Feb./Jan. 2010
The Blood of Dresden
Kurt Vonnegut
... In February 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers; disemboweled her with high explosives and cremated her with incendiaries ... It is with some regret that I here besmirch the nobility of our airmen, but, boys, you killed an appalling lot of women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral pyres in the parks, so I know ... The "Get Tough America" policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, have earned us a name for obscene brutality.
Street Clashes Pending?: Rallies Set to Mark Dresden Bombing
Der Spiegel (Germany)
The German far right traditionally stages a march on Feb. 13 of each year to commemorate the bombing of Dresden. This year, however, authorities have moved to prevent counterdemonstrations by the left. In the night between Feb. 13 and 14, 1945, 796 Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force dropped more than 2,600 tons of bombs on Dresden, a city overflowing with thousands of refugees from the East. The next day, 311 American B-17 bombers dropped another 700 tons of bombs on the city's Baroque center.
America Slides Deeper Into Depression as Wall Street Revels
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard -- The Telegraph (Britain)
December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began. The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3 percent. That is the one that matters ... Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody's Economy.com expects another 2.4 million homes to go this year.
Obama, The War President
Helen Thomas
President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war. The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where's the change we can believe in? Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama's State of the Union
Stephen Zunes -- Foreign Policy in Focus
... Despite two ongoing wars, it was striking that Obama focused so little in his first State of the Union speech on the world outside our borders other than the call to be competitive in the global economy. Indeed, he dedicated only eight minutes of the 70-minute speech to foreign policy. Yet many of the pressing economic problems the country faces that were addressed in the speech are directly related to foreign policy. And, despite promises of change, much of this foreign policy shows disappointing continuity with previous administrations.
Non-Natives Being Evicted: Mohawks Evict Whites to `Protect Identity'
The Gazette (Canada)
Saying there are too many non-natives living in Kahnawake, the local band council has issued eviction notices to 25 residents, giving them 10 days to leave the Indian reserve on Montreal's South Shore. About 25 non-natives - mostly white people involved in relationships with Mohawks - are being asked to leave the reserve because Mohawk law does not allow them to live there, said Joe Delaronde, press attaché for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. "They are people with no native ancestry at all," Delaronde said in an interview yesterday. According to Mohawk law, non-aboriginals have no residency rights. About 7,500 Mohawks live on the reserve.
Citizen's Arrest of War Criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush
Prof. Anthony J. Hall
Professor Boyle's intervention with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute the Bush War Cabinet for international crimes is welcome news. Professor Boyle's meticulously documented charges come shortly after news of a reward being set up in Great Britain for those who attempt citizens' arrests of credibly accused war criminal, Tony Blair. All over the world, citizens are mobilizing to take action to demand accountability from those who have been committing with impunity the highest order of international crime. About a year ago I joined this global movement
President Obama Seeks Record $708 Billion Military Budget
Reuters
President Barack Obama on Monday asked Congress to approve a record $708 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2011, including a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon's base budget and $159 billion to fund U.S. military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The White House budget request also included $33 billion in additional funding for fiscal 2010 to pay for increasing military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq. That comes on top of $129.6 billion already provided for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30.
US Military Spending: A Path To Ruin
Eric Margolis
President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America's economic health. In fact, it's another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug -- debt. More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion ... Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe -- what neocons call "full spectrum dominance."
Shattering Lincoln's Dream
Joseph Sobran
... Lincoln, we should also remember, was a passionate segregationist, a fact Krannawitter barely touches on, though it might interest our new President to know that the Great Emancipator's preferred solution was to abolish slavery and to remove all "free colored persons" from the United States. In 1862 he proposed an amendment that would authorize Congress to pay for this huge project.
Why is Revisionism Important? / The Vengeful `Morgenthau Plan'
Institute for Historical Review - Video
Mark Weber, historian and director of the IHR, speaks about the importance of historical revisionism, and Prof. Anthony Kubek speaks about the `Morgenthau Plan' for a brutal and vindictive Allied occupation of Germany after the end of World War II. From the Ninth IHR Conference (1989). Runtime: 9:44 mins.
N o Dumb Blonde: A New Book About Eva Braun
Daily Mail (Britain)
She was the mystery figure at Hitler's side that the world never knew about during the lifespan of the Third Reich. Now the first comprehensive biography of Eva Braun reveals how the hidden First Lady of Nazism was the polar opposite of everything her beloved Adolf decreed should be found in a woman. 'Eva Braun: Life With Hitler,' by renowned German historian Heike B. Goertemaker, paints Eva not as an air-head besotted by a dominant man, but a fiercely loyal, independent thinker at odds with Hitler's public proclamations about 'the fairer sex'.
Google's Problems May Help Dispel Illusions About China
John Naughton -- The Observer (Britain)
One useful spin-off from the developing story of Google's difficulties with the Chinese communist regime is that it may finally spur the west to discard the rose-tinted spectacles through which it has chosen to view China in the past decade ... The regime is irredeemably authoritarian and never had any intention of ceding freedom of information to its people. Neither has it ever bought into the idea of market triumphalism. The whole Chinese economic "miracle" is a refutation of the link between capitalism and liberalism: Hu Jintao & Co believe it is perfectly possible to build a dynamic, prosperous economy without bothering with all that democracy nonsense. Recent developments confirm the indifference of the regime to western sensibilities.
Israel Seeks German Arms-Aid Deal
Defense News
Germany and Israel are intensifying negotiations over a nearly one billion euro ($1.45 billion) naval procurement package, a considerable portion of which Israel hopes to fund from a combination of German and U.S. aid. The Israeli-proposed arms-aid deal - to be discussed Jan. 18 in Berlin at a special joint meeting of the German and Israeli cabinets - involves an additional Dolphin diesel-electric submarine, torpedoes and two German-built warships.
Rash of Retirements Pushes Social Security to Brink
USA Today
Social Security's annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years as the recession led hundreds of thousands of workers to retire or claim disability. The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated ... Experts say the trend points to a more basic problem for Social Security: looming retirements by Baby Boomers will create annual losses beginning in 2016 or 2017.
The Crisis is Not Over
Paul Craig Roberts
Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans' prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one ... The threats to the U.S. economy are extreme. Yet, neither the Obama administration, the Republican opposition, economists, Wall Street, nor the media show any awareness. Instead, the public is provided with spin about recovery and with higher spending on pointless wars that are hastening America's economic and financial ruin.
Adolf Hitler, Irish Folk Music Fan
Irish Central
Newly released historical photographs reveal that famous Irish musician Sean Dempsey played for Adolf Hitler in 1936, and the Nazi dictator loved his music. Dempsey, an uileann piper, was invited to play for Hitler and propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels during a visit to Berlin in 1936 after being told that Hitler was an Irish folk music fan ... Dempsey played what was described as a 'haunting air' as Hitler listened with rapt attention. After he performed, Hitler presented him with a gold fountain pen while Goebbels clapped wildly.
Palestinian Families Protest Israeli Construction of `Museum of Tolerance' on Historic Jerusalem Cemetery
Democracy Now
Palestinian families have filed a petition with the United Nations over the Simon Wiesenthal Center's plans to build a "Museum of Tolerance" over the historic Mamilla Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Opponents of the project have long questioned how a monument to tolerance can be built on the remains of the graves of generations of Palestinian Muslims. Ten minute interview with Columbia University professor and author Rashid Khalidi, a petitioner whose ancestors were buried at the Mamilla Cemetery; and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing the families in their petition. Includes transcript of the interviews.
Japanese Split on Exposing Secret Cold War Era Pacts With U.S.
The New York Times
They were Tokyo's worst-kept diplomatic secrets: clandestine cold war era agreements with Washington that obligated Japan to shoulder the costs of United States bases and allow nuclear-armed American ships to sail into Japanese ports. For decades, Japanese leaders have gone to great lengths to deny the pacts' existence, despite mounting proof to the contrary from the testimony of former diplomats and declassified documents in the United States ... Now, the so-called secret treaties are causing problems again, this time in how Japan is handling its suddenly rocky relationship with the United States.
Investigator Skeptical of New Witness Claim in Demjanjuk Trial
The Associated Press
A top German investigator said Thursday he is skeptical about a new claim by a Sobibor survivor who says he remembers John Demjanjuk as a guard at the Nazi death camp. Thomas Walther, who led the investigation that prompted Germany to prosecute Demjanjuk, said if survivor Alexej Weizen did remember Demjanjuk, it almost certainly would have come up before in the roughly 30 years the retired U.S. autoworker has faced investigations of his past. Weizen had given statements previously to Soviet investigators and Demjanjuk had a high-profile trial in Israel in the 1980s.
North Carolina Schools May Cut Large Chunk from U.S. History Lessons
Fox News
He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 ... Under the proposed change, the ninth-graders would take a course called global studies, focusing in part on issues such as the environment. The 10th grade still would study civics and economics, but 11th-graders would take U.S. history only from 1877 onward.
The Legacy of Rudolf Hess
Mark Weber
.... He spent 46 years -- half his life -- behind bars, a victim of a cruel victor's justice. More than any other man, Rudolf Hess symbolizes the vindictiveness and hypocrisy of the Nuremberg Tribunal ... Known as the "conscience of the party," he often used what power and influence he had to intervene on behalf of victims of persecution by extremists in the National Socialist party. In his detailed study, Justice at Nuremberg, which is generally very critical of the German defendants, historian Robert E. Conot called Hess a "decent and honest" man and "a pacifist at heart." ... Rudolf Hess was a prisoner of peace and a victim of a vindictive age.
Why Does The US Turn a Blind Eye to Israeli Bulldozers?
Robert Fisk -- The Independent (Britain)
... The dream of a "two-state" Israeli-Palestinian solution, a security-drenched but noble settlement to decades of warfare between Israelis and Palestinians is as good as dead. Both the United States and Europe now stand idly by while the Israeli government effectively destroys any hope of a Palestinian state; even as you read these words, Israel's bulldozers and demolition orders are destroying the last chance of peace; not only in the symbolic centre of Jerusalem itself but - strategically, far more important - in 60 per cent of the vast, biblical lands of the occupied West Bank, in that largest sector in which Jews now outnumber Muslims two to one.
Mitchell: The Kangaroo
Uri Avnery
... When one is dealing with a 130-year old conflict, the naïve belief in the value of talk borders on folly. Decades of experience indicate that negotiations are useless if one of the parties is not interested in an agreement. Worse: negotiations can actually cause damage when one of the parties uses them to waste time while creating a false impression of progress towards peace. In our [Israel-Palestine] conflict, peace negotiations have become a substitute for peace, a means to obstruct peace. They are an instrument used by successive Israeli governments to gain time - time to enlarge the settlements and entrench the occupation.
Gaza 2009: We Will Never Forget
What Really Happened -- Video
Montage documentary on Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" military assault against Palestinians in the Gaza district. Runtime: 8:58 mins.
Obama's Irresponsibly Wasted Year
William Pfaff
Barack Obama's first State of the Union address has passed with his administration's record widely criticized by his own supporters as one of unexpected ineptitude and political incompetence ... President Obama's failure has astonished the international public and left in despair those Americans who can scarcely believe that a whole year has been irresponsibly wasted. By now, there is little or no hope of recovering that promise of national and international reform that had pervaded Western society a year ago, thanks to Obama, persuading a Nobel Peace Prize committee, dizzied by Obama glamour, to award him their prize even as he escalated the most senseless yet of America's unsuccessful wars in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran
Daniel Pipes -- The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
... He [President Obama] needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations. Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapon capacity. Circumstances are propitious ... Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush's meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama's feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.
Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power
The New York Times
In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power ... For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country's influence around the world eroded.
Seven Years Behind Bars: Anniversary of Ernst Zundel's Arrest
Mark Weber
Seven years ago -- on Feb. 5, 2003 -- Ernst Zundel was arrested at his home in eastern Tennessee. Ever since he has been held behind bars, first in Canada and now in Germany, for his peaceful expression of non-conformist views. He is the most prominent "prisoner of conscience" in the western world today. Now 70 years of age, he is due to be released on or about March 1.
`Defamation' Film Looks at Contemporary `Anti-Semitism'
A provocative, irreverent video by Israeli film-maker Yoav Shamir about "anti-Semitism," real and invented, in today's world. Shows how Zionists use a manipulated historical narrative, especially of "the Holocaust," to inculcate Jews with a paranoid sense of victimhood and "otherness," and feelings of fear, disregard and even contempt for non-Jews. Includes interviews with: Abe Foxman, director of the Zionist "Anti-Defamation League"; Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry ; Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby; Uri Avnery, Israeli peace activist. Runtime: one hour and 32 mins.
Popular iPhone App of Mussolini Speeches is Withdrawn
BBC News
An iPhone application that allows users to download speeches by the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini has been withdrawn. Its developer says he is removing it after legal threats. But the application has also faced protests from Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors who described it as offensive. IMussolini, as the application is known, has become the most popular iPhone download in Italy. It has even beaten video games based on the current film sensation Avatar. It is a 25-minute collection of video and audio clips from 100 of Mussolini's speeches. But now it has been withdrawn after a row with the film institute where the pictures came from.
US May Kill `Threatening' Americans, Says Intelligence Chief
The Washington Post
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged Wednesday that government agencies may kill U.S. citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are "taking action that threatens Americans." Blair told members of the House intelligence committee that he was speaking publicly about the issue to reassure Americans that intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense "follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed" in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens. Blair's unusually frank remarks come as the issue of targeting Americans for lethal action has attracted more notice.
Iraq `Littered' With High Levels of Nuclear and Dioxin Contamination
The Guardian (Britain)
More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels of radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found. Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years.
A Terrifying Legacy of the Vietnam War
The Telegraph (Britain)
Another Vietnam War shell has exploded - this time, in a schoolyard. No one was injured when the artillery shell exploded in a school playing field on Wednesday, shattering windows and terrifying hundreds of students. Unexploded ordnance and mines have killed more than 42,000 people and wounded some 62,000 since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
Colorado City Cuts Into Services Considered Basic by Many
The Denver Post (Colorado)
This tax-averse city [Colorado Springs] is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric. More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops -- dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled ... City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends.
In England, `Heretical Two' Lose Appeal on Internet Racism Case
BBC News
Two men have lost their appeals against the UK's first conviction for inciting racial hatred via a foreign website. Simon Sheppard, 51, was sentenced to four years and 10 months, and Stephen Whittle, 42, to two years and four months at Leeds Crown Court in July. However, the Court of Appeal has reduced Sheppard's sentence by one year and Whittle's jail term by six months. Sheppard, from Selby, North Yorks, and Whittle, of Preston, Lancs, controlled US websites featuring racist material. During their first trial in 2008, they skipped bail and fled to California, where they sought asylum claiming they were being persecuted for their right-wing views, but were deported.
In California, A New Campaign to Remove Prof. MacDonald
Daily 49er -- California State University - Long Beach
In the past week, psychology professor Kevin MacDonald had his class interrupted by an organization claiming his views and recent involvement in political organization the American Third Option party are seen as racist and anti-Semitic. MacDonald, a tenured professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been making headlines on the matter since he was investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2006. The SPLC tracks hate crimes and groups across America ... Both Kauffman and Cabral are students at CSULB and members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist and Leninist organization that advocates revolutionary change and progressive reform.
The Case Against Tony Blair
Patrick Cockburn
... It was striking in Blair's testimony that so many of his references to Iraq are inaccurate. In trying to prove some connection between the perpetrators of 9/11 and Saddam's regime, he mentioned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, later head of the Iraqi branch of al Qa'ida, as being in Iraq before Saddam was overthrown. He failed to mention that he was in a camp in Kurdistan in part of the country not controlled by Saddam Hussein. He said Iran intervened in Iraq because it feared a Shia democracy on its doorstep. In fact, Iran supported the Shia government in Baghdad after it was elected in 2005, but opposed the presence of American and British forces ... A YouGov poll earlier this month shows that 23 per cent of the public think he should be tried as war criminal.
Jewish Groups Protest Popular iPhone App Sales of Mussolini Speeches
The Times (Britain)
Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors have protested to Apple over Italy's current best-selling iPhone application: a collection of the speeches of Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator. Demand for "iMussolini", subtitled "The man who changed the history of our country", has risen to the point where it is being downloaded 1,000 times a day according to Luigi Marino, 25, its creator. It is more popular than a video game based on the film Avatar and an X-ray machine app which "allows you to see your friends naked". The app, which costs 79 Euro cents, contains audio, video and text of 100 speeches ...
Jewish Complaints of Pro-Nazi Videos on YouTube
Daily Mail (Britain)
Video-sharing website YouTube has been condemned for showing video clips glorifying Nazi troops. The scenes, accompanied by militaristic music, have drawn millions of hits from potential Nazi sympathisers and voyeurs. YouTube, which hosts film clips from the public, has 2,880 items on the Waffen SS, the most fanatical of Hitler's soldiers who were indicted for war crimes throughout WW2. The entries have a string of 'Sieg Heil' comments and praise for the fighting prowess of the Waffen SS, recruited for their unswerving loyalty to Nazism. The videos, some from Nazi propaganda news reels, have angered Jewish organisations who have called for YouTube to remove the 'hugely offensive' postings.
US Grants Asylum to Home Schooling German Family
The Guardian (Britain)
A US judge has granted political asylum to a German family who said they had fled the country to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. In the first reported case of its kind, Tennessee immigration judge Lawrence Burman ruled that the family of seven have a legitimate fear of prosecution for their beliefs. Germany requires parents to enrol their children in school in most cases and has levied fines against those who educate their children at home. Christians Uwe Romeike, a piano teacher, and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Morristown, Tennessee, in 2008 after German authorities fined them thousands of euros for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes, Romeike said.
Presidential Assassinations of US Citizens
Glenn Greenwald -- Salon
... American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed: "After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests ... The Obama administration has adopted the same stance." ... Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests."
Cracking Down on 'Conflict Minerals': Millions Dying in Congo Conflict
Los Angeles Times -- Editorial
The deadliest conflict since World War II, in which 5.4 million people have died and 200,000 women have been raped, rages far from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where murderous militias are battling for control of valuable minerals such as tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, which are essential to the worldwide production of consumer electronics. Congolese, in other words, are dying in extraordinary numbers for our cellphones and video games, digital cameras and laptop computers.
Wanted: Tony Blair For War Crimes
George Monbiot -- The Guardian (Britain)
The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression ... Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg principles as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties".
Britain's Leaders Knew Impending Iraq Invasion Was Illegal, Says Former Official
The Telegraph (Britain)
Tony Blair and his ministers went to war in Iraq despite repeated warnings from senior Government advisers that they had "no leg to stand on" legally. During evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the war against Saddam, it emerged that Foreign Office lawyers were "unanimous" in their view that going to war without a United Nations mandate would be a "crime of aggression" likely to damage Britain's standing in the world. Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, painted a vivid picture of how his team repeatedly intervened privately to correct ministers who were stating that a fresh UN resolution was not legally not legally necessary, but their advice was ignored.
U.S. Foreign Aid Summary
The US provides more aid to Israel than any other country. In 2006, the US gave $2.5 billion to the Zionist state, which has a population of about 7.5 million. By contrast, the impoverished nation of Haiti, with a population of more than eight million, received $163 million, and Peru, with a population of more than 27 million, received $133 million. Each year more American taxpayer money goes to Israel than to all of sub-Saharan Africa.
US Budget Deficit Set to Hit $1.35 Trillion
BBC News
The US budget deficit is expected to reach $1.35 trillion in 2010, according to US Congress estimates. In 2009, the US deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion - equal to 9.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) - and the highest since the end of World War II. President Obama will make his first State of the Union address on Wednesday and will submit his budget plan on February 1. He is expected to announce a three-year partial spending freeze. The savings - expected to be about $15 billion off next year's budget and to amount to $250 billion during the next 10 years - are aimed at reducing the country's massive deficit.
Many Europeans Believe Jews Exploit History for Money
Haaretz (Israel)
Nearly half of Western European believe that Jews exploit the persecution of their past as a method of extorting money, according to an annual Jewish Agency report released on Sunday. A joint report on anti-Semitism conducted by the Agency and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs found that 42 percent of those polled by the University of Bielefeld in Germany agreed that "Jews exploit the past to extort money." The countries in which the highest percentage of the population agreed with that statement were Poland and Spain. According to the Jewish Agency, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in 2009 than in any year since the Second World War.
German Court Summons Bishop Williamson for `Holocaust Denial' Remarks
Reuters
A German court said on Wednesday it had summoned traditionalist Catholic bishop Richard Williamson to face charges he denied the Holocaust, an offence punishable by up to five years in jail. In comments broadcast on Swedish television last January, Williamson said he believed no more than 300,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust and that there were no gas chambers.
The Bishop Williamson Case: Behind the Headlines
Mark Weber and Jeff Rense
The IHR director and the host of the Jeff Rense program take a spirited and informed look at the much-publicized Bishop Williamson case. They review the Bishop's controversial remarks on "the Holocaust," and what this affair means for Americans, Christians and the world. As Weber explains, the uproar over Williamson's much-criticized "Holocaust denial" statements is not really about historical truth or "hate," but about Jewish-Zionist power and its role in our culture. Audio recording of broadcast of Feb. 24, 2009. Runtime: 38:17 mins.
Incarcerated Revisionists: Write to Europe's Prisoners of Conscience
Write to Europe's most prominent prisoners of conscience, including Ernst Zündel, Horst Mahler and Sylvia Stolz. Here are the addresses of individuals who are behind bars in Germany and Austria for expressing dissident, "banned" views.
The Blood of Dresden
Kurt Vonnegut
... In February 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers; disemboweled her with high explosives and cremated her with incendiaries ... It is with some regret that I here besmirch the nobility of our airmen, but, boys, you killed an appalling lot of women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral pyres in the parks, so I know ... The "Get Tough America" policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, have earned us a name for obscene brutality. Street Clashes Pending?: Rallies Set to Mark Dresden Bombing
Der Spiegel (Germany)
The German far right traditionally stages a march on Feb. 13 of each year to commemorate the bombing of Dresden. This year, however, authorities have moved to prevent counterdemonstratioAmerica Slides Deeper Into Depression as Wall Street Revels
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard -- The Telegraph (Britain)
December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began. The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3 percent. That is the one that matters ... Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody's Economy.com expects another 2.4 million homes to go this year. Obama, The War President
Helen Thomas
President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war. The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where's the change we can believe in? Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama's State of the Union
Stephen Zunes -- Foreign Policy in Focus
... Despite two ongoing wars, it was striking that Obama focused so little in his first State of the Union speech on the world outside our borders other than the call to be competitive in the global economy. Indeed, he dedicated only eight minutes of the 70-minute speech to foreign policy. Yet many of the pressing economic problems the country faces that were addressed in the speech are directly related to foreign policy. And, despite promises of change, much of this foreign policy shows disappointing continuity with previous administrations. Non-Natives Being Evicted: Mohawks Evict Whites to `Protect Identity'
The Gazette (Canada)
Saying there are too many non-natives living in Kahnawake, the local band council has issued eviction notices to 25 residents, giving them 10 days to leave the Indian reserve on Montreal's South Shore. About 25 non-natives - mostly white people involved in relationships with Mohawks - are being asked to leave the reserve because Mohawk law does not allow them to live there, said Joe Delaronde, press attaché for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. "They are people with no native ancestry at all," Delaronde said in an interview yesterday. According to Mohawk law, non-aboriginals have no residency rights. About 7,500 Mohawks live on the reserve. Citizen's Arrest of War Criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush
Prof. Anthony J. Hall
Professor Boyle's intervention with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute the Bush War Cabinet for international crimes is welcome news. Professor Boyle's meticulously documented charges come shortly after news of a reward being set up in Great Britain for those who attempt citizens' arrests of credibly accused war criminal, Tony Blair. All over the world, citizens are mobilizing to take action to demand accountability from those who have been committing with impunity the highest order of international crime. About a year ago I joined this global movement President Obama Seeks Record $708 Billion Military Budget
Reuters
President Barack Obama on Monday asked Congress to approve a record $708 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2011, including a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon's base budget and $159 billion to fund U.S. military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The White House budget request also included $33 billion in additional funding for fiscal 2010 to pay for increasing military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq. That comes on top of $129.6 billion already provided for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30. US Military Spending: A Path To Ruin
Eric Margolis
President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America's economic health. In fact, it's another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug -- debt. More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion ... Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe -- what neocons call "full spectrum dominance." Shattering Lincoln's Dream
Joseph Sobran
... Lincoln, we should also remember, was a passionate segregationist, a fact Krannawitter barely touches on, though it might interest our new President to know that the Great Emancipator's preferred solution was to abolish slavery and to remove all "free colored persons" from the United States. In 1862 he proposed an amendment that would authorize Congress to pay for this huge project. Why is Revisionism Important? / The Vengeful `Morgenthau Plan'
Institute for Historical Review - Video
Mark Weber, historian and director of the IHR, speaks about the importance of historical revisionism, and Prof. Anthony Kubek speaks about the `Morgenthau Plan' for a brutal and vindictive Allied occupation of Germany after the end of World War II. From the Ninth IHR Conference (1989). Runtime: 9:44 mins. N o Dumb Blonde: A New Book About Eva Braun
Daily Mail (Britain)
She was the mystery figure at Hitler's side that the world never knew about during the lifespan of the Third Reich. Now the first comprehensive biography of Eva Braun reveals how the hidden First Lady of Nazism was the polar opposite of everything her beloved Adolf decreed should be found in a woman. 'Eva Braun: Life With Hitler,' by renowned German historian Heike B. Goertemaker, paints Eva not as an air-head besotted by a dominant man, but a fiercely loyal, independent thinker at odds with Hitler's public proclamations about 'the fairer sex'. Google's Problems May Help Dispel Illusions About China
John Naughton -- The Observer (Britain)
One useful spin-off from the developing story of Google's difficulties with the Chinese communist regime is that it may finally spur the west to discard the rose-tinted spectacles through which it has chosen to view China in the past decade ... The regime is irredeemably authoritarian and never had any intention of ceding freedom of information to its people. Neither has it ever bought into the idea of market triumphalism. The whole Chinese economic "miracle" is a refutation of the link between capitalism and liberalism: Hu Jintao & Co believe it is perfectly possible to build a dynamic, prosperous economy without bothering with all that democracy nonsense. Recent developments confirm the indifference of the regime to western sensibilities. Israel Seeks German Arms-Aid Deal
Defense News
Germany and Israel are intensifying negotiations over a nearly one billion euro ($1.45 billion) naval procurement package, a considerable portion of which Israel hopes to fund from a combination of German and U.S. aid. The Israeli-proposed arms-aid deal - to be discussed Jan. 18 in Berlin at a special joint meeting of the German and Israeli cabinets - involves an additional Dolphin diesel-electric submarine, torpedoes and two German-built warships. Rash of Retirements Pushes Social Security to Brink
USA Today
Social Security's annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years as the recession led hundreds of thousands of workers to retire or claim disability. The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated ... Experts say the trend points to a more basic problem for Social Security: looming retirements by Baby Boomers will create annual losses beginning in 2016 or 2017. The Crisis is Not Over
Paul Craig Roberts
Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans' prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one ... The threats to the U.S. economy are extreme. Yet, neither the Obama administration, the Republican opposition, economists, Wall Street, nor the media show any awareness. Instead, the public is provided with spin about recovery and with higher spending on pointless wars that are hastening America's economic and financial ruin. Adolf Hitler, Irish Folk Music Fan
Irish Central
Newly released historical photographs reveal that famous Irish musician Sean Dempsey played for Adolf Hitler in 1936, and the Nazi dictator loved his music. Dempsey, an uileann piper, was invited to play for Hitler and propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels during a visit to Berlin in 1936 after being told that Hitler was an Irish folk music fan ... Dempsey played what was described as a 'haunting air' as Hitler listened with rapt attention. After he performed, Hitler presented him with a gold fountain pen while Goebbels clapped wildly. Palestinian Families Protest Israeli Construction of `Museum of Tolerance' on Historic Jerusalem Cemetery
Democracy Now
Palestinian families have filed a petition with the United Nations over the Simon Wiesenthal Center's plans to build a "Museum of Tolerance" over the historic Mamilla Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Opponents of the project have long questioned how a monument to tolerance can be built on the remains of the graves of generations of Palestinian Muslims. Ten minute interview with Columbia University professor and author Rashid Khalidi, a petitioner whose ancestors were buried at the Mamilla Cemetery; and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing the families in their petition. Includes transcript of the interviews. Japanese Split on Exposing Secret Cold War Era Pacts With U.S.
The New York Times
They were Tokyo's worst-kept diplomatic secrets: clandestine cold war era agreements with Washington that obligated Japan to shoulder the costs of United States bases and allow nuclear-armed American ships to sail into Japanese ports. For decades, Japanese leaders have gone to great lengths to deny the pacts' existence, despite mounting proof to the contrary from the testimony of former diplomats and declassified documents in the United States ... Now, the so-called secret treaties are causing problems again, this time in how Japan is handling its suddenly rocky relationship with the United States. Investigator Skeptical of New Witness Claim in Demjanjuk Trial
The Associated Press
A top German investigator said Thursday he is skeptical about a new claim by a Sobibor survivor who says he remembers John Demjanjuk as a guard at the Nazi death camp. Thomas Walther, who led the investigation that prompted Germany to prosecute Demjanjuk, said if survivor Alexej Weizen did remember Demjanjuk, it almost certainly would have come up before in the roughly 30 years the retired U.S. autoworker has faced investigations of his past. Weizen had given statements previously to Soviet investigators and Demjanjuk had a high-profile trial in Israel in the 1980s. North Carolina Schools May Cut Large Chunk from U.S. History Lessons
Fox News
He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 ... Under the proposed change, the ninth-graders would take a course called global studies, focusing in part on issues such as the environment. The 10th grade still would study civics and economics, but 11th-graders would take U.S. history only from 1877 onward. The Legacy of Rudolf Hess
Mark Weber
.... He spent 46 years -- half his life -- behind bars, a victim of a cruel victor's justice. More than any other man, Rudolf Hess symbolizes the vindictiveness and hypocrisy of the Nuremberg Tribunal ... Known as the "conscience of the party," he often used what power and influence he had to intervene on behalf of victims of persecution by extremists in the National Socialist party. In his detailed study, Justice at Nuremberg, which is generally very critical of the German defendants, historian Robert E. Conot called Hess a "decent and honest" man and "a pacifist at heart." ... Rudolf Hess was a prisoner of peace and a victim of a vindictive age. Why Does The US Turn a Blind Eye to Israeli Bulldozers?
Robert Fisk -- The Independent (Britain)
... The dream of a "two-state" Israeli-Palestinian solution, a security-drenched but noble settlement to decades of warfare between Israelis and Palestinians is as good as dead. Both the United States and Europe now stand idly by while the Israeli government effectively destroys any hope of a Palestinian state; even as you read these words, Israel's bulldozers and demolition orders are destroying the last chance of peace; not only in the symbolic centre of Jerusalem itself but - strategically, far more important - in 60 per cent of the vast, biblical lands of the occupied West Bank, in that largest sector in which Jews now outnumber Muslims two to one. Mitchell: The Kangaroo
Uri Avnery
... When one is dealing with a 130-year old conflict, the naïve belief in the value of talk borders on folly. Decades of experience indicate that negotiations are useless if one of the parties is not interested in an agreement. Worse: negotiations can actually cause damage when one of the parties uses them to waste time while creating a false impression of progress towards peace. In our [Israel-Palestine] conflict, peace negotiations have become a substitute for peace, a means to obstruct peace. They are an instrument used by successive Israeli governments to gain time - time to enlarge the settlements and entrench the occupation. Gaza 2009: We Will Never Forget
What Really Happened -- Video
Montage documentary on Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" military assault against Palestinians in the Gaza district. Runtime: 8:58 mins.
Obama's Irresponsibly Wasted Year
William Pfaff
Barack Obama's first State of the Union address has passed with his administration's record widely criticized by his own supporters as one of unexpected ineptitude and political incompetence ... President Obama's failure has astonished the international public and left in despair those Americans who can scarcely believe that a whole year has been irresponsibly wasted. By now, there is little or no hope of recovering that promise of national and international reform that had pervaded Western society a year ago, thanks to Obama, persuading a Nobel Peace Prize committee, dizzied by Obama glamour, to award him their prize even as he escalated the most senseless yet of America's unsuccessful wars in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran
Daniel Pipes -- The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
... He [President Obama] needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations. Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapon capacity. Circumstances are propitious ... Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush's meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama's feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power
The New York Times
In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power ... For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country's influence around the world eroded. Seven Years Behind Bars: Anniversary of Ernst Zundel's Arrest
Mark Weber
Seven years ago -- on Feb. 5, 2003 -- Ernst Zundel was arrested at his home in eastern Tennessee. Ever since he has been held behind bars, first in Canada and now in Germany, for his peaceful expression of non-conformist views. He is the most prominent "prisoner of conscience" in the western world today. Now 70 years of age, he is due to be released on or about March 1. `Defamation' Film Looks at Contemporary `Anti-Semitism'
A provocative, irreverent video by Israeli film-maker Yoav Shamir about "anti-Semitism," real and invented, in today's world. Shows how Zionists use a manipulated historical narrative, especially of "the Holocaust," to inculcate Jews with a paranoid sense of victimhood and "otherness," and feelings of fear, disregard and even contempt for non-Jews. Includes interviews with: Abe Foxman, director of the Zionist "Anti-Defamation League"; Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry ; Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby; Uri Avnery, Israeli peace activist. Runtime: one hour and 32 mins. Popular iPhone App of Mussolini Speeches is Withdrawn
BBC News
An iPhone application that allows users to download speeches by the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini has been withdrawn. Its developer says he is removing it after legal threats. But the application has also faced protests from Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors who described it as offensive. IMussolini, as the application is known, has become the most popular iPhone download in Italy. It has even beaten video games based on the current film sensation Avatar. It is a 25-minute collection of video and audio clips from 100 of Mussolini's speeches. But now it has been withdrawn after a row with the film institute where the pictures came from. US May Kill `Threatening' Americans, Says Intelligence Chief
The Washington Post
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged Wednesday that government agencies may kill U.S. citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are "taking action that threatens Americans." Blair told members of the House intelligence committee that he was speaking publicly about the issue to reassure Americans that intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense "follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed" in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens. Blair's unusually frank remarks come as the issue of targeting Americans for lethal action has attracted more notice. Iraq `Littered' With High Levels of Nuclear and Dioxin Contamination
The Guardian (Britain)
More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels of radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found. Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. A Terrifying Legacy of the Vietnam War
The Telegraph (Britain)
Another Vietnam War shell has exploded - this time, in a schoolyard. No one was injured when the artillery shell exploded in a school playing field on Wednesday, shattering windows and terrifying hundreds of students. Unexploded ordnance and mines have killed more than 42,000 people and wounded some 62,000 since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Colorado City Cuts Into Services Considered Basic by Many
The Denver Post (Colorado)
This tax-averse city [Colorado Springs] is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric. More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops -- dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled ... City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. In England, `Heretical Two' Lose Appeal on Internet Racism Case
BBC News
Two men have lost their appeals against the UK's first conviction for inciting racial hatred via a foreign website. Simon Sheppard, 51, was sentenced to four years and 10 months, and Stephen Whittle, 42, to two years and four months at Leeds Crown Court in July. However, the Court of Appeal has reduced Sheppard's sentence by one year and Whittle's jail term by six months. Sheppard, from Selby, North Yorks, and Whittle, of Preston, Lancs, controlled US websites featuring racist material. During their first trial in 2008, they skipped bail and fled to California, where they sought asylum claiming they were being persecuted for their right-wing views, but were deported.
In California, A New Campaign to Remove Prof. MacDonald
Daily 49er -- California State University - Long Beach
In the past week, psychology professor Kevin MacDonald had his class interrupted by an organization claiming his views and recent involvement in political organization the American Third Option party are seen as racist and anti-Semitic. MacDonald, a tenured professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been making headlines on the matter since he was investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2006. The SPLC tracks hate crimes and groups across America ... Both Kauffman and Cabral are students at CSULB and members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist and Leninist organization that advocates revolutionary change and progressive reform. The Case Against Tony Blair
Patrick Cockburn
... It was striking in Blair's testimony that so many of his references to Iraq are inaccurate. In trying to prove some connection between the perpetrators of 9/11 and Saddam's regime, he mentioned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, later head of the Iraqi branch of al Qa'ida, as being in Iraq before Saddam was overthrown. He failed to mention that he was in a camp in Kurdistan in part of the country not controlled by Saddam Hussein. He said Iran intervened in Iraq because it feared a Shia democracy on its doorstep. In fact, Iran supported the Shia government in Baghdad after it was elected in 2005, but opposed the presence of American and British forces ... A YouGov poll earlier this month shows that 23 per cent of the public think he should be tried as war criminal. Jewish Groups Protest Popular iPhone App Sales of Mussolini Speeches
The Times (Britain)
Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors have protested to Apple over Italy's current best-selling iPhone application: a collection of the speeches of Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator. Demand for "iMussolini", subtitled "The man who changed the history of our country", has risen to the point where it is being downloaded 1,000 times a day according to Luigi Marino, 25, its creator. It is more popular than a video game based on the film Avatar and an X-ray machine app which "allows you to see your friends naked". The app, which costs 79 Euro cents, contains audio, video and text of 100 speeches ... Jewish Complaints of Pro-Nazi Videos on YouTube
Daily Mail (Britain)
Video-sharing website YouTube has been condemned for showing video clips glorifying Nazi troops. The scenes, accompanied by militaristic music, have drawn millions of hits from potential Nazi sympathisers and voyeurs. YouTube, which hosts film clips from the public, has 2,880 items on the Waffen SS, the most fanatical of Hitler's soldiers who were indicted for war crimes throughout WW2. The entries have a string of 'Sieg Heil' comments and praise for the fighting prowess of the Waffen SS, recruited for their unswerving loyalty to Nazism. The videos, some from Nazi propaganda news reels, have angered Jewish organisations who have called for YouTube to remove the 'hugely offensive' postings. US Grants Asylum to Home Schooling German Family
The Guardian (Britain)
A US judge has granted political asylum to a German family who said they had fled the country to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. In the first reported case of its kind, Tennessee immigration judge Lawrence Burman ruled that the family of seven have a legitimate fear of prosecution for their beliefs. Germany requires parents to enrol their children in school in most cases and has levied fines against those who educate their children at home. Christians Uwe Romeike, a piano teacher, and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Morristown, Tennessee, in 2008 after German authorities fined them thousands of euros for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes, Romeike said. Presidential Assassinations of US Citizens
Glenn Greenwald -- Salon
... American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed: "After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests ... The Obama administration has adopted the same stance." ... Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests."
Cracking Down on 'Conflict Minerals': Millions Dying in Congo Conflict
Los Angeles Times -- Editorial
The deadliest conflict since World War II, in which 5.4 million people have died and 200,000 women have been raped, rages far from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where murderous militias are battling for control of valuable minerals such as tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, which are essential to the worldwide production of consumer electronics. Congolese, in other words, are dying in extraordinary numbers for our cellphones and video games, digital cameras and laptop computers. Wanted: Tony Blair For War Crimes
George Monbiot -- The Guardian (Britain)
The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression ... Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg principles as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties". Britain's Leaders Knew Impending Iraq Invasion Was Illegal, Says Former Official
The Telegraph (Britain)
Tony Blair and his ministers went to war in Iraq despite repeated warnings from senior Government advisers that they had "no leg to stand on" legally. During evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the war against Saddam, it emerged that Foreign Office lawyers were "unanimous" in their view that going to war without a United Nations mandate would be a "crime of aggression" likely to damage Britain's standing in the world. Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, painted a vivid picture of how his team repeatedly intervened privately to correct ministers who were stating that a fresh UN resolution was not legally not legally necessary, but their advice was ignored.
U.S. Foreign Aid Summary
The US provides more aid to Israel than any other country. In 2006, the US gave $2.5 billion to the Zionist state, which has a population of about 7.5 million. By contrast, the impoverished nation of Haiti, with a population of more than eight million, received $163 million, and Peru, with a population of more than 27 million, received $133 million. Each year more American taxpayer money goes to Israel than to all of sub-Saharan Africa. US Budget Deficit Set to Hit $1.35 Trillion
BBC News
The US budget deficit is expected to reach $1.35 trillion in 2010, according to US Congress estimates. In 2009, the US deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion - equal to 9.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) - and the highest since the end of World War II. President Obama will make his first State of the Union address on Wednesday and will submit his budget plan on February 1. He is expected to announce a three-year partial spending freeze. The savings - expected to be about $15 billion off next year's budget and to amount to $250 billion during the next 10 years - are aimed at reducing the country's massive deficit.
Many Europeans Believe Jews Exploit History for Money
Haaretz (Israel)
Nearly half of Western European believe that Jews exploit the persecution of their past as a method of extorting money, according to an annual Jewish Agency report released on Sunday. A joint report on anti-Semitism conducted by the Agency and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs found that 42 percent of those polled by the University of Bielefeld in Germany agreed that "Jews exploit the past to extort money." The countries in which the highest percentage of the population agreed with that statement were Poland and Spain. According to the Jewish Agency, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in 2009 than in any year since the Second World War. German Court Summons Bishop Williamson for `Holocaust Denial' Remarks
Reuters
A German court said on Wednesday it had summoned traditionalist Catholic bishop Richard Williamson to face charges he denied the Holocaust, an offence punishable by up to five years in jail. In comments broadcast on Swedish television last January, Williamson said he believed no more than 300,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust and that there were no gas chambers. The Bishop Williamson Case: Behind the Headlines
Mark Weber and Jeff Rense
The IHR director and the host of the Jeff Rense program take a spirited and informed look at the much-publicized Bishop Williamson case. They review the Bishop's controversial remarks on "the Holocaust," and what this affair means for Americans, Christians and the world. As Weber explains, the uproar over Williamson's much-criticized "Holocaust denial" statements is not really about historical truth or "hate," but about Jewish-Zionist power and its role in our culture. Audio recording of broadcast of Feb. 24, 2009. Runtime: 38:17 mins. Incarcerated Revisionists: Write to Europe's Prisoners of Conscience
Write to Europe's most prominent prisoners of conscience, including Ernst Zündel, Horst Mahler and Sylvia Stolz. Here are the addresses of individuals who are behind bars in Germany and Austria for expressing dissident, "banned" views.
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The secret to happiness--is it good for the Jews?
The secret to happiness--is it good for the Jews?
"Before Professor Dershowitz accused me of being an anti-Semite (news to me on Jan. 24, 2010), I was a happy person. Since then, I'm still a happy person". --Michael Santomauro
Third revised edition: Debating The Holocaust: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton_
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