Polish Bishop Accuses Jews of Exploiting Holocaust
Agence France Presse
A retired Polish bishop accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for propaganda purposes in remarks that appeared Monday on a Rome-based traditionalist Roman Catholic website ... "The Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention," said the former spokesman of Poland's Bishops Conference. The Shoah is "used as a propaganda weapon and to obtain advantages that are often unjustified," he charged. Pieronek, who was a friend of the late Polish pope John Paul II, added: "You could speak just as forcefully and establish a day of remembrance for the many victims of communism, persecuted Catholics and Christians and so on." Accusing Jews of "intolerable arrogance," he said they "enjoy good press because they are supported by powerful financial means, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States."
World Has `Privilege and Obligation' to Defend Israel, Says Israeli Leader
Israel National News - Arutz Sheva (Israel)
The [Israel] government has dedicated today's meeting to the memory of the six million Jews starved, tortured and massacred in the Holocaust. This Wednesday, the United Nations and at least 20 countries will mark International Holocaust Day. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, said, "I hope the United Nations will remember what happened when the Jews did not have a state - and the privilege and obligation of the international community to defend the Jewish State's existence."
Blair Was Warned That Attack on Iraq Needed UN Go-Ahead
The Independent (Britain)
Tony Blair [then British prime minister] was warned two months before the invasion of Iraq it would be illegal to go to war without United Nations' authority, the inquiry into the conflict heard today ... The inquiry heard how Mr Straw rejected the advice of his senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Sir Michael Wood, that an invasion without a UN Security Council resolution specifically authorising military action would be a "crime of aggression". Sir Michael's deputy Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned in protest on the eve of the invasion in March 2003, described the Government's treatment of the legal advice as "lamentable".
British Legal Decision on 2003 Iraq War Was `Lamentable'
BBC News
A [British] Foreign Office lawyer who resigned in protest at the Iraq war said the way ministers weighed up the legal case for the invasion was "lamentable". Elizabeth Wilmshurst told the Iraq inquiry she thought the war was unlawful without express UN backing. And she said it was "extraordinary" that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had only been asked for his opinion days before British troops went in. Ministers argue that existing UN resolutions justified the use of force. The testimony of Ms Wilmshurst and her then boss Sir Michael Wood made it clear that the legal team at the Foreign Office believed that the war was illegal under international law.
Israeli Leader Vows to Keep Zionist Settlements In Occupied Land
BBC News
The Israeli prime minister has taken part in tree-planting ceremonies in the West Bank while declaring Israel will never leave those areas. Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel. His remarks came hours after a visit by US envoy George Mitchell who is trying to reopen peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.
China Economy Sees Strong Growth
BBC News
China has said its economy expanded by 8.7 percent in 2009, exceeding even the government's own initial expectations. The pace of change increased as the year went on, with growth in the final quarter of 2009 increasing by 10.7 percent from the same period a year earlier. China is now on course to overtake Japan and become the world's second-biggest economy.
Genetic Heritage Unites Jews, Says Author
Jewish Life Televsion - Video
Jews around the world have a remarkably high level of genetic unity, says Jon Entine in his new book, "Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People." He cites up-to-date DNA research to show that what makes the "Chosen People" Jewish is largely a matter of shared ancestry. A JLTV "On the Hour" video report. Runtime: 7:25 mins.
Why They Hate Us? It's Not a Secret
Ron Smith -- The Baltimore Sun
You'll remember that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush said the motivation of the hijackers was that they hated freedom. Hating freedom seemed then and now to be a pretty weak reason to give up one's own life to inflict death and destruction on others. People who had been paying attention knew what the real reasons for the Islamist radicals' actions were -- Osama bin Laden himself had laid them out in detail. They included America's support of Israel in its subordination of the Palestinians and its attacks on Lebanon; the propping up of pro-American kleptocracies in Muslim lands; and the presence of U.S. forces on the "sacred soil" of Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War.
Accepting Various Truths
Helen Thomas
No one in the Obama administration is going to acknowledge that our foreign policy in the Middle East has alienated many Arabs. The U.S. pro-Israel policy and our shocking neglect of the beleaguered Palestinians underlie almost every initiative or tactical tilt that comes out of Washington ... The United States spends more for its arsenal than any other 10 countries combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the world's total military spending. China is in second place, at a relatively puny 5.8 percent.
Obama's Alternate Universe
Scott Ritter -- Truthdig
... The "war on terror" has the United States combing the world in search of enemies ... So long as American politicians find themselves constrained by a pro-Israeli lobby that refuses to permit the inclusion of either the concept or reality of Palestine into the lexicon of American foreign policy considerations (beyond simplistic "dual-state" and other demeaning and dishonest formulations), then there can and will be no long-term solution to any other modern Middle Eastern problem.
Debunking of Myths?: Willmott's History of World War II
James V. Koch -- H-Net
.. .. On occasion, Willmott [in his book, The Great Crusade] offers conclusions that undermine his own position, as when he offers the judgment that the Wehrmacht exhibited "a technique, initiative and flair at both tactical and operational levels that enabled German ground formations to outfight consistently superior enemy forces -- at least until 1944," even as he argues that German military excellence is a "pernicious myth." Apparently he discounts the work of Trevor N. DuPuy and others, which suggests that the typical German infantryman was approximately 25 percent more effective than the comparable British or American.
More States on Budget Brink
CNN
California is hurtling into the budgetary abyss - and it's not alone. Across the nation, state tax collections in the first three quarters of 2009 posted their steepest decline in at least 46 years, according to a report this month from the public policy research arm of the State University of New York .. .. Like California, Arizona and Illinois face budget gaps above 40% of projected general fund spending, according to Pew data .. .. Alaska, Nevada, New Jersey and New York face gaps of at least 30% of their planned general fund spending by the end of this fiscal year. A dozen more states face a fiscal 2010 budget gap of between 20% and 29%.
California: Too Big Not to Fail?
Jeffrey M. O'Brien -- CNN
.. .. Name almost any serious malady and the state of California has it: the nation's highest marginal tax rate coupled with an abysmal public education system; the most home foreclosures; a free-falling commercial real estate sector; lame-duck governor with no legislative support and a disdain for an annual budget process that he refers to as kabuki theater; unemployment somewhere between the official number of 12% and the whisper number of 18%; a 20% drop in year-over-year revenue; municipalities that have either declared bankruptcy (Vallejo) or are on the verge (Los Angeles); and a black-box permitting process that scares away business investment even while every week, 3,000 more taxpayers migrate to greener pastures.
Is A U.S. Default Inevitable
Patrick J. Buchanan
.. .. Today, there are those warning that the United States, with consecutive deficits running 10 percent of gross domestic product, is risking an eventual default on its national debt .. .. With that share of the U.S. national debt held by individuals, corporations, pension funds and foreign governments having risen in 2009 from 41 percent to 53 percent of GDP, Penner and Walker believe it imperative to get the deficit under control. Unfortunately, it is not possible to see how, politically, this can be done. .. .. What the looming fiscal crisis of this country portends is nothing less than a test of whether this democratic republic is sustainable.
Montgomery vs. Eisenhower: Two Generals at War
The Times (Britain)
... It would be hard to imagine two more contrasting characters. The American general: likeable, diplomatic, balanced and gregarious. The British general: egotistical, prickly, brilliant and caustic. Yet despite their very different personalities, and frequent disagreements, they managed to work together, and won a war together ... There was continual bickering among the top Allied brass. The American generals George Patton and Omar Bradley both detested Montgomery, who responded in kind. Patton on Monty: "That cocky little limey fart"; Monty on Patton: "A foul-mouthed lover of war"; Bradley on Monty: "All-out, right-down-to-the-toes mad".
General Patton's Warning
National Vanguard
... It was only in the final days of the war and during his tenure as military governor of Germany -- after he had gotten to know both the Germans and America's "gallant Soviet allies" -- that Patton's understanding of the true situation grew and his opinions changed. In his diary and in many letters to his family, friends, various military colleagues, and government officials, he expressed his new understanding and his apprehensions for the future ... In his diary that night he wrote: "There is a very apparent Semitic influence in the press. ... They have utterly lost the Anglo-Saxon conception of justice and feel that a man can be kicked out because somebody else says he is a Nazi."
Rabbinic Text or Call to Terror?
Forward (New York)
The marble-patterned, hardcover book embossed with gold Hebrew letters looks like any other religious commentary you'd find in an Orthodox Judaica bookstore -- but reads like a rabbinic instruction manual outlining acceptable scenarios for killing non-Jewish babies, children and adults. "The prohibition 'Thou Shalt Not Murder'" applies only "to a Jew who kills a Jew," write Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and attacks on them "curb their evil inclination," while babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us."
States Lower School Exit Test Standards
The New York Times
... The situation in Pennsylvania mirrors what has happened in many of the 26 states that have adopted high school exit exams. As deadlines approached for schools to start making passage of the exams a requirement for graduation, and practice tests indicated that large numbers of students would fail, many states softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a diploma ... In 2008, state officials in Alabama, Arizona and Washington delayed the start of the exit exam requirement and lowered standards after seeing that many students, including a disproportionate number of minorities, would fail the tests.
Revisionism for Our Time
Murray N. Rothbard (1966)
... Revisionism teaches us that this entire myth, so prevalent then and even now about Hitler, and about the Japanese, is a tissue of fallacies from beginning to end. Every plank in this nightmare evidence is either completely untrue or not entirely the truth. If people should learn this intellectual fraud about Hitler's Germany, then they will begin to ask questions, and searching questions, about the current World War III version of the same myth. Nothing would stop the current headlong flight to war faster, or more surely cause people to begin to reason about foreign affairs once again, after a long orgy of emotion and cliché.
Jewish Group Condemns Oliver Stone's Remark That Hitler is a Scapegoat
Ynet News (Israel)
The Simon Wiesenthal Center rebuked remarks made by director Oliver Stone during a press conference for his new history documentary. Stone said, "Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect." The director is using the series to expose what he calls lies and biases behind the conventional interpretation of American history and that would include reexamining WWII history and putting Hitler "into context." "To talk about 'placing Adolf Hitler in context' is like placing cancer in context, instead of recognizing cancer for what it really is - a horrible disease, just as we must recognize Hitler as the ultimate expression of evil," said Rabbi Marvin Hier ...
Popular Music in Germany, 1934-1944
Some Third Reich "hits," by Marika Rökk, Rudi Schuricke, Zarah Leander, Ilse Werner, Heinz Rühmann, Lale Andersen, and others.
In France, New Interest in Churchill, the `Old Lion'
The Times (Britain)
... France has just fallen for the charms of another British leader -- Sir Winston Churchill. "Le Vieux Lion," as the British leader was known, has found new popularity thanks to two bestselling books -- a fresh translation of his Second World War memoirs and a prize-winning biography. Enthusiasm for Churchill is being fed by new interest in the war era among a generation born since France preferred to forget the trauma of the Nazi occupation. Recent war documentaries, including a spectacular colour series on the France2 channel last autumn, have brought the period closer to modern France, said François Kersaudy, author of the new biography Winston Churchill.
Winton Churchill: An Unsettled Legacy
Mark Weber
The well-entrenched idealization of Churchill is part and parcel of a drastically misleading view of the Second World War that Americans have been fed for decades. One common deceit is to give the impression that Hitler sought war against Britain and France, and that Germany aggressively attacked those two countries ... Churchill's enduringly stellar image is all the more remarkable considering that his views on a range of issues were, by today's standards, hopelessly backward and politically incorrect ... Along with most Britons (and Americans) of his era, he was also an unabashed racist.
The Real Churchill
Adam Young
... With his lack of principles and scruples, Churchill was involved in one way or another in nearly every disaster that befell the 20th century. He helped destroy laissez-faire liberalism, he played a role in the Crash of 1929, he helped start World War I, and by bringing in America to help, prolonged the war and created the conditions for the rise of Nazism, prolonged World War II, laid the groundwork for Soviet domination, helped involve America in a cold war with Russia, and pioneered in the development of total war and undermining western civilized standards.
Welcome to Orwell's World: Obama's Lies About Afghanistan
John Pilger -- New Statesman (Britain)
... Obama's most audacious lie is that Afghanistan today is a "safe haven" for al-Qaeda's attacks on the west. His own national security adviser, James Jones, said in October that there were "fewer than 100" al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. According to US intelligence, 90 per cent of the Taliban are hardly Taliban at all, but "a tribal localised insurgency [who] see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power". The war is a fraud. Only the terminally gormless remain true to the Obama brand of "world peace" ... Behind much of this are the Israelis, who have long advised the Americans in both the Iraq and the Afghanistan adventures.
Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth?
Paul Craig Roberts
... The U.S. and its puppet state allies were led to war in the Middle East and Afghanistan entirely on the basis of lies and deception. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist and were known by the U.S. and British governments not to exist ... Now the same thing is happening in regard to the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Forged documents leaked to The Times (London) that indicated Iran was developing a "nuclear trigger" mechanism have been revealed as forgeries. Who benefits? Clearly, attacking Iran is on the Israeli-U.S. agenda, and someone is creating the "evidence" to support the case ...
Why Are They At War With Us?
Patrick J. Buchanan
... To Osama, we started the war. Muslims, the ulema, must fight because America, with her "brutal crusade occupation of the (Arabian) Peninsula" and support for "the Jews' petty state" and "occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there" was waging war upon the Islamic world. Terrorism, the direct killing of civilians for political ends, is al-Qaida's unconventional tactic, but its war aims are quite conventional. Al-Qaida is fighting a religious war against apostates and pagans in their midst, a civil war against collaborators of the Crusaders and an anti-colonial war to drive us out of the Dar al-Islam. On Sept. 11, they were over here -- because we are over there.
Helen Thomas Deviates From the Terrorism Script
Glenn Greenwald -- Salon
... At a White House press conference yesterday with Janet Napolitano and John Brennan, Helen Thomas shows -- yet again -- that she's one of the very few White House reporters willing to deviate from approved orthodoxy scripts. She asks the prohibited question about the motives of Terrorists, and keeps asking as she receives complete non-responses, until they all just decide to ignore her: Brennan's answer -- they do this because they're Evil and murderous -- is on the same condescending cartoon level as the "They-Hate-us-For-Our-Freedom" tripe we endured for the last eight years.
--
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton
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