March 13, 2010
http://michaelsantomauro.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-norman-finkelstein-zionist-stooge-by.html
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367
What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?
From: walter
Date: October 24, 2010 11:15:52 AM EDT
To: RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com
Subject: Milking the Holocaust cow
Michael, another act of post-unification self-immolation by guilt-ridden, politically ueber-correct Germans looking for more perpetrators. First the regular German army (Hamburg Wehrmacht exhibition); then the German people (current Berlin Hitler exhibition), and now the Foreign Ministry (investigative historian). Who will be next? My bet is Germany's women. Besides, what is new about the Foreign Ministry's involvement in Nazi crimes? Wasn't Ribbentrop hanged in Nuremberg, and wasn't Weizsaecker and many other given stiff prison sentences? Walter
24.10.2010
Germany's Foreign Ministry was complicit in Holocaust, study says
Germany's Foreign Ministry was far more involved in the murder of millions of Jews than previously thought, according to a government study. The findings contradict claims that the ministry disapproved of the Nazis.
A report to be published this week reveals that diplomats actively assisted the Nazis in their campaign of genocide against the Jews, contradicting post-war attempts to portray Germany's wartime Foreign Ministry in a positive light."The Foreign Ministry actively supported all measures of persecution, rights deprivation, expulsions and the Holocaust," Eckart Conze, one of four historians asked to investigate the role played by the ministry in the Holocaust, told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
"The Foreign Ministry was actively involved in every operation to persecute, strip away the rights of, expel and exterminate the Jews from the very beginning," Conze said.
Conze, who spent five years researching diplomatic archives, also condemned the ministry during wartime as a "criminal organization" in the German news magazine Spiegel.
Conze said post-war claims that officials within the ministry had resisted Nazi policies were untrue. In fact, he said, the ministry had often been proactive in its efforts to carry out the will of the Third Reich leadership.
The study, commissioned in 2005 by former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, looked at the activities of ministry between 1933 and 1945. The panel of historians is due to present its full findings later this week.
Support of war-crime suspects
Fischer was quoted by the newspaper as saying that he was "horrified" by the level of support and advice offered by the ministry to help war-crime suspects escape Germany after the country's defeat.
"As I read this report, I became more and more shocked," said Fischer.
Among the documents was a paper from the official responsible for Jewish affairs, Franz Rademacher, citing the "liquidation of Jews in Belgrade" as a reason for one of his foreign trips.
The report was praised by current Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle as "an important work" that would contribute greatly to the ministry's knowledge of its own past.
Westerwelle's predecessor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said the fact that it had taken 60 years since the end of the war to begin the inquiry was "incredible."
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants also hailed the report, saying it "categorically refuted" previous attempts to sanitize the Foreign Ministry's role in the Holocaust.
"Germany has taken an honest and painful look at its past," said the group's president Elan Steinberg in a statement. "This report is a pointed reminder of the broad cross section of German society and institutions which were implicated in the Holocaust and the brutalities of the Nazi regime."
Campaign against 'hostile' author
It was also revealed that Ernst von Weizsaecker, who was secretary of state at the ministry from 1938 to 1943, had pressed for the removal of German citizenship from author Thomas Mann in 1936.
Weizsaecker, father of former German President Richard von Weizsaecker, was said to be in favor of the action because of Mann's "hostile propaganda" against the Third Reich.
Weizsaecker, who after the war was tried for crimes against humanity for alleged complicity in the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz, claimed he had always worked against the Nazis. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 1949, but died two years later.
The ministry's role has long been controversial because many Nazi-era diplomats continued to work for the ministry after 1945 - many claiming they had always been opposed to Hitler's regime.Authors: Richard Connor, Andrew Bowen (dpa, AFP, AP)
Editor: Kyle James
From: braveheart <billguru1@gmail.com>
Date: October 24, 2010 10:32:00 AM EDT
Subject: The Romance Continues
Latest.
From: "Gilad Atzmon" <gilad@gilad.co.uk>
Date: October 24, 2010 10:37:48 AM EDT
To: reporternotebook@gmail.com
Subject: an amazing video & a great text
Jewish Integrity for a Change
Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 10:02AM
Gilad Atzmon: The following is an email that was sent to me by an American Jew a few days ago. This is a very interesting text that exposes the depth of the Jewish Diaspora's identity complex: Tribalism, shame, self hatred, pride and embarrassment...
You're free to share my story if it interests you, but please spare my name.
My father is a Cleveland-born Labor Zionist who immigrated to Israel with the aspiration of redeeming his secular Jewish soul by pioneering and cultivating the land of his forefathers. My mother is a Mumbai-born B'nei Israel Jew who grew up rather poor in the southern development town of Dimona but worked hard and eventually became a well-paid corporate executive, all while maintaining her traditional Jewish orientation.
I was born in the Holy Land but left when I was four. I lost my Hebrew within a few months of my exile and always considered it a personal tragedy. It was a burned bridge to that curious home away from home that I would visit every few years--the big JCC my synagogue honored, the always-running summer camp my youth group worshiped, the headquarters to which I owed my ethnic loyalty. To have such an Israeli name without the ability to speak Hebrew...chaval (pitty).
To read more:
Jewishness, in general, is a characteristic the fictional Zuckerberg and his friends are desperate to escape. At the Caribbean Night party at the Alpha Epsilon Pi house, one of Zuckerberg's friends wryly remarks: "There's an algorithm for the connection between Jewish guys and Asian girls: They're hot, smart, not Jewish and can dance." Sorkin would have us believe that, in the eyes of some Jewish men — or at least those run-of-the-mill Harvard scholars — one of the best things about an Asian woman is that she isn't a Jewish woman. And in Sorkin's story, Asians get bonus points for performing oral sex in public bathrooms.
"That's not what you're going to get from an Erica," said Olivia Cohen-Cutler, referring to the film's only female Jewish character. Cohen-Cutler, a senior executive at ABC, is the chair of Hadassah's Morningstar Commission, which devotes attention to images of Jewish women in the media. While most are decrying the film's treatment of women, Cohen-Cutler sees something different in the character Erica Albright.
In the film's opening scene, the fictional Zuckerberg is on a date with Erica, who is pretty, sophisticated and exquisitely articulate. While trying to woo her, an arrogant and socially inept Zuckerberg winds up insulting her every which way, which prompts Erica to unequivocally reject him: "You're going to be successful and rich. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a tech geek. I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that won't be true: It'll be because you're an asshole."
The Israel Lobby: Targeting Democrats for Election Day Defeat
October 22, 2010 "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.
Then there is the American Jewish Committee, which has now issued an unusual second political poll this year. The first, issued in March, was its traditional annual poll of American Jewish opinion on matters foreign and domestic.
This second poll, issued just before the congressional elections, is more limited and clearly is designed to demonstrate that Jewish voters are deserting President Obama because of his efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the peace table. (The AJC press release carries the title: "AJC Poll Shows Jewish Disapproval of President Obama Rising.")
Actually, the poll's intent is to create the shift it claims to portray, a shift that is, in fact, not happening because, as Republican Whip Eric Cantor said on October 2, American Jews are voting Democratic, as they always have, because "Jews are prone to want to help the underdog."
But not the American Jewish Committee, the most established and establishment of lobby organizations which, under its current leadership, is a bastion of neoconservative war-mongeringand has put its once-respected polls to the service of the GOP.
The good news is that Eric Cantor is right: American Jews (not him) are liberals and Democrats. But the "pro-Israel" establishment just follows lockstep behind Prime Minister Netanyahu who wants Republicans to win in November (he has a history of supporting the GOP) and President Obama gone in 2012.
One, they are tired of even Obama's timid pressure on settlements and (2) they want a President who will give Israel permission to bomb Iran. George W. Bush said "no" to that scheme as has Obama. But President Palin or Huckabee? They know that they would say "bombs away" in a heartbeat.
That is why they are running these ads. That is why the American Jewish Committee has become a Republican cutout. It's all about the Middle East: preventing Israel from achieving peace with its neighbors and preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, not through diplomacy but war.
And check out this ad the "Emergency Committee for Israel" is running against a Democratic Congressman in Connecticut. (They are using the same ad against a host of Democrats). Happily, it won't work. But it does demonstrate what this game is all about. And it's not jobs, jobs, jobs.
MJ Rosenberg, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow, Media Matters Action Network
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/the-lobby-targeting-democ_b_771117.html
Monday, September 13, 2010
Israeli Soldiers Sexually Abuse Palestinian Children
Israeli Soldiers Sexually Abuse Palestinian Children - by Stephen Lendman
On September 10, Israel's YnetNews.com headlined, "IDF sexually abused Palestinian children," headlining:
"Damning (September 9) CNN report cites uncorroborated sexual abuse charges of Palestinian children detained by IDF." Military officials refused to "respond to abuse charges as no details (were) provided," a spokesman saying "We cannot address general claims on the subject in the absence of a specific complaint."
CNN's report "featured an unidentified Palestinian boy claiming that IDF forces attempted to insert an object into his rectum," and that dozens of officers present stood around laughing while it happened.
The network cited Defence of Children International (DCI) as its source, an independent NGO involved in promoting and protecting children's rights globally for over 30 years, founded on the date the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) passed 10 years later.
In May 2010, it asked the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to investigate 14 cases of sexual assault or threatened assault it uncovered - committed by Israeli soldiers, interrogators, and police from January 2009 - April 2010. The abused children were from 13 - 16 years old, detained for offenses like stone-throwing harming no one.
DCI-Palestine expressed alarm about sworn affidavits children provided, explaining instances of sexual assault or threatened assault to obtain confessions. In 2009 alone, DCI reviewed 100 sworn affidavits attesting to the following:
-- 97% of children said their hands were tied during interrogations;
-- 92% said they were blindfolded or hooded;
-- 81% said forced confessions were made;
-- 69% said they were beaten or kicked;
-- 65% said they were arrested from midnight to 4AM;
-- 50% said they were verbally abused;
-- 49% cited threats or inducements;
-- 32% were forced to sign confessions in Hebrew they didn't understand;
-- 26% cited painful position abuse;
-- 14% were in solitary confinement;
-- 12% were threatened with sexual assault; and
-- 4%, in fact, were sexually assaulted.
It included grabbing boys by the testicles until they confessed, and threatening others as young as 13 with rape unless they admitted to "throwing stones at Israeli settler vehicles in the occupied West Bank."
DCI suspects these figures "may understate the extent of the problem," a conclusion substantiated in an earlier article titled "Palestinian Children Under Occupation," accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/07/palestinian-children-under-occupation.html
In its April 2008 report, the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said over 7,000 children had been arrested since September 2000, the start of the second Intifada. About 360 were still held, some as young as 10, treated as harshly as adults, in violation of international law requiring special treatment for children.
Of these, 145 had been sentenced, 200 awaited trial, and 15 were being administratively held without charge for offenses as trivial as stone-throwing. The report also said about 500 youths arrested turned 18 in prison. About 75 were ill and not treated, and nearly all had been tortured or abused by beatings, hooding, painful shackling, and sleep deprivation for several days in the shabeh position.
It involves binding their hands and feet to a small chair, at times from behind to a pipe affixed to the wall, painfully slanted forward, hooded with a filthy sack, and played loud music nonstop through loudspeakers.
The article includes more on their treatment during detention and under occupation, clear evidence of state-sponsored brutality, flagrantly violating international law, Israel's specialty.
DCI-Palestine cited a 15 year old boy's experience after being arrested in September 2009 at 2AM at home:
"While sitting on the ground near the truck, a person speaking Arabic approached me and grabbed my hands and ordered me to stand up and accompany him. He grabbed me so violently and pulled me. He forced me to walk with him for about 20 meters, and I could see from under the blindfold that we stopped behind a military jeep. He slapped me hard twice and grabbed my testicles so hard and started pressing them. Then, he asked me whether I threw stones and Molotov cocktails and I said I did not."
"He started shouting and saying 'liar,' your mother's c..t.' He started beating me all over my body and once again grabbed my testicles and started pressing hard. 'I won't let go of your testicles unless you confess,' he said to me. I felt so much pain and kept shouting. I had no other choice but to confess" to stop the pain.
Every year, around 700 children are arrested, most for stone-throwing, then interrogated with no lawyer or family member present, prosecuted, and sentenced. Over 80% signed forced confessions, one-third written in Hebrew they don't understand. After conviction in military, not civil, court, most are imprisoned in violation of Fourth Geneva's Article 76. Its provisions include assuring "Proper regard....paid to the special treatment due to minors," one of many laws Israel violates, children abused like adults.
When confronted with hard evidence, Israel denies it, saying it respects and observes international law, when, in fact, it's abusively and consistently in violation.
On May 10, Haaretz writer Amira Hass covered the child abuse story, headlining "Over 100 Palestinian minors reported abuse in IDF, police custody in 2009," saying:
"69 minors complained of being beaten, four minors reported being sexually assaulted, and 12 said they were threatened with sexual assault." She added that most were intimidated, abused, and maltreated in custody, before and during interrogations. In addition, they got no food or water for many hours and were forced to name others to stop being mistreated.
DCI-Palestine legal advisor Khaled Kuzmar said many parents don't complain to authorities, having no "confidence in the system that abuses them." It's true. Police and military officials rarely investigate, and when do it, absolve abusers, victims not Jewish afforded no justice.
Like always, an IDF Spokesman dismissed "claims of deliberate deviation from procedures for arresting and interrogating minors, (saying their) arrests are carried out in keeping with international law; the arrests of suspects under 16 years old in the West Bank requires a military lawyer's approval....Minors are brought before a judge within a relatively short period."
He lied, including about quick resolution before a judge. In fact, children and adults are often held for weeks or months before appearing for trial or accepting a plea bargain, Israel's corrupted injustice system for anyone not Jewish - even children as young as 9 or 10.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
