... 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.
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IHR NEWS AND VIEWS
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.
Mark Weber, an American historian and director of the Institute for Historical Review, was banned from Britain in April 2015 by order of Theresa May, who later became the country’s Prime Minister. The decision to ban him was “taken personally” by May while she was serving as Home Secretary ... The Home Office finally ... accepted that the reasons for the 2015 exclusion order were insufficient, but cited new justifications to support a continued ban ... Weber explained in some detail just why the new examples of allegedly “unacceptable behavior” presented by the agency to justify a continued ban against him “lack any reasonable basis in fact,” are “weak, unconvincing or irrelevant,” and are “applied in an arbitrary way.” ... May has been one of the most ardently pro-Zionist political figures in modern British history.
While this past year has been another busy and productive one, we’ve also had to deal with more vicious media smears and new efforts to shut us down ... In September an IHR digital display billboard went up at two major transit stations in the heart of San Francisco. This bold public service ad generated considerable media coverage ... More than 800 articles, essays and reviews of the Institute for Historical Review, totaling more than three million words, were re-posted on The Unz Review, an influential, information- packed website ... Throughout this past year, large IHR display ads have been appearing regularly in the American Free Press, a bold, independent bi-weekly newspaper. These ads have been generating a steady stream of orders and inquiries.
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:
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.
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.
... 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.
As dawn was breaking on Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, military forces of Germany, Finland and Romania suddenly struck against the Soviet Union. The stunning news of this attack was announced to the world by German radio at 5:30 that Sunday morning, when Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels broadcast the text of a proclamation by Adolf Hitler to the German people that laid out his reasons for the historic offensive. Following that was the broadcast of Germany's declaration of war against the Soviet Union. This was in the form of a diplomatic note to the Soviet government. Because Hitler's proclamation and the German Foreign Office declaration explain at some length the reasons and motives for the fateful decision to strike against the USSR, these are documents of historic importance. With a foreword by Mark Weber.
In line with a recent crackdown policy, YouTube has “restricted” a number of independently produced videos of IHR talks and presentations. To watch a “restricted” video, the viewer must first click through a warning screen. Also, comments on the video are not allowed, and the number of views is not given. Even worse, YouTube will never “suggest” a “restricted” video to viewers, which is how many people find our videos. While YouTube claims that its “restriction” policy is aimed at videos with “inflammatory religious or supremacist content,” applying it to IHR videos is absurd. YouTube restricts our voice not because we have violated any objective standards, or because we have done anything wrong or illegal -- but because it doesn’t like what we say.
… In 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.
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.
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.
… 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 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.
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 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.
... 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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
... 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.
NEWS AND COMMENT
Feelings about the state of the country are primarily negative. Nearly seven in ten (69%) Americans report that, when thinking about what is going on in the country today, they generally feel a negative emotion, including feeling sad (29%), angry (20%), or fearful (20%). By contrast, less than one-quarter (23%) of Americans feel positive emotions, including less than one in five (17%) who say they are hopeful, and six percent who say are content ... White Americans (18%) are more hopeful than Hispanic (13%) or black (12%) Americans, while black Americans are more likely than white Americans to say they are fearful (27% v. 19%) ... Over the past year, Americans have grown more pessimistic about our ability to bridge political differences and address important national problems.
... A core trait of a good leader is to love the people you’re in charge of. The Han Dynasty text “Guiguzi” states, “One with talent but no kindness cannot command an army.” How a leader regarded those in his charge was among the key traits that separated sage kings from tyrants. It was the virtue that determined whether a military leader cared about how his choices affected the well-being of his men, and whether a ruler cared about how a policy affected the everyday lives of his people ... Benevolent leaders also possess a broadness of mind — the ability to see the bigger picture and to guide people along a road that leads them to the best outcome ... Benevolence was seen as going hand in hand with governance, and this was a common theme across many cultures.
A quick quiz: who said the following, the great interpreter of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville or the German dictator Adolf Hitler: ... The person who said all of these things was of course Tocqueville, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was Hitler, for he made much the same points ... National Socialist rhetoric and propaganda largely agreed with the form, if not the content, of Abraham Lincoln’s famous slogan of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” For the National Socialists, the Third Reich was a people’s regime in the truest sense ... The fascists believed liberal democracy to be at best misguided and at worst a fraud ... And anyway, the “liberal democracies” are actually dominated by the oligarchic and media elites who bribe politicians and shape public opinion.
This richly detailed work takes a boldly dissident look at the personality and historical role of Adolf Hitler. Prof. Stolfi reinterprets the known facts about the German leader to construct a convincing, realistic portrait of the man. Unlike most profiles, which are relentlessly hostile and focus on recounting his deeds in detail, this fascinating work seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of Hitler’s character, outlook and motives. It is a major mistake to compare Hitler to the typical politician or statesman of the modern age. Instead, Stolfi emphasizes, he should be understood as a world-historical religious figure or prophet. With dust jacket, 16 photographs, source notes, and index.
The “standard” biographies of Adolf Hitler are inadequate and fundamentally flawed, says American historian Russell Stolfi in a remarkable new book, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny. The mass media and even supposedly scholarly works portray the German leader as a monstrous, criminal demagogue who was driven by irrational hatred and lust for power. In fact, contends Stolfi, Hitler was a prophetic, messianic and visionary figure, who should be understood along with such personalities as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Mohammed and Jesus.
... Then, as now, the United States was deploying its military forces assertively, to the point of brinksmanship, in the backyard of the would-be adversary ... Then, as now, policymakers in the U.S. administration welcomed — even sought — an incident as a rationale for air strikes against the adversary, in the absence of anything else that North Vietnam was doing that was a threat to U.S. interests ... The politicization was sufficient to carry the day. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became the congressional authorization for U.S. airstrikes against North Vietnamese naval facilities and also for a ground war in which 58,000 Americans would die ... As with Vietnam in 1964, politicians are susceptible to being swept up by a mood of revenge and bellicosity.
Sen. Wayne Morse was one of only two members of Congress to vote against the fateful Gulf of Tonkin resolution of August 1964, which gave President Lyndon Johnson blank check authority to wage war against North Vietnam. This authorization, warned Sen. Morse, was unconstitutional. Moreover, it was later established that the alleged North Vietnamese attack against US warships, which the White House cited to justify the sweeping resolution, either never took place, or had been greatly exaggerated.
Head of Iran’s government department of tourism says around eight million foreigners visited the country in the last Iranian calendar year ending in March 2019. “Some 7.8 million foreign tourists arrived in the country last year,” said Ali Asghar Mounessan, adding that the figure shows a 40-percent year-on-year increase. Mounessan, who heads the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization of Iran (ICHTO), said each tourist coming to the country spends an average sum of $1,400 during his or her stay ... He said the boom in tourism arrivals and revenues have come despite sanctions imposed by the United States in the past year, adding that major accommodation places across the country have been booked up for months to come.
Israel recently has been expanding its military attacks across much of the Middle East, hitting multiple countries. The aggressive campaign far outpaces anything any adversaries of Israel have been doing to it, or even trying unsuccessfully to do to it. Over the past two years Israel has used combat aircraft to conduct scores of attacks in Syria. Israel has stayed silent about most of this campaign of bombardment, but when it speaks it says the targets it hits are associated with Iran. The most recent widening of Israel’s assaults have involved Lebanon, including drone attacks on facilities in suburban Beirut associated with Hezbollah ... The most dramatic geographic widening of the Israeli assault came last month with multiple attacks, reportedly conducted with F-35s, in Iraq — which, of course, does not even border Israel.
Israel's military went on a propaganda offensive against Iran and Hezbollah using social media to drastically increase tensions with neighboring Lebanon hours after Benjamin Netanyahu warned the nation's enemies, in Arabic, to "watch it." The Israeli prime minister was on the campaign trail ahead of elections scheduled for September 17. But the barrage of agitprop by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) represented a dramatic shift towards a warning of outright war. The casus belli, Israel says, is Iran's efforts to modernize Hezbollah's Lebanon-based arsenal of what Israel says is more than 100,000 rockets into precision-guided missiles.
... This year’s poll found that among Americans who feel that blacks and whites are equal, or that blacks are superior to whites, 82 percent expressed a strong interest in voting in 2020. That was seven percentage points higher than people who feel strongly that whites are superior to blacks ... The Reuters analysis also found that Americans were less likely to express feelings of racial anxiety this year, and they were more likely to empathize with African Americans ... The July 17-22 poll also found that 29% of whites agreed that “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage,” down seven points from a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in August 2017 and nine points down from another Reuters/ Ipsos poll in August 2018.
... The best way to mark the anniversary of the beginning of World War II would be to learn from it and other catastrophic conflicts which came before. For instance, alliances can deter war but also risk spreading violence. Military action rarely has humanitarian effects. Good intentions do not prevent awful results. Wars are filled with unintended consequences. International social engineering is a daunting task, confronting different cultures, histories, religions, ethnicities, politics, traditions, and more. Blowback is real, a terrible consequence of ill-considered intervention. Washington’s foreign policy consensus is busted, and its practitioners are incompetent. The American republic disappeared long ago, leaving a half-hearted, bungling semi-empire which views the entire world as its sphere of interest.
... Zinn is the Brooklyn-born Jewish social radical (and lifelong communist fellow-traveler) who died at the age of 87 in 2010 ... He published his radically leftist People’s History of the United States in 1980, which has sold over two million copies. The book has been adopted as an educational tool for American public schools ... In many of his antiwar statements, Zinn, far more than his contemporary critics in the conservative movement, sounds like a Taft Republican. He deplored America’s entry into World War I, the use of Irish immigrants as cannon fodder in the Civil War, and the failure to seek a negotiated peace to end our war with Japan ... Thus we find inklings of what once passed for American conservatism in this unlikely source. Perhaps we on the traditional Right should cut this deceased radical from Brooklyn a bit of slack.
Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism is a new book by Richard Drake, himself an accomplished historian who teaches at the University of Montana ... Beard’s offense was to have committed heresy, not once but twice over. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, he opposed U.S. intervention in the European war that had begun in September 1939. And when that conflict ended in 1945 he had the temerity to question the heroic “Good War” narrative that was even then already forming. Present-day Americans have become so imbued with this narrative as to be oblivious to its existence ... In that sense, the persistence of the Good War narrative robs Americans of any capacity to think realistically about their nation’s role in the existing world.
In this scholarly article, excerpted from his book, The Forced War: The Origins and Originators of World War II, Dr. Hoggan examines the secret war aspirations of President Franklin Roosevelt. Hoggan also shows how Poland’s leaders, bolstered by assurances from London of military backing, sought to provoke war with Germany. During the months prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939, he explains, Poland’s provocations of Germany were frequent and extreme. Hitler had more than sufficient justification to go to war with Poland.
A carefully researched and persuasive debunking of the widely-accepted “official” story of the origins of World War II, by one of America’s most astute and influential public affairs commentators. In this masterful and provocative book, Buchanan draws on the work of more than a hundred historians to trace the fateful failures of judgment that consigned millions to decades of subjugation under Soviet Communist tyranny, and ended Europe’s central role in world affairs. This is also an important dissident treatment of the origins and consequences of the First and Second World wars, and a devastating critique of the “cult” image of Winston Churchill. Buchanan concludes with timely warnings about US foreign policy today. With 36 photos, source references, bibliography and index.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was not invited. President Trump abruptly canceled. And as other global leaders gathered in Poland on Sunday to commemorate the start of the deadliest conflict in human history, the event served to underscore the divisions in Europe and within Poland itself ... It is not just in Russia where history is being deployed as a potent political weapon. In Poland there is a deep divide over how the country’s suffering over the past century should be remembered and memorialized ... The struggle for control of the historical narrative resonated so deeply in Poland because for so long, Poles were not allowed to tell their own story. Under Communist rule, for instance, discussion of the massacre of more than 20,000 Poles in the Katyn forest in 1940 by Soviet troops was forbidden.
In April 1943, Nazi Germany announced the discovery of a series of mass graves containing the bodies of thousands of Polish officers who had been arrested and then executed by the Soviet Army. Seventy-five years later, the Katyn massacre is still a sensitive issue between Poland and Russia. Runtime: 2:31 mins.
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. They did this not only by declaring war on him on Sept. 3, 1939, but also by blocking step by step for seven years the path to any peaceful discussion ... A quick look at the most important events provides incontrovertible proof of this.
... The 1939-45 conflict is still wreathed in delusions, delusions often employed to try to justify modern wars which are alleged to have comparably ‘good’ aims. The belief in its goodness is in fact ludicrous. Our main ally (rejected at the beginning with lofty scorn, embraced later with desperate, insincere enthusiasm) was one of the most murderous tyrants in human history ... During and immediately after the war, as I have discussed here, we employed methods which would have disgusted our forebears and which ought to disgust us, but which were so frightful that we still lie to ourselves about them, or hide them from our consciousness.
... Proponents of the Afghan War insist that ‘terrorists’ will take over if US troops withdraw. By now, it’s unclear who the so-called ‘terrorists’ really are. Previously, the US branded Taliban as terrorists ... Under the banner of the faux War on Terrorism, the US bombed and rocketed Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest but proudest nations, for 18 years, using B-1 heavy bombers and fleets of killer drones against mountain tribesmen armed with old rifles and fierce courage. America faces historic defeat in Afghanistan. By not winning, it loses. How this loss would affect the rest of America’s empire remains to be seen. But the sooner America ends this shameful colonial war the better.
... The Graham-JINSA proposal is particularly dangerous as it effectively permits Israel to be interventionist with a guarantee that Washington will not seek to limit Netanyahu’s “options.” ... This treaty would serve as a green light for an Israeli attack on Iran, should they opt to do so, while also serving as a red light to Tehran vis-à-vis an ironclad US commitment to “defend” Israel that would serve to discourage any serious Iranian retaliation. Given that dynamic, the treaty would be little more than a one-way security guarantee from Washington to Jerusalem ... Israel has no defined borders as it is both expansionistic and illegally occupying Palestinian land, so the United States would in effect be obligated to defend space that Israel defines as its own.
... Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, had planned their own “Delegation to Palestine,” scheduled to begin on August 17. Tlaib, who was born in the U.S., planned to travel to the West Bank to visit her 90-year old Palestinian grandmother ... But, aided and abetted by Donald Trump, Israel withdrew permission for the trip unless Tlaib agreed to remain silent about Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians. She refused to abide by the gag order and the trip was cancelled ... Israel’s refusal to allow members of the U.S. Congress entry into Israel-Palestine without muzzling them backfired. It has garnered widespread criticism, even by AIPAC, and focused the national discourse on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which Tlaib and Omar support.
... This is how Jewish power works on behalf of the Jewish state. It is done right out in the open, at least if one knows where to look, and it operates by what the intelligence community would refer to as misdirection. That means that you never talk about Israel itself, except in a positive, laudatory fashion, you never mention Jewish power in America, and, finally, you have in reserve some fabricated threats that can be surfaced to dominate discussion and render Israel’s malign activity invisible ... Removing politicians who are not fully on board with the Israel agenda is normal practice and has been for many years ... Criticizing Israel means not being reelected to Congress next time around, and it is not because Israel is greatly loved by voters.
As Americans prepare to celebrate the holiday, their pride in the U.S. has hit its lowest point since Gallup's first measurement in 2001. While 70 percent of U.S. adults overall say they are proud to be Americans, this includes fewer than half (45%) who are "extremely” proud, marking the second consecutive year that this reading is below the majority level. Democrats continue to lag far behind Republicans in expressing extreme pride in the U.S. These findings are explored further with new measurements of the public's pride in eight aspects of U.S. government and society. American scientific achievements, military and culture/arts engender the most pride, while the U.S. political system and health and welfare system garner the least.
... If you’re thinking that your youngster will get a truly liberal arts education, you are sadly mistaken. It turns out that less than half of the schools studied require courses in traditional literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history and economics. At some colleges, students can fulfill their humanities requirement with a course titled “Global X: Zombies!” ... There’s another college-related issue not given much voice and that’s how important is a college education in the first place. That’s an issue raised by a Market Watch article, “Half of young Americans say their degree is irrelevant to their work.” Parents think a college education is necessary for success. Their youngsters think differently. According to the TD Ameritrade study, 49% of young millennials said their degree was “very or somewhat unimportant” to their current job.
For Americans and others, World War II might seem a black-and-white story of good defeating evil, with the Allies fighting far from home to defeat Adolf Hitler’s genocidal regime and open a new era of peace and liberty. But from the Baltics and Poland to Hungary and Russia, where fighting, deportations and mass executions happened, there are many shades of gray: heroic resistance and martyrdom but also collaboration — and a liberation by Soviet forces that spelled the start of decades of occupation and oppression for those behind the Iron Curtain. That leaves a lot of room for differing ways to remember the war.
… The American public has long thought of the Allied effort in World War II as a “great crusade” that pitted good and decency against Nazi evil. Even after all these years, it is likely that the last thing the public wants to learn is that vast and unspeakable wrongs were committed by both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during the war and its aftermath. It flies in the face of that reluctance for MacDonogh to tell “the brutal history” at great length [in his book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation]. That willingness is commendable for its intellectual bravery.
For many in Europe, the end of the Second World War meant peace and healing. But for millions of Germans, “liberation” opened a new and terrible chapter. This hour-long British documentary reveals the appalling violence meted out to the defeated, especially to those ethnic Germans who had lived peacefully for centuries in neighbouring countries. Using rare and unseen archive film, this documentary tells a harrowing story of vengeance against German civilians. The Savage Peace includes the unique testimony of eyewitnesses and victims, who recall the horrors with searing clarity, their memories undimmed 70 years after the events took place. As the writer George Orwell said, the treatment of the defeated Germans was a terrible crime that has gone unpunished.
An eminent British historian provides a brilliant, devastating critique of the widely accepted, “official” view of the origins of World War II. The war between Germany, Poland, Britain and France that broke out in September 1939, he shows, was not the result of an intentional plan by Hitler. “Far from wanting war, a general war was the last thing he wanted,” Taylor writes. “The war of 1939, far from being premeditated, was a mistake, the result on both sides of diplomatic blunders.” This edition includes a bibliography and index, and a “Second Thoughts” response to critics. This controversial and intensely discussed work earned praise from respected British journals. The New Statesman called it “A masterpiece: lucid, compassionate, beautifully written.”
YouTube recently took down some channels affiliated with white nationalism after it initialized a policy to more explicitly bar such content. There are many more channels on the platform that have either directly pushed white supremacist ideas or are associated with white nationalists. In June, YouTube announced that it would prohibit “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status,” specifically mentioning content that promotes “Nazi ideology” or Holocaust denial ... On August 15, the Anti-Defamation League published a report with a list of white nationalist channels operating on the platform. Over a week later, YouTube removed multiple channels that were mentioned in the ADL report,...
The channels of two prominent far-right YouTubers have been re-instated after the video-sharing site said it made a mistake in removing them. Initially, YouTube gave no reason for changing its decision and just said it had made a "wrong call". Later, it said that while many people found the channels "deeply offensive", they had not broken its rules. The decision came days after YouTube's chief executive said YouTube had to be open to hosting "controversial" ideas. YouTube removed several channels and accounts this week, claiming they had broken its hate speech policies. Among them was a channel run by white nationalist Martin Sellner and an anonymous British YouTuber known as The Iconoclast ... Mr Sellner is also banned from entering the UK ... Several other far-right channels that YouTube banned this week remain unavailable.
President Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, notes former CIA analyst Paul Pillar, is more obsession than strategy, and a not-so-mysterious explosion on the outskirts of Baghdad Monday shows why. Iraqi political analysts are blaming the attack on Israel, saying it follows two attacks earlier this month on facilities of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq ... Israel has long attacked Iranian-backed forces in Syria, an enemy of the United States. Now Israel has expanded its scope of operations to attack targets in Iraq, whose coalition government is friendly to the United States. The predictable result: the Iraqi government is bailing on Trump’s policy. The dynamic exposes two underappreciated realities of Trump’s Iran obsession: Any U.S. war on Iran will ignite war in Iraq, and U.S. credibility is visibly faltering across the region.
... Netanyahu’s widening of Israel’s war with Iran and its proxies into Lebanon and Iraq — and perhaps beyond — and his acknowledgement of that wider war raise questions for both of us. Israel today has on and near her borders hostile populations in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq. Tens of millions of Muslims see her as an enemy to be expelled from the region. While there is a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, the Saudis and Gulf Arabs are temporary allies as long as the foe is Iran. Is this pervasive enmity sustainable? As for America, have we ceded to Netanyahu something no nation should ever cede to another, even an ally: the right to take our country into a war of their choosing but not of ours?
A powerful bloc in Iraq’s parliament called on Monday for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, following a series of airstrikes targeting Iran-backed Shiite militias in the country that have been blamed on Israel. The Fatah Coalition said it holds the United States fully responsible for the alleged Israeli aggression, “which we consider to be a declaration of war on Iraq and its people.” The coalition is a parliament bloc representing Iran-backed paramilitary militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. The coalition’s statement came a day after a drone strike in the western Iraqi town of Qaim killed a commander with the forces — the latest in strikes apparently conducted by Israel against the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
... The slow death of the Amazon is an alarm call to us all of the importance of trees to mankind. I’ve been to many nations – such as India and Haiti – where most of their original trees were cut down – and the result has been an environmental disaster for mankind and animals ... The gutting of America’s wildlife and environmental laws by the Trump administration is a shameful act of ignorance. But one supposes that our president, who appears to live on burgers and diet Coke, has zero interest in wetlands, trees, birds, animals or rivers. Even Adolf Hitler was an arch conservationist and vegetarian who hated smokers and loved birds and trees. The Mongols destroyed every city in their bloody path to free up more grazing for their ponies.
In the United States, the white share of the population is declining as Hispanic, Asian and black populations grow. But the shift to a more diverse nation is happening more quickly in some places than in others. From 2000 to 2018, 109 counties in 22 states, from California to Kansas to North Carolina, went from majority white to majority nonwhite – that is, counties where non-Hispanic whites are no longer the majority, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data ... Overall, 293 U.S. counties were majority nonwhite in 2018. Most of these counties are concentrated in California, the South and on the East Coast, with few in the country’s middle section. In addition, several majority white counties with large populations may flip in coming years.
The birthrate in England and Wales has hit its lowest level since records began, government statistics have shown. In total, there were 657,076 live births in England and Wales last year – a fall of 3.2 percent from the previous year, and down by ten percent from 2012. The number of live births fell from 11.6 per 1,000 people to 11.1, the lowest since records started in 1938. The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), also showed that the percentage of live babies with mothers not born in the UK also fell for the first time since 1990, from 28.4% to 28.2%. Since 1947, the rate has dropped by 45.9%, when the number of babies being born was at its ultimate peak.
A Canadian editor was handed a one-year prison sentence for promoting hatred against Jews and women in his publication. James Sears, editor of the quarterly Your Ward News in Toronto, was sentenced Thursday to two six-month terms by Judge Richard Blouin of the Ontario Court of Justice. The publication promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic blood libel claims and published columns justifying rape. It also contained racist, Islamophobic and homophobic messages ... Noah Shack, vice president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, hailed the conviction as a “moment of justice for the thousands of women and Jewish community members … who have been impacted by the toxic hate-mongering of Your Ward News.”
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to clarify that when he said Jews who vote for Democrats are being “disloyal,” he meant they were abandoning their support for Israel and the Jewish people. Trump spoke to reporters as he departed from the White House in Washington and answered questions about his comments made the day before, which were widely condemned as employing anti-Semitic tropes of dual loyalty. “If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,” Trump told US media. “Only weak people would say other than that.” He also said he hadn’t heard of anyone calling his remarks from Tuesday anti-Semitic. “I have been responsible for a lot of great things for Israel,” Trump also said. “No president has ever done anywhere close to what I’ve done” for Israel.
… 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 -- Zionism -- for Jews.
As tensions escalated with Iran, 78 percent of Americans said they opposed military action against Iran, according to a Gallup Poll ... The vast majority of Republicans (72 percent) and Democrats (86 percent) said they instead favored economic or diplomatic efforts. The poll was taken between July 15-31, after Iran shot down a U.S. drone on June 20 and President Trump called off military retaliation. Americans were less unified, however, if non-military efforts failed: 53 percent of Americans polled said Washington should refrain from military action even if diplomatic and economic measures failed; 42 percent said the United States should launch kinetic operations. Positions split divided along partisan lines: 68 percent of Democrats were opposed to military action as a second option, while 60 percent of Republicans supported military action as a fallback.
The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. The powerful collection includes essays by historians, poets, columnists, a variety of academics, and more.
Conservatives called the New York Times’ project “divisive,” progressives hailed it as the "real" history of America ... The conclusions reached by the 1619 Project could have been guessed from the start ... Nor is there anything subtle about its constituent articles, which all follow the same formula: blaming slavery, a white historical figure, or white people as a class, for present-day shortcomings of American society, which in turn affect black people disproportionately. According to what has already been placed online, dead white slavers and their inheritors are at fault for a lack of a functioning democracy, rapacious capitalism, incarceration rates, political gridlock, poor healthcare, traffic jams, and the country’s sugar addiction.
A new initiative from the New York Times examining the history of slavery in the US has been met with applause and criticism online. Some say the project is “long overdue,” while others accuse the paper of “rewriting” history. The 1619 Project was conceived as a way to observe the “400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery” and, in the Times’ words, to “reframe our country’s history” by placing the stories of slaves at the forefront ... Conservative radio host Erick Erikson dismissed the project, arguing that if the Times is correct and the US is “tainted by racism since the 1600s” in every way, then it would stand to reason that the US itself is illegitimate. That would also mean “the constitution is illegitimate, and revolution is the answer” ...
... Far from being the poor, dependent outpost relying on British largesse – as depicted by Brexiters – the Republic of Ireland is an outward-looking, dynamic, trading entrepot ... Ireland has been far more successful in diversifying from the UK than the UK has been in diversifying from Ireland. Today, little Ireland remains the UK’s fifth largest export market. Britain exports more to Ireland than it does to China ... Ireland buys more from Britain because Ireland is much richer. Rich people buy stuff. On a conservative estimate, the Irish are now over 25 per cent richer than their UK counterparts ... Ireland is growing nearly five times faster than the UK every year.
... The new programming comes at a time of growing questions about what to do with the troves of Nazi propaganda art that’s stowed away in Germany, and in the US as well. To this day, many works of Nazi propaganda and Nazi-sanctioned art are stashed away at the Center of Military History Fort Belvoir, outside of Washington, DC, and there is no imminent plan for its return. The US military uncovered and removed troves of art after the war as part of the de-Nazification process ... It is estimated that there are more than 500 works of art from the Third Reich still in the US Army Center of Military History.
Most American adults of voting age believe representatives should visit their congressional districts rather than go to Israel according to a new poll. IRmep Polls surveyed 2,000 American adults about where they believed congressional reps should go during recess. Junkets to Israel funded by an entity housed within the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a domestically registered lobby and a small number of other Israel lobby groups account for a third of all privately funded congressional trips with an international destination ... The trips are designed to present Israel as a militarily vulnerable and valuable ally deserving massive U.S. foreign aid.