In recent years prominent American politicians and other influential public figures have spoken repeatedly of the alleged danger of Iran’s nuclear program, and have again and again threatened war against this Middle East nation of 75 million ... How real is this “threat”? How dangerous is Iran? What’s behind the campaign for war? And what does all this mean for Americans? In fact, the so-called Iran “crisis” is artificial ... Often ignored amid the clamor for war are the sober warnings of informed scholars, historians, specialists, analysts, and military leaders, who point out some basic, key facts: Iran is not building nuclear weapons, Iran is not a threat to the US ... War is not the answer. What’s needed instead is a bold new reality-based approach toward Iran.
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IHR NEWS AND VIEWS
At an IHR meeting in southern California, three seasoned speakers provided informed perspective on Iran and Iranian society, the threats of war by Israel and the US, the impact of the US-organized sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic, and the prospects for military conflict. Paul Sheldon Foote, a California professor with years of experience in the Middle East, and Art Olivier, a filmmaker and former mayor in southern California, joined IHR director Mark Weber at the spirited gathering.
Writers, filmmakers and scholars from the US, France, Italy and other countries, together with Iranian cinema specialists, journalists, officials and others, gathered in north Tehran for a four-day “Hollywoodism” conference to critically examine the often harmful social-political impact of the US film industry, and to discuss how to counter it ... During this visit I gained a greater understanding of this ancient but vibrant nation of 75 million, which Israel and its allies in the US have demonized and threatened with military attack.
This past year has been one of our most productive and influential ever. It included talks to audiences in Canada, the US and Iran ... My nine-day visit to Iran also included a guest appearance on an influential prime-time public affairs television show, a meeting with the country’s president ... We produced, distributed and posted more than 30 podcasts by me on a range of historical topics and current affairs issues ... In April we launched a re-designed IHR website, with a “cleaner” and more modern look.
Mark Weber explains why the work of the IHR in countering the forces of historical deceit, bigotry and cultural distortion is vitally important. An awareness of factual history is essential to an understanding of ourselves and the great issues of our age, says the IHR director in this five-minute presentation. Unless and until the interests that have gripped our nation are clearly identified and discredited, he says, there will be no change in basic policies or direction.
... Even many of those who readily acknowledge the tremendous influence of American film and television seem not to fully comprehend the formidable scope of the power behind Hollywood, or the outlook and agenda of those who wield that power ... Hollywood, together with the rest of the Jewish-Zionist dominated US media, sensationalizes and distorts current events, systematically falsifies history, promotes debased “entertainment” and perverse cultural standards, and makes possible the Jewish-Zionist hold on American political life ...
American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? ... The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere -- among those who support Israel but don't really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel - and Zionism - often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
Among the highlights of my nine-day visit to Iran was a guest appearance on an influential prime-time public affairs television show, a memorable meeting with the nation’s President, and a well-received lecture of more than two hours on “The Zionist Lobby in America," given to a gathering of several hundred university students.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, based in Los Angeles, is one of the most influential Jewish organizations in the world ... Although it claims to promote "tolerance," and makes a pretense of concern for humanity, the Center's real agenda is a narrowly Jewish-Zionist one. The Wiesenthal Center is a staunch supporter of Israel and its Jewish supremacist regime. It fervently defends Israel’s policies of oppression, occupation, dispossession, and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews.
... In Andernach about 50,000 [German] prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement ... I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty.
Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War to free the slaves. While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad.
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... I’m going to try to extract from my experience certain basic sort of tactics that I think the Jewish lobby has used over the years pertaining to my particular situation ... The first and major tactic that I discovered in their attack on me was their reliance on lies -- just straight-up lies. There’s no other way to describe it, just telling lies. Many of the categories that I will enumerate overlap, and many of them could also come under this general rubric of telling lies. But I think that if one had to isolate a single tactic, it was a tactic of telling lies. I think they’ve elevated telling lies to a very high artistic form.
... How did America come to war against Germany, the heart of Europe? Could not Roosevelt have acted as a great peacemaker by mediating the Danzig conflict in 1939, instead of instigating the Poles against Germany? ... The American President could very possibly have saved the peace in 1939. Instead, he fed the American people inventions about a hypothetical German plot to take over the United States and the whole world.
How accurate is this hallowed portrayal of America's role in World War II? As we shall see, it does not hold up under close examination ... The three Allied leaders accomplished what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany, Italy and Japan of conspiring to achieve: world domination ... Presidential deception to justify war did not start with George W. Bush. Americans who express admiration for the US role in World War II, and for Franklin Roosevelt's presidential leadership, have little moral right to complain when presidents follow his example and lead the country into war by breaking the law, subverting the Constitution, and lying to the people.
... Because the myth of Israel's birth was so closely linked to the horrors of the Holocaust, to question its truth was for years as unthinkable as doubting the truth of the Holocaust itself. But today a new breed of historians is challenging much of that myth. Palestinian and other Arab scholars, Western Middle East specialists, and non-Zionist Jews such as Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, and Norman Finkelstein have already published well-documented refutations of the official version of Israel's history. The current debunking process, however, is being carried out for the first time by Israeli Jews a younger generation of historians with impeccable credentials as Zionists, patriotic Israelis and scholars.
Revisionism as applied to World War II and its origins (as also for previous wars) has the general function of bringing historical truth to an American and a world public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda ... Revisionism brings to the artificial frenzy of daily events and day-to-day propaganda, the cool but in the last analysis glorious light of historical truth. Such truth is almost desperately needed in today's world.
… 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 ... 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.
... Fascism was touted by Mussolini as a unique combination of thought and action, yet fascism was still seeking an ideology after the Second World War was over. The roots of fascism are many and complex. The fascist leadership, notably Mussolini, admitted the multi-faceted influences of liberalism, marxism, syndicalism, risorgimento, socialism, catholicism and nationalism on their ideology.
To deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression, both the US and German governments launched innovative and ambitious programs. Although President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” measures helped only marginally, the Third Reich’s much more focused and comprehensive policies proved remarkably effective. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was flourishing. And while Roosevelt’s record in dealing with the Depression is pretty well known, the remarkable story of how Hitler tackled the crisis is not widely understood or appreciated.
... During his lifetime he made a mark not only as a pioneering global aviator, but also as a prize-winning author, environmentalist and anti-war activist. Given the scarcity of truly heroic Americans during the past century, he towers as a man of exemplary accomplishment and courage. He deserves to be remembered today not only as an authentic American hero, but also because much of what he wrote and said is relevant in our own age. Indeed, some of his remarks have proven to be prophetic.
... Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. 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.
… In August 1941 Hitler permitted a Red Cross delegation to visit the camp for Soviet POWs in Hammerstadt. It is these contacts that resulted in an appeal to the Soviet government, requesting that it should send food parcels for our officers and men. We are prepared to fulfill and comply with the norms of the Geneva convention, Moscow said in its reply, but sending food in the given situation and under fascist control is the same as making presents to the enemy … How great was Stalin's hatred for those who had found themselves behind enemy lines. It made no difference: who, where, how and why? Even the dead were considered to be criminals.
Nine-Eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the 9/11 catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president in recent decades had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people.
"The Sound of Music" is perhaps the most popular American musical picture ever produced. But whatever its merits as entertainment, the film's presentation of history is deceitful. In particular, its portrayal of the 1938 union or Anschluss of Austria with the German Reich is a gross distortion of historical reality.
Audio recordings of dozens of "Mark Weber Report" broadcasts. Information, analysis and commentary on current affairs and historical issues by the IHR director.
Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich Germany's chief publicist and spokesman, is widely portrayed as a master of lies and deceitful propaganda. But this familiar image, which is particularly entrenched in the United States, is itself a propaganda falsehood.
... America today is a society in denial. The country's political, cultural and intellectual leadership -- both liberal and conservative -- denies social reality and ignores the historical record, and therefore inevitably betrays the interests of the people, leading America down a path that means ever greater anxiety and ever more rapid decline ... The crying need in our nation today is candor, courage and truthfulness -- not childish slogans, simplistic nostrums, or wishful thinking about a mythologized past or a utopian future -- presented by media personalities who are little more than entertainers.
Fraudulent quotations attributed to Hitler and other Third Reich leaders have been widely circulated for years. Such quotes are often used by polemicists -- of both the left and the right -- to discredit their ideological adversaries by showing that Nazis held similar views. Here's a look at a few of the many remarks falsely attributed to Hitler and other top Nazis.
At one of the most spirited and successful IHR meetings in many months, Paul Fromm and Mark Weber delivered informed, well-received talks about social-political decline in America and Canada, and the factors behind this trend ... Canada is undergoing rapid and profound ethnic-cultural transformation, Fromm said. Parallel to what's also happening in the US, non-whites are replacing Canada's traditional, European-origin population ... In his address, Mark Weber spoke about how America has changed drastically over the past 60 years, as reflected in the country's high school history textbooks.
Websense company, a major US supplier of web content filtering software, says that the Institute for Historical Review promotes "racism and hate," and blocks access to the IHR website, on the basis of an unfair standard that deceives the public and its own customers. In a letter to the IHR, Websense Senior Legal Counsel Eric Proul makes clear that the company has no objective basis for its claim that the IHR promotes "racism and hate."
... The perpetrators of the Nine Eleven attacks meant to harm the United States. But the response to those attacks by President George W. Bush and other American political leaders has proven to be even more harmful. The U.S. response has weakened this country's security, undermined its economy, degraded its standing and credibility, and violated the principles it claims to uphold ... The calamity of September 11 was a consequence, above all, of the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political life and the U.S. media. Enduring security will therefore remain elusive as long as U.S. policy, especially in the Middle East, is set by a small but very influential minority with its own agenda and strong ethno-religious ties to a key protagonist in the region.
The IHR's recently launched campaign against internet censorship is making headway. In letters, by telephone, and in face-to-face meetings, the Institute has been contacting businesses and other institutions that block access to the IHR website to explain why this practice is unfair, defamatory and harmful, and to call on them to stop it.
... In 1940, an obscure cypher clerk at the American Embassy in London came across documents which, in his judgment and that of many reputable historians subsequently, proved conclusively that Roosevelt both directly and through his agents was engaged in activities designed to foment a war and eventually to compel American participation in it. I was that cypher clerk ... The new basic law of nations requires only one clause, very simply: "It pays to be on the winning side."
This essay focuses on Roosevelt's secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. It deals particularly with his efforts to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany in 1938 and 1939. Franklin Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war that had already engulfed Europe, he bears a grave responsibility for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time. This paper relies heavily on a little-known collection of secret Polish documents that fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in September 1939. These revealing documents also confirm the crucial role of Jewish power and influence on US foreign policy during these years.
... 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" ... Now what a scandalous statement that is! Here's the one country, Germany, trying to prevent anwar 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.
Video based on interview with Mark Weber by Daniel Davis, host of the "Beyond 50" radio show. The United States, says Weber, has changed from a republic focused on its own prosperity and well-being to a globally intrusive military power. This worldwide military presence reflects an entrenched American view that the US is a social-political model for all nations, and therefore has a right, based on perceived moral superiority, to intervene everywhere. He traces the evolution of this outlook from the fateful Spanish-American War of 1898, and the false pretexts and promises used since then to justify wars. Going to war to fight "evil" or "terrorism," says Weber, is a recipe for endless strife and conflict.
... We hear a lot about terrible crimes committed by Germans during World War II, but we hear very little about crimes committed against Germans. Germany's defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, "ethnic cleansing," and mass killing.
The news that I would be addressing the Institute of Historical Review came to some people as, well, news. It was mentioned in the Jewish newspaper Forward and on the Zionist Wall Street Journal OnLine. The editors of two conservative magazines called and wrote me to express their concern that I might damage my reputation, such as it is, by speaking to "Holocaust deniers." ... In short, the Holocaust has become a device for exempting Jews from normal human obligations. It has authorized them to bully and blackmail, to extort and oppress. This is all quite irrational, because even if six million Jews were murdered during World War II, the survivors are not entitled to commit the slightest injustice.
... A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to any country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish community ... Zionist Jews and their non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double standard. Jewish-Zionist organizations, along with their non-Jewish allies, support one social-political ideology for Israel and the world Jewish community, and a completely different one for the United States and other non-Jewish countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is evil and bad for non-Jews, while at the same time they vigorously support ethnic nationalism -- that is, Zionism -- for Jews.
Jews played a highly disproportionate and probably decisive role in the infant Bolshevik regime, effectively dominating the Soviet government during its early years ... With the notable exception of Lenin, most of the leading Communists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews ... The US ambassador in Russia warned in a dispatch to Washington: "The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution."
... The Six Million figure is hammered into the public consciousness, not only in newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, and television, but also routinely in our schools ... An information sheet issued by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council describes the grand Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, as a "living memorial to the six million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi fanaticism who perished in the Holocaust." Just what is the basis for this familiar figure?
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."
.. By supporting Israel and its policies, the United States betrays not only its own national interests, but the principles it claims to embody and defend. The only country in the world that has a nuclear weapons arsenal, that occupies territory of its neighbors, and which is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions - is Israel. In fact, if the United States were to hold Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq, Serbia, and other countries, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and American troops would seize Israel's leaders and punish them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
A little-known chapter of history is the wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler's Third Reich. During the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared similar views on how to deal with the "Jewish Question." They agreed that Jews and Germans were distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in Germany.
By Tomislav Sunic
So if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack? Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush's decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America's Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush -- who was already fervently committed to Israel -- resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel's chief regional enemies.
NEWS AND COMMENT
... While U.S.-funded democracy promotion is portrayed as benign, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, DNI and Freedom House have been linked to revolutions that brought down regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and nearly succeeded in Belarus ... Once the most admired of nations, America is no longer so. Why not? Because of our compulsive interventions, military and political, in the internal affairs of nations that are none of our business. Defund the American Comintern, and bring the outside agitators home.
Four interesting developments have taken place recently: One is that the US is selling (i.e., giving) Israel tanker aircraft to allow it to refuel its strike aircraft no matter what the US does. ... And four, the US Defense Secretary of whom so many of us hoped so much, has made it clear that he is no different from his predecessor, and on his trip to Israel has given what is effectively a "green light" for Israel to attack Iran whenever it chooses to do so, with full and complete US support. ... Of course, the waging of preventive war is a war crime under international law, as is endorsing or assisting in the waging of preventive war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his two-day visit to Poland ... with a stern warning about a potential Holocaust from Iran ... “This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel's 6 million Jews," Netanyahu said, alluding to the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. "We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust." Israel considers Iran its greatest threat because of its support of Islamic militant groups, its arsenal of long-range missiles and primarily its advanced nuclear program.
... George Orwell once said that some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them. Multiculturalism is one of those ideas. The intelligentsia burst into indignation or outrage at "gaps" or "disparities" in educational, economic or other outcomes – and denounce any cultural explanation of these group differences as "blaming the victim." ... Multiculturalism not only serves the ego interests of intellectuals, it serves the political interests of elected officials, who have every incentive to promote a sense of victimhood, and even paranoia, among groups whose votes they want, in exchange for both material and psychic support.
Half of the respondents to a survey on attitudes toward Jews in France said French Jews are closer to Israel than to their own republic. In the poll conducted last month of 1,001 French adults, 50 percent of respondents said Jews are “closer to France than Israel” and 46 percent said they were not; 4 percent said they did not know. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said Jews are “a unified group characterized by solidarity,” while 20 percent said Jews are a “diverse and divided” group. Twenty-eight percent agreed with the assertion that “Jews exercise an oversized level of influence,” while 71 percent said they “exercise a normal amount of influence.”
... As it turns out, Hitler’s love for American movies was reciprocated by Hollywood. A forthcoming book by the young historian Ben Urwand, to be published by Harvard University Press in October, presents explosive new evidence about the shocking extent of the partnership between the Nazis and major Hollywood producers ... Collaboration is the only fitting word for the relationship between Hitler and Hollywood in the 1930s. Using new archival discoveries, Urwand alleges that some of the Hollywood studio heads, nearly all of whom were Jewish, cast their lot with Hitler almost from the moment he took power, and that they did so eagerly — not reluctantly. What they wanted was access to German audiences.
In spite of a basic hostility between Third Reich Germany and international Jewry, German National Socialists and Jewish Zionists shared similar views about ethnicity and nationhood, and worked together in the years 1933 through 1940-41 for what each group believed was in its own best national interest. The Hitler government vigorously promoted Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine. In collaborating with the Zionists for a mutually desirable and humane solution to a complex problem, Third Reich Germany was willing to make foreign exchange sacrifices, impair relations with Britain, and anger Arabs.
A day before his death in his beleaguered command center in central Berlin, Adolf Hitler summoned Traudl Junge, his youngest secretary, for an important task. Standing at a large table in the conference room of the cramped underground concrete bunker complex, he paused a bit before he began dictating “My Political Testament,” a declaration that would be his final words to the German people, as well as a statement for coming generations ... Hitler also sought to explain why things had turned out so calamitously, and he anticipated accusations that would be made against him in the years ahead.
After the successful Allied invasions of western France, Germany gathered reserve forces and launched a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes, which collapsed by January. At the same time, Soviet forces were closing in from the east, invading Poland and East Prussia ... In the first several months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but rapidly lost territory, ran out of supplies, and exhausted its options ... Then came the end of the Third Reich, as the Soviets took Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, and Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 8 (May 7 on the Western Front).
The last words of Eva Braun, Hitler’s longtime mistress and wife of a few hours, charting her fear of their certain death, have been discovered / Letters written by Braun show how the sense of hope in the German camp turned to despair as the Red Army started to take control of Berlin in April 1945. On April 22, as the German forces were overwhelmed, she wrote: “We are fighting here until the last but I’m afraid the end is threatening closer and closer.” Eight days later the 33-year-old was dead, killing herself alongside her husband Adolf Hitler. The pair had been married just a few hours. The letters are thought to have been written by Braun to her friend Herta Schneider.
Twenty-one photos from defeated, war-ravaged Berlin, following the end of fighting in early May 1945. Includes several photos from Hitler’s underground bunker command center.
Adolf Hitler made his final address to the nation in a radio broadcast on Jan. 30, 1945, the twelfth anniversary of the National Socialist seizure of power. Here are the concluding sentences of that historic address, with English-language subtitles. In this talk, delivered three months before his death, he concludes with determined confidence that, in spite of setbacks, Germany and Europe will ultimately prevail against the grave threat from the East. This brief video clip, just 42 seconds in length, has garnered nearly two and a half million "hits” or “views.” It’s from a 1997 BBC documentary “The Nazis: A Warning From History.”
Hitler honors 20 young German volunteers who had shown extraordinary commitment and courage in defending the homeland against enemy forces. These final images of the German leader as he meets with Hitler Youth boys and teenagers in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin are from March 20, 1945 -- six weeks before he took his life in his beleaguered command post. This is a portion of the final German wartime weekly newsreel, “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” of March 22, 1945. With English subtitles (not entirely accurate). Runtime: 1:50 mins.
... The SPLC is probably the richest poverty organization in the history of the world. From its very beginning the SPLC, thanks to Dees’s talent for crafting multi-page alarmist fundraising letters, has not only continuously operated in the black, but has steadily accumulated a mountain of surpluses augmented by a shrewdly managed investment portfolio. Today the SPLC’s net assets total more than $256 million ... Besides being willing to slap the hate label onto groups that may merely interpret data differently from the SPLC, the center routinely tries to link, if only by implication, increases in the number of hate and patriot groups it tallies to actual incidents of domestic terrorism and other violence.
... People who raise money and make money selling the notion there's a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with massed legions of haters, ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of "Mein Kampf" tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other. What is the arch-salesman of hate mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now? Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC.
... The [US] military has for years been developing offensive capabilities, giving it the power not just to defend the US but to assail its foes. Using so-called cyber-kinetic attacks, Alexander [director of the National Security Agency] and his forces now have the capability to physically destroy an adversary’s equipment and infrastructure, and potentially even to kill. Alexander — who declined to be interviewed for this article — has concluded that such cyberweapons are as crucial to 21st-century warfare as nuclear arms were in the 20th. And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s.
German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of the dreaded Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.
... This year’s presidential campaign, like its predecessors, challenges Westerners’ deep attachment to myths of the Islamic Republic’s illegitimacy and fragility. The eight candidates initially approved by the Guardian Council represented a broad spectrum of conservative and reformist views ... Americans and most other Westerners have never been able to take the Islamic Republic seriously as a system — one reason successive U.S. administrations have, for three decades, bought into perennially mistaken, agenda-driven claims of the Islamic Republic’s vulnerability and impending collapse.
... No Iranian president, no matter how influential, will advocate that Iran give up its uranium-enrichment activities. The Islamic Republic has invested too much, financially and politically, in the nuclear program to give in to such maximalist demands. But a new president could bring a change in tone. While this may seem minor, it could significantly improve chances for a successful accommodation in which Iran agrees to limit its enrichment activities and allow intrusive monitoring of its nuclear program. In diplomacy, language and public behavior can play important roles in easing tensions and allowing diplomats to sell compromises to their domestic constituencies.
For the first time, half (49.9%) of American children under the age of five are of a racial or ethnic minority, according to the US Census Bureau. The agency projected that in the US, whites would become a minority in the under-five age group this year or next. The 2012 data also found that for the first time in more than a century, there were more deaths than births among white Americans. The "natural decrease" occurred several years earlier than forecast, it said. The government figures also project that in five years, minorities will make up more than half of children under 18.
Dozens of striking photos provide vivid glimpses of American life during the dynamic era from the US Civil War era to the 1920s. These vintage photographs from the US Library of Congress collection have been restored by a company that specializes in HD photo restoration.
Twitter will have to reveal the names of France-based users posting anti-Semitic messages, after a Paris court refused to consider the firm's appeal. In January, the Paris High Court told the firm to reveal the data directly to France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) and four others, if requested. The groups filed a complaint following several instances of racist tweets. Twitter blocked the posts in France, but appealed against the decision to hand over user IDs. The micro-blogging service still has not revealed any of the requested identities, and is now thinking of appealing again, said the firm's spokeswoman.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) welcomed the issuance of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA) Internet Hate Task Force Report and Recommendations on Wednesday in Jerusalem. The report, the culmination of testimony and meetings with industry experts, academics and non-governmental organizations, offers a series of recommendations for responding to cyber-hate, including the creation of clear policies on hate speech and better enforcement of hate speech policies.
As the Supreme Court prepares to once again weigh in on the issue of affirmative action, a record-low number of Americans support such programs, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Just 45 percent of respondents said they believe affirmative action programs are still needed to counteract the effects of discrimination against minorities, while an equal 45 percent feel the programs have gone too far and should be ended because they unfairly discriminate against whites ... Reasons for the trend range from the idea of “diversity fatigue” to what others believe is the effect of an African-American being elected president, as well as 20 years of anti-affirmative-action campaigns.
Vilifying Israel has become the acceptable face of anti-Semitic rhetoric, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu told the fourth annual Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem … Describing the advent of so-called modern anti-Semitism as “tragic”, he lamented its rise to prominence in Muslim society particularly across Iran and the Arab world, “where Jews and Muslims used to live for centuries in relative harmony”.
The problem of sexual assault in the military leapt to the forefront in Washington on Tuesday as the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 in 2010, and an angry President Obama and Congress demanded action. The study, based on a confidential survey sent to 108,000 active-duty service members ... In a separate report made public on Tuesday, the military recorded 3,374 sexual assault reports last year, up from 3,192 in 2011, suggesting that many victims continue not to report the crimes for fear of retribution or a lack of justice under the department’s system for prosecution.
The soldiers who landed in Normandy on D-Day were greeted as liberators, but by the time American GIs were headed back home in late 1945, many French citizens viewed them in a very different light. In the port city of Le Havre, the mayor was bombarded with letters from angry residents complaining about drunkenness, jeep accidents, sexual assault — “a regime of terror,” as one put it, “imposed by bandits in uniform.” This isn’t the “greatest generation” as it has come to be depicted in popular histories. But in “What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American G.I. in World War II France,” the historian Mary Louise Roberts draws on French archives, American military records, wartime propaganda and other sources to advance a provocative argument ...
Americans often think of World War II as the "good war," but historian Mary Louise Roberts says her new book might make our understanding of that conflict "more truthful and more complex." The book, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, tells the story of relations between American men and French women in Normandy and elsewhere ... "I guess like many people I was somewhat surprised when I found out that the GIs were not impeccable soldiers. I began to look at documents in France that were only opened in January of 2005, and in many cases I was the first American to look at them.”
... Mary Louise Roberts’ book is all the more pertinent because it asks this question of the group of soldiers most likely to be idealised and least likely to be criticised: the American GIs who helped to liberate France from Nazi occupation in 1944-45. In popular mythology, the GIs who landed in Normandy in June 1944 were large, well-dressed, well-fed and handsome ... While US troops entered France as part of a liberating force, ordinary French men and women would experience the GIs as yet another occupation force. US military power was capricious.
... The following are 27 quotes from Edward Snowden about U.S. government spying that should send a chill up your spine ... “The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate." ... “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything." ... “If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards." “Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere ... I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President ..."
Government surveillance and secret warrants are not new in the United States, particularly in the years since the September 11, 2001, attacks. Following are some key milestones in the history of surveillance in the country: ... 2006 - In February, USA Today reports that the NSA had worked with telecommunications companies including AT&T and Sprint in its warrantless eavesdropping program. Three months later the newspaper reveals that the agency had been secretly collecting tens of millions of phone records from companies including Verizon.
After two years of civil war, support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was said to have sharply increased. NATO has been studying data that told of a sharp rise in support for Assad. The data, compiled by Western-sponsored activists and organizations, showed that a majority of Syrians were alarmed by the Al Qaida takeover of the Sunni revolt and preferred to return to Assad, Middle East Newsline reported. “The people are sick of the war and hate the jihadists more than Assad,” a Western source familiar with the data said ... The data, relayed to NATO over the last month, asserted that 70 percent of Syrians support the Assad regime. Another 20 percent were deemed neutral and the remaining ten percent expressed support for the rebels.
In the last week we have been following British and French’s desperate attempts to push for a military intervention in Syria. It is far from being a secret that both British and French government are dominated by the Jewish Lobby. In Britain it is the ultra-Zionist CFI (Conservative Friends of Israel) -- apparently 80% of Britain’s conservative MPs are members of the pro-Israeli Lobby. In France the situation is even more devastating, the entire political system is hijacked by the forceful CRIF. But in case anyone fails to grasp why the Jewish Lobby is pushing for an immediate intervention, Debka, an Israeli news outlet provides the answer.
Italian border authorities arrested 77-year-old Israeli citizen Gedaliah Taub on Friday on suspicion of international human organ trafficking. Taub was detained at the Rome airport after officials determined his passport was forged. Rome police told Maariv that Brazil had issued an international arrest warrant for Taub after he fled the South American country in 2009 during a leave from prison, where he was serving a nine-year sentence for organ trafficking.
The US government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidant of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War Two. A preliminary U.S. government assessment reviewed by Reuters asserts the diary could offer new insight into meetings Rosenberg had with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders, including Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering. It also includes details about the German occupation of the Soviet Union, including plans for mass killings of Jews and other Eastern Europeans.
While some individuals, both Jewish and Christian, have talked about a Jewish "return" to Palestine throughout past centuries, today's version of Christian Zionism was largely invented in the 19th century; adherents of political Zionism, a movement to create a Jewish state, were a major factor in how and why it grew ... The precursor to today's pro-Israel lobbying groups, the "American Zionist Emergency Council" (AZEC), played a significant role in creating Christian support for Zionism ... The objective was to organize a group of prominent (mainly non-Jewish) Americans in moral and political support of Zionism.
Mainline Christians are beginning to realize that “Christian Zionism” is a misnomer, a sort of faith- based oxymoron, an impossibility to those who follow Christ ... Israel is a far more brutal occupier than were the Romans, of Jesus’ day, as can be witnessed to by thousands who have lived in Israeli prisons. It is our prayer that church groups like the Church of Scotland will take this next bold, but obviously correct step, and we offer suggestions from mistakes we have made.
This “must see” 32-minute documentary about Christian Zionism explains why It is a "must see" to understand why Christian Zionists (Judeo-Christians, Dispensationalists) support war in the Middle East to protect Israel. Explains how Cyrus I. Scofield's reference Bible was used to promote Christian Zionism throughout evangelical seminaries and in evangelical churches for more than a hundred years.
"Hitler -- You knew him -- What was he like?" I have been asked that question a thousand times since 1945, and nothing is more difficult to answer ... Hitler's most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic principles. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could be understood by anyone ... His intellectual curiosity was limitless. He was readily familiar with the writings of the most diverse authors, and nothing was too complex for his comprehension ... The universality of Hitler's knowledge may surprise or displease those unaware of it, but it is nonetheless a historical fact: Hitler was one of the most cultivated men of this century.
Besides being a great political leader and thinker, Adolf Hitler had a great interest in various artistic forms including opera, sculpture and paintings. The artistic side of the Führer has gone unnoticed in history or, at least, has not been given the attention it deserves.
… What kind of boy was Adolf Hitler? Many biographers have put him down as harsh-voiced, defiant, untidy; as a young ruffian who personified all that is unattractive. This simply is not true. As a youth he was quiet, well-mannered and neatly dressed … In the practice of my profession it is natural that I should have witnessed many scenes such as this one, yet none of them left me with quite the same impression. In all my career I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler.
As a social experiment, media analyst Mark Dice asks randomly selected people at a beach pier in southern California to sign a petition to keep the “Holocaust Beach Party” from being canceled due to budget cuts. The Holocaust, he explains, is a “favorite celebration of the Jewish people,” a “Jewish festival,” and a “Jewish holiday.” He urges support for the “Holocaust celebration” and the “Holocaust reenactment.” No one disputes what he says. Dice is surprised and frustrated by the ignorance of these ordinary Americans. Many Americans seem utterly unmoved by what politicians, educators and the media in the US has been telling them for years about the importance of “the Holocaust.”
On June 8, 1967, 34 American servicemen were killed and 174 were wounded during an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer, “Those men were then betrayed and left to die by our own government.” The survivors are still awaiting justice ... Israel claimed the attack was “a case of mistaken identity”; that they didn’t know it was an American ship ... The Navy’s chief attorney to the original 1967 military Court of Inquiry has issued a statement that orders to cover-up the incident were issued by President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
... Far more shocking was Washington's response. Writes Bamford: 'Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident.' Why? Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this 'third rail' issue.
In testimony to Congress on Wednesday [May 15], Obama's State Department official Wendy Sherman reiterated the administration's policy on Iran. Since the intelligence community has concluded for some time now that Iran has not yet decided to pursue nuclear weapons, Sherman felt compelled to recite a litany of supposed Iranian transgressions to justify America's harsh economic sanctions and overall belligerence toward the country. Every major criticism of Iran, though, is one that can also be lodged against the United States.
Dr. Mario Silva says Holocaust denial must be fought not just by Jewish groups but also by governments. / Holocaust denial is another form of anti-Semitism which is prevalent today and must be fought, Dr. Mario Silva told Arutz Sheva. Dr. Silva, chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, took part in the 4th conference of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism which was held in Jerusalem this week.
For the Jews, the term "Holocaust" does not simply denote a single catastrophic era in history, but is a grim metaphor for the meaning of Jewish history. The "Holocaust" lies at the heart of the Jewish experience of time itself. One is either anxiously awaiting persecution, experiencing persecution, recovering from it, or living in a period that is a temporary reprieve from it … Thus the "reality" of the Holocaust is inextricably part of the myth in which it is woven -- and for which myth it serves as further confirmatory evidence for the timeless Jewish theme that the world is in conspiracy to annihilate them, one way or another, at least eventually.
Germany has found that it has 1.5 million fewer people than was generally assumed, following the first census since reunification in 1990. The new data revealed a population of 80.2 million, the federal statistics office Destatis said ... The total number of foreigners is 6.2 million - 1.1 million fewer than had been assumed. They make up 7.7% of the total population. The number of residents from a non-German background is 15 million - about 19% of the total. Hamburg has the highest proportion of ethnically non-German residents, at 27.5%. The figure for the capital, Berlin, is 23.9%.
... A new book has revealed the dark side of Europe’s liberation after the Second World War. Professor Mary Louise Roberts, from the University of Wisconsin, said within months of D-Day ordinary French women came to fear their American ‘liberators’. She tells how, by the summer of 1944, large numbers of women in Normandy filed complaints about rapes by US soldiers. And their arrival prompted a wave of crime all over France, with American soldiers caught committing robberies and petty thefts ... The locals of Le Havre were shocked by the soldiers’ behaviour and wrote letters of protest to their mayor.
... An explosive new book published by an American academic sensationally debunks that myth. In What Soldiers Do, Professor Mary Louise Roberts of the University of Wisconsin argues that American GIs committed rape thousands of times during the War ... Throughout the summer of 1944, from the moment they had pushed back the Germans during the D-Day landings in June, the Americans unleashed throughout northern France, in the words of Professor Roberts, a ‘tsunami of male lust’. ‘Normandy women launched a wave of rape accusations against American soldiers,’ Roberts writes ...
... The Jewish state has now largely alienated its former friends and supporters in Europe. Its all-important American patron and protector suffers from budgetary bloat, political constipation, diplomatic enervation, and strategic myopia ... Israel is now known around the world for the Kafkaesque tyranny of its checkpoint army in the Occupied Territories, its periodic maiming and slaughter of Lebanese and Gazan civilians, its blatant racial and religious bigotry, the zealotry and scofflaw behavior of its settlers, its theology of ethnic cleansing, and its exclusionary religious dogmatism ... Official America’s passionate attachment to Israel has become a very salient part of U.S. political pathology.
... We are in the midst of a horrifying economic decline that is the result of decades of very bad decisions ... At the same time that we have been running up all of this debt, our economic infrastructure and our ability to produce wealth has been absolutely gutted. Since 2001, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities and millions of good jobs have been shipped overseas. Our share of global GDP declined from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed is at a record low, and the percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at a record high.
One country, two religions and three very telling pictures: The empty pews at churches just yards from an overcrowded mosque. Two photos show Sunday morning services in churches in East London. The third shows worshippers gathered for Friday midday prayers outside a nearby mosque / … What these pictures suggest is that, on current trends, Christianity in this country is becoming a religion of the past, and Islam is one of the future. … It is estimated that in just 20 years, there will be more active Muslims in this country than churchgoers – an idea which even half a century ago would have been utterly unthinkable.
... Their emblem might be a lavish new movie of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Two of the main characters, as Fitzgerald wrote, "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess.” The "mess" left by George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq is a sectarian war, the bombs of 7/7 and now a man waving a bloody meat cleaver in Woolwich. Bush has retreated back into his Mickey Mouse “presidential library and museum,” and Tony Blair into his jackdaw travels and his money. Their "mess" is a crime of epic proportions, wrote Von Sponeck ...
... Now comes a poll about perceptions of the war which, notwithstanding the above, shows public perception wildly at odds with reality. By common consent the war cost at the very, very least, 100,000 Iraqi lives and the figure may well be several times that. Yet the poll, by ComRes shows the following in establishing public perceptions of the Iraqi death toll since the invasion of Iraq in 2003: Two-thirds (66 per cent) of the public estimate that 20,000 or fewer civilians and combatants have died as a consequence of the war in Iraq since 2003.
It was a fleeting moment of friendship across the battlelines which now stands as testament to the unwavering spirit of human kinship that not even savage warfare could extinguish. But newly discovered letters sent from the trenches of the Western Front have cast new light on the famous Christmas Day truce of 1914, when the guns of First World War fell silent and sworn enemies put hostilities aside to play a game of football ... The Christmas Day truce saw more than 100,000 British and German soldiers lower their guns and leave the trenches to exchange gifts and play football in the mud of No Man's Land.
… 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.
The Anti-Defamation League received a $7.5 million grant to launch a global anti-Semitism index. In a statement Thursday announcing the grant [from an anonymous or undisclosed source], which will be paid over three years, the ADL said it would “significantly expand” the organization’s polling on global anti-Semitism. ... In its first year, the project will poll and measure anti-Semitic attitudes in 50 countries. More countries will be added as time goes on, the ADL said in a statement. Pollsters will conduct face-to-face, telephone or online surveys in the native language of each country.