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.
IHR STORE
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
IHR NEWS AND VIEWS
... 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.
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.
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.
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 is now the country’s Prime Minister. The decision to ban him was “taken personally” by May while she was serving as Home Secretary ... As justification for the ban, her order cites three statements allegedly made by Weber, as reported in a sensational article in Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper. After the exclusion order was issued, the paper publicly acknowledged that the first of the three statements attributed to Weber was never made by him, and that a portion of the second statement was likewise not by him. ... “The decision to ban me from the UK,” says Weber, “was based on inaccurate, untrue or distorted claims from a sensational and hostile second-hand report.”
... 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.
Over the years many malicious and untrue things have been said about me by people who don’t like my views. Perhaps the most widely circulated example is the lie that I said or wrote the following: “The Holocaust is a religion. Its underpinnings in the realm of historical fact are non-existent -- no Hitler order, no plan, no budget, no gas chambers, no autopsies of gassed victims, no bones, no ashes, no skulls, no nothing.” In fact, I never wrote or uttered those words. They do not represent what I think or believe ... This quote was first attributed to me by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an influential Jewish-Zionist organization ... Over the years several newspapers, including Israel’s daily Jerusalem Post, and some websites, including Wikipedia, have likewise tied this quote, or some version of it, to me.
This past year has been another busy and productive one for us. But we’ve also had to deal with new problems caused by bigoted groups that want to shut us down ... In 2017 we organized five meetings here in southern California. Over the years these educational gatherings have helped make the IHR an important networking center for like-minded people in the region ... Over the past year I’ve conducted numerous broadcast interviews with US and overseas media, appearing as a guest on radio and television broadcasts to talk about topical and historical issues. Most of these were with global television broadcasters that reach vast numbers of viewers.
In this 45-minute talk, given at an IHR meeting, Weber reviews Donald Trump’s foreign policy record. Trump’s actual policies as president, Weber shows, have been a drastic betrayal of pledges he made before taking office. For example, Trump repeatedly spoke against US military involvement in the Syria conflict, especially without specific Congressional authorization. But as President he has stepped up the US role in the war, even ordering a missile strike against a Syria air base – a violation of both US law and international law. For President Trump, Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. Consistent with that, he threatens war against Iran. Weber recalls President Eisenhower’s foreign policy record and outlook during the 1950s, and shows how they contrast sharply with those of President Trump.
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:
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.
At a special IHR meeting on Oct. 1, 2016, three seasoned specialists provide informed perspective, each from a different angle, on aspects of Jewish-Zionist power. Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor who has written extensively on the Jewish role in history and contemporary life, takes a close look at Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election campaign. Gilad Atzmon, who was born in Israel and now lives in Britain, reviews the Jewish role in Capitalism, Marxism, Communism, and other major intellectual-political trends in modern history. Mark Weber reviews the lives and careers of both MacDonald and Atzmon in his introductions of those two speakers. In his own address Weber provides an overview of Jewish-Zionist power and its enormous impact on American society and the world.
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.
... 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.
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.
… 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."
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.
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.
... 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.
... 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.
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.
... 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.
... 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.
… 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.
... 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."
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.
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.
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
... How is this little dispute thousands of miles away any of our business? Unfortunately it is “our business” because of President Obama’s foolish idea to overthrow a democratically- elected, pro-Russia government in Ukraine in favor of what his Administration believed would be a “pro-Western” and “pro-NATO” replacement. In short, the Obama Administration did openly to Ukraine what his Democratic Party claims without proof the Russians did to the United States: meddled in a vote ... What flag flies over Crimea is none of our business. We are not the policemen of the world, and candidate Trump seemed to have understood that. But now Trump’s in a trap. He was foolish enough to believe that Beltway foreign policy “experts” have a clue about what really is American national interest.
But there is a larger issue here. Why is control of the Kerch Strait any of our business? Why is this our quarrel, to the point that U.S. strategists want us to confront Russia over a Crimean Peninsula ... Why are we letting ourselves be dragged into everyone’s quarrels — from who owns the islets in the South China Sea, to who owns the Senkaku and Southern Kurils; and from whether Transnistria had a right to secede from Moldova, to whether South Ossetia and Abkhazia had the right to break free of Georgia, when Georgia broke free of Russia? Do the American people care a fig for these places? Are we really willing to risk war with Russia or China over who holds title to them?
US President Donald Trump has admitted that the US only keeps its troops in the Middle East to protect Israel. In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump explained that he would not withdraw US troops from the region because of the need to support Israel, despite the fact that other US concerns such as oil were no longer sufficient reason to remain. Trump told the Post: “Now, are we going to stay in that part of the world [the Middle East]? One reason to is Israel. Oil is becoming less and less of a reason because we’re producing more oil now than we’ve ever produced. So, you know, all of a sudden it gets to a point where you don’t have to stay there.” ... It is no secret that the US provides extensive military support to Israel. In October, the largest ever US military aid package to Israel – worth $38 billion to be delivered over a period of ten years – entered into force.
... T. M. Landry has become a viral Cinderella story, a small school run by Michael Landry, a teacher and former salesman, and his wife, Ms. Landry, a nurse, whose predominantly black, working-class students have escaped the rural South for the nation’s most elite colleges ... Landry success stories have been splashed in the past two years on the “Today” show, “Ellen” and the “CBS This Morning.” ... In reality, the school falsified transcripts, made up student accomplishments, and mined the worst stereotypes of black America to manufacture up-from-hardship tales that it sold to Ivy League schools hungry for diversity. The Landrys also fostered a culture of fear with physical and emotional abuse, students and teachers said. Students were forced to kneel on rice, rocks and hot pavement, and were choked, yelled at and berated.
... Increasing numbers of British voters now think that the original referendum to withdraw Britain from the European Union after four decades of grudging membership was a catastrophic mistake. Britain was one of Europe’s big three members; without with EU, Britain will be marooned somewhere off the coast of northern Europe and forced to become totally responsive to US demands and policies ... Britain is no longer the manufacturing powerhouse it was before World War II ... Divorcing Britain from the EU will be nightmarishly complex and fraught. The Bank of England warns that Brexit will plunge the country into a serious recession ... The way out of this nasty mess is for Parliament to do its job and mandate another referendum. Many pro-Brexit voters misunderstood the real issues and regret their hastiness.
... Hill was fired by CNN within 24 hours. The message is clear. You can criticize Christianity, Muslims, white males, Donald Trump and the American government at will ... but never, never go after Jews or Israel even indirectly if you want to keep your job ... To be sure, CNN is pro-Israeli in its reporting and, more important, in terms of choosing what not to report. Its lead political anchor is Wolf Blitzer, a former American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) employee, who speaks Hebrew and has lived in Israel. Like most major American mainstream media outlets, CNN has numerous Jewish employees working to select, edit and produce the news stories that actually air, well placed to manage what does finally go out to the public. Reports critical of Israel or Jews are not welcome anywhere in the U.S. national media ...
The sale of more than a dozen pieces of WW2 Nazi memorabilia, including a portrait of Hitler, at a regional NSW [Australia] auction has drawn criticism from the country's Jewish community. The auction in Bredbo, near Queanbeyan, on Saturday features Nazi medals, helmets, jewellery and the Hitler portrait. Spokesman for the auction company Don Mahoney defended the sale of the items, saying they formed a small part of a large sale of military items. He said some Australian politicians were known to collect Nazi memorabilia. "I can't mention names, but you would be shocked, I have sold Nazi memorabilia to solicitors, bank managers, accountants, politicians over the years," Mr Mahoney told AAP.
The Netherlands' state-run rail company NS has agreed to set up a commission to compensate Holocaust survivors and their relatives for transporting Jews to a Nazi transit camp. Its decision to "learn, honour and remember in an enduring way" followed a campaign by Salo Muller, whose parents were murdered at Auschwitz. Some 107,000 Jews were taken to Westerbork and deported, mainly to deaths camps at Auschwitz and Sobibor. Only 5,000 survived. NS said it had decided to avoid a legal battle, years after French rail company SNCF was ordered to pay compensation for its role in deporting 76,000 French Jews during World War Two. SNCF eventually apologised for its role in 2010, and later agreed a compensation fund after US lawmakers threatened to bar the state-run company from rail contracts.
US President Donald Trump indicated in an interview published Wednesday that, although he could remove troops from the Middle East, citing cheaper oil as an explanation, one reason not to do so is concern for Israel’s security. “Now, are we going to stay in that part of the world? One reason to is Israel,” Trump told the Washington Post. “Oil is becoming less and less of a reason because we’re producing more oil now than we’ve ever produced,” he added, appearing to envision a world where the US would be less beholden to Saudi Arabia. “So, you know, all of a sudden it gets to a point where you don’t have to stay there.” ... Trump last week suggested that Israel would face major regional difficulties in the Middle East were it not for the stabilizing presence of Saudi Arabia, explaining his decision not to take measures against Riyadh.
... Sure, he may hector imperial allies to spend more on their militaries (while insisting he respects their sovereignty), but that’s just a show. He’s an all-in imperialist, so we shouldn’t be fooled by the staged populism that sometimes is mistaken for come- home-Americanism. America First in practice embodies George H. W. Bush’s summation of America’s foreign policy: “What we say goes.” ... Trump is a caricature of a conventional American politician — which is why the political establishment despises him so. He lacks the diplomatic costume that makes brutality acceptable or at least enables people to live comfortably with their heads in the sand. But he’s just another faithful defender of the empire, and as such, he needs an enemy. In fact, he has plenty; take your choice: China, Iran, — and, yes — Russia.
... Among the problems facing America, in the eyes of her people in November, not one of the top ten involved a foreign threat. In the following order, all involve the troubled state of our splintered nation: immigration/illegal aliens; dissatisfaction with government/ poor leadership; health care; unifying the country; race relations/ racism; lack of respect for each other; ethics/moral/ religious/family decline; economy in general; unemployment/ jobs; and education. Immigration, race, culture, the economy and education appear to be the agenda Americans want addressed in 2020 ... Progressives fail to understand that what they describe as greater and ever more desirable diversity, millions of Americans see as the conquest of their country by an endless flood of uninvited strangers.
CNN on Thursday said it had ended its contract with one of its political commentators after he used a phrase associated with Palestinian extremists – “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” – during a speech at the United Nations. “Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN,” the network said in a statement. Lamont Hill, a professor of Media Studies and Urban Education at Temple University who also hosted the syndicated television show “Our World with Black Enterprise,” spoke at the United Nations on Wednesday at an event held for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People ... Lamont Hill defended his remarks, saying in a tweet that the phrase predates Hamas by some 50 years.
Sen. Rand Paul acknowledged that he had placed a hold on major funding legislation for Israel, saying he wanted time limits on assistance to the Jewish state. The Kentucky Republican also said he wanted cuts in aid to countries he says are hostile to the United States. “While I’m not for foreign aid in general, if we are going to send aid to Israel it should be limited in time and scope so we aren’t doing it forever, and it should be paid for by cutting the aid to people who hate Israel and America,” Paul’s office said in an statement ... The hold has been countered vigorously by major pro-Israel groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Christians United for Israel, through online ads and action alerts to membership.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry is officially urging Jews no matter where they are to speak out against Israel’s presence in the West Bank. An official ministry document listing actions that “encourage diaspora Jewish communities to voice their opposition to the occupation” appeared in a government report published earlier this year on Dutch funding for the Breaking the Silence group. It was an unusual statement among European governments offering funding for organizations that they say are promoting peace or coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians. Breaking the Silence is a group of Israeli combat veterans who oppose the occupation.
... The accused had no attorney, and there was no question of last rites for those condemned to death. The corpses were not put into coffins. The dead were not restored to their families. Very expeditious, this maquis seldom used torture ... Perhaps the most detestable acts of violence are those which attack women. Near Limoges, a young woman of the region, Mlle. d'Armagnac, whose family are proprietors of a château, gets married in the church of her village: when she comes out on the parvis from the mass, maquisards kidnap her, her husband, the priest who married them, and a witness. At dawn the next day she is shot to death in her wedding gown. Motives given: first, she is a chatelaine; in the second place, she has taken care of militiamen.
... The part of the world where American meddling coupled with ignorance has produced the worst result is inevitably the Middle East. Washington has been led by the nose by Israel and Saudi Arabia, currently working in sync, to have the United States destroy Iran even though the Iranians represent no threat whatsoever to Americans or any serious U.S. interests ... Senator Rand Paul’s courageous decision to place a “hold” on aid to Israel is long overdue, as Israel is a liability to the United States and is also legally ineligible for aid due to its undeclared nuclear arsenal and its unwillingness to sign the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The hysterical reactions of American Jews and Israel suggest that any redirection of U.S. Middle East policy will produce a hostile reaction from the Establishment ...
Free Beacon reports that “pro-Israel groups in America are mobilizing against Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) for blocking the continuation of U.S. aid to Israel.” Paul has placed a “block” on legislation to give Israel $38 billion over the next ten years – $23,000 per every Jewish Israeli family of four. This is the largest military aid package in U.S. history ... A block is a legislative procedure in which a senator calls on the floor leader not to move forward with a bill and indicates that the senator may filibuster against it. Jewish News Syndicate reported last week that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had sent an action alert to its members calling on them to pressure Paul to remove his block on the bill ... AIPAC has also been purchasing advertisements on Facebook attacking Paul “as the primary Senate force blocking the reauthorization of the U.S.-Israel security pact.”
... The announcement of the University of Oregon’s student-run event called Thanksgiving a “celebration” of “ongoing genocide,” and said the alternative event would help people with raising their “critical consciousness and identifying ways to decolonize the holiday.” The school’s event description reads, “... Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe.” ... Campus Reform, which describe itself as a “watchdog to the nation’s higher education system,” sent correspondent Josiah Tejada to ask students whether they believe Thanksgiving is racist or celebrates genocide ... Another student said Thanksgiving was “racist” because “we’re celebrating taking away land from natives.”
Anti-Semitic stereotypes are alive and well in Europe, while the memory of the Holocaust is starting to fade, a sweeping new survey by CNN reveals. More than a quarter of Europeans polled believe Jews have too much influence in business and finance. Nearly one in four said Jews have too much influence in conflict and wars across the world. One in five said they have too much influence in the media, and the same number believe they have too much influence in politics ... Those are among the key findings of a survey carried out by pollster ComRes for CNN ... A third of Europeans said that Jews use the Holocaust to advance their own positions or goals ... Nearly one in five said anti-Semitism in their countries was a response to the everyday behavior of Jewish people.
Today [Nov. 24] Ukrainians around the world commemorate victims of an artificial famine of 1932-1933 known as the Holodomor, the result of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s order to force peasant households into collective farms. The exact number of Ukrainians who perished during the Holodomor genocide is unknown but scholars say at least 3.9 million people were starved to death in Ukraine as the Soviet government seized their property and crops, closed off the borders and denied any outside aid. Besides Ukraine, millions of people in other agricultural regions of the Soviet Union were subjected to collectivization and starvation. Of all ethnic groups, Kazakhstan saw the highest death ratio: an estimated 38 percent of the ethnic Kazakh population died during the 1931-1933 famine, according to a Harvard University study published in 2001.
… These elementary analogies are enough to show that the murder of seven million Ukrainians in 1933 could not have been motivated by socio-economic or "class" reasons alone. Conflicts claim millions of victims only in struggles between nations, as in wars, colonial struggles, and so forth, when the national question is paramount. Moscow needed a holocaust. The imposed famine of 1933 and the whole range of repressive mass killings during the 1930s were an expression of the empire's struggle for self-preservation. It was this instinct, and not the economic doctrine of collectivization, that impelled the Kremlin to carry out the horrors of the 1930s.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday called Israel a “cancerous tumor” established by Western countries to advance their interests in the Middle East. Iran’s leaders frequently condemn Israel and predict its demise, but Rouhani, a relative moderate, rarely employs such rhetoric. Addressing an annual Islamic Unity Conference on Saturday, Rouhani said “one of the ominous results of World War II was the formation of a cancerous tumor in the region.” He went on to refer to Israel as a “fake regime” set up by Western countries ... Israel views Iran as an existential threat. Rouhani said the United States cultivates close ties with “regional Muslim nations” to protect Israel, an apparent reference to Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s Sunni Arab allies.
... Trump began by saying he was putting America first, but that was the last thing he was doing ... Trump is also clear that he is running interference for the crown prince for the sake of Israel and in order to keep together his coalition against Iran. But Israel would not need to suck up to bone saw murderers if it would make peace with the Palestinians and stop colonizing their land and keeping them stateless. As for Iran, the US had made an epochal settlement with Tehran that mothballed most of its nuclear enrichment program in 2015. Trump trashed that agreement and tried to put Iran behind the eight ball, cheered on by aggressive Saudis willing to fight Iran to the last drop of American soldiers’ blood ... With allies like this, who needs enemies?
The 633-word statement of President Donald Trump on the Saudi royals’ role in the grisly murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi is a remarkable document, not only for its ice-cold candor ... “Our paramount goal,” Trump declared in his statement, “is to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world.” But this objective is every bit as utopian as George W. Bush’s second inaugural where he declared the “ultimate goal” of U.S. foreign policy to be “ending tyranny in our world.” Terrorism and tyranny have been with mankind forever, and they will be with mankind forever ... Iran has not attacked us, does not want war with us and remains in compliance with the nuclear treaty from which we walked away.
Jewish leaders are calling for new editions of the Bible and Koran to carry warning messages which highlight anti-Semitic passages in the holy texts. The recommendations have been made in a new document called ‘An End to Antisemitism! A Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism’. It was produced following an international conference organised by the European Jewish Congress, at which academics gathered to discuss how prejudice and discrimination can be tackled. Among the policies mentioned in the document was the idea of warning messages in holy texts, a topic discussed in a chapter entitled 'recommendations regarding Religious Groups and Institutions.'
... The Trump administration quietly changed America’s long-held position on Syria’s strategic Golan Heights while attention was focused on the raucous political carnival in Washington. Though barely noticed, the policy change had enormous importance and will lead the United States into a lot of future Mideast misery ... Now, the White House has quietly accepted permanent Israeli control of Golan, though it violates international law and past US policy. It’s clear that US Mideast policy is firmly under the control of the neocons aligned to Israel’s expansionist far right parties. In fact, it is impossible to see any difference between the policies of Israel’s hard rightwing leader, Benyamin Netanyahu, and President Donald Trump ... A coterie of pro-Israel lawyers and property developers from New York City have completely taken control of Mideast policy.
An Israeli-American man was sentenced to ten years in prison in Israel on Thursday for making about 2,000 hoax bomb threats that forced evacuations of Jewish community centers across the U.S., and planes to make emergency landings. The threats were made by phone and email in 2016 and 2017, and raised concern at the time in the United States that anti-Semitism was on the rise ... In passing sentence, the court said the defendant offered on the "dark web" — part of the Internet accessible only through special software — to make bomb and shooting threats for money, earning about $240,000 worth of the digital currency Bitcoin ... Kadar, who was arrested in Israel in March 2017, is Jewish.
The Quakers of Britain announced that the religious movement will no longer invest in companies that “profit from the occupation” they accused Israel of maintaining in Judea and Samaria [“West Bank” Palestine]. The Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends, said in their announcement Monday that the decision was made by the church’s trustees in consultation with Meeting for Sufferings – the national representative body of Quakers. It said the Quakers have a long history of “pursuing ethical investments,” noting that it has taken decisions not to invest in the fossil fuel industry, arms companies and South Africa under apartheid. “Our long history of working for a just peace in Palestine and Israel has opened our eyes to the many injustices and violations of international law arising from the military occupation of Palestine by the Israeli government” ...
Early in Operation Finale, a docudrama about the capture of fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann (played by Ben “Man Of A Thousand Nationalities” Kingsley), Eichmann endures a grilling from Mossad and Shin Bet agents, who’ve just grabbed him outside the Argentina home where he’s been hiding in fairly plain sight for 15 years ... This is a movie that somehow manages to make Nick Kroll boring. Alexandre Desplat contributes an urgent, aggressively stylized score that would be terrific in another context but sounds all wrong for this sober material, and director Chris Weitz — yes, the American Pie guy — is just out of his depth. Operation Finale means to embody the banality of evil, but it’s mostly mired in plain old banality.
... Since announcing last July [2002] that CBS would air a four-hour, prime time miniseries on the early life of Adolf Hitler, media critics and Jewish spokesmen had had a field day. They feared that the early Hitler would be “humanized” into a sympathetic figure ... Now, with “Hitler: The Rise of Evil” broadcasting May 18 and May 20 [2003] during the ratings sweeps period, the CBS chief is breathing easier. After previewing tapes of the film, a half-dozen Holocaust scholars and prominent rabbis generally have given it their approval. Some of the turnaround can be credited to an entirely new script and complete revision of the original project ... The earlier critical volleys, and advice from Jewish leaders consulted by the producers, apparently gave a substantial push to the revisions.
... Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been at war two out of every three years. Indeed, the frequency of US military deployments has been six times greater in the period between 1990 and 2017 than in the 200 years spanning 1789 and 1989. The seven wars initiated by the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have, in Mearsheimer’s telling, “failed to achieve any meaningful success.” Still worse, the costs have been immense ... According to Mearsheimer, because liberalism is based on the concept of universal and inalienable rights, a “universalist logic” takes hold and leads American policy-makers “to think of every area of the world as a potential battlefield, because they are committed to protecting human rights everywhere and spreading liberal democracy far and wide.”
... Moreover, for Moscow the issue goes beyond the individual conflicts. For the Putin government to abandon important interests on America’s demand would be but the beginning, encouraging the United States to employ coercion elsewhere. After all, Washington has proved itself to be a most meddlesome power, intent on having its way everywhere, at whatever cost. The American government is currently applying sanctions — or considering doing so — on most of the known world: Europe, China, Russia, India, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and more. The United States will remain the most powerful nation for years to come. However, its ability to unilaterally impose its will is waning. And policymakers who imagine adversaries can be easily browbeaten ignore how Americans would react in similar circumstances.
... Actually, the only regime change that is needed is in Washington and it would include Jeffrey, Bolton, Haley, Pompeo, and Miller ... None of them are capable of acting to advance any American national interest, which they wouldn’t recognize even if it hit them in the butt. Once they are gone the U.S. can bid the Middle East goodbye and leave its constituent nations to sort out their own problems. Jeffrey’s ridiculous prescriptions for the Syrians and Russians are symptomatic of what one gets from a team of yes-men who have latched onto some dystopic ideas and pursued them relentlessly, blinded by what they believe to be American power. Someone should tell them that their antics have made that power a commodity that is dramatically depreciating in value, but it is clear that they are not listening.
... Anti-Semitism is not what defines the experience of Jews in America today; assimilation is. To hear the professional worriers in the Jewish community, it’s love, not hate, that poses the bigger existential challenge. A vast majority of Jews — 72 percent among the non-Orthodox — now marry outside the tribe ... Almost a third of millennial Jews are so unidentified with Judaism they say they have no religion at all. And Israel, which once inspired, now alienates many, especially the young ... It’s the part of American Jewish identity that points with pride to the fact that Barack Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, and beams at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s status as a liberal rock star ... A majority of American Jews in that 2013 Pew survey rated “humor” and “intellectual curiosity” much higher than community and religious practice as indicators of Jewishness.
In his new book, “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, claims that Jews are different, and the differences are not just skin deep. Jews exhibit, he writes, a distinctive genetic signature ... Ostrer, who is also director of genetic and genomic testing at Montefiore Medical Center, goes further, maintaining that Jews are a homogeneous group with all the scientific trappings of what we used to call a “race.”... To his credit, Ostrer also addresses the third rail of discussions about Jewishness and race: the issue of intelligence ... Jewish success is a product of Jewish genes as much as of Jewish moms.
... Anyone that understands Jewish history as well as the history of the entire development of the idea or construct of the “white race” should understand how that no Jew, Ashkenazi or otherwise, is “white.” While it is certainly the case that many Ashkenazi Jews today in America (such as Ruiz-Grossman) identify as “white,” that doesn’t make it any more accurate or appropriate ... This is not merely a semantic issue. Jews are not “white.” We are a tribal people from the Levant ... No one that wants to end anti-Semitism and to fight against bigotry and racism should be claiming that Jews are “white.”
The Great European War [1914-1918] posed no national security threat whatsoever to the US ... In arming merchantmen and stowing munitions on passenger liners, England was hypocritical and utterly cavalier about the resulting mortal danger to innocent civilians. That was exemplified tragically by the 4.3 million rifle cartridges and hundreds of tons of other munitions carried in the hull of the Lusitania, when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland in May 1915 ... Likewise, German resort to so-called “unrestricted submarine warfare” in February 1917 was brutal and stupid, but came in response to massive domestic political pressure during what was known as the “turnip winter” in Germany. By then, the country was starving from the English blockade – literally.
... This week marks the 75th anniversary of World War II, as last month marked the 100th anniversary of World War I. Thus, it is a good time for Eugene Windchy’s Twelve American Wars: Nine of Them Avoidable. A compelling chapter in this new book, by the author of “Tonkin Gulf,” deals with how Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, schemed to drag America into Britain’s war in 1915 ... Had [President] Wilson publicly warned U.S. citizens not to sail on the ships of belligerent nations and forbidden U.S.-flagged merchant ships to carry contraband to nations at war, America might have stayed out of the war, which might have ended in a truce, not a German defeat. There might have been no Adolf Hitler and no World War II.
Mark Weber joins host Tim Kelly in this January 2016 broadcast to talk about harmful but widely accepted myths about World War II. (Runtime: one hour, 13 minutes.) Weber talks about the self-righteous and calamitous policies of US President Woodrow Wilson in the First World War. Weber also reviews the even more delusional and catastrophic policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. His illegal and highly deceitful efforts to foment war in Europe, and then pull the US into the conflict continue to have harmful consequences for America and the world today.
The Pentagon has failed what is being called its first-ever comprehensive audit, a senior official said on Thursday, finding U.S. Defense Department accounting discrepancies that could take years to resolve. Results of the inspection - conducted by some 1,200 auditors and examining financial accounting on a wide range of spending including on weapons systems, military personnel and property - were expected to be completed later in the day. “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters, adding that the findings showed the need for greater discipline in financial matters within the Pentagon ... The U.S. defense budget for the 2018 fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30 was about $700 billion.
The Pentagon has finally completed its first ever audit and the results are as many of us expected. After spending nearly a billion dollars to find out what has happened to trillions in unaccounted-for spending, the long look through the books has concluded that only ten percent of all Pentagon agencies pass muster ... The problem with military spending is the philosophy that drives it. If the US strategy is to maintain a global military empire, there will never be enough spending. Because there is never enough to control every corner of the globe. But if we are to return to a well-defended republic, military spending could easily be reduced by 75 percent while keeping us completely safe.
In 2016 and 2017 Al Jazeera produced a program that unmistakenly documents the Israel government and U.S. Israel lobby’s all-out effort to spy on, smear, and disrupt American students and other activists who are working to build an understanding of the Palestinians’ plight. The Lobby — USA ... is now available ... What the program presents is shocking ... The effort aims to smear Palestinian students in the United States and pro-Palestinian American activists and political candidates who criticize Israeli policy as anti-Semites and enablers of terrorism. The paid pro-Israel operatives, guided by Israeli government officials and embassy staff, have used social media and other channels in an attempt to destroy the career potential of student activists who work to raise Americans’ consciousness about the Palestinians.
Depending on what criteria one uses, there are between 200 and 600 groups in the United States that wholly or in part are dedicated to furthering the interests of Israel. The organizations are both Jewish, like the Zionist Organization of America, and Christian Zionist to include John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, but the funding of the Israel Lobby and both its political and media access comes overwhelmingly from Jewish supporters and advocates.
The U.N. culture and education agency has teamed up with the World Jewish Congress to launch a website to counter Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and WJC President Ronald Lauder unveiled the interactive "Facts about the Holocaust " site at the cultural agency's Paris headquarters on Monday. It features a trove of historical information about the Holocaust, including testimonies and it is linked to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Online Holocaust Encyclopedia. The new site has been conceived to combat what UNESCO calls "increased hate and disinformation online" on Jewish issues.
Soon two biotechnology firms will begin to offer couples undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) the chance to screen embryos before they are implanted in the mother’s womb. ... By selecting between different embryos, a couple undergoing IVF (1-2% of all American births today) can optimise the health of their future progeny in a way that those who conceive naturally cannot. When the technique becomes widely available, as it no doubt will, those wealthy enough to do so may opt to undergo IVF even if they are able to conceive naturally. And although both firms say that, for ethical reasons, they will screen embryos only for disease risk, there is no reason why other traits such as height, or most controversially intelligence, might not be selected in the same way.
The persistent myth of the Vatican's indifference to the fate of Europe's Jews during the Second World War had its origin in the 1960s ... Responding to these accusations, Pope Paul VI opened the wartime records in the Vatican archives to study by four Jesuit historians, permitting them to select documents for publication. The American among them, Robert A. Graham, sorted out a great number that were eventually published in a series of volumes. These weighty documents clearly show that well before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, Secretary of State Pacelli, the future Pope, was deeply involved in promoting the welfare of Europe's Jews.
... A new US poll on the same topic will not help Shaked rest easy. The results indicate that key trends identified in recent years show no signs of slowing; Israel's reputation is deteriorating among demographics such as Democrats, younger voters, African Americans and Hispanic Americans. The fact that the US public's view towards Israel remains positive overall masks an increasingly partisan divide; the Economist/ YouGov poll found that only 25 percent of Democrat-voters consider Israel an "ally" of the US, compared with 57 percent of Republicans. As Israeli newspaper Haaretz observed, the poll "shows that support for Israel is directly co-related to gender, age, economic status and political outlook. It is strongest among older, well-to-do, conservative white men, and weakest among young, liberal, minorities and women".
A plurality of Virginians (38.1%) favor ending taxpayer funding for Israeli business ventures in the commonwealth according to a Virginia Coalition for Human Rights (VCHR) poll fielded by Google Surveys. About a third of Virginians (32.7%) were neutral about discontinuing subsidies, while 29.2% disagreed ... State Israel advocacy organizations lobbied to create and staff a taxpayer-funded state government office to exclusively promote Israeli business projects called the Virginia-Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) in 1996 ... In 1984 the Israeli government lobbied the Reagan administration for preferential export access to the US to boost Israel’s struggling economy ... The US-Israel trade deal passed in 1985 and is America’s worst performing bilateral trade deal with an inflation-adjusted 2017 cumulative deficit of $170.72 billion.
The U.S. wars and military action in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have cost American taxpayers $5.9 trillion since they began in 2001, according to a new study. That total is almost $2 trillion more than all federal government spending during the recently completed 2017-18 fiscal year. The report, from Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, also finds that more than 480,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting. Over 244,000 civilians have been killed. Another ten million people have been displaced due to violence. The $5.9 trillion figure reflects the cost across the U.S. federal government, since the price of war is not borne by the Defense Department alone, according to Neta Crawford, the study's author.
The price for America’s longest wars has surpassed more than $5.9 trillion and at least 480,000 lost lives, according to a new study released by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. The figures highlight the toll of U.S. war operations around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the study projects the numbers could rise ... The study’s death estimates include nearly 7,000 U.S. service members, nearly 8,000 U.S. contractors, more than 100,0000 military and police members from other countries, more than 244,000 civilians, and more than 100,000 opposition fighters ... War appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan are funded by deficit spending and borrowing, and not new taxes or war bonds, the study notes. This adds to interest costs, it concludes.
... Many Europeans – and certainly Germans – consider their nations still militarily and politically occupied by the American Imperium. How else could the US National Security spy agency (NSA) get away with tapping Angela Merkel’s cell phone with nary a German protest? Given Russia’s military and financial feebleness (a defense budget less than one tenth of the US), what reason is there for a major US military presence from Spain to the Baltic and Black Sea? There are still US military bases in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany (34 bases), Belgium, Holland, Britain, Turkey, Denmark, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo, Greece, and soon Poland. Large parts of Europe are still militarily occupied by the US.
Alaska is by far the most dangerous state in the nation, according to the business website 24/7 Wall Street. The most sparsely populated of all U.S. states, Alaska has the highest rates of rape and aggravated assault in the nation ... Last year's murder rate in Alaska was up 20 percent over the previous year. New Mexico comes in at No. 2 ... With aggravated assault numbers that are nearly double the national rate, Tennessee ranks as the nation's third most dangerous state. Most of the state's violent crime is concentrated in urban areas ... The least dangerous state is Maine, according to the report, with 121 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. Other states that were deemed the least dangerous in America include Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia and Kentucky.
For more than 30 years, French scholar Robert Faurisson was known as an intrepid, intellectually formidable, and courageous critic of the familiar Holocaust narrative. His extensive writings and many lectures, which were based on considerable research and study, enraged powerful enemies who waged a fierce, relentless campaign to silence him. Regarded as Europe’s foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar, he was perhaps most renowned, and notorious, for his view that there was no systematic mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers during World War II. On the basis of controversial “Holocaust denial” laws that selectively criminalize dissident views on this emotion-laden subject, French authorities repeatedly brought him to court, where he was punished with fines and prison sentences ... For his views Faurisson was repeatedly a victim of physical assault.
... The eighties – whose revisionist activity Faurisson utterly dominated – ended in France with the infamous Fabius-Gayssot law of 1990, a sort of Lex Faurissonia, if I may use Latin here for 'the Faurisson Law,' that is, the law specifically targeting Faurisson by the State. This was both a disaster for Faurisson and revisionism, but at the same time also a back-handed compliment to, and confirmation of, the intellectual significance of revisionism. It was not until 1999 that a serious compilation of Faurisson's writings appeared, as the four volume Écrits révisionnistes ... At this point Faurisson does not need a biographer as much as he needs somebody to summarize his work in a concise but thorough way.
... In 1990, with him in mind, the French National Assembly passed the Faurisson law, otherwise known as the Fabius-Gayssot Act, criminalizing the expression of public doubts about the execution gas chamber claims. Here was a national law specifically legislated to gag one man! After Robert was removed from his university professorship due to the enactment of Fabius-Gayssot, he challenged the legislation as a violation of his right to freedom of speech ... No wonder then that when Muslims are sanctimoniously lectured about their “misplaced” rage over blasphemy against Mohammed, they respond by wanting to know how it is that Faurisson’s “blasphemy” of the gas chambers is illegal in France while attacks on their Prophet are protected speech ... Throughout the world the scholars and activists he has influenced and inspired are innumerable.