... 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.
IHR STORE
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
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
... Trump has promised to “put America first,” but there is inevitably a spanner in the works. Now ... it is possible to discern that the new foreign policy will, more than under Barack Obama and George W. Bush, be driven in significant part by Israeli interests ... For many years now, Israel has sought to make the American people complicit in its own crimes while also encouraging our country’s feckless and corrupt leadership to provide their government with political cover and even go to war on its behalf ... Trump might think he is ushering in a new era of American policy based on American interests but it is beginning to look a lot like same-old same-old but even worse, and Benjamin Netanyahu will be very much in the driver’s seat.
... It was a defining and pivotal episode for Jared Kushner, now 35, who is poised to become one of the most trusted advisers to his father-in-law, President-elect Donald Trump. The donation scandal provides a glimpse of the privilege and influence that marked Kushner's upbringing in a prominent family ... Trump told the New York Times last week that, once he is in the White House, Kushner would probably keep his role as an informal counselor and envoy to the Middle East, where Kushner already has close relationships with people close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Several Trump associates have said that Kushner will be a chief of staff in all but name, with wide-ranging -- if sometimes hard-to-quantify -- influence ...
With his nomination of attorney David Friedman as the new United States Ambassador to Israel, President-elect Donald Trump has sent a very clear message that he intends to shift U.S. policy away from its decades-long commitment to ending the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. That commitment represents not only a strong American political consensus, but an overwhelming international consensus as well. Friedman’s views can only be described as radical. He is an avowed opponent of the two-state solution, which he has called “an illusion that serves the worst intentions of both the United States and the Palestinian Arabs.”
Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday the Israeli refusal to stop building Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory is undermining any attempt to achieve a lasting peace in the region. "The settler agenda is defining the future of Israel, and their stated purpose is clear," Kerry said. "They believe in one state: greater Israel." In an often-harsh, 70-minute plus speech, Kerry said the two-state solution that President Obama and his predecessors have been pushing for is "now in jeopardy" and the continued settlement building by the Israelis is cementing "a one-state reality that nobody really wants." If Israel keeps annexing Palestinian territory, Kerry said, "it can be Jewish or Democratic — but it can't be both."
Major US Jewish organizations declared that US President Barack Obama had undermined his legacy on Israel, and bitterly criticized the administration’s decision to allow a resolution calling for a halt to all Israeli settlement activity to pass in the United Nations Security Council. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which had tussled in recent weeks with President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, offered a full-throated condemnation of the Security Council resolution and of the Obama administration’s decision to abstain from voting. ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt stated that the organization was “outraged over the US failure to veto this biased and unconstructive UNSC resolution on Israel.”
The British government this week formally adopted a definition of anti-Semitism based on the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) on 26 May 2016 in Warsaw by 31 countries. A Downing Street statement said the purpose of the definition was to “ensure that culprits will not be able to get away with being anti-Semitic because the term is ill-defined, or because different organisations or bodies have different interpretations of it” ... To guide IHRA in its work, the following examples serve as illustrations: manifestations of anti-Semitism might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.
For years I have argued that Jewish power is the power to silence criticism of Jewish Power. Now, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has confirmed that my observation is spot on. PM May has decided to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and to integrate it into British law ... Is there not one Jewish leader who can see that such a move, one that makes Jews special in the eyes of the law, is a recipe for disaster? Does any Jewish leader really believe such a law will make British Jews loved or respected? Jewish history actually proves the opposite. It is always Jewish exceptionalism that evolves into Jewish disaster.
Films will not be eligible for two of the main Bafta [British Academy of Film and Television Arts] Awards from 2019 if they do not meet new diversity criteria. Films will be nominated for outstanding British film or outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer only if they meet two of four criteria. The "significant change" will bring in more people from minorities, women, people with disabilities and from lower socio-economic groups, Bafta said. It aims to improve access on screen, behind the scenes and among audiences. To be eligible for the two awards, films must prove they have worked to improve diversity in two of the four following areas ...
Two weeks ago, the Guardian reported that the top Google search result for “Did the Holocaust happen?” was an article on the neo-Nazi website Stormfront titled “Top 10 reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen.” The story was picked up by numerous outlets and drew widespread anger (at least from everyone who isn’t a Nazi). When Google was asked to comment, however, a spokesperson stated that Google would not tamper with the search results ... Well, it appears as if Google has reconsidered. Gizmodo reported yesterday that the search engine has decided to alter the search results, pushing the Stormfront article further down the first page ... The company told Digital Trends that, despite the correction, search results are still sorted automatically.’
Veronica Bouchard, 19, who lives in Toronto, is currently undergoing investigation by the authorities for allegedly posting a video online in which she praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, along with wishing Hitler a happy birthday. Bouchard also mentioned in her video that crime rates have increased drastically due to the increase of immigrants in Canada. More shocking statements that Bouchard had claimed was her view that perhaps the Holocaust had never actually occurred in the first place, and called for a “white Canada.” After her video had been posted, Bouchard was filed for charges on a hate crime, along with her YouTube channel removed from the internet, and her laptop has been confiscated by the authorities.
The Obama Administration on Friday finally allowed the UN Security Council to call on Israel to halt its settlement expansion on Friday. The resolution essentially re-states U.S. policy that settlement activity in the West Bank is illegal and counterproductive, and that Israel’s security must be protected ... The resolution is toothless — it does not, for example, authorize any form of sanctions to compel Israel to respect international law ...The administration’s abstention reflects a larger reality: President Obama did more to shield Israel from international pressure at the United Nations than any of his predecessors ... At the same time, Obama awarded Israel with its largest military aid package ever — signing a memorandum of understanding in September that would give it $38 billion over ten years.
Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is very, very cross about last Friday’s United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the creation of illegal Jewish settlements all over the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem ... This is why Netanyahu has to lie all the time, and it drives Obama crazy ... The Jewish settlements are indeed illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and there is not a single government outside Israel that believes they are legitimate. But the recent Security Council resolution will have no effect on Israeli policy, nor will the state of Israel suffer grave consequences as a result.
Benjamin Netanyahu is waging diplomatic war against the world, and notably against Israel’s only vital ally, the United States. We’ve never seen anything like it. It won’t win Israel any new friends ... Israel was annihilated in the Security Council vote on Friday that demanded an end to all settlement activity and that designated all the land that Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, which includes the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” The prime minister’s hope is that he can stave off further, and still more devastating, potential diplomatic defeat at the hands of the outgoing Obama administration via a mixture of pleas, threats and boycotts. On the horizon, he sees the incoming administration of Donald J. Trump. For Netanyahu, it cannot arrive soon enough.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally phoned New Zealand's Foreign Minister Murray McCully to warn him a UN resolution co-sponsored by the country was a "declaration of war", according to a leading Israeli newspaper. The UN Security Council resolution called for Israel to stop building settlements on occupied Palestinian land, including East Jerusalem, declaring the settlements “illegal.” It was picked up and sponsored by New Zealand and three other countries after US President-elect Donald Trump reportedly pressured Egypt into dropping it.
... By abstaining on that Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal and invalid, raged Bibi Netanyahu, President Obama “failed to protect Israel in this gang-up at the UN, and colluded with it.” ... We have an Israeli leader all but castigating an American president as a backstabber and betrayer, while the White House calls Bibi a liar. This is not an unserious matter ... Not a single Security Council member stood by her [Israel] and voted against condemning Israel’s presence in Arab East Jerusalem and the Old City ... The resolution will stimulate and strengthen the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel ... If Israel does not cease expanding West Bank settlements, she could be hauled before the International Criminal Court and charged with war crimes.
Secretary of State John Kerry tore into Israel on Wednesday for settlement-building, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of dragging Israel away from democracy and forcefully rejecting the notion that America had abandoned Israel with a controversial U.N. vote ... “If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won’t ever really be at peace,” Kerry said in a speech that ran more than an hour, a comprehensive airing of grievances that have built up in the Obama administration over eight years but were rarely, until this month, discussed publicly.
As tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims converge on the Holy Land this week to celebrate the birth of Jesus, senior Israeli rabbis have announced a war on the Christmas tree. In Jerusalem, the rabbinate has issued a letter warning dozens of hotels in the city that it is "forbidden" by Jewish religious law to erect a tree or stage new year's parties ... In the coastal city of Haifa, in northern Israel, the rabbi of Israel's premier technology university has taken a similarly strict line. Elad Dokow, the Technion's rabbi, ordered that Jewish students boycott their students' union, after it installed for the first time a modest Christmas tree. He called the tree "idolatry", warning that it was a "pagan" symbol that violated the kosher status of the building, including its food hall.
A prominent leader of the “alt-right” left a Hillel rabbi speechless when he drew a direct parallel between white supremacy and Zionism — igniting debate on social media about whether such a comparison has any validity. Richard Spencer, who leads the white nationalist National Policy Institute, appeared at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, on Tuesday [Dec. 6] night ... Strident critics of Israel were quick to jump on the one-sided debate between Spencer and the rabbi as evidence that Zionism shares some ideological common ground with far right political movements ... Max Blumenthal, an activist and harsh critic of Israel, tweeted that the incident illustrates why “Zionists are poorly positioned to confront white nationalists.”
Donald Trump will disappoint and disillusion his far-right supporters by eschewing white supremacy, according to some of the movement’s own intellectual leaders ... Instead of enjoying proximity to power, according to this analysis, vocal parts of the loose coalition known as the “alt-right” could remain on the political fringe, wondering what happened to their triumph. “Their hearts are bigger than their brains,” said Mark Weber, who runs the Institute for Historical Review, an organisation dedicated to exposing “Jewish-Zionist” power. “Saying they want to be the intellectual head of the Trump presidency is delusional.”
A high school principal in Taiwan has resigned after students at his school reportedly dressed up as Nazis for a holiday parade, prompting outrage from local educators and the island’s Israeli representative. According to the Taipei Times, the school’s principal, Cheng Hsiao-ming, took full responsibility and will step down as the head of Kuang Fu High School in Taiwan’s Hsinchu City. Photos of students hoisting swastika banners and parading behind a cardboard tank went viral over the weekend ... Cheng reportedly said that a teacher had recommended Arabic culture as a theme for the event, but that the students twice voted against it in favor of a Nazi parade. The students were advised that the theme would be controversial, according to the Taipei Times, but the teacher decided to respect their decision.
... Earth is no longer the property of the globe’s “sole superpower.” If you want proof, you can start by checking out Moscow’s recent role in reshaping the civil war in Syria and frustrating Washington’s agenda to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. And that’s just one of a number of developments that highlight America’s diminishing power globally in both the military and the diplomatic arenas ... The previously overwhelming economic power of the U.S. is gradually being challenged and curtailed internationally ... At the moment, Chinese leaders do not seem to imagine their country openly challenging the United States for world leadership for, minimally, decades to come ... China and Russia are now trying to ensure that Washington no longer exercises unrestrained power globally, as it did between 1992 and summer of 2008.
Despite almost six years of war between his army and rebels backed by the West and Gulf countries, Syrian President Bashar Assad said he still considers Israel the one and only “enemy” state, in an interview ... Much of the interview, with Syrian daily Al-Watan, was devoted to Assad’s recent success in the battle over Aleppo ... “Whereas Israel occupies Syrian territory, so the issue is different,” said Assad. Israel seized 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) of the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War of 1967, then effectively annexed it in 1981. Syria, and much of the West, considers the Israeli Golan Heights occupied Syrian territory and Syria has pushed for its return.
Anne Frank may not have been betrayed to Nazi occupiers, but captured by chance. A new study published Friday by the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam says that despite decades of research there is no conclusive evidence that the Jewish diarist and her family were betrayed to the Netherlands’ German occupiers during World War II, leading to their arrest and deportation. Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House museum, said in a statement Friday that new research by the museum “illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered.” One possible theory is that the Aug. 4, 1944, raid that led to Anne’s arrest could have been part of an investigation into illegal labor or falsified ration coupons at the canal-side house where she and other Jews hid for just over two years.
Two pairs of Polish Jewish siblings, who each believed their entire families died in the Holocaust, met for the first time at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The tale started earlier this year when one of the siblings, Fania Blakay, found a testimony in the Yad Vashem database about her father. The testimony had been filled out by her father’s brother-in-law, who Blakay had been told had died. The brother in-law, it turns out, had actually survived the Holocaust and immigrated with his wife and daughters to Israel. The daughters — Blakay’s cousins — were living in Israel. On Tuesday, Blakay and her brother Gennadi Band — both of whom also live in Israel — were united with their first cousins Henia Moskowitz and Rywka Patchnik.
His assassination of a German diplomat in Paris gave the Nazis the pretext for sanctioning Kristallnacht, the violent pogrom against Jews on 9 November 1938. Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew considered a controversial figure to this day, was widely believed to have perished in a concentration camp during the 1940s. But a photograph discovered in the archives of Vienna’s Jewish Museum now appears to show that Grynszpan survived the war. The snapshot, taken in Germany in 1946, shows the then 24-year-old in a gathering of displaced persons. Its discovery effectively clears up one of the most enduring mysteries of the Nazi era ... His parents, Sendel and Ryfka, who survived the Holocaust and moved to Israel in 1948, had him pronounced dead in 1960, which enabled them to draw a pension from the German state.
... Hess's appearance on Scottish soil, a self-described mission of peace just weeks before Hitler would launch his ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union, was one of the war's strangest incidents. The search for explanations began on the morning after and has roiled on now for 75 years, spawning theories both intriguing (World War II might have ended differently) and bizarre (the man wasn't Hess at all but a body double.) The truth is likely as interesting as any of the fantasies — but it's still not entirely certain what happened 75 years ago ... Some of the intelligence files on the Hess affair are known to have been 'weeded,' or destroyed. Whatever information they held is lost — but other classified files remain and have yet to be released.
... Hess’s journey to Britain by fighter aircraft to Scotland has traditionally been dismissed as the deranged solo mission of a madman. But Peter Padfield, an historian, has uncovered evidence he says shows that, Hess, the deputy Fuhrer, brought with him from Hitler a detailed peace treaty, under which the Nazis would withdraw from western Europe, in exchange for British neutrality over the imminent attack on Russia ... Mr Padfield, who has previously written a biography of Hess as well as ones of Karl Dönitz and Heinrich Himmler, believes the treaty was suppressed at the time, because it would have scuppered Churchill’s efforts to get the USA into the war, destroyed his coalition of exiled European governments, and weakened his position domestically ...
History will remember the 46-year imprisonment of Rudolf Hess as an act of injustice and inhumanity. Hitler's one-time deputy flew from Germany to Britain on May 10, 1941, in a courageous effort to end the war between the two nations. His plea for peace was promptly rejected, and he was imprisoned ... Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg for ''crimes against peace,'' a charge invented for the occasion. As Robert A. Taft and other Americans pointed out, this was a blatant violation of our own tradition against ex post facto laws ... Rudolf Hess will be remembered as a prisoner of peace and a victim of a vindictive age.
... What foreign policy experts call the liberal international order is, in fact, the Pax Americana, which was constructed after 1945, and rested on the foundation of preponderant U.S. power. In 1945 — America’s first unipolar moment — the United States accounted for half of the world’s manufacturing output, controlled two-thirds of the world’s gold and currency reserves, and possessed powerful global power projection capabilities ... As scholars of international politics would say, following World War II, the United States was in a position of primacy, or hegemony. Even during the Cold War, U.S. dominance was never seriously challenged ... The liberal international order is fraying because the global balance of power is shifting, and the foundation of U.S. power on which the Pax Americana was built is cracking.
If the 2016 presidential campaign was a national disgrace, the reaction of the losers is an even more disgraceful spectacle. It seems that the political machine backing Hillary Clinton can’t stand losing an election. And why is that? Because they are determined to impose “exceptional” America’s hegemony on the entire world, using military-backed regime changes, and Donald Trump seems poised to spoil their plans ... Trump is the revenge of people who feel manipulated, forgotten and despised. However flawed, he is the only choice they had to express their revolt in a rotten election. The United States is deeply divided ideologically, as well as economically. The United States is threatened, not by Russia, but by its own internal divisions and the inability of Americans not only to understand the world, but even to understand each other.
Christmas truces during the First World War were not a one-off but continued throughout the conflict, a historian has found. / The Christmas truce of 1914 is generally reported as a unique phenomenon not repeated as the conflict grew ever more brutal. However, historian Thomas Weber, of the University of Aberdeen, has uncovered evidence that festive meetings continued throughout the war, with a significant number in 1916 despite the huge casualties suffered in the Battle of the Somme. Professor Weber has been given access to a large number of family memories of the war that show that, despite officers recording in official documents that no such friendly exchanges took place, the situation on the front lines was very different.
... The Germans seem to have made the first move. During the evening of December 24 they delivered a chocolate cake to the British line accompanied by a note that proposed a cease fire so that the Germans could have a concert. The British accepted the proposal and offered some tobacco as their present to the Germans. The good will soon spread along the 27-mile length of the British line. Enemy soldiers shouted to one another from the trenches, joined in singing songs and soon met one another in the middle of no-mans-land to talk, exchange gifts and in some areas to take part in impromptu soccer matches. The high command on both sides took a dim view of the activities ...
The terrorist who hijacked a truck in Berlin and ran over and killed 12 people, maiming and wounding 48 more, in that massacre in the Christmas market, has done more damage than he could imagine ... Europe’s populist right is laying this act of Islamist savagery at the feet of Merkel for her having opened Germany in 2015 to a million migrants and refugees from Syria and the Middle East wars. Before Berlin, she was already on the defensive after mobs of migrants went about molesting and raping German girls in Cologne last New Year’s Eve ... We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be ... Only liberal ideology calls for America and Europe to bring into their home countries endless numbers of migrants, without being overly concerned about who they are, whence they come or what they believe.
... His filmed testimony is one of several taken of Palestinians in Jerusalem who have been violently assaulted recently by far-right Jewish activists ... The attacks were carried out by a far-right group called Lehava, or Flame in Hebrew, an acronym for the Organisation for the Prevention of Miscegenation in the Holy Land ... In 2014, some 200 Lehava supporters - many wearing the group's "Jewish honour guard" T-shirts - protested noisily outside the wedding of a Palestinian man and a female Jewish convert to Islam in the city of Jaffa, near Tel Aviv. Some carried placards with the slogan: "Miscegenation is a Holocaust". Jerusalem's streets, meanwhile, are littered with fliers and stickers in Arabic warning, "Don't even think about a Jewish girl" and in Hebrew stating, "Beware the goys [a derogatory term for non-Jews] - they will defile you".
The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things. The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile ... Italy’s 1948 general election is an early example of a race where U.S. actions probably influenced the outcome.
... Watching the mounting Red Hysteria in the US is bizarre and amusing. But most amusing is the media furor claiming that the Kremlin has ‘meddled’ in US elections ... The US is hardly in a position to play the outraged virgin. Starting in 1946, the US and the Vatican financed Italy’s right-wing Christian Democratic Party, helping it win three national elections against the Left ... Washington organized the overthrow of Syria’s government in 1949. In 1953, the US and Britain colluded to overthrow Iran’s popular democratic government ... As a seasoned intelligence watcher for the past three decades, I think claims by US Democrats that they lost the election due to Russian machinations are absolute bunk .... The Dems lost because they ran a horrible, corrupt woman who was hated, and mistrusted by many.
This Christmas, for once, Bethlehem really can boast again that there is no room at the inn, as relative calm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank brings pilgrims and tourists flocking to the town of Jesus’s birth. Elias Al-Arja of the Bethlehem hoteliers’ association said the troubles of the surrounding region had boosted numbers in the biblical Holy Land, and bookings were up on last year. Tourism is a major source of revenue for the Palestinian economy ... Israeli-Palestinian violence has driven tourists away in the past, especially during the 2000-2005 Palestinian uprising when Bethlehem was a particularly lonely place. While the security situation is more relaxed now, Israeli roadblocks and a six-meter (20-foot) Israeli-built concrete separation barrier snaking through the landscape are still part of the Bethlehem vista.
Though their government plays a determinative role in the region, most Americans are not too sure about where Bethlehem is and who lives there … The surveys have put the spotlight on the plight of the town, which has been fast losing its indigenous Christian population since the construction of the Israeli wall plunged Bethlehem into economic crisis … While the Christians of Bethlehem overwhelmingly (78%) blame the exodus of Christians from the town on Israel's blockade, Americans are more likely (45.9%) to blame it on Islamic politics and are reluctant (7.4%) to blame Israel.
The Obama administration on Friday allowed the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements, defying pressure from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as well as Israel and several U.S. senators who urged Washington to use its veto ... Israel and Trump had called on the United States to veto the measure. It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years. The U.S. decision to abstain was a relatively rare step by Washington, which usually shields Israel from such action ... The resolution demanded that Israel "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem" ...
The United States has given its biggest rebuke in recent history to longstanding ally Israel, allowing the U.N. Security Council to condemn its settlements and continuing construction in Palestinian territory as a "flagrant violation" of international law. Instead of casting a veto to support Israel, as it almost always does on council resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. abstained. That gave a green light for the council to approve the resolution by a 14-0 vote with U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power abstaining, a move greeted with loud applause in the packed Security Council chamber. The resolution says Israel's settlements on Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, have "no legal validity."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has held phone conversations with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts to discuss the unfolding situation in Syria. The three ministers have urged the facilitation of a political resolution to the conflict in Syria. Mark Weber, director of Institute for Historical Review, believes Turkey’s alignment with Russia and Iran over Syria indicates a "major shift" in constellation of power in the Middle East, adding that it reflects a "steady" and "dramatic" decline in US influence in the region. “This collaboration among Russia, Iran, [and] Syria and now at least to some extent with Turkey is part of a really dramatic change that is taking place, and it is part of a major disaster by the United States ... and also a great miscalculation by [US President] Barack Obama’s administration in Syria,” the analyst told Press TV in an interview ...
Russia and Turkey’s negotiations on a ceasefire and evacuation deal for Aleppo was a surprise for the U.S. and European powers, which were seemed not to be aware of it until the media was blasted with the news. This made the Western world, namely the U.S. become more of a spectator than an active participant in post-ceasefire Syria. While the evacuations are ongoing and negotiation continues the U.S. fails to become a part of this procedure ... Mark Weber, director of Institute for Historical Review, said all these alignments, Turkey with Russia and Iran over Syria is a clear illustration on how the "major shift" happens in power relations of states interested in the Middle East, which reflects a rather "dramatic" decline of U.S. as a player in the region.
The party of populist anti-Islam Dutch MP Geert Wilders has risen strongly in the polls since the lawmaker was tried and convicted of discrimination, according to a survey published Sunday [Dec. 11]. If legislative elections due next March were held this week, Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) would pick up 36 out of 150 seats in the lower house of parliament, making it the biggest single political group, it found. Before the trial began on October 31, the PVV was credited with 27 seats. During the trial, but before his conviction on Friday, its estimated share rose to 34 seats ... Wilders was found guilty of discrimination against Moroccans but acquitted of hate speech over remarks he made at an election rally in March 2014.
The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post. Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.
... We cannot be sure what exactly is happening in Aleppo, but we do know a few things about what happened in Syria over the past five years. This was no popular uprising to overthrow a dictator and bring in democracy. From the moment President Obama declared “Assad must go” and approved sending in weapons, it was obvious this was a foreign-sponsored regime change operation that used foreign fighters against Syrian government forces ... We should end that hypocrisy starting with Syria. That government, along with its allies, seems to be on track to take their country back from ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups. The only sensible Syria policy is for the US to stop trying to overthrow their government, to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
... According to The Washington Post, the bloodbath is a result of a U.S. failure to intervene more decisively in Syria’s civil war: “Aleppo represents a meltdown of the West’s moral and political will — and … a collapse of U.S. leadership ... But the blunder was not in staying out of Syria’s civil war, but in going in. Aleppo is a bloodbath born of interventionism ... U.S. policy became to back the “good” rebels in Aleppo, bomb the “bad” rebels in Raqqa and demand that Assad depart. An absurd policy ... The lessons for Trump from the Aleppo disaster? Do not even consider getting into a new Middle East war — unless Congress votes to authorize it, the American people are united behind it, vital U.S. interests are clearly imperiled, and we know how the war ends and when we can come home.
The current success of the Syrian army in Aleppo might signify that the ongoing fight against terrorism in Syria is entering its final stage. However Mark Weber, the Director of the Institute for Historical Review underlines that if it weren’t for the help provided by Russia and Iran, the Syrian government would have "never been able to survive." ... Speaking to Iranian 24-hour English language news network Press TV, he noted that the current alliance between Russia and Iran has served as a vital factor which has foiled the US regime change policy in Syria ... The historian noted that experts are now trying to second-guess how the new administration will act when it takes office next month in Washington and what changes, if any, it will bring to the Middle East.
Syria's fight against terrorism seems to be getting close to its final stage ... In an interview with Press TV, Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review, highlighted the current alliance between Russia and Iran as a vital factor which has foiled the US regime change policy in Syria. Weber sees the close cooperation among Russia, Iran, and Syria as an expression of bankruptcy or the decline of US power and influence in the region and the world.
State Department spokesman John Kirby reaffirmed the US commitment to a two-state solution and longstanding opposition to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank — referring in unusually harsh language to the enterprise’s “illegality” — five days after President-elect Donald Trump announced he would appoint an outspoken settlements supporter, David Friedman, to be the next US ambassador to Israel ... Designating Israel’s settlement of the West Bank “illegal” is unusual for an American official, as US policy has long avoided invoking international law.
Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations have called on the United States to “unequivocally affirm” that it would veto any one-sided condemnatory United Nations Security Council resolution on the Palestinian-Israeli issue if it is presented Thursday to the Council for a vote. A draft UN Security Council resolution demanding a halt to Israeli building in the West Bank is expected to be voted on in a meeting in New York. The draft declares that existing settlements "have no legal validity" and are "a flagrant violation" of international law. It also stresses that "the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-state solution" which would see Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in peace.
In recent months, Google has confronted a new and unsettling trend: Its top search results for questions about the Holocaust lead to neo-Nazi sites while queries about different ethnic groups direct users to racist or inflammatory material. The company last week said it was reluctant to take action, citing a desire to preserve the integrity of the company’s algorithms, which are designed to turn up relevant information. But on Tuesday, a Google spokesperson told Fortune it is making some changes. “Judging which pages on the web best answer a query is a challenging problem and we don’t always get it right,” said the spokesperson. “We recently made improvements to our algorithm that will help surface more high quality, credible content on the web. We’ll continue to change our algorithms over time in order to tackle these challenges.”
So there was Samantha Power doing her “shame” bit in the UN. “Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin, that just creeps you out a little bit?”, America’s ambassador to the UN asked the Russians and Syrians and Iranians ... When Samantha talked about “barbarism against civilians” in Aleppo, I remembered climbing over the dead Palestinian civilians massacred at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982 ... Then I recalled the monstrous American invasion of Iraq. Perhaps half a million dead. It’s one of the statistics for Rwanda’s dead. Certainly far more than Srebrenica’s 9,000 dead. And I can tell you that Iraq’s half million dead “creeped me out” rather a lot ...
John Kerry offered yet another tough-love talk to Israel at the pro-Israel Saban Forum yesterday [Dec. 4]. The United States gives Israel more than half of the aid that we give “to the entire world” [he said], and Israel simply ignores us when we warn it about new settlements ... “... We, the Obama administration, have put $23.5 billion on the line for foreign military financing. More than 50 percent of the total that we give to the entire world has gone to Israel. We have just signed an agreement for $38 billion over ten years, $3.8 billion a year, up from 3.1.” ... Kerry also protested that he has spoken to Benjamin Netanyahu 375 times as Secretary of State, to the point that his wife says he talks to Netanyahu more than to her.
A day ahead of a government shutdown deadline, Congress scrambled on Thursday [Dec. 8] to wrap-up unfinished business, voting decisively to send President Barack Obama a defense policy bill, including more than $600 million for missile defense cooperation with Israel. The Senate passed the defense legislation by a wide margin, 92-7, a week after the House overwhelmingly approved the measure, 375-34. The legislation includes the approval of some $600.7 million for US-Israel missile defense cooperation for the 2017 fiscal year ...
Anyone living in England during the 1950s and 1960s who was politically alert knew about A.J.P. (Alan) Taylor. He was that diminutive bow-tied Oxford academic who ... marched in protests organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was one of the first of the British "telly dons," who could stand in front of the camera and pontificate without notes about virtually anything ... The surprising portrayal of German policies in Origins [of the Second World War] was pretty shocking stuff. Taylor had assaulted orthodoxies on all fronts. In 1961 the British firmly believed that World War II had been "the good war," a Manichaean clash between light and darkness in which Hitler was the true Beelzebub ... To imply that the war was some sort of mistake or accident was heresy.
Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson tactlessly sermonized that, “The United States was the locomotive of mankind and the rest of the world was the caboose.” The supreme arrogance of the secretary’s bifurcation made no friends but endless enemies ... Acheson and his cohorts at the outset of the Cold War were delusional in the belief that the United States enjoyed a monopoly on the world’s angelic and enlightened DNA. They were equally deluded in the belief that we were saddled with an obligation to be the leader of the world to direct the affairs of other nations as a conductor directs an orchestra ... The United States has chronically fomented instability since World War II ... We have created havoc throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia ...
... If our next president remains trapped in expensive Middle East wars, the budgetary costs alone could derail any hopes for solving our vast domestic problems ... The United States is incurring massive public debt and cutting back on urgent public investments at home in order to sustain a dysfunctional, militarized, and costly foreign policy ... The costly wars in the Middle East — even if continued much less enlarged in a Hillary Clinton presidency — could easily end any realistic hopes for a new era of scaled-up federal investments in education, workforce training, infrastructure, science and technology, and the environment.
“We have fallen into a self-defeating spiral of reaction and counterterror,” writes Mark Danner in his new book Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War. “Our policies, meant to extirpate our enemies, have strengthened and perpetuated them.” ... The war on terror — the Obama administration has re-titled it a war on extremism — hasn’t been just an illegal and moral catastrophe. It’s a failure by any measure ... Danner argues that idea you can defeat terrorism — which is really just a tactic used by the less powerful against the more powerful — with military force is an illusion. It can and does, however, make everything worse.