 650 right-wing extremists took part in the second rally on Saturday, organized by rival Nazi leader and Dresden local, Maik Müller.
... Dresden is not only a German city, or the symbol of a German destiny. Dresden is also the universal symbol of countless German and countless European, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Belgian and French cities that were bombed by the Western Allies, or for that matter that were fully bombed out ... We are often criticized for playing up the Dresden victims in order to trivialize the fascist crimes. This is nonsense. This thesis can be easily reversed. The establishment historians and opinion-makers, 70 years after the war, are in need of forever renewing the fascist danger in order to cover up their own catastrophic economic failures and their own war crimes.
The destruction of the virtually undefended German city of Dresden by bombers of the Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force, in mid-February 1945, remains one of the most controversial episodes of the Second World War ... British military historian, Alexander McKee, has produced a new account of the Dresden bombing, based in part upon an examination of official records recently declassified, as well as interviews from survivors of the attack and Allied airmen who flew in the raids. McKee had doubts about the efficacy of area bombing when, as a soldier with the 1st Canadian Army, he witnessed the results of the Allied bombing of "friendly" French towns.
… In February 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers; disembowelled her with high explosives and cremated her with incendiaries … It is with some regret that I here besmirch the nobility of our airmen, but, boys, you killed an appalling lot of women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral pyres in the parks, so I know … The “Get Tough America” policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, have earned us a name for obscene brutality.
The European Union's foreign policy chief and the United Nations secretary-general on Tuesday criticised an Israeli move to legalise thousands of settler homes on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. The EU's Federica Mogherini said that the law, if it was implemented, crossed a new and dangerous threshold. "Such settlements constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten the viability of a two-state solution," she said. "(It) would further entrench a one-state reality of unequal rights, perpetual occupation and conflict," she said, highlighting that the EU sees Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as illegal ... U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the action went against international law and would have legal consequences for Israel.
Israel faced international criticism on Tuesday over a new law allowing the appropriation of private Palestinian land for Jewish settler outposts, although the United States remained notably silent. Britain, France, the United Nations and Israel's neighbour Jordan were among those coming out against the legislation passed late on Monday. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the law would have "far-reaching legal consequences for Israel" and was "in contravention of international law" ... France called the bill a "new attack on the two-state solution," while Britain said it "damages Israel's standing with its international partners". Turkey "strongly condemned" the law and Israel's "unacceptable" settlement policy and the Arab League accused Israel of "stealing the land and appropriating the property of Palestinians".
In recent days, the Statue of Liberty has been reproduced across multiple social and print media as a national symbol in opposition to the Trump administration’s aggressive ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations. The lines, “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses” are repeated as an established principle of U.S. identity ... Although today the poem is calcified in our political imagination, [Emma] Lazarus’s sonnet should be recognized as a progressive poem that radically refigures Bartholdi’s vision ... In Lazarus’s reworking, the statue embodies the principle of hospitality that welcomes all dispossessed, displaced people from all over the world: ... According to Josephine Lazarus, Emma’s sister, the strong public protests against the Jews were a “trumpet call that awoke the slumbering” poet into political action.
... Along with the increasingly popular ACT, the SAT is critical in identifying student readiness for college and as an important gateway to higher education. Yet despite efforts to equalize academic opportunity, large racial gaps in SAT scores persist ... Insofar as SAT scores predict student success in college, inequalities in the SAT score distribution reflect and reinforce racial inequalities across generations. In this paper, we analyze racial differences in the math section of the general SAT test, using publicly available College Board population data for all of the nearly 1.7 million college-bound seniors in 2015 who took the SAT ... The mean score on the math section of the SAT for all test-takers is 511 out of 800, the average scores for blacks (428) and Latinos (457) are significantly below those of whites (534) and Asians (598).
... President Trump certainly stirred a whirlwind in his first ten days. But it wasn't unprecedented. Take a look at the front pages from the first ten days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency in 1933 ... Before his second full day in office was over, President Roosevelt had suspended all banking transactions in the United States. The goal was to stanch the hoarding of currency and gold by anxious depositors ... By the time the banks finally began reopening on March 13, Roosevelt had delivered the first of his intimate "fireside chats" over the radio and had been granted what The Times described as "practically dictatorial powers" by Congress after he proposed a $500 million cut in federal salaries and pensions, and in veterans' compensation. That would be the equivalent of more than $9 billion today.
“We have the power. Now our gigantic work begins." Those were Hitler's words on the night of January 30, 1933, as cheering crowds surged past him, for five long hours, beneath the windows of the Chancellery in Berlin. His political struggle had lasted 14 years. He himself was 43 … Half a century later, few people understand the crisis Germany faced at that time … During the preceding years, a score of "democratic" governments had come and gone, often in utter confusion. Instead of alleviating the people's misery, they had increased it, due to their own instability …
One of the most direct indications of Donald Trump’s failure, or refusal, to understand issues involving Iran is his tweeted declaration this week that the Iranians “should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!” ... Another illusionary Trump tweet asserts that Iran “was on its last legs” — which it certainly was not, having endured not only years of sanctions but also an extremely costly war begun by Iraq — until the U.S. “gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran deal: $150 billion”. That $150 billion figure has long been discredited ... Meanwhile, Trump and Flynn leave themselves no apparent exit from an ever-escalating confrontation with Iran, no matter what the Iranians could reasonably do.
... Now the United States will be facing down a far stronger Iran, one that has taken advantage of the past six years of turmoil in the Arab world to steadily expand its reach and military capabilities ... Iran now stands at the apex of an arc of influence stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean, from the borders of NATO to the borders of Israel and along the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula ... So pervasive is Iran’s presence across the region that it is hard to see how any U.S. administration could easily roll it back without destabilizing allies, endangering Americans, undermining the war against the Islamic State and upsetting the new regional balance that emerged during the Obama administration’s retreat, analysts say.
... Some of the most notable differences revolved around the concepts of “individualism” and “collectivism”; whether you consider yourself to be independent and self-contained, or entwined and interconnected with the other people around you, valuing the group over the individual. Generally speaking, people in the West tend to be more individualist, and people from Asian countries like India, Japan or China tend to be more collectivist ... People in more individualistic, Western societies tend to value personal success over group achievement, which in turn is also associated with the need for greater self-esteem and the pursuit of personal happiness. But this thirst for self-validation also manifests in overconfidence, with many experiments showing that Weird participants are likely to overestimate their abilities.
Of the national identity attributes included in the Pew Research Center survey, language far and away is seen as the most critical to national identity. Majorities in each of the 14 countries polled say it is very important to speak the native language to be considered a true member of the nation. Roughly eight-in-ten or more Dutch, British, Hungarians and Germans believe the ability to converse in their country’s language is very important to nationality ... In the United States, about half of all immigrants were proficient in English as of 2014. Most Americans consider such language facility to be an important attribute of U.S. nationality. Fully 70 percent of the public says that to be truly American it is very important to be able to speak English, and an additional 22 percent believe proficiency is somewhat important.
About one-third of all Americans think that you have to be a Christian to truly be an American — despite the history of religious pluralism that dates back to the nation’s very earliest days. In a timely survey released Wednesday afternoon, just as the United States is debating the merits of suspending immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, the Pew Research Center asked residents of numerous nations what it takes to truly belong in their countries. Americans were far more likely than residents of other countries included in the survey to say that religion was key to sharing in the national identity. Thirty-two percent of Americans said one should be Christian to really be American, compared to just 13 percent of Australians, 15 percent of Canadians and 15 percent of Europeans who felt the same way about belonging in their homelands.
British Baroness Jenny Tonge, who was suspended and then resigned from the UK Liberal Democrat party in October over allegations of antisemitism, doubled down Sunday on her accusations against the “Jewish lobby” and against Israel for being the “root cause” of global terrorism ... She argued, “The core problem here is not …what literature you’ve read, or what you can spout on the history of a particular country. It’s the fact that a great injustice has been done to the people who were in Palestine for centuries before the state of Israel was created.”
A majority of young people in America believe the tone of the country’s politics has taken a turn for the worse, according to a new poll. Sixty-two percent of Americans between the ages of 18-29 believe the level of civility of American politics has decreased during the past five years, the poll released Thursday by the Harvard Institute of Politics found. The same poll indicates 60 percent of young people disapproved of Trump’s performance during the presidential transition, though the numbers were split largely along party lines. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats polled disapprove of Trump’s performance, while just 22 percent of Republicans feel the same way.
In its March 1967 issue, Ramparts ... published an exposé of the close relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Student Association ... then the leading American organization representing college students, with branches on about 400 campuses ... The disclosures about the CIA’s ties to the NSA were the most sensational of a number of revelations in that era that exposed the Agency’s involvement in such institutions as the Congress for Cultural Freedom; the International Commission of Jurists; the AFL-CIO; Radio Free Europe; and various leading philanthropic foundations. Karen Paget’s new [2015] book, Patriotic Betrayal, is the most detailed account yet of the CIA’s use of the National Student Association as a vehicle for intelligence gathering and covert action.
The federal government [of Canada] secretly gave RCMP security officials the authority to tap telephone calls without court oversight during the Cold War, newly unearthed archival documents show. The surveillance program, codenamed “Picnic,” began as an emergency effort during the Korean War, but federal agencies collaborated with telephone companies in 1954 to continue the wiretaps, says Dennis Molinaro, who teaches history at Ontario’s Trent University ... It has long been known the Mounties kept an eye on a wide array of people and organizations – from church and gay rights groups to Quebec separatists and Communists – in the name of national security, amassing hundreds of thousands of dossiers.
The Trump administration is continuing to make reckless threats against Iran. On Wednesday, in response to recent missile tests, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn announced that the White House was “officially putting Iran on notice,” and refused to say whether military force is under consideration. The administration is now escalating sanctions against Iran, which will further ratchet up tensions — even though the missile tests are not a violation of the Iran nuclear agreement, and the White House hasn’t even tried to say they are. But that’s not stopping Trump. Just hours ago, he tweeted: “Iran is playing with fire — they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” The escalation is also taking hold in the mainstream press.
... During the concluding decade of the twentieth century and the first decade-and-a-half of the twenty-first, Americans endured a seemingly endless series of crises. Individually, none of these merit comparison with, say, the Civil War or World War II. Yet never in U.S. history has a sequence of events occurring in such close proximity subjected American institutions and the American people to greater stress ... The Age of Great Expectations has ended, leaving behind an ominous void. Yet Trump’s own inability to explain what should fill that great void provides neither excuse for inaction nor cause for despair. Instead, Trump himself makes manifest the need to reflect on the nation’s recent past and to think deeply about its future.
... This nasty little spat came on the heels of last week’s refusal by Trump to accept Mideast refugees from seven nations, supposedly to keep America safe. However, there has not been a single attack against the US from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria or Yemen – even though all have been bombed (26,171 times) or had their governments overthrown by the US and its allies ... One of the key tenets of Republican theological voters is the hatred of Islam as the ‘new’ Communism and the fear that Islam’s growth is far outpacing Christianity. Few of these confused Republican core voters have any sense of geography or history ... President Trump benefitted from this accrued ignorance in his startling electoral victory.
In his campaign and transition to power, President Donald Trump has repeatedly sent tremors through the commanding heights of the U.S. national security establishment. Recently, he again attacked the NATO alliance, calling it "obsolete," because NATO was not set up to respond to terrorist threats, and reminding the world that the allies free-ride off U.S. military efforts by not bearing their fair share of the burden. Embarrassingly, Trump is right on both counts ... Thus Trump is correct that the Cold War-era alliance needs to be scrapped or at the very least reformed. More generally, the bedrock of defense reform should be staying out of other nonstrategic brush fire wars in the developing world, such as in Iraq and Syria. As was the case in Afghanistan, such long-term U.S. involvement only creates more terrorists.
The executive order that forced Japanese-Americans from their homes also put immigrants from Italy under the watchful eye of the government / ... The incarceration of Japanese-Americans is the best-known effect of Executive Order 9066, the rule signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 ... But the full extent of the government order is largely unknown. In addition to forcibly evacuating 120,000 Americans of Japanese background from their homes on the West Coast to barbed-wire-encircled camps, EO 9066 called for the compulsory relocation of more than 50,000 Italian-Americans and restricted the movements of more than 600,000 Italian-Americans nationwide. Now, the order has resurfaced in the public conversation about immigration.
French nationalist Marine Le Pen vowed to put "France First" as she launched her presidential bid Sunday, speaking out against globalization. "The primaries have shown that the debates on secularism or on immigration, as well as on globalization or generalized deregulation do constitute now a fundamental and cross-cutting division," she told crowds in the central city of Lyon. "The division is not between right and left anymore, but between patriots and pro-globalization." Le Pen has been a vocal representative of the National Front (FN) party for years, and continues to gain popularity as France falls victim to more terrorist attacks, prompting voters to shift toward nationalist and populist policies. Le Pen in recent months has called to ban the Muslim veil and Jewish kippah on streets.
What a stunning clash of messages: President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell address and President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address! The clash [in Jan. 1961] ... is still much underappreciated today. The straightforward words of the departing leader were drowned out by the electric vocabulary of the nation’s new Sir Galahad. The old general who had seen it all in war and peace warned the nation against the growing power of the military-industrial complex, decried excessive governmental spending and debt, and emphasized the need to preserve a sound economy as the basis for American power in the world ... With 50 years’ perspective and with countless wars and mindless governmental spending to look back upon, Ike’s words serve us better than JFK’s.
In his farewell address, delivered to the American people on national television, Jan. 17, 1961, President Eisenhower spoke firmly, and in carefully chosen words, to warn against the dangers in the years to come of the great “military-industrial complex.” Excerpt. Runtime: 1:54 mins. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
When Gen. Michael Flynn marched into the White House Briefing Room to declare that “we are officially putting Iran on notice,” he drew a red line for President Trump. In tweeting the threat, Trump agreed. His credibility is now on the line ... Is the United States making new demands on Iran not written into the nuclear treaty or international law — to provoke a confrontation? ... The problem with making a threat public — Iran is “on notice” — is that it makes it almost impossible for Iran, or Trump, to back away. Tehran seems almost obliged to defy it, especially the demand that it cease testing conventional missiles for its own defense.
The Trump administration on Friday imposed new sanctions against Iran, continuing what one observer describes as "an escalatory cycle with no clear exit." ... Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, however, said Wednesday that the test was "provocative" and in defiance of the U.N. resolution, adding, "As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice." ... Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif struck a different tone on Twitter, tweeting, apparently in response to Trump, that "Iran is unmoved by threats." The new sanctions, according to foreign policy expert Phyllis Bennis, "will further ratchet up tensions."
The Trump administration is imposing sanctions on Iran following its recent ballistic missile test. The US Treasury Department announced the measures against 13 people and a dozen companies on Friday. President Donald Trump tweeted earlier: "Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" But Iran has said it will not yield to "useless" American threats from "an inexperienced person" ... [BBC News correspondent Kim Ghattas writes:] This administration is filled with officials whose are fixated on Iran, such as National Security Advisor Michael Flynn or Defence Secretary James Mattis ... The whole framework of the approach has changed and Mr Trump and his team are signalling clearly they want to cut Iran to size.
In recent years prominent American politicians and other influential public figures have spoken repeatedly of the alleged danger of Iran’s nuclear program, and have again and again threatened war against this Middle East nation of 75 million ... How real is this “threat”? How dangerous is Iran? What’s behind the campaign for war? And what does all this mean for Americans? In fact, the so-called Iran “crisis” is artificial ... Often ignored amid the clamor for war are the sober warnings of informed scholars, historians, specialists, analysts, and military leaders, who point out some basic, key facts: Iran is not building nuclear weapons, Iran is not a threat to the US ... War is not the answer. What’s needed instead is a bold new reality-based approach toward Iran.
“Five million non-Jews died in the Holocaust.” It’s a statement that shows up regularly in declarations about the Nazi era. It was implied in a Facebook post by the Israel Defense Forces’ spokesperson’s unit last week marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And it was asserted in an article shared by the Trump White House in defense of its controversial Holocaust statement the same day omitting references to the 6 million Jewish victims. It is, however, a number without any scholarly basis. Indeed, say those close to the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, its progenitor, it is a number that was intended to increase sympathy for Jewish suffering, but which now is more often used to obscure it.
… In my view, Simon Wiesenthal was a liar and a fraud. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he was one of the biggest conmen of the 20th century. I spent four years working on a history of Nazi-hunting that was published last year, and the material I gathered on Wiesenthal was enough to make me scream out loud. When I started my book, I too believed that the great man was just that — great. But when I looked at all his memoirs, biographies and original archive material, I realised that, like so many others, the image I had built up of Simon Wiesenthal was hopelessly incorrect.
Holocaust denial is alive and well in the highest offices of the United States. It is being spread by those in President Trump’s innermost circle. It may have all started as a mistake by a new administration that is loath to admit it’s wrong. Conversely, it may be a conscious attempt by people with anti-Semitic sympathies to rewrite history. Either way it is deeply disturbing ... The de-Judaization of the Holocaust, as exemplified by the White House statement, is what I term softcore Holocaust denial ... What we saw from the White House was classic softcore denial. The Holocaust was de-Judaized.
In Croatia, International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked in the absence of representatives of the Croatian Jewish community. This was the second year in a row that the Coordinating Committee of the Jewish Communities in Croatia decided to boycott the official Holocaust commemoration event for the victims of Jasenovac concentration camp. The Jewish representatives say that the government is not doing enough to counter right-wing attempts at historical revisionism. On January 17, 2017, the traveling exhibition “Anne Frank – A History for Today” was removed from a high school in the town of Šibenik after being there for only one day ... World War II is a part of the daily public discourse in Croatia. The issues are constantly questioned in search for “the real truth.”
US President Donald Trump said that “nothing is off the table,” when it came to a response to Iran’s controversial test this week of a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Speaking to reporters Thursday, Trump was responding to a question about whether a military response to Iran was under consideration. “Nothing is off the table,” he replied, borrowing a phrase Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used for years vis-à-vis Tehran’s nuclear program. Trump’s comment followed a string of remarks by Republican senators, including the House Speaker, backing additional sanctions on Iran in the wake of the missile test, which prompted an emergency UN Security Council session and a call by Netanyahu to reimpose punitive measures.
A quite incredible story out of England has not received much media coverage in the United States. It concerns how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to “take down” parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs) ... Britain under its new Prime Minister Theresa May has also been rolling over in response to Israel’s perceived interests almost as obsequiously as the U.S. Congress ... Lobbying on behalf of Israel is a global phenomenon ...
Russia’s alleged attempt to sway the results of the US presidential election pales by comparison to Israel’s proven infiltration of Britain’s political sphere. However, whereas the US political establishment is up in arms, threatening a new round of anti-Russian sanctions, the British government has done its utmost to sweep the explosive findings of an Al Jazeera undercover reporter under the rug. This is, of course, unsurprising. Israel is a special case, uniquely permitted to get away with anything from snubbing international law and UN resolutions to inserting spies and working against unsympathetic politicians in the US Congress and UK Parliament. Much has been written about the power of the Israeli lobby in the US, and its ability to destroy the careers of out-of-step lawmakers.
Ten-Day Dawn celebrations have kicked off across Iran, marking the run-up to the 38th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which put an end to the monarchy of the US-backed Pahlavi regime in the country. The festivities started all over the nation [on Jan. 31] at 9:33 a.m. local time, symbolically marking the precise time when the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, arrived back home from exile on February 1, 1979 ... Special ceremonies are being held in more than 80 Iranian cultural centers in 60 countries to mark the first day of the Ten-Day Dawn period ... The Ten-Day Dawn festivities will culminate in nationwide rallies on February 10 this year, the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
... These are just some of the 30 southern California organizations listed on the latest edition of the Hate Map, an annual product of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The 2015 Hate Map (a new one is due next month) lists 892 groups nationally, including 68 in California ... “They simply list everyone who disagrees with them,” said Evelyn Miller, treasurer of the Huntington Beach-based National Coalition for Immigration Reform (NCIR), which is listed as an “anti-immigrant” hate group on the 2015 Hate Map ... She said her group is only opposed to illegal immigration, not legal immigration – though she also believes legal immigration should be curbed, saying the influx of immigrants at this time is “too much.” ... The Hate Map is both well regarded and widely controversial.
Every year, the media promotes an annual study put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left wing organization devoted to “monitoring” hate groups and crimes across the U.S., despite provoking its own hate crime against a conservative organization in 2012. The group has a cozy relationship with the media, with its president Richard Cohen frequently appearing on news programs to promote his group’s “studies.” Though the group in no way actually vets or verifies any of the alleged incidents they collect for their reports, the media happily hypes the group’s studies without hesitation or question as to their legitimacy.
The US Embassy in Tel Aviv has clarified that President Donald Trump’s travel ban will largely not affect the tens of thousands of Israeli Jews born in Middle Eastern countries. A Tuesday statement said the controversial executive order would not be enforced against Israelis from those countries unless they possess a valid passport from one of the seven Arab countries banned under the directive ... Regarding those Israelis born in the seven countries who do have a valid passport from one of those countries, the embassy did not have definitive information, but seemed to indicate this would be handled on a case-by-case basis.
... The dominant foreign-policy vision animating left and right in recent years has been promiscuous intervention. While elites disagreed on tactics and targets, both major political parties shared a belief that Washington, DC should micromanage the world ... Ultimately, the U.S. government is created, funded, staffed and defended by the American people. Its first and overwhelming obligation is to those it represents — and coerces. It has no cause to squander its wealth and risk the lives of its own citizens unless something serious is at stake ... U.S. government officials should put America First. Their failure to do so in recent years has resulted in high costs to the American people: thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of serious injuries, and destructive blowback including terrorism and massive debt.
Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and visitors from seven Muslim countries entering the US makes a terrorist attack on Americans at home or abroad more rather than less likely. It does so because one of the main purposes of al-Qaeda and Isis in carrying out atrocities is to provoke an over-reaction directed against Muslim communities and states ... The great success of Mohammed Atta and his eighteen hijackers was not on the day that they and 3,000 others died, but when President George W Bush responded by leading the US into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that are still going on ... Though 9/11 is cited as an explanation for Trump’s executive order, none of the countries whose citizens were involved (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Lebanon) are facing any restrictions.
... The idea of a permanent barrier between our countries [US and Mexico] goes to the heart of the divide between our two Americas on the most fundamental of questions. Who are we? What is a nation? What does America stand for? ... Were we from the beginning a new, unique, separate and identifiable people like the British, French and Germans? Or was America a new kind of nation, an ideological nation, an invented nation, united by an acceptance of the ideas and ideals of Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln and Dr. King? ... To the tens of millions for whom Trump appeals, what the [proposed] wall represents is our last chance to preserve that nation and people. To many on the cosmopolitan left, ethnic or national identity is not only not worth fighting for, it is not even worth preserving.
President Donald Trump’s executive orders last week limiting immigration to the U.S. may be the first such directives in recent years, but they are hardly the first time the U.S. government has sought to restrict immigration ... In the late 1800s, Congress moved for the first time to limit the number of immigrants. Lawmakers targeted Asians, especially Chinese ... In the 1920s, restrictions on immigration increased. The Immigration Act of 1924 was the most severe: it limited the overall number of immigrants and established quotas based on nationality. Among other things, the act sharply reduced immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa. And it completely restricted immigrants from Asia, except for Japan and the Philippines.
... Recent research has shown us that most enslaved persons in the Americas before 1700 were Indians; that Indians constituted a sizable proportion of the global slave population thereafter; and that Europeans enslaved Indians from Quebec to New Orleans, and from New England to the Carolinas ... In his beautifully written (and National Book Award-nominated) The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America, Andrés Reséndez offers a tour-de-force account of the enslavement of Indians in the New World, and in the process broadens our definitions of slavery.
... Today our children our being taught that the people who lived in the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere were not “merciless Indian savages” (as Jefferson calls them in the Declaration of Independence), many of whom delighted in torture and cannibalism, but rather spiritually enlightened “native Americans” whose wise and peaceful nobility was rudely destroyed by invading European barbarians ... ; and that Africans were not uncultured slave traders and cannibals, but unappreciated builders of great empires. But just how did these peoples live before they came into contact with Europeans? Although historical myth is ever more rapidly replacing factual history, not only in popular culture but also in our schools and universities, we may still find accurate historical accounts buried in larger libraries or in used book stores.
... I don't defend a false or romanticized image of the Indians, as propagated, for example, by Hollywood in such films as "Pocahontas" and the others mentioned in the Journal. But just as inaccurate as the currently fashionable media image of the "Noble Red Man" is the disgraceful picture drawn by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in the article reprinted from a 1870 issue of The Galaxy ... While the Iroquois' ferocity against their enemies may seem quite shocking to us, what real difference is there between burning people to death on scaffolding by Indians in the 17th century, and incinerating tens of thousands of people at a time in fire-bombings (Hamburg, Dresden) or with atomic blasts (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) by "civilized" Whites in the "enlightened" 20th century?
... A study from Iceland is the latest to raise the prospect of a downwards spiral into imbecility. The research from deCODE, a genetics firm in Reykjavik, finds that groups of genes that predispose people to spend more years in education became a little rarer in the country from 1910 to 1975 ... Those who carried more “education genes” tended to have fewer children than others. This led the scientists to propose that the genes had become rarer in the population because, for all their qualifications, better educated people had contributed less than others to the Icelandic gene pool.
The first-ever direct China-to-Britain freight train pulled into London last week - the latest milestone in China’s ambitions to redevelop the old "Silk Road" trade routes from Asia to Europe ... After 18 days and 28,000 kilometers, the freight train pulled into London on time last week. It passed through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France, finally crossing under the English Channel ... But there’s more to the train than its cargo. Analysts say the historic journey also carried with it a political message – that China is forging new trade routes and new markets. Already, 15 European cities are served by freight trains from China as part of Beijing’s "One Belt, One Road" initiative.