[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
In rare criticism, Russian chief rabbi blasts supply of S-300 missiles to Syria.
Berel Lazar calls Russia’s decision to give advanced air defense system to Assad regime a ‘mistake,’
says he’s talked to Putin about it.
File photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) lights up a candle watched by Russia’s chief Rabbi Berl Lazar during a ceremony in Moscow’s Jewish community center.REUTERS/Viktor Korotayev
The chief rabbi of Russia said that Moscow’s decision to give Syria advanced anti-aircraft missiles is a “mistake,” offering a rare rebuke of his country’s defense policy.
Berel Lazar, of the Chabad Hasidic movement, made his remarks Thursday at a conference organized by the Limmud FSU cultural group in Sighet, Romania.
Russia is giving Syria the S-300 system following the downing last month of a Russian intelligence gathering aircraft by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli strike over Syrian airspace.
Russia has blamed Israel for the incident, which killed 15 Russian soldiers.
“I think it’s a mistake that will only augment the region’s problems,” Lazar, who meets regularly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the Israeli journalist Eli Mandelbaum about the missile transfer.
Screen capture from video showing the delivery of Russian S-300 air defense missiles to Syria. (YouTube)
Lazar’s group, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia, often speaks out against expressions of anti-Semitism in Russia and aspects of Russia’s policy concerning Israel, including its voting in 2017 in favor of a UN resolution that ignores Jerusalem’s significance to Jews.
But Lazar, who has said he opposes excessive involvement by Jewish community leaders in Russian politics, has seldom criticized Russia publicly over its bilateral relations with Israel on subjects devoid of a religious dimension.
The rabbi, a native of Italy who became a Russian citizen in 2000, went on to say that he and his organization “speak about [the S-300 issue] with the president,” referencing Putin. “We explain, I’d say, the sensitivity of this issue to our brethren in Israel, in Zion, and we hope Israel and Russia can continue to cooperate in stopping terrorism, stopping Iran, and that Israel will continue to guard its borders and neutralize any threat before it reaches its doorstep.”
Israel and its allies for years have lobbied Russia not to give Syria and other regional players the S-300 system, arguing that it would limit Israel’s ability to neutralize terrorist threats, including by the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah.
Several hundred people attended the event in Sighet, which is the birthplace of Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor who died in 2016. In August, Romanian police arrested a 37-year-old man whom they suspect wrote anti-Semitic slogans on Wiesel’s childhood home.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 09 October 2018 22:05.
In this photo July 21, 2016, photo, then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, right, watches with then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Manafort’s chief deputy Rick Gates, left, as Ivanka Trump rehearses for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
New York Times, “Rick Gates Sought Online Manipulation Plans From Israeli Intelligence Firm for Trump Campaign”, 8 October 2018:
WASHINGTON — A top Trump campaign official requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals.
The Trump campaign’s interest in the work began as Russians were escalating their effort to aid Donald J. Trump. Though the Israeli company’s pitches were narrower than Moscow’s interference campaign and appear unconnected, the documents show that a senior Trump aide saw promise in a disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump’s favor.
The campaign official, Rick Gates, sought one proposal to use bogus personas to target and sway 5,000 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention by attacking Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Mr. Trump’s main opponent at the time. Another proposal describes opposition research and “complementary intelligence activities” about Mrs. Clinton and people close to her, according to copies of the proposals obtained by The New York Times and interviews with four people involved in creating the documents.
Documents from Psy-Group laying out its proposals for the Trump campaign.
A third proposal by the company, Psy-Group, which is staffed by former Israeli intelligence operatives, sketched out a monthslong plan to help Mr. Trump by using social media to help expose or amplify division among rival campaigns and factions. The proposals, part of what Psy-Group called “Project Rome,” used code names to identify the players — Mr. Trump was “Lion” and Mrs. Clinton was “Forest.” Mr. Cruz, who Trump campaign officials feared might lead a revolt over the Republican presidential nomination, was “Bear.”
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 06 October 2018 16:27.
See Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem’s full speech here.
During the Syrian Civil War, millions of Syrians fled to Europe and other places as refugees. Now it seems that Syria wants them back after a powerful speech by Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Moualem at the recent UN General Assembly.
Speaking on Saturday (29th September), Moualem, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister, thanked the countries which have taken in the refugees, but said it was time for them to come back home, as the Syrian Civil War is now practically finished.
“The government continues to rehabilitate the areas destroyed by terrorists, to restore normalcy,” he told the meeting. “All conditions are now present for the voluntary return of Syrian refugees to the country, the country they had to leave because of terrorism and the unilateral economic measures that targeted their daily lives and their livelihoods.
True enough, thousands of Syrian refugees abroad have started their journey back home.
From this podium I would like to stress the following - the return of each and every Syrian refugee is a priority for the Syrian state. All doors are wide open for All Syrians abroad to return voluntarily and safely…
Thanks to the help of Russia, the Syrian government will spare no effort to facilitate the return of refugees and meet their basic needs. Therefore a special committee was recently established to coordinate the return of refugees to their places of origin in Syria, and to help them regain their lives once again.”
Moualem also criticised the uncooperative attitude of some of the Western countries to which the refugees fled, and accused them of trying to prevent the refugees returning to their homelands.
“We have called upon the international community and humanitarian organisations to facilitate these returns. However, some Western countries, in line with their dishonest behaviour since the start of the war in Syria, continue to prevent the return of refugees. They are spreading irrational fears among refugees. They are politicising what should be a purely humanitarian issue, using refugees as a bargaining ship to serve their political agenda and linking the return of refugees to the political process.”
According to the document, Manafort and an unnamed senior Israeli official conspired to tarnish the reputation of Yulia Tymoshenko by accusing her of anti-semitism.
In 2012, while working as a lobbyist for the pro-Russian government of Ukraine, Paul Manafort conspired with a senior Israeli official to pressure Barack Obama’s administration to disavow Ukraine’s then-opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, Haaretz reports.
The Manafort-Israel-Russia connection appears on the pages of the plea deal signed between Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and Robert Mueller’s office. The following is stated in the document.
“Manafort sought to undermine United States support for Tymoshenko. He orchestrated a scheme to have, as he wrote in a contemporaneous communication, ‘Obama Jews’ put pressure on the [Obama] administration to disavow Tymoshenko.”
According to the document, Manafort and an unnamed senior Israeli official conspired to tarnish the reputation of Yulia Tymoshenko by accusing her of anti-semitism.
Manafort and the Israeli official’s strategy was simple. The two men authored a written statement, slandering Tymoshenko. Manafort then spread the story to U.S. media.
“I have someone putting it in the New York Post. Bada bing bada boom,” he wrote to one of his associates.
“The Jewish community will take this out on Obama on Election Day if he does nothing,” Manafort told an associate, according to the document, implying that his goal was to pressure Barack Obama’s administration into acting against Tymoshenko, Manafort client’s biggest rival at the time.
By accusing Tymoshenko of anti-semitism, with the help of his Israeli co-conspirator, Manafort planned on spreading the story to American media. Eventually, it would reach the American Jewish community (“Obama Jews,” as Manafort put it), which would then pressure Obama to work in the favor of Manafort’s client.
According to Haaretz, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s then-foreign minister could be the mysterious Israeli official mentioned in the document. In October, 2012, Lieberman published a statement viciously attacking political rivals of Manafort’s pro-Russian client. Ukrainian elections were held on October 28, 2012.
“Israel condemns anti-Semitism in all its forms, and expresses hope that common sense will prevail,” the statement read.
If Avigdor Lieberman is indeed the mysterious Israeli official mentioned in court documents, his and Manafort’s tactic worked, at least to an extent, considering the fact that various American media outlets published his statement, including Breitbart and the New York Times.
Avigdor Lieberman is currently the Defense Minister of Israel. Today, Lieberman denied ever meeting with, speaking to, or working with Paul Manafort.
Manafort weaponized antisemitism with ‘senior Israeli official’ in Ukraine lobbying scheme
— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) September 14, 2018
According to the Jerusalem Post, along with Manafort’s deep ties to Ukraine’s pro-Russia politicians, political influence campaigns directed by other states, such as Israel, through Manafort, are also attracting Robert Mueller’s attention.
The Jerusalem Post, too, noted that Avigdor Lieberman appears to be the unnamed Israeli official mentioned in court documents.
These developments may come as a surprise to the American public, but some intellectuals have warned that other foreign powers, along with Russia, have meddled in U.S. elections multiple times.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, renowned linguist Noam Chomsky recently argued — without denying Russian election interference — that Israel meddles in U.S. internal affairs “openly, brazenly and with enormous support.”
Manafort weaponized antisemitism with ‘senior Israeli official’ in Ukraine lobbying scheme
Jerusalem Post, “Muller: Manafort used ‘Obama’s Jews’ to smear Ukrainian leader”, 14 Sept 2018:
Israeli Defense Minister Liberman seems to be implicated in the affair.
Paul Manafort tried to use misleading charges of antisemitism against a senior Obama administration official to pressure the former president to go soft on his Ukrainian client, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2012, according to documents released on Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office.
New “superseding” criminal information was released this morning as part of a plea agreement reached between Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman who faced charges for lobbying law violations, and Mueller, the special prosecutor investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Manafort has already been convicted on several counts of federal bank and tax fraud brought by the special counsel.
Mueller describes a scheme by Manafort to manipulate “Obama’s Jews”– in Manafort’s own words– to pressure the administration to disavow Yanukovych’s political archrival, Yulia Tymoshenko, by highlighting her alleged ties to antisemitic groups and spreading stories that an Obama “Cabinet official” supporting her cause was antisemitic by proxy.
Manafort “coordinated with a senior Israeli government official” to publicize the story, Mueller charged, seeking to convince the administration that “the Jewish community will take this out on Obama in the [2012 presidential] election if he does nothing.” The Israeli official is not named.
According to archived articles from the time, the cabinet official referenced in the Mueller documents appears to be then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and the Israeli official appears to be Avigdor Liberman, then minister of foreign affairs.
He then fed claims to Obama officials that Yanukovych was working to quell the manicured crisis, hoping to ingratiate him with the administration.
Manafort’s deep ties to Ukraine’s pro-Russia figures, paired with his prominent role in Trump’s presidential campaign, has drawn Mueller’s attention as he investigates whether US persons coordinated with Moscow to influence the 2016 race.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 16 August 2018 06:16.
Observer, “Mueller Finally Starts to Target Trump’s Israel Ties”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump.
Our media has followed the Justice Department’s investigation of President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia closely for more than a year, with each revelation getting granular analysis amid endless television coverage. No news here is too small to avoid hours of talking-head pontification. Yet, it appears that a significant aspect of the inquiry, one that calls the conventional narrative of the case into question, has been missing from public view—until now.
A genuine bombshell dropped yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere. It came in an interview with Simona Mangiante, the wife of George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who pled guilty last October to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian agents—especially Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor with suspicious Kremlin ties—during the president’s election campaign. As expected, Mangiante explained that her husband, whom she married just three months ago, is innocent of what he admitted he did, and in no way was working for Russian intelligence.
“George had nothing to do with Russia,” she explained, seemingly in an effort to convince the White House that Papadopoulos lacks any dirt on the president’s Kremlin connections that could assist Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Team Trump. However, what Mangiante said next was the real shocker: her husband “pled guilty because [Mueller’s prosecutors] threatened to charge him with being an Israeli agent.”
Wait, what?
According to his wife, who insists that George Papadopoulos has nothing to do with Russia, he was facing criminal charges of being a spy for Israel. An attentive reader of her interview will note that Mangiante at no point denied that this accusation.
The notion is hardly implausible. Before joining the Trump campaign in early March 2016, Papadopoulos was a self-styled energy consultant who was known for taking strongly pro-Israeli positions in print. To boot, during the 2016 campaign, he met with an Israeli settler leader and assured him that Donald Trump, if elected president, would take a favorable view of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Then there’s the backstory to Papadopoulos’ infamous May 10, 2016 meeting at an upscale London wine bar with Alexander Downer, the Australian high commissioner (i.e. ambassador) to Britain. At that hard-drinking affair, the young Trump staffer informed Downer that Russia possessed derogatory information about Hillary Clinton—a claim the Australian diplomat found so troubling that he shared it with Australian security officials, who passed it on to their American partners, thus officially beginning the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s Kremlin ties.
That fateful boozy chat was set up by an unnamed Israeli diplomat. This fact, namely that “the meeting came about through a series of connections involving an Israeli diplomat who introduced Papadopoulos to an Australian counterpart,” was reported at the end of last year, “sourced from four current and former American and foreign officials.” This revelation has not been rebutted, nor has it received the attention it deserves. Given that a high percentage of Israeli diplomats serving abroad are spies, this story needs further investigation.
Moreover, there are strange Israeli footprints all over the Trump-Russia story. Quite a few of the shady figures close to the president and his business affairs are American Jews of Soviet heritage who possess connections to Israel. Felix Sater and Michael Cohen are only the best-known of this dubious crew. Those men are also connected to Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island that is part of the worldwide Chabad movement—which reportedly possesses close links to Putin and his Kremlin. The recent BBC report that Cohen accepted at least $400,000 from the Ukrainian government to set up a substantive meeting with President Trump last year included the tantalizing detail that this dirty deal ran through attendees of Chabad of Port Washington.
Then there’s the explosive New York Times report just two weeks ago about a hush-hush meeting in Trump Tower on August 3, 2016—less than two months after the other hush-hush meeting there with Kremlin operatives—between Team Trump and George Nader, who reportedly offered Donald Trump, Jr. help with getting his father elected. According to the Times, Nader proffered unofficial (and probably illegal) foreign aid to the Republican nominee’s campaign, including from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
That day, Nader brought with him Joel Zamel, an Israeli expert in several things that were of interest to Team Trump, including social media manipulation. Zamel is known to possess a close relationship with a bunch of former Israeli intelligence officials, and Nader reportedly paid him a large sum, perhaps as much as $2 million, after Trump’s election as compensation for Zamel’s shadowy social media assistance to the president-elect’s campaign in (both men also visited the White House).
Zamel is best known as the founder of Wikistrat, a private intelligence firm that was founded in 2010, ostensibly as a “crowdsourced” geopolitical analysis outfit. Although it’s based in Washington, D.C., as The Daily Beast recently uncovered, “Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm; and that the company’s work was not just limited to analysis. It also engaged in intelligence collection.” For this reason, Wikistrat is under investigation by Team Mueller, whose investigators have interviewed Zamel, while FBI agents have traveled to Israel to dig deeper. Several prominent Wikistrat staffers formerly worked for Israeli intelligence—and some experienced espionage professionals in our nation’s capital wonder if they still do.
Israeli espionage against the United States is a perennially touchy subject in Washington. This issue is admitted frankly in counterintelligence circles—and nowhere else. Israel constitutes a unique case. Although it’s a close ally and intelligence partner of ours—the relationship between the National Security Agency and the Israel Defense Force’s Unit 8200, its Israeli equivalent, is exceptionally close—Israel also spies on America aggressively. Year in and year out, Israel ranks in the Big Four counterintelligence threats to the United States, alongside Russia, China and Cuba. It’s not politic to mention this in polite society, however, so the counterspies know a lot about Israel’s spying on us, keeping mum outside their esoteric realm.
Indeed, some counterintelligence pros in Washington have a rather different take on the Mueller inquiry than most Americans do. While Moscow’s secret role in subverting our election in 2016 is plain to see and is now denied only by the willfully obtuse or congenitally dishonest, detecting a direct Kremlin hand on the Trump campaign is trickier. Trump’s links to Moscow are visible but remain somewhat obscure.
His ties to Israel, however, are much plainer to see. Based on the available evidence to date, Team Trump’s 2016 links to shadowy Israelis appear just as troubling as those to dodgy Russians—indeed, in some cases they are the very same people. As a veteran counterspy in our Intelligence Community whom I’ve known for years recently asked me with a wry smile, “What if the real secret of the Trump campaign isn’t that it’s a Kremlin operation, rather an Israeli operation masquerading as a Russian one?”
That’s a provocative question, but it merits consideration beyond counterintelligence circles. After all, Putin and his retinue have ample reason to feel let down by Trump. His greasy obsequiousness to Moscow aside, the president’s policies towards Russia have hardly pleased the Kremlin. Sanctions on Russia remain in effect, NATO’s military posture near Russia’s borders is more robust than a couple years ago, and Ukraine is now getting the anti-tank missiles that the previous White House denied it. Unlike so many of Trump’s assertions, his claim that he’s tougher on Moscow than President Barack Obama happens to be true from any policy perspective.
But not so with Israel. Unlike Obama, Trump has gone whole-hog for the Israeli right-wing, boosting Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who openly despised Obama, at every opportunity. The recent move of our embassy to Jerusalem, long desired by the Israeli Right, is merely the most prominent of Trump’s gifts to his pal Bibi and his ruling Likud party. Sending a right-wing American Jew who has compared his more liberal co-religionists to Nazi collaborators to serve as our ambassador sent a clear message to Israel, as did the Trump administration’s recent inability to say anything negative about the IDF’s shooting last month of more than a thousand Palestinians at the Gaza border fence, killing 60 of them. Instead, the White House blocked a United Nations resolution condemning that Israeli deed, serving as a tacit endorsement of using automatic weapons for crowd control.
Few of America’s friends around the world are happy with the Trump administration, given its habit of gleefully trashing our longstanding alliances and declaring trade wars on our allies. Israel stands as a significant exception, however, and it’s no wonder that Mueller and his investigators are trying to get to the bottom of what certain Israelis were doing in 2016 in secret to boost the Trump campaign. That answer may eventually prove just as important as Mueller’s inquiry into the Kremlin and its clandestine attack on our democracy two years ago.
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst. Originally posted 06/05/18, but still relevant.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 11 August 2018 08:20.
Lew Rockwell.com, “Punishing Iran Will Cost A Fortune”, 11 August 2018:
President Trump keeps vowing to create more jobs in America. But his actions often speak differently. The most egregious example was Trump’s cancellation of the multi-national Iran nuclear treaty that had been welcomed by the world as a major step to Mideast denuclearization.
In abrogating the international treaty signed by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the US humiliated its allies and rivals who were strongly in favor of the accord. Iran had already handed 97% of its enriched uranium to Russia, shut down reactors and centrifuges, and allowed UN inspectors to run all over its nuclear facilities when Trump tore up the deal that had been under negotiation since 2015.
Iran has been under a harsh US-led trade embargo since its 1979 revolution that was designed to cripple its economy and military and drive the people to rebel against their government. Washington used the same tactics – without success – against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
So intense is the Trump administration’s hatred for Islamic Iran that it decided to scrap the multinational nuclear deal that would have meant opening Iran to western commerce and a bonanza for US and European companies. The key element of the deal was to have been the sale of some 210 commercial jet airliners to Iran by the US and the European Union, a deal worth some $40-50 billion, not counting future sales of spare parts.
The US embargo of Iran since 1979 has made it unable to modernize its commercial airline fleet. Iran was denied modern aircraft, spare parts, engines and instruments, leaving it with decaying aircraft from the 1970’s.
The grim result of the US-imposed embargo has been 17 crashes of Iranian civilian aircraft with 1500 deaths.
Most of Iran’s commercial aircraft – a grab bag of old, mostly 25-year old Boeing, Airbus, Chinese and Soviet aircraft – are flying coffins. Iran’s maintenance, training and air traffic control are substandard. Flying over and around Iran’s lofty mountains is a challenge for the best of pilots, even for a handful of newer ATR turboprop aircraft.
Washington’s denial to Iran of Boeing Aircraft (and Airbus planes because they contain US-made parts), means the loss of tens of thousands of highly-paid jobs in the US and Europe. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claims he talked Trump into canceling the Iran nuclear deal and the Boeing orders.
It’s hard to validate Netanyahu’s claim but it is clear that America’s ever more powerful Israel lobby and its ally fundamentalist Christian Zionists played a key role in thwarting the Iran nuclear deal and sale of commercial aircraft.
We don’t yet know the full cost of lost American jobs and business to help keep Iran isolated. But one could argue that part of the $20 billion lost should be counted as part of annual US aid to Israel.
Russia and China’s aircraft industries will soon be able to deliver modern passenger aircraft to Iran and accept payment in oil. China’s C919 and ARJ21 are now nearing service. Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 will be ready soon. Trump could be cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Trump and his allies are trying to push Iran into a corner and provoke it to lash out at US forces that are poised around it. A navel clash in the Gulf is the obvious pretext for war.
While the US goes after Iran, it has opened a new anti-Muslim front against old ally Turkey by imposing heavy duties on Ankara’s exports to the US and attacking the always vulnerable Turkish lira. This, in turn, has set off a financial crisis across Europe, notably among EU banks that have large, soft loans made to Turkey.
Trump & Co. are trying to force Turkey to bend the knee and support US-Israeli-Saudi policy goals. Turkey and Iran remain the last significant supporters in the region of the Palestinians. Trump and the New York City real estate developers, and the money men who surround him, are determined to show the independent-minded Iranians and Turks who is the big boss.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 02 August 2018 06:10.
Ewa Faryaszewska (1920-1944) - Museum of Warsaw, Public Domain
Generally speaking, I don’t like to go into World War II, because I view it as a nasty history for Europeans, about which few people alive had anything to do - therefore, I prefer to uncouple the ethnonationalist cause from it - and especially from Nazism - for the sake of Germans perhaps especially. However, because a needless and counterproductive tendency to try to fully exonerate and redeem Hitler and the Nazis persists - e.g., Mark Collette and “ComfyTangent” recommending that people attend to the schlock revisionism of “The Greatest Story Never Told”; David Duke persisting in blaming anyone but Hitler for WWII - there is yet need to address the issue enough to put it to rest for anyone reasonable - not something to expect from the Stormfront crowd, e.g; and many have not yet gotten Dr. Lindtner’s message regarding the disingenuousness of Faurisson and other revisionists. We will be engaging podcasts on the matter with a Swedish colleague, et al. in days to come to straighten-out the record on WWII - why White Nationalism need not and should no be burdened with Hitler/Nazi association, denial, let alone its idealization and idolatry.
In the meantime, while you will hear a great deal from American White Nationalists about the terrible fire-bombing of Dresden, you can expect them to remain irresponsibly silent (or make revolting excuses) regarding events like the quelling of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
If anyone has better information to add, they are welcome, but again, because I don’t like going into WWII history, at this point I’ll merely set forth a textual sketch of the event from Wikipedia and this video:
Berlin 1st Army: 5,660 casualties[7]
Warsaw Airlift: 41 downed aircraft German forces:
8,000–17,000 killed and missing
9,000 WIA
150,000–200,000 civilians killed,[8] 700,000 expelled from the city.[7]
Poland 1944–45: The Warsaw Uprising (Polish: powstanie warszawskie; German: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation, in the summer of 1944, by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa), to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance.[9] While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to raze the city in reprisal. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.[10]
The Uprising began on 1 August 1944 as part of a nationwide Operation Tempest, launched at the time of the Soviet Lublin–Brest Offensive. The main Polish objectives were to drive the Germans out of Warsaw while helping the Allies defeat Germany. An additional, political goal of the Polish Underground State was to liberate Poland’s capital and assert Polish sovereignty before the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation could assume control. Other immediate causes included a threat of mass German round-ups of able-bodied Poles for “evacuation”; calls by Radio Moscow’s Polish Service for uprising; and an emotional Polish desire for justice and revenge against the enemy after five years of German occupation.[11][12]
Initially, the Poles established control over most of central Warsaw, but the Soviets ignored Polish attempts to maintain radio contact with them and did not advance beyond the city limits. Intense street fighting between the Germans and Poles continued. By 14 September, the eastern bank of the Vistula River opposite the Polish resistance positions was taken over by the Polish troops fighting under the Soviet command; 1,200 men made it across the river, but they were not reinforced by the Red Army. This, and the lack of air support from the Soviet base five-minute flying time away, led to allegations that Stalin tactically halted his forces to let the operation fail and the Polish resistance to be crushed. Arthur Koestler said the Soviet disposition will rank on an ethical level with Lidice.”[13]
Winston Churchill pleaded with Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt to help Britain’s Polish allies, to no avail.[14] Then, without Soviet air clearance, Churchill sent over 200 low-level supply drops by the Royal Air Force, the South African Air Force, and the Polish Air Force under British High Command, in an operation known as the Warsaw Airlift. Later, after gaining Soviet air clearance, the U.S. Army Air Force sent one high-level mass airdrop as part of Operation Frantic.
Although the exact number of casualties remains unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded.
85% of Warsaw was destroyed deliberately by Hitler’s order that the city be razed.
In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. Jews being harboured by Poles were exposed by German house-to-house clearances and mass evictions of entire neighbourhoods. German casualties totalled over 8,000 soldiers killed and missing, and 9,000 wounded. During the urban combat approximately 25% of Warsaw’s buildings were destroyed. Following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically levelled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945, when the course of the events in the Eastern Front forced the Germans to abandon the city.
Ewa Faryaszewska (1920-1944) - Museum of Warsaw, Public Domain
85% of Warsaw was destroyed deliberately by Hitler’s order that the city be razed.
In this photo July 21, 2016, photo, then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, right, watches with then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Manafort’s chief deputy Rick Gates, left, as Ivanka Trump rehearses for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (
