Monday, August 23, 2010

In Holland, Muslim Group Is Fined Over Holocaust Cartoon

 

Post-Anti-Americanism: Growing European Disdain For The U.S.
Howard Fineman - Newsweek 

... When you read about America in European newspapers, what you are likely to find is a tone bordering on pity. The U.S. is depicted as a fraying empire of obesity, ignorance, debt, gridlock, stagnation, and mindless war. Sure, the iPad is cool, but it is evidence of what America was, not what it will be again. The stories are not angry, accusatory, or even ideological. It's worse: they are condescendingly elegiac ... America is no longer admired, imitated, or feared. We remain -- for now -- a safe haven for dollars (of which there are too many in the world). But we increasingly are seen less as a model or as an empire than as a cautionary tale of national neglect and decline. 


Will Israel Really Attack Iran Within a Year?
Haaretz (Israel) 

Israel might attack Iranian nuclear sites within a year, if Iran stays the current course and the U.S. administration doesn't succeed in persuading Israel's leadership that U.S. President Barack Obama is ready to stop Iran by force if necessary, so argues Jeffrey Goldberg in Atlantic magazine's September cover story ... Based on dozens of interviews the Atlantic correspondent conducted in recent months with Israeli, American and Arab officials, Goldberg came to the conclusion that the likelihood of an Israeli strike has crossed the 50 percent mark. And Israel might not even ask for the famous "green light" from the U.S. - or even give couple of false pre-attack alerts, so that Washington won't try to stop the unilateral operation.


The Point of No Return
Jeffrey Goldberg -- The Atlantic 

... Based on my conversations with Israeli decision-makers, this period of forbearance, in which Netanyahu waits to see if the West's nonmilitary methods can stop Iran, will come to an end this December ... In my conversations with former Israeli air-force generals and strategists, the prevalent tone was cautious. Many people I interviewed were ready, on condition of anonymity, to say why an attack on Iran's nuclear sites would be difficult for Israel. And some Israeli generals, like their American colleagues, questioned the very idea of an attack ... Based on months of interviews, I have come to believe that the administration knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program ... 


Color Photos of Rural and Small Town America, 1939-1943
Library of Congress 

These images from 1939-1943, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/ Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America's rural and small town populations. 


Official US Holocaust Agency Rebukes Romania for 'Anti-Semitic' Coin
The Associated Press 

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says the refusal of Romania's central bank to withdraw a coin bearing the image of a prime minister who stripped Jews of their citizenship before World War II is "insensitive" to the memory of Holocaust victims. The Anti-Defamation League also condemned the decision and urged President Traian Basescu Friday to ensure that information about the anti-Semitic actions of Miron Cristea is included with each coin. The museum in Washington, D.C., said Cristea's tenure as Romania's premier from 1938 to 1939 "marked the opening of a systematic campaign of anti-Semitic persecution by successive Romania governments ..." 


In Holland, Muslim Group Is Fined Over Holocaust Cartoon
Reuters 

A Dutch Muslim group was fined 2,500 euros ($3,200) for publishing a cartoon which suggested the Holocaust was made up or exaggerated by Jews, a Dutch appeals court ruled on Thursday. The court in the western city of Arnhem overruled an acquittal handed down by a Dutch lower court, saying the cartoon, published on the website of the Arab European League's (AEL) in 2006, was "unnecessarily hurtful." "The court points out that the European Court of Human Rights, which considers freedom of speech of paramount importance and defends it thoroughly, makes an exception for the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust," the court said. The court also imposed a two-year probation period on the AEL. 


With Arab Opinion Like This, Obama Needs Media Advice
Jonathan Steele -- The Guardian (Britain) 

... It is easy to blame Obama, as though he alone had the power to crack down on Israel's political elite. It is easy, too, to blame the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for its lobbying against critical US politicians. Just as important is the pressure that pro-Israel campaigners put on the mainstream US media. They warn people off the very word Zionist as though only antisemites use it and demand Israel be treated as a special country whose politics deserve more sympathy than others. In fact US publishers, editors, and reporters carry the biggest responsibility for the rotten state of US policy in the Middle East. The pro-Israel lobbies are powerful and Obama weak mainly because Americans rarely get an alternative view. 


California to Press French Rail Company on Holocaust Role
The Telegraph (Britain) 

Rail companies will be forced to come clean on their role in transporting Nazi victims during the Holocaust when they bid for a multi-billion-pound contract to operate a new bullet train in California. A Democratic politician in the US state is pushing to make it a requirement that any involvement in taking people to work, concentration, prisoner of war, or extermination camps between January 1942 and December 1944 must be disclosed. The proposal is specifically aimed at SNCF, the French national railway operator, which is expected to apply for a contract to run the new $45 billion high speed link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. 


Motherly Love Breeds Confidence
BBC News 

Being lavished with affection by your mum as a young child makes you better able to cope with the stresses and strains of adult life, say researchers. Hugs, kisses and expressive declarations of love appear to rub off and foster emotional resilience. The results are from nearly 500 people, from the US state of Rhode Island, who were studied as children and adults. A secure mother-child bond may be key, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reports. But experts say it is important to know when to stop. Over-mothering can be intrusive and embarrassing, especially as children grow older. 


Formalizing Israel's Land Grab
Chris Hedges 

Time is running out for Israel. And the Israeli government knows it. The Jewish Diaspora, especially the young, has a waning emotional and ideological investment in Israel. The demographic boom means that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories will soon outnumber Jews. And Israel's increasing status as a pariah nation means that informal and eventually formal state sanctions against the country are probably inevitable. Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term "the one-state solution." It is the latest tool to thwart a Palestinian state and allow Israel to retain its huge settlement complexes and land seizures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. 


In Hungary, Police Probe Former Official For `Communist Crime Denial' 
MTI (Hungary) 

Police have launched an investigation to see if remarks by Bela Biszku, who had a role in the retributions following Hungary's anti-Soviet 1956 revolution, were in breach of the law, Magyar Nemzet daily reported on Thursday. Biszku, a former interior minister, told public television channel Duna TV in an August 4 interview that the retributions, which included the execution of former prime minister Imre Nagy, among others, had been lawful and that the events of 1956 had not been a revolution. Gyorgy Szilagyi, an MP for the radical nationalist Jobbik party, has asked for an investigation against Biszku on grounds of a new law forbidding the denial of communist crimes. 


British Mistreatment of India During World War II
Joseph C. Goulden -- The Washington Times 

... Now comes the India-born Madhusree Mukerjee with a savage indictment of Churchill's policies towards her homeland - then part of the British Empire - that likens his conduct to that of the genocidal barbarism of the Nazis. Drawing heavily on British Foreign Office documents, she asserts that his conduct, directly or indirectly, led to the deaths of three million Indians during the war, chiefly through starvation. She points out a cruel irony: While Britain and its Allies fought to "free" European nations from "captivity," Churchill and other British leaders strongly opposed the nascent Indian independence movement, imprisoning such leaders as Mahatma Gandhi. The horrific story that Ms. Mukerjee relates [in her new book, Churchill's Secret War] has been largely ignored in the vast volume of Churchillania produced in the last half-century. 


Putting Our Brains on Hold
Bob Herbert - The New York Times 

The world leadership qualities of the United States, once so prevalent, are fading faster than the polar ice caps. We once set the standard for industrial might, for the advanced state of our physical infrastructure, and for the quality of our citizens' lives. All are experiencing significant decline. The latest dismal news on the leadership front comes from the College Board, which tells us that the U.S., once the world's leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations ... We've increasingly turned our backs on the very idea of hard-won excellence while flinging open the doors to decadence and decline. No wonder Lady Gaga and Snooki from "Jersey Shore" are cultural heroes. 


In Arab Countries, Most Now Support a Nuclear Iran
The Washington Times 

A new poll shows that the percentage of the Arab world that thinks a nuclear-armed Iran would be good for the Middle East has doubled since last year and now makes up the majority. The 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll found that 57 percent of respondents not only believe that Iran's nuclear program aims to build a bomb but also view that goal positively -- nearly double the 29 percent who thought so in 2009. The percentage of those who view an Iranian nuclear bomb negatively fell by more than half, from 46 percent to 21 percent. The survey, conducted by University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami in conjunction with the polling firm Zogby International, also found rapidly diminishing support among Arabs for President Obama ... 


Jewish Groups Defend Israel's Humiliation of US
James Petras 

.... When Israel announced a major new Jews-only building project of 1600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem, it was not only "spitting in the face" of visiting Vice President Biden, it was demonstrating its power to humiliate America and Americans. Netanyahu was sending a message to world: Israel backed by its billionaire-financed Presidents of the 51 Major American Jewish Organizations, leads the US by the nose ... The fundamental issue is that the ZPC [Zionist Power Configuration] in the United States is turning our country and its people into defenders of Israel's sordid crimes, casting the American people as accomplices to ethnic cleansing and degrading our moral sensibilities before the whole world. 


Poles Question Warsaw Legend
Global Post 

The Warsaw uprising, popularized in the post-communist era, is again a subject of controversy. / ... While the communists denounced the uprising, the memory of the doomed battle was kept alive by Polish exiles in the west. After the end of communism in 1989, the uprising became a central part of democratic Poland's identity. Lech Kaczynski became Poland's president in 2005 in large part because of his success in building a museum to the uprising -- arguably the most innovative and most modern museum in the country. The uprising has also been embraced in modern pop culture. 


In Croatia, Large Crowds Welcome German Troops, 1941
Video 


In Zagreb, the Croatian capital, joyful crowds welcome German troops as liberators, April 12, 1941. Newsreel footage. German narration with Croatian subtitles. Runtime: 1:02 mins. 


Trotsky: The Ignorance and the Evil
Ralph Raico 

Leon Trotsky has always had a certain appeal for intellectuals that the other Bolshevik leaders lacked. ...The fact is that Trotsky used his talents to take power in order to impose his willful dream - the abolition of the market, private property, and the bourgeoisie. His actions brought untold misery and death to his country. ... He was a champion of thought-control, prison camps, and the firing squad for his opponents, and of forced labor for ordinary, non-brilliant working people. He openly defended chattel slavery - which, even in our century, must surely put him into a quite select company. 


Wikipedia: A `Battlefield Over History'
Jewish Telegraphic Agency 

From January's war in Gaza to Holocaust denial, the world's largest collaborative encyclopedia has become a battlefield over history ... About 200 Israelis are active Wikipedians -- people who contribute and edit entries related to Israel several times a week. Israel has the world's highest per capita amount of Wikipedia users. Israelis use Wikipedia in English in large numbers, in addition to other languages like Russian and French. 


Israel Deploys Cyber Activists in Global Propaganda Battle 
Jonathan Cook 

The passionate support for Israel expressed on talkback sections of websites, internet chat forums, blogs, Twitters and Facebook may not be all that it seems. Israel's foreign ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel. Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilised soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government's line on the Middle East conflict. "To all intents and purposes the internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose," said Ilan Shturman, who is responsible for the project. 


Israeli May Attack Iran by August 21, Says John Bolton
Newsmax 

News that Russia will load nuclear fuel rods into an Iranian reactor has touched off a countdown to a point of no return, a deadline by which Israel would have to launch an attack on Iran's Bushehr reactor before it becomes effectively "immune" to any assault, says former Bush administration U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton. Once the fuel rods are loaded, Bolton told Fox News on Friday afternoon, "it makes it essentially immune from attack by Israel. Because once the rods are in the reactor an attack on the reactor risks spreading radiation in the air, and perhaps into the water of the Persian Gulf." ... The developments mean Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon may face a stark choice: Attack the Bushehr reactor in the next eight days, or allow it to become operational despite the certainty it would greatly enhance Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons. 


Attacking Iran: Limited US Options
Gwynne Dyer 

... There is no way for the US to win a non-nuclear war with Iran. The US could "win" by dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons on Iran's military bases, nuclear facilities and industrial centres (cities) and killing five to ten million people. But short of that, nothing works. On this we have the word of Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism adviser in the White House under three administrations ... "After a long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favourably for the US," he said. The Pentagon's planners have war-gamed an attack on Iran and they just can't make it come out as a US victory ... The end would be an embarrassing retreat by the US and the definitive establishment of Iran as the dominant power of the Gulf region. 


The Constitution: How Important Is It?
Mark Weber - Beyond 50 Radio (Audio) 

The US Constitution is widely revered but little understood, says historian Mark Weber in this hour-long interview. Few Americans realize that the government laid out in the original Constitution was remarkably un-democratic. Many familiar federal government programs are, strictly speaking, not constitutional. What's decisive in any society is not a country's constitution, says Weber, but rather the character, basic values, and customs of its people. 


Across America, `Unthinkable' Cuts in Basic Services 
The New York Times 

... Faced with the steepest and longest decline in tax collections on record, state, county and city governments have resorted to major life-changing cuts in core services like education, transportation and public safety that, not too long ago, would have been unthinkable. And services in many areas could get worse before they get better. The length of the downturn means that many places have used up all their budget gimmicks, cut services, raised taxes, spent their stimulus money -- and remained in the hold. Even with Congress set to approve extra stimulus aid, some analysts say states are still facing huge shortfalls. 


America Is at Risk of Boiling Over 
Peggy Noonan -- The Wall Street Journal 

... The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us ... When the adults of a great nation feel long-term pessimism, it only makes matters worse when those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns -- even from the essential nature -- of their fellow citizens. And it makes those citizens feel powerless. Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination. 


How the Truth Was Hidden About Nagasaki 65 Years Ago 
Greg Mitchell -- The Nation 

... Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., once said in an interview that the "nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki." But Nagasaki was "forgotten" from the very start, thanks to a blatant act of press censorship. One of the great mysteries of the Nuclear Age was solved just five years ago: What was in the censored, and then lost to the ages, newspaper articles filed by the first reporter to reach Nagasaki following the atomic attack on that city on Aug. 9, 1945. The reporter was George Weller, the distinguished correspondent for the now-defunct Chicago Daily News. His startling dispatches from Nagasaki, which could have affected public opinion on the future of the bomb, never emerged from General Douglas MacArthur's censorship office in Tokyo. 


The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today
John Pilger 

... The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb. The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. 


Was Hiroshima Necessary? 
Mark Weber 

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives. ... General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war." 


Germany's Expellee Museum: Charges of Historical Revisionism 
Der Spiegel (Germany) 

Those Germans who were expelled from Eastern Europe following World War II have long sought recognition of their plight. With a museum in sight, however, some associated with the project have been accused of historical revisionism. Germany, says one deputy board member, wasn't solely responsible for starting the war ... Opposition to the pair has been growing in both breadth and volume. Both have been accused of historical revisionism. And German opposition politicians have joined historians in calling for the two to be removed from their new positions. 


World War II Internment Camp in Wyoming: Dark Period in US History
USA Today 

A year after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, 16-year-old Takashi Hoshizaki and his family were moved from their home in Southern California by the federal government to Heart Mountain Relocation Center, an internment camp in northwest Wyoming. For the next two years, the family of eight lived in two rooms in a barracks, Hoshizaki says ... Motivated by racial hysteria during World War II, the U.S. government ordered more than 100,000 Japanese and American citizens of Japanese ancestry to leave their homes and live in the camps. Nearly 11,000, including the Hoshizakis, were interned at Heart Mountain from 1942 to 1945. 


In Iran, A New Cartoon Website to `Undermine Holocaust'
DPA 

Iran has started a website with cartoons on the Holocaust aimed at undermining the historic dimensions of the mass murder of Jews during World War II, Fars news agency reported Thursday. The site - http://holocartoons.com - is financed by a non-governmental cultural foundation and mainly based on a cartoon book on the Holocaust published in 2008 which contained satirical cartoons and texts aimed at questioning the Holocaust and how the issue was allegedly used by Israelis.The website, which opens to the Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini, reportedly wants to continue challenging the issue and show that "the killing of 6 million Jews in the Second World War known as the Holocaust was a sheer lie." 


Food Stamp Use Hits Record 40.8 Million in May
Bloomberg News 

The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday. Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website. Participation has set records for 18 straight months. 


Let Them Eat Wedding Cake 
Paul Craig Roberts 

... Today in the American Superpower, one of every six Americans is living on food stamps. The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive. The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain. And the American sheeple remain acquiescent. 


Obama Warned Israel May Bomb Iran
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity 

We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war. Israel's leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel. This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens ... Netanyahu believes he holds the high cards, largely because of the strong support he enjoys in our Congress and our strongly pro-Israel media. 


GOP Blank Check for War? 
Patrick J. Buchanan 

...These Republicans have just given Tel Aviv a blank check for a preemptive war that Israel, unless it uses its nuclear weapons, can start but not finish. Fighting and finishing that war would fall to the armed forces of the United States. Whom do these Republicans represent? The Pentagon has made clear that with two wars of nearly a decade's duration bleeding us, we do not want a third war with Iran. For while easy to predict how such a war begins, with air and missile strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, no one can know how it ends ... The principal purpose and result of an Israeli preemptive war on Iran, bringing retaliation on Israel, would be to drag America in to fight and finish a war Israel had begun. In whose interest is that? 


Familiar Lies for a New War
Mark Weber -- Institute for Historical Review 

Now the world is anxiously following the so-called crisis over Iran ... Once again we are told lies so similar to those we heard in 2002 and 2003, and from the same people, that it's amazing that anyone takes them seriously. ... No issue is of greater urgency than breaking the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political, social and cultural life. As long as that power remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish-Zionist distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace. 


'Official' Changes in the Auschwitz Story
Mark Weber 

Since the end of World War II, authoritative claims about the character and scope of killings at the Auschwitz concentration camp have changed drastically. One particularly striking change concerns the various "official" estimates of the number of victims -- a number that since 1945 has been steadily declining ... Aumeier's testimony, which Meyer accepts as valid, suggests that Jews were killed at Auschwitz not as part of an comprehensive extermination program systematically to kill all European Jews, but rather as an exceptional measure to curb the horrific epidemics that were ravaging the Auschwitz I and Birkenau camps ... Compared to the recently "authoritative" figure of approximately one million Auschwitz deaths, Meyer has reduced the number of Jewish victims there by at least 450,000. 


Jewish Hostility to Christians: The Prejudice No One Ever Writes About
Damian Thompson -- The Telegraph (Britain) 

... Christian anti-Semitism, Muslim anti-Semitism, Christian Islamophobia, Muslim persecution of Christians - all of these are acceptable topics of debate. But not Jewish hostility to Christianity ... Until now I've never written a word about Jewish prejudice against Christians, even though I've seen it at close hand, at a series of Jewish-run conferences I attended in America in the 1990s at which evangelical Christian believers were stereotyped as fanatics who needed only the right demagogue to turn them into murderous anti-Semites. 


Israel Has Crept Into The European Union Without Anyone Noticing
Robert Fisk -- The Independent (Britain) 

... What on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to the Israelis? ... "Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union in all but name." ... Pardon me? Did we know this? Did we vote for this? Who allowed this to happen? 


French Historian Reynouard Behind Bars for Dissident Views
Vincent Reynouard 

... I want it to be possible to say that in 2010, in France, a father of eight children, aged from 1 to 17, languishes in prison simply for having publicly expressed revisionist arguments. I want it known that in France, in 2010, a father of eight whose only weapon is a pen languishes in prison. ... Whatever the hardships, I will never give in. The cops, judges and prisons will make no difference. The seed has been sown; it will germinate and, some day, it will grow. 


Obama Reassures Israelis, Stresses Ties to Jews
Ynet News (Israel) 

US President Barack Obama gave an interview to Channel 2 Wednesday night in which he said his administration had provided Israel with more aid than any other before it ... In an interview aimed at assuring Israelis of the US's support, Obama ventured a guess as to why they were mistrustful of him. "Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion," he said. "Ironically, I've got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the US Senate." 


Hitler Denounces Oppression of Palestinians 
Video 

From Hitler's speech of April 28, 1939. "... Palestine at present is occupied not by German troops but by the English; and the country is undergoing restriction of its freedom by the most brutal resort to force, is being robbed of its independence, and is suffering the cruelest mistreatment for the benefit of Jewish interlopers ... England is attempting to suppress a people that loves its freedom and is merely defending it ... England is not defending herself against a threatened Arab attack, but as an uninvited interloper, is endeavoring to establish her power in a foreign territory that does not belong to her." Original speech, with English subtitles. Runtime: 1:37 mins. 


Was Stalin to Blame For World War II?
Tom Segev - Haaretz (Israel) 

... The document is in his possession, and now the history of World War II may have to be rewritten: It was Stalin's fault. The document, from October 1939, consists of three pages in English that purportedly reflect a dialogue in Moscow between a delegation from Czechoslovakia and a senior Soviet Foreign Ministry official. The Czechs tried to find out why the U.S.S.R. had signed the non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. A few days later the Germans invaded Poland, and World War II began. The Soviet official, Alexandrov by name, explained to the Czech delegation that had the Soviet Union signed an agreement with the West, Hitler would not have dared to launch a war, and without that war there would have been no possibility of imposing communism in Europe. He also listed the benefits to the Soviet Union of the pact with Nazi Germany, and of the war. 


Exposing Stalin's Plan to Conquer Europe 
Daniel Michaels - Institute for Historical Review 

... Thus, when German forces struck [the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941], the bulk of Red ground and air forces were concentrated along the Soviet western borders facing contiguous European countries, especially the German Reich and Romania, in final readiness for an assault on Europe. In his second book on the origins of the war, "M Day" (for "Mobilization Day"), Suvorov details how, between late 1939 and the summer of 1941, Stalin methodically and systematically built up the best armed, most powerful military force in the world -- actually the world's first superpower -- for his planned conquest of Europe. Suvorov explains how Stalin's drastic conversion of the country's economy for war actually made war inevitable. 


Out Of Afghanistan 
Ralph Nader 

The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old -- the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels. America's overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing. 


Wikigate: Pakistan No Obedient Ally
Eric Margolis 

... Trying to make Pakistan into a satellite state will result in that enormously important, nuclear-armed nation of 170 million one day exploding with anti-American hatred, as was the case in Iran in 1979. The US-led war in Afghanistan is putting the two nations on a collision course. Over 90% of Pakistanis already say that their nation's primary enemy is the United States, followed by India. Here in Washington, the US Congress just ignored the WikiLeaks scandal and voted yet more billions to fuel the Afghanistan War. Politicians are petrified to oppose this nine-year war lest they be accused of being anti-patriotic, the kiss of death in hyper-patriotic America where flag-wavers root for foreign wars so long as their kids don't have to serve and they don't have to pay taxes to finance them. 


In Roosevelt Archive, History As He Made It 
The New York Times 

A month after the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Joseph P. Kennedy, the American ambassador in London and father of a future president, expressed grave doubts about "this war for idealism" against Hitler. Joseph P. Kennedy, then an ambassador, criticized the war and Thomas E. Dewey in a 1939 letter to Roosevelt's personal secretary. "I can't see any use in everybody in Europe going busted and having communism run riot," Kennedy wrote to Marguerite LeHand, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's personal secretary ... Kennedy's letter is one of nine documents released Wednesday by the National Archives in Washington, part of a coming cache of letters, drafts and notes related to Roosevelt's presidency ... 


Joseph Kennedy and the Jews 
Edward Renehan, Jr -- History News Network 

... Kennedy always remained convinced of what he believed to be the Jews' corrupt, malignant, and profound influence in American culture and politics. "The Democratic [party] policy of the United States is a Jewish production," Kennedy told a British reporter near the end of 1939, adding confidently that Roosevelt would "fall" in 1940. 


Large Salaries of Top SPLC Staff Members


Large annual salaries of top nine officers of the "Southern Poverty Law Center," as shown on its most recent IRS 990 form. Headed by president and CEO Richard Cohen, these nine SPLC staff members receive six-digit annual salaries, totaling $1,835,541, to fight "Hate," as they define it. None of the leading figures of this prominent "civil rights" outfit is African-American. 


The Influence: Haim Saban, Pro-Israel Entertainment Media Mogul
Connie Bruck -- The New Yorker 

... He [Haim Saban] remains keenly interested in the world of business, but he is most proud of his role as political power broker. His greatest concern, he says, is to protect Israel, by strengthening the United States-Israel relationship. At a conference last fall in Israel, Saban described his formula. His "three ways to be influential in American politics," he said, were: make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets. In 2002, he contributed seven million dollars toward the cost of a new building for the Democratic National Committee -- one of the largest known donations ever made to an American political party. 



--

Peace.

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

http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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