News Items From the Spring of 2007
History of Israel Reconsidered
Prof. Ilan Pappe
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar07/gyaku18.htm
...What we found challenged most of this mythology. First of all, we found out that the Zionist leadership, the Israeli leadership, regardless of the peace plans of the United Nations, contemplated long before 1948 the dispossession of the Palestinians, the expulsion of the Palestinians. So it was not that as a result of the war that the Palestinians lost their homes. It was as a result of a Jewish, Zionist, Israeli -- call it what you want -- plan that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948 of its original indigenous population.
China is Forming Agency to Invest Huge Foreign Reserves
The New York Times
http://www.signonsandieg o.com/uniontrib/20070310/news_1b10china.html
China will create a new agency to invest the country's immense reserves of foreign currency, now totaling more than $1 trillion, the country's finance minister said Friday ... China's currency holdings are already the world's largest, and they are growing rapidly because of China's huge trade surpluses. Most of the reserves are invested very conservatively, in U.S. Treasury bonds and other government securities, a strategy that helps keep interest rates low in the United States and other developed countries but earns little profit for China. The new agency will be able to invest some of the money more diversely and aggressively, analysts said, with the possibility of hundreds of billions of dollars put into acquiring "strategic assets" ...
German Neo-Nazi Fear Over Police Cadets
The Times (Britain)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t ol/news/world/europe/article1555768.ece
Fears that the German police force contains neo-Nazi sympathisers have been sparked after disdainful cadets delivered an extraordinary rebuff to a Holocaust survivor. Students at the Berlin police academy refused to listen to the harrowing testimony of Isaak Behar, 83, who had been invited to lecture them on his experiences as a Jew in the Third Reich ... The cadets shouted that they did not want to hear about the Holocaust any more, and said that the Jewish community was emotionally blackmailing Germany, according to German press reports. ...German police officers are given compulsory Holocaust-awareness training. Visits to sites where Nazis murdered or deported Jews are part of the curriculum.
Many Major Rivers are in Danger of Dying
Reuters
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/ 0320-03.htm
Climate change, pollution, over extraction of water and development are killing some of the world's most famous rivers including China's Yangtze, India's Ganges and Africa's Nile, conservation group World Wildlife Fund said on Tuesday. At the global launch of its report "World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk", the Geneva- based group said many rivers could dry out, affecting hundreds of millions of people and killing unique aquatic life. "If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods, biodiversity will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh water and agriculture, resulting in less food security," said Ravi Singh, secretary-general of WWF-India.
Crisis Looms for Entire Economy
Peter Morris -- Newsday (New York)
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny- opmor205137262mar20,0,2597234.story?coll=ny- viewpoints-headlines
If Washington doesn't address the rapidly building multi-trillion-dollar crisis in residential mortgage defaults, its paralysis will help trigger a national economic recession that could touch every homeowner. The crisis has been building for months - if not years. Experts agree it is a result of banks and other lenders' granting home loans to people who were not truly able to afford the payments. Now, with the national economy in a slide, the number of mortgage defaults is rising at an alarming rate ... Congress must realize that we are on the abyss of an enormous economic crisis. Capitol Hill has the means, the opportunity and the motive to prevent a mortgage market collapse if it acts decisively.
What Does 'Holocaust Denial' Really Mean?
Prof. Daniel McGowan
http://rense.c om/general75/viv.htm
... Are these revisionist contentions so odious as to cause those who believe them to be reviled, beaten, and imprisoned? More importantly, is it possible that revisionist contentions are true, or even partially true, and that they are despised because they contradict the story of the Holocaust, a story which has been elevated to the level of a religion in hundreds of films, memorials, museums, and docu- dramas? ... "Holocaust Denial" might be no more eccentric or no more criminal than claiming the earth is flat, except that the Holocaust itself has been used as the sword and shield in the quest to build a Jewish state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, where even today over half the population is not Jewish.
Israel Lobby Backed Removal of Iran War Provision
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York)
http://www.jta.org/cgi- bin/iowa/breaking/100580.html
AIPAC lobbying helped remove a provision from a bill that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval for war against Iran. A number of congressional sources confirmed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee backed dropping the provision from the Iraq war spending bill introduced Tuesday by Democrats. The bill ties funding to deadlines for withdrawal from Iraq.
Current Afghan Government More Corrupt than Taliban,
Survey Finds
The Associated Press
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03 /19/asia/AS-GEN-Afghan-Corruption.php
Bribery and corruption are pervasive in Afghanistan’s current government, according to a survey released Monday that said most Afghans believe their leaders are more corrupt than the Soviet-backed government in the 1980s or the Taliban-run government in the 1990s. About 60 percent of respondents said the current administration is more corrupt than any other in the past two decades, said the report by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, an independent group. "Over the last five years, corruption has soared to levels not seen in previous administrations," it said.
Jews Face 'Holocaust' by Interfaith Marriages
Pauline Tam -- The Ottawa Citizen
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/ news/story.html?id=486f8ed7-e85e-4967-ae40- 3912809ec843
The high rate of Jews who marry non-Jews has created a "spiritual holocaust" that threatens the survival of Judaism, says an Orthodox scholar and leading opponent of intermarriage. Esther Jungreis, an international lecturer who has been called "the Jewish Billy Graham," equates intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews with self-imposed annihilation on the scale of the Nazi extermination campaign. ...Mrs. Jungreis, a Holocaust survivor and New York-based author, argues there is a moral imperative for Jews to marry within the faith ...
Am I Doubted Because I'm a Jew?
Stephen Pollard -- The Telegraph (Britain)
http://www.teleg raph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=2XE0WDQ1 4M3H3QFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0? xml=/opinion/2007/03/23/do2302.xml
...But anti-Semitism is resurgent. The Community Security Trust, a Jewish body that works with the police to record anti-Semitic race hate incidents, has recorded a 31 per cent rise (from 455 to 594 incidents) between 2005 and 2006 - the highest since such reports began in 1984. This week in France, more than 7,000 Jews have signed a petition to the US Congress asking for political asylum because of anti- Semitism in France.
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
253 West 72nd street #1711
New York, NY 10023
http://www.tadp.org
Call anytime: 212-787-7891
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"Deep down, I believe that a little anti-Semitism is a good thing for the Jews - reminds us who we are." --Jay Lefkowitz (NYT Magazine. Feb.12, 1995. Page 65).