Congressional Estimates Show Grim Deficit Picture
The Associated Press
A new congressional report released Friday says the United States' long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama's grim budget submission last month. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That's $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration. The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration's ... Economists say that deficits of that size are unsustainable and could put upward pressure on interest rates, crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation's standard of living.
Bad Economies of US States Set To Worsen, Say Governors
Reuters
The already gloomy conditions of states' economies are set to worsen, according to preliminary survey findings from the National Governors Association released on Saturday. "The situation is fairly poor for a lot of states around the country. In fact, most states," Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, who is chairman of the association, said at a press conference at its annual meeting. "What we're finding out from a fiscal standpoint is that the worst is yet to come," Douglas said. In a survey conducted last week of 45 of the 50 states, the group found that states have $18.8 billion of budget gaps yet to be closed in fiscal 2010 ... In the budgets they are drafting for fiscal 2011, states foresee shortfalls of $53.6 billion and for fiscal 2012 $61.6 billion.
America, the Fragile Empire
Niall Ferguson
... If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time -- it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion -- about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II.
A German Woman Breaks Silence About Red Army Rapes
The Telegraph (Britain)
An 80-year-old German woman has broken an old taboo of silence over the rapes she endured at the hands of Soviet soldiers in the second world war with a searing book about the crimes of the Red Army as it marched towards Berlin. "Why Did I Have To Be A Girl" by Gabriele Koepp is the first book published about the rapes under a victim's real name. Mrs Koepp was one of an estimated two million German girls and women raped by Soviet soldiers, encouraged by their leader Josef Stalin to regard the crime as a spoil of war after Hitler's invasion had left 26 million Russians dead. "Frau. Komm," was a phrase that women dreaded hearing from Red Army soldiers.
In Spain, Bookseller Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for `Justifying Genocide'
JTA
A Barcelona bookshop owner was sentenced to prison for the crime of "honoring and justifying genocide." Pedro Varela, owner of the Europa bookshop, was given a term of two years, nine months for "selling and spreading in a continuous manner books that honor and justify the genocide committed by Hitler against the Jewish people and other minorities." The sentence, which was handed down Monday in a Barcelona court, also accused the bookshop of marketing "books that belittle other races or ethnicities, women, homosexuals and disabled people," as well as organizing neo-Nazi conferences. Varela also was fined nearly $4,000.
Invictus Idolatry
Peter Hammond (South Africa)
... This beautifully crafted, stirring and inspiring film, Invictus, clearly has a political agenda. It has dangerous distortions of reality and a selective focus ... Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. He had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela's MK terrorists. South African President P.W. Botha had, on a number of occasions, offered Nelson Mandela freedom from prison, if he would only renounce terrorist violence.
Israel-Palestine Rights and Wrongs: Finkelstein vs. Gissin
RT (Russia) - Video
Rights and wrongs in the Israel-Palestine conflict are debated in this heated exchange between Norman Finkelstein, a fierce and articulate Jewish critic of Israel and its policies, and Ranann Gissin, an ardent defender of the Zionist state and for years a prominent Israeli spokesman. Broadcast on Peter Lavelle's "CrossTalk." Runtime: 26 mins.
British Leader Chamberlain Read and Annotated Hitler's Mein Kampf
The Times (Britain)
Neville Chamberlain read and annotated Hitler's Mein Kampf in its original German before he embarked on his policy of appeasement, says a new biography. The former prime minister, who acquired a 1933 copy of the book, highlighted sections that he thought revealing of the German dictator's mindset, and even added exclamation marks alongside some passages. Chamberlain was struck by sections that underlined Hitler's anti-Semitism, his faith in Aryan superiority and his sense of racial affinity with the British. In one highlighted passage about Anglo-German relations, Hitler states: "The bond of kindred blood and the main features of a common civilisation united us."
The Pentagon's Runaway Budget
Carl Conetta
With his decision to boost defense spending, President Obama is continuing the process of re-inflating the Pentagon that began in late 1998 -- fully three years before the 9/11 attacks on America. The FY 2011 budget marks a milestone, however: The inflation-adjusted rise in spending since 1998 will probably exceed 100 percent in real terms by the end of the fiscal year ... Looking forward, the Obama administration plans to spend more on the Pentagon over the next eight years than any administration since World War II.
Many Voices Calling for War With Iran
Philip Giraldi
Wanting to go to war with Iran has created some very strange bedfellows. Leading neoconservative Daniel Pipes' assertion that President Barack Obama can salvage his presidency and get reelected by attacking Iran is about as low as it gets, suggesting as it does that an act of war can and should serve as a diversion from a failed domestic agenda ... How to stop an Israeli attack? All the White House has to do is to say "no" to Israel firmly and publicly and tie that no to a commitment to cut off all military and economic aid to Tel Aviv if Bibi Netanyahu opts to do otherwise.
Debate Over Military Action Against Iran Gains Steam
Jim Lobe - Inter Press Service
While the ongoing U.S. military "surge" in Afghanistan continues to capture the headlines, Iran's nuclear program - and how best to deal with it - is rapidly emerging here as this year's biggest foreign policy challenge ... The debate appears to be driven chiefly by growing pressure on the administration by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and its supporters here to sharply ramp up pressure on Tehran through the urgent adoption of both "crippling sanctions" and the means to enforce them militarily.
President Roosevelt's Campaign To Incite War in Europe
Mark Weber
A detailed look at US President Roosevelt's secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. Highlights his efforts to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany in 1938 and 1939. Franklin Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war that had already engulfed Europe, he bears a grave responsibility for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time. This paper relies heavily on secret Polish documents that fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in 1939. These revealing documents also confirm the crucial role of Jewish power and in fluence on US foreign policy during these years.
Is the Recovery Real?
Paul Craig Roberts
... Today a desperate government, which has wasted $3 trillion invading countries that pose no danger to the U.S. and wasted more trillions of dollars combating a crisis brought on by the government's failure to regulate the financial sector, is likely to steal people's pensions as well as to gut Social Security and Medicare. The reason is that the dollar's role as reserve currency is at stake. If the Federal Reserve has to monetize the federal deficit, the world will turn its back on a rapidly depreciating dollar. The minute the dollar loses the reserve currency role, the U.S. can no longer pay its bills in its own currency, and its days as a superpower come to a sudden end. Wars can't be financed, and Washington's pursuit of world hegemony will hit a brick wall.
Mossad Comes to America: Death Squads by Invitation
James Petras
... To counter the American Zionist defense of Israel's practice of extra-territorial, extra-judicial executions by the Mossad, we need American writers and academics to step forward. It is time to expose their flimsy arguments, bold-face lies and audacious immorality. It is time to speak out against their impunity, before another Israeli secret police murder takes place, possibly inside the USA itself and with the shameless complicity of Zionist accomplices.
Online Ad by `Denier' In Student Newspaper Sparks Campus Protests
Channel 3000 (Wisconsin)
Issues of free speech, advertising and the Holocaust clashed on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus on Wednesday as about 150 students rallied to honor the victims of the Holocaust and call for an end to an ad in a campus newspaper. The controversy was sparked by some anti-Semitic comments posted on an online version of a Badger Herald article earlier this month. It erupted when the online edition of the student paper posted an ad paid for by a man who doesn't believe in the Holocaust ... An advertisement that reads, "The Holocaust question: the power of taboo." Click on the ad and it goes to the Web site of the man who bought the ad, Holocaust denier Bradley Smith and his "Committee For Open (Holocaust) Debate."
Another Financial Crisis on the Way, Say Leading Economists
ABC News
Even as many Americans still struggle to recover from the country's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, another crisis -- one that will be even worse than the current one -- is looming, according to a new report from a group of leading economists, financiers, and former federal regulators. In the report, the panel, that includes Rob Johnson of the United Nations Commission of Experts on Finance and bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren, warns that financial regulatory reform measures proposed by the Obama administration and Congress must be beefed up to prevent banks from continuing to engage in high risk investing that precipitated the near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008.
U.S. Can't Afford Military Aid to Israel
Josh Ruebner -- The Huffington Post
In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama pledged to "go through the budget line by line to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work." One week later, he sent his FY2011 budget request to Congress, which included a record-breaking $3 billion in military aid to Israel. This requested increase in U.S. weapons to Israel -- part of a ten-year $30 billion agreement signed between the two countries in 2007 -- qualifies on both counts as a program that the United States can't afford, and that doesn't work in establishing a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel Approves 600 New Homes in Occupied East Jerusalem
BBC News
An Israeli planning committee has pushed forward plans for 600 new homes in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. The move comes as the Palestinians are refusing to restart peace talks unless Israel stops all building in the area, where they want their future capital. The plan will expand the Pisgat Zeev settlement in the city's north-east. The international community considers East Jerusalem occupied territory. Building on occupied land is illegal under international law. Palestinians regard Pisgat Zeev and neighbourhoods like it as settlements, and accuse Israel of using them to increase the Jewish presence in the mainly Arab east of the city.
Ernst Zundel Released From Mannheim Prison
Video
Supporters and well-wishers of Ernst Zundel greet him as he leaves the Mannheim prison on March 1, 2010, after having been held behind bars for seven years and three weeks for his beliefs, in the US, Canada and Germany. Runtime: 9:52 mins.
Germany's Fear of Finkelstein
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Norman Finkelstein, an internationally renowned scholar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was due to talk about the state of the decades-old conflict and the situation in Gaza one year after the Israeli assault last week in Munich and Berlin. As part of a European speaking tour which would have led him to Germany for the first time since 2002, Finkelstein has been invited to speak in Prague at a number of prestigious institutions ... The wave of cancellations came after a concerted campaign by neoconservative and Zionist pressure groups ...
Austrian Politician Calls for Repeal of Anti-Nazi Law
The Associated Press
A woman who has criticized anti-Nazi law and is married to an extreme rightist is running for president in Austria, and critics contend her candidacy could tarnish the reputation of a country still marred by its connection to the Holocaust. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, is not expected to win the April 25 election ... She is most widely known for her belief that Austria's law banning the glorification of the Nazis is a hindrance to freedom of expression and violates the country's constitution. In the same vein, she also has defended doubts over Nazi gas chambers.
Hitler Letter Hoping For `Cordial Relationship' With Britain For Sale
The Telegraph (Britain)
A letter written by Adolf Hitler in 1931 hoping for a "truly cordial relationship" between Britain and Germany in place of the present "unhappy war-psychosis" is to be sold at auction. Hitler wrote the one-page letter, in German, to Sefton Delmer, a British journalist, 16 months before he became Chancellor and seized power in 1933. In it, he wrote: "I hope ... that out of this crisis a new readiness will grow up in Britain to submit the past 12 years to a reappraisal. I should be happy, if as a result of this, the unhappy war-psychosis could be overcome on such a scale as to permit the realisation of the truly cordial relationship between the British and the German peoples so eagerly desired by myself and my movement."
Blair Warned in 2000 That Iraq War Was Illegal
The Independent (Britain)
An invasion of Iraq was discussed within the [British] government more than two years before military action was taken - with Foreign Office mandarins warning that an invasion would be illegal, that it would claim "considerable casualties" and could lead to the breakdown of Iraq, The Independent can reveal. The extent of Whitehall opposition to the policy eventually backed by Tony Blair emerges just three days before Gordon Brown will appear at the Iraq Inquiry, where he will be asked to explain his role in the Government's decision to invade.
--
Peace. Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
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