When It Comes to Innovation, Is America Becoming a Third World Country?
Arianna Huffington
... Once upon a time, the United States was the world's dominant innovator -- partly because we didn't have much competition. As a result of the destruction wreaked by WWII, the massive migration of brainpower to the U.S. caused by the war, and huge amounts of government spending, America had the innovation playing field largely to itself. None of these factors exist as we enter the second decade of the 21st century ... Adding to the problem is the sense that America's best days may be behind us. Many economists and historians are warning that our current economic downturn has created a new normal. That the country will never be the same.
The Disemboweling of America
Patrick J. Buchanan
... The last decade was the first in history where government employed more workers than manufacturing, a stunning development to those of us who remember an America where nearly one-third of the U.S. labor force was producing almost all of our goods and much of the world's, as well ... No nation rose to world power on free trade. From Britain after 1860 to America after 1960, free trade has been the policy of powers that put consumption before production and today before tomorrow. Nations rise on economic nationalism; they descend on free trade.
Russia and Poland Remember Katyn Massacre
BBC News
The Russian and Polish prime ministers have together marked the 1940 Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish troops, in an unprecedented move. Russia's Vladimir Putin had invited Poland's Donald Tusk to the ceremony commemorating the massacre. The Soviet secret police was responsible, but for half a century the Soviet Union blamed it on the Nazis. Both leaders spoke of reconciliation at Wednesday's ceremony, though their statements appeared qualified. "A lie was told for decades, but we cannot blame the Russian people for it," said Mr Putin.
Hungarians Not Happy With Democracy
Pew Global Attitudes Project
With Parliamentary elections approaching, Hungarians are in a funk. Nearly unanimously, they say the economy is in bad shape, and a stunning 72% say most Hungarians are actually worse off now economically than they were under communism. But Hungary's malaise is not all about economics -- most are frustrated with politics too. Overwhelmingly, Hungarians are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working and discontent with political elites, with about three-in-four saying political corruption is a major problem.
Israel is `Main Threat to Peace,' Says Turkish Prime Minister
BBC News
Turkey's Prime Minister has described Israel as the "main threat to peace" in the Middle East. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was speaking during a visit to Paris. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded saying he regretted Turkey's "repeated attacks" on Israel. Relations between the two countries have been worsening since the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip in 2009, made worse by a recent diplomatic row. Mr Erdogan was speaking to journalists before meeting the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "It is Israel that is the main threat to regional peace," he said. "If a country uses disproportionate force, in Palestine, in Gaza, uses phosphorus bombs we are not going to say 'well done.'"
On the Road To Canossa: Netanyahu and Obama
Uri Avnery
... This sheds light on a tried and tested Zionist method. When an unofficial consensus about the division of the land between Israel and Palestine is reached, the Israeli government says: OK, now that there is agreement about the land we are getting, let's talk about the rest of the land. Mine is mine, now let's negotiate about what is yours. The existing Jewish neighborhoods are ours already. There we are free to build without limitation. It remains only to decide upon the Arab neighborhoods, where we also intend to build ... That is not just a "crisis" anymore. It is something really momentous: a basic change in the policy of the US. The American ship in the Middle East is making a large turn, and this is taking a long time.
The `Jewish Soap' Fable
Mark Weber
One of the most lurid and slanderous Holocaust claims is the story that the Germans manufactured soap from the bodies of their victims. Although a similar charge during the First World War was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterwards, it was nevertheless revived and widely believed during the Second. More important, this accusation was "proved" at the main Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, and has been authoritatively endorsed by numerous historians in the decades since. In recent years, though, as part of a broad retreat from the most obviously untenable aspects of the "orthodox" extermination story, Holocaust historians have grudgingly conceded that the human soap tale is a wartime propaganda lie.
Entitlement Rip-Offs: Social Security and Medicare
John Stossel
... It wasn't the biggest [Ponzi scheme]. Social Security and Medicare are much bigger ones. These are trillion-dollar scams. Medicare has a $36 trillion unfunded liability. Social Security's is $8 trillion. There's no money to keep those promises. But Congress isn't investigating this scam. Congress runs it. That FICA money you thought government had saved for your retirement is gone. There's nothing left but IOUs backed by nothing. Your money was spent not only on current retirees but on wars, welfare, corporate bailouts, earmarks and all the other stuff Congress wants. For years, this was possible because the FICA tax brought in surpluses that allowed government to pay retirees more than they contributed and still help buy those other things.
California Public Pensions Underfunded by $500 Billion, Study Shows
The Associated Press
California's public pension funds are underfunded by as much as $500 billion, according to a Stanford University study that was commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and released Monday. The shortfall could create a major financial crisis for the state. And California is not alone: States around the country are facing massive shortfalls in their pension and retiree health care obligations. The estimated California shortfall applies to the retirement systems for its state and local government workers, teachers and University of California employees - about 2.6 million retirees.
Behind the Massive Underfunding of California Public Pensions
Los Angeles Times
The state of California's real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported ... To put that number in perspective, it's almost seven times greater than all the outstanding voter-approved state general obligation bonds in California ... For decades -- and without voter consent -- state leaders have been issuing billions of dollars of debt in the form of unfunded pension and healthcare promises, then gaming accounting rules in order to understate the size of those promises ... In California's case, past pension underfunding means reduced funding of current programs. This explains why pension costs rose 2,000% from 1999 to 2009, while state funding for higher education declined over the same period.
Israel May Attack Iran By November, Warns Former High-Ranking Israeli Official
Newsmax
Israel will be compelled to attack Iran's nuclear weapons facilities by this November unless the U.S. and its allies enact "crippling sanctions that will undermine the regime in Tehran," former deputy defense minister Brig. Gen. Ephraim Sneh said on Wednesday in Tel Aviv ... In an Op-Ed in the Israeli left-wing daily, Haaretz, Sneh argues that Iran will probably have "a nuclear bomb or two" by 2011. "An Israeli military campaign against Iran's nuclear installations is likely to cripple that country's nuclear project for a number of years. The retaliation against Israel would be painful, but bearable."
What War with Iran Means
Patrick J. Buchanan
... As to who starts it, we know the answer. Tehran has not started a war in memory and is not going to launch a suicide attack on a superpower with thousands of nuclear weapons. As with Iraq in 2003, the war will be launched by the United States against a nation that did not attack us -- to strip it of weapons it does not have. But to Graham's point, if we are going to start this war, prudence dictates that we destroy Iran's ability to fight back. At a minimum, we would have to use air strikes and cruise missiles to hit a range of targets ... Before the War Party stampedes us into yet another war, the Senate should find out if Tehran is really on the "verge" of getting a bomb, and why deterrence, which never failed us, cannot succeed with Iran.
Journalist on the Run From Israel is Hiding in Britain
The Independent (Britain)
An Israeli journalist is in hiding in Britain, The Independent can reveal, over fears that he may face charges in the Jewish state in connection with his investigation into the killing of a Palestinian in the West Bank. Uri Blau, a reporter at Israel's liberal newspaper, Haaretz, left town three months ago for Asia and is now in London. Haaretz is understood to be negotiating the terms of his return to Israel with prosecutors, according to an Israeli source, who declined to be identified, because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Hitler's Art Academy Sketches Up For Sale
CNN
A British auction house plans to sell off newly discovered sketches done by Adolf Hitler when he was a struggling student trying desperately to get into art school. The twelve charcoal and crayon sketches cover "typical student subjects" and don't display a great deal of promise, Mullock's Auctioneers said. They include two drawings of an elderly woman thought to be Hitler's mother, as well as studies of objects, landscapes, models, and even a Roman senator. All are signed and some even have Hitler's Vienna address, Mullock's said. The sale also includes the original portfolio in which Hitler kept the sketches, which is signed and has his address, Mullock's said.
The Crisis That Wasn't
Philip Giraldi
... Lest there be any confusion about what happened, the White House said "Thou shalt not" and Bibi Netanyahu responded "I shall" with Bibi left standing at the end. AIPAC managed to get the support of nearly every congressman who mattered, including many leaders from Obama's own party ... The propaganda spewed at the current AIPAC conference makes it equally clear that Israel and its supporters are the leading advocates of an attack on Iran and their victory over Obama will only embolden them. Israel can trigger a war by bombing Iran and provoking retaliation that will draw the United States in and there is nothing Washington can do to stop that.
Obama Squeezed Between Israel and Iran
Pepe Escobar -- Asia Times
... AIPAC arm-twisted members of the US Congress to sign a letter to the White House calling for the US to bypass the United Nations Security Council and unilaterally sanction Iran . And AIPAC also urged lawmakers to pass with no comments the annual US$3 billion US aid to Israel . This means the new made-in-USA F-35 fighter jets Israel buys will be basically financed by US taxpayers. No surprises here. This is a congress that backed Israel 's assault in Gaza in late 2008 and condemned the Goldstone Report on Israeli atrocities in that conflict by a vote of 334 to 36. After all, the Democratic party depends heavily on very wealthy Jewish - and Zionist - donors for a chunk of its budget.
Israel Fears Obama Heading For Imposed Mideast Settlement
Ari Shavit -- Haaretz ( Israel )
U.S. President Barack Obama's demands during his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday point to an intention to impose a permanent settlement on Israel and the Palestinians in less than two years, political sources in Jerusalem say. Israeli officials view the demands that Obama made at the White House as the tip of the iceberg under which lies a dramatic change in U.S. policy toward Israel ... It is not just Obama's demands that are perceived as problematic, but also the new modus operandi of American diplomacy. The fact that the White House and State Department have been in contact with Israel 's European allies, first and foremost Germany , is seen as part of an effort to isolate Israel and put enormous political pressure on it.
Topic Of German Expulsion Still Taboo
The Record ( Canada )
It's a dark chapter in world history that many know nothing about, that others refuse to acknowledge. It concerns the expulsion of millions of Germans living in Eastern Europe after the Second World War, from such places as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and eastern areas of Germany ... While casualty estimates vary, many historians -- including Alfred de Zayas, whose books Nemesis at Potsdam and A Terrible Revenge were among the first English works to chronicle the tragedy -- believe that two million Germans died as a result. ... "If I only deal with one category of victims, and deliberately ignore the experience of other victims, I am essentially taking away the human dignity of the other," he said. "I'm essentially saying my corpses are prettier than your corpses."
A Forgotten Genocide: Germans in Postwar Central Europe
Tom Sunic - Institute for Historical Review - Audio
Dr. Sunic provides an overview of the brutal "ethnic cleansing" of Germans in the aftermath of World War Two, in which some twelve million people, mostly women, children and elderly, were forcibly expelled from centuries-old homelands in eastern and central Europe. Of these, some two million were killed or otherwise perished. In this address at an IHR meeting, March 6, 2010, the European-American scholar contrasts the way in which this massive genocide is all but ignored in the US media, whereas Jewish "victimology" has become a central feature of our society's "civic religion."
Making Political Writing Into An Art: George Orwell
Jean-Christophe Peuch -- Radio Free Europe
... It was during this period that Orwell developed the taste for the simple, bohemian lifestyle that marked the rest of his years. It was also the time that spawned his deep political commitment. The former British colonial policemen had already nurtured a profound distaste for any form of imperialism, but had not yet begun to think of himself as a socialist ... While Orwell was polishing "1984" on the Scottish island of Jura , he became ill and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He died in a London hospital on 21 January 1950, at the age of 46. In the words of his biographer, Orwell has marked his place in the history of literature as a man who succeeded in "making political writing into an art." But for him, politics and literature were equally important.
New Head of AIPAC is Former Obama Aide
Israel National News
Lee "Rosy" Rosenberg, a jazz recording industry veteran capitalist who accompanied U.S. President Barack Obama on his campaign trip to Israel two years ago, takes over on Sunday as the new president of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosenberg also served on the president's national campaign finance committee. The new AIPAC president hails from Chicago , the home state of President Obama, and also is on first-name terms with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, President Obama's senior advisor.
Judea Declares War On Obama
Gilad Atzmon
... Jewish lobbies certainly do not hold back when it comes to pressuring states, world leaders and even super powers. AIPAC's behavior last week reminded me of the Jewish declaration of war against Nazi Germany in 1933. Not many people are aware that in March 1933, before Hitler became the undisputed leader of Germany and began restricting the rights of German Jews, the American Jewish Congress announced a massive protest at Madison Square Gardens and called for an American boycott of German goods ... Jewish texts tend to glaze over the fact that Hitler's March 28, 1933, order calling for a boycott against Jewish stores and goods was an escalation in direct response to the declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.
Pentagon Wants $33 Billion More For War in Afghanistan
The Christian Science Monitor
The Pentagon wants $33 billion in additional funding to pay for the war in Afghanistan this year and train the Afghan military, but members of Congress want to make sure they're not writing a blank check. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared before Senate appropriators to defend the war supplemental, which is on top of the $708 billion baseline budget submitted to Congress in February. Most of the war supplemental - a separate account used to pay for war costs - will pay for Afghanistan operations.
Afghan War Will Be Won With Talks, Not Troops
Eric Margolis
... The bloody Afghan conflict can only be ended by genuine peace negotiations and withdrawal of all foreign troops. U.S. commanders in Afghanistan admit they have lost the military initiative. The resistance is steadily gaining ground. Increasing U.S. and allied troops to 150,000 won't be enough to defeat Taliban. By year end, U.S. and NATO forces will only equal the number of Soviet forces committed to Afghanistan in the 1980s. Meanwhile Pakistan , without whose co-operation the U.S. cannot wage war in Afghanistan , is in turmoil.
Helen Thomas' Unanswered Question for Obama
Real News Network
In this interview with Helen Thomas, longest-serving member of the White House Press Corps, Paul Jay asks her about her first question for President Obama. The question, asking Obama to name all the countries in the Middle-East that have nuclear weapons, was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to "speculate". Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in Washington , DC , and Obama's answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region.
North Korea on the Edge
B.R. Myers -- The Wall Street Journal
... The regime seems increasingly unlikely to last out the decade, even if the planned hand-off of power to the Dear Leader's son Kim Jong Eun goes off without a hitch. The economy is only part of the problem ... Such misery prevailed in the mid-1990s too, but at least then the regime admitted an economic crisis, even as it mostly blamed the Yankees. Now it talks of a country transforming itself from one year to the next. No dictatorship can afford to lie so stupidly to its people, or to raise public expectations that will be dashed in a matter of months ... The possibility of a violent, potentially apocalyptic regime collapse in North Korea within the decade is one that all countries with an interest in the region should keep in mind.
Row Over Plan By Jewish Shop Owner to Sell Holocaust `Human Soap'
The Gazette ( Canada )
A vendor's claim that soap for sale in his Montreal trinket shop is made from the corpses of Second World War victims was greeted yesterday with both outrage and ridicule. But Montreal police said they are investigating after B'nai Brith League for Human Rights lodged a complaint under a Criminal Code ban on violating human remains. The story surfaced after a CBC radio reporter disclosed that a curio shop on St. Laurent Blvd. was selling a bar of soap allegedly made from the fat of Holocaust victims. The light brown bar was inscribed with a swastika and enclosed in a glass case with a card that said it was from Poland ... There is no evidence the Germans ever made soap out of human flesh, most Holocaust experts today agree.
The `Jewish Soap' Fable
Mark Weber
One of the most lurid and slanderous Holocaust claims is the story that the Germans manufactured soap from the bodies of their victims. Although a similar charge during the First World War was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterwards, it was nevertheless revived and widely believed during the Second. More important, this accusation was "proved" at the main Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, and has been authoritatively endorsed by numerous historians in the decades since. In recent years, though, as part of a broad retreat from the most obviously untenable aspects of the "orthodox" extermination story, Holocaust historians have grudgingly conceded that the human soap tale is a wartime propaganda lie.
Most Russians Believe US Bent on World Domination
Agence France Presse
Almost three-quarters of Russians believe the United States is an "aggressor" nation hell-bent on world domination, a poll suggests. The survey by the independent Levada Center polling agency found that 73 percent of respondents agreed that the US was "an aggressor trying to take control" of all countries in the world. Only eight per cent agreed that the US was "a defender of peace, democracy and order," while 19 per cent said they were undecided. The poll's margin of error was 3.4 per cent. The poll, which surveyed 1600 people, showed Russians' attitudes to the US barely changed over the last seven years
Historians Speak Out Against Proposed Texas Social Studies Curriculum
The Washington Post
Historians criticized proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum Tuesday, saying that many of the changes are historically inaccurate and that they would affect textbooks and classrooms far beyond the state's borders. The changes, which were preliminarily approved last week by the Texas board of education and are expected to be given final approval in May, will reach deeply into Texas history classrooms, defining what textbooks must include and what teachers must cover. The curriculum downplays the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions the separation of church and state and says that the U.S. government was infiltrated by communists during the Cold War.
The Liberation of the Camps: Facts vs. Lies
Theodore J. O'Keefe -- Institute for Historical Review
Nothing has been more effective in establishing the authenticity of the Holocaust story in the minds of Americans than the terrible scenes US troops discovered when they entered German concentration camps at the close of World War II. At Dachau, Buchenwald, Dora, Mauthausen, and other work and detention camps, horrified US infantrymen encountered heaps of dead and dying inmates, emaciated and diseased ... But it is known today that, very soon after the liberation of the camps, American authorities were aware that the real story of the camps was quite different from the one in which they were coaching military public information officers, government spokesmen, politicians, journalists, and other mouthpieces.
US Government Denounces `New Forms' of Anti-Jewish Sentiment
Agence France Presse
The United States Thursday denounced "new forms" of anti-Semitism, saying criticism of Israel and Zionism had led to a rise of anti-Jewish sentiment around the world in 2009. "Traditional and new forms of anti-Semitism continued to arise, and a spike in such activity followed the Gaza conflict in the winter of 2008-2009," the State Department said in an annual report. "Often despite official efforts to combat the problem, societal anti-Semitism persisted across Europe, South America , and beyond and manifested itself in classic forms," it said.
China to Connect Its High Speed Rail System to Europe
Inhabitat ( New York )
China already has the most advanced and extensive high speed rail line in the world, and soon that network will be connected all the way to Europe and the UK . With initial negotiations and surveys already complete, China is now making plans to connect its high speed rail line through 17 other countries in Asia and Eastern Europe in order to connect to the existing infrastructure in the European Union. Additional rail lines will also be built into South East Asia as well as Russia , in what will likely become the largest infrastructure project in history. China hopes to complete this massive infrastructure project within ten years, which will include three major rail lines running at speeds of 320 km/hour.
Obesity: The Killer Combination of Salt, Fat And Sugar
The Guardian ( Britain )
Our favourite foods are making us fat, yet we can't resist, because eating them is changing our minds as well as bodies / ... The food industry creates dishes to hit what he called the "three points of the compass". Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling. They stimulate neurons, cells that trigger the brain's reward system and release dopamine, a chemical that motivates our behaviour and makes us want to eat more. Many of us have what's called a "bliss point", at which we get the greatest pleasure from sugar, fat or salt. Combined in the right way, they make a product indulgent, high in "hedonic value".
French Children of World War II German Soldiers Seek German Nationality
Deutsche Welle ( Germany )
Their mothers were French, their fathers were German soldiers in Nazi-occupied France . Some 200,000 children endured scorn and often hid their father's identity. Now some have begun applying for German citizenship. More than 200,000 children fathered by German soldiers were raised by their French mothers after the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, according to Paris historian Fabrice Vergili. The author of the book "Naitre ennemi" (Born an Enemy) also estimates that 20,000 French women were hounded through streets and brutally given short haircuts by their French compatriots, who accused them of "horizontal collaboration" with the Nazis.
Samuel Eliot Morison And America's Displaced Protestant Establishment
Steve Sailer
As I've been rereading Professor Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison's three-volume Oxford History of the American People from 1964, I've been thinking about the old Protestant Establishment ... To Morison, American liberalism was invented by his ancestors, the descendants of the Puritans. As he made clear in his Oxford History, rudimentary versions of most American progressive movements, including civil rights for blacks, feminism, and the rudiments of the ideology of environmentalism. were up and running in the greater Boston area by the 1840s. In other words, American liberalism was invented by the oldest and most socially respectable hereditary elite in the country's least ethnically diverse region, and imposed from the top down.
Despite Row , U.S. and Israel Sign Massive Arms Deal
Haaretz ( Israel )
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington this week absorbing the full wrath of the Obama administration, the Pentagon and Israel 's defense establishment were in the process of sealing a large arms deal. According to the deal, Israel will purchase three new Hercules C-130J airplanes. The deal for the three aircrafts, designed by Lockheed Martin, is worth roughly a quarter billion dollars. Each aircraft costs $70 million. The aircrafts were manufactured specifically for Israeli needs, and include a large number of systems produced by Israel 's defense industry. The deal will be covered by American foreign assistance funds.
US Backs Israel at UN Human Rights Council
The Jerusalem Post ( Israel )
The US was the only country at the United Nations Human Rights Council to vote against all three anti-Israel resolutions, which were approved Wednesday in Geneva . It was also the only country to oppose a UNHRC resolution in support of the Palestinian right to self determination. In the last weeks America 's relationship with Israel has been strained. But in Geneva , the US took the council to task for its treatment of Israel .
Britain Expels Israeli Diplomat Over Dubai Killing
The Associated Press
Britain took the extraordinary step Tuesday of expelling an Israeli diplomat for the first time in more than 20 years, after concluding there was compelling evidence that Israel was responsible for the use of forged British passports in the plot to slay a senior Hamas operative in Dubai . British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said trust between the two countries had been badly dented, demanded formal assurances it never happen again and -- in an unusual step -- issued travel advice to U.K. citizens warning their identity details may be at risk if they visit Israel.
Britain Expels Mossad Agent Over Forged Passport Plot
The Guardian ( Britain )
Britain expelled a senior Mossad official at the Israeli embassy today after directly accusing Israel of forging British passports used by a hit squad in Dubai . The blunt allegation, coupled with parallel investigations by other European countries into possible transgressions by the Mossad, seemed certain to deepen Israel 's isolation at a critical moment.
Nationalism in Europe Today
Tom Sunic - Institute for Historical Review - Audio
People of European descent and heritage should reject imposed feelings of guilt fostered by the mainstream media, says Dr. Sunic in this thoughtful address at an IHR meeting, March 6, 2010. Tomislav Sunic, who has served as a professor of political science in the US, and as a Croatian diplomat, says that the prevailing social-political order is not as strong or as solid as it pretends to be, or as most people assume, he says, and suggests that, under the right conditions, nationalist sentiments could awaken quickly.
Himmler's SS Castle Opens to Public With Large Exhibition
Daily Mail ( Britain )
An eight million pound exhibition chronicling the empire of the SS within the Nazi state opens next month in Germany at the Renaissance castle that was once its spiritual home. Organisers of the exhibition say its principal aim is educational rather than glorifying the regime ... Wewelsburg Castle , funded by a foundation and by the North Rhine-Westphalia government, opens to visitors on April 15. It is where SS leader Heinrich Himmler brought together his senior officers. He even installed a round table, coats of arms for his SS 'knights' and pagan ceremonies exalting his movement above all other world religions.
Jewish Concerns Over `Holocaust Dilution' in Eastern Europe
The Jerusalem Post ( Israel)
A gathering of academics, Jewish activists and locals here [in Riga , Latvia ] on Sunday and Monday seeks to begin an broad, international effort to combat "the dilution of the Holocaust." Throughout Eastern Europe, from Ukraine to Lithuania, a "new historiography" has sprouted that attempts to equate the Nazi genocide of Jews with the crimes committed in their countries by the Soviet Union, according to conference attendees ... The "white-washing" of such pro-Nazi groups, together with a new focus on the suffering inflicted by the Soviet regime, "amounts to the dilution of the Holocaust," Greenberg says. "We cannot accept a historiography where there were 'many holocausts'," he adds.
Lunch With George Will: How An Influential Journalist Twists the Truth
Mark Weber (1993)
... Will's rigid bias with regard to the Holocaust story and Israel is no secret. Even William Buckley, himself a staunch friend of Israel and Zionist interests, has taken note of what he calls Will's "perverse" partisanship with regard to these matters. With regard to the Holocaust issue, wrote the founder of National Review magazine, "Will is losing sight of rather a lot of things." Buckley took exception to a reference by Will to the " Vatican 's contemptible behavior toward the Holocaust." ... The self-righteous and almost reverential way he writes about "the Holocaust" is not merely fashionable these days, it is all but obligatory -- particularly for a successful commentator on current affairs.
Secretary Clinton Re-Affirms US Support for Israel After Row
BBC News
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dismissed the idea that US-Israeli relations are in crisis amid a row over Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem. She said the two nations had a "close, unshakeable bond" but made clear the US wanted both Israel and the Palestinians to prove their commitment to peace. Earlier, US envoy George Mitchell postponed a planned visit to Israel . Heightened tensions in Jerusalem have led to violent clashes between hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli police. Israeli police said about 60 Palestinians had been arrested and medical officials said a number of people had been injured.
German Prisoners Used in Britain After the End of World War II
BBC News
English Sporting icons don't come much bigger than Wembley Stadium but few realise that it owes some of its splendour to the labour of German prisoners of war .The news, which follows an investigation by BBC Radio 4's Document programme, may come as a shock to many England fans who view Germany as their fiercest sporting rivals ... Questions were raised in the House of Commons about why the men were still in captivity. Some argued that Britain was in breach of the Geneva Convention for not releasing the POWs as soon as fighting had finished. The government denied the charge. It claimed that the convention did not apply because no actual peace deal had been signed with Germany which had surrendered unconditionally.
Turkey Threatens to Expel 100,000 Armenians Over `Genocide' Row
The Telegraph ( Britain )
Turkey has threatened to expel 100,000 Armenians from the country in response to the US branding the First World War killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide". Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said the position of the immigrants, many of whom have lived there as refugees for a generation, was being reviewed in the wake of the row ... "There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country. Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000," said Mr Erdogan. "If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don't have to keep them in my country."
Up to 25,000 Died in 1945 Dresden Firebombing, Says German Historians' Report
BBC News
Up to 25,000 people died in the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II, fewer than often estimated, an official German report has concluded. The Dresden Historians' Commission published its report after five years of research into the February 13-15, 1945 air raid by Britain and the US . The study was aimed at ending an ongoing debate on the number of casualties in the German city.
The Dresden Holocaust
David Irving
Perspective, background and commentary on the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden , February 1945, compiled by British historian David Irving. Evidence that the death toll was much larger than the latest "official" figure of about 25,000.
Anti-Semitism In China ?: Book on Jewish Global Wealth Is Best Seller
Ynet News ( Israel )
Who's to blame for the current global financial crisis? According to a bestselling book in China , which is leading the sales charts in the country, the answer is clear: The Jews. In the eyes of most Chinese, Jewish people are considered "smart," "rich" and "good at making money." ... Estimates put sales of "Currency War" well over a million, not including hundreds of thousands of illegal copies that can also be downloaded off the net.
Brazil's President in Israel Refuses Visit to Herzl's Grave
JTA ( New York )
Brazil 's president said he would not visit the grave of Theodor Herzl during his first official visit to Israel . President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, who arrived in Israel on Sunday, refused to visit Herzl's grave, which is part of the itinerary for visiting foreign officials this year in honor of the 150th anniversary of the father of Zionism. The Brazilian president is reportedly scheduled to visit the grave of Yasir Arafat during a visit to Ramallah. "It is an insult to Israel 's citizens and to Zionist communities around the world," World Zionist Organization head Hagai Merom said Monday.
Book Burning in Ukraine Stokes Controversy About History
Voice of America ( USA )
Russian nationalists in Crimea have burned Ukrainian history textbooks to protest what they say are distortions of the past by the administration of former President Viktor Yushchenko ... Dubovik says his group burned literature that promoted fascism in Ukraine , and they will continue to burn and trample it. He condemns the books, saying they separate people and destroy the mutual love between Russians and Ukrainians. Dubovik adds that perhaps even toilet paper will be made out of the books. He acknowledges the chosen method may be harsh, but thinks it is the right one.
Young Adult Americans Anxious About Future, Finances
The Associated Press
Young adults are financially anxious, worried that they can't meet their educational, housing and health care needs, according to a new poll that exposes a growing pessimism about achieving the American Dream. The poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics found that six out of ten of those surveyed worry they may not meet their current bills and obligations. Nearly half of those attending college wonder whether they will be able to afford to stay in school. And more than eight out of 10 said they expect difficulty finding a job after graduation. Fewer than half said they believe they will be better off than their parents when they reach their parents' age.
New Round of Foreclosures Threatens Housing Market
The Washington Post
The housing market is facing swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but have yet to lose their homes, and this is threatening a new wave of foreclosures that could hit just as the real estate market has begun to stabilize. About five million to seven million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale.
Israel First?
Joe Klein - Time
The America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has done a very unwise thing: It has issued a statement criticizing the Obama Administration, rather than Israel, for its reaction to the Netanyahu government's recent announcement of more illegal settlement blocks in East Jerusalem ... I can't remember another ethnic or religious lobbying group publicly siding with a foreign country against the President of the United States ... Once again, every U.S. President since Richard Nixon has called for a freeze of settlements being built in Palestinian areas, including East Jerusalem, conquered by Israel in 1967. AIPAC stands, with Israel, against every one of those Presidents.
Japan Confirms Cold War-Era Secret Pacts with US
The Associated Press
Japan confirmed Tuesday secret Cold War-era pacts with Washington that tacitly allowed nuclear warships in Japanese ports in violation of a hallowed postwar principle, effectively acknowledging that previous governments had lied about them for decades. While the move was welcomed as a step toward greater government transparency, atomic bomb survivors expressed disgust that officials kept such agreements hidden for dozens of years.
The Boer War Remembered
Mark Weber
The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 was more than the first major military clash of the 20th century. Pitting as it did the might of the globe-girdling British Empire, backed by international finance, against a small pioneering nation of independent-minded farmers, ranchers and merchants in southern Africa who lived by the Bible and the rifle, its legacy continues to resonate today. The Boers' recourse to irregular warfare, and Britain's response in herding a hundred thousand women and children into concentration camps foreshadowed the horrors of guerilla warfare and mass detention of innocents that have become emblematic of the 20th century.
`Lost' Shakespeare Play is Published
BBC News
A play which was first discovered nearly 300 years ago has been credited to William Shakespeare. The work, titled Double Falsehood, was written by the playwright and another dramatist, John Fletcher. Theatre impresario Lewis Theobald presented the play in the 18th century as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play but it was dismissed as a forgery. But scholars for British Shakespeare publisher, Arden, now believe the Bard wrote large parts of the play. Researchers think the play is based on a long-lost work called Cardenio, which was itself based on Don Quixote. "I think Shakespeare's hand can be discerned in Act One, Act Two and probably the first two scenes in Act Three of the play," Professor Brean Hammond told the BBC's World Service.
Minority Babies in US To Be in Majority
The Associated Press
Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years. In fact, demographers say this year could be the "tipping point" when the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers that of babies born to whites ... The numbers highlight the nation's growing racial and age divide, seen in pockets of communities across the U.S., which could heighten tensions in current policy debates from immigration reform and education to health care and Social Security.
General Petraeus Warns: Israel Is Jeopardizing US Security Interests
Democracy Now
Veteran military and foreign affairs analyst and author Mark Perry reports that CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus dispatched a team of senior military officers in January to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perry reports that the briefers told Mullen that "Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing US standing in the region." Transcript and video.
The Rogue Nation
Philip Giraldi
...Three strikes and you're out, Mr. Obama. Your government stands for preemptive killing and missile strikes on people living in countries with which America is not at war, lets torturers and torture enablers go free, and has asserted the right to assassinate its own citizens anywhere in the world based on secret evidence. Ronald Reagan once described his vision of America as a shining city on a hill. Over the past ten years the shining city has become the ultimate rogue nation, pumped up with power and hubris in spite of the clearly visible signs of decline and moving inexorably towards a catastrophic fall.
The Poodle Gets Kicked
Patrick J. Buchanan
... Biden may feel he was played for a fool, and Americans may feel jilted, but we got what grovelers deserve. And if we wish to understand why the Arabs who once respected us now seem contemptuous of us, consider that battered-spouse response to a public slap across the face ... How can America be seen as an honest broker between Arabs and Israelis if there is "no space" between America and Israel? ... And if our policy and Israel's are one and the same, the Arab perception will be what it is today -- that America cannot stand up to Israel, even when her national interests command it. Joe's performance before he got the wet mitten across the face only underscored the point: The mighty superpower is a poodle of Israel.
Latvian SS Veterans and Supporters March, Defying Protests
BBC News
Hundreds of Latvian veterans who fought on the side of Nazi Germany in World War II have held a peaceful march in the capital, Riga. The veterans laid flowers at Riga's Freedom Monument. Police said about 1,000 people took part. The annual march is a flashpoint for tension between the veterans and ethnic Russians whose relatives fought against the Nazis. The veterans fought in a legion commanded by Nazi Germany's Waffen SS. The city council in Riga had tried to ban this year's march and a counter-demonstration, but protesters from both sides had the ban overturned. Dozens of people turned out to heckle the veterans during the parade, which was protected by a heavy police presence.
Thoughts on the Release of Ernst Zundel
Douglas Christie - Video
Douglas Christie, attorney and free speech activist, comments on the ordeal of Ernst Zundel in the aftermath of his release from a German prison on March 1, 2010. For seven years Zundel was held behind bars -- in the US, in Canada and in Germany -- for his peaceful expression of non-conformist views, thus making him the western world's most prominent "prisoner of conscience." In Canada he was tried in a secret proceeding in which he and his attorney, Christie, were not permitted to know or respond to evidence or witnesses brought against him. Zundel was then held in Canada for two years in solitary confinement. Runtime: 4:15 mins.
Hitler's Popularity in Pakistan and India
Der Spiegel (Germany)
Germans are popular in India and Pakistan, but not always for the right reasons. Many in South Asia have nothing but admiration for Adolf Hitler and still associate Germany with the Third Reich. Everyday encounters with the love of all things Nazi makes German visitors cringe ... English editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" can be found in bookshops even in the most remote parts of India. And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader.
US Misled Allies Over Detainees, Says Ex-Spy Chief
The Associated Press
United States intelligence agencies misled key allies, including Britain, about its mistreatment of suspected terrorists, the former head of the country's domestic spy agency, MI5, said Tuesday. Eliza Manningham-Buller, who retired in 2007 and is now a member of the House of Lords, said the U.S. deliberately suppressed details of its harsh handling of some detainees, including accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," Manningham-Buller told a meeting at Britain's Parliament.
French Bread Spiked With LSD in CIA Experiment
The Telegraph (Britain)
In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted. For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.
The Mystery of Hitler's `Spyclists'
BBC Radio Today
Summer 1937. What could be more fitting in the cool afternoon of an English country lane than a group of cycling tourists steadily pedalling their way from one historic site to another, stopping to camp overnight in fields along the way. The only problem was, that summer, some of those groups of teenage boys were Hitler Youth ... One of the boys, Les Fardon, told Radio 4's Document Programme ten years ago: "It was like a Roman legion," he said. "You had these long banners and you were marching to tune... it was very stirring and frightening" Another of his fellow Scouts remembered it as being a very exciting trip, and he recalled how even the British boys fell into doing the "Heil Hitler" salute.
Who Is a Jew? DNA Can Hold the Key
The Telegraph (Britain)
... Even 20 years later the thought of a genetic test for Jewish descent would have been treated with horror. Now, one has emerged and is not despised but hailed by many Jews themselves. A scan of half a million variable sites across the genomes of several hundred Europeans and Americans, each aware from their family history of having had a recent Jewish or a non-Jewish ancestry, gave an absolute separation between Jews and others: even a single Jewish grandparent was enough to provide an unambiguous identity, written in DNA.
Jewish Intelligence, Jewish Genes and Jewish Values
William Saletan - Slate
Are Jews a race? Is Jewish intelligence genetic? ... To suggest that Jews are genetically smart is to imply that non-Jews are inherently inferior, in violation of Jewish commitments to equality and compassion. ... Some scholars now hypothesize that the genes that make Jews smart also give some of them nasty diseases such as Tay-Sachs.
Jews: A Religious Community, a People, or a Race?
Mark Weber
Defining "Jew" has never been simple. Is he someone who practices Judaism, the Jewish religion, or is he identified by his ancestry? While many Americans assume that Jews are essentially a religious group, Jews themselves take for granted that their community is much more ethnic-national than it is religious. Benjamin Netanyahu, until recently Israel's prime minister, frankly regards Jews as members of a racial group. Speaking in February [2000] to a gathering of nearly a thousand Jews in southern California, he said: "If Israel had not come into existence after World War II then I am certain the Jewish race wouldn't have survived."
Stalin To Be Put on Billboards in Moscow for VE Day
Fox News
If there was an award for despicable legacies Joseph Stalin would rank right up there with Hitler and Mao for the men with the most blood on their hands. By conservative estimates the man who led the Soviet Union for 30 years until his death in 1953, was responsible for killing some 30 million people, most of them his own citizens. His penalty? In May of this year when Russia celebrates it's victory over Germany in World War 2 (victory with the help of all it's allies including America) it will put Stalin's face on billboards all over Moscow.
Study Links Religion and Racism
Carl Marziali - USC News
... A meta-analysis of 55 independent studies carried out in the United States with more than 20,000 mostly Christian participants has found that members of religious congregations tend to harbor prejudiced views of other races. In general, the more devout the community, the greater the racism, according to the authors of the analysis ... "Religious groups distinguish between believers and non-believers and moral people and immoral ones," Wood said. "So perhaps it's no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them -- blacks and minorities."
Children's US History Textbooks Put Political Correctness Above Accuracy, Say Most Parents
Rasmussen Reports
Sixty percent of Americans with children in elementary or secondary school say most school textbooks are more concerned with presenting information in a politically correct manner than in accuracy. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 28 percent of adults with children in the schools disagree and think most textbooks are more concerned with accurately providing information ... Those with children currently in elementary or secondary school are even more skeptical. Just 28 percent think most school textbooks portray U.S. history accurately, while nearly half say they do not.
Rejecting Holocaust `Crocodile Tears'
Norman Finkelstein -- Video
Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar who is a well known critic of Israel, denounces the "crocodile tears" of Holocaust remembrance, which he says is used to justify Zionist oppression of Palestinians. "I refuse any longer to be intimidated or brow-beaten by the tears," he exclaims in response to an emotional question from a student. From a lecture at the University of Waterloo (Canada). Runtime: 3:11 mins.
This Time We Went Too Far
Norman Finkelstein
... The fact that active opposition to Israeli policy, say, on college campuses, has spread beyond the Arab-Muslim core towards the mainstream, whereas active support for Israel has shrunk to a fraction of the ethnic Jewish core, is a telling indicator of where things are headed. The era of the "beautiful" Israel has passed, it seems irrevocably, and the disfigured Israel that in recent years has replaced it in the public consciousness is a growing embarrassment. It is not so much that Israel's behavior is worse than it was before, but rather that the record of that behavior has, finally, caught up with it.
Hungary Makes `Holocaust Denial' A Crime
The Associated Press
Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom has signed a law making Holocaust denial punishable by three years in prison. The law was approved last month by Hungarian lawmakers, after more wide-ranging versions of the law had been rejected by courts for limiting free speech. Spokesman Ferenc Kumin says President Solyom signed the bill because in his opinion the law is not unconstitutional.
Norse Rune Symbols and the Third Reich
The Viking Rune
... Both their original meaning in the Norse Viking culture and their use in Nazi Germany is treated, in order to demonstrate that the earlier, original tradition is much older ... Note that a few of these symbols are included in to the list of symbols forbidden in Germany today.
The Marxist Roots of `Political Correctness'
William S. Lind
... Political Correctness is nothing less than Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. The parallels are obvious. First, both classical, economic Marxism and the Cultural Marxism that is Political Correctness are totalitarian ideologies. Both insist on "truths" that are contrary to human nature and experience. Contrary to economic Marxism, there is no such thing as a "classless society," and economic incentives matter. Contrary to Political Correctness, men and women are different, as are their natural roles in society; races and ethnic groups have specific characteristics; and homosexuality is abnormal.
Sen. Morse Denounces `Tonkin Gulf' Vietnam War Resolution
Video
Sen. Wayne Morse was one of only two members of Congress to vote against the fateful August 1964 "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson "blank check" authority to wage war against North Vietnam. This authorization, warned Sen. Morse, was unconstitutional. Moreover, it was later established that the alleged North Vietnamese attack against US warships, which the White House cited to justify the sweeping resolution, either never took place, or had been greatly exaggerated.
Dutch Prince Bernhard Was Nazi Party Member, Says Historian
The Telegraph (Britain)
Prince Bernhard, the father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was a member of the Nazi party, a new book has claimed, contradicting the German-born Dutch war hero's life-long denials. "Bernhard, a secret history" has revealed that the prince was a member of the German Nazi party until 1934, three years before he married Princess Juliana, the future queen of the Netherlands. Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch historian, has found membership documents in Berlin's Humboldt University that prove Prince Bernhard, who studied there, had joined Deutsche Studentenschaft, a National Socialist student fraternity, as well as the Nazi NSDAP and its paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung.
Admiral Mullen Wary of Israeli Attack on Iran
Ray McGovern
Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came home with sweaty palms from his mid-February visit to Israel. He has been worrying aloud that Israel will mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran. This is of particular concern because Mullen has had considerable experience in putting the brakes on such Israeli plans in the past. This time, he appears convinced that the Israeli leaders did not take his warnings seriously --notwithstanding the unusually strong language he put into play. Upon arrival in Jerusalem on February 14, Mullen wasted no time in making clear why he had come. He insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be "a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences."
Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Disinformation
Gareth Porter -- Inter Press Service
For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand. It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.
Budget Deficit Sets Record In February
The Associated Press
The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year's record for the full year. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year. The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago. The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year's $1.4 trillion total.
List Of Troubled Banks at 16-Year High: Bracing for a Wave of Failures
The New York Times
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is bracing for a new wave of bank failures that could cost the agency many billions of dollars and further strain its finances. With bank failures running at their highest level in nearly two decades, the F.D.I.C. is racing to keep up with rising losses to its insurance fund, which safeguards savers' deposits. On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had placed 702 lenders on its list of "problem" banks, the highest number since 1993. Not all of those banks are destined to founder, and F.D.I.C. officials said Tuesday that they expected failures to peak this year.
'Closet-Nazi' Running for Austrian President
Agence France Presse
A far-right candidate for Austria's presidential election has brought the country's dark past to the surface once more, after denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional party leader for the Freedom Party (FPOe) who was nominated last week, looks to be the sole candidate to run against incumbent President ... Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. But Rosenkranz, a mother of ten and the wife of an outspoken figure in Austria's far-right scene, insists the law constitutes "an unnecessary restriction" and that, on the contrary, people should be allowed freedom of opinion.
Hiroshima Book Pulled Over Doubts About Sources
The Telegraph (Britain)
A best-selling book about atom bomb survivors in Japan has been pulled from shops following claims sections of it may have been based on false accounts made up by an imposter. Charles Pellegrino's Last Train from Hiroshima has been dropped by its US publisher, Henry Holt and Company, which said it had doubts over facts in the book. After publication in January, it emerged that a source who claimed to have been on the US bombing mission over Hiroshima had invented his story. The publisher has now said it also has doubts relating to two other people named in the work.
Subversion of Science: How Psychology Lost Darwin
Glayde Whitney -- Institute for Historical Review
When real history is finally written, mainstream social sciences during most of the twentieth century will be exposed as consisting largely of ethnically motivated disinformation. Much has already been written about the subversion of American anthropology: the shift from legitimate science to ideological pap under the direction of the Jewish immigrant Franz Boas. Much less has been written about how psychology was transformed from a branch of natural science into a section of the Marxist-influenced social sciences. In this paper I will provide information on the subversion of psychology, pointing out the role of Boas and others in the subversion of psychology.
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 docu ments 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.
Nude Sketch by Young Hitler For Sale
The Telegraph (Britain)
Two sketches by Adolf Hitler of a young nude woman and the face of an elderly lady thought to be his mother are to be sold at auction. The two previously unseen pictures turned up in Europe and are expected to raise 20,000 pounds between them. Hitler drew them in the early 1900s when he was based in Vienna and was practising various styles so that he might win a place at art college. The picture of the elderly woman's face is similar to photographs of his mother and shows a lined and world-weary visage.
Mossad's Murderous Reach: The Larger Political Issues
James Petras
... Israel has a publicly-stated policy of violating the sovereignty of any and all countries in order to kill or abduct its opponents. In both proclamation and actual practice, Israeli law, decrees and actions abroad supersede the laws and law enforcement agencies of any other nation. If Israel's policy becomes the common practice world-wide, we would enter a savage Hobbesian jungle in which individuals would be subject to the murderous intent of foreign assassination squads unrestrained by any law or accountable national authority. Each and every state could impose its own laws and cross national borders in order to murder other nation's citizens or residents with impunity.
Protestant Churches Pose Growing Threat to Israel, Says Wiesenthal Center Rabbi
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Israel is facing a threat from theologians and activists in prominent Protestant churches throughout the world, in addition to the threats posed by "lawfare" and the Goldstone Report, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, charged on Tuesday ... "Theologians and activists in some prominent Protestant churches are seeking to destroy Israel from Above," Cooper warned ... According to Cooper, the center of the Protestant theological war against Israel is the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of liberal church bodies ... "Anti-Israel momentum is building," Cooper warned.
Positive Views of Israel, Brought to You by Israelis
The New York Times
The Israeli government, deeply worried about the country's declining international image, began a campaign on Wednesday to turn every Israeli -- and ultimately every Jew -- into a traveling public relations agent. With a website backed by an advertising blitz, the Information and Diaspora Affairs Ministry began issuing Hebrew-language pamphlets to passengers on Israeli airlines and offering coaching courses to groups heading abroad. The message: "Are you fed up with the way we are portrayed around the world? You can change the picture."
Publishing: The Revolutionary Future
Jason Epstein - The New York Review
The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends ... The huge, worldwide market for digital content, however, is not a fantasy. It will be very large, very diverse, and very surprising: its cultural impact cannot be imagined. E-books will be a significant factor in this uncertain future, but actual books printed and bound will continue to be the irreplaceable repository of our collective wisdom.
Ernst Zundel, Convicted `Holocaust Denier,' Is Released From German Prison
The Associated Press
Far-right German activist Ernst Zundel was freed after serving five years in prison for denying the Holocaust ever happened -- something he wouldn't speak about Monday. The 70-year-old had been extradited in 2005 from Canada, where he spent some additional time behind bars on the German warrant after having been deported from the United States for alleged immigration violations. A crowd of 20 supporters on Monday morning clapped and shouted "bravo" as Zundel emerged from the prison in Mannheim. Some handed him flowers as he passed through the prison's steel gates. "I'm back out after seven years, three weeks, three prisons and three countries," Zundel said, declining to comment when asked whether the Holocaust happened.
Ernst Zundel: Seven Years a `Prisoner of Conscience'
Mark Weber
Ernst Zundel, a German-born publisher and author, was held for seven years behind bars, first in Canada and then in Germany, for his peaceful expression of non-conformist views. From February 2003 to March 2010, he was the western world's most prominent "prisoner of conscience." He is known worldwide as a publicist, organizer and defender of free speech, and as author countless booklets, newsletters and essays. He has been a major figure in the Holocaust revisionist movement.
Finkelstein Banned in Berlin: A Democracy That Isn't a Democracy
Anis Hamadeh
... What is going on there, one wonders. Does [Jewish scholar Norman] Finkelstein call for violence? Are his views outside legal norms, does he disesteem the human rights? Nothing of all this. On the contrary. The reason for banning him is the veto of groups that seek to avert criticism of Israel, connecting this issue with the reproach of anti-Semitism. This is an old chestnut and not specifically interesting. What is interesting, though, is that the German public buys this nonsense and denies a man, who lost his family in German concentration camps, to talk on German soil, tolerating that he is labeled an anti-Semite for his reflections on violence in Israel. The same thing actually happened only some months ago to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in Munich ...
US Military Suicides Rise, Despite Prevention Efforts
McClatchy Newspapers
Eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have etched indelible scars on the psyches of many of the nation's servicemen and women, and the U.S. military is losing a battle to stem an epidemic of suicides in its ranks. Despite calls by top Pentagon officials for a sea change in attitudes about mental health, millions of dollars in new suicide prevention programming and thousands of hours spent helping soldiers suffering from what often are euphemistically dubbed "invisible wounds," the military is losing ground. The Department of Defense Friday reported that there were 160 reported active-duty Army suicides in 2009, up from 140 in 2008. Of these, 114 have been confirmed, while the manner of death in the remaining 46 remains to be determined.
Britain's Secret Torture Center: Interrogation Camp in Postwar Germany
The Guardian (Britain)
... The "London Cage" was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery. As horrific as conditions were at the London Cage, Bad Nenndorf was far worse ... Prisoners were systematically beaten and exposed to extreme cold, where some were starved to death and, allegedly, tortured with instruments that his fellow countrymen had recovered from a Gestapo prison in Hamburg.
Elie Wiesel's Ignoble Recruits
John Walsh
Is there nothing that is safe from debasement by the propaganda machine of the U.S. and Israel? A full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times of February 7 provides the answer. Sponsored by Elie Wiesel's modestly named "The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity," and signed by 44 Nobel Laureates, 35 of them in the physical sciences, it urges brutal and lethal actions against Iran ... It asserts without evidence that such "ambitions" threaten "the entire world." This is certainly a very grave charge, and some scintilla of evidence should be offered for it. But none is provided, not one word, not even a footnote or reference in this spacious advert.
In Hungary, A New Effort to Ban `Holocaust Denial'
The Associated Press
Hungary's parliament has approved a bill making Holocaust denial punishable by up to three years in prison, but the measure may be unconstitutional. Lawmakers passed the bill submitted by Attila Mesterhazy, the prime ministerial candidate of the governing Socialist Party, by 197-1, with 142 abstentions. Earlier attempts to ban Holocaust denial have been rejected by the courts for infringing on freedom of speech. Efforts to modify the Constitution to ensure the bill's legality have also failed. Mesterhazy's proposal was backed by the Socialists and most of the Alliance of Free Democrats, a former coalition partner. An opposition proposal to include the denial of Nazi and Communist crimes in the bill was rejected.
Mossad's Latest Blunder: The Dubai Assassination
Gwynne Dyer
... The Dubai police say they are now "99 percent if not 100 percent sure" that [Israel's] Mossad was behind the murder, and most Western governments assume the same. Four Western governments are especially angry: Britain, France, Germany and Ireland, whose passports were used in the operation. Israel will doubtless promise once more never to do that again, and the fuss will eventually die down ... Many Israelis think they don't need to worry about this because everyone hates them anyway, but the wiser ones realise that the state's security and prosperity still depend heavily on the goodwill of Western countries. Actions like the Dubai operation, when they become public, erode that goodwill. But the wiser Israelis are not currently in the majority.
The Mastermind Behind Mossad's Murder War
The Sunday Times (Britain)
... Mossad is now deeply embarrassed. Its use of the identities of British, French, German and Irish nationals as cover for agents to carry out the hit has angered western governments. In the ensuing diplomatic fall-out, sources close to Mossad said yesterday that it had suspended similar operations in the Middle East, mainly because of fear that heightened security would put its agents at greater risk. Dagan's job is also on the line. However, few believe that Mossad will give up the secret war it has long waged against Israel's enemies.
Americans Concerned About Falling US Influence as China's Grows
The Washington Post
Facing high unemployment and a difficult economy, most Americans think the United States will have a smaller role in the world economy in the coming years, and many believe that while the 20th century may have been the "American Century," the 21st century will belong to China.
Harvard Prof. Urges Genocide as Final Solution of Palestinian Problem
M. J. Rosenberg - Huffington Post
This has to be seen to be believed. Dr. Martin Kramer, a fellow at Harvard's National Security Studies Program, has posted a speech he delivered two weeks ago in Israel in which he urged solving the Palestinian refugee problem by population control, that is "stopping pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status." In other words, starve the Palestinians so they don't have babies and, he seems to be saying, starving the babies so they don't grow up. That will help reduce the terrorist threat by preventing Palestinian babies from becoming "superfluous young men." It is, Kramer says, those "superfluous young men" who become radicals.
Zionist Group Urges Donors and Student to Avoid UC Irvine
The Associated Press
After months of growing tension between Jewish and Muslim students at the University of California, Irvine, the Zionist Organization of America is asking potential students to apply elsewhere and donors to stop sending contributions. The New York-based organization lambasted Chancellor Michael Drake in a statement Tuesday for not condemning anti-Semitic speech on campus and enabling a years-long history of "bigotry, discrimination and the violation of civil rights" by the school's Muslim Student Union.
A Country of Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs
Paul Craig Roberts
... The problems of the American economy are too great to be reached by traditional policies. Large numbers of middle class American jobs have been moved offshore: manufacturing, industrial and professional service jobs. When the jobs are moved offshore, consumer incomes and U.S. GDP go with them. So many jobs have been moved abroad that there has been no growth in U.S. real incomes in the 21st century, except for the incomes of the super rich who collect multi-million dollar bonuses for moving U.S. jobs offshore.
Conspiracy Theories, History, and The State
Jeff Riggenbach
On conspiracy theories, the impact of historical revisionism during the 1920s and 1930s, the role of Harry Elmer Barnes, and more. Audio recording of talk by a libertarian journalist, author, and educator. Runtime: 22 mins.
I Am Israel
Video
Anti-Zionist video, made by Jihane Al Quds in Sept. 2009. Now available in a range of languages. Text by Hashem Said, an officer in the UW Palestinian student group Hayaat. Runtime: 6:27 mins.
Liquidating the Empire
Patrick J. Buchanan
... We spend more on defense than the next 10 nations combined. Our Navy exceeds in firepower the next 13 navies combined. We have 100,000 troops in Iraq, 100,000 in Afghanistan or headed there, 28,000 in Korea, over 35,000 in Japan and 50,000 in Germany. By the Department of Defense's "Base Structure Report," there are 716 U.S. bases in 38 countries ... Is it not absurd to borrow hundreds of billion annually from China -- to defend Asia from China? Is it not a symptom of senility to borrow from all over the world in order to defend that world?
Grandson of Israeli Prime Minister Rejects Zionism
The Palestine Telegraph (Britain)
"Murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries," says the grandson of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Avindav Begin, who is also the son of the current Likud Knesset member Benny Begin, refuses to stand during the Israeli national anthem "Hatikva" and participates in protests against the Apartheid Wall. He does not see himself as a Jew or a Zionist ...
New Issue of `Inconvenient History' Now Online
Inconvenient History
The new Spring 2010 issue of "Inconvenient History," a serious online "Journal for Free Historical Inquiry," is now available. Contents include: An analysis by Thomas Dalton of Joseph Goebbels' statements and diary remarks about Jews and Germany's Jewish policy; Paul Grubach on the non-Jewish stake in supporting Holocaust mythology; Joseph Bishop's consideration of the US atomic bombings of Japan as war crimes; Richard Widmann's review of David Irving's prison memoir.
Eva Braun: Hitler's Devoted Companion
The Observer (Britain)
For decades she has been seen as a decorative companion to Adolf Hitler, an apolitical "dumb blonde" whose attentions served as an occasional diversion for the Führer. But the first academic biography of Eva Braun draws a different picture of the dictator's long-standing girlfriend, claiming historians have hugely underestimated the role she played in his life. Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker reveals her as a politically committed woman who won Hitler's affections, enjoyed a healthy sex life with him, sympathised with Nazi politics and gave him psychological support. Görtemaker spent three years researching her book, Eva Braun: Life With Hitler, due out this month.
Eva Braun: Hitler's Devoted Partner
BBC News
Interview with Heike Gortemaker, author of the much-discussed new book, Eva Braun: Life with Hitler. Runtime: 4:06 mins. The woman who was Hitler's lover, companion and wife has been portrayed for decades dismissively as an uninteresting, dumb blonde. This new book says that Eva Braun was anything but passive, and that historians have greatly underestimated her role in the German leader's life.
Zionist Group Protests Romanian Film at Berlin Festival
Der Spiegel (Germany)
The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania has protested against the inclusion of a Romanian film about anti-communist partisans in the Berlinale festival program. They say the main character was fascist and anti-Semitic ... The Romanian film "Portrait of the Young Man as a Fighter," which deals with anti-communist partisans in post-World War II Romania, has been accused of glossing over the anti-Semitism of its main character.
Third Reich Film `Jew Suess' in Focus at Berlin Festival
Agence France Presse
A big-budget German movie about the Nazis' most successful propaganda picture and the pact with the devil sealed by its lead actor premiered to boos Thursday at the Berlin Film Festival. "Jew Suess - Rise and Fall" by Oskar Roehler tells the true story of a little-known actor who is offered the lead role in the main anti-Semitic smear film commissioned by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. The new picture had been one of the most eagerly awaited at this year's Berlinale but a press preview drew scornful howls as the credits rolled.
Myths of the `Good Wars': Three 'Holy' Wars
Howard Zinn - Video
A noted dissident historian presents a critical view of three wars that most Americans have long regarded as "good" or "holy": the War for Independence, the Civil War, and World War II. Runtime: 67 mins.
Israel Is Waging A Covert War Across the Middle East
The Times (Britain)
Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities. Israeli agents have been targeting meetings between members of Hamas and the leadership of the militant Hezbollah group, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They are also suspected of recent killings in Dubai, Damascus and Beirut. While Israel's Mossad spy agency has been suspected of staging assassinations across the world since the 1970s, it does not officially acknowledge or admit its activities.
Our Mission and Record
Institute for Historical Review
The IHR is an educational research and publishing center that works to promote peace, understanding and justice through greater public awareness of the past, and especially socially-politically relevant aspects of twentieth-century history. We strive in particular to increase understanding of the causes, nature and consequences of war and conflict. Factually and conscientiously, the Institute informs the public about the Jewish-Zionist grip on America's cultural and political life, World War II lies, distortions of Middle East history, myths about the Israel-Palestine conflict, the corrosive impact of "Holocaust" propaganda, and much more.
A `Museum of Tolerance' We Don't Need
Saree Makdisi
The Simon Wiesenthal Center's plan to construct an outpost of Los Angeles' Museum of Tolerance atop the most important Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem is temporarily in disarray. This presents an opportunity to call on the center to abandon this outrageous project once and for all ... For all its sanctimoniousness, the center now presides over a big hole from which scores of bones have been unearthed. Those remains were disinterred without respect.
New Evidence That Shakespeare May Not Have Written `His' Plays
Daily Mail (Britain)
A prominent 17th-century nobleman, Greville was a renowned scholar, soldier, statesman and spy. Like his dearest friend Sir Philip Sidney, he was also an accomplished author. So talented, indeed, that some believe he was the true author of several of Shakespeare's works. For years this has been little more than conjecture ... Now, however, the tantalising prospect of a definitive answer has been raised. More intriguingly still, the explanation, hidden in a series of clues scattered throughout his work and on the Warwick monument, is said to come from Fulke Greville himself.
A Glimpse Into Dr. Mengele's Diary
Haaretz (Israel)
A diary and a revealing letter written by notorious Auschwitz death camp Dr. Josef Mengele were put on auction in the United States last month. Mengele was the SS officer who supervised the selection of prisoner transports arriving at Auschwitz and performed bizarre medical experiments on camp inmates ... "Everything will end in catastrophe if natural selection is altered to the point that gifted people are overwhelmed by billions of morons," he warns ...
Lessons of the Mengele Affair
Mark Weber
With the possible exceptions of Hitler and Himmler, no man has been so vilified in recent years as the personification of Nazi evil as Dr. Josef Mengele. The Mengele legend was the basis for two novels that Hollywood turned into popular movies ... While no sane person would excuse or whitewash atrocities, no matter who commits them, a basic regard for truth and decency compels another, more thoughtful look at the Mengele legend. How much truth is there to the fantastic accusations? The stock allegation that Mengele "sent 400,000 Jews to the Auschwitz gas chambers" is a falsehood based in part on misrepresentation.
Jewish Group Protests Ukraine Award to Nationalist Insurgent Leader
The Associated Press
A prominent Jewish human rights organization has criticized the Ukrainian president's decision to give a posthumous award to a nationalist leader it describes as a Nazi collaborator. The Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement Friday that Stepan Bandera and his followers were linked to the deaths of thousands of Jews in World War II's early stages. President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday bestowed the Hero of Ukraine award to Stepan Bandera for his role in fighting for an independent Ukraine.
New `Defamation' Film Skewers the ADL
Rev. Ted Pike
Defamation is a film that reveals how the Anti-Defamation League and the government of Israel stimulate irrational fear of persecution from Gentiles within the minds of the Jewish people. Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir suggests such defamation of the motives and character of Gentiles (as well as "self-hating" Jewish critics of Israel) is necessary for the ADL. He says this helps generate ADL's $70 million annual budget and also deflects blame from the government of Israel in wake of "Operation Cast Lead" in Gaza. Shamir originally intended a film about anti-Semitism, a topic he says is mentioned everywhere in Israeli media but poorly defined or understood.
The Murder in Dubai of a Hamas Commander
Gulf News TV - Video
This remarkable film record, compiled by Dubai authorities, shows how an Israeli hit squad carried out the killing of Palestinian Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh. Footage from surveillance cameras at the hotel where the killing was carried out, and at the Dubai airport, enabled Dubai police to make a timeline chronology of the squad's preparations for the assassination, and their getaway. Runtime: 27 mins.
Long History of Israel's `Covert Killing'
Heather Sharp -- BBC News
The Islamic movement Hamas claims that the death of one its senior commanders, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, is the latest in Israel's history of assassinating individuals it believes to have been behind attacks on its citizens ... Among the best documented of Israel's assassinations were a wave of killings of pro-Palestinian militants in Paris, Nicosia, Beirut and Athens, carried out in response to the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics in 1972 which resulted in the deaths of eleven Israelis. Methods used included a booby-trapped telephone, a bomb planted in a bed, and a raid in Beirut in which current Defence Minister Ehud Barak dressed as a woman.
Mossad's License to Kill
Gordon Thomas -- The Telegraph (Britain)
The Mossad assassins could have felt only satisfaction when the news broke that they had succeeded in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas military commander, in Dubai last month. The Israeli government's refusal to comment on the death has once more gained worldwide publicity for Mossad, its feared intelligence service. Its ruthless assassinations were made famous by the film Munich, which detailed Mossad's attacks on the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Long ago, the agency had established that silence is the most effective way to spread terror among its Arab enemies.
Suspects in Dubai Hotel Killing On Interpol Wanted List
BBC News
The eleven people suspected of killing a Hamas commander in Dubai have been placed on international police organisation Interpol's wanted list. Interpol has posted the photographs and names it suspects were used fraudulently by the individuals. Dubai's police chief says he is 99% sure Israeli secret service agents were involved in Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's death, but Israel says there is no proof. The UK has expressed "outrage" that six British passports were used.
Zundel To Be Released Soon From German Prison
The Associated Press
Far-right activist Ernst Zundel will soon be released from prison after serving his five-year sentence for denying the Holocaust, a German prosecutor said Wednesday. Mannheim prosecutor Andreas Grossmann said Zundel, 70, will be released on March 1, after receiving credit for time served before his 2007 trial. Zundel was deported from Canada in 2005. He was convicted in February 2007 of 14 counts of inciting hatred for years of anti-Semitic activities, including contributing to a website devoted to denying the Holocaust - a crime in Germany. Prosecutors were able to bring charges in Germany because the website was accessible there.
College Makes Students More Liberal, But Not Smarter About Civics, Study Finds
The Chronicle of Higher Education
While many graduates of American colleges cannot answer basic civics questions, a higher education does make their opinions more liberal on controversial social issues, according to a new report issued on Friday by an academic think tank ... Previous surveys have found that, in general, college does not bring students up to a high level of civics knowledge. According to the institute's 2008 report, based on a survey of 2,500, people whose highest level of educational attainment was a bachelor's degree correctly answered 57 percent of the questions, on average. That is three percentage points lower than a passing grade, according to the survey's authors.
In Germany, Authorities Vow to Keep Ban on Hitler's Mein Kampf
The New York Times
... Experts at the respected Institute of Contemporary History in Munich say they want to prepare a critical, annotated version of the book for release when the copyright expires 70 years after Hitler's suicide in his Berlin bunker ... But the Bavarian government opposed the idea, citing respect for victims of the Holocaust. In a statement Thursday, the Bavarian Finance Ministry said that permits for reprints would not be issued, at home or abroad.
Nationalists March in Dresden on Anniversary of Allied Terror Bombing
The Associated Press
Thousands of protesters formed a human chain in Dresden on Saturday, determined to stop neo-Nazis from exploiting the German city's painful history on the 65th anniversary of its deadly Allied bombing in the Second World War ... Some 5,000 far-right supporters poured into the city, according to police, who limited them to a rally near a railway station rather than a march for security reasons after opponents staged sit-down blockades in streets nearby. When that decision was announced, far-right demonstrators chanted "open the streets to the German youth."
The Dresden Debate Won't Die
The New York Times
A year ago, this blog pointed to an interview with a British historian who contended that the destruction of Dresden, 65 years ago this past weekend, had a clear military rationale, since it was a communications and transit hub ... But recently in The New Statesman, Leo McKinstry sifted through archives that he says contradict the British government's longstanding denials that killing civilians en masse was a primary aim of wartime air raids on German cities.
Warrants Issued in Apparent Israeli Hit Squad Murder in Dubai
ABC News
All signs point to an Israeli hit squad, using fake passports and elaborate disguises, in the assassination of a top Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel room, according to current and former intelligence officials. Police in Dubai have issued international arrest warrants for eleven people wanted in the murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh, a Hamas military commander, who was found dead in his room at the five-star Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai. Police made public surveillance footage from inside the hotel showing members of the group disguised in wigs, with false facial hair.
French Soldiers `Deliberately Exposed' to Nuclear Tests
BBC News
French authorities deliberately exposed soldiers to nuclear testing in the Sahara, according to researchers citing a confidential French military report. At least one test aimed to "study the physiological and psychological effects of nuclear arms on man", they say. Le Parisien newspaper, which carried excerpts from the document on Tuesday, quoted the defence minister as saying he had no knowledge of the report. Some soldiers say they were made ill by French tests dating back to the 1960s. They have complained for decades that they were given insufficient protection from radioactive fallout during testing, with some claiming they were used as "guinea pigs".
Hitler Painting May Have Hung in Freud's Office
The Telegraph (Britain)
The Jewish psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud might have had a painting by Hitler hanging on the wall of his office, it's been revealed. A watercolour by the German dictator has come to light that has an inscription on the back that bears the name of Freud's medical practice in Vienna. While Freud was based in the Austrian city in 1910 it is possible he or one of his staff bought the picture from the struggling artist. Hitler was a jobbing painter at the time, knocking out postcards and paintings and trying to make a living. This painting, that measures 8 inches by 4 inches, shows what looks like a small church with a background of mountains and is signed "A Hitler 1910."
The Lessons of Iraq Have Been Ignored. The Target is Now Iran
Seumas Milne -- The Guardian (Britain)
The US military buildup in the Gulf and Blair's promotion of war against Tehran are a warning of yet another catastrophe / We were supposed to have learned the lessons of the Iraq war. That's what Britain's Chilcot inquiry is meant to be all about. But the signs from the Middle East are that it could be happening all over again. The US is escalating the military build-up in the Gulf, officials revealed this week, boosting its naval presence and supplying tens of billions of dollars' worth of new weapons systems to allied Arab states. The target is of course Iran.
Jews in US Sue Hungarian Railway For $1.24 Billion For Holocaust Role
Agence France Presse
A group of survivors and descendants of victims of the Holocaust victims of the Holocaust are suing the Hungarian state railroad company in US court for its role in transporting Jews to the Auschwitz death camp. The class action suit was filed Tuesday in a US district court in Chicago by attorneys representing the group of 95 plaintiffs. The suit, seen by AFP, seeks 1.24 billion dollars in compensation and punitive damages. According to the document, the Hungarian railroad company "knowingly provided the trains for delivering 437,000 Jews to their death in Auschwitz" between March and October 1944.
More Fraudulent Holocaust-Era Claims Revealed
The Jewish Week (New York)
The Claims Conference fired three employees last week who allegedly approved more than 100 fraudulent Holocaust-era claims -- filed primarily by Russians now living in Brooklyn -- that bilked the German government out of more than $350,000, The Jewish Week has learned ... In the last two years, there has been a surge in Hardship Fund applications because Germany broadened the eligibility criteria to include Jews who were in Leningrad at any time during the Nazis' 900-day siege of the city from September 1941 through January 1944, or fled from Leningrad during those years; Germany paid 7,000 claims in 2008 and 18,000 last year.
Billions Paid by Germany in Holocaust Restitution
Der Spiegel (Germany) - 2007
... For more than half a century, the Jewish Claims Conference has been responsible for dealing with the German government over compensation claims made by victims of the Holocaust. In 1965, Germany signed a treaty agreeing to pay individual victims; survivors had to file their claims before 1969. Since then, Germany has paid out over 63.2 billion euros -- including 1.5 billion euros in direct payments to the Israeli government.
The Blood of Dresden
Kurt Vonnegut
... In February 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers; disemboweled her with high explosives and cremated her with incendiaries ... It is with some regret that I here besmirch the nobility of our airmen, but, boys, you killed an appalling lot of women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral pyres in the parks, so I know ... The "Get Tough America" policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, have earned us a name for obscene brutality.
Street Clashes Pending?: Rallies Set to Mark Dresden Bombing
Der Spiegel (Germany)
The German far right traditionally stages a march on Feb. 13 of each year to commemorate the bombing of Dresden. This year, however, authorities have moved to prevent counterdemonstrations by the left. In the night between Feb. 13 and 14, 1945, 796 Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force dropped more than 2,600 tons of bombs on Dresden, a city overflowing with thousands of refugees from the East. The next day, 311 American B-17 bombers dropped another 700 tons of bombs on the city's Baroque center.
America Slides Deeper Into Depression as Wall Street Revels
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard -- The Telegraph (Britain)
December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began. The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3 percent. That is the one that matters ... Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody's Economy.com expects another 2.4 million homes to go this year.
Obama, The War President
Helen Thomas
President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war. The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where's the change we can believe in? Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama's State of the Union
Stephen Zunes -- Foreign Policy in Focus
... Despite two ongoing wars, it was striking that Obama focused so little in his first State of the Union speech on the world outside our borders other than the call to be competitive in the global economy. Indeed, he dedicated only eight minutes of the 70-minute speech to foreign policy. Yet many of the pressing economic problems the country faces that were addressed in the speech are directly related to foreign policy. And, despite promises of change, much of this foreign policy shows disappointing continuity with previous administrations.
Non-Natives Being Evicted: Mohawks Evict Whites to `Protect Identity'
The Gazette (Canada)
Saying there are too many non-natives living in Kahnawake, the local band council has issued eviction notices to 25 residents, giving them 10 days to leave the Indian reserve on Montreal's South Shore. About 25 non-natives - mostly white people involved in relationships with Mohawks - are being asked to leave the reserve because Mohawk law does not allow them to live there, said Joe Delaronde, press attaché for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. "They are people with no native ancestry at all," Delaronde said in an interview yesterday. According to Mohawk law, non-aboriginals have no residency rights. About 7,500 Mohawks live on the reserve.
Citizen's Arrest of War Criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush
Prof. Anthony J. Hall
Professor Boyle's intervention with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute the Bush War Cabinet for international crimes is welcome news. Professor Boyle's meticulously documented charges come shortly after news of a reward being set up in Great Britain for those who attempt citizens' arrests of credibly accused war criminal, Tony Blair. All over the world, citizens are mobilizing to take action to demand accountability from those who have been committing with impunity the highest order of international crime. About a year ago I joined this global movement
President Obama Seeks Record $708 Billion Military Budget
Reuters
President Barack Obama on Monday asked Congress to approve a record $708 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2011, including a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon's base budget and $159 billion to fund U.S. military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The White House budget request also included $33 billion in additional funding for fiscal 2010 to pay for increasing military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq. That comes on top of $129.6 billion already provided for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30.
US Military Spending: A Path To Ruin
Eric Margolis
President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America's economic health. In fact, it's another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug -- debt. More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion ... Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe -- what neocons call "full spectrum dominance."
Shattering Lincoln's Dream
Joseph Sobran
... Lincoln, we should also remember, was a passionate segregationist, a fact Krannawitter barely touches on, though it might interest our new President to know that the Great Emancipator's preferred solution was to abolish slavery and to remove all "free colored persons" from the United States. In 1862 he proposed an amendment that would authorize Congress to pay for this huge project.
Why is Revisionism Important? / The Vengeful `Morgenthau Plan'
Institute for Historical Review - Video
Mark Weber, historian and director of the IHR, speaks about the importance of historical revisionism, and Prof. Anthony Kubek speaks about the `Morgenthau Plan' for a brutal and vindictive Allied occupation of Germany after the end of World War II. From the Ninth IHR Conference (1989). Runtime: 9:44 mins.
N o Dumb Blonde: A New Book About Eva Braun
Daily Mail (Britain)
She was the mystery figure at Hitler's side that the world never knew about during the lifespan of the Third Reich. Now the first comprehensive biography of Eva Braun reveals how the hidden First Lady of Nazism was the polar opposite of everything her beloved Adolf decreed should be found in a woman. 'Eva Braun: Life With Hitler,' by renowned German historian Heike B. Goertemaker, paints Eva not as an air-head besotted by a dominant man, but a fiercely loyal, independent thinker at odds with Hitler's public proclamations about 'the fairer sex'.
Google's Problems May Help Dispel Illusions About China
John Naughton -- The Observer (Britain)
One useful spin-off from the developing story of Google's difficulties with the Chinese communist regime is that it may finally spur the west to discard the rose-tinted spectacles through which it has chosen to view China in the past decade ... The regime is irredeemably authoritarian and never had any intention of ceding freedom of information to its people. Neither has it ever bought into the idea of market triumphalism. The whole Chinese economic "miracle" is a refutation of the link between capitalism and liberalism: Hu Jintao & Co believe it is perfectly possible to build a dynamic, prosperous economy without bothering with all that democracy nonsense. Recent developments confirm the indifference of the regime to western sensibilities.
Israel Seeks German Arms-Aid Deal
Defense News
Germany and Israel are intensifying negotiations over a nearly one billion euro ($1.45 billion) naval procurement package, a considerable portion of which Israel hopes to fund from a combination of German and U.S. aid. The Israeli-proposed arms-aid deal - to be discussed Jan. 18 in Berlin at a special joint meeting of the German and Israeli cabinets - involves an additional Dolphin diesel-electric submarine, torpedoes and two German-built warships.
Rash of Retirements Pushes Social Security to Brink
USA Today
Social Security's annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years as the recession led hundreds of thousands of workers to retire or claim disability. The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated ... Experts say the trend points to a more basic problem for Social Security: looming retirements by Baby Boomers will create annual losses beginning in 2016 or 2017.
The Crisis is Not Over
Paul Craig Roberts
Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans' prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one ... The threats to the U.S. economy are extreme. Yet, neither the Obama administration, the Republican opposition, economists, Wall Street, nor the media show any awareness. Instead, the public is provided with spin about recovery and with higher spending on pointless wars that are hastening America's economic and financial ruin.
Adolf Hitler, Irish Folk Music Fan
Irish Central
Newly released historical photographs reveal that famous Irish musician Sean Dempsey played for Adolf Hitler in 1936, and the Nazi dictator loved his music. Dempsey, an uileann piper, was invited to play for Hitler and propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels during a visit to Berlin in 1936 after being told that Hitler was an Irish folk music fan ... Dempsey played what was described as a 'haunting air' as Hitler listened with rapt attention. After he performed, Hitler presented him with a gold fountain pen while Goebbels clapped wildly.
Palestinian Families Protest Israeli Construction of `Museum of Tolerance' on Historic Jerusalem Cemetery
Democracy Now
Palestinian families have filed a petition with the United Nations over the Simon Wiesenthal Center's plans to build a "Museum of Tolerance" over the historic Mamilla Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Opponents of the project have long questioned how a monument to tolerance can be built on the remains of the graves of generations of Palestinian Muslims. Ten minute interview with Columbia University professor and author Rashid Khalidi, a petitioner whose ancestors were buried at the Mamilla Cemetery; and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing the families in their petition. Includes transcript of the interviews.
Japanese Split on Exposing Secret Cold War Era Pacts With U.S.
The New York Times
They were Tokyo's worst-kept diplomatic secrets: clandestine cold war era agreements with Washington that obligated Japan to shoulder the costs of United States bases and allow nuclear-armed American ships to sail into Japanese ports. For decades, Japanese leaders have gone to great lengths to deny the pacts' existence, despite mounting proof to the contrary from the testimony of former diplomats and declassified documents in the United States ... Now, the so-called secret treaties are causing problems again, this time in how Japan is handling its suddenly rocky relationship with the United States.
Investigator Skeptical of New Witness Claim in Demjanjuk Trial
The Associated Press
A top German investigator said Thursday he is skeptical about a new claim by a Sobibor survivor who says he remembers John Demjanjuk as a guard at the Nazi death camp. Thomas Walther, who led the investigation that prompted Germany to prosecute Demjanjuk, said if survivor Alexej Weizen did remember Demjanjuk, it almost certainly would have come up before in the roughly 30 years the retired U.S. autoworker has faced investigations of his past. Weizen had given statements previously to Soviet investigators and Demjanjuk had a high-profile trial in Israel in the 1980s.
North Carolina Schools May Cut Large Chunk from U.S. History Lessons
Fox News
He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 ... Under the proposed change, the ninth-graders would take a course called global studies, focusing in part on issues such as the environment. The 10th grade still would study civics and economics, but 11th-graders would take U.S. history only from 1877 onward.
The Legacy of Rudolf Hess
Mark Weber
.... He spent 46 years -- half his life -- behind bars, a victim of a cruel victor's justice. More than any other man, Rudolf Hess symbolizes the vindictiveness and hypocrisy of the Nuremberg Tribunal ... Known as the "conscience of the party," he often used what power and influence he had to intervene on behalf of victims of persecution by extremists in the National Socialist party. In his detailed study, Justice at Nuremberg, which is generally very critical of the German defendants, historian Robert E. Conot called Hess a "decent and honest" man and "a pacifist at heart." ... Rudolf Hess was a prisoner of peace and a victim of a vindictive age.
Why Does The US Turn a Blind Eye to Israeli Bulldozers?
Robert Fisk -- The Independent (Britain)
... The dream of a "two-state" Israeli-Palestinian solution, a security-drenched but noble settlement to decades of warfare between Israelis and Palestinians is as good as dead. Both the United States and Europe now stand idly by while the Israeli government effectively destroys any hope of a Palestinian state; even as you read these words, Israel's bulldozers and demolition orders are destroying the last chance of peace; not only in the symbolic centre of Jerusalem itself but - strategically, far more important - in 60 per cent of the vast, biblical lands of the occupied West Bank, in that largest sector in which Jews now outnumber Muslims two to one.
Mitchell: The Kangaroo
Uri Avnery
... When one is dealing with a 130-year old conflict, the naïve belief in the value of talk borders on folly. Decades of experience indicate that negotiations are useless if one of the parties is not interested in an agreement. Worse: negotiations can actually cause damage when one of the parties uses them to waste time while creating a false impression of progress towards peace. In our [Israel-Palestine] conflict, peace negotiations have become a substitute for peace, a means to obstruct peace. They are an instrument used by successive Israeli governments to gain time - time to enlarge the settlements and entrench the occupation.
Gaza 2009: We Will Never Forget
What Really Happened -- Video
Montage documentary on Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" military assault against Palestinians in the Gaza district. Runtime: 8:58 mins.
Obama's Irresponsibly Wasted Year
William Pfaff
Barack Obama's first State of the Union address has passed with his administration's record widely criticized by his own supporters as one of unexpected ineptitude and political incompetence ... President Obama's failure has astonished the international public and left in despair those Americans who can scarcely believe that a whole year has been irresponsibly wasted. By now, there is little or no hope of recovering that promise of national and international reform that had pervaded Western society a year ago, thanks to Obama, persuading a Nobel Peace Prize committee, dizzied by Obama glamour, to award him their prize even as he escalated the most senseless yet of America's unsuccessful wars in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran
Daniel Pipes -- The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
... He [President Obama] needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations. Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapon capacity. Circumstances are propitious ... Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush's meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama's feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.
Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power
The New York Times
In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power ... For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country's influence around the world eroded.
`Defamation' Film Looks at Contemporary `Anti-Semitism'
A provocative, irreverent video by Israeli film-maker Yoav Shamir about "anti-Semitism," real and invented, in today's world. Shows how Zionists use a manipulated historical narrative, especially of "the Holocaust," to inculcate Jews with a paranoid sense of victimhood and "otherness," and feelings of fear, disregard and even contempt for non-Jews. Includes interviews with: Abe Foxman, director of the Zionist "Anti-Defamation League"; Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry ; Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby; Uri Avnery, Israeli peace activist. Runtime: one hour and 32 mins.
Popular iPhone App of Mussolini Speeches is Withdrawn
BBC News
An iPhone application that allows users to download speeches by the former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini has been withdrawn. Its developer says he is removing it after legal threats. But the application has also faced protests from Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors who described it as offensive. IMussolini, as the application is known, has become the most popular iPhone download in Italy. It has even beaten video games based on the current film sensation Avatar. It is a 25-minute collection of video and audio clips from 100 of Mussolini's speeches. But now it has been withdrawn after a row with the film institute where the pictures came from.
US May Kill `Threatening' Americans, Says Intelligence Chief
The Washington Post
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged Wednesday that government agencies may kill U.S. citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are "taking action that threatens Americans." Blair told members of the House intelligence committee that he was speaking publicly about the issue to reassure Americans that intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense "follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed" in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens. Blair's unusually frank remarks come as the issue of targeting Americans for lethal action has attracted more notice.
Iraq `Littered' With High Levels of Nuclear and Dioxin Contamination
The Guardian (Britain)
More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels of radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found. Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years.
A Terrifying Legacy of the Vietnam War
The Telegraph (Britain)
Another Vietnam War shell has exploded - this time, in a schoolyard. No one was injured when the artillery shell exploded in a school playing field on Wednesday, shattering windows and terrifying hundreds of students. Unexploded ordnance and mines have killed more than 42,000 people and wounded some 62,000 since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
Colorado City Cuts Into Services Considered Basic by Many
The Denver Post (Colorado)
This tax-averse city [Colorado Springs] is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric. More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops -- dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled ... City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends.
In England, `Heretical Two' Lose Appeal on Internet Racism Case
BBC News
Two men have lost their appeals against the UK's first conviction for inciting racial hatred via a foreign website. Simon Sheppard, 51, was sentenced to four years and 10 months, and Stephen Whittle, 42, to two years and four months at Leeds Crown Court in July. However, the Court of Appeal has reduced Sheppard's sentence by one year and Whittle's jail term by six months. Sheppard, from Selby, North Yorks, and Whittle, of Preston, Lancs, controlled US websites featuring racist material. During their first trial in 2008, they skipped bail and fled to California, where they sought asylum claiming they were being persecuted for their right-wing views, but were deported.
In California, A New Campaign to Remove Prof. MacDonald
Daily 49er -- California State University - Long Beach
In the past week, psychology professor Kevin MacDonald had his class interrupted by an organization claiming his views and recent involvement in political organization the American Third Option party are seen as racist and anti-Semitic. MacDonald, a tenured professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been making headlines on the matter since he was investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2006. The SPLC tracks hate crimes and groups across America ... Both Kauffman and Cabral are students at CSULB and members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist and Leninist organization that advocates revolutionary change and progressive reform.
The Case Against Tony Blair
Patrick Cockburn
... It was striking in Blair's testimony that so many of his references to Iraq are inaccurate. In trying to prove some connection between the perpetrators of 9/11 and Saddam's regime, he mentioned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, later head of the Iraqi branch of al Qa'ida, as being in Iraq before Saddam was overthrown. He failed to mention that he was in a camp in Kurdistan in part of the country not controlled by Saddam Hussein. He said Iran intervened in Iraq because it feared a Shia democracy on its doorstep. In fact, Iran supported the Shia government in Baghdad after it was elected in 2005, but opposed the presence of American and British forces ... A YouGov poll earlier this month shows that 23 per cent of the public think he should be tried as war criminal.
Jewish Groups Protest Popular iPhone App Sales of Mussolini Speeches
The Times (Britain)
Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors have protested to Apple over Italy's current best-selling iPhone application: a collection of the speeches of Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator. Demand for "iMussolini", subtitled "The man who changed the history of our country", has risen to the point where it is being downloaded 1,000 times a day according to Luigi Marino, 25, its creator. It is more popular than a video game based on the film Avatar and an X-ray machine app which "allows you to see your friends naked". The app, which costs 79 Euro cents, contains audio, video and text of 100 speeches ...
Jewish Complaints of Pro-Nazi Videos on YouTube
Daily Mail (Britain)
Video-sharing website YouTube has been condemned for showing video clips glorifying Nazi troops. The scenes, accompanied by militaristic music, have drawn millions of hits from potential Nazi sympathisers and voyeurs. YouTube, which hosts film clips from the public, has 2,880 items on the Waffen SS, the most fanatical of Hitler's soldiers who were indicted for war crimes throughout WW2. The entries have a string of 'Sieg Heil' comments and praise for the fighting prowess of the Waffen SS, recruited for their unswerving loyalty to Nazism. The videos, some from Nazi propaganda news reels, have angered Jewish organisations who have called for YouTube to remove the 'hugely offensive' postings.
US Grants Asylum to Home Schooling German Family
The Guardian (Britain)
A US judge has granted political asylum to a German family who said they had fled the country to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. In the first reported case of its kind, Tennessee immigration judge Lawrence Burman ruled that the family of seven have a legitimate fear of prosecution for their beliefs. Germany requires parents to enrol their children in school in most cases and has levied fines against those who educate their children at home. Christians Uwe Romeike, a piano teacher, and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Morristown, Tennessee, in 2008 after German authorities fined them thousands of euros for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes, Romeike said.
Presidential Assassinations of US Citizens
Glenn Greenwald -- Salon
... American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed: "After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests ... The Obama administration has adopted the same stance." ... Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests."
Cracking Down on 'Conflict Minerals': Millions Dying in Congo Conflict
Los Angeles Times -- Editorial
The deadliest conflict since World War II, in which 5.4 million people have died and 200,000 women have been raped, rages far from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where murderous militias are battling for control of valuable minerals such as tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, which are essential to the worldwide production of consumer electronics. Congolese, in other words, are dying in extraordinary numbers for our cellphones and video games, digital cameras and laptop computers.
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.
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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Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
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Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
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