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Jan 20, 2010

Over 20 items: News & Comment

 

Why Are They At War With Us? 
Patrick J. Buchanan 

... To Osama, we started the war. Muslims, the ulema, must fight because America, with her "brutal crusade occupation of the (Arabian) Peninsula" and support for "the Jews' petty state" and "occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there" was waging war upon the Islamic world. Terrorism, the direct killing of civilians for political ends, is al-Qaida's unconventional tactic, but its war aims are quite conventional. Al-Qaida is fighting a religious war against apostates and pagans in their midst, a civil war against collaborators of the Crusaders and an anti-colonial war to drive us out of the Dar al-Islam. On Sept. 11, they were over here -- because we are over there. 


Helen Thomas Deviates From the Terrorism Script 
Glenn Greenwald -- Salon 

... At a White House press conference yesterday with Janet Napolitano and John Brennan, Helen Thomas shows -- yet again -- that she's one of the very few White House reporters willing to deviate from approved orthodoxy scripts. She asks the prohibited question about the motives of Terrorists, and keeps asking as she receives complete non-responses, until they all just decide to ignore her: Brennan's answer -- they do this because they're Evil and murderous -- is on the same condescending cartoon level as the "They-Hate-us-For-Our-Freedom" tripe we endured for the last eight years. 


Goebbels' Place in History 
Mark Weber 

No other name is so firmly associated with the term propaganda, conjuring lies and deceit, than that of Joseph Goebbels. But the popular image of this man, particularly in the United States, is a crude caricature ... Contrary to popular belief, Goebbels was successful as a propagandist not because he was a master of the "Big Lie," but rather as a result of his fidelity to facts and truth ... It is also common to imagine that, however skilled, Goebbels was little more than a clever ranter who won support from his countrymen by appealing to base feelings of envy, revenge, conceit and arrogant pride. 


Revealed: Jack Straw's Secret Warning to Tony Blair on Iraq
The Times (Britain) 

A "Secret and Personal" letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair's plans for Iraq a year before war started. The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed. 


Settlement for Black Students Harassed by Other Blacks For `Acting White' 
South Carolina Lawyers Weekly 

Two Williamsburg County students and members of their family have reached a $150,000 settlement in what may be the first Title VI lawsuit based on claims of intra-racial discrimination in South Carolina public schools ... "Y ou have a culture where to act like you want to do well in school is considered acting white. And that is part of why we're saying that it was racial, even though the students were all of the same race because they weren't acting how the others thought they should be acting as members of that race," Kobrovsky said ... "You see, it's a crime to act white, or it's a crime to be white," the uncle testified. 


Deconstructing Simon Wiesenthal 
Lawrence Swaim 

... In any case, it is now known that Wiesenthal, a born story-teller, rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story -- in fact many of the things he claimed to have done were fabrications. This recently came to light with the publication, in June of 2009, of Hunting Evil, by British Author Guy Walters, in which he characterizes Simon Wiesenthal as "a liar -- and a bad one at that." ... Wiesenthal's scant regard for the truth makes it possible to doubt everything he ever wrote or said." ... The Simon Wiesenthal Center is, rather, committed to using the Holocaust to raise money, and using the trauma associated with it to promote the Center's extremist political perspectives. 


Simon Wiesenthal: Fraudulent `Nazi Hunter' 
Mark Weber (1995) 

.. .. Wiesenthal's reputation as a moral authority is undeserved. The man whom The Washington Post has called the "Holocaust's Avenging Angel" has a little known but well-documented record of reckless disregard for truth. He has lied about his own wartime experiences, misrepresented his postwar "Nazi-hunting" achievements, and has spread vile falsehoods about alleged German atrocities. 


Past War Offers Afghanistan Lessons. And It's Not Vietnam 
CNN 

... The Philippine-American War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902. The war is largely forgotten today, but it was a bloody preview of the type of warfare that the U.S. military faced in Asia and now in Afghanistan, historians say. "It was the 19th century version of Vietnam," said Edward Sheehy, a professor of military history at La Salle University in Pennsylvania ... Yet the United States won, in part, because it was willing to be brutal, some military historians say. According to an official State Department account of the war, at least 4,200 American soldiers, 20,000 Filipino combatants and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence and famine during the war. 


The US Becomes an Imperial Power: 1898 and the Great Debate Over Overseas Expansion 
John Ries and Mark Weber - Institute for Historical Review 

Until the 1890s, America followed its traditional foreign policy of non-interventionism. The year 1898 was a landmark in the transition of the United States from a republic to an imperial power. Today, as Americans debate the merits of new military intervention in foreign lands, many of the arguments for and against such actions echo those made nearly a century ago, but with some interesting differences. 


December Budget Deficit Sets Record
The Associated Press 

The federal budget deficit hit an all-time high for the month of December, and the red ink for the first three months of the current budget year is rising at a more rapid pace than last year's record clip. The massive tide of red ink, reflecting the continued fallout from a deep recession and a severe financial crisis, highlights the challenge facing President Barack Obama as he pledges to get control of runaway deficits. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the deficit last month totaled $91.85 billion, the largest December deficit on record. 


Why Osama is Winning 
Eric Margolis 

... Today, as we witness hysteria and chaos engulf America's air travel system, and the war party in Washington demands the US invade Yemen and attack Iran, we should recall Osama's ominous warning, "there will be no peace in America until there is peace in Palestine." ... The American colossus continues to stumble ever deeper into the Muslim world's violent, tangled affairs at a time when Washington is bankrupt and only runs on Chinese loans. In 2009, the US deficit was US $1.4 trillion ... America still refuses to face the hard reality that what drives anti-western violence is not Islam, as neocons claim, but Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. 


One In Eight Americans Receives Food Stamps
Reuters 

Some 37.9 million people -- one in eight Americans -- received food stamps to help buy food at latest count, the government said on Tuesday as enrollment set a record for the ninth month in a row. Participation has surged since the financial-market turmoil more than a year ago and has set a record each month since December 2008. The Agriculture Department said enrollment reached 37.9 million in October, the latest month for which figures are available, up 746,000 from the previous month. One in eight Americans "is the highest share of the U.S. population" ever in the program. 


Wilhelm Marr's Seminal `Anti-Semitic' Booklet 
Kevin MacDonald 

Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) has gone down in history as the first racial anti-Semite. His signature work, The Victory of Judaism over Germanism: Viewed from a Nonreligious Point of View, expresses Marr's views on the conflict between Germans and Jews in a strikingly modern manner ... Marr's pamphlet contains a number of ideas that agree with modern theories and social science research on Jews, as well as some ideas that are less supported but interesting nonetheless. His ideas on future events are fascinating with the 20/20 hindsight of 130 years of history. 


The Holocaust We Will Not See: Genocide in the Americas
George Monbiot 

... Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas; the American nations were founded on them ... As genocide spread westwards, it was endorsed at the highest levels. George Washington ordered the total destruction of the homes and land of the Iroquois. Thomas Jefferson declared that his nation's wars with the Indians should be pursued until each tribe "is exterminated or is driven beyond the Mississippi". ... The final solutions pursued in the Americas were far more successful. Those who commissioned or endorsed them remain national or religious heroes. Those who seek to prompt our memories are ignored or condemned. 


Obama Wants Record $708 Billion for Military Next Year
The Associated Press 

President Barack Obama will ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned -- a request that could be an especially hard sell to some of the administration's Democratic allies. The extra $33 billion in 2010 would mostly go toward the expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war as part of an overhaul of the war strategy late last year. 


US Military Spending: $700 Billion a Year, and We're Still Not Safe
David Wood - Politics Daily 

On Dec. 19, 2009, President Obama authorized a military budget plan for a record $663 billion to defend the United States, the highest since World War II -- higher, adjusted for inflation, even than during the Korean and Vietnam wars ... Everywhere, it seems, Uncle Sam is struggling to regain its footing -- despite its vast spending on security. Counting outlays for the military, homeland defense, airport security, nuclear weapons, and other facets of defense, the United States will spend well over $700 billion for security this year, more than the rest of the world combined. 


America is Losing the Free World 
Gideon Rachman -- The Financial Times (Britain) 

Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the "free world". But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world - Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey - are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran. The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs. 


Another God That Failed: `Democratism'
Patrick J. Buchanan 

... If democracy, from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, brings to power parties and politicians who, for reasons religious, racial or historic, detest the "white, rich Western world," why are we pushing democracy in these regions? ... If one-person, one-vote democracy in multiethnic countries leads to dispossession and persecution of the market-dominant minority, why would we promote democracy there? Why would we promote a system in an increasingly anti-American world that empowers enemies and imperils friends? Is democratism our salvation -- or an ideology of Western suicide? 


Israel's Crisis 
Philip Weiss 

Just back from Israel/Palestine, the overwhelming sense I carry away is that the present state cannot last. Just how it goes down I have no idea. But conditions are so obviously discriminatory, and the knowledge of these conditions now so widespread- among the Christian pilgrims in my Jerusalem guesthouse, among European leaders, and now too among the Israeli elite and American left - that the situation is reminiscent of the delegitimizing of communism in the 70s and 80s. The period of apartheid struggle that Ehud Olmert warned of two years ago is upon us. So too his warning of possible "national suicide." 


Prime Minister Blair's Private Pact with President Bush on Iraq
Guardian News Service (Britain) 

Tony Blair privately assured President George Bush in letters written a year before the invasion of Iraq that Britain would "be there" in any US-led attack on the country, it was revealed at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war in London Tuesday ... The inquiry has also heard from senior British diplomats that regime change was being discussed by Mr. Blair in the US in 2002 even though, according to leaked documents, Lord Goldsmith, the then attorney general, warned Mr. Blair that military action aimed at regime change, as opposed to disarmament, would be unlawful. 


Recording of German Officers Who Found Hitler's Body is Made Public 
The Telegraph (Britain) 

A tape recording of Nazi officers describing the moment they found Adolf Hitler's body in his Berlin bunker has been discovered. The recording was made on October 25, 1956, in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden, site of the Fuehrer's mountaintop home in Bavaria. The court was convened to officially declare the former leader of Nazi Germany dead so that his fortune and rights to his book "Mein Kampf" could be seized by the state government. Among those giving evidence that day were Otto Guensche, an SS officer, and Heinz Linge, a valet, who first discovered the corpses of Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun. 


The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning
James Petras 

... China has created scores of millions of manufacturing jobs, reduced poverty faster and for more people in the shortest time span in history. Its banks mostly finance production. China doesn't bomb, invade or ravage other countries. In contrast, US capitalism has been harnessed to a monstrous global military machine that drains the domestic economy and lowers the domestic standard of living in order to fund its never-ending foreign wars ...China's diversified growth is linked to dynamic economic partners; US militarism has tied itself to narco-states, warlord regimes, the overseers of banana republics and the last and worst bona fide racist colonial regime, Israel. 


Israeli Brigadier-General Denies Iran is Nuclear Threat 
The Times (Britain) 

A general who was once in charge of Israel's nuclear weapons has claimed that Iran is a "very, very, very long way from building a nuclear capability". Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons. The views expressed by the former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission contradict the assessment of Israel's defence establishment and put him at odds with political leaders ... Eilam, who is thought to be updated by former colleagues on developments in Iran, calls his country's official view hysterical. "The intelligence community are spreading frightening voices about Iran," he said. 


Can Oliver Stone Show Us the Human Side of Hitler? 
The Independent (Britain) 

Oliver Stone has never been one to spot a historical controversy without steaming towards it, but the latest project from the film-maker behind JFK and W threatens to pitch him into more dangerously hot water than ever before. The director is battening down the hatches already, saying he fully expects "ignorant attacks" on a new documentary series in which he is promising to "liberalise" Hitler and to finger US corporations for their role in the rise of National Socialism in Germany ... "I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalise them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... " 


Hitler Had Leadership Potential, Said World War I Military Evaluation 
The Associated Press 

Adolf Hitler was only a lance corporal during World War I but his commanders saw the future German dictator's leadership potential as "very good". That's according to Bavarian military records added on Tuesday to the genealogy website Ancestry.com's database. The handwritten pages note the future Fuehrer's occupation as "artist" and say he was his regiment's bicycle dispatch rider at one point. He volunteered for service only about two weeks after the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 and fought in several battles before being gassed in 1918 and hospitalised. Hitler received both the Iron Cross 1st Class and 2nd Class for bravery. 


In Ukraine, New Move to Honor World War II Nationalist Insurgents 
The Washington Post 

In World War II, members of the Ukrainian underground fought to make their vision of an independent nation real. They battled Hitler and Stalin. Ultimately they lost, and the Soviets took control of most of Eastern Europe after the war. The Ukrainians finally achieved independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Now many in this fledgling nation would like to formally recognize those earlier nationalists -- the "brave defenders of the Motherland," as President Viktor Yushchenko has called them. ... Many say the underground collaborated with the Nazis, killed thousands of Jews and perpetrated a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Poles. 


Cancer: The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq 
New American Media 

Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment. Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25 percent of new-born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord. 


In Uganda, Witch Doctors Reveal Extent of Child Sacrifice 
BBC News 

A BBC investigation into human sacrifice in Uganda has heard first-hand accounts which suggest ritual killings of children may be more common than authorities have acknowledged. One witch-doctor led us to his secret shrine and said he had clients who regularly captured children and brought their blood and body parts to be consumed by spirits. Meanwhile, a former witch-doctor who now campaigns to end child sacrifice confessed for the first time to having murdered about 70 people, including his own son. The Ugandan government told us that human sacrifice is on the increase ... 


A Decade Of High Unemployment Is Looming
The Associated Press 

Call it the Terrible Teens. The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America's unemployed -- and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises. At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won't happen until much later -- perhaps not until the next decade. The deepest and most enduring recession since the 1930s has battered America's work force. The unemployed number 15.4 million. The jobless rate is 10 percent. More than 7 million jobs have vanished. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. And household income, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk in the past decade. 


Nazis Left Dutch Gays Untouched, Says Historian
NRC Handelsblad (The Netherlands) 

... In fact, very few of those people were persecuted in the Netherlands, says historian Anna Tijsseling, who obtained her doctoral degree at Utrecht University on Wednesday for her thesis Guilty Sex: Homosexual indecency offences around the German occupation. Actually, the legal prosecution of homosexuals was more intense before and immediately after the war, her research shows. Her conclusions counter the generally accepted view of Dutch homosexuals as victims of the Nazis. Tijsseling calls this image "a persistent fiction, created by the gay-emancipation movement in the 1970s." 


Iran's President Calls For Compensation For Allies' World War II Invasion
Fox News 

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country suffered after invasions during World War II and he will "stand to the end" to get full compensation, the Jerusalem Post reported. Ahmadinejad said he'd write to U.N. secretary General Ban Ki-moon to ask for compensation for damages caused to Iran during the war, and for use of its territory and resources by allied powers, the Post reported. Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran on August 26, 1941, to secure oil fields and supply lines for the Soviets. The Post notes the Iranians suffered when food, fuel, and other essentials were given to the invading powers. 


Egypt Tombs Suggest Pyramids Not Built By Slaves 
Reuters 

New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday. Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts. "These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement. "If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's." 


China Overtakes US in Car Sales
BBC News 

China has said it overtook the United States to become the world's biggest car and van market in 2009. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said 13.6 million vehicles were sold within the country last year. That compares with just over 10 million vehicles in the US, which was previously the world's largest market. Unlike the US, China's figures include heavy trucks, but they added just 650,000 to the total. That meant China was still comfortably ahead in terms of private car sales, which were 53% higher than in 2008. 


America's Can't Do List 
Orville Schell -- Los Angeles Times 

... In China today, you feel an unmistakable sense of energy and optimism in the air that, believe me, is bittersweet for an American pondering why the regenerative powers of his own country have gone missing. As I've traveled from China's gleaming, efficient airports to our often-chaotic and broken-down versions of the same, or ridden on Europe's high-speed trains that so sharply contrast with our clunky, slowly vanishing passenger rail system, I keep expanding my list of what works here at home and what doesn't ... American prowess and promise, once seemingly as much a permanent part of the global landscape as glaciers, mountains and oceans, seems to be melting away by the day, just like the great Himalayan ice fields. 


Japan to Come Clean on Secret Nuke Deals With U.S. 
The Associated Press 

To the government's critics, it was a long and shocking act of official stonewalling: Agreements long hidden in Foreign Ministry files allowed nuclear-armed U.S. warships to enter Japanese ports, violating a hallowed principle of postwar Japan. Yet their very existence was officially denied. Now, in a clear break from the past, a new prime minister has gone where none of his predecessors dared go: He has ordered a panel of ministry officials and academics to investigate the secret agreements. The findings, due out this month, are part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's wide-ranging campaign to wrest power from the bureaucracy and make government more open ... 


US Playing Al-Qaeda's Game 
William Pfaff 

... The real reason for attacking Westerners in the West, or in airplanes on the way there, is to provoke the Western governments to send more Western soldiers to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere in the Muslim world to attack Muslim jihadists on the Islamists' own ground, where the latter have tactical and human advantages that Western soldiers can never overcome. Instead, attack by Western soldiers and the building of Western military bases on the soil of Muslim countries radicalize and scandalize ordinary people, and undermine the governments of those countries that choose to align themselves with the invaders -- thereby, in the eyes of Islamic true believers, revealing themselves as traitors to orthodox Muslim belief. 


Hitler's Grand Error at Dunkirk: Why? 
Virtue magazine 

... Why the nonsensical halt order [by Hitler], when the enemy was beaten, and with no chance of stopping the powerful German army? ... But on May 24th, 1940, while the campaign was still in progression, Hitler expressed a deeper, more political motive, to members of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's staff ... "He then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilization that Britain had brought into the world ... He concluded by saying that his aim was to make peace with Britain on a basis that she would regard as compatible with her honor to accept." An incredible tale, and yet, it fits with the admiration Hitler expressed for Britain in Mein Kampf. Hitler offered peace to the British twice during World War Two ... 


Interviews With Some Men Who Knew Hitler
PBS television 

Several prominent Germans recall Hitler, including an outstanding World War II fighter pilot. Adolf Galland relates that Hitler emphasized to him, in a private conversation, how much he detested having to fight the English, whom he admired. (Britain declared war against Germany in 1939, and rejected Hitler's repeated offers of peace.) From the PBS television series "How Hitler Lost the War." Runtime: 2:00 mins. 


A `Blatantly Anti-Semitic' Exchange on C-Span
Israel National News 

A caller on a C-Span [US cable television] interview program Monday complained about "all these Jews" having "way too much power" in America and pushing the U.S. into wars with the Muslim world. He found his comments echoed and expanded upon by the studio guest. Michael Scheuer, the former director of a CIA unit assigned to track down Osama Bin-Laden, calmly expressed the view that American soldiers are now dying in Iraq for the sake of Israelis. He further claimed that any debate of American support for Israel is squelched in the public sphere. The interviewer for C-Span's Washington Journal program did not react to the blatantly anti-Semitic exchange. 


Myths of the American Revolution 
John Ferling -- Smithsonian Magazine 

We think we know the Revolutionary War. After all, the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it not only determined the nation we would become but also continue to define who we are ... Yet much of what we know is not entirely true. Perhaps more than any defining moment in American history, the War of Independence is swathed in beliefs not borne out by the facts. Here, in order to form a more perfect understanding, the most significant myths of the Revolutionary War are reassessed ... In reality, Britain might well have won the war. The battle for New York in 1776 gave England an excellent opportunity for a decisive victory. France had not yet allied with the Americans. Washington and most of his lieutenants were rank amateurs. 


Murray Rothbard, 1926-1995
Mark Weber 

Uncompromisingly hostile to war and war propaganda, Rothbard was one of the few who remained true to his convictions even during the stifling Cold War era. Along with Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn and Harry Elmer Barnes, he continued steadfastly to oppose the US military-industrial complex and the military adventurism that is an integral part of its "perpetual war for perpetual peace" policy. Rothbard embraced historical revisionism in all its facets, including taboo issues of the Second World War. 


Israeli Officers Cancel Visit to Britain for Fear of Arrest
The Associated Press 

An Israeli military delegation has canceled an official visit to Britain, officials said Tuesday, the latest in a string of politicians and army officials to put off travel to the U.K. because of fears of war crimes prosecution. Israel complained that the practice, spearheaded by pro-Palestinian activists, is harming relations, and Britain's visiting attorney general said an urgent solution must be found. The Israelis called off their trip because their British army hosts could not guarantee they would not be arrested, the Israeli officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Neither the Israeli military nor the British government would comment. 


Americans' Job Satisfaction Falls to Record Low 
The Associated Press 

We can't get no job satisfaction. Even Americans who are lucky enough to have work in this economy are becoming more unhappy with their jobs, according to a new survey that found only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work. That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue. In 2008, 49 percent of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs. The drop in workers' happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs. But worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades. 


Obama Does a Louis XVI 
Eric S. Margolis 

...Thus the real cost of Afghanistan and Iraq are much higher than $200 billion annually. Yet President Obama, heedless of such costs, appears determined to expand the Afghan War. It seems clear that Obama has fallen increasingly under the influence of America's powerful military-industrial-financial complex and neoconservative war party. In short, the same calculus of forces that guided the Bush administration. Even America's mighty economy cannot for long support waging wars across the Muslim world. Unaffordable wars have been the ruin of many an empire, and the American Raj seems headed in the same direction as Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama plunges ever deeper into the Afghan quagmire. 


Ben Stein Drops the A Bomb
Wikitopian -- Occidental Dissent 

Larry King hosted a discussion between Ben Stein and Ron Paul on Monday that was ostensibly about the airline security fiasco. The discussion quickly turned into a heated debate between Stein and Paul about the root cause of the terrorist attack ... Stein may have merely slipped up and admitted the obvious: that the entire thing is about Jewish influence on our foreign policy. Rejecting Middle Eastern imperialism is anti-Semitic. The truth is anti-Semitic. But I don't think a man as intelligent and poised as he is would do something that consequential by accident. I believe this is the beginning of a sea change in political strategy, one in which a direct campaign tries to bury the Ron Paul Revolution and its Tea Party Movement under a tidal wave of negative publicity and accusations of neoheresy. Anti-Imperialism = Anti-Semitism. 


Bended Knees: Zionist Power in American Politics 
James Petras 

... The major potential counterweight to Zionist Israel First hegemony in the US would be in a revival of patriotic working class consciousness. America's "special relation" with Israel has been at an enormous cost to the working class, amounting to over $1.5 trillion dollars in foreign aid, loan guarantees, hijacked technological innovations, lost overseas investment opportunities, not to mention the wars on Israel's behalf and the lost lives in fighting Israel's war in Iraq. There is a 'material base' for a mass patriotic working people's revolt against the crass submission of the entire political class to the ZPC and its patrons in Tel-Aviv. 


A Look At the Jewish Lobby 
Mark Weber (Audio MP3 file) 

A factual, reasoned talk on the power of the "Jewish lobby" in America, and its harmful role, especially in directing US Middle East policy. Runtime:15:45 mins. "As long as the `very powerful' Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the U.S. political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace." 


Fascist Mothers: Children of British Blackshirt Women Cope With the Past 
BBC News 

Children of Blackshirt women, who joined Oswald Mosley's pro-Nazi British Union of Fascists, often feel that they have had to live with the burden of the guilt and shame caused by their mother's fascist sympathies ... In documentaries about the Blackshirts, the pictures I have seen are only of men, marching in the streets in their paramilitary uniforms. I knew about the daughters of the aristocracy, like Diana Mitford who married Oswald Mosley, but I had not realised that young girls, like my own mother, could have been sucked in too. But speaking to the historian Julie Gottlieb (author of Feminine Fascism) I was surprised to learn that the first fascist political organisation in Britain was actually founded by a woman. 


Why `Holocaust Denial' is On the Rise in the Arab World
Gilbert Achcar -- Mediapart 

... Within the Arab world where denial is riding high, there's not a single author who has produced anything original on that theme. All the Arab deniers do is pick up theories produced in the West ... At that level, there are two different aspects: the one that we've talked about, the war over the instrumentalization of the Holocaust, and there is what you could call the local version of competition between victims: "My tragedy is more important than yours." On the Palestinian side, one may often read statements that assert that the fate of the Palestinian people has been worse than that of the Jews under Nazism. 


Revisionism and the Arab World
Dr. Ibrahim Alloush -- The Journal of Historical Review (2001) 

... The "Holocaust" ceased long ago to be about the Jews who died in that war. The "Holocaust" is about Zionist power and policies. As stated, the "Holocaust" myths serve specific objectives: justifying Zionist settlement in Palestine; cultivating a guilt complex in the West over the "Holocaust" as the result of Western anti-Semitism; mobilizing Western public opinion behind financial, political, and military support for the Zionist movement; and condoning Zionist infractions of international law under the pretext that the wartime deaths of the Jews were unique and unparalleled in human history. 


Auschwitz Site Complex Had Record 1.3 Million Visitors in 2009 
Deutsche Presse Agentur 

International interest in the most prominent symbol of the Nazi death machine, the Auschwitz concentration camp, remains high, with a record number of visitors in 2009, officials said Sunday. The erstwhile Auschwitz-Birkenau complex drew 1.3 million visitors last year, a record for the 62-year history of the memorial, the facility's press office reported. Well more than half the visitors - 821,000 - were young people, a matter of satisfaction since they are the world's future, said museum director Piotr M A Cywinski. 


President Roosevelt Kept Deadly Disease Hidden for Years
New York Post 

... It has long been known that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the last year of his life, was gravely ill with serious cardiac problems: He'd been diagnosed with acute heart failure in March 1944 and suffered from astronomically high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis. But what the public did not know was that four years earlier, while still in the second of his four terms as president, FDR had been diagnosed with a deadly skin cancer, melanoma, in a lesion over his left eyebrow. This disease would metastasize to Roosevelt's abdomen and his brain, causing a tumor that eventually killed him on April 12, 1945. 


No-Fault Espionage
Philip Giraldi 

... Spies are traitors in every sense of the word, unless, of course, if one is spying for Israel. Israel aggressively spies on the US both to influence policy and steal high technology, but getting caught only very rarely has any consequences. Leading neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and Stephen Bryen have all been detected in flagrante providing classified information to Israel but the investigations were halted and their security clearances were godfathered so they could continue to hold high office. FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported on the frustration of his colleagues over the many cases of Israeli espionage that are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. 


US Public Pensions Face $2,000 Billion Shortfall 
The Financial Times (Britain) 

The US public pension system faces a higher-than-expected shortfall of more than $2,000 billion [two trillion dollars] that will increase pressure on many states' strained finances and crimp economic growth, according to the chairman of New Jersey's pension fund. The estimate by Orin Kramer will fuel investors' concerns over the deteriorating financial health of US states after the recession. "State and local governments are correctly perceived to be in serious difficulty," Mr Kramer told the Financial Times. 


Honest Men 
Taki Theodoracopulos -- Takimag 

Let's start 2010 right and mention a few honest people in the news... Lastly I read Kevin Mac Donald's Cultural Insurrections, his essays on western civilization, Jewish influence, and anti-Semitism. Jewish influence is a much-discussed subject -- in private, that is. It is seldom the subject of dispassionate scientific analysis. MacDonald does not pull his punches. I read all three books in one week while partying non-stop as the year came to a close. 


A Nobel Judge Who Admired Hitler 
The Dominion Post -- Stuff (New Zealand) 

Sven Hedin was one of Sweden's most famous scientists. Back in the early 1900s he explored Central Asia and Mongolia, and became an international cartographer, hydrographer, photographer and author of popular travel books ... In 1905 Hedin was appointed one of 18 judges on the Nobel Prize Committee. He continued voting on nominees until 1949. In the 1930s, he came to admire Adolf Hitler and often visited him ... "He was a hypnotic talker, a fascinating man. I also made friends with Goebbels, Himmler, Goering and Doenitz." 


Where Do Jews Come From? 
Evan R. Goldstein -- The Wall Street Journal 

... Enter Shlomo Sand. In a new book, "The Invention of the Jewish People," the Tel Aviv University professor of history argues that large numbers of Khazar Jews migrated westward into Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, where they played a decisive role in the establishment of Eastern European Jewry. The implications are far-reaching: If the bulk of Eastern European Jews are the descendents of Khazars -- not the ancient Israelites -- then most Jews have no ancestral links to Palestine. Put differently: If most Jews are not Semites, then what justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East? 


Israel Rules 
Paul Craig Roberts 

... In the second decade of the 21st century, America's Zionist wars against Islam will expand. America's wars in behalf of Israel's territorial expansion will complete the bankruptcy of America ... America has been brought low, both morally and economically, by its obeisance to the Israel Lobby. Even Jimmy Carter, a former President of the United States and Governor of Georgia recently had to apologize to the Israel Lobby for his honest criticisms of Israel's inhumane treatment of the occupied Palestinians in order for his grandson to be able to run for a seat in the Georgia state senate. This should tell the macho super-power American tough guys who really runs "their" country. 



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Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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