Wanted: Tony Blair For War Crimes
George Monbiot -- The Guardian (Britain)
The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression ... Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg principles as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties".
Britain's Leaders Knew Impending Iraq Invasion Was Illegal, Says Former Official
The Telegraph (Britain)
Tony Blair and his ministers went to war in Iraq despite repeated warnings from senior Government advisers that they had "no leg to stand on" legally. During evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the war against Saddam, it emerged that Foreign Office lawyers were "unanimous" in their view that going to war without a United Nations mandate would be a "crime of aggression" likely to damage Britain's standing in the world. Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, painted a vivid picture of how his team repeatedly intervened privately to correct ministers who were stating that a fresh UN resolution was not legally not legally necessary, but their advice was ignored.
U.S. Foreign Aid Summary
The US provides more aid to Israel than any other country. In 2006, the US gave $2.5 billion to the Zionist state, which has a population of about 7.5 million. By contrast, the impoverished nation of Haiti, with a population of more than eight million, received $163 million, and Peru, with a population of more than 27 million, received $133 million. Each year more American taxpayer money goes to Israel than to all of sub-Saharan Africa.
US Budget Deficit Set to Hit $1.35 Trillion
BBC News
The US budget deficit is expected to reach $1.35 trillion in 2010, according to US Congress estimates. In 2009, the US deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion - equal to 9.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) - and the highest since the end of World War II. President Obama will make his first State of the Union address on Wednesday and will submit his budget plan on February 1. He is expected to announce a three-year partial spending freeze. The savings - expected to be about $15 billion off next year's budget and to amount to $250 billion during the next 10 years - are aimed at reducing the country's massive deficit.
Many Europeans Believe Jews Exploit History for Money
Haaretz (Israel)
Nearly half of Western European believe that Jews exploit the persecution of their past as a method of extorting money, according to an annual Jewish Agency report released on Sunday. A joint report on anti-Semitism conducted by the Agency and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs found that 42 percent of those polled by the University of Bielefeld in Germany agreed that "Jews exploit the past to extort money." The countries in which the highest percentage of the population agreed with that statement were Poland and Spain. According to the Jewish Agency, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in 2009 than in any year since the Second World War.
German Court Summons Bishop Williamson for `Holocaust Denial' Remarks
Reuters
A German court said on Wednesday it had summoned traditionalist Catholic bishop Richard Williamson to face charges he denied the Holocaust, an offence punishable by up to five years in jail. In comments broadcast on Swedish television last January, Williamson said he believed no more than 300,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust and that there were no gas chambers.
The Bishop Williamson Case: Behind the Headlines
Mark Weber and Jeff Rense
The IHR director and the host of the Jeff Rense program take a spirited and informed look at the much-publicized Bishop Williamson case. They review the Bishop's controversial remarks on "the Holocaust," and what this affair means for Americans, Christians and the world. As Weber explains, the uproar over Williamson's much-criticized "Holocaust denial" statements is not really about historical truth or "hate," but about Jewish-Zionist power and its role in our culture. Audio recording of broadcast of Feb. 24, 2009. Runtime: 38:17 mins.
Incarcerated Revisionists: Write to Europe's Prisoners of Conscience
Write to Europe's most prominent prisoners of conscience, including Ernst Zündel, Horst Mahler and Sylvia Stolz. Here are the addresses of individuals who are behind bars in Germany and Austria for expressing dissident, "banned" views.
Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning
Ray McGovern
Nothing highlights President Barack Obama's abject surrender to Gen. David Petraeus on the "way forward" in Afghanistan more than two cables U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry sent to Washington on Nov. 6 and 9, 2009, the texts of which were released by the New York Times. No longer is it possible to suggest that Obama was totally deprived of good counsel on Afghanistan; Eikenberry got it largely right. Sadly, the inevitable conclusion is that, although Obama is not as dumb as his predecessor, he is no less willing to sacrifice thousands of lives for political gain.
U.S. Envoy's Cables Show Worries on Afghan Plans
The New York Times
The United States ambassador in Kabul warned his superiors here in November that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan "is not an adequate strategic partner" and "continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden," according to a classified cable that offers a much bleaker accounting of the risks of sending additional American troops to Afghanistan than was previously known ... "Sending additional forces will delay the day when Afghans will take over, and make it difficult, if not impossible, to bring our people home on a reasonable timetable," he wrote Nov. 6.
Mussolini Speeches Are Apple iTunes Hit
The Telegraph (Britain)
A collection of speeches by Benito Mussolini has become an unlikely and controversial hit on the internet. The speeches, the last of which was delivered in 1938 when Italy introduced laws which discriminated against Jews, are the second-most downloaded application on the Italian version of Apple's iTunes website. ... Since the application was launched on Jan 21, it has been downloaded about 1,000 times a day. "The first day it was downloaded only 55 times, the second day more than 600 and from the third day I had on average 1,000 downloads a day," Mr Marino said.
A Heated Exchange on Zionism's `Holocaust Industry'
"Cross Talk" -- RT television (Russia)
A heated exchange between two Jewish scholars on the legacy of the Holocaust today. It its memory being abused? Does Israel use "the Holocaust" as a political weapon? Norman Finkelstein, Jewish scholar and author of The Holocaust Industry, says that Israel and its defenders have used "the Holocaust" as a "shakedown racket" and a tool of "blackmail" in extorting money, for example from Swiss banks. Israel Charny, director of Israel's Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, responds with pious evasions and attacks Finkelstein's style and character. Runtime: 25:47 mins.
Holocaust Remembrance is a Boon for Israeli Propaganda
Gideon Levy - Haaretz (Israel)
... Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and an Israeli public relations drive like this hasn't been seen for ages ... A thousand speeches against anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Operation Cast Lead, flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world. As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized xenophobia, Holocaust speeches will remain hollow. As long as evil is rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to accept our preaching to others, even if they deserve it.
Jews Are A `Source of Problems,' Says Malaysian Ex-PM
JTA
Malaysia's former prime minister accused America's "Jewish lobby" of preventing President Obama from ending the war in Afghanistan. Local Malaysian media reported that Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who ruled the Muslim nation between 1981 and 2003, ... went on to say that Jews "had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom. Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world," he said.
Iraq Invasion Violated International Law, Dutch Inquiry Finds
The Guardian (Britain)
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a violation of international law, an independent inquiry in the Netherlands has found. In a damning series of findings on the decision of the Dutch government to support Tony Blair and George Bush in the strategy of regime change in Iraq, the inquiry found the action had "no basis in international law." The 551-page report, published today [Jan. 12] and chaired by former Dutch supreme court judge Willibrord Davids, said UN resolutions in the 1990s prior to the outbreak of war gave no authority to the invasion. "The Dutch government lent its political support to a war whose purpose was not consistent with Dutch government policy. The military action had no sound mandate in international law," it said.
Obama: A Hawk On Military Spending
Steve Chapman
Anyone who was hoping the administration would bring a modest downsizing of the nation's defense establishment and global military role has to be feeling like Bernard Madoff's investors. Escalation is underway in Afghanistan, the Army is expanding and the Pentagon is on the all-you-can-eat diet ... Anyone looking back 50 years from now at objective indicators would have trouble identifying a meaningful difference between the current president and the previous one ... Obama's policy on the war he once opposed is not similar to George W. Bush's: It is identical.
British Invasion of Iraq Was Illegal, Says Ex-Government Lawyer
Agence France Presse
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was illegal, a former top British government lawyer told a public inquiry into the war Tuesday, three days before ex-prime minister Tony Blair appears. "I considered that the use of force against Iraq in March 2003 was contrary to international law," Michael Wood, chief legal advisor to the Foreign Office between 1999 and 2006, told the Chilcot inquiry in London. "In my opinion, that use of force had not been authorised by the Security Council, and had no other legal basis in international law." Wood said he told ministers of his concerns but was brushed aside ...
Nazi Souvenirs on Sale in Israel
Ynet News (Israel)
If it happened in any other country, we'd be crying 'anti-Semitism!' but it's happening in the first Hebrew city in broad daylight. And yes, there are customers / ... Then I see medals, coins, banknotes and letters - all authentic, all from the time of the Third Reich, and all displayed in broad daylight in the first Hebrew city, on sale in exchange for Israeli currency. ... Hitler has yet to become a cultural icon - a situation soon to change, judging by the stalls at Tel Aviv's flea market.
Hitler's Fish Knife: The Trade in Nazi Memorabilia
BBC News
A look at the robust and growing trade in Nazi memorabilia. Audio recording of BBC report, including an interview with historian David Irving.
Television Under the Swastika
Spiegel TV (Germany)
A documentary look, with memorable images, at television in Third Reich Germany, which was a world leader in television technology and broadcasting. Runtime: 54:44 mins.
Meritocracy and Jewish Kinship Networks
Philip Weiss
.. .. How much of Jewish achievement reflects the fact that Jews look out for one another? When I had to get a partner on this website to keep it going, I was most comfortable getting another Jew. Years ago when I was at the Harvard Crimson newspaper, my Irish-Catholic friend Mary Ridge informed me that it was a "Jewish club"- we selected for our own kind; and the Crimson produced a lot of professional journalism talent. I have gotten most of my journalism work from Jewish bosses. Jews have kinship networks as strong as other people's, maybe more strong .. .. So I think some of the amazing record of Jewish achievement reflects discrimination; and Jews are powerful enough in this society that we ought to be conscious of that.
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.
Goebbels' Place in History
Mark Weber
No other name is so firmly associated with the term propaganda, conjuring lies and deceit, than that of Joseph Goebbels. But 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 ... It is also common to imagine that, however skilled, Goebbels was little more than a clever ranter who won support from his countrymen by appealing to base feelings of envy, revenge, conceit and arrogant pride.
Revealed: Jack Straw's Secret Warning to Tony Blair on Iraq
The Times (Britain)
A "Secret and Personal" letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair's plans for Iraq a year before war started. The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.
Settlement for Black Students Harassed by Other Blacks For `Acting White'
South Carolina Lawyers Weekly
Two Williamsburg County students and members of their family have reached a $150,000 settlement in what may be the first Title VI lawsuit based on claims of intra-racial discrimination in South Carolina public schools ... "Y ou have a culture where to act like you want to do well in school is considered acting white. And that is part of why we're saying that it was racial, even though the students were all of the same race because they weren't acting how the others thought they should be acting as members of that race," Kobrovsky said ... "You see, it's a crime to act white, or it's a crime to be white," the uncle testified.
Deconstructing Simon Wiesenthal
Lawrence Swaim
... In any case, it is now known that Wiesenthal, a born story-teller, rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story -- in fact many of the things he claimed to have done were fabrications. This recently came to light with the publication, in June of 2009, of Hunting Evil, by British Author Guy Walters, in which he characterizes Simon Wiesenthal as "a liar -- and a bad one at that." ... Wiesenthal's scant regard for the truth makes it possible to doubt everything he ever wrote or said." ... The Simon Wiesenthal Center is, rather, committed to using the Holocaust to raise money, and using the trauma associated with it to promote the Center's extremist political perspectives.
Simon Wiesenthal: Fraudulent `Nazi Hunter'
Mark Weber (1995)
.. .. 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.
Past War Offers Afghanistan Lessons. And It's Not Vietnam
CNN
... The Philippine-American War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902. The war is largely forgotten today, but it was a bloody preview of the type of warfare that the U.S. military faced in Asia and now in Afghanistan, historians say. "It was the 19th century version of Vietnam," said Edward Sheehy, a professor of military history at La Salle University in Pennsylvania ... Yet the United States won, in part, because it was willing to be brutal, some military historians say. According to an official State Department account of the war, at least 4,200 American soldiers, 20,000 Filipino combatants and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence and famine during the war.
The US Becomes an Imperial Power: 1898 and the Great Debate Over Overseas Expansion
John Ries and Mark Weber - Institute for Historical Review
Until the 1890s, America followed its traditional foreign policy of non-interventionism. The year 1898 was a landmark in the transition of the United States from a republic to an imperial power. Today, as Americans debate the merits of new military intervention in foreign lands, many of the arguments for and against such actions echo those made nearly a century ago, but with some interesting differences.
December Budget Deficit Sets Record
The Associated Press
The federal budget deficit hit an all-time high for the month of December, and the red ink for the first three months of the current budget year is rising at a more rapid pace than last year's record clip. The massive tide of red ink, reflecting the continued fallout from a deep recession and a severe financial crisis, highlights the challenge facing President Barack Obama as he pledges to get control of runaway deficits. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the deficit last month totaled $91.85 billion, the largest December deficit on record.
Why Osama is Winning
Eric Margolis
... Today, as we witness hysteria and chaos engulf America's air travel system, and the war party in Washington demands the US invade Yemen and attack Iran, we should recall Osama's ominous warning, "there will be no peace in America until there is peace in Palestine." ... The American colossus continues to stumble ever deeper into the Muslim world's violent, tangled affairs at a time when Washington is bankrupt and only runs on Chinese loans. In 2009, the US deficit was US $1.4 trillion ... America still refuses to face the hard reality that what drives anti-western violence is not Islam, as neocons claim, but Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.
One In Eight Americans Receives Food Stamps
Reuters
Some 37.9 million people -- one in eight Americans -- received food stamps to help buy food at latest count, the government said on Tuesday as enrollment set a record for the ninth month in a row. Participation has surged since the financial-market turmoil more than a year ago and has set a record each month since December 2008. The Agriculture Department said enrollment reached 37.9 million in October, the latest month for which figures are available, up 746,000 from the previous month. One in eight Americans "is the highest share of the U.S. population" ever in the program.
Wilhelm Marr's Seminal `Anti-Semitic' Booklet
Kevin MacDonald
Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) has gone down in history as the first racial anti-Semite. His signature work, The Victory of Judaism over Germanism: Viewed from a Nonreligious Point of View, expresses Marr's views on the conflict between Germans and Jews in a strikingly modern manner ... Marr's pamphlet contains a number of ideas that agree with modern theories and social science research on Jews, as well as some ideas that are less supported but interesting nonetheless. His ideas on future events are fascinating with the 20/20 hindsight of 130 years of history.
The Holocaust We Will Not See: Genocide in the Americas
George Monbiot
... Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas; the American nations were founded on them ... As genocide spread westwards, it was endorsed at the highest levels. George Washington ordered the total destruction of the homes and land of the Iroquois. Thomas Jefferson declared that his nation's wars with the Indians should be pursued until each tribe "is exterminated or is driven beyond the Mississippi". ... The final solutions pursued in the Americas were far more successful. Those who commissioned or endorsed them remain national or religious heroes. Those who seek to prompt our memories are ignored or condemned.
Obama Wants Record $708 Billion for Military Next Year
The Associated Press
President Barack Obama will ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned -- a request that could be an especially hard sell to some of the administration's Democratic allies. The extra $33 billion in 2010 would mostly go toward the expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war as part of an overhaul of the war strategy late last year.
US Military Spending: $700 Billion a Year, and We're Still Not Safe
David Wood - Politics Daily
On Dec. 19, 2009, President Obama authorized a military budget plan for a record $663 billion to defend the United States, the highest since World War II -- higher, adjusted for inflation, even than during the Korean and Vietnam wars ... Everywhere, it seems, Uncle Sam is struggling to regain its footing -- despite its vast spending on security. Counting outlays for the military, homeland defense, airport security, nuclear weapons, and other facets of defense, the United States will spend well over $700 billion for security this year, more than the rest of the world combined.
America is Losing the Free World
Gideon Rachman -- The Financial Times (Britain)
Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the "free world". But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world - Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey - are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran. The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs.
Another God That Failed: `Democratism'
Patrick J. Buchanan
... If democracy, from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, brings to power parties and politicians who, for reasons religious, racial or historic, detest the "white, rich Western world," why are we pushing democracy in these regions? ... If one-person, one-vote democracy in multiethnic countries leads to dispossession and persecution of the market-dominant minority, why would we promote democracy there? Why would we promote a system in an increasingly anti-American world that empowers enemies and imperils friends? Is democratism our salvation -- or an ideology of Western suicide?
Israel's Crisis
Philip Weiss
Just back from Israel/Palestine, the overwhelming sense I carry away is that the present state cannot last. Just how it goes down I have no idea. But conditions are so obviously discriminatory, and the knowledge of these conditions now so widespread- among the Christian pilgrims in my Jerusalem guesthouse, among European leaders, and now too among the Israeli elite and American left - that the situation is reminiscent of the delegitimizing of communism in the 70s and 80s. The period of apartheid struggle that Ehud Olmert warned of two years ago is upon us. So too his warning of possible "national suicide."
Prime Minister Blair's Private Pact with President Bush on Iraq
Guardian News Service (Britain)
Tony Blair privately assured President George Bush in letters written a year before the invasion of Iraq that Britain would "be there" in any US-led attack on the country, it was revealed at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war in London Tuesday ... The inquiry has also heard from senior British diplomats that regime change was being discussed by Mr. Blair in the US in 2002 even though, according to leaked documents, Lord Goldsmith, the then attorney general, warned Mr. Blair that military action aimed at regime change, as opposed to disarmament, would be unlawful.
Recording of German Officers Who Found Hitler's Body is Made Public
The Telegraph (Britain)
A tape recording of Nazi officers describing the moment they found Adolf Hitler's body in his Berlin bunker has been discovered. The recording was made on October 25, 1956, in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden, site of the Fuehrer's mountaintop home in Bavaria. The court was convened to officially declare the former leader of Nazi Germany dead so that his fortune and rights to his book "Mein Kampf" could be seized by the state government. Among those giving evidence that day were Otto Guensche, an SS officer, and Heinz Linge, a valet, who first discovered the corpses of Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun.
The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning
James Petras
... China has created scores of millions of manufacturing jobs, reduced poverty faster and for more people in the shortest time span in history. Its banks mostly finance production. China doesn't bomb, invade or ravage other countries. In contrast, US capitalism has been harnessed to a monstrous global military machine that drains the domestic economy and lowers the domestic standard of living in order to fund its never-ending foreign wars ...China's diversified growth is linked to dynamic economic partners; US militarism has tied itself to narco-states, warlord regimes, the overseers of banana republics and the last and worst bona fide racist colonial regime, Israel.
Israeli Brigadier-General Denies Iran is Nuclear Threat
The Times (Britain)
A general who was once in charge of Israel's nuclear weapons has claimed that Iran is a "very, very, very long way from building a nuclear capability". Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons. The views expressed by the former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission contradict the assessment of Israel's defence establishment and put him at odds with political leaders ... Eilam, who is thought to be updated by former colleagues on developments in Iran, calls his country's official view hysterical. "The intelligence community are spreading frightening voices about Iran," he said.
Can Oliver Stone Show Us the Human Side of Hitler?
The Independent (Britain)
Oliver Stone has never been one to spot a historical controversy without steaming towards it, but the latest project from the film-maker behind JFK and W threatens to pitch him into more dangerously hot water than ever before. The director is battening down the hatches already, saying he fully expects "ignorant attacks" on a new documentary series in which he is promising to "liberalise" Hitler and to finger US corporations for their role in the rise of National Socialism in Germany ... "I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalise them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... "
Hitler Had Leadership Potential, Said World War I Military Evaluation
The Associated Press
Adolf Hitler was only a lance corporal during World War I but his commanders saw the future German dictator's leadership potential as "very good". That's according to Bavarian military records added on Tuesday to the genealogy website Ancestry.com's database. The handwritten pages note the future Fuehrer's occupation as "artist" and say he was his regiment's bicycle dispatch rider at one point. He volunteered for service only about two weeks after the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 and fought in several battles before being gassed in 1918 and hospitalised. Hitler received both the Iron Cross 1st Class and 2nd Class for bravery.
In Ukraine, New Move to Honor World War II Nationalist Insurgents
The Washington Post
In World War II, members of the Ukrainian underground fought to make their vision of an independent nation real. They battled Hitler and Stalin. Ultimately they lost, and the Soviets took control of most of Eastern Europe after the war. The Ukrainians finally achieved independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Now many in this fledgling nation would like to formally recognize those earlier nationalists -- the "brave defenders of the Motherland," as President Viktor Yushchenko has called them. ... Many say the underground collaborated with the Nazis, killed thousands of Jews and perpetrated a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Poles.
Cancer: The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq
New American Media
Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment. Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25 percent of new-born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.
In Uganda, Witch Doctors Reveal Extent of Child Sacrifice
BBC News
A BBC investigation into human sacrifice in Uganda has heard first-hand accounts which suggest ritual killings of children may be more common than authorities have acknowledged. One witch-doctor led us to his secret shrine and said he had clients who regularly captured children and brought their blood and body parts to be consumed by spirits. Meanwhile, a former witch-doctor who now campaigns to end child sacrifice confessed for the first time to having murdered about 70 people, including his own son. The Ugandan government told us that human sacrifice is on the increase ...
A Decade Of High Unemployment Is Looming
The Associated Press
Call it the Terrible Teens. The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America's unemployed -- and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises. At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won't happen until much later -- perhaps not until the next decade. The deepest and most enduring recession since the 1930s has battered America's work force. The unemployed number 15.4 million. The jobless rate is 10 percent. More than 7 million jobs have vanished. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. And household income, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk in the past decade.
Nazis Left Dutch Gays Untouched, Says Historian
NRC Handelsblad (The Netherlands)
... In fact, very few of those people were persecuted in the Netherlands, says historian Anna Tijsseling, who obtained her doctoral degree at Utrecht University on Wednesday for her thesis Guilty Sex: Homosexual indecency offences around the German occupation. Actually, the legal prosecution of homosexuals was more intense before and immediately after the war, her research shows. Her conclusions counter the generally accepted view of Dutch homosexuals as victims of the Nazis. Tijsseling calls this image "a persistent fiction, created by the gay-emancipation movement in the 1970s."
Iran's President Calls For Compensation For Allies' World War II Invasion
Fox News
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country suffered after invasions during World War II and he will "stand to the end" to get full compensation, the Jerusalem Post reported. Ahmadinejad said he'd write to U.N. secretary General Ban Ki-moon to ask for compensation for damages caused to Iran during the war, and for use of its territory and resources by allied powers, the Post reported. Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran on August 26, 1941, to secure oil fields and supply lines for the Soviets. The Post notes the Iranians suffered when food, fuel, and other essentials were given to the invading powers.
Egypt Tombs Suggest Pyramids Not Built By Slaves
Reuters
New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday. Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts. "These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement. "If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's."
China Overtakes US in Car Sales
BBC News
China has said it overtook the United States to become the world's biggest car and van market in 2009. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said 13.6 million vehicles were sold within the country last year. That compares with just over 10 million vehicles in the US, which was previously the world's largest market. Unlike the US, China's figures include heavy trucks, but they added just 650,000 to the total. That meant China was still comfortably ahead in terms of private car sales, which were 53% higher than in 2008.
America's Can't Do List
Orville Schell -- Los Angeles Times
... In China today, you feel an unmistakable sense of energy and optimism in the air that, believe me, is bittersweet for an American pondering why the regenerative powers of his own country have gone missing. As I've traveled from China's gleaming, efficient airports to our often-chaotic and broken-down versions of the same, or ridden on Europe's high-speed trains that so sharply contrast with our clunky, slowly vanishing passenger rail system, I keep expanding my list of what works here at home and what doesn't ... American prowess and promise, once seemingly as much a permanent part of the global landscape as glaciers, mountains and oceans, seems to be melting away by the day, just like the great Himalayan ice fields.
Japan to Come Clean on Secret Nuke Deals With U.S.
The Associated Press
To the government's critics, it was a long and shocking act of official stonewalling: Agreements long hidden in Foreign Ministry files allowed nuclear-armed U.S. warships to enter Japanese ports, violating a hallowed principle of postwar Japan. Yet their very existence was officially denied. Now, in a clear break from the past, a new prime minister has gone where none of his predecessors dared go: He has ordered a panel of ministry officials and academics to investigate the secret agreements. The findings, due out this month, are part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's wide-ranging campaign to wrest power from the bureaucracy and make government more open ...
US Playing Al-Qaeda's Game
William Pfaff
... The real reason for attacking Westerners in the West, or in airplanes on the way there, is to provoke the Western governments to send more Western soldiers to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere in the Muslim world to attack Muslim jihadists on the Islamists' own ground, where the latter have tactical and human advantages that Western soldiers can never overcome. Instead, attack by Western soldiers and the building of Western military bases on the soil of Muslim countries radicalize and scandalize ordinary people, and undermine the governments of those countries that choose to align themselves with the invaders -- thereby, in the eyes of Islamic true believers, revealing themselves as traitors to orthodox Muslim belief.
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 ...
Interviews With Some Men Who Knew Hitler
PBS television
Several prominent Germans recall Hitler, including an outstanding World War II fighter pilot. Adolf Galland relates that Hitler emphasized to him, in a private conversation, how much he detested having to fight the English, whom he admired. (Britain declared war against Germany in 1939, and rejected Hitler's repeated offers of peace.) From the PBS television series "How Hitler Lost the War." Runtime: 2:00 mins.
A `Blatantly Anti-Semitic' Exchange on C-Span
Israel National News
A caller on a C-Span [US cable television] interview program Monday complained about "all these Jews" having "way too much power" in America and pushing the U.S. into wars with the Muslim world. He found his comments echoed and expanded upon by the studio guest. Michael Scheuer, the former director of a CIA unit assigned to track down Osama Bin-Laden, calmly expressed the view that American soldiers are now dying in Iraq for the sake of Israelis. He further claimed that any debate of American support for Israel is squelched in the public sphere. The interviewer for C-Span's Washington Journal program did not react to the blatantly anti-Semitic exchange.
Myths of the American Revolution
John Ferling -- Smithsonian Magazine
We think we know the Revolutionary War. After all, the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it not only determined the nation we would become but also continue to define who we are ... Yet much of what we know is not entirely true. Perhaps more than any defining moment in American history, the War of Independence is swathed in beliefs not borne out by the facts. Here, in order to form a more perfect understanding, the most significant myths of the Revolutionary War are reassessed ... In reality, Britain might well have won the war. The battle for New York in 1776 gave England an excellent opportunity for a decisive victory. France had not yet allied with the Americans. Washington and most of his lieutenants were rank amateurs.
Murray Rothbard, 1926-1995
Mark Weber
Uncompromisingly hostile to war and war propaganda, Rothbard was one of the few who remained true to his convictions even during the stifling Cold War era. Along with Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn and Harry Elmer Barnes, he continued steadfastly to oppose the US military-industrial complex and the military adventurism that is an integral part of its "perpetual war for perpetual peace" policy. Rothbard embraced historical revisionism in all its facets, including taboo issues of the Second World War.
Israeli Officers Cancel Visit to Britain for Fear of Arrest
The Associated Press
An Israeli military delegation has canceled an official visit to Britain, officials said Tuesday, the latest in a string of politicians and army officials to put off travel to the U.K. because of fears of war crimes prosecution. Israel complained that the practice, spearheaded by pro-Palestinian activists, is harming relations, and Britain's visiting attorney general said an urgent solution must be found. The Israelis called off their trip because their British army hosts could not guarantee they would not be arrested, the Israeli officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Neither the Israeli military nor the British government would comment.
Americans' Job Satisfaction Falls to Record Low
The Associated Press
We can't get no job satisfaction. Even Americans who are lucky enough to have work in this economy are becoming more unhappy with their jobs, according to a new survey that found only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work. That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue. In 2008, 49 percent of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs. The drop in workers' happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs. But worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades.
Obama Does a Louis XVI
Eric S. Margolis
...Thus the real cost of Afghanistan and Iraq are much higher than $200 billion annually. Yet President Obama, heedless of such costs, appears determined to expand the Afghan War. It seems clear that Obama has fallen increasingly under the influence of America's powerful military-industrial-financial complex and neoconservative war party. In short, the same calculus of forces that guided the Bush administration. Even America's mighty economy cannot for long support waging wars across the Muslim world. Unaffordable wars have been the ruin of many an empire, and the American Raj seems headed in the same direction as Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama plunges ever deeper into the Afghan quagmire.
Ben Stein Drops the A Bomb
Wikitopian -- Occidental Dissent
Larry King hosted a discussion between Ben Stein and Ron Paul on Monday that was ostensibly about the airline security fiasco. The discussion quickly turned into a heated debate between Stein and Paul about the root cause of the terrorist attack ... Stein may have merely slipped up and admitted the obvious: that the entire thing is about Jewish influence on our foreign policy. Rejecting Middle Eastern imperialism is anti-Semitic. The truth is anti-Semitic. But I don't think a man as intelligent and poised as he is would do something that consequential by accident. I believe this is the beginning of a sea change in political strategy, one in which a direct campaign tries to bury the Ron Paul Revolution and its Tea Party Movement under a tidal wave of negative publicity and accusations of neoheresy. Anti-Imperialism = Anti-Semitism.
Bended Knees: Zionist Power in American Politics
James Petras
... The major potential counterweight to Zionist Israel First hegemony in the US would be in a revival of patriotic working class consciousness. America's "special relation" with Israel has been at an enormous cost to the working class, amounting to over $1.5 trillion dollars in foreign aid, loan guarantees, hijacked technological innovations, lost overseas investment opportunities, not to mention the wars on Israel's behalf and the lost lives in fighting Israel's war in Iraq. There is a 'material base' for a mass patriotic working people's revolt against the crass submission of the entire political class to the ZPC and its patrons in Tel-Aviv.
A Look At the Jewish Lobby
Mark Weber (Audio MP3 file)
A factual, reasoned talk on the power of the "Jewish lobby" in America, and its harmful role, especially in directing US Middle East policy. Runtime:15:45 mins. "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."
Fascist Mothers: Children of British Blackshirt Women Cope With the Past
BBC News
Children of Blackshirt women, who joined Oswald Mosley's pro-Nazi British Union of Fascists, often feel that they have had to live with the burden of the guilt and shame caused by their mother's fascist sympathies ... In documentaries about the Blackshirts, the pictures I have seen are only of men, marching in the streets in their paramilitary uniforms. I knew about the daughters of the aristocracy, like Diana Mitford who married Oswald Mosley, but I had not realised that young girls, like my own mother, could have been sucked in too. But speaking to the historian Julie Gottlieb (author of Feminine Fascism) I was surprised to learn that the first fascist political organisation in Britain was actually founded by a woman.
Why `Holocaust Denial' is On the Rise in the Arab World
Gilbert Achcar -- Mediapart
... Within the Arab world where denial is riding high, there's not a single author who has produced anything original on that theme. All the Arab deniers do is pick up theories produced in the West ... At that level, there are two different aspects: the one that we've talked about, the war over the instrumentalization of the Holocaust, and there is what you could call the local version of competition between victims: "My tragedy is more important than yours." On the Palestinian side, one may often read statements that assert that the fate of the Palestinian people has been worse than that of the Jews under Nazism.
Revisionism and the Arab World
Dr. Ibrahim Alloush -- The Journal of Historical Review (2001)
... The "Holocaust" ceased long ago to be about the Jews who died in that war. The "Holocaust" is about Zionist power and policies. As stated, the "Holocaust" myths serve specific objectives: justifying Zionist settlement in Palestine; cultivating a guilt complex in the West over the "Holocaust" as the result of Western anti-Semitism; mobilizing Western public opinion behind financial, political, and military support for the Zionist movement; and condoning Zionist infractions of international law under the pretext that the wartime deaths of the Jews were unique and unparalleled in human history.
Auschwitz Site Complex Had Record 1.3 Million Visitors in 2009
Deutsche Presse Agentur
International interest in the most prominent symbol of the Nazi death machine, the Auschwitz concentration camp, remains high, with a record number of visitors in 2009, officials said Sunday. The erstwhile Auschwitz-Birkenau complex drew 1.3 million visitors last year, a record for the 62-year history of the memorial, the facility's press office reported. Well more than half the visitors - 821,000 - were young people, a matter of satisfaction since they are the world's future, said museum director Piotr M A Cywinski.
President Roosevelt Kept Deadly Disease Hidden for Years
New York Post
... It has long been known that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the last year of his life, was gravely ill with serious cardiac problems: He'd been diagnosed with acute heart failure in March 1944 and suffered from astronomically high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis. But what the public did not know was that four years earlier, while still in the second of his four terms as president, FDR had been diagnosed with a deadly skin cancer, melanoma, in a lesion over his left eyebrow. This disease would metastasize to Roosevelt's abdomen and his brain, causing a tumor that eventually killed him on April 12, 1945.
No-Fault Espionage
Philip Giraldi
... Spies are traitors in every sense of the word, unless, of course, if one is spying for Israel. Israel aggressively spies on the US both to influence policy and steal high technology, but getting caught only very rarely has any consequences. Leading neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and Stephen Bryen have all been detected in flagrante providing classified information to Israel but the investigations were halted and their security clearances were godfathered so they could continue to hold high office. FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported on the frustration of his colleagues over the many cases of Israeli espionage that are dropped under orders from the Justice Department.
US Public Pensions Face $2,000 Billion Shortfall
The Financial Times (Britain)
The US public pension system faces a higher-than-expected shortfall of more than $2,000 billion [two trillion dollars] that will increase pressure on many states' strained finances and crimp economic growth, according to the chairman of New Jersey's pension fund. The estimate by Orin Kramer will fuel investors' concerns over the deteriorating financial health of US states after the recession. "State and local governments are correctly perceived to be in serious difficulty," Mr Kramer told the Financial Times.
Honest Men
Taki Theodoracopulos -- Takimag
Let's start 2010 right and mention a few honest people in the news... Lastly I read Kevin Mac Donald's Cultural Insurrections, his essays on western civilization, Jewish influence, and anti-Semitism. Jewish influence is a much-discussed subject -- in private, that is. It is seldom the subject of dispassionate scientific analysis. MacDonald does not pull his punches. I read all three books in one week while partying non-stop as the year came to a close.
A Nobel Judge Who Admired Hitler
The Dominion Post -- Stuff (New Zealand)
Sven Hedin was one of Sweden's most famous scientists. Back in the early 1900s he explored Central Asia and Mongolia, and became an international cartographer, hydrographer, photographer and author of popular travel books ... In 1905 Hedin was appointed one of 18 judges on the Nobel Prize Committee. He continued voting on nominees until 1949. In the 1930s, he came to admire Adolf Hitler and often visited him ... "He was a hypnotic talker, a fascinating man. I also made friends with Goebbels, Himmler, Goering and Doenitz."
Where Do Jews Come From?
Evan R. Goldstein -- The Wall Street Journal
... Enter Shlomo Sand. In a new book, "The Invention of the Jewish People," the Tel Aviv University professor of history argues that large numbers of Khazar Jews migrated westward into Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, where they played a decisive role in the establishment of Eastern European Jewry. The implications are far-reaching: If the bulk of Eastern European Jews are the descendents of Khazars -- not the ancient Israelites -- then most Jews have no ancestral links to Palestine. Put differently: If most Jews are not Semites, then what justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East?
Israel Rules
Paul Craig Roberts
... In the second decade of the 21st century, America's Zionist wars against Islam will expand. America's wars in behalf of Israel's territorial expansion will complete the bankruptcy of America ... America has been brought low, both morally and economically, by its obeisance to the Israel Lobby. Even Jimmy Carter, a former President of the United States and Governor of Georgia recently had to apologize to the Israel Lobby for his honest criticisms of Israel's inhumane treatment of the occupied Palestinians in order for his grandson to be able to run for a seat in the Georgia state senate. This should tell the macho super-power American tough guys who really runs "their" country.
Local Holocaust Museums Grow Amid Worries About Future
Forward (New York)
The numbers speak for themselves: There are now 16 Holocaust museums in the United States, from Albuquerque, N.M., to Houston, to Richmond, Va. And these are just the biggest of nearly 150 Holocaust centers all over the country. The proliferation of museums detailing the story of what happened to European Jewry during World War II has been largely a phenomenon of the 1990s, part of the general increase in Holocaust awareness in the culture at large. But it has by no means slowed.
A Decade of Self-Delusion
Patrick J. Buchanan
... We have a government that cannot balance its books, defend its borders or win its wars. And what is it now doing? Drafting another entitlement program as we are informed that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have unfunded liabilities in the trillions. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the question is not whether we will preside over the creation of a New World Order, but whether America's decline is irreversible.
Why They Hate Us: On Military Occupation
Stephen M. Walt
... The bottom line is that you don't need to be a sociologist, political scientist, or a student of colonialism or foreign cultures to understand why military occupation is such a poisonous activity and why it usually fails. If you're an American, you just need to read a bit about Reconstruction and reflect on how its effects -- along with the effects of slavery itself -- have persisted across generations. If that's not enough, visit a society that is currently experiencing occupation, and take the time to go through a checkpoint or two. Then you might understand why the local population doesn't view the occupying forces as benevolent and isn't as grateful as occupiers often think they ought to be.
Operation Cast Lead: Anniversary of Israel's Gaza Strike
Uri Avnery
... The Gaza War - from the decision to throw the army into a densely populated area to the use of white phosphorus and flechette munitions - has raised a dark cloud over Israel. The Goldstone report, coming as it did after the gruesome pictures broadcast throughout the war by all the world's TV networks, has produced a terrible impression. Hundreds of millions of people saw and heard, and their attitude towards Israel has changed for the worse. This will have far-reaching impact on the decisions of governments, the attitude of the media and in thousands of big and small decisions concerning Israel.
Israelis View Foreign Media as 'Anti-Semitic'
European Jewish Press
Nearly three-quarters of Israelis view the foreign media as being negative towards Israel, according to a recent poll revealed by Professor Avraham Tzion of Ariel University Center, located in the West Bank. Speaking at the annual conference on media and communications held there, he said the survey also showed that 88 percent of the respondents cited anti-Semitism as the main reason for Israel's negative image.
Inside Story of the Hess Flight: Hitler's Peace Offer to Britain
The American Mercury (1943)
... Hitler offered total cessation of the war in the West. Germany would evacuate all of France except Alsace and Lorraine, which would remain German. It would evacuate Holland and Belgium, retaining Luxembourg. It would evacuate Norway and Denmark. In short, Hitler offered to withdraw from Western Europe, except for the two French provinces and Luxembourg, in return for which Great Britain would agree to assume an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards Germany as it unfolded its plans in Eastern Europe. In addition, the Führer was ready to withdraw from Yugoslavia and Greece.
Americans Are Hell-Bent on Tyranny
Paul Craig Roberts
... In the US, of course, there is no such attempt to hold to account Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the large number of war criminals that comprised the Bush Regime. Indeed, Obama, whom Republicans love to hate, has gone out of his way to protect the Bush cohort from being held accountable. Here in Great Moral America we only hold accountable celebrities and politicians for their sexual indiscretions ... Apparently, Americans regard sexual infidelity as far more serious than invading countries on the basis of false charges and deception, invasions that have caused the deaths and displacement of millions of innocent people.
Sigmund Freud Saved by Nazi Admirer
The Times (Britain)
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was saved from Hitler's persecution of the Jews by a long-standing Nazi who was fascinated with his work, a new book reveals. The fate of Freud and his family in Vienna hung in the balance after Hitler's forces took over Austria in 1938. The psychoanalyst was first protected, then helped to escape to Britain, by Anton Sauerwald, a Nazi who had been put in charge of his assets. In twists of Freudian complexity, Sauerwald was put on trial after the Second World War accused of plundering the Freud family wealth -- only to be saved after the intervention of one of Freud's daughters.
China Executions Shrouded in Secrecy
BBC News
Opponents of the death penalty condemn China's record on a number of fronts. Firstly, there is the secrecy surrounding the judicial process that makes it impossible to find out whether the accused has had a fair trial or not. That means of course that it is uncertain how many criminals are executed here. Human rights groups based abroad estimate that China executes more people each year than the rest of the world put together - although there is quite a disparity between their figures. It will be around 5,000 in 2009, down from 6,000 in 2007, according to the US-based Dui Hua Foundation. Amnesty International's figure is lower.
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.
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.
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.
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An Ethnie without a sense of peoplehood will end up being used to achieve the goals of other ethnies. -- Feb. 2010, Michael Santomauro
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
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