Israeli police arrest Jewish man for Arab murders
Haim Pearlman has spent time in jail in the past for assaulting Palestinians Israeli police have arrested a Jewish man on suspicion of stabbing to death two Palestinians in 1998 and attempting to kill others in a string of attacks.
Haim Pearlman was detained on Tuesday, but the news was blocked by a court order that was lifted on Wednesday.
Mr Pearlman insists he is being framed by the Shin Bet security service.
Israeli media say he is a member of the banned far-right Kach movement, which advocates the removal of Arabs from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Continue reading the main story
"Start Quote
Haim PearlmanThey are trying to pin something on me. I didn't kill"
He has spent time in jail in the past for assaulting Palestinians and was questioned by police this year after "wanted" posters bearing the picture of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were posted in Tel Aviv, they add.
In an interview with Israeli Channel 2 television broadcast on Wednesday, the 29-year-old former settler claimed Shin Bet was framing him for the murders because he had refused to serve as an informant and kill an Israeli Arab for them.
"They are trying to pin something on me," he said. "I didn't kill."
Reports say Mr Pearlman is suspected of being behind a series of stabbings in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Jewish district of Mea Shearim.
--
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Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
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... HaYovel is one of many groups in the United States using tax-exempt donations to help Jews establish permanence in the Israeli-occupied territories -- effectively obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state, widely seen as a necessary condition for Middle East peace. The result is a surprising juxtaposition: As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them. A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. 
A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House. Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender. Four months ago, the Obama administration made a politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement. The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration's actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover. 
A photograph of Winston Churchill giving his victory salute has been airbrushed to remove his signature cigar. In the well-known original image, Churchill makes a "V" shaped symbol with his fingers - while gripping a cigar in the corner of his mouth. But in a reproduction of the picture, hanging over the main entrance to a London museum celebrating the wartime leader, he has been made into a non-smoker through the use of image-altering techniques. 
... Chamberlin opens America's Second Crusade with the words: "Americans, more than any other people, have been inclined to interpret their involvement in the two great wars of the twentieth century in terms of crusades for righteousness." In the pages that follow, Chamberlin deftly and devastatingly tears apart the folly of such arrogance. He exposes the mendacity of American leaders such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, the fraud of the Nuremberg trials, and the hypocrisy and bad faith of the Allied leaders in their Second World War "crusade." 
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has widened its probe into allegedly fraudulent Holocaust-era claims that could have bilked the German government out of millions of dollars, The Jewish Week has learned. The fraud was discovered in December by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany in New York, which processes Holocaust-era claims for survivors in behalf of the German government. It immediately contacted federal authorities, including the FBI. The fraud initially involved claims submitted to the Hardship Fund but has now been broadened to include the Article 2 Fund, a pension program that may have been defrauded out of about $7 million over the last decade. Both investigations are continuing and the Article 2 Fund pensions of more than 200 people were suspended last Thursday. 
Dariusz Ratajczak (1962-2010) was a Polish historian who was dismissed from his university teaching post, publicly vilified, and convicted of "Holocaust denial" for having published arguments and evidence that cast doubt on aspects of the familiar Holocaust story. He held a doctoral degree in history, and was the author of several books ... Publication of "Dangerous Themes" set off a storm of fierce criticism, including protests by some prominent scholars. 
... An accumulating body of evidence suggests that the traditional view of Iran-Contra was mistaken, that this conventional understanding of the scandal was like starting a novel in the middle and assuming you're reading the opening chapter ... In view of the latest evidence - and the crumbling of the long-running October Surprise cover-up -- there appears to have been a single Iran-Contra narrative spanning the entire twelve years of the Reagan and Bush I administration, and representing a much darker story. And it was not simply a tale of Republican electoral skullduggery and treachery, but possibly even more troubling, a story of rogue CIA officers and Israel's Likud hardliners sabotaging a sitting U.S. president, Jimmy Carter. 
... For us to even consider several more years of fighting and dying in Afghanistan -- at a cost of heaven knows how many more billions of American taxpayer dollars -- is demented ... We're like a compulsive gambler plunging ever more deeply into debt in order to wager on a rigged game. There is no victory to be had in Afghanistan, only grief. We're bulldozing Detroit while at the same time trying to establish model metropolises in Kabul and Kandahar. We're spending endless billions on this wretched war but can't extend the unemployment benefits of Americans suffering from the wretched economy here at home. The difference between this and a nightmare is that when you wake up from a nightmare it's over. This is all too tragically real. 
Sacked US General Stanley McChrystal issued a devastatingly critical assessment of the war against a "resilient and growing insurgency" just days before being forced out. Using confidential military documents, copies of which have been seen by the IoS, the "runaway general" briefed defence ministers from Nato and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) earlier this month, and warned them not to expect any progress in the next six months. During his presentation, he raised serious concerns over levels of security, violence, and corruption within the Afghan administration. 
Israel's botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. This situation is likely to get worse over time, which will cause major problems for Americans who have a deep attachment to the Jewish state ... The lobby will remain influential enough over the next decade to protect Israel from meaningful U.S. pressure. 
Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials. Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia ... Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not." 
Greek inventor Archimedes is said to have used mirrors to burn ships of an attacking Roman fleet. But new research suggests he may have used steam cannons and fiery cannonballs instead. A legend begun in the Medieval Ages tells of how Archimedes used mirrors to concentrate sunlight as a defensive weapon during the siege of Syracuse, then a Greek colony on the island of Sicily, from 214 to 212 B.C. No contemporary Roman or Greek accounts tell of such a mirror device, however. Both engineering calculations and historical evidence support use of steam cannons as "much more reasonable than the use of burning mirrors," said Cesare Rossi, a mechanical engineer at the University of Naples ... 
A German man is facing up to six months in jail for having a speech by Adolf Hitler as his mobile phone ringtone. Every time the 54-year-old man's phone rang, it played a speech by Hitler, in which the former dictator pledged the destruction of world Jewry if Germany was dragged into war. Fellow passengers on a train in Hamburg heard the ringtone several times during a journey and reported him to police, who seized the telephone and arrested him when the train stopped. Police found swastika stickers and a photo of Hitler on the telephone with the words "the greatest commander of all time" written over it. The man was charged with violating the German constitution, which expressly forbids public displays of the Nazis and all their works. 
The United States will donate $15 million to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, pending congressional authorization and appropriations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday. Speaking at the Schindler Factory Museum in Krakow, Poland, Clinton said the contribution will go to preserve the site of the concentration camp and "demonstrates America's commitment to Holocaust education, remembrance and research," the State Department said. 
... Democracy in its current state, especially within the English-Speaking world, is a political system that specializes in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious characters in leading positions. Two democratically elected leaders launched the illegal war in Iraq. Two democratically elected leaders marched the west into a financial disaster ... .As much as our elected leaders are totally clueless, the Sabans, the Lord Levys and the Wolfowitzes know exactly what to do. The Jewish religion, culture and ideology provides its followers with a narrative that saves us of the democratic limbo. The Sabans of this world are far from being amateurs or clueless; they know exactly what to do. They have been doing it for three thousand years. 
More American women are choosing not to have children than three decades ago, according to a new report. Nearly 20 percent of older women do not have children, compared to 10 percent in the 1970s, the Pew Research Center said. ... Education also is a factor in a woman's choice to be a mother. The more educated women are, the higher the childless rate is.
In this interview on the British BBC television program "Hardtalk," an activist describes how Israeli troops stormed the Gaza flotilla vessel. Given here in three parts. The BBC presenter repeatedly tries to justify or excuse Israel's attack on the humanitarian aid ship, as well as the Zionist state's overall policies. Ken O'Keefe, a former US Marine combat soldier, speaks calmly but forcefully about the Israeli attack, the humanitarian flotilla operation, the plight of the Palestinians, and Israel's propaganda lies. 
During the Second World War the Americans tested in the desert of Utah the bombardment of Berlin. In accurate detail they had copies of tenement buildings constructed. The architect was the well-known German Jew Erich Mendelsohn / ... The Berlin tenements were erected in May 1943 on the Dugway Proving Grounds, shortly before Winston Churchill had gale-force firestorms ignited in the center of Hamburg. Their intended purpose was to try out the possibilities and to solve the problems that clearly lay beyond any moral limits of target bombardments. The buildings became a trade fair for the growing lobby of fire war. 
This booklet documents the background and criminal activities of Jewish Zionist terrorist groups, and especially the Jewish Defense League. Particular emphasis is given here to terror -- including murder -- against "thought criminals" who question the Holocaust story that six million Jews were systematically killed during the Second World War ... This terror campaign culminated in a devastating arson attack on the Institute's offices and warehouse in Torrance on July 4, 1984 -- the 209th anniversary of American independence. Damage in the attack, carried out in the early morning hours of the 4th, was estimated at $400,000. 
The United States is a "puppet state of Israel," says Dr. Roberts, and the US media presents the American public with "Israeli propaganda." "The United States government does not represent the American people," he continues. "It represents the military-security complex, the Israel lobby, Wall Street, the oil companies, the insurance industry, the pharmaceuticals." The US is an "oligarchy of powerful special interests, and they control politics with their campaign contributions." Runtime: 6:37 mins. 
Minister Louis Farrakhan in a letter addressed to U.S. Jewish organizations accused Jews of hurting blacks and called for dialogue to "repair" the damage. The Nation of Islam leader sent the letter, as well as a two-volume copy of "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" by the Nation of Islam Historical Research Team, which he said proves "an undeniable record of Jewish Anti-Black behavior," the Associated Press reported Tuesday. "We could charge you with being the most deceitful so-called friend, while your history with us shows you have been our worst enemy," he reportedly wrote in the letter, dated June 24. 
French rail operator SNCF is being targeted by a California state lawmaker who has introduced legislation that would force the company to disclose its role in the Holocaust as a condition of a multibillion-
Authorities in Georgia on Sunday tore down another monument to Soviet dictator and native son Josef Stalin. The monument in the town of Tkibuli in western Georgia was taken down two days after authorities tore down a bigger and more famous monument to Stalin in his hometown of Gori. Both statues were brought down in the middle of the night in an apparent bid to avoid protests and media attention. 
... For two generations, our [Israeli] foreign policy used the Holocaust as its main instrument. The bad conscience of the world determined its attitude towards Israel. The (justified) guilt feelings - either for atrocities committed or for looking the other way - caused Europe and America to treat Israel differently than any other nation - from nuclear armaments to the settlements. All criticism of our governments' actions was branded automatically as anti-Semitism and silenced. But time does its work. New tragedies have blunted the world's senses. For a new generation, the Holocaust is a thing of the remote past, a chapter of history. The sense of guilt has disappeared in all countries, except Germany. 
... But my sense is that while politicians and media remain fearful of criticizing Israel the public is starting to move on ... My sense is that within the public the residual goodwill for Israel is wearing thin. Holocaust guilt, which in the past has been skillfully used to mute criticisms of Israel, no longer has the same effect. Nor do ritual charges of anti-Semitism. The politicians tiptoe around Israel. The public is coming to understand that it is just another country.
... Although "Holocaust remembrance" remains well entrenched in our society, its impact seems to have diminished in recent years. In part this is because the men and women of the World War II generation are nearly all gone ... The Holocaust imagery of the 1940s is less potent because it's less relevant. Criticism of Israel and its policies has become much more common in recent years, even in the United States. Among thoughtful men and women, and especially among the young, sympathy for Israel has fallen noticeably, while skepticism about the role of the Holocaust in society has grown. 
... That atrocities were committed by the Allies against Germans and non-combatant civilians on both the Eastern and Western fronts is not often acknowledged. In large measure this reflects the fact that "victors write the history." ... POWs, whether Germans or Axis allies, were often shot out of hand, or shortly after they had been questioned. At Feodosiya, on the Black Sea, wounded soldiers were drenched with water and then left on the beaches to freeze to death ... When the Red Army invaded German territory in late 1944, civilians who had been unable to flee before their advance were condemned to undergo a regime of ferocious brutality. At such towns as Goldap, Gumbinnen, and Nemmersdorf, even children were raped before being murdered by Russian soldiers. 
An Iranian delegation upset its German hosts by refusing to tour a concentration-
More than 40% of Norwegians are already boycotting Israeli products or are in favor of doing so, according to a poll published Wednesday, two days after Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. The survey, conducted on Tuesday by the InFact institute and published Wednesday in the Verdens Gang tabloid, showed that 9.5% of the Norwegians questioned were already boycotting Israeli products, while 33.5% said they would like to. Only 29.4% of the 1,028 people polled said they were opposed to such a boycott, while 27.6% said they had no opinion on the issue. 
As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational "terrorists" who have no point of view worth listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance ... This paper outlines the history of Palestine to show how this process occurred and what a moral solution to the region's problems should consist of. If you care about the people of the Middle East, Jewish and Arab, you owe it to yourself to read this account of the other side of the historical record. 
... Hitlerization is the price one inevitably pays for criticizing Israel or opposing its policies. Whenever Israel discovers that yet another foreign nation has turned Nazi and is intent on recreating the Holocaust, the American lap dog soon picks up the scent ... But now it [Turkey] must be punished because it has crossed the line by opposing the kleptocracy Israel. And it will be punished, first pilloried in the US media, a process which is underway right now, and then by the US Congress and White House, which will together find some subtle and not-so-subtle ways to bring Ankara to heel. And the loser in all of this will be the American people, who will alienate a good and staunch friend in the Middle East and make another unnecessary enemy. 
New historical documents show that Adolf Hitler wanted for nothing during his short incarceration at Landsberg Prison in 1924. He was able to hold court and maintain his political contacts -- all with the consent of the prison management. A personnel manager couldn't have been more well-meaning in his description. "He was always reasonable, frugal, modest and polite to everyone, especially the officials at the facility," prison warden Otto Leybold wrote about the inmate on Sept. 18, 1924. The prisoner, he added, didn't smoke or drink and "submitted willingly to all restrictions." 
California's white population has declined since 2000 at an unprecedented rate, hastening the day when Hispanics will be the state's largest population group, according to newly released state figures. There were half a million fewer whites in California in 2008 than in 2000, a period when the state's overall population grew by 4 million to 38.1 million, according to a study released Thursday by the state Department of Finance. By 2008, whites made up 40 percent of Californians, down from 47 percent at the turn of the century. In 2000, Hispanics comprised 32 percent of the population; that number grew to 37 percent in 2008. 
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's undergraduate thesis submitted at Princeton University in 1981, was a detailed history of the rise and fall of New York's Socialist Party in the early 20th Century. It's an impressive work for a young person -- and it is sparking questions about the extent to which the young Kagan had embraced left-wing views ... Kagan's critics will focus on her conclusion, however -- which can be read as a personal statement in support of the socialist dream. "The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America," she wrote. "American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope." 
The United Kingdom faces the "longest, deepest, sustained period of cuts to public services spending at least since World War II", said an economic think tank. It is the first time that six years of consecutive spending cuts will have been endured, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said. Some government departments may see budgets slashed by a third, it added. 
... If I'm known for anything as a historian, apart from being a pain in the neck, it's because I uncover things. And uncovering things does not necessarily mean you go into the archives and see something and say: "Look at this, this is something quite extraordinary." If you go into the archives long enough, ten or twenty years, you become what I would call a "gap-ologist" I can spot gaps in archives and they're much more difficult to spot, because they've been papered over, and the files have been closed. ... Now what a scandalous statement that is! Here's the one country, Germany, trying to prevent a war and the other country -- Roosevelt, neutral -- trying to fan the flames of anti-German feeling to fuel the war. Yet it is the Germans who are called the criminals, and the Americans who do the prosecuting. 
The address he made to the British nation as it stood alone against the Nazi war machine is one of the most celebrated speeches in history. Full of passion and Shakespearesque language, his appeal for fortitude and courage was credited with re-galvanising the country in its darkest hour. But a new examination of his papers shows how he agonised over every famous phrase - even adding one at the last minute - and how his private secretary was secretly unimpressed by his efforts. 
... The Nazis decided to send German art historians to Italy to fulfill an article of the conventions which called for invading powers to ensure that cultural treasures in occupied territory be protected. The "art preservation unit," as it was named, was funded out of the military budget ... Before long, says Peters, the unit once responsible for protecting Italy's cultural heritage began delivering emotional images depicting devastated palaces, churches reduced to heaps of rubble and shattered sculptures. ... He had hundreds of pictures taken and wrote contributions for brochures on "the war against art" in which he spoke of the "enemy terror attacks." 
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini hid a set of secret diaries in an Italian hillside and ordered them not to be opened until 2025, the son of the man who buried them has revealed. Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 until he was executed by partisans in 1945, has long been rumoured to have kept diaries which could detail the extent of his relationship with wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. 
.. The problem is that nobody believes Israeli propaganda as much as Israelis. Pro-Palestinian activists often lament the fluency and mendacity of Israeli spokesmen on the airwaves and the pervasive influence of Israel's supporters abroad. But, in reality, these PR campaigns are Israel's greatest weakness, because they distort Israelis' sense of reality. Defeats and failures are portrayed as victories and successes. The slaughter of civilians is justified as a military necessity or somehow the fault of the other side. Opponents are demonized as bloodthirsty terrorists. Comforted by such benign accounts of their activities, Israeli leaders are consumed by arrogance because they come to believe they have never made a mistake. 
... Israel has violated its conditions for admission to U.N. membership and thus must be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the entire United Nations System ... Third, we must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States government is an "honest broker." The United States government has never been an honest broker from well before the very outset of these negotiations in 1991. Rather, the United States has invariably sided with Israel against the Palestinians. 
Literary reading is in dramatic decline with fewer than half of American adults now reading literature, according to a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) survey ... Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports drops in all groups studied, with the steepest rate of decline - 28 percent - occurring in the youngest age groups. The study also documents an overall decline of 10 percentage points in literary readers from 1982 to 2002, representing a loss of 20 million potential readers. The rate of decline is increasing and, according to the survey, has nearly tripled in the last decade. 
... As a Jewish child I was regularly instructed, both subtly and openly, that Jews, the people of Maimonides, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and Meyer Lansky, were on the whole smarter, cleverer, more brilliant, more astute than other people ... The man who praises you for your history of accomplishment may someday seek therein the grounds for your destruction. This is, of course, the foundational ambiguity of Judaism and Jewish identity: the idea of chosenness, of exceptionalism, of the treasure that is a curse, the blessing that is a burden, of the setting apart that may presage redemption or extermination. To be chosen has been, all too often in our history, to be culled. 
... The neoconservatives frequently complain that Islam is not a "religion of peace," but the Old Testament is also a bloody book, including as it does many accounts of the Israelites massacring their enemies with God's blessing. There are also elements of the Jewish religion that are dark and lend themselves to a mindset that accepts one standard for Jews and another for gentiles ... Based on recent evidence, lying to the gentiles certainly appears to be the hallmark of the Israeli government response to the Gaza flotilla massacre. The Israelis have fabricated information and even two videos, contrived a manifestly false narrative, and lied at every step along the way 
... A survey of last year's college graduation class showed that 80 percent moved back home after getting their diplomas, up significantly from the 63 percent in 2006. The CollegeGrad.
President Barack Obama is appointing women and minorities to federal judgeships at an unprecedented rate, and nowhere is the evidence more clear than in the Golden State ... Obama has already done more to diversify the Supreme Court than any other president by choosing two women for the high court. His first choice, Sonia Sotomayor, is the first person of Latino heritage to serve on the Supreme Court. ... Of Obama's nominees, 43 percent are women and minorities, a much higher rate than any of his predecessors, according to an analysis by Alliance for Justice, a liberal advocacy group. 
The nation's minority population is steadily rising and now makes up 35 percent of the United States, advancing an unmistakable trend that could make minorities the new American majority by midcentury. As white baby boomers age past their childbearing years, younger Hispanic parents are having children -- and driving U.S. population growth ... Currently four states -- Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas -- as well as the District of Columbia have minority populations that exceed 50 percent. 
It is a ferocious beast, the Jewish lobby. Write just one sentence even mildly critical of Israel and it lunges from its lair, fangs bared ... It's standard operating procedure for the lobby to hurl accusations of anti-Semitism with that peculiar Israeli blend of paranoia and belligerence ... None of this is accidental. The Israel lobby, worldwide, is orchestrated in Jerusalem by a department in the Prime Minister's office with the rather Orwellian name of the Ministry for Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs. Less than 24 hours after the attack on the Mavi Marmara, the ministry hit the internet with "important talking points" for Jews around the world, the first of which was - surprisingly - that "the Palestinian people are not under blockade". 
... Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger, Orthodox-dominated, Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled. ... In the world of AIPAC, the Holocaust analogies never stop, and their message is always the same: Jews are licensed by their victimhood to worry only about themselves. ... This obsession with victimhood lies at the heart of why Zionism is dying among America's secular Jewish young. 
... The Holocaust's lesson for most Israelis is not a universal one that might inspire them to oppose racism, or fanatical dictators or the bullying herd mentality that can all too quickly grip nations, or even state-sponsored genocide. Instead, Israelis have been taught to see in the Holocaust a different message: that the world is plagued by a unique and ineradicable hatred of Jews, and that the only safety for the Jewish people is to be found in the creation of a super-power Jewish state that answers to no one. Put bluntly, Israel's motto is: only Jewish power can prevent Jewish victimhood ... The lesson the rest of us need to draw from the deadly commando raid is that the world can no longer afford to indulge these delusions. 
... Eight years ago, the Taliban seemed finished. Since then, we have poured in scores of thousands of troops, spent $300 billion, lost 1,000 soldiers and seen thousands more wounded. Yet, the Taliban have never been stronger or operated more broadly ... To succeed in creating in Afghanistan a country where the Taliban have been driven permanently from power and there is no chance of al-Qaida's returns, we need a government in Kabul and an Afghan army and police that can follow up U.S. military gains by taking control, protecting the population and providing social reforms. We don't have that government. We have, instead, a regime that has no confidence we will stay the course and is thus dealing behind our backs with the enemy who is killing our troops. 
... The United States, 25 percent of the global economy, can't rein in its spending or cut debt. President George Bush inherited a surplus and went on to create the biggest deficit in US history (excepting WWII). Now, President Barack Obama is making matters worse by piling on more unsustainable debt ... Most alarmingly for resource exporters like Canada and Australia, Roubini warns China has massively overspent on infrastructure, exporting its excess capacity. Beijing has "front-loaded 15 years of capital spending," says Roubini. 
... The truth is that the U.S. no longer has a "defense" budget. The adjective is wrong. Our military forces' size long ago ceased to have any meaningful attachment to the requirements of protecting Americans ... Our military spending is nearly equal to half the world's, and our allies spend most of the other half. Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and Iran collectively spend about a fourth of what we do on defense ... Our deficit problem is an opportunity to surrender the pretension that we are the world's indispensable nation, preventing instability, shaping the international system and guiding history. We should be content to settle for being the big kid on the block that looks out for itself and occasionally helps friends in a bad spot. 
"Stop cooperation with the state of Jewish scoundrels", "Don't give in to the thriving Holocaust industry." These statements were not said in the Tehran parliament, but in the German city of Dresden, during a parliament meeting in the state of Saxony. Leader of the extreme right National Democratic Party (NPD) Holger Apfel stirred up a storm in the parliament on Thursday when he carried a speech titled "no to cooperation with scoundrel countries - and end cooperation between Saxony and Israel." 
David Norris (Ind.) [member of the Seanad or Senate of the Irish Republic] called on the Israeli authorities to end their "cynical, heartless and contemptible exploitation of the Holocaust for their own political purposes. This lets us all down, including those tragic victims of Auschwitz and all the other terrible camps." Mr Norris said he utterly condemned the recent murderous assault on the Gaza-bound peace flotilla, "where, in what was the equivalent of Bloody Sunday for the Israelis, a group almost equal in numbers of innocent, peaceful protesters against an outrage against humanity in Gaza were slaughtered by Israeli commandos." 
Emboldened by passage of the nation's toughest law against illegal immigration, the Arizona politician who sponsored the measure now wants to deny U.S. citizenship to children born in this country to undocumented parents. Legal scholars laugh out loud at Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce's proposal and warn that it would be blatantly unconstitutional, since the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. But Pearce brushes aside such concerns ... The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." 
A New York hotel is staking its claim to have invented a new hospitality niche ? birth tourism. The Marmara Manhattan offers "an exclusive package for new mothers that wish to give birth in the USA", with the additional bonus of the newborn child gaining US citizenship. The hotel, which is part of the Turkish hospitality chain, exploits the 14th amendment to the US constitution, which states that all children born on American soil "are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside". 
... Like scores of other US politicians who have traded their political souls for access to the seemingly bottomless checking accounts of Israel's American supporters, Biden has become a poster boy for "dual loyalty." Given that he has done this as a member of Congress and continues to do so while now a heartbeat from the White House should probably qualify him for a treason trial and a cell next to Jonathan Pollard ... Biden stated, "When I was a young senator, I used to say, 'If I were a Jew I'd be a Zionist.' I am a Zionist," he said. "You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist." 
Jews of European descent living on opposite sides of the globe are more closely related to one another than they are to their fellow countrymen, according to the largest study ever conducted of what it means genetically to be Jewish. Ashkenazis, the primary group descended from European Jews, are all as closely related as fourth or fifth cousins would be, the study found ... They [Jews] are not different enough to be considered a separate race, as some experts have argued, he added, but definitely are a "distinct population" -- the result, presumably, of cultural separation down through thousands of years. 
An index to documents on the 1943 "Franke-Gricksch Report," including 1945 British Army documents on the genuine Franke-Gricksch report, a summary of the genuine report, entries from the postwar diary of SS officer Maximilian von Herff, a facsimile of the alleged extract of the Franke-Gricksch report made public by Lipman. 
... Two recent books argue that Admiral Husband Kimmel, in particular, was gravely wronged by his superiors, not merely after December 7, 1941, but in the weeks and months before. One, Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit, is radically revisionist, claiming to abound in new evidence for a conspiracy involving the president, the war and navy departments, the army chief of staff, and the chief of naval operations, among many other participants. The other, Michael Gannon's Pearl Harbor Betrayed, makes no explicit accusations of conspiracy, nor does it seriously fault America's confrontational diplomacy vis-a-vis Japan in the years leading up to the attack. Odd as it might seem, this reviewer found the second the more satisfying book.
A book entitled The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable, by George Victor and published by Potomac Books Inc. of Washington, D.C. is well researched and gives a very clear picture of how and why the Pearl Harbor myth was created. ... Based on a good summary of the up-to-date research the author, who is an approving admirer of Roosevelt, concludes that Roosevelt deliberately provoked the attack and that he and his key military and administrative advisers clearly knew, well in advance, that the Japanese were going to attack both Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. 
... Israel seems to be losing the battle against the country's isolation worldwide. That isolation was exacerbated after Israel's May 31 naval raid on a flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza spiraled into violence that left nine Turkish activists dead in a clash with the troops. Ecuador, South Africa and Turkey recalled their ambassadors and Nicaragua broke off diplomatic relations following the raid. Vietnam put off a visit by Israel's president, Greece suspended military exercises and Swedish dockworkers launched a weeklong boycott of Israeli ships and goods. 
... Kids crossing the continent in the mid-19th century often had roles and responsibilities that were critical to the family's survival, said Larry Jones, a retired Idaho state historian who has written extensively about the Oregon Trail. "They were pretty tough little kids," said Jones. "Many walked the entire 2,000 miles barefoot." It's been about 160 years since the westward migration started up in force between Missouri and the Pacific states, but there are still plenty of signs left behind by the more than 400,000 people estimated to have made that journey. ... The details of the crossing are dramatic. An estimated one in ten pioneers perished en route from cholera or dysentery or from accidents like accidental gunshots or falling under a wagon wheel. 
... This Siberian territory bordering Manchuria and seven time zones east of Moscow is a Jewish republic. The Jewish Autonomous Region [Birobidzhan] was created by Stalin 75 years ago as an alternative to the Zionist project in Israel ... Today, just 6,000 of the region's 200,000 residents identify as Jews. But the Jewish dream in Siberia is not quite dead yet, and the region is now experiencing a small revival, thanks to Jews arriving from Israel. 
One of the toughest clashes between the [Israeli] state and Israel's ultra-Orthodox community came to a head on Thursday ... The parents, of Ashkenazi descent, have refused to allow their daughters to study alongside peers from Sephardi descent at a religious school in the West Bank settlement of Immanuel. The parents had removed their daughters from the school, despite the court's decision barring them from doing so, and refused to comply with the ruling in the future ... 100,000 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators came out to the streets to support the right of Ashkenazi Hasidic parents to keep their children in classes segregated from their Sephardi peers and to greet the parents on their way to custody. 
