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Israel Prodding U.S. To Attack Iran
CBS News

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen leaves Tuesday night on an overseas trip that will take him to Israel, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. The trip has been scheduled for some time but U.S. officials say it comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex. CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn't want to wait for a new administration ... Israel's message is simple: If you don't, we will. Israel held a dress rehearsal for a strike earlier this month, but military analysts say Israel...



Morality and World War Two: Trotskyite vs. Christian
Patrick J. Buchanan

... According to British historians, however, Churchill ordered the initial bombing of German cities on his first day in office, the very first day of the Battle of France, on May 10, 1940 ... "So far as air strategy was concerned," adds British historian A.J.P. Taylor, "the British outdid German frightfulness first in theory, later in practice, and a nation which claimed to be fighting for a moral cause gloried in the extent of its immoral acts."



The Two Israels
Nicholas D. Kristof - The New York Times

To travel through the West Bank and Gaza these days feels like traveling through Israeli colonies ... It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won't let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)



Hitler Privately Joked About Colleagues
The Telegraph (Britain)

Adolf Hitler took time out from running Nazi Germany to make jokes at the expense of his henchmen, a new book claims. The dictator would often break from the serious nature of waging his campaign to "pull the legs" of his entourage of generals and hangers on. His favourite victim was the Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering, who was notoriously fond of awarding himself medals and decorations. According to the book by the last surviving member of his bunker, Hitler recounted how Mrs Goering found her husband waving a baton over his underwear in the bedroom and asked him what he was doing.



The Real McCain
The Observer (Britain)

... But there is another, very different side to John McCain. Away from the headlines and the stirring speeches, a less familiar figure lurks. It is a McCain who plans to fight on in Iraq for years to come and who might launch military action against Iran. This is the McCain whose campaign and career has been riddled with lobbyists and special interests. It is a McCain who has sided with religious and political extremists who believe Islam is evil and gays are immoral. It is a McCain who wants to appoint extreme conservatives to the Supreme Court and see abortion banned. This McCain has a notoriously volatile temper that has scared some senior members of his own party.



Anyone Care About Free Speech?
Peter Worthington - Ottawa Sun (Canada)

The tragedy of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal's case against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine over alleged "hate" mongering because of Steyn's views on Islam, is that most people don't give a damn ... The villains in the Steyn case are not Muslims who complained to the HRC that Steyn's writings foster "Islamophobia" and hate ... At fault is the government of Stephen Harper for not rescinding a law that the Liberals introduced and makes a mockery of both justice and freedom.



Bush Inspires Least Confidence as World Leader
Jim Lobe

While historians here debate whether George W. Bush has been the worst president in U.S. history, a global consensus that he inspires the least confidence of all the world's major leaders appears to have emerged. An average of two out of three respondents in 20 nations whose combined population make up 60 percent of the world's population said they either had "no" or "not too much confidence" in Bush "to do the right thing regarding world affairs", by far the highest negative rating of eight leaders featured in a new survey released here Monday by WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO).



George W. Bush Has `Gotten Away With Murder’
Vincent Bugliosi

Former California prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wants President Bush charged with murder. Bugliosi ... who in the early 1970s successfully prosecuted Charles Manson for the murder of Sharon Tate and six others ... lays out his case against Bush in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. "My motivation for writing this book is simple - to bring about justice," Bugliosi says in a video posted on the book’s web site. Video runtime: 3:55 mins.



US Politicians Are Obliged to Agree With Israel, Says Jimmy Carter
YouTube.com

Interview excerpt. Video runtime: 34 seconds



Hitler, Owens and the 1936 Olympics Myth
Rick Shenkman

Everyone knows that at the 1936 Olympics Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens. As the story goes, after Owens won one gold medal, Hitler, incensed, stormed out of Olympic Stadium so he wouldn't have to congratulate Owens on his victory ... Several other misconceptions about the 1936 Olympics are prevalent. Not only was Owens not rebuffed by Hitler, Owens wasn't shunned by the German audience at the Berlin stadium either ... It is forgotten that Germany managed to pick up more medals than all the other countries combined.



Jesse Owens, Man and Myth at the 1936 Olympics
Peter Ephross -- Forward (New York)

Hitler’s snub of sprinter Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is well known: Unwilling to recognize a black runner’s prowess, the story goes, Hitler refused to acknowledge Owens after the American athlete won the 100-meter dash. Indeed, Owens himself repeatedly recounted the incident late in his life. There’s only one problem: The story is most likely apocryphal. As sports journalist Jeremy Schaap points out in his vividly written "Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics," American newspaper accounts filed by onsite journalists reported that Owens and Hitler exchanged waves after Owens won the 100-meter dash.



Documents Undercut Pentagon's Denial of Routine Abuse
Tom Lasseter - McClatchy Newspapers

Although Defense Department officials deny that detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in other American camps were routinely mistreated, official statements and court testimony undercut the claim. FBI agents witnessed mistreatment at Guantanamo, according to accounts gathered for a Justice Department report released May 20, 2008. One agent reported seeing detainees in interrogation rooms "chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor ... Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."



America’s Irrational Defense of Israel
Robert Weitzel

... Earlier this month 7,000 activists and politicians attended the America Israel Public Forum Committee’s 2008 Policy Conference in Washington D.C. This was AIPAC’s premier pro-Israel event, which attracted a bipartisan who’s who of Congressional sycophants. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s keynote address drew nearly half the members of Congress ... AIPAC is the most powerful of the dozen or so major organizations and think-tanks that comprise the "Israel lobby" in the United States. This influential lobby dictates U.S. Middle East foreign policy.



Saving Berlin
National Post (Canada)

... Even without the hypocrisy, Soviet behavior in Germany was abominable. Roger G. Miller, whose 2000 book on the Berlin blockade is one of the best accounts, notes that Russian soldiers raped up to a million German women in the first weeks of occupation. Next, the Soviets put two million East Germans out of work by dismantling and removing some 3,500 industrial facilities. Much of the farmland in the Soviet zone was stripped clean and the food likewise shipped off, which produced famine and caused a wave of refugees to flee into the U. S. and British zones.



Empire or Republic?
Robert Scheer

War doesn’t pay, nor does imperial ambition. This proposition should be evident to anyone who has paid attention to the fivefold increase in the price of oil since George W. Bush took office. The principle of nonintervention is neither liberal nor conservative in orientation, and at the inception of the Republic it was accepted as a commonsense. The dominant assumption of our nation’s founders was to avoid "foreign entanglements," to use Thomas Jefferson’s words of warning. Indeed, the policy of nonintervention was considered by the founders as a basic demarcation between the politics of the Old and New Worlds.



Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
Hans Massaquoi

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the photograph taken in 1933 of a brown-skinned boy wearing a swastika in a schoolyard in Hamburg, Germany, does not begin to tell the story of the remarkable life of Hans J. Massaquoi. Mr. Massaquoi, former managing editor of Ebony magazine, has now told the story himself in his new book, Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany ... The question of how Massaquoi came to be raised in Nazi Germany is one he has been asked "millions of times." Grandson of the Liberian consul general to Hamburg, Mr. Massaquoi was born in 1926 to a well-to-do African father and a German mother.



Four Out of Five Americans Think Country is on Wrong Track
Harris Poll

The latest Harris Poll finds the nation in a foul political mood. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice all register their worst ratings ever. More people than ever also think the country is on the wrong track. But this does not seem to help the Democrats. The Democratically-controlled Congress gets even worse ratings than the President and Vice-President, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ratings have also fallen to their lowest point. ... Only 14 percent of the public think the things in the country are going in the right direction and fully 80 percent think they are on the wrong track.



Anti-Americanism at Record Levels, Says Congressional Report
AFP

Anti-Americanism is at record levels thanks to US policies such as the war in Iraq, and Washington's perceived hypocrisy in abiding by its own democratic values, US lawmakers said Wednesday. A House of Representatives committee report based on expert testimony and polling data reveals US approval ratings have fallen to record lows across the world since 2002 ... The report blames specific policies for falling approval ratings, notably the war in Iraq, support for some repressive governments, a perception of bias in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and the "torture and abuse of prisoners" in violation of treaty obligations.



Visitors Eager for `Hitler Tours’ of Munich
Fox News

Tours chronicling the rise of notorious dictator Adolf Hitler have been met with a flurry of interest by foreign tourists in the southern German city of Munich, where Hitler nurtured the Nazi Party and mounted the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. The guided walking tours showcase historical city sites where significant events in Hitler's life took place, many of which most Munich natives today are no longer aware of, including the world-famous Hofbraeuhaus beer hall, where Hitler gave his first public speech in 1918. Born in Braunau, Austria, Hitler made Munich his home in 1913, before World War I.



Native Hawaiians Seek to Restore Monarchy
The Associated Press

Surrounded by royal guards and the occasional tourist, Her Majesty Mahealani Kahau and her government ministers hold court every day under a tent outside the palace of Hawaii's last monarch, passing laws and discussing how to secure reparations for the Native Hawaiian people. Kahau and her followers are members of the self-proclaimed Hawaiian Kingdom Government, which is devoted to restoring the Hawaiian monarchy overthrown in 1893. Nearly two months ago, they stormed the gates of the old Iolani Palace, and they have politely occupied the grounds ever since, operating like a government-in-exile.



BBC Uncovers `Lost’ Iraq Billions
BBC News

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23 billion may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq. For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources. A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations. The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies. While George Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted. To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq.