US Pro-Israel Group Claims Election Victory

 

US Pro-Israel Group Claims Election Victory  Foreign Policy  One prominent pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington is already praising the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives as a net benefit for Israel. "While Democrats are likely to keep control of the U.S. Senate, Republicans will take over the U.S. House of Representatives following Tuesday's elections. This is likely to have implications for Israel-related issues such as Israel's relationship with the United States and the push for sanctions against Iran," said an e-mail blasted out by The Israel Project only minutes after news stations called the turnover of House control a certainty.  You Want War? Pay For It Eric Margolis  ... The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been ignored during the election race. After nine years of combat, 5,000 US dead and 35,000 seriously wounded soldiers, and expenditure of over $1 trillion - silence. These longest and second most expensive wars in US history have dropped off the radar. Not even the latest WikiLeaks shocker, which revealed the US condoning death squads, torture and mass human rights violations in Iraq, became a campaign issue ... Right-wing Republicans will press for more war, in more places - financed, of course, by the magic of credit. Few stop to think that this manic borrowing it wrecking America.  The Phantom Left Chris Hedges  ... The celebrities from Comedy Central and the trash talk show hosts on Fox are in the same business. They are entertainers. They provide the empty, emotionally laden material that propels endless chatter back and forth on supposed left- and right-wing television programs. It is a national Punch and Judy show. But don't be fooled. It is not politics. It is entertainment. It is spectacle. All national debate on the airwaves is driven by the same empty gossip, the same absurd trivia, the same celebrity meltdowns and the same ridiculous posturing. It is presented with a different spin. But none of it is about ideas or truth. None of it is about being informed. It caters to emotions. It makes us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge.  A German Soldier's Photos of the Devastation of Dunkirk  Daily Mail (Britain)  Rare photos taken by a German soldier of the devastated beaches of Dunkirk after the evacuation have been found 70 years on by the family of a British war veteran. The pictures were taken a few hours after 330,000 Allied soldiers were rescued from the beaches by an armada of little ships having been defeated by the Nazis. The remarkable album was later taken from a German house as a memento by British serviceman Corporal Frank Smith. It includes shots of the Germans surveying the wreckage of downed aircraft and scores of damaged trucks and tanks on the battle-scarred shores of Dunkirk.  Hitler's Grand Error at Dunkirk: Why?  Virtue magazine  ... Why the nonsensical halt order [by Hitler], when the enemy was beaten, and with no chance of stopping the powerful German army? ... But on May 24th, 1940, while the campaign was still in progression, Hitler expressed a deeper, more political motive, to members of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's staff ... "He then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilization that Britain had brought into the world ... He concluded by saying that his aim was to make peace with Britain on a basis that she would regard as compatible with her honor to accept." An incredible tale, and yet, it fits with the admiration Hitler expressed for Britain in Mein Kampf. Hitler offered peace to the British twice during World War Two ...  Israel Protests British 'Universal Jurisdiction' Law JTA  Israel reportedly postponed a strategic dialogue with Britain to protest a law that allows for the prosecution of Israeli officials for alleged war crimes. Strategic dialogue between Israel and Britain on defense and security issues occurs annually. This year's strategic dialogue meeting, scheduled for last month in Britain, did not take place, the French news agency AFP reported. The British law provides the country's courts with "universal jurisdiction" to issue arrest warrants for alleged war crimes, including to visiting foreign politicians.  Israel Ranks Among Western World's Most Corrupt Countries Haaretz (Israel) and Reuters  Israel ranks among the most corrupt countries in the Western world, according to a study released by the International Transparency Organization on Tuesday ... The least corrupt countries were listed as Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore ... The United States, meanwhile, has dropped out of the "top 20" in a global league table of least corrupt nations, tarnished by financial scandals and the influence of money in politics. The U.S. fell to 22nd from 19th last year, with its CPI score dropping to 7.1 from 7.5. This was the lowest score awarded to the U.S. in the index's 15-year history and also the first time it had fallen out of the top 20.  German Police Swoop on Neo-Nazi Internet Radio Station AFP  German police staged dawn raids today against right-wing extremists accused of operating a neo-Nazi Internet radio station to whip up anti-foreigner sentiment among young supporters. Authorities swooped in 10 of Germany's 16 states on 22 homes with alleged links to "Radio Resistance", which features "racist and National Socialist" commentary and music from skinhead bands, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said. "The 23 suspects aged between 20 and 37 from across the country are believed to have acted as administrators and hosts" of programs on the station, the BKA said in a statement.  Anger As Germany Cuts Funding to Orthodox Jews The Telegraph (Britain)  The German government has ignited a row with the country's Orthodox Jews after it stopped funding the training of Orthodox rabbis. The authorities have been subsidising the training of rabbis for several years, but the interior ministry recently announced that it would only fund Liberal rabbis from now on. Thomas de Maziere, the interior minister, blamed "the budget situation" for the decision, the Times reports. However, the move has upset the Jewish community ... Since the Second World War, Germany has been trying to re-establish a Jewish presence in the country. There are now some 120,000 Jews living in Germany, and many are Orthodox.  Dutch Authorities Recall Auto License Plates With `Nazi' Initials  The Telegraph (Britain)  The Dutch authorities have urgently recalled "Nazi" number plates issued to drivers after a computer error. Over 100 car owners received licence plates with the letters "NSB" on them, a Dutch equivalent of the word Nazi. NSB is the notorious abbreviation for the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, the Dutch fascist party which collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War. Number plates displaying the offending letters were recalled by the Dutch Vehicle Authority on Monday after the first angry complaints by drivers.  The Holocaust and the Myth of the Past as History Howard F. Stein  For the Jews, the term "Holocaust" does not simply denote a single catastrophic era in history, but is a grim metaphor for the meaning of Jewish history. The "Holocaust" lies at the heart of the Jewish experience of time itself. One is either anxiously awaiting persecution, experiencing persecution, recovering from it, or living in a period that is a temporary reprieve from it ... Thus the "reality" of the Holocaust is inextricably part of the myth in which it is woven -- and for which myth it serves as further confirmatory evidence for the timeless Jewish theme that the world is in conspiracy to annihilate them, one way or another, at least eventually.  The Shaming of America  Robert Fisk: -- The Independent (Britain)  As usual, the Arabs knew. They knew all about the mass torture, the promiscuous shooting of civilians, the outrageous use of air power against family homes, the vicious American and British mercenaries, the cemeteries of the innocent dead. All of Iraq knew. Because they were the victims. Only we could pretend we did not know. Only we in the West could counter every claim, every allegation against the Americans or British with some worthy general - the ghastly US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt and the awful chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, come to mind - to ring-fence us with lies.  The Ten Smartest and Dumbest U.S. Cities Daily Beast -- Alternet  The second annual list of the nation's smartest and dumbest cities. What makes a city "smart" or "dumb," per this list? The education level of the city's citizens, for one, and also its "intellectual environment," as measured by nonfiction book sales and the prevalence of colleges and libraries. Draw your own conclusions about what the list means in terms of a city's desirability. But one thing that seems to be objectively true is that there's an economic element to the rankings: The continuing economic malaise just reinforces a perennial fact: A city's potential lies mostly with the ingenuity and brainpower of its citizens. Regions with intellectual vigor are more likely to bounce back; those without risk a stupor.  British Legion's 1935 Visit to Third Reich Shown In Archive Photos BBC News  A delegation from the British Legion met Adolf Hitler in July 1935, recently uncovered photographs show. The 148 images were in a swastika-embossed album found by an employee. They show British veterans of World War I being saluted by Germans, and delegation leader Maj Francis Fetherston-Godley shaking hands with Hitler's deputy Rudolph Hess ... The five members of the Legion (now known as the Royal British Legion) met Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe. There were photos of German ex-servicemen in wheelchairs giving Nazi salutes as the delegation parade passed with the Union flag, and pictures of the delegation at Commonwealth war graves in Germany.  In Russia, One of `World's Worst' History Textbooks  Foreign Policy  Lesson plan: Buddy Stalin Subject matter: It can't be easy to put a positive spin on Stalin, under whose leadership more than 20 million Russians lost their lives. But that's what's being attempted in Russia today ... Aleksandr Filippov, the author of a new Kremlin-approved textbook told the Times, "It is wrong to write a textbook that will fill the children who learn from it with horror and disgust about their past and their people." His book devotes 83 pages to Joseph Stalin's industrialization plans, but only one paragraph to the Great Famine of 1932 to 1933 in which millions starved as a result of deeply flawed agricultural policy.  In Germany, Berlin Police Fear Entering Immigrant `No Go' Areas ZDF Heute Journal (Germany) - Television video  German television news report on "no go" areas in Berlin, populated by immigrants from outside Europe. These areas are so crime-ridden and disorderly that even police sometimes cannot patrol them without being insulted, spit upon or physically attacked. Runtime: 4:07 mins.  Dr. Siddique Stands By Anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist Statements The Philadelphia Inquirer  A Lincoln University professor who drew criticism this week for anti-Israel statements he made at a recent rally said Thursday that he stood by those words and would not back down from detractors he said are out to "threaten academic freedom." Kaukab Siddique, 67, an associate professor of English and literature, said that he had the support of his faculty and students and that he would continue to speak his mind, despite pressure from those who have referred to him as an "anti-Semite."  Sex Trafficking In Israel CNN  ... Over the past decade, about 10,000 women have been trafficked into Israel in what Keidar calls "modern slavery." The women are locked, beaten, raped, starved and forced to receive 15-30 men a day 365 days a year, according to the attorney. About three years ago, Israeli police greatly reduced women trafficking by pouring resources into the problem.  Israel Sees Double Standard in Response to Wikileaks' Iraq Files  The Christian Science Monitor  The Wikileaks release of US military field reports from Iraq that detail tens of thousands of civilian casualties in seven years of fighting is being used by some Israels to argue that their country is a victim of an international double standard on human rights ... On Monday, Israeli lawmaker Michael Ben Ari said he filed a formal complaint with the UN, calling for war crimes investigations of senior American politicians and "international arrest warrants for US government leaders." In a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, he wrote: "I call on the UN to condemn the behavior of the US and especially its attempts to hide the facts... We need to expose the hypocrisy of the West."  Jewish Groups Launch New, Well-Funded Pro-Israel PR Campaign  JTA  The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs are launching a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns. The JFNA and the rest of the Jewish federation system have agreed to invest $6 million over the next three years in the new initiative, which is being called the Israel Action Network ... The network is expected to serve as a rapid-response team charged with countering the growing campaign to isolate Israel as a rogue state akin to apartheid-era South Africa - a campaign that the Israeli government and Jewish groups see as an existential threat to the Jewish state.  Muslim Sect Sees Struggle Through Christian Lens: A Little-Known Jewish Massacre  The New York Times  Among the ruins on the edge of this ancient oasis city are deep trenches littered with bones. That, local people say, is all that remains of one of the great atrocities of antiquity, when thousands of Christians were herded into pits here and burned to death by a Jewish tyrant after they refused to renounce their faith. The massacre, which took place in about A.D. 523, is partly shadowed by myth and largely unknown to the outside world. But it has become central to the identity of the people now living here, who mostly belong to the minority Ismaili sect of Islam.  Jews in US Sue Hungary Over World War II Railroad Role Haaretz (Israel)  Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust and families of the victims sued the Republic of Hungary and its two rail companies in U.S. court on Thursday, accusing them of collaborating with the Nazis to exterminate Jews during World War Two. The lawsuit accused the Hungarian government and rail companies of confiscating property of Jews and transporting them to ghettos and concentration camps where hundreds of thousands perished in Nazi-occupied Poland and Ukraine.  A New Book `Rehabilitates' Lindbergh, Says Salon  Salon  The influential conservative publishing house Regnery has just released a book that argues, contrary to popular belief, that aviator and political leader Charles Lindbergh was neither anti-semitic nor pro-German, but rather was the victim of an unfounded smear campaign by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to promotional material, the book, "Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided America" by James Duffy, argues that Lindbergh was the target of a "vicious personal vendetta by President Roosevelt" that "blighted his reputation forever."  US Foreclosure Crisis Becomes More Widespread BBC News  The foreclosure crisis in the US has spread across a wider area of the country, according to RealtyTrac, which monitors repossession activity. The organisation said foreclosure notices increased across a majority of large metropolitan areas, including Chicago and Seattle. Previously, these cities had seen relatively low levels of activity ... The trend is the latest sign that the US foreclosure crisis is worsening as homeowners -- facing high unemployment, slow job growth and uncertainty about house prices -- continue to fall behind on their mortgage payments ... Earlier in the week, data from rating agency Standard and Poor's showed that US house prices also began falling again in August, mainly in response to the expired tax credit.  Israel's West Bank Occupation Unacceptable, Says Vatican  The Australian  The Vatican has issued one of its strongest condemnations yet of Israel's "occupation" of the West Bank. It has rejected the use of biblical texts by Jewish settlers to justify "injustices." Releasing a strongly worded document by the synod of bishops for the Middle East, a senior Archbishop also challenged the notion of Jews as "the chosen people", saying such a concept no longer existed. After a two-week conference, which ended with a meeting with the Pope, the bishops called on the international community to pressure Israel to end the occupation. "Recourse to theological and biblical positions, which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices, is not acceptable," the statement said.  Israel Can't Use Bible To Justify Claims, Say Mideast Bishops JTA  A meeting of Mideast bishops declared that Israel cannot use the Bible to justify territorial claims to land in Israel. The final statement of the two-week Synod of Bishops of the Middle East in Rome that ended Saturday blamed Israel for the conflict between the Jewish state and the Palestinians. It rejected the use of the biblical position of the Promised Land to justify Jewish settlement of the West Bank. "Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable," the bishops said. ... Participants included more than 170 Catholic bishops from Muslim countries, as well as other Church figures and non-Catholic representatives and experts.  Fox's Nazi Fetish: Beck, O'Reilly, Others Repeatedly Invoke Nazi Imagery Media Matters  Led by Glenn Beck -- who was once condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for saying Al Gore used "the same tactic" as Adolf Hitler -- Fox News personalities have frequently invoked Nazi Germany in their political commentary, often comparing progressives to Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazi "brownshirts." Beck regularly invokes Nazis, Hitler, Goebbels, other Nazi imagery  Goebbels and the `Big Lie' Legend Mark Weber  ...The popular image of this man, particularly in the United States, is a crude caricature... Contrary to popular belief, Goebbels was successful as a propagandist not because he was a master of the "Big Lie," but rather as a result of his fidelity to facts and truth. As biographer Heiber notes: "Goebbels was accordingly able to celebrate his information policy as being not only superior to the enemy's in its monolithic character, but also of a `seriousness and credibility' which `simply cannot be surpassed.' The boast could be made with some justification: Seen in the long view, Goebbels preached, the best propaganda is that which does no more than serve the truth."  Gary, Indiana: Decline of a Once Great American City  Newsnight - BBC News  A sobering look at the fall of a once thriving American city. Gary, Indiana, home to what is still US Steel Corp's biggest plant, is suffering from one of the most advanced cases of urban blight in the developed world. Its city centre is near-deserted by day. The texture of the urban landscape is cracked stone, grass, crumbled brick and buddleia. Gary is one-third poor, 84% African American, and has seen its population halve over the past three decades. This city's decline is a symbol of the intractable problems gripping the world's biggest economy. We tramped through the remains of the post office, opened by Henry Morgenthau in 1936 as a New Deal reconstruction project. Runtime: 15:50 mins.  The Holocaust and the Myth of the Past as History Howard F. Stein  For the Jews, the term "Holocaust" does not simply denote a single catastrophic era in history, but is a grim metaphor for the meaning of Jewish history. The "Holocaust" lies at the heart of the Jewish experience of time itself. One is either anxiously awaiting persecution, experiencing persecution, recovering from it, or living in a period that is a temporary reprieve from it ... Thus the "reality" of the Holocaust is inextricably part of the myth in which it is woven -- and for which myth it serves as further confirmatory evidence for the timeless Jewish theme that the world is in conspiracy to annihilate them, one way or another, at least eventually.  Film Director Godard, Accused of Anti-Semitism, Won't Come to L.A. For Oscar JTA  Film director Jean-Luc Godard will not appear in person to accept an honorary Oscar that some have urged be withdrawn because of views deemed anti-Semitic. The news announced Monday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences elicited little surprise in Hollywood and came exactly two months after the academy's invitation to Godard kicked off a lively discussion about the New Wave filmmaker's alleged anti-Semitism and acknowledged anti-Israel record. The charges were first examined by the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and the Forward. The Zionist Organization of America and other critics have pressed for the withdrawal of the award for the French-Swiss director.  Buchanan's Necessary Book Laurence M. Vance  ... There is one book, however, that is not only Buchanan's best and most important book; it is one of the best and most important books ever written. I am referring to his latest book on World War II: Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War ... It explains how Hitler never wanted war with Britain. Hitler wanted absolute power in Germany. Hitler wanted to overturn the Versailles Treaty. Hitler wanted to restore lands to Germany. Hitler wanted to enlarge the German empire to the east. Hitler wanted to cleanse Germany of Jews. Hitler wanted to destroy Bolshevism. Hitler wanted Germany to achieve economic self-sufficiency ... It confirms that Hitler was not a threat to the United States.  British Secret Service Lured Hitler Deputy Hess in 1941, Says Historian The Telegraph (Britain)  Rudolf Hess was lured to Britain in an elaborate MI6 sting, according to a new book that claims to solve one of the most enduring mysteries of the Second World War. The reason for Hitler's deputy making his solo flight to Scotland in May 1941 has kept conspiracy theorists busy for decades. He was arrested in Renfrewshire and spent the rest of his life in prison. Nearly 70 years on, a fresh theory has emerged. Author John Harris claims that Hess was lured to Britain in an MI6 plot led by Tancred Borenius, a Finnish art historian who was working as an agent for the British secret service.  Berlin Exhibition Views Hitler's Hold on Germans The Associated Press  Bronze Hitler busts of various sizes crown austere pedestals. A red paper lantern with a swastika floats in the air. A tiny toy model of the Fuehrer stands behind a swastika-bedecked lectern. This isn't an auction of Nazi memorabilia but a major exhibition at a Berlin museum that delves into the personality cult that sprang up around Adolf Hitler - exploring with the help of period artifacts how he won mass support for his destructive regime. The exhibition at the German Historical Museum that opened Thursday is the first exhibition in the German capital to focus so firmly on the Nazi dictator - another step in the erosion of German taboos concerning depictions of the Nazi era.  US Government Reports $1.3 Trillion Budget Deficit The Associated Press  The Obama administration said Friday the federal deficit hit a near-record $1.3 trillion for the just-completed budget year. That means the government had to borrow 37 cents out of every dollar it spent as tax revenues continued to lag while spending on food stamps and unemployment benefits went up as joblessness neared double-digit levels in a struggling economy.  The Israel Lobby: Targeting Democrats for Election Day Defeat  M.J. Rosenberg -- Huffington Post  The fury of the "pro-Israel" lobby lately has truly been something to behold. It has abandoned bipartisanship by setting up front organizations like the so-called Emergency Committee for Israel, which is running ads across the country calling on voters to defeat Democratic members of the House and Senate for signing a letter urging President Obama to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. With all the problems average Americans are facing, the lobby is so out-of-touch that it thinks that hard-hit Pennsylvanian voters (the ads runs most often in the Keystone State) will actually cast their votes based on the lobby's litmus test of who is and who isn't hawkish enough on Israel.  U.S. Jews Increasingly Hawkish on Iran, Skeptical of Obama Jim Lobe -- Inter Press Service  U.S. Jews, who, next to African Americans, have constituted the minority most supportive of Barack Obama, are growing more sceptical of his performance and increasingly hawkish on Iran, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the American Jewish Committee (AJC).... Support for U.S. military action against Iran "to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons... if diplomacy and sanctions fail" rose from 53 percent to 59 percent since last March, while opposition to such a course fell from 42 percent to 35 percent over the same period.  Torture and Killing in Iraq: How the US Tried to Keep it All Quiet  The Independent (Britain)  So now we begin to know the full extent of what Tony Blair called the blood price. A detainee tortured with live electrical wires here, children shot by US troops at a checkpoint there, insurgents using children to carry out suicide bombings somewhere else; on and on, through 391,832 documents. At the Pentagon, these messages were the day-to-day commonplaces of staff inboxes; for Iraqis, they detail, in the emotionless jargon of the US military, nothing less than the hacking open of a nation's veins. Today, seven and a half years on from the order to invade, the largest leak in history has shown, far more than has been hitherto known, just what was unleashed by that declaration of war. The Iraqi security services tortured hundreds, and the US military watched, noted and emailed, but rarely intervened.  In Pennsylvania, A Professor Calls for Israel's Destruction  Ynet News (Israel)  Lincoln University [Pennsylvania] History Professor Kaukab Siddique is in the eye of a new storm in the United States, after several statements he made calling for the destruction of Israel prompted US senators to urge an investigation in the matter. Speaking at a recent Labor Day rally, Siddique said: "We must stand united to defeat, to destroy, to dismantle Israel - if possible by peaceful means... For the Jews, I would say, 'See what could happen to you if the Muslims wake up.' And I say to the Muslims, Dear brothers and sisters - unite and rise up against this hydra-headed monster which calls itself Zionism',"  Holocaust Study Obligatory in Southern Brazilian City's Schools The Associated Press  A city in southern Brazil that has suffered a series of neo-Nazi incidents is requiring all public schools to teach about the Holocaust. The new law, the first of its kind in Brazil, will go into effect next year in all of Porto Alegre's 96 public schools, where some 60,000 students study, the city government's website said Tuesday. The author of the law, Alderman Valter Nagelstein said Tuesday that including the Holocaust in the school curriculum will help prevent it from happening again, and said he hopes it also will curb "the kind of neo-Nazi incidents we have seen in the past."  In Los Angeles, New $18 Million Holocaust Museum Opens The Associated Press  Hundreds of people toured the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust during its grand opening Thursday at Pan Pacific Park. The museum, founded in 1961, has been moved four times over the years, but never had its own building and has always had limited space. But its new $18 million, high-tech, very green museum changes all that, executive director Mark Rothman said. The building, designed so it is partially underground to preserve green space, is located next to the Martyrs Memorial, built in the park 18 years ago. There will be many familiar artifacts, including a concentration camp uniform, a partial replica of a boxcar used to haul Jews to death camps and a death camp model.  Zionist Group Updates Annual Holocaust Education Program The Jewish Journal (Los Angeles)  The Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) annual Holocaust Education Workshop, which emphasizes Holocaust education in the classroom and will feature four sessions Nov. 3-10, will, for the first time, overlap with "Bearing Witness," the organization's long-running, three-day workshop for Catholic-school teachers, seminarians and priests, which takes place Nov. 7-9. Attendees from the two programs will come together for an eight-hour intensive learning session Nov. 7 at American Jewish University ...  Holocaust Remembrance: What's Behind the Campaign? Mark Weber  ... Holocaust remembrance is not, as its supporters claim, a noble effort motivated by sincere concern for humanity. Instead, this relentless campaign is an expression of Jewish-Zionist power, and is designed to further Jewish-Zionist interests ... Jewish death and suffering do not deserve to be venerated more than the death and suffering of non-Jews. The Holocaust remembrance campaign deserves scorn, not support, because it is a one-sided effort that serves narrow Jewish and Israeli interests and bolsters Jewish-Zionist power.  Recession To Echo Loudly For The Young Los Angeles Times  ... These developments, beyond their effects on individuals, are harbingers of significant and painful changes for the whole country. For decades, adult life, especially for college graduates, began with entry-level jobs that paid well and promised even better things to come. Those bright prospects encouraged young workers to go out on their own, marry and start families -- bolstering the overall economy. But now, with so many unemployed or underemployed -- and others underwater on their mortgages or with little hope of buying houses of their own -- the spending they once provided simply isn't there now.  Crumbling America Has a $2.2 Trillion Repair Bill The Independent ( Britain )  ... It's happening everywhere, from potholed interstate highways and grimy railways, to congested airports and a creaking air traffic control system that only adds to the increasingly third world experience of flying in the US. And hold your breath when you cross an American bridge: a 2005 study found that fully a quarter of them were structurally inadequate or obsolete ... Another reminder is when friends return from foreign trips marvelling at the high-speed rail networks in Europe, Japan and China, or at other man-made wonders such as the Millau Viaduct in southern France. Why, they ask, can't we have this sort of thing? To be fair, they can and do.  Former Vice President Agnew Was Outraged By `Zionist Domination' National Vanguard  Former US Vice President Spiro Agnew expressed "outrage" over "the domination of this country by Zionists" in a 1982 letter. He also wrote of the "Zionist control of our media" and "the 70 years of indoctrination" that has "brainwashed the western world."  Such a Parcel o' Rogues in a Nation Philip Giraldi  ... No one is found guilty for starting an unnecessary war that has killed 4,425 Americans and many thousands of Iraqis. No one is punished or even tarnished by his or her role. On the contrary, all are, in fact, richly rewarded for their presumed dedication to their country ... Until that culture is eradicated by something like a Nuremberg trial demonstrating that no one is above the law the United States will continue to be a place that the rest of the world quite rightly regards as preaching respect for rules and values while rewarding just the opposite.  Secret Iraq War Files Offer Grim New Details The Washington Post  A massive cache of secret U.S. field reports from the Iraq war provides grim new details about the toll of that conflict, indicating that more than 100,000 Iraqis were killed during a six-year stretch and that American forces often failed to intervene as the U.S.-backed government brutalized detainees, according to news organizations given access to the documents by the WikiLeaks Web site. The nearly 400,000 records are described as offering a chilling, pointillist view of the war's peak years, documenting thousands of civilian deaths - including hundreds killed at checkpoints manned by U.S. soldiers - and the burgeoning role that American contractors came to play in the conflict.  Obesity Care Costs Twice Previous Estimates, New Research Finds The Associated Press  Nearly 17 percent of U.S. medical costs can be blamed on obesity, according to new research that suggests the nation's weight problem may be having close to twice the impact on medical spending as previously estimated. One expert acknowledged that past estimates likely low-balled the costs and said the new study, which places obesity-related medical costs at around $168 billion, probably is closer to the truth.  Food Stamp Nation Patrick J. Buchanan  ... Forty percent of all children in America are now born out of wedlock. Among Hispanics, it is 51 percent. Among African-Americans, it is 71 percent. Food stamps are feeding children abandoned by their own fathers. Taxpayers are taking up the slack for America's deadbeat dads ... What we have accepted today is a vast permanent underclass of scores of millions who cannot cope and must be carried by the rest of society -- fed, clothed, housed, tutored, medicated at taxpayer's expense for their entire lives. We have a new division in America : those who pay a double fare, and those who forever ride free.  Truth Can Get Lost in Fights Over Civil War History The Washington Post  ... Virginia fourth-graders are the latest targets of historical misinformation. A textbook distributed to students last month included the gross falsehood that two battalions of African American soldiers fought for the Confederacy under famed Gen. Stonewall Jackson ... The passage represents a deliberate distortion of history driven by a political agenda. It was foisted on kids by a sloppy author using Internet research who mistakenly drew from works done by Confederate heritage enthusiasts. The latter like to promote the canard that large numbers of African Americans carried arms willingly for the South.  Reexamining Assumptions Tom Sunic - Institute for Historical Review  ... Putting different people together into larger, unnatural entities brings disaster. Mutual vilification and name calling eventually become the norm. Among the similarities between the former Soviet Union and present-day America is a comparably linear and static view of history .. It seems to me that the only way to stop the process of Western collective suicide is by discarding the ideology of progress, the myth of egalitarianism, and the theology of market democracy. ... The linear concept of the "end of history," a currently fashionable notion that holds that liberal democracy is a final or a permanent form of social order, is a willful act of intellectual stupidity.  US Cities Face Enormous Pension Deficits The Financial Times ( Britain )  Big US cities could be squeezed by unfunded public pensions as they and counties face a $574 billion funding gap, a study to be released on Tuesday shows. The gap at the municipal level would be in addition to $3,000 billion in unfunded liabilities already estimated for state-run pensions, according to research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the University of Rochester .  How Tyranny Came to America Joseph Sobran  One of the great goals of education is to initiate the young into the conversation of their ancestors; to enable them to understand the language of that conversation, in all its subtlety, and maybe even, in their maturity, to add to it some wisdom of their own. The modern American educational system no longer teaches us the political language of our ancestors. In fact our schooling helps widen the gulf of time between our ancestors and ourselves, because much of what we are taught in the name of civics, political science, or American history is really modern liberal propaganda.  The Constitution: How Important Is It? :: Mark Weber - Beyond 50 Radio (Audio)  The US Constitution is widely revered but little understood, says historian Mark Weber in this hour-long interview. Few Americans realize that many familiar federal government programs are, strictly speaking, not constitutional, or that the government laid out in the original Constitution was remarkably un-democratic. What's decisive in any society is not a country's constitution, says Weber, but rather the character, basic values and customs of its people.  Why Defense Spending Won't Go Down Much  Stephen M. Walt -- Foreign Policy  ... Although it is mind-boggling to realize that five percent of the world's population (the United States) now spends more on defense than the other 95 percent put together, this situation is hard to avoid when you see threats emerging virtually everywhere and when you think all of them are best met by an ambitious and highly interventionist foreign policy ... If you want to cut defense spending significantly, in short, you have to make some non-trivial adjustments in U.S. grand strategy. As some of you know, I think the United States would be both more prosperous and safer if we had a more restrained grand strategy and a more intelligent foreign policy.  Non-Jews Exist Only To Serve Jews, Says Prominent Israeli Rabbi  The Jerusalem Post (Israel)  The sole purpose of non-Jews [Goyim] is to serve Jews, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas's Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator. "Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world - only to serve the People of Israel," he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat. According to Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.  Multiculturalism Has `Utterly Failed,' Says German Chancellor BBC News  Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", Chancellor Angela Merkel says. She said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate - including learning German. The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany. A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was "overrun by foreigners".  The Multicultural Cult  Thomas Sowell  Somebody eventually had to say it -- and German chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has "utterly failed." Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about "diversity," without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits. In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.  Hitler Exhibition in Berlin Proves Popular Reuters  "Hitler and the Germans," an exhibition in Berlin's German Historical Museum which investigates the society that created Hitler, has seen more than 10,000 visitors walk through its doors since opening Friday. Rudolf Trabold, a spokesman for the museum, said there were 4,000 visitors to the exhibition on the first day alone. People visiting the exhibition said they had waited as long as one and a half hours to get in. Ravi Nair, a 73-year-old Indian visitor, said: "I had to queue for about an hour but it was worth it. The exhibition should help people in democratic countries realize that their vote is very valuable."  How The Jews Changed Catholic Thinking  Joseph Roddy - Look magazine (1966)  ... Few Catholics were ever directly taught to hate Jews. Yet Catholic teaching could not get around the New Testament account that Jews provoked the Crucifixion. ... "It is a sign of the times," the Archbishop said, "that a layman, and a Jewish layman at that, has become the originator of a Council decree." ... Its claim that the Church was being infiltrated by Jews would intrigue anti- Semites. For, in fact, ordained Jews around Rome working on the Jewish declaration included Father Baum, as well as Msgr. John Oesterreicher, on Bea's staff at the Secretariat.  Cancer Was Almost Non-Existent in the Ancient World  The Telegraph (Britain)  Researchers looking at almost a thousand mummies from ancient Egypt and South America found only a handful suffered from cancer when now it accounts for nearly one in three deaths. The findings suggest that it is modern lifestyles and pollution levels caused by industry that are the main cause of the disease and that it is not a naturally occurring condition. The study showed the disease rate has risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer - proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer .. "So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle. Cancer appears to be a modern disease created by modern life."  Suspect in Israel-Organized Dubai Assassination Arrested in Canada  Haaretz (Israel)  A suspect in the Dubai assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh has been arrested in Canada, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates reported Tuesday. The Al-Itihad daily quoted the head of the Dubai police force, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, as saying that the detainee is connected to another main suspect, who was caught on surveillance footage with al- Mabhouh inside an elevator. A week earlier, Tamim - who is in charge of the investigation into the January murder - had announced that the suspect was arrested in a "Western" state, without naming the country. Dubai authorities have used closed-circuit television footage to identify suspects in the killing.  How Jewish-Zionist Grip on Film and Television Promotes Bias  Abdullah Mohammad Sindi -- Institute for Historical Review  ... The hostility and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims engendered by Hollywood and US television infects not only tens of millions of Americans, but also hundreds of millions of credulous viewers worldwide. Such noxious propaganda over a period of decades inevitably has grave long-term consequences. This flood of ethnic-religious poison understandably produces deep resentment among hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims around the globe -- creating a vast and growing reservoir of resentment and rage that one day will almost certainly erupt with terrible fury.  Goldwater Warned of the `Way Too Powerful' Israel Lobby  American Conservative  .. A classic 1986 interview with the Arizona senator in which he lights into lobbyists in general -- and the Israel lobby in particular: "Kolbe: Is the Israeli lobby too powerful? Goldwater: God, yes, way too powerful. Kolbe: Has that had some detrimental effects on what comes out of Congress? Goldwater: Yes. See, we have no treaty with Israel, but we have pledged ourselves to go to war if she has to go to war. And there are some of the actions that some of the Israeli groups take that, at times, I've felt would hasten that day when we have to live up to our promise. I can understand the feeling, but I'm getting awfully tired of the great influence they have and there's no question about it."  Pro-Hitler Views of Le Corbusier Prompts Rethinking of Architect's Legacy  The Associated Press  He's one of the titans of 20th Century architecture, but Le Corbusier is suddenly feeling the weight of history working against him. The modernist master's legacy is coming under pressure after Switzerland's largest bank dropped an ad campaign featuring the architect and artist last week. Now, Zurich authorities are debating whether to dump plans to name a square after him. Letters made public in recent years and a 2008 biography suggest that the visionary known for his cool, spare designs and revolutionary urban planning ideas was a Nazi sympathizer whose Fascist tendencies went far beyond what was previously known.  Hitler Letter Shows Warm Feelings For British The Times (Britain)  ... The typewritten letter is revealing about the warmth of Hitler's feelings towards the British. Writing of his hopes that a new accord would arise between Britain and Germany to replace the settlement made after the First World War, Hitler said: "I hope ... that out of this crisis a new readiness will grow up in Britain to submit the last twelve years to a reappraisal. I should be happy if, as a result of this, the unhappy war-psychosis could be overcome on such a scale as to permit the realisation of the truly cordial relationship between the British and the German peoples so eagerly desired by myself and my movement."  Six More Years Philip Giraldi  ... Just as neoconservatives were in complete denial during the Bush years about the horrors emerging from the Pandora's box that the Administration opened after 9/11, so too are progressives currently in denial about just how awful President Barack Obama has been on the world stage. He has authorized the extrajudicial killing of US citizens overseas based only on suspicion and has concealed war crimes committed at Guantanamo by citing the state secrets privilege. Obama has actually broadened the abominable "global war on terror," which he refers to as "overseas contingency operations," ...  China's Mao Responsible For 45 Million Deaths, Says Historian  The Independent (Britain)  Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday ... Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.  Subverting the Disney Legacy Mark Weber  ... Because Eisner and the others who run the motion picture and television industries are able to shape the public's barely conscious basic assumptions about life and society, thereby profoundly influencing the thinking and actions of millions, they wield greater power than even our elected lawmakers ... Eisner's transformation of Disney parallels, and contributes to, the cultural, social and political transformation of the United States as a whole. Like America's political leaders, Eisner and his Disney colleagues reassuringly display familiar symbols and trademarks from an earlier era, exploiting reputations and good-will painstakingly built up over decades.  Banks Seize a Record 288,345 US Homes in Year's Third Quarter The Associated Press  Lenders seized more U.S. homes this summer than in any three-month stretch since the housing market began to bust in 2006. But many of the foreclosures may be challenged in court later because of allegations that banks evicted people without reading the documents. A total of 288,345 properties were lost to foreclosure in the July-September quarter, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service. That's up from nearly 270,000 in the second quarter, the previous high point in the firm's records dating back to 2005. Banks have seized more than 816,000 homes through the first nine months of the year and had been on pace to seize 1.2 million by the end of 2010.  The Big Hollywood Lie: Denying Jewish Control.  New American View (1994)  ... The Jewish denial that Hollywood is controlled by Jews is a great lie which can be attested to by anyone who has ever been associated with the film industry ... It is positively insulting for them to deny their influence and power -- particularly when they themselves are continually boasting in their own circles about their "overrepresentation" in these fields. And it is absolutely infuriating when this denial reaches the point that non-Jews are attacked by Jewish agitators and Zionist zealots for stating obvious facts and truth.  How Jewish is Hollywood?  Joel Stein -- Los Angeles Times  ... The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews ... As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between "The 700 Club" and "Davey and Goliath" on TV all day ... I don't care if Americans think we're running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.  Israel's Loyalty Oath: Discriminatory By Design  The Guardian (Britain) -- Editorial  ... This was evident in all its inglory yesterday when the Israeli cabinet approved a measure requiring candidates for Israeli citizenship to pledge loyalty to "the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state". The naturalisation oath would not apply to Jews, who are granted automatic citizenship under the law of return, so it is, by definition, discriminatory. The existing text binds individuals to declare their loyalty to the state of Israel. The new version requires future citizens to declare their loyalty not just to a state but an ideology, one specifically designed to exclude one fifth of its citizens who see themselves as Palestinian. Palestinian Israeli leaders have described this proposal as racist.  US Government Supports Israel As 'Jewish State'  Jason Ditz  Though the Palestinian Authority has rejected an Israeli demand for them to declare their public recognition of Israel as a uniquely "Jewish" state, citing concerns for the nation's Arab minority, the US State Department has been Johnny-on-the-spot with its own unsolicited declaration that they are committed to Israel's status in that regard. "We recognize the special nature of the Israeli state. It is a state for the Jewish people," declared spokesman P.J. Crowley. Crowley added that it was a "core demand of the Israeli government, which we support."  The Jewish Republic of Israel Gideon Levy -- Haaretz (Israel)  ... From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country. Anyone who thinks it doesn't affect him is mistaken. There is a silent majority that is accepting this with worrying apathy, as if to say: "I don't care what country I live in." Also anyone who thinks the world will continue to relate to Israel as a democracy after this law doesn't understand what it is about. It's another step that seriously harms Israel's image.  US Funded Anti-White School Program Defames Nation's Founders Fox News  The Oklahoma City public school district is taking a second look at a plan to teach at-risk students using rap and hip-hop after receiving complaints over one lesson referring to the Founding Fathers as "old dead white men." .... One particularly controversial song entitled "Old Dead White Men,"describes President James Monroe's presidential term by saying: "White men getting richer than Enron. They stepping on Indians, women and blacks. Era of Good Feeling doesn't come with the facts." ... Flocabulary CEO and co-founder Alex Rappaport says that the lyrics are meant to keep students engaged and promote discussion.  In Italy, Prof. Teaches Course on Holocaust `Lies and Inaccuracies'  Mako (Israel)  Claudio Moffo, an avid supporter of Ahmadinejad and an Italian professor of political science at Teramo University teaches a special course, named "Not exactly a holocaust - the lies and inaccuracies". The professor teaches his students information that explains how, in his opinion and according to his research, the Jewish people has rewritten history. According to Moffa, whose controversial story was published in the Italian newspaper "La Repubblica," the gas chambers and crematoria never existed. He also questions the number of victims murdered by the Nazi regime.  In Austria, A New Prison Sentence for `Holocaust Denier' Fröhlich Der Standard (Austria)  A court in Vienna sentenced Wolfgang Fröhlich on Monday, Oct. 4, to two years in prison for "Holocaust denial" writings sent to prominent public figures. He was found guilty of violating Austria's law against "attempted National Socialist re-activism" for having distributed writings in which he said that mass gassings with Zyklon B are technically impossible, and that the familiar figure of six million Jewish Holocaust victims is a fraud. This latest sentence was his fourth for such "denial" writings. Fröhlich, 59, has already served six and a half years in prison.  Four-Thousand -Year-Old Aryan Settlements Discovered in Russia PTI (India)  Russian archaeologists have unearthed some ancient and virtually unknown settlements which they believe were built by the original Aryan race about 4000 years ago. According to the team which has discovered 20 of the spiral-shaped settlements in remote part of Russia steppe in southern Siberia bordering Kazakhstan, the buildings date back to the beginning of Western civilisation in Europe. The Bronze-age settlements, the experts said, could have been built shortly after the Great Pyramid some 4000 years ago by the original Aryan race whose swastika symbol was later adopted by the Nazis in the 1930s.  Men Who Play Nazis for Fun Try to Explain Robert Mackey -- The New York Times  The revelation that Rich Iott, a Republican candidate for Congress from Ohio, was an active member of a group dedicated to understanding the experience of soldiers who served in the Nazi Waffen SS by dressing up in their uniforms -- and staging recreations of their battles -- has forced historical re-enactors to defend their hobby.  America's Third World Economy  Paul Craig Roberts  ... The US economy has been losing jobs for a decade. As manufacturing, information technology, software engineering, research, development, and tradable professional services have been moved offshore, the American middle class has shriveled. The ladders of upward mobility that made American an "opportunity society" have been dismantled ... The loss of middle class jobs and incomes was covered up for years by the expansion of consumer debt to substitute for the lack of income growth. Americans refinanced their homes and spent the equity, and they maxed out their credit cards. ..  Nervous Germany Stages First Hitler Exhibition The Australian  Hitler is back in town. An extremely nervous Germany is staging the first exhibition dedicated to the Nazi leader since the Fuhrer killed himself in his Berlin bunker in 1945. The exhibition, entitled Hitler and the Germans, shatters a taboo. Since World War II there have been scores of museum displays on the Holocaust, on slave labour, on the murdering doctors, cruel judges and massacring soldiers, and all have triggered debates and protests. Hitler, himself, however, has always been out of bounds - and in Berlin most of all, lest neo-Nazis swarm to the museum to pay tribute to the dictator of the Third Reich.  The Case Against Circumcision Paul M. Fleiss, M.D.  Western countries have no tradition of circumcision. In antiquity, the expansion of the Greek and Roman Empires brought Westerners into contact with the peoples of the Middle East, some of whom marked their children with circumcision and other sexual mutilations. To protect these children, the Greeks and Romans passed laws forbidding circumcision. Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has passed many similar laws. The traditional Western response to circumcision has been revulsion and indignation  The National Socialist Party in the Third Reich: Himmler Talks With an American Journalist Lothrop Stoddard (1940)  'The Party." That is the commonest phrase in Germany today. It denotes that all-powerful organization, NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) which dominates, energizes, and directs the Third Reich. Just what is the Party, and what are its relations with the Nation, the State Administration, and those numberless organizations characteristic of German life? That was one of the first questions I put when I got to Germany ... One thing seems certain: The National Socialist upheaval that has created the Third Reich goes far deeper than the Fascist regime in Italy, and is perhaps a more defiant breach with the historic past than even the Communism of Soviet Russia.  Studies Show `Dark Chapter' of U.S. Medical Research  CNN  The Tuskegee syphilis experiment of the 20th century is often cited as the most famous example of unethical medical research. Now, evidence has emerged that it overlapped with a shorter study, also sponsored by U.S. government health agencies, in which human subjects were unknowingly being harmed by participating in an experiment. Research from Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby has uncovered evidence of an experiment in Guatemala that infected people with sexually transmitted diseases in an effort to explore treatments. The U.S. government apologized for the research project on Friday, more than 60 years after the experiments ended.  CIA Ran Secret Torture Center in Poland, Says Official BBC News  The CIA used a secret prison in Europe to torture its most important terrorism suspect, according to an official who first uncovered a secret network of prisons for holding suspects. He told the BBC there was now reliable evidence that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, was tortured in Poland in the months before that country joined the European Union.  Elderly German Woman Fined for `Holocaust Denial' JTA  An 81-year-old German woman was convicted of Holocaust denial and fined. The woman, identified as Ursula H. [Ursula Haverbeck] on Wednesday was given a suspended sentence of six months and fined nearly $1,400 by a Munich judge. Ursula, the former president of a banned right-wing extremist group, admitted to distributing a text among schoolchildren that she had written in which she denied the Holocaust. Her 91-year-old co-defendant had allowed his name to be used on the pamphlet and was fined more than $800, the German news agency DPA reported.  In Serbia, Court Bans `Holocaust Denial' Book  B92 (Serbia)  The Higher Court in Belgrade has prohibited the distribution of Swiss historian Jurgen Graf's book "The Myth of the Holocaust." The court also ordered all copies of the book to be seized. The Higher Court thus accepted the prosecution's motion to ban the distribution of the book for inciting racial, national and religious hatred. The book represents incitement to discrimination, animosity and violence, said Republic Public Prosecution Spokesman Tomo Zoric.  Why Does Germany Still Owe Money For The First World War? Jon Henley -- The Guardian (Britain)  In a few days Germany will pay its final reparations to the Allies for the First World War, 92 years after it finished / ... News that Germany was still paying reparations from 1919 in 2010 does rather prompt the question: what for? The idea isn't new, of course: Rome exacted punitive indemnities from Carthage after the Punic wars in the second century BC ... In 2007, a disgruntled American founded the International Coalition for British Reparations, demanding £31 trillion from Britain as "the greatest criminal nation on earth ..."  Discord in Israel Over Orchestra's Plans to Play at Wagner Festival The Independent (Britain)  Nearly 130 years after his death, Richard Wagner still provokes a maelstrom of emotions. Katharina Wagner, the German composer's great-granddaughter, has pulled out of a trip to Israel where she was to announce that the Israel Chamber Orchestra would be invited to open the next season of the prestigious Bayreuth festival, the annual celebration of Wagner's music. Ms. Wagner canceled the trip after the orchestra's participation was leaked to the Israeli media, prompting a hostile reaction in Israel. Wagner is widely shunned there for his anti-Semitic writings, which drew admiration from Adolf Hitler. Israeli orchestras have largely honored a seven-decade boycott of Wagner's work ... Video Clip Shows Israeli Soldier Belly-Dancing Beside Bound Palestinian Woman Haaretz (Israel)  A video uploaded to YouTube shows an Israel Defense Forces soldier wriggling in a belly dance beside a bound and handcuffed Palestinian woman, to the cheers of his comrades who were documenting the incident. The IDF's internal investigation department ordered an immediate probe into the matter after the Ch. 10 television program Tzinor Laila caught wind of the clip on the internet. The full clip and the details behind the incident will be broadcast on the show just before midnight on Monday.  Remembering Joe Sobran Jared Taylor  Joe Sobran, who left this world on Sept. 30, was perhaps the most brilliant man I have ever known. Not brilliant in all ways, of course, and even obtuse in some, but in his power to see the essential, to lay bare hypocrisy, to capture an idea with a turn of phrase, to mock with gentle humor, and to treat the heaviest subjects with the lightest touch, I have never met his equal and never expect to.  Is It Worth It? Joseph Sobran (2001)  ... In the early 1980s it became clear to me that the pro-Israel lobby was trying to steer the United States into conflict with the Arab world. I saw nothing in the American interest in that; and my own two sons were approaching the draft age. Until then, I had been strongly pro-Israel myself; but sacrificing my boys for Israel was a higher price than I wanted to pay. Nor did I want other Americans to pay it. But as soon as I began arguing publicly that the U.S.-Israel alliance was not only costly but dangerous to the United States, I became the target of Zionist vituperation and worse. Some, like Podhoretz, tried to ruin my career. And I've seen others get the same treatment.  Former Los Angeles Gang Members Launch Guided Bus Tours  The Telegraph (Britain)  Staring out from their air-conditioned bus, the tourists pass tattooed gang members, bullet-marked buildings and homeless drug users / Only a few miles from the celebrity mansions of Hollywood, they are getting their first glimpse into the gang heartland of America on a guided tour with a big difference. Passengers embarking on the "Los Angeles Gang Tour" sign release forms acknowledging they could be crime victims and put their fate in the hands of a group of former gangsters who act as guides and protection.  Hitler Watercolors Find Favor With Buyers  DPA (Germany)  A collection of 16 watercolours attributed to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler sold for 104,800 pounds ($164,800) at an auction in Britain Thursday, and were snapped up by buyers from emerging economies. Richard Westwood-Brookes of Mullock's Auctioneers in Shropshire, northwest of London, said it was an 'interesting trend' that the works had been bought exclusively by overseas buyers from China, India and Russia. 'This shows that it has nothing to do with an obsession with the Nazis, or neo-Nazis buying it,' Westwood-Brookes told DPA.  Iran Is Not A Nuclear Threat Scott Horton - Christian Science Monitor  Politicians, lobbyists, and propagandists have spent nearly two decades pushing the lie that Iran poses a nuclear weapons threat to the United States and Israel. After a brief respite in the intensity of the wolf cries over the past two years, the neoconservative movement has decided to relaunch the "Must Bomb Iran" brand. The fact that Iran is not and has not been a nuclear threat to either nation is rendered irrelevant by a narrative of universal "concern" about its nuclear program.  Senators Lieberman and Berman Press Obama to Weigh Attack on Iran  YNet News (Israel)  US President Barack Obama is under pressure to consider a military strike on Iran, according to the Financial Times. Both Senator Joe Lieberman and Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have urged the president to consider setting a time limit of just a few months on the effectiveness of the most recent sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic for its nuclear advances.  U.S. Officials Apologize For Human Syphilis Experiments in Guatemala  Reuters  The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis. In the experiment, aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin, inmates were infected by prostitutes and later treated with the antibiotic. "The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.  Guatemala President Calls US Human Experiments `Crimes Against Humanity' BBC News  Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has said the US committed "crimes against humanity" in a study that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with gonorrhoea and syphilis more than 60 years ago. President Barack Obama has apologised for the medical tests, in which mentally ill patients and prisoners were infected without their consent. Mr Obama told Mr Colom the 1940s-era experiments ran contrary to American values, Guatemala said.  CNN Host Sanchez Fired After Remarks About Jews in Media  Los Angeles Times  CNN newscaster Rick Sanchez has been fired. The news comes one day after Sanchez appeared on Pete Dominick's Sirius radio show, where he called "The Daily Show's" John Stewart a "bigot" (he later amended the term to "prejudicial") and suggested that "everybody who runs CNN" was Jewish.  Historic Voice Recordings  The Free Information Society  Here, in their own voices, are remarks and statements by dozens of historical figures, including Franklin Roosevelt, Lenin, Stalin, Winston Churchill, Hitler, Thomas Edison, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro, Dwight Eisenhower, Warren Harding, and many others.  Joseph Sobran, Writer Whom Buckley Mentored, Dies at 64 The New York Times  Joseph Sobran, a hard-hitting conservative writer and moralist whose outspoken antipathy to Israel and what he saw as the undue influence of a Jewish lobby on American foreign policy led to his removal as a senior editor of National Review in 1993, died on Thursday ... "Nobody has ever accused me of the slightest personal indecency to a Jew," he said in a speech delivered at a 2002 conference of the Institute for Historical Review. "My chief offense, it appears, has been to insist that the state of Israel has been a costly and treacherous 'ally' to the United States. As of last Sept. 11, I should think that is undeniable. But I have yet to receive a single apology for having been correct."  Shot Down in Beirut Joseph Sobran (2001)  ... Obviously, something disastrous happened to the Jews during World War II; even the revisionists don't deny that. But does the word "Holocaust" accurately sum up the Jewish misfortune? Maybe so; maybe the secular Jewish-Zionist thugs and pressure groups are essentially right. But that's a conclusion I'd want to reach as a free man, not because a different conclusion might result in my kneecaps being broken. And in this controversy, I know which side is appealing to my mind, and which is going for my kneecaps.  Israel's Reasoning Against Peace Jonathan Cook  With the resumption of settlement construction in the West Bank yesterday, Israel's powerful settler movement hopes that it has scuttled peace talks with the Palestinians. It would be misleading, however, to assume that the only major obstacle to the success of the negotiations is the right-wing political ideology the settler movement represents. Equally important are deeply entrenched economic interests shared across Israeli society. These interests took root more than six decades ago with Israel's establishment and have flourished at an ever-accelerating pace since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1967 war.  In Europe, A New Shift in Candor on Immigrants The New York Times  The base line in Europe for what politicians say and do about immigration and the role of Islamic communities in their countries is moving. It is shifting in a way that mainstream politics now permits its leaders to say flatly that immigrants, Muslims in large part, must accommodate the rules and traditions of the societies they enter, rather than vice versa. In recent weeks, there have been paroxysms of controversy in Germany over a critical book on the place of immigrants there, which found substantial public support.  The Rise of the Extreme Right in Europe Newsweek  ... Without a common foe and without agreement that the Atlantic alliance is an overwhelming priority, politics in Europe has lost its moorings. The politics of Gemeinschaft (community) is replacing the politics of Gesellschaft (society). New communities of true believers are forming all over Europe. Those who trace their national woes to immigrants -- or nuclear power, or the EU, or Muslims, or Jews, or market economics, or the United States -- are uniting in new political communities, all of them harmful to society. To its splintering communities behind a vision that can say more than no.  European Union Backs Down From Comparing French Expulsions to Nazi Deportations The Telegraph (Britain)  The European Commission has stepped back from formally accusing France of carrying out racist expulsions of Roma gipsies despite previously comparing the policy to Nazi deportations. Viviane Reding, the EU's fundamental rights commissioner, dropped her previous accusation that the "disgraceful" policy amounted to illegal discrimination against gipsies.  President Nixon Wanted to Release Rudolf Hess The Guardian (Britain)  In 1974 Richard Nixon, the US president, was ready to support the release on humanitarian grounds of prisoner number 7, but his efforts were thwarted by unwavering Soviet opposition. So Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former deputy, dubbed "the loneliest man in the world" as sole occupant of Spandau prison, remained locked up, according to secret documents released today by the National Archives at Kew. The files cover a period when there was an international campaign to free Hess as his 80th birthday approached. It included an application to the European commission of human rights by his wife, Ilse, and public demands by his son, Wolf.  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.  Virginia Governor Cancels `Confederate History Month'  Mediaite  After controversially declaring last April as Confederate History Month Virginia's Republican governor Bob McDonnell has decided to cancel the event for next April. McDonnell made his announcement at a conference titled "Race, Slavery, and the Civil War," which was being held at Norfolk State University.  The House of the Rothschild Video  A remarkable ten-minute scene from a 1934 Hollywood effort to portray the notorious Rothschild family in a favorable light. This Twentieth Century Pictures' film was produced by Darryl Zanuck and directed by Alfred Werker. George Arliss stars both as Amschel and Nathan Rothschild, and Boris Karloff plays the evil anti-Semite Count Ledrantz. Portions of this film were included in the notorious 1940 German film "Der Ewige Jude."  Some Czech Shops Selling Models Offer Figures of Nazis  CTK (Czech Republic)  Some Czech shops selling things for modellers offer figures of Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, Radiozurnal station of public Czech Radio (CRo) reported Monday. The shop owners say they sell the figures as part of a collection of World War Two leading figures and that this is not meant as propagation of Nazism. The co-owner of one such shop, Matej Pecka, has decided to withdraw the figure of World War Two Bohemia and Moravia Reichsprotektor Heydrich in reaction to CRo's notice.  The Collapse Of Western Morality Paul Craig Roberts  ... Despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising ... When other countries attempt to enforce the international laws that the Americans established in order to execute Germans defeated in World War II, the US government goes to work and blocks the attempt.  America's Smartest Cities Yahoo News  Ever wonder what happened to your high school valedictorian? He or she might just have wound up in Washington, D.C. That metro area has the nation's highest percentage of residents with college degrees. Call it America's brainiest place to live. In the District and surrounding suburbs, 47.3% of people 25 years or older have bachelor's, master's, professional school or doctorate degrees, according to new Census Bureau data released Tuesday. The national average barely tips 25% ... In second-place San Francisco, 43.5% of residents have college degrees or better; San Jose, Calif., the hub of Silicon Valley, ranked third at 43.2%.  The Truth Will Set U.S. Free: Breaking Israel's Stranglehold On American Foreign Policy  Maidhc Ó Cathail  If Israel's stranglehold over U.S. foreign policy is to be broken, Americans will need to be informed about the harm that Washington 's unconditional support for the Jewish state is doing to American interests, say leading analysts of U.S.-Israeli relations. ... Philip Giraldi , executive director of the Council for the National Interest, believes that Tel Aviv's stranglehold over Washington can be broken "only by directly challenging the power of the Israel lobby and the false narrative about how it is of value to the United States ." ... "The American people must learn that Israel is and always has been a strategic liability that has done immense damage to the United States and its worldwide interests," ...  Wake Up, America! Philip Giraldi  ... If ever a foreign country has stuck its thumb in the eye of Uncle Sam, it is Israel in its willingness to take the United States for a ride while always demanding still more. And when it demands more it is invariably given more, with US politicians and mainstream media ever willing to genuflect and do what is right for the kleptocracy in charge in Tel Aviv ... That means that the congressmen in question, who actually took an oath to uphold the US Constitution, know that they are doing nothing but throwing yet another bone to Israel.  A Straight Look at the Jewish Lobby Mark Weber  ... Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. As long as the "very powerful" Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the U.S. political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.  New Woodward Book Says Afghanistan War Divided White House New York Times  Some of the critical players in President Obama's national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to a new book. The book, "Obama's Wars," by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama's top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.  The `Military Industrial Complex' Danger: A Presidential Warning Dwight Eisenhower - Video  In his farewell address, delivered to the American people on national television, Jan. 17, 1961, President Eisenhower spoke firmly, and in carefully chosen words, to warn against the dangers in the years to come of the great "military-industrial complex." Excerpt. Runtime: 1:54 mins. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."  First World War Officially Ends As Germany Pays Off Reparations Debt The Telegraph (Britain)  Almost 92 years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front, the final act of the First World War will be played out on Sunday when Germany pays the last chunk of reparations imposed by the victorious allied powers. The payment of 59.5 million pounds ($96.9 million Canadian) ends the crippling debt that was the price of one world war and laid the foundations for the next. Germany was forced to pay the reparations under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.  Maps That Show Racial Breakdown of Biggest US Cities Daily Mail (Britain)  These are the maps that show the racial breakdown of America's biggest cities. Using information from the latest U.S. census results, the maps show the extent to which America has blended together the races in the nation's 40 largest cities ... The resulting maps may not represent what many might expect Barack Obama's integrated rainbow nation to look like, as many cities have clear racial dividing lines. Detroit, for example, is infamous for its divide between black and white.  Endless Wars Are Not Affordable  Steve Chapman  ... . Adjusted for inflation, we have spent more on Iraq and Afghanistan than on any war in our history except World War II. They have cost more in real dollars than the Korean and Vietnam wars combined . ... We should have learned from these experiences that money and military force are not enough to redesign the world to suit us. The record also indicates that ambitious interventions abroad are more likely to erode our security than enhance it, bankrupting us in the process.  Putting an End to the Global Policeman  Review by Claude R. Marx -- The Washington Times  ... Boston University history and international relations professor Andrew J. Bacevich. His engaging and insightful book, "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War," is a timely analysis and critique of contemporary and historical defense policies ... He argues that the country would be better off if its military policy adhered to three principles: Our military's main goal isn't to combat evil or remake the world but to defend the country and its interests; the main "duty station" of military personnel is at home; the nation should use force as a last resort and only in self-defense.  Controversial German Movie About Third Reich Film is Released  BBC News  A controversial new movie telling the story behind an anti-Semitic film made in 1940 has been released in Germany. Jud Süss - A Film Without Conscience looks at why the earlier film, also called Jud Süss [Jew Süss], was a huge success under the Nazi regime. It focuses on the leading actor's decision to join the cast, suggesting he was forced into it by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. The original movie was banned in 1945 ... The real-life Joseph Süss Oppenheimer was a Jewish financier executed in Stuttgart in 1738.  Joseph Sobran, RIP Joseph Sobran died peacefully on Thursday afternoon, Sept. 30, age 64. The 20th century produced many great conservative writers, but none brought together wit, erudition, and humanity on a single page so well as Joseph Sobran. He was a remarkable man: even seeming quite frail at a gathering in his honor last December, he had a mind as accurate as precision clockwork, able to recall Shakespearean verses he had memorized decades earlier. He lived T.S. Eliot's dictum that there are no lost causes because there are no gained causes, and he hated cant and injustice. News of his death today is a terrible shock, despite his long illness. He will be missed.  The Myth of Equality  Patrick J. Buchanan  ... Since 1965, America has invested trillions in education with a primary goal of equalizing test scores among the races and genders. Measured by U.S. test scores, it has been a waste -- an immense transfer of wealth from private citizens to an education industry that has grown bloated while failing us again and again. Perhaps it is time to abandon the goal of educational equality as utopian -- i.e., unattainable -- and to focus, as we do in sports and art, on excellence. ... The beginning of wisdom is to recognize this world as it is, not as what we would wish it to be.  Israel's Settlement `Freeze' Barely Slowed Construction The Associated Press  How much of a freeze has there actually been on West Bank Jewish settlement building by Israel? Very little, an Associated Press analysis of the numbers suggests.... The [Israel] government's own figures -- and the assessments of Israeli peace activists monitoring construction -- show building has barely slowed down. ... That means that even months into the halt, the number of homes under construction had declined by only about ten percent.  President Roosevelt and the Origins of the 1939 War David L. Hoggan  In this scholarly article, excerpted from his book, The Forced War: The Origins and Originators of World War II, Dr. Hoggan examines the secret war aspirations of President Franklin Roosevelt. Hoggan also shows how Poland's leaders, bolstered by assurances from London of military backing, sought to provoke war with Germany. During the months prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939, he explains, Poland's provocation of Germany was frequent and extreme. Hitler had more than sufficient justification to go to war with Poland.  UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis `Executed' A US Citizen Gareth Porter -- Truthout  The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos. The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.  Number of Overweight Americans is Still Growing The Associated Press  Citizens of the world's richest countries are getting fatter and fatter and the United States is leading the charge, an organization of leading economies said Thursday in its first ever obesity forecast. Three out of four Americans will be overweight or obese by 2020, and disease rates and health care spending will balloon, unless governments, individuals and industry cooperate on a comprehensive strategy to combat the epidemic, the study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.  Jews Play `Leading Role' in Promoting Multiculturalism in Europe, Jewish Activist Acknowledges Kevin MacDonald  In this You Tube video, Barbara Lerner Spectre, who runs a government-funded Jewish study group in Sweden, makes the following remarkable statement -- remarkable because she does not attribute anti-Jewish attitudes to irrational prejudices or even Muslims who hate Israel. Instead she says that it's because of the "leading role" played by Jews in the movement toward multiculturalism .. Her comment is an example of the age-old Jewish self-concept of a "Light Unto the Nations": Jews saving Europe by leading it to multiculturalism. One wonders why she thinks Europe could not survive as a set of monocultural societies. Nuremberg Defendant Streicher Relates Mistreatment By His Captors Video  Before the "International Military Tribunal" at Nuremberg, defendant Julius Streicher tells how he was brutally mistreated by his American captors. His only official position during the Third Reich was governor (Gauleiter).of the region of Franconia. He had no role whatsoever in making or carrying out German national policy. He was sentenced to death by the Allied Tribunal for publishing a weekly anti-Jewish newspaper, "Der Stuermer," one that would have been legal in the United States. Video Runtime: 8:01 mins.  American Atrocities in Germany Edward L. Van Roden -- The Progressive (1949)  American investigators at the U. S. Court in Dachau, Germany, used the following methods to obtain confessions: Beatings and brutal kickings. Knocking out teeth and breaking jaws. Mock trials. Solitary confinement. Posturing as priests. Very limited rations. Spiritual deprivation. Promises of acquittal ... Royall appointed Justice Gordon Simpson of the Texas Supreme Court and me to go to Germany and check up on the reports. Accompanied by Lt. Col. Charles Lawrence. Jr., we went to Munich, Germany, set up offices there, and heard a stream of testimony about the way in which American atrocities were committed.  The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust Mark Weber  ... The Nuremberg enterprise violated ancient and fundamental principles of justice. The victorious Allies acted as prosecutor, judge and executioner of the German leaders. The charges were created especially for the occasion, and were applied only to the vanquished. Defeated, starving, prostrate Germany was, however, in no position to oppose whatever the Allied occupation powers demanded. As even some leading Allied figures privately acknowledged at the time, the Nuremberg trials were organized not to dispense impartial justice, but for political purposes.  How The CIA Runs a Secret Army of 3,000 Assassins  The Independent (Britain)  Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed. Woodward's book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there.  One and a Half Cheers for American Decline  Tom Engelhardt  ... Here's a simple reality: the U.S. is an imperial power in decline -- and not just the sort of decline which is going to affect your children or grandchildren someday. We're talking about massive unemployment that's going nowhere and an economy which shows no sign of ever returning good jobs to this country on a significant scale, even if "good times" do come back sooner or later. We're talking about an aging, fraying infrastructure -- with its collapsing bridges and exploding gas pipelines -- that a little cosmetic surgery isn't going to help.  Exposing Israel's Original Sins Gideon Levy -- Ha'aretz (Israel) - 2000  ... The Arabs were always the bad guys. We [Jews] were the absolute righteous, or the exclusive victims - or so we were told ... If you want to understand the Palestinian uprising in the territories, go to these two books [by Benny Morris]. If you want to understand why a settlement is impossible without a solution to the refugee problem, go to Morris. All the early-warning signs appear in his works. They show how our relationship with the Arabs began. Everything that followed, up until this very day, is anchored in their - and particularly our - original sins, which Morris and his colleagues have exposed.  In Hungary, Nationalists Would Outlaw Denial of `Gypsy Criminality' The Budapest Times (Hungary)  The far-right party Jobbik has called for legislation that would make the denial of "inherent criminality" among the country's Roma minority punishable by up to three years in jail, five for politicians and other public figures. The draft proposal for an amendment to the Criminal Code was submitted to parliament last Monday. One of its three sponsors, Jobbik politician János Volner, told reporters last Wednesday that the aim was to ensure there is "honest debate" about certain issues, "for example about the question of Gypsy criminality, as is currently taking place in France and Italy".  Gypsies in France Recall World War II Internment  The Associated Press  ... As today's France expels a wave of Romanian Gypsies seeking an escape from hardship back home, children of the camp's survivors have been drawing up plans for a memorial to the site's chilling past. They have been caught up in a battle against what they say is state-sponsored discrimination today against some of Europe's most marginalized, misunderstood minorities. This shameful episode of French history is little known and isn't in the school textbooks: Under the Nazi occupation, thousands of Gypsies, mostly citizens of France, were rounded up and put in 31 internment camps administered and guarded by their fellow Frenchmen.  In Russia, New History Textbook Justifies Stalin-Era Repression The Telegraph (Britain)  Stalin-era repressions, including the Gulag camp system and the deportation of entire ethnic groups were justified according to a new history textbook published in Russia, which critics claim is anti-Semitic. "A History of Russia, 1917-2009," written by two Moscow State University academics, Alexander Barsenkov and Alexander Vdovin, attempts to justify forced collectivisation and the mass arrests and executions of the 1930s. Supporters say the book is filled with patriotism and love of the Motherland. But critics claim the textbook offers a pro-Stalinist and anti-Semitic view of Soviet and Russian history.  Wartime Enemies Make Contact 67 Years Later The Vancouver Sun (Canada)  Nearly 70 years after a famous Second World War incident in which a Canadian ship rammed and sank a German submarine in the Mediterranean Sea, the only survivor of the doomed U-boat and perhaps the last living sailor from HMCS Ville de Quebec have rediscovered each other via the Internet -- two former enemies now forging a poignant, long-distance friendship via e-mail.  Germany Is Rapidly Becoming Muslim, Says Chancellor Merkel Paul Williams -- Family Security Matters (Washington, DC)  Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. "Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the task of dealing with immigrants," Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper. "For years we've been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before."  Debating the Holocaust: A Review  Martin Gunnels - Inconvenient History  ... The book is a very potent effort at setting the record straight about revisionist claims, and it's done in such a reasonable, straightforward way that you could give the book to your mom without apology. It is the kind of book that resists drowning its reader in statistics, opting instead for a concise, memorable, camp-by-camp analysis of what Dalton calls "the great debate." In Debating the Holocaust, the revisionist community now has the closest thing yet to an encyclopedic handbook of revisionist arguments. This is the work's most remarkable achievement, and I hope it will only mark the very beginning of Thomas Dalton's promising new career in the fight for historical truth.  On Jewish Loyalty Gilad Atzmon  ... As it seems, 'loyalty to the Jews' is a crucial demand within the Zionist discourse ... Jewish loyalty is an empty signifier: it is a dynamic notion; it changes constantly; it is impossible to pinpoint. As it happens, Jewish loyalty is removed from any notion of universalism, ethics or integrity. All it means in practice is, 'Jews come first' ... The days of Israel are numbered, there is no way to rescue the Jewish state for it is founded on tribal and racist ideology. However, Britain can still liberate itself of its Neocon phase. All it has to do is to de-Zionise its political system and media.  American Public Opinion and the Special Relationship With Israel John Mearsheimer  There is no question that the United States has a relationship with Israel that has no parallel in modern history. Washington gives Israel consistent, almost unconditional diplomatic backing and more foreign aid than any other country. In other words, Israel gets this aid even when it does things that the United States opposes, like building settlements. Furthermore, Israel is rarely criticized by American officials and certainly not by anyone who aspires to high office ... The bottom line is that the lobby is largely responsible for America's special relationship with Israel, which is harmful to both countries.  The Afghanistan War: `A Long-Drawn-Out Disaster' Eric S. Margolis  ... The threat from al-Qaeda and Taliban has been "exaggerated" by the western powers. The US-led mission in Afghanistan has "ballooned" out of all proportion from its original aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda. The US-led war in Afghanistan, says IISS, using uncharacteristically blunt language, is "a long-drawn-out disaster".... Europeans are fed up with the Afghan war. Polls report 60% of Americans think the war not worth fighting ... The truth about Iraq and Afghanistan is finally emerging. Afghanistan may again prove to be "the graveyard of empires".  Genocide Wiped Out A Native American Population, Archeologists Say Discovery News  Physical traces of ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 800s suggest the massacre was an inside job. Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study. The paper, accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, describes the single largest deposit to date of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest. The entire assemblage comprises 14,882 human skeletal fragments, as well as the mutilated remains of dogs and other animals killed at the massacre site -- Sacred Ridge, southwest of Durango, Colo.  What Israel Wants From the Palestinians, It Takes Ahmed Moor -- Los Angeles Times  Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Michael B. Oren, argues ... that Israelis want peace, and I believe him. They've said so often enough. But the Israelis want lots of other things too. For instance, they want the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, they want the Palestinian aquifers situated beneath the West Bank, and they want to preserve their racial privilege in the Jewish state. They also want to shear the Gaza Strip from Palestine. Most of all, the Israelis want Palestinian quiescence in the face of Israeli wants. Those wants have made the two-state solution impossible to implement. For decades, the Israelis have taken what they want from the Palestinians.  Netanyahu's `Catastrophic Success' Robert Grenier  ... The fact of the matter, however, is that the idea of a two-state solution in Palestine is finished. Israeli settlements in the West Bank and their attendant infrastructure have made a viable and independent Palestinian state impossible. The settlements, moreover, cannot be undone. Their existence obviates the need for formal Israeli annexation: The de-facto annexation of the West Bank has already taken place. The only remaining solution is a single, unified, bi-national state. The fact that a bi-national state is inevitable will not make its formation any easier; nor will the great difficulties involved in forging a truly bi-national state make its emergence any less inevitable.  Killing Gentiles Joseph Sobran  ... Israel is based on the principle that Jews have rights "goyim" don't have. Hence its abuse of Arab gentiles and its defiance of Western gentiles. Mark Weber, of the Institute for Historical Review, has summed up the situation in one pithy sentence: "The truth is that if we held Israel to the same standards that we apply to Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, U.S. bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and we'd be putting Israeli prime minister Sharon behind bars for war crimes and crimes against humanity."  Third World America Macleans (Canada)  ... Despite its position as the world's unrivalled superpower, international comparisons show the U.S. slipping on a number of fronts. On education, the United States has been falling behind, in everything from science and engineering to basic literacy. The U.S. once had the world's highest proportion of young adults with post-secondary degrees; now it ranks 12th, according to the College Board, an association of education institutions. (Canada is now number one.) In 2001, the U.S. ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use; it now ranks 15th out of 30 nations ...  A Critical Look at Simon Wiesenthal Der Spiegel (Germany)  Until his death in 2005, Simon Wiesenthal was the world's best-known Nazi hunter. But a new biography finds fault with the way he pursued his quarry and asks whether his "soaring ego" and "tendency to fantasize" actually got in the way of his mission / ... He used questionable methods. He took credit for the achievements of others. And, over the years, he succeeded in antagonizing many people who actually shared the same goals. This side of Wiesenthal is presented in "Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends," a new biography by Tom Segev, an Israeli historian and journalist ... Wiesenthal also concocted legends surrounding the story of the Holocaust and his own suffering.  Tony Blair and the Great Islamic Threat Gwynne Dyer  People often wind up believing their own cover story. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, for example, is trapped forever in the rationalizations he used in 2003 to explain why he was going along with George Bush's invasion of Iraq. He was at it again last week, telling the BBC that "radical Islam" is the greatest threat facing the world today ... Terrorism, by radical Islamists or anybody else, is a real threat but a modest one. It cannot be "defeated", but it can be contained by good police work and wise policy choices. It might make it into the top ten global threats, but it certainly wouldn't make it into the top three. Anybody who says it does has something to sell or something to hide.  David Irving In Poland for Controversial Tour of Historical Sites  AFP  British historian David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for denying the Holocaust, said on Tuesday he was in Poland to lead a tour of World War II sites, including the former Treblinka death camp. Holocaust survivors and anti-racism groups have slammed Irving's plans, even calling on Polish authorities to ban his visit which is also scheduled to take in a visit to the former local headquarters of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. But Irving confirmed to AFP that he was now in the Polish capital and planned to remain in the country until September 29.  Holocaust Tour in Poland Will `Set Record Straight,' Says Irving The Telegraph (Britain)  The controversial British historian David Irving was met with outrage in Poland yesterday as he claimed the country should be "grateful" that he was running a £1,500 a head "unforgettable" tour of Holocaust sites, including the Treblinka death camp. Mr Irving said he would "set the record straight" on the Nazis' extermination of six million Jews, despite the fact that an Austrian court sentenced him in 2006 to three years in jail for his 1989 claims that there were no gas chambers in the Third Reich. He was released and deported to Britain after serving only one year and told the court that his claims had been a mistake.  Chomsky Denounces France's `Holocaust Denial' Law Rue 89 (France)  A petition to free Vincent Reynouard, a French negationist ["Holocaust denier"], who is serving a prison sentence and to abrogate the Gayssot Act ... has Noam Chomsky's backing. This is the letter he wrote: "I understand that Vincent Reynouard has been condemned and jailed under the Gayssot law, and that a petition is being circulated in protest against these actions. I know nothing about Mr. Reynouard, but regard the Gayssot law as entirely illegitimate, inconsistent with the basic principles of a free society as these have been understood since the Enlightenment. The law in effect grants the state the right to determine historical truth ..."  Vatican Shocked at Britain's Hostile Reaction to Pope John Laughland -- Newsmax  ... Britain has become one of the most virulently anti-Christian countries in the world. After a few decades in which the traditional anti-Catholic prejudices fell into abeyance, the basic anti-popish reflexes of an ancient Protestant nation have come back with a vengeance, spurred on by ideological attacks on the only Christian church that seems to stand for anything at all ... Britain has traveled further down the road of political correctness than even traditionally permissive European societies like those of the Netherlands or Scandinavia.  More Americans Are Gloomy About US Role in the World  BBC News  There has been a sharp rise in the number of Americans who believe the US role as a world leader is on the decline, a survey suggests ... Nine out of ten Americans today think it is more important for the future that the US see to pressing problems at home than address challenges abroad ; Fifty-one percent of Americans think US ability to achieve its goals has decreased ; A majority of Americans believe that if Israel and Iran go to war, the US should not intervene militarily on Israel's side; American support for military bases in Japan, Germany, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan has declined.  Court Bans Czech Edition of `Mein Kampf'  The Associated Press  A court has ordered a Czech publisher to withdraw and destroy all its published copies of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Prague's municipal court issued the verdict Friday at the request of the German state of Bavaria that was suing the publisher, KMa, for copyright infringement. "Mein Kampf" is banned in Germany and Bavaria, which holds the copyright for the book, is seeking to block its publication in other countries for fear it could be misused by right-wing extremists.  Enough With the Mideast Kabuki; The Farcical `Peace Talks'  Eric Margolis  ...For those yearning to see an end to the seven decade Jewish-Palestinian conflict, to see security and tranquility for Israel, and justice for Palestinians, last week's so-called "peace talks" in Washington were a painful farce ... The American dialogue on the Holy Land is almost entirely controlled by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is virtually an arm of the Likud Party. Candidate Obama in fact promised AIPAC never to pressure Israel into a peace deal it did not want, a pledge he is keeping. But no pressure on Israel by Washington to trade land for peace means no real peace, no matter what sweetheart deal Abbas signs. No real peace means more woes for the United States in dealing with the Muslim world.  Mexico On Its 200th Birthday: A Grim Balance Sheet The Associated Press  The movie that Mexican director Luis Estrada is putting out for his country's bicentennial is bluntly named "Hell." Like many Mexicans, Estrada says there is little to celebrate in Mexico today, with its violence, corruption and inequity ... A Pew Research Center poll released in August shows 79 percent of Mexicans are dissatisfied with the country's direction. Even U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped into the fray last week, saying that Mexico, plagued with drug-running and violence, is looking more and more how Colombia looked two decades ago. Mexico seems to be slipping behind.  US Poverty Level is Highest Since 1960s BBC News  One in seven Americans was living in poverty in 2009 with the level of working-age poor the highest since the 1960s, the US Census Bureau says. The number of people in poverty increased by nearly four million -- to 43.6 million -- between 2008 and 2009, officials said. The bureau defines poverty as any family of four living on less than $21,954 a year. Meanwhile, new figures showed home foreclosures in August hit the highest level since the mortgage crisis began. Banks repossessed 95,364 properties in August, up 3% from July and an increase of 25% from August 2009, said RealtyTrac, a company which charts the national picture. The official US poverty rate in 2009 rose to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008.  Historian Blames Churchill For a Million Deaths in India Famine  The Telegraph (Britain)  Sir Winston Churchill may be one of Britain's greatest wartime leaders, but in India he has been blamed for allowing more than a million people to die of starvation. According to a new book on the famine, Sir Winston ignored pleas for emergency food aid for millions in Bengal left to starve ... Between one and three million died of hunger in 1943 ... The man-made famine and the contrast between the plight of starving Indians and well-fed British officers dining in the city's many colonial clubs has been described as one of the darkest chapters in British rule on the Indian subcontinent. Miss Mukerjee blames Churchill's 'racism' for his refusal to intervene.  Netanyahu Said Iran Was 3-5 Years Away From Nuclear Capability - In 1995 Philip Weiss  ... So who do you believe? Netanyahu in '95 or Netanyahu today? Shouldn't Goldberg have passed along Netanyahu's 1995 warning to readers and suggested that he's a Bibi who cries wolf? Goldberg said he'd spent years working on the piece. Maybe he should have read Netanyahu's back pages. One has to question Netanyahu's sincerity because Israel uses this alleged threat. It uses it to distract the world from its oppression of Palestinians, and from Obama's pressure on it to stop settlement activities. Netanyahu has never wanted to stop settlement activity. He needs an existential threat to turn attention away.  Catholics In England Suffered Centuries of Repression  The Associated Press  For nearly three centuries after the Reformation, Catholics in England were outlaws. But in the turmoil and persecution that followed the break between King Henry VIII and Rome, noble families such as the Stonors clung to their faith, "in spite of dungeon, fire and sword," as the Victorian hymn "Faith of our Fathers" put it. "We're just stubborn, really," says Ralph Thomas Campion Stonor, the seventh Lord Camoys, a title bestowed on an ancestor for valor in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Pope Benedict XVI will recall the years of persecution during his upcoming tour of Britain Sept. 16-19.  Hitler's Forgotten Library: The Man, His Books, and His Search for God  Timothy W. Ryback -- The Atlantic Monthly  ... By the late 1930s Hitler had three separate libraries for his ever-expanding collection. At his apartment he removed a wall between two rooms and installed bookshelves. For the Berghof, his Alpine retreat near Berchtesgaden, Hitler built a second-floor study with handmade bookcases; color photographs of the finished space show an elegant setting with Oriental carpets, two globes, and bookcases fitted with glass doors and brass locks ... By his own admission, Hitler was not a big fan of novels, though he once ranked Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Don Quixote (he had a special affection for the edition illustrated by Gustave Doré) among the world's greatest works of literature.  Forty-Two Percent of Israeli Jews Are Non-Religious  AFP  Forty-two percent of Israeli Jews identify themselves as secular or non-religious, making them the largest segment of society, according to figures released by the government [of Israel] on Monday. The Central Bureau of Statistics said another 25 percent identify themselves as "not very religious," 13 percent as "traditional," 12 percent as "religious" and eight percent as "ultra-Orthodox." It said 72 percent of respondents had been to a synagogue in the past year, 82 percent celebrated the Passover holiday and 67 percent light candles for Hanukkah. The numbers are the product of polling carried out throughout 2009 on 7,500 Jews over the age of 20, the bureau said.  German Police Raid `Neo-Nazi' Group  The Associated Press  Police on Tuesday [Sept. 7] raided buildings used by Germany's largest neo-Nazi group in an effort to find evidence to support banning it, the Interior Ministry said. The sweep targeted 30 buildings and houses across the country belonging to members of the Aid Organization for National Political Victims and their Relatives, the ministry said in a statement. It declined to say how many officers were taking part in the raids in nine of the country's 16 states. The group, known as HNG by its German acronym, is believed to have some 600 members, making it the country's largest neo-Nazi group, the ministry said.  Federal Government Deficit On Track As Second-Highest Ever The Associated Press  The federal government is on track to record the second-highest deficit of all time with one month left in the budget year. The deficit totaled $1.26 trillion through August, the Treasury Department said yesterday. That puts it on pace to total $1.3 trillion when the budget year ends Sept. 30, slightly below last year's record $1.4 trillion deficit ... Deficits of $1 trillion in a single year had never happened until two years ago. The $1.4 trillion deficit in 2009 was more than three times the size of the previous record-holder, a $454.8 billion deficit recorded in 2008. Last year's deficit was equal to 9.9 percent of the total economy - the highest percentage in 65 years.  Why I Believe Simon Wiesenthal Was a Fraud Guy Walters -- Daily Mail (Britain)  ... In my view, Simon Wiesenthal was a liar and a fraud. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he was one of the biggest conmen of the 20th century. I spent four years working on a history of Nazi-hunting that was published last year, and the material I gathered on Wiesenthal was enough to make me scream out loud. When I started my book, I too believed that the great man was just that -- great. But when I looked at all his memoirs, biographies and original archive material, I realised that, like so many others, the image I had built up of Simon Wiesenthal was hopelessly incorrect.  Irving Defends Plans for `Nazi Travel' Tour of Poland  Daily Mail (Britain)  Controversial historian David Irving has hit back at claims his guided history tours of Polish death camps are 'sick'. Claiming that it is the Polish authorities who are 'tasteless' for their promotion of Auschwitz as a 'Disney-style' tourist site, Mr Irving defended his own trip which is fully-booked with American and British tourists. Critics have slammed the trip Mr Irving is organising to Hitler's headquarters and the notorious death camp Treblinka, referring to it as 'Nazi Travel'. However, the historian, who was convicted of Holocaust denial in Austria in 2006, has said his critics have clearly not read his books on the Second World War.  Tour of Poland May Upset Some Revisionists, Says Irving  David Irving  In response to recent criticisms of his upcoming visit to several Nazi sites in Poland, including the Treblinka death camp, David Irving says, "I shall be saying nothing anywhere which violates any laws; on the contrary, I am mildly worried I may upset the more revisionist of our guests with my statements." Popular journalistic beliefs notwithstanding, Mr Irving does not deny that many people were murdered in the Operation Reinhardt camps, of which Treblinka is the most notorious. On recent visit to Treblinka in July of 2010, he said "There can be no doubt at all that the Nazis did murder hundreds of thousands of Jews by machine gunning them into pits all along the eastern front and in the Aktion Reinhardt camps, of which this camp, Treblinka, is one."  Broke, But Building the Most Expensive School in U.S. History  The Wall Street Journal  At $578 million -- or about $140,000 per student -- the 24-acre Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex in mid-Wilshire [Los Angeles] is the most expensive school ever constructed in U.S. history. To put the price in context, this city's Staples sports and entertainment center cost $375 million. To put it in a more important context, the school district is currently running a $640 million deficit and has had to lay off 3,000 teachers in the last two years. It also has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country and some of the worst test scores. The K-12 complex isn't merely an overwrought paean to the nation's most celebrated liberal political family. It's a jarring reminder that money doesn't guarantee success -- though it certainly beautifies failure.  On the Nation's Paper Trail: Large-Scale Theft of Items From US National Archives Los Angeles Times  When Paul Brachfeld took over as inspector general of the National Archives, guardian of the country's most beloved treasures, he discovered the American people were being stolen blind. The Wright brothers' 1903 Flying Machine patent application? Gone. A copy of the Dec. 8, 1941, "Day of Infamy" speech autographed by Franklin Roosevelt and tied with a purple ribbon? Gone. Target maps of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, war telegrams written by Abraham Lincoln, and a scabbard and belt given to Harry Truman? Gone, gone and gone.  In Austria, Two Years Added to Prison Sentence of `Thought Criminal' Honsik  The Associated Press  A jailed right-wing Austrian author has been found guilty of violating a prohibition on glorifying Nazi ideology and sentenced to an additional two years in prison. Gerd Honsik is already serving a four-year term, which began last year after he was found guilty of "Wiederbetaetigung" -- "re-engaging" in Nazi-era beliefs. The crime is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The previous sentence was for articles Honsik wrote in a right-wing publication praising the Nazi era. The judgment and sentence pronounced Thursday arose from two books by him that contained similar pro-Hitler and anti Jewish sentiments.  China to Build Two Billion Dollar Railway for Iran The Telegraph (Britain)  China is poised to sign a $2 billion deal to build a railway line in Iran in the first step of a wider plan to tie the Middle East and Central Asia to Beijing. China's railways minister, Liu Zhijun, is expected to visit Tehran this week to seal the deal, according to his Iranian counterpart, Hamid Behbahani ... China is rapidly expanding its own high-speed rail network and has unveiled plans for lines that will connect Beijing with London, both through Russia and through central Asia. China Railway Group, the largest railway construction company, has also recently revealed it has had "early stage contact" with South African companies about undertaking rail projects in South Africa.  Anti-Israel Economic Boycotts Are Gaining Speed  Haaretz (Israel)  ... There's another boycott, an international one, that's gaining momentum - an economic boycott. Last week the Chilean parliament decided to adopt the boycott of Israeli products made in the settlements, at the behest of the Palestinian Authority, which imposed a boycott on such products several months ago. ... The world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem.  Puberty Age for Some Girls in US May Still be Falling  Los Angeles Times  Doctors and parents were stunned when research published more than a decade ago found American girls were beginning puberty at much younger ages, some as early as 7. A new study released Sunday suggests the average age at which puberty begins may still be falling for white and Latina girls ... By age eight, 27 percent of the girls had begun puberty: 18.3 percent of whites, 42.9 percent of blacks and 30.9 percent of Latinas ... There are numerous potential explanations for why puberty is starting earlier. Excess body weight, is thought to increase the blood levels of estrogens that promote breast development. But other studies suggest that body fat may not be the only cause.  Demjanjuk Health Issues Taking Over Trial  The Associated Press  John Demjanjuk attends most sessions of his trial in a hospital bed set up in the courtroom, wearing dark sunglasses and a hat pulled down over his face. The case of the retired Ohio autoworker accused of serving as a Nazi death camp guard -- which resumes next week after a monthlong summer break -- broke potentially precedent-setting ground when it opened last year. But it has become increasingly dominated by the 90-year-old defendant's failing health. Nazi hunters have taken keen interest in the Demjanjuk saga because it's the first time German authorities have prosecuted such a low-ranking suspect on the premise that, even without evidence of a specific crime, simply working at a death camp was enough to be an accessory to murder.  Israeli Settlement Construction Booms Despite Ban Der Spiegel (Germany)  In Washington, the Israelis and Palestinians are discussing peace, but in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, construction is proceeding at full speed. A legal ban is being ignored and the government is looking away. The thousands of new homes could hinder reconciliation.  America's Faltering Search for Peace in the Middle East Amb. Chas. Freeman  ... For more than four decades, Israel has been able to rely on aid from the United States to dominate its region militarily and to sustain its economic prosperity. It has counted on its leverage in American politics to block the application of international law and to protect itself from the political repercussions of its policies and actions. Unquestioning American support has enabled Israel to put the seizure of ever more land ahead of the achievement of a modus vivendi with the Palestinians or other Arabs. Neither violent resistance from the dispossessed nor objections from abroad have brought successive Israeli governments to question, let alone alter, the priority they assign to land over peace.  Informed Talks on Wartime Axis Europe Policy Highlight IHR Meeting  Institute for Historical Review  Two informed lectures on plans for the postwar era by leaders in Germany and other Axis nations during World War II, and their vision of a prosperous European community, highlighted the IHR meeting on July 31, 2010. Adrian Davies, an English attorney and lecturer, and Mark Weber, historian and director of the IHR, presented views on how Europe might have developed if the Soviet Union had been vanquished in 1941 or 1942, and British leaders had made peace with Germany ... An Axis-dominated Pax Europa, Weber suggested, would have been economically prosperous, socially progressive, politically stable, and technologically advanced.  David Irving Tour of Wartime Sites in Poland Prompts Criticism  The Telegraph (Britain)  David Irving, the controversial historian, has outraged war veterans and survivors' groups with a tour of sites related to the Nazi occupation of Poland. Irving will be shadowed by the Polish secret service as he takes a week-long guided trip round various sites related to the German occupation of Poland, including a trip to the notorious SS-run camp Treblinka, where more than 800,000 Jews died between 1942 and 1943. The 1,500 pound-a-head tour, organised by Irving's Focal Point Publications website, will also visit Heinrich Himmler's bunker in Hochward as well as Adolf Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in Ketrzyn, as well as a series of lectures, and screening of the German film Downfall, about the last days of Hitler, featuring commentary by Irving.  European Trade Chief Accused of Anti-Semitism The New York Times  The European Union's chief trade negotiator was accused on Friday of "outrageous anti-Semitism" after comments made in an interview about Israel's role in Middle East peace talks. Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, told a radio station in his native Belgium that the "average Jew" had a belief that they are right, which was "difficult to counter with rational arguments." ... Mr. De Gucht also said the Jewish community wielded its influence in the United States. "Don't underestimate the power of the Jewish lobby on Capitol Hill," he added. "That is the best organized lobby; you shouldn't underestimate the grip it has on American politics -- no matter whether it's Republicans or Democrats."  German Banker Earns Popular Support for Controversial Book on Immigration  AFP  Politicians have rushed to condemn a board member of the German central bank for a new book tackling immigration, but his views have found considerable support among the population at large. Thilo Sarrazin's book "is not convincing, but it has convinced many people," said the influential Spiegel magazine, which this week has the Bundesbank executive on its cover, calling him a "people's hero." His publisher is rushing to print more copies of "Germany Does Itself In" to meet demand ... In the book, Sarrazin says Europe's top economy is being undermined, overwhelmed and made "more stupid" by poorly educated, fast-breeding, badly integrated and unproductive Muslim immigrants and their offspring.  Thomas Mann's War-Time Radio Speeches and the Genesis of the Mass Gassing Allegations  Thomas Kues - Inconvenient History  ... From 1940 to the end of the war Mann recorded a number of speeches in German which were sent to the BBC and broadcasted from London in order to reach German radio listeners ... As Mann proceeded to declare, the reports on mass killings of Jews were not simply "stories", but history in the making.[30] This is highly ironic, considering that most of the supposedly authentic and reliable reports on mass killings relayed by Mann to his listeners have been quietly thrown down the memory hole. The speeches made by Mann during the war years are actually mythology in the making, and reading them gives us more insight into how and when the mass gassing allegations arose and provides us with leads to follow up in future research into this issue.  Dresden Mayor Against Memorial to World War II British Bombers The Telegraph (Britain)  The mayor of the German city of Dresden has flown into London under pressure from fellow politicians to try to get a planned memorial to Second World War bomber crews scrapped. Helma Orosz, 57, is officially in Britain to open an exhibition on the bombing of London, her city and that of its twin, Coventry, during the war. She is under pressure however to get the memorial, which is to recognise the courage of RAF bomber crews, scrapped. The East German city of Dresden was turned into rubble over two days nights in February 1945 by British and American bombers. Some 25,000 people, mostly women and children, died in savage firestorms whipped up by the intense heat of 2,400 tons of high explosive and 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs. The raid was controversial because the war was almost over and Dresden had no strategic value as a military target.  World War Two Era Mass Grave Discovered in Slovenia  The Associated Press  The bodies of about 700 people killed in the wake of World War II have been discovered in a mass grave in Slovenia, 65 years after they were herded into the woods and slain by antifascists seeking revenge on Nazi collaborators, an official said Tuesday. Marko Strovs, who heads the government's commission for exhuming mass graves, told The Associated Press that researchers examined a pit in a forest near the town of Prevalje in the country's northeast last week and found the remains. "Based on what we've heard from local people and what we've seen so far, there could be about 700 bodies buried inside," Strovs said. Thousands of Nazi collaborators were executed by communist-backed antifascists after the war; in many cases, victims also included innocent civilians.  Orange County is No Longer Nixon Country  The New York Times  ... It was the latest sign of the demographic, ethnic and political changes that are transforming the county and challenging long-held views of a region whose colorful -- its detractors might suggest zany -- reputation extends well beyond the borders of this state. At the end of 2009, nearly 45 percent of the county's residents spoke a language other than English at home, according to county officials. Whites now make up only 45 percent of the population; this county is teeming with Hispanics, as well as Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese families. Its percentage of foreign-born residents jumped to 30 percent in 2008 from 6 percent in 1970, and visits to some of its corners can feel like a trip to a foreign land.  Third World America: 'Fast-Tracking to Anarchy' Janet Tavakoli  ... Among the future consequences of not fixing our national problems will likely be an increase in social unrest and an increase in crime. A look at Chicago's problems may serve as a call to action for America's middle class. Chicago's city budget is in dire straits. That's also true of the state of Illinois, California, New York and other areas. In Chicago, the same mismanagement that deepened our fiscal crisis has caused a crisis in essential city services ... Thugs, gangs and renegade groups run the streets and neighborhoods, intimidating and victimizing the decent citizens of this city. They go mostly unchallenged and unchecked by a totally demoralized police force that is dangerously understaffed and still out-gunned on the streets.  America's Little Wars are Draining Us in a Big Way Georgie Anne Geyer  ... In Iraq and Afghanistan, it was the inner group of neocons, originally leftist Trotskyites who then switched to the right, bringing their war propensities with them, when they saw the left turning against Israel. They are still very much around in the right wing of the Republican Party, and they are always the people to watch ... The bigger question we now face is whether the American people really want 800 American bases all over the world "projecting power," and whether we want to invade other countries and bring back body bags instead of rebuilding our bridges and highways and ports.  We Owe The Troops An Exit  Bob Herbert -- The New York Times  ... In addition to the terrible physical toll, the ultimate economic costs of these two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have pointed out, will run to more than $3 trillion. I get a headache when I hear supporters of this endless warfare complaining about the federal budget deficits. They're like arsonists complaining about the smell of smoke in the neighborhood. There is no silver lining to this nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan. Poll after poll has shown that it no longer has the support of most Americans. And yet we fight on, feeding troops into the meat-grinder year after tragic year -- to what end?  'I Did Nothing Wrong': German Gulag Prisoners Recall Their Postwar Ordeal  Der Spiegel (Germany)  Thousands of Germans, including teenagers, were forced to toil in Stalin's labor camps after World War II. When they were finally released, their country had been divided into east and west. Karl Heinz Vogeley and Lothar Scholz recall how no one was interested in their fate when they returned ... Between 15 million and 18 million people were imprisoned in Soviet gulags between the mid 1920s and the beginning of the 1950s.  German War Dead Find Final Resting Place in Czech Soil DPA  The remains of 5,600 Wehrmacht soldiers and ethnic Germans who died on Czech territory during and shortly after World War II now have a final resting place there. The place is the town of Cheb, known in German as Eger, in the Sudetenland region near the Bavarian border. The new war cemetery, the largest and last burial site for German war dead on Czech territory, will be officially opened on September 11, some 65 years after the war. Hundreds of plain granite crosses mark the graves. The people buried in them include 473 civilians who died either in internment camps or during the expulsion of ethnic Germans after the war.  Jewish Moral Deception, Free Speech, and the Israel Lobby Prof. Kevin MacDonald - Video  Dr. MacDonald explains how Jewish intellectuals promote policies to advance Jewish group interests while deceitfully justifying them on the basis of "universal values" and humanitarian principles that appeal to non-Jews. This video presentation, made by James Williams, lasts 4:53 mins. As part of what psychology professor MacDonald calls a "group evolutionary strategy," Jews frame polices that are good for Jews as beneficial for everyone. These policies include: Mass immigration and multiculturalism for the US and Europe, but not for Israel, which are justified on "humanitarian" grounds; and, Wars waged by the US against Israel's enemies, which are justified as promoting "freedom" and "democracy."  What's The Difference Between President Ahmadinejad And Rabbi Yosef? Alan Hart  Short answer. Iran's President Ahmadinejad did NOT call for Israeli Jews to be annihilated. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel's Shas party, HAS called, more than once, for the Palestinians (and, in fact, all Arabs) to be exterminated. As reported by the mainstream Western media, Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". What that meant, it was asserted, was the destruction, the driving into the sea, of Israel's Jews. What Ahmadinejad actually called for was the de-Zionization of Palestine. His actual words were to the effect that he wanted the Zionist state to disappear as the Soviet Union had done.  Red and Green: Israel and the World  Uri Avnery (Israel)  ... But the belief that "the whole world is against us" is rooted deep in our national psyche. It enables us to ignore the world reaction to our behavior. It is very convenient. If the entire world hates us anyhow, the nature of our deeds, good or bad, doesn't really matter. They would hate Israel even if we were angels. The goyim are just anti-Semitic ... One could answer that since Israel demands special treatment in all other matters, we are measured by special standards when it comes to the occupation and the settlements. But logic doesn't matter. It's the national myths that count.  London in the Blitz: How Crime Flourished Under Cover of the Blackout The Observer / The Guardian (Britain)  The first people to be liberated by Britain in the Second World War were our own criminals. As the declaration of hostilities was announced in 1939, the gates of the country's prisons swung open for any inmate with less than three months left to serve and all the Borstal boys who had completed six months. Next month sees the 70th anniversary of the start of the blitz and there will be, quite rightly, many celebrations of the courage and stoicism displayed during it. What may receive less publicity are the activities of those who took advantage of the confusion to make their criminal fortunes because, as most of the nation pulled together to help each other, others were very busily helping themselves.  A Trillion-Dollar Catastrophe: The Iraq War  Simon Jenkins -- The Guardian (Britain)  Today the Iraq war was declared over by Barack Obama. As his troops return home, Iraqis are marginally freer than in 2003, and considerably less secure. Two million remain abroad as refugees from seven years of anarchy, with another two million internally displaced. Ironically, almost all Iraqi Christians have had to flee. Under western rule, production of oil - Iraq's staple product - is still below its pre-invasion level, and homes enjoy fewer hours of electricity. This is dreadful. Some 100,000 civilians are estimated to have lost their lives from occupation-related violence ... The Iraq war will be seen by history as a catastrophe that did more than anything else to alienate Atlantic powers from the rest of the world and disqualify them as global policemen.  The Iraq War in Figures BBC News  The US formally ends its combat operations in Iraq at the end of August, marking a new phase in the seven-year conflict which has cost billions of dollars and many thousands of lives ... The respected and non-partisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the US will have spent almost $802 billion on funding the war by the end of fiscal year 2011, with $747.6 billion already appropriated. However, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard's Linda Bilmes put the true cost at $3 trillion once additional impacts on the US budget and economy are taken into account.  Making Soldiers Fit to Fight, Without the Situps The New York Times  ... This year, a group of retired generals and admirals released a report titled "Too Fat to Fight." "Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 percent," the report concluded. Though the Army screens out the seriously obese and completely unfit, it is still finding that many of the recruits who reach basic training have less strength and endurance than privates past. It is the legacy of junk food and video games, compounded by a reduction in gym classes in many high schools, Army officials assert.  America's Culture of Overwork: Comparing US and German Workers  Alex Jung -- Salon.com  ... Compared to our German cousins across the pond, we work 1,804 hours versus their 1,436 hours - the equivalent of nine extra 40-hour workweeks per year. The Protestant work ethic may have begun in Germany, but it has since evolved to become the American way of life ... European social democracy - particularly Germany's - offers some tantalizing solutions to our overworked age. In comparison to the U.S., the Germans live in a socialist idyll. They have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university tuition, nursing care, and childcare.  Wiesenthal Worked for Israeli Spy Agency, Says Israeli Historian The New York Times  Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who gained worldwide fame for decades as a one-man Nazi-hunting operation, was in fact frequently on the payroll of the Mossad, Israel's spy agency, a new biography asserts. The assertion, based on numerous documents and interviews with three people said to be Mr. Wiesenthal's Mossad handlers, punctures not only a widely held belief about how he operated; it also suggests a need to re-evaluate the standard view that the Israeli government took no interest in tracking down Nazis until the 1960 capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, and little thereafter.  Simon Wiesenthal: Fraudulent `Nazi Hunter' Mark Weber  ... Wiesenthal's reputation as a moral authority is undeserved. The man whom The Washington Post has called the "Holocaust's Avenging Angel" has a little known but well-documented record of reckless disregard for truth. He has lied about his own wartime experiences, misrepresented his postwar "Nazi-hunting" achievements, and has spread vile falsehoods about alleged German atrocities  French Teacher Suspended For Holocaust `Brain-Washing' AFP  A Jewish French history teacher said Tuesday that she had been suspended for spending too much time teaching her pupils about the Holocaust and for organising trips to former Nazi death camps. A lawyer acting for Catherine Pederzoli, a 58-year-old secondary teacher in the eastern town of Nancy, said her client had been accused by administrators of teaching the World War II massacres with insufficient "neutrality". ... The report, compiled last month, alleged the teacher took up too much time preparing pupils for annual school trips to Poland and the Czech Republic to visit sites like the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. A copy of the report, seen by AFP, accuses Pederzoli of "lacking distance, neutrality and secularism" in teaching the Holocaust and of manipulating her charges through a process of "brain-washing".  The `Beatification' of Anne Frank  Anne Karpf -- The Guardian (Britain)  ... From the spring of 1944 onwards Anne rewrote her diary as she updated it, to turn it into a more eloquent piece of writing. After the war her father, Otto Frank, drew on versions A (the original) and B (Anne's revision) to produce C - the standard edition, until both the critical edition (1989) and the definitive edition (1995) supplemented C with hitherto omitted passages from A and B. ... Her posthumous beatification - the remaining few frames of film of her have almost the status of a relic - rests mostly on those lines in her diary about still believing that people are good at heart. (The ones about people's innate "urge to destroy . . . to kill . . . murder and rage" have curiously never found equal fame.)  Samuel Konkin: An Influential Libertarian and Revisionist Revisionists.com  Samuel Edward Konkin III (1947-2004) was an influential libertarian writer, publisher and activist. ... In keeping with his outlook, he fervently opposed US military interventionism in foreign countries, and all forms of state collectivism. He was an ardent defender of free speech and free intellectual inquiry. He was a good friend of the Institute for Historical Review. He addressed the Third IHR conference (1981), contributed to the IHR's Journal of Historical Review, and for years was a member of the IHR Journal's Editorial Advisory Committee.  Military Spending: Start Cutting Overseas B. Friedman and C. Preble -- Los Angeles Times  ... The truth is that the U.S. no longer has a "defense" budget. The adjective is wrong. Our military forces' size long ago ceased to have any meaningful attachment to the requirements of protecting Americans ... Our military spending is nearly equal to half the world's, and our allies spend most of the other half. Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and Iran collectively spend about a fourth of what we do on defense, according to statistics compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Even if we cut our military in half, it would still be far bigger than that of any conceivable rival ... Our deficit problem is an opportunity to surrender the pretension that we are the world's indispensable nation, preventing instability, shaping the international system and guiding history.  More US Schools `Infested' With Drugs, New Teen Survey Shows Reuters  Millions of U.S. teens attend "drug-infested schools" where students routinely see drugs used, sold or kept on schools grounds, according to a national survey of attitudes on substance abuse released on Thursday. Thirty-one percent of high school students -- more than four million -- see drug dealing, illegal drug use or students high or drunk at least once a week on their school grounds, said the annual survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University ... Since 2002, the proportion of students who attend schools where drugs are used, kept or sold soared 39 percent for high school students and 63 percent for those in middle school.  Prominent Israeli Rabbi Calls For Death To Palestinians  Reuters  An influential Israeli rabbi has said God should strike the Palestinians and their leader with a plague, calling for their death in a fiery sermon before Middle East peace talks set to begin next week. "Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth," Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual head of the religious Shas party in Israel's government, said in a sermon late Saturday, using Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' popular name. "God should strike them and these Palestinians -- evil haters of Israel -- with a plague," the 89-year-old rabbi said in his weekly address to the faithful, excerpts of which were broadcast on Israeli radio Sunday.  German Banker's Remarks on Jews and Muslims Spark Outrage  Daily Mail (Britain)  A leading member of Germany's central bank has caused outrage by claiming that Jews are identified by a particular gene. Thilo Sarrazin, who is on the board of the the Bundesbank in Frankfurt, said in a newspaper interview: 'All Jews share a certain gene. Basques (Spanish separatists) have particular genes, that distinguishes them from others.' ... In the book he claims the country is on the road to ruin because of the influx of immigrants from the Middle East which would overwhelm the indigenous population and create a nation of 'dunces'. In particular he singles out Muslims for failing to integrate and having low IQs. This influx, he claims, has been going on virtually since the war while the birthrate of native Germans has been steadily falling.  World War Two West Coast Camps for Japanese-Americans  Mark Weber -- Institute for Historical Review  In the months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, many [Americans] expected an immediate attack against the West Coast. Fear gripped the country and a wave of hysterical antipathy against the Japanese engulfed the Pacific Coast ... The Japanese were sent to concentration camps not by a group of West Coast racists seeking economic advantage, but by a popular and powerful government run by democratic liberals. At the top of the list of those responsible for not only authorizing the program, but also for keeping it in operation was President Franklin Roosevelt.  On the Way Down: The Erosion of America's Middle Class Der Spiegel (Germany)  While America's super-rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever. Long-term unemployment is rising and millions of Americans are struggling to survive. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever and the middle class is disappearing. ... Even more unsettling is the fact that America, which has always been characterized by its unshakable belief in the American Dream, and in the conviction that anyone, even those at the very bottom, can rise to the top, is beginning to lose its famous optimism. According to recent figures, a significant minority of US citizens now believe that their children will be worse off than they are.  Hateful Images of Germans and Japanese in 1950s British Comics  Robert Fisk -- The Independent (Britain)  .... Only now, 12 years after her death, have I found the box in my garage, containing dozens of volumes published by the Amalgamated Press (now IPC), in which a generation of schoolboys learned that Germans and Japanese were subhumans, and that we, the Brits - and occasionally Frenchmen and Americans, even Soviets - were fighting courageously against these "hordes" ... At their most racist, the comics cover the Allied-Japanese war. "The Emperor ... has ordered us to show these low-natured curs ... that we are the sons of Japan," a Jap says of the Brits in Malaya. But fear not, a plucky Tommy is there to "mow down the oncoming Japs" while screaming: "Come and get it you grinning little monkeys."  Britain Carried Out Cold War Assassinations, Says Former Agent Le Carre  AFP  Britain carried out assassinations during the Cold War, novelist and former secret agent John le Carre told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The espionage writer worked for Britain's domestic and external intelligence agencies during the 1950s and 1960s. "Certainly we did very bad things. We did a lot of direct action. Assassinations, at arm's length. Although I was never involved," said the 79-year-old, whose real name is David Cornwell. He drew a distinction between Western spy agencies and their Soviet bloc counterparts in the way they went about it. The novelist, who worked in Berlin in his Cold War days, denied that both sides were as bad each other.  French State Rail Company To Open Wartime Files, Bowing to Pressure The Telegraph (Britain)  France's state rail operator, SNCF, has pledged to open its wartime archives to the state of California to prove it has "nothing to hide" over transporting French Jews to Nazi death camps. The pledge came a week after California passed legislation making full disclosure on involvement in taking people to work, concentration, prisoner of war, or extermination camps between January 1942 and December 1944 a requirement for bidding to build a high-speed railway in the state. Under the Holocaust Survivor Responsibility Act details of any reparations paid must also be disclosed. The new legislation is specifically aimed at SNCF, which is making a joint bid with French construction firm Alstom to build a $45 billion high speed link between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  British Pilots Relied on German Sea Rescue Service During World War II  The Telegraph (Britain)  RAF [British air force] pilots shot down over the Channel during the Battle of Britain had to rely on German search and rescue services to save them from drowning, new research has unveiled. The problem became so severe that British aircraft were ordered to try to avoid travelling over the sea because too many being drowned, it has emerged. Amid the 70th anniversary commemorations this summer it can be disclosed that at least 200 pilots died "needlessly" in 1940 after bailing out over water. Once they hit the water there was very little chance of survival with only the occasional flier being picked up by a passing destroyer or fishing boat.  The Genocide Britain Hushed Up Daily Mail (Britain) A new film tells the terrible story of Stalin's own Final Solution - and Churchill's shameful complicity / … This is the harrowing scene of a devastating new film, Katyn. It takes its name from the village in western Russia where the bodies of more than 4,000 Polish prisoners of war were dug up in 1943. But these bodies were by no means the only ones to be disinterred. Near the Soviet city of Kalinin, now known as Tver, another 6,000 bodies were unearthed. Near Kharkov in Ukraine there were 4,000. In all, more than 22,000 Poles -- roughly two-thirds of them officers and policemen, the rest political prisoners -- suffered the same appalling fate: to be executed, without trial or even warning, and thrown like carcasses into mass graves.  Germar Rudolf Released from Prison in Germany Altermedia Germar Rudolf, 44, a German chemist and intellectual dissident who had been serving a prison sentence for violating Germany's law against "Holocaust denial," was released from Mannheim prison on July 4 after three years and nine months behind bars. Upon his release, he was met by his American wife and four-year-old US-born daughter. In October 2005 he was arrested in Chicago, and deported to his homeland, where he was tried, sentenced, and imprisoned.  David Irving Speaks in 17 US Cities in July In a tour of the western US, David Irving is addressing meetings in 17 cities, including Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Costa Mesa, and Kansas City. His topic is "Hitler, Himmler and `Enigma': Re-writing World War II history using Nazi messages decoded by the British Secret Service." The best-selling British historian also has available copies of his prison memoir, which tells of his headline-making arrest and harrowing prison ordeal in Austria, 2005-06.  Alarm in Baltic as Kremlin Seizes Control of Soviet Past The Independent (Britain) In Russia it is not only the future that is unpredictable; often the past is equally in doubt … When authorities in Estonia removed a monument to Soviet soldiers from the centre of Tallinn two years ago, riots between police and ethnic Russian citizens of Estonia ensued, and the Kremlin made furious noises. With its new commission and law, Moscow is upping the stakes. Russia accuses the governments of Estonia and Latvia of glorifying partisan regiments which fought on the side of the Nazis. In recent years, relations between Latvia and Russia have normalised in many spheres, but the Second World War is still a thorny issue.  Jewish Group Objects to Ukraine 'Great Famine' Case JTA A Jewish group in Ukraine is objecting to a criminal case brought over the "Great Famine" committed in the 1930s. The nation's security service is pressing the case against a list of former Soviet officials accused of committing the Holodomor, which caused the deaths of millions in Ukraine in 1932-33. Most of the names on the list were Jewish.  Holocaust Denial And Uncomfortable Truths Robin Davis It has always been those few who can see through the political correctness and hypocrisy of popular attitudes who are considered dangerous. "Holocaust denial laws" are now in place in about a dozen countries. Defenders of these laws claim that the expression of unconventional views about the Jewish genocide is "hate speech" and "incitement to violence" and therefore must be suppressed. But history shows the greatest purveyors of lies, hatred and incitement to violence are those with the power to spread their poison by manipulating popular opinion via the control or complicity of the mass media.  Jewish Leader: Obama May Be 'Most Hostile President to Israel' Ronald Kessler President Barack Obama's refusal to take a stand on protests in Iran stands in sharp contrast to demands he has made on Israel, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, says in a Newsmax interview … Klein says leaders of Jewish organizations are rethinking their support of Obama in light of his attitude toward Israel. "There are many leaders in the organized Jewish world who have privately discussed this issue with me, and say they are deeply concerned about Obama's actions and policies toward Israel, and now they're rethinking their support for Obama during the campaign and the election," says Klein …  A `Virulent' New Anti-Semitism is Rife in Britain, Says Chief Rabbi The Times (Britain) Britain is in the grip of a "virulent" new strain of anti-Semitism, according to the Chief Rabbi. Sir Jonathan Sacks told The Times in an interview that in January the number of anti-Semitic incidents reached the highest level since records began. Jews have been physically attacked, schools targeted and cemeteries desecrated … Although the new "mutation" was different from the anti-Semitism promoted by Hitler, it was dangerous because it was international, he said. "The internet means that we no longer have national cultures; we have global cultures and the new anti-Semitism is very much a phenomenon of the global culture." Whereas in the past, hatred was focused against Judaism as a religion or Jews as a race, the focus this time was on Jews as a nation.  The Pentagon Spigot is Wide Open: How Obama Will Outspend Reagan on Defense Winslow T. Wheeler … Not counting money projected for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the presidentially approved budget plan would continue increasing the Pentagon's budget: by another $8.1 billion in 2011 (up 1.5 percent), another $9 billion in 2012 (up 1.6 percent), and $10.4 billion in 2013 (up1.8 percent), and so on all the way out to 2019. If we add in the costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon budget for the current fiscal year - 2009 - exceeds any year since the end of World War II, including the spending peaks for the Korean and Vietnam wars. President Obama's plan is to increase that lead. Obama also will outspend Ronald Reagan on defense.  The Language That Absolves Israel Saree Makdisi -- Los Angeles Times … Reality can be so easily stood on its head when it comes to Israel because the misreading of Israeli declarations is a long-established practice among commentators and journalists in the United States. In fact, a special vocabulary has been developed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. It filters and structures the way in which developing stories are misread here, making it difficult for readers to fully grasp the nature of those stories -- and maybe even for journalists to think critically about what they write. The ultimate effect of this special vocabulary is to make it possible for Americans to accept and even endorse in Israel what they would reject out of hand in any other country.  The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran Paul Craig Roberts … In Iran's system, election fraud has no purpose, because a small select group of ruling mullahs select the candidates who are put on the ballot. If they don't like an aspiring candidate, they simply don't put him on the ballot. When the liberal reformer Khatami ran for president, he won with 70% of the vote and served from 1997-2005. If the mullahs didn't defraud Khatami of his win, it seems unlikely they would defraud an establishment figure like Mousavi, who was foreign minister in the most conservative government, and is backed by another establishment figure, Rafsanjani.  Historian Says He's Found `Real' Reason for Hitler's Hatred of Jews Daily Mail (Britain) Adolf Hitler's obsessive hatred for Jews was sparked by his experiences after World War One, according to a new book. Respected historian Ralf-George Reuth argues the dictator blamed them for both the Russian revolution and the collapse of the German economy. The claim is a stark contrast to previous theories … At the time almost half of all German private banks were Jewish owned, the stock exchange dominated by Jewish stockbrokers, almost half of the nation's newspapers were Jewish run as were 80 per cent of chain stores. It became fashionable to decry the loss of the war on Jewish financiers. But Hitler, according to Reuth, also blamed Jews for the Russian revolution …  The Underworked American The Economist (Britain) Americans like to think of themselves as martyrs to work. They delight in telling stories about their punishing hours, snatched holidays and ever-intrusive BlackBerrys … But when it comes to the young the situation is reversed. American children have it easier than most other children in the world, including the supposedly lazy Europeans. They have one of the shortest school years anywhere, a mere 180 days compared with an average of 195 for OECD countries and more than 200 for East Asian countries. German children spend 20 more days in school than American ones, and South Koreans over a month more.  Canadian Politician Sues Jewish Groups JTA An ex-candidate in Canada is suing the country's leading Jewish advocacy groups, alleging they ruined her political career. Lesley Hughes, who was dumped as a Liberal candidate in a Winnipeg-area electoral district, claims the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith Canada made false and defamatory accusations that she is anti-Semitic. In a lawsuit filed June 16, Hughes alleges that as a result of the actions of the CJC and B'nai Brith, former federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion revoked her candidacy in last September's federal elections.  Sharp Drop In US Support for Israel, New Poll Shows Mondoweiss … The state-run radio station's Washington correspondent, Nathan Guttman, obtained data from a recent unpublished poll, conducted by the Israel Project, an organization that works to improve Israel's image in the United States. The Israel Project has been conducting a periodic running poll, asking American registered voters questions about Israel … There is a steep decline in the percentage of Americans who say that the U.S. should support Israel. That has dropped from 71% in March 2008 (at the time of the Annapolis process) to only 44% now.  Israeli 'Settlements': Fictions on the Ground Tony Judt -- The New York Times … Thus President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him for a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond. Alternatively, the president could break with two decades of American compliance, acknowledge publicly that the emperor is indeed naked, dismiss Mr. Netanyahu for the cynic he is and remind Israelis that all their settlements are hostage to American goodwill. He could also remind Israelis that the illegal communities have nothing to do with Israel's defense, much less its founding ideals of agrarian self-sufficiency and Jewish autonomy.  The Risky Provocations of Mr. Netanyahu Leonard Fein -- Forward (New York) … I sometimes fear there's a genetically inbred survival characteristic of the Jews that predisposes us to try to beat the system, to get away with things, a characteristic that came in very handy for all those many centuries during which the nerve and cleverness to beat the system enabled survival, but that has now become a dysfunctional anachronism. Be that as it may, Netanyahu's stance will likely turn out to be a serious miscalculation of Obama's intentions and abilities. Obama has no intention of endangering Israel, but when it comes to outsmarting a would-be outsmarter, he is not exactly a beginner.  Netanyahu's Speech: When He Says Yes, What Does He Mean? Uri Avnery (Israel) … The idea of the Palestinian state has now become a part of the national consensus, and only a handful of ultra-rightists reject it directly. But this is only the beginning. The main struggle will be about turning the idea into reality. The entire speech was addressed to one single person: Barack Obama. It was not designed to appeal to the Palestinians … Obama is not seeking a frontal collision with the Israeli government. It seems that he wants to exert "soft" pressure, vigorously but quietly. To my mind, that is a wise approach.  U.S. Jewish Leaders Deeply Troubled by Obama Haaretz (Israel) There is growing concern among the American Jewish community over Obama's Mideast initiatives, this according to the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein. "President Obama's strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes," Hoenlein, said in an interview published Monday.  Carter Says Palestinians Treated 'Like Animals' AFP Former US president Jimmy Carter on Tuesday met Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip, where he called for a lifting of Israel's blockade, saying Palestinians are being treated "like animals." Following the talks, Carter called for an end of "all violence" against both Israelis and Palestinians. "This is holy land for us all and my hope is that we can have peace ... all of us are children of Abraham," he said at a joint news conference with Haniya, prime minister of the Hamas government in the Palestinian enclave.  Holocaust Lawyer Edward Fagan is Disbarred For Misusing Victims' Funds The Star-Ledger (New Jersey) Only a few years ago, Edward Fagan was a world-renowned lawyer for the underdog, brash and audacious enough to take on Swiss banks and even whole countries to win judgments for Holocaust survivors and victims of South African apartheid. This week, the Supreme Court announced he was barred from practicing law in New Jersey, completing one of the steepest falls from grace in the state's law community. The court found Fagan, 56, misappropriated nearly $400,000 of the money he won for the victims he so effectively championed.

Peace.

Michael Santomauro 

@ 917-974-6367 

What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

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