Interventions Without End
Patrick J. Buchanan

… In his second inaugural, President Bush declared that America's national goal is now to "support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny on earth." Are Americans still willing to support that utopian mission with blood and billions of dollars? … U.S. global hegemony is history. Like every nation, America must now choose – between what is vital and worth fighting for, and what may be "idealistic," but is not worth a war.  Not long ago, America produced 96 percent of all she consumed and was the most self-sufficient republic in history. With statesmanship and sacrifice, we can become so again. With leaders like we once had, we can chuck the empire. For what good has it done us?

Little Known US Crimes in World War II
The Guardian (Britain)

… A controversial book by the American sociologist Bob Lilly, Taken by Force … initially failed to find either an American or British publisher [because it] was concerned with the estimated 14,000 rapes committed by American soldiers in England, France and Germany between 1942 and 1945 … [World War II GIs] had, in fact, been involved in some of the worst crimes on mainland Europe, including black-market trading, armed robbery, looting, rape and murder. Indeed, secret wartime files that were made public in this country only in April 2006 disclosed that GIs committed 26 murders, 31 manslaughters, 22 attempted murders and more than 400 sexual offences, including 126 rapes in England, during 1942-45.

Sexual Assault of Women Soldiers on Rise in US Military
Helen Benedict – Salon.com

I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to ten hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.  The female soldiers who were at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, for example, where U.S. troops go to demobilize, told me they were warned not to go out at night alone… Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. "The knife wasn't for the Iraqis," she told me. "It was for the guys on my own side."

The Ides of March 2003
Frank Rich – The New York Times

Tomorrow night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush's prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom…. The embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration's case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look. By the time the ides of March arrived in March 2003, these warning signs were visible on a nearly daily basis. So were the signs that Americans were completely ill prepared for the costs ahead. Iraq was largely anticipated as a distant, mildly disruptive geopolitical video game that would be over in a flash.

New Book Examines American Ignorance About Religion
The Washington Post 

The United States is the most religious nation in the developed world if religiosity is measured by belief in all things supernatural, from God and the Virgin Birth to the humbler workings of angels and demons. Americans are also the most religiously ignorant people in the Western world. Fewer than half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible, and only one-third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. These are just two of the depressing statistics in Stephen Prothero's provocative and timely Religious Literacy.

US Strike Against Iran Less Likely Now, Some Analysts Say
Christian Science Monitor

… War with Iran, or even targeted air strikes at presumed nuclear facilities, is looking less and less likely. Despite tough rhetoric from both sides and increased tension over Iran's move to detain 15 British sailors last week, a variety of influential thinkers who championed the US-led invasion of Iraq are now saying that containment, not confrontation, is the best approach to Iran …[Even] the more hawkish forces in Washington – from neoconservatives who believe the Middle East should be remade by force to pro-Israel lobby groups that say military strikes would prevent Iran from advancing its nuclear ambitions – have taken a step back.

Is a U.S.– Iran War Inevitable?
Time

… [A] grim fatalism that has settled over Iran of late, the resigned belief that a war with the U.S. is all but inevitable … The Bush Administration is doing nothing to allay Tehran's paranoia. With the largest build up in the Gulf since the start of this Iraq war, it's actually fanning it. You have to wonder if Bush is counting on the Iranians over-reacting like they did when they seized our embassy in 1979. And lest we forget, this was driven by paranoia that we were plotting to destroy the revolution. Add this to the rest of the bad news coming out of the Gulf, and things look pretty grim.

Iran Must Get Ready to Repel a Nuclear Attack
Genl. Leonid Ivashov – Strategic Cultural Foundation (Russia)

In the overall flow of information coming from the Middle East, there are increasingly frequent reports indicating that within several months from now the US will deliver nuclear strikes on Iran … However it is not easy for the US to get involved in yet another military campaign while Iraq and Afghanistan are not “pacified” (the US lacks the resources necessary for the operation). Besides, protests against the politics of the Washington neocons intensify all over the world. Due to all of the above, the US will use nuclear weapon against Iran. 

Record US Trade Deficit in 2006
BBC News

The US current account deficit jumped by 8.2 percent to a record $856.6 billion in 2006, official figures show.  The rise, the fifth consecutive annual increase in the deficit, came despite a smaller trade imbalance in the final three months of 2006. The deficit shrank by 14.6% to $195.8 bn during the fourth quarter, reflecting a fall in world oil prices. The current account is the broadest measure of trade, covering goods and investment flows between countries. The deficit for 2006 meant the US was borrowing more than $2bn daily to finance its trade gap. The annual figure represented 6.5% of US gross domestic product in 2006, up from 6.4% in 2005. However, Nigel Gault, US economist at Global Insight, said he believed the country's current account deficit had "peaked".

On Israel, America and AIPAC
George Soros – The New York Review of Books

The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East, one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and is not receiving the attention it should. This time it concerns the Israeli-Palestinian relationship … There is the growing danger of a regional conflagration in which Israel and the US could well be on the losing side. With the ability of Hezbollah to withstand the Israeli onslaught and the rise of Iran as a prospective nuclear power, Israel's existence is more endangered than at any time since its birth … The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism. Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence political contributions. 

If Washington doesn't address the rapidly building multi-trillion-dollar crisis in residential mortgage defaults, its paralysis will help trigger a national economic recession that could touch every homeowner. The crisis has been building for months - if not years. Experts agree it is a result of banks and other lenders' granting home loans to people who were not truly able to afford the payments. Now, with the national economy in a slide, the number of mortgage defaults is rising at an alarming rate … Congress must realize that we are on the abyss of an enormous economic crisis. Capitol Hill has the means, the opportunity and the motive to prevent a mortgage market collapse if it acts decisively.

A New Wiesenthal Center Film About Famed 'Nazi Hunter'
Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

“I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal,” the newest film from the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Moriah Films, had its world premiere in Jerusalem in the presence of members of Simon Wiesenthal's family. Narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman, the feature length documentary examines the life and deeds of Simon Wiesenthal. It features interviews with longtime associates, government leaders, friends and family members, many of whom have never discussed the legendary Nazi hunter on camera. 

Simon Wiesenthal: Fraudulent 'Nazi Hunter'
Institute for Historical Review

This living legend was portrayed in flattering terms by the late Laurence Oliver in the 1978 film fantasy "The Boys From Brazil," and by Ben Kingsley in the 1989 HBO made-for-television movie "Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story." One of world's most prominent Holocaust organizations bears his name: the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles. Wiesenthal's reputation as a moral authority is undeserved. The man whom The Washington Post has called the "Holocaust's Avenging Angel" has a little known but well-documented record of reckless disregard for truth. He has lied about his own wartime experiences, misrepresented his postwar "Nazi-hunting" achievements, and has spread vile falsehoods about alleged German atrocities.

China is Forming Agency to Invest Huge Foreign Reserves
The New York Times

China will create a new agency to invest the country's immense reserves of foreign currency, now totaling more than $1 trillion, the country's finance minister said Friday … China's currency holdings are already the world's largest, and they are growing rapidly because of China's huge trade surpluses. Most of the reserves are invested very conservatively, in U.S. Treasury bonds and other government securities, a strategy that helps keep interest rates low in the United States and other developed countries but earns little profit for China. The new agency will be able to invest some of the money more diversely and aggressively, analysts said, with the possibility of hundreds of billions of dollars put into acquiring "strategic assets" …

Lindbergh’s 1941 Des Moines Speech
Charles A. Lindbergh

National polls showed that when England and France declared war on Germany, in 1939, less than ten percent of our population favored a similar course for America. But there were various groups of people, here and abroad, whose interests and beliefs necessitated the involvement of the United States in the war … The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration …  They planned: first, to prepare the United States for foreign war under the guise of American defense; second, to involve us in the war, step by step, without our realization; third, to create a series of incidents which would force us into the actual conflict.  

Huge Migration To Rich Countries, Predicts UN Agency
The Telegraph (Britain)

At least 2.2 million migrants will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050, the United Nations said yesterday. Britain’s population will rise from 60 million to approaching 69 million by 2050 – almost entirely because of immigration. The latest figures from the UN’s population division predict a global upheaval without parallel in human history over the next four decades. There will be billions more people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Of these, tens of millions will migrate to Europe and America, while the indigenous populations of most countries in the rich world will either stagnate or decline. 

History of Israel Reconsidered
Prof. Ilan Pappe 

…What we found challenged most of this mythology. First of all, we found out that the Zionist leadership, the Israeli leadership, regardless of the peace plans of the United Nations, contemplated long before 1948 the dispossession of the Palestinians, the expulsion of the Palestinians. So it was not that as a result of the war that the Palestinians lost their homes. It was as a result of a Jewish, Zionist, Israeli – call it what you want – plan that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948 of its original indigenous population.

What Does 'Holocaust Denial' Really Mean?
Prof. Daniel McGowan 

…Are these revisionist contentions so odious as to cause those who believe them to be reviled, beaten, and imprisoned? More importantly, is it possible that revisionist contentions are true, or even partially true, and that they are despised because they contradict the story of the Holocaust, a story which has been elevated to the level of a religion in hundreds of films, memorials, museums, and docu-dramas? … "Holocaust Denial" might be no more eccentric or no more criminal than claiming the earth is flat, except that the Holocaust itself has been used as the sword and shield in the quest to build a Jewish state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River , where even today over half the population is not Jewish.

One-Third in Washington DC Are 'Functionally Illiterate'
The Associated Press

About one-third of the people living in the national’s capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a report on the District of Columbia. Adults are considered functionally illiterate if they have trouble doing such things as comprehending bus schedules, reading maps and filling out job applications.  The growing number of Hispanic and Ethiopian immigrants who aren’t proficient in English contributed to the city’s high functional illiteracy level, which translated to 170,000 people, said Connie Spinner, director of the State Education Agency. The report says the district’s functional illiteracy rate is 36 percent and the nation’s 21 percent.

Saddam Has the Last Laugh
Robert Scheer

Yep, you did it, George – mission impossible accomplished. Unbelievably, four years of a bungled occupation have managed to make Saddam Hussein's tyranny look good in comparison with "liberated Iraq. " … Even more disturbing is that 51 percent of Iraqis think it is OK to attack coalition troops – triple the number that thought that way in a 2004 survey. Square that with our president's assurances, offered since the first month of this unnecessary adventure, that the insurgency represents a small handful of terrorists. While most of the antipathy is registered among Sunnis, 94 percent of whom favor attacks on coalition forces, and by only 7 percent of Kurds, a surprising 35 percent of Shiites endorse that sort of violence…

Talking About Israel
Nicholas D. Kristof – The New York Times 

Democrats are railing at just about everything President Bush does, with one prominent exception: Mr. Bush’s crushing embrace of Israel. There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself. Within Israel, you hear vitriolic debates in politics and the news media about the use of force and the occupation of Palestinian territories. Yet no major American candidate is willing today to be half as critical of hard-line Israeli government policies as, say, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper … One reason for the void is that American politicians have learned to muzzle themselves.

Gang Mayhem Grips Los Angeles
The Observer (Britain)

A bloody conflict between Hispanic and black gangs is spreading across Los Angeles. Hundreds are dying as whole districts face the threat of ethnic cleansing … Boyle's Los Angeles is where an estimated 120,000 gang members across five counties battle over turf, pride and drugs. It is a city of violence as a new race war escalates between new Hispanic gangs and older black groups, each trying to ethnically cleanse the other. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has referred to his city as 'the gang capital of America', has launched a crackdown on the new threat.

Pro-Israel Bias in the Media
Saree Makdisi – Los Angeles Times 

Consider, for example, the editorial in The [Los Angeles] Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians "recognize Israel" and its "right to exist." This is a common enough sentiment – even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel's advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is – at best – utterly nonsensical … For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?

Iran’s Shah Speaks About the Jewish Lobby in the US
60 Minutes (1974) 

In an interview with Mike Wallace broadcast in 1974 on the CBS television show “60 Minutes,” the late Shah of Iran speaks openly about the Jewish control of US policy.

Growing Discontent in Central Europe
Chicago Tribune

When British Holocaust denier David Irving is the honored guest at your National Day celebrations, you know something nasty is brewing in the body politic. But there was Irving, fresh from serving his jail sentence in Austria, firing up a large crowd in Budapest's Heroes' Square last week … Hungary is not alone in this state of political muddle. Its Central European neighbors, Poland , the Czech Republic and Slovakia , also are wrestling with the demons of post-communist transformation. Each case is different, but a common thread of discontent binds them together.

Pelosi’s Capitulation
Patrick J. Buchanan 

If George W. Bush launches a pre-emptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war. For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran… The corruption of both parties is astonishing. Republicans used to be the party of the Constitution: “No more undeclared wars! No more presidential wars!” Democrats used to be the party of the people. The people don’t want this war. They don’t want another … Yet, just because the Israeli lobby jerked her chain, the leader of the Peoples’ House has decided she and her party will leave the next war up to Bush.

Iraq, Iran, and the Lobby
Justin Raimondo

… Just as this [Iraq] war, as I've been saying since Day One, was fought to advance Israel 's interests, not America's. The next war – yes, I mean the looming conflict with Iran – will be fought for the same reason. American foreign policy has long since ceased pursuing the genuine national interests of this country, and instead is being held hostage by a coalition of neoconservative ideologues and foreign lobbyists, who have no compunctions about leading us into an abyss as long as their no-longer-quite-so-hidden agenda is served.

Hundreds March in Latvia to Honor Wartime SS Legion
The Associated Press

About 300 people marched in downtown Riga on Friday to honor Latvians who fought in a Waffen SS unit during World War II. Dozens of police in riot gear flanked the procession to prevent a repeat of clashes that have marred the annual commemoration in recent years. No incidents were reported during the march, which ended at the Freedom Monument in the center of Riga … Some Latvians regard the Latvian Waffen SS, also known as the Latvian Legion, as heroes who fought not for the Nazis, but for Latvian independence against Soviet occupiers … About 250,000 Latvians ended up fighting alongside either the Germans or the Soviets - and some 150,000 Latvians died in the fighting.

Imperial History of the Middle East
Alpha Omega Academy

Who has conquered the Middle East over the centuries? See 5,000 years of history – from 3,000 B.C. to the present – shown in a 90-second silent video of map graphics.

Beyond Quagmire
Tim Dickinson – Rolling Stone

The war in Iraq isn't over yet, but – surge or no surge – the United States has already lost. That's the grim consensus of a panel of experts assembled by Rolling Stone to assess the future of Iraq. "Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now," says retired four-star Gen. Tony McPeak, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. "Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again." Those on the panel – including diplomats, counterterror analysts and a former top military commander – agree that President Bush's attempt to secure Baghdad will only succeed in dragging out the conflict, creating something far beyond any Vietnam-style "quagmire." 

Taming Leviathan: Challenging Time for American-Jewish Lobby
The Economist (Britain)

This week saw yet another reminder of the awesome power of "the lobby". The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) brought more than 6,000 activists to Washington for its annual policy conference. And they proceeded to live up to their critics' darkest fears. The lobbyists had every reason to feel proud of their work … Both parties are competing with each other to be the "soundest" on Israel. About two-thirds of Americans hold a favourable view of the place. Yet they have reason to feel a bit nervous, too. The Iraq debacle has produced a fierce backlash against pro-war hawks, of which AIPAC was certainly one. It has also encouraged serious people to ask awkward questions about America's alliance with Israel.

Inside America's Powerful Israel Lobby
Gregory Levey – Salon

At the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this week in Washington, a conservative Christian couple from eastern Tennessee told me that their son had decided to join the Israeli army. It was one of many surreal moments during the three-day gathering hosted by AIPAC, the lobbying group devoted to ensuring close U.S.-Israel ties that remains extraordinarily influential in Washington … “Our commitment to Israel defines us as a nation," said Republican Norm Coleman of Minnesota, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding that the AIPAC lobbyists "help make sure that we don't forget."

Channel Island of Sark is Remnant of Feudalism
Los Angeles Times

Here, on an island that might be called Camelot, the winds of democracy have blown in like the waft from a landfill. This three-mile-long stretch of granite crags, flowered meadows, neat cottages and well-behaved Guernsey cows 80 miles off Britain's coast in the English Channel is the last feudal outpost in Europe ... Sark has remained pretty much the same for 442 years, since Queen Elizabeth I declared it a noble fiefdom...  Landownership is divided among 40 "tenants." They are the descendants or successors of the 40 men with muskets recruited by the original seigneur, the ruling lord commissioned to defend the isle against pirates and buccaneers. Government administration is by fiat…

Could 650,000 Iraqis Really Have Died Because of the Invasion?
The Times (Britain)

The statistics made headlines all over the world when they were published in The Lancet in October last year. More than 650,000 Iraqis – one in 40 of the population – had died as a result of the American-led invasion in 2003 … The controversy has deepened rather than evaporated. Several academics have tried to find out how the Lancet study was conducted; none regards their queries as having been addressed satisfactorily. Researchers contacted by The Times talk of unreturned e-mails or phone calls, or of being sent information that raises fresh doubts. Iraq Body Count says there is “considerable cause for scepticism” and has complained that its figures had been misleadingly cited in the The Lancet as supporting evidence.

Turn Off the Life Support: America is Dead
Doug Thompson – Capitol Hill Blue

Maybe, just maybe, it's time to pull the plug on this failed democratic republic called The United States of America. Turn off the life support. Disconnect the IVs. Bring in the priest for last rites. The US of A is brain dead with no chance for revival…  It doesn't matter who controls Congress. Congress is a dead institution, ruled by timid legislators who no longer exercise any real role in the governing of this nation … We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need to start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to recognize that our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured from within by the cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a lust for power.

Forget Israel, Befriend Russia
Charley Reese

… It would behoove us to put good relations with Russia very high on a diplomatic agenda. Yet, on the contrary, the Bush administration goes out of its way to insult Russia and to interfere in what Russia sees as its internal affairs. Secondly, because of the cowardice of Congress, the U.S. government has allowed a little country in the Middle East (Israel) to distort our priorities. Our first priority should be getting along with Russia. Iran is a small country we can squash anytime. Russia is not small, and it can squash us anytime. How darn stupid does one have to be not to realize that? … American politicians need to get over their fear of the Israeli lobby and attend to America's business. 

Despite the storm it ignited, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter held fast on Thursday to his accusation that Israel oppresses the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza and seeks to colonize their land. Speaking at The George Washington University to a polite but mostly critical student audience, Carter offered no second thoughts on his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid that prompted 14 members of the Carter Center 's advisory board to resign and drew fire from Jewish groups and some fellow Democrats.

Churchill Took Swipe at Jews in 1937 Article
International Herald-Tribune

An article from 1937 under the name of Winston Churchill that blamed Jews for their own persecution has ruffled a long-held view among Britons of their wartime leader's pro-Jewish sentiments. Some experts on the history of British Jews dismissed the article, saying its existence has been well-known and it had never been published because Churchill rejected the views of the ghost-writer who composed it … But [historian Richard] Toye said Churchill had sought to publish the article in 1937 in Britain and the United States. Churchill "was apparently happy to put his name to this article in 1937" and was "happy to endorse sentiments contained in articles that were written for him," Toye said.

Zionism vs. Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul
of the Jewish People
Winston Churchill (1920)

… There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism, and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. 

Iran Denounces New '300' Movie
The Telegraph (Britain)

A new Hollywood film depicting a battle between the Persian empire and a Greek army was denounced by Iran yesterday as "hostile" and an example of "cultural and psychological warfare". The film, 300, about the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, has made about $70 million in America in its first three days of release. It was attacked for its depiction of Persians as ruthless but dumb imperialists, who were repeatedly outsmarted by a smaller "western" force. The Persian king, Xerxes, was shown as effeminate.

New Films Take More 'Sympathetic' View of Third Reich
Nick Hasted – The Independent (Britain)

Is Nazi Germany a Fit Subject for Sympathy? In the case of individuals caught up in the conflagration of World War II's final days, three recently made films suggest that the answer may be a careful yes … This shift in perspective has arrived with the 21st century, with the war's reality six decades gone. Anthony Beevor's best-selling 2002 history book Berlin: The Downfall 1945 was one catalyst, using newly uncovered Soviet documents to detail the Red Army's systematic rape of almost every woman in its path, as it bludgeoned its way through East Prussia towards Hitler's capital. The sheer horror of German civilian suffering, and the despairing heroism of its shattered armies, was impossible to avoid …

Israel, Iran and US Top 'Negative' List
BBC News

A majority of people believe that Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests. It shows that the two countries are closely followed by the United States and North Korea. The poll asked 28,000 people in 27 countries to rate a dozen countries plus the EU in terms of whether they have a positive or negative influence. Canada, Japan and the EU are viewed most positively in the survey.

Demons and Angels
Israel Shamir

Things began to change a hundred years ago, with the advent of democracy and mass media as there was the need to convince a lot of people that a war is necessary and justified. The "good guys/bad guys" simplification of Hollywood supplanted the old division of "friend/foe", and the foe became intrinsically and irredeemably "bad". … The Americans like to consider themselves the ‘good guys’ vs. Hitler’s ‘bad guys’.  But objectively speaking, there was not much to choose between the two sides. The Americans were beastly enough: they burned Dresden, nuked Hiroshima, starved to death millions of German POWs. Even their racism was quite comparable.

Former French Prime Minister Accuses 'Jewish Lobby'
European Jewish Press

Former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre has sparked an uproar within the Jewish community after accusing “the Jewish lobby” of making “a scapegoat” of Maurice Papon, a French senior official who signed deportation orders for hundreds of Jews in the Bordeaux region during World War II. In an interview with France Culture, a state-run radio station, Barre also said that “opposing the deportation of Jews had not been a matter of “major national interest.”

Testimony Reveals Real Goal of Israel’s Lebanon War
Jonathan Cook

Israel's supposedly "defensive" assault on Hizbullah last summer, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in a massive aerial bombardment that ended with Israel littering the country's south with cluster bombs, was cast in a definitively different light last week by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee – investigating the government's failures during the month-long attack – suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006. Lebanon's devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hizbullah and the country's wider public a lesson.

What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?
Christopher Ketcham – Counterpunch

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, an FBI bulletin … was issued with regard to three suspicious men who that morning were seen leaving the New Jersey waterfront minutes after the first plane hit World Trade Center 1 … Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion … It was New York's venerable Jewish weekly The Forward that broke this story in the spring of 2002, after months of footwork. The Forward reported that the FBI had finally concluded that at least two of the men were agents working for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and that Urban Moving Systems, the ostensible employer of the five Israelis, was a front operation.  

Pentagon Planned Attack on Iraq Already in Sept. 2001,
Says Clark
Gen. Wesley Clark (Interview) – Democracy Now 

About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September [2001].

Most Americans See Bias in US Media
Zogby International

The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83 percent of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just eleven percent believe the media doesn’t take political sides, a recent IPDI/Zogby Interactive poll shows … Nearly two-thirds of those online respondents who detected bias in the media (64%) said the media leans left, while slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said they see a conservative bias on their TV sets and in their column inches. 

'These Are Bad Times for Freedom’
David Irving (Speech in Budapest)

… There is one ugly truth – and it is a bitter truth – which links our two great countries: we now both have prime ministers who lie … These are bad times for freedom … Several of my good friends, writers like me, are in prison in Germany right now, and have been for years, because of what they wrote and believed to be true: I mention today the names only of Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf, the scientist … Shall we ever see Blair and Bush hang for their crimes, which have caused the Holocaust in Iraq today?

Tom Sunic, Mark Weber to Address IHR Meeting, March 24

Tom Sunic, scholar and author, and Mark Weber, director of the IHR, will address an IHR meeting on Saturday evening, March 24, in Orange County, southern California. Sunic’s address is entitled “Hate Speech or Free Speech?: The Threat of a New Totalitarianism.” He will also speak about his new book, Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age. Weber's address is entitled "Behind the Iran Crisis: The Israel Lobby’s Campaign for War.” For details about the event, phone 949 - 631 1490.

German Court Sentences 'Denier' Rudolf to 30 Months
in Prison
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Germany)

A 42-year-old German “neo-Nazi” who claims the Holocaust never happened was sentenced on Thursday to 30 months imprisonment by a court in the city of Mannheim. At the start of his trial in November, Germar Rudolf had called the Holocaust 'a gigantic fraud.' He was last year expelled from the United States to Germany, which charged him with incitement to racial hatred. A chemist, Rudolf has published pseudo-scientific claims that it was impossible that Zyklon-B poison was used in the gas chambers at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp. Denial of the Holocaust is punishable in Germany with up to five years in jail. Last month, another US-based German “neo-Nazi,” Ernst Zuendel, was sentenced to five years in jail…

Five Sentenced in Germany for Burning Anne Frank Diary
Reuters 

A German court gave five far-right supporters in eastern Germany nine-month suspended sentences for ceremonially burning a copy of the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. The five men, aged between 24 and 29, were found guilty of incitement and desecration of the dead by a court in the eastern town of Schoenebeck. Two other defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence. The incident took place in February of last year during a summer solstice celebration in the eastern German village of Pretzien near Magdeburg.

Iraq: The Hidden Cost of the War
Andrew Stephen – New Statesman (Britain)

… This might sound like chicanery by George W Bush and his cronies - or characteristic incompetence – but Bilmes and Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist from Columbia University, have established not only that the number wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is far higher than the Pentagon has been saying, but that looking after them alone could cost present and future US taxpayers a sum they estimate to be $536 billion, but which could get considerably bigger still. 

Prejudice Is Hard-Wired In the Human Brain,
New Study Shows
Science Daily

Contrary to what most people believe, the tendency to be prejudiced is a form of common sense, hard-wired into the human brain through evolution as an adaptive response to protect our prehistoric ancestors from danger. So suggests a new study published by Arizona State University researchers in the May issue of the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology," which contends that, because human survival was based on group living, "outsiders" were viewed as – and often were – very real threats.

Prof. Faurisson Remains Defiant in Court
Agence France Presse-EJP

French “Holocaust denier” Robert Faurisson has told a Paris court he believes that the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis in WWII is a "historical lie". Faurisson, who has been condemned several times for revisionism, made the statement before a Paris court where he is suing former French Justice Minister, Robert Badinter, for defamation for having said that he "falsified history". The trial has been postponed until April. During the hearing on March 13, the 77-year-old Faurisson, a retired literature professor, maintained that the "alleged Hitlerian gas chambers and the alleged genocide of Jews formed the same historical lie".

Eurabian Nights
Daniel Pipes – The National Interest

The most critical issue facing Europe is the long-term relationship between the continent’s natives and its burgeoning Muslim minority. There are but three outcomes – Islamic takeover, Muslim expulsion or harmonious integration – and the end result has profound implications not only for Europe but for humanity as a whole… Extreme secularism pervades Europe, especially among its elites …

China Overtakes US in Passenger Car Output
The Australian

China overtook the US in passenger car output for the first time last year, adding to the growing list of consumer goods for which it has become the world's biggest supplier … Based on data compiled by the bank, China produced about 5.2 million cars in 2006 compared with 4.4 million in the US . China 's car output stood at only 5.4 per cent of the US in 1997. But it  has surged 16-fold since then while US production has stalled … Chinese factories already produce about 70 per cent of all toys, 60 percent of bicycles and half of the world's shoes and microwave ovens.

Simon Wiesenthal Center Convicted of Defamation
by Paris Court
European Jewish Press

The Paris-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has been convicted of defamation by a Paris court last Thursday for accusing a French-based group of financing Palestinian militants. The Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) filed suit against the centre’s head of international relations, Shimon Samuels, after he claimed it finances terrorism and sent funds in support of the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.  

The Simon Wiesenthal Center:  A Bastion of Jewish-Zionist Power
Mark Weber 

Since its founding in 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has grown to become one of the most important and influential Jewish organizations in the world. … Although it calls itself “an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust fostering tolerance and understanding,” the Center in reality is a propaganda agency whose agenda is to further Jewish-Zionist interests… The Wiesenthal Center has a long record of reckless propaganda for war. Long before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it had been pressing for an American attack against the Middle East nation, backing its effort with alarmist “Big Lie” claims about the supposed danger posed by the Baghdad regime.

Corruption in the Schools
Patrick J. Buchanan 

… Test scores for high-school students have been falling now for 40 years … An NAEP test of 12th-grade achievement was given to what the New York Times called a “representative sample of 21,000 high school seniors attending 900 public and private schools from January to March 2005.” What did the tests reveal? Since 1990, the share of students lacking even basic reading skills has risen by a third, from 20 percent to 27 percent. Only 35 percent of high school seniors have reached a “proficient” level in reading, down from 40 percent … The Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind Act mandates “that all children should reach a proficient level of academic achievement by 2014.” We're not going to make it. We're not even going to come close.

German TV Breaks Taboo With Story Of Post WWII Refugees
The Independent (Britain)

German viewers tuned in to a taboo-breaking television drama last night that for the first time tackled the plight of millions of their countrymen who were driven out of what is now eastern Europe by Russia's Red Army after the Second World War. The lavish three-hour production - entitled Die Flucht, or the March of Millions -- was an attempt to face up to an issue that has been a source of simmering resentment for many Germans for six decades and which is currently the subject of a diplomatic row between Berlin and Poland. An estimated 14 million Germans were expelled from the former eastern territories of East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and Sudetenland at the end of the Second World War.

Unpublished 1937 Churchill Article is Critical of Jews
The Independent (Britain)

Winston Churchill suggested Jewish people were "partly responsible for the antagonism" that saw them branded "Hebrew bloodsuckers", according to an article made public for the first time today. The 1937 document, "How the Jews Can Combat Persecution", was unearthed by Dr Richard Toye, a Cambridge University historian. Written three years before Churchill became Prime Minister, the article has apparently lain unnoticed in the Churchill archives at Cambridge since the early months of the Second World War. The article argues that "the wickedness of the persecutors" was not the sole reason for the ill-treatment of Jews down the ages.

Historians Discuss Churchill’s View of Jews
The Observer (Britain)

Winston Churchill's views on anti-Semitism were at the centre of a row last night after Cambridge University claimed to have discovered a 70-year-old document in which the future Prime Minister wrote that Jews may 'have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer', inviting terms of abuse such as 'Hebrew bloodsucker' ... But when The Observer contacted Sir Martin Gilbert, the eminent historian and Churchill biographer, the implication of anti-Semitism began to unravel. Gilbert, who also has a book out this summer, said the article was not written by Churchill at all, but rather his ghost writer, Adam Marshall Diston. 

Japan Won’t Apologize for Wartime 'Sex Slaves'
Reuters

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday that Japan would not apologize again for forcing women, mostly Asian, to act as wartime sex slaves for its soldiers even if U.S. lawmakers adopt a resolution calling for an apology. Abe, seeking to bolster support among his conservative base, has already sparked diplomatic ire by appearing to question the state's role in forcing the women to act as sex slaves for soldiers during World War Two. U.S. Congressman Michael Honda, a California Democrat, has introduced a non-binding resolution calling on Japan to unambiguously apologize for the tragedy that thousands of Asian women, many Korean, endured at the hands of its Imperial Army.

Who Will Stop the Next War?
Patrick J. Buchanan

If Americans sickened by the carnage of Iraq wish to stop an even more disastrous war on Iran, they had best get cracking. For the “On-to-Baghdad!” boys are back, warning us that the only way to prevent an atom bomb from being detonated in an American city is to attack and destroy Iran ’s nuclear sites. And the forces needed to execute an attack are moving into place … What is the threat? Iran has no missiles that can reach us, no atom bombs. Though the Mullahs have been in power 27 years, they have yet to launch their first war. The war they fought was in self-defense.

Baghdad on the Potomac?
Patrick J. Buchanan

Both houses of Congress have now gone on record opposing Bush's dispatch of 21,500 more troops to Iraq. Yet neither house is willing to end U.S. involvement by cutting off funding for the war. Transparently, this is not a strategy for victory. It is a hold-the-line, stay-the-course strategy until America concludes that the price in blood and treasure of averting defeat is too high, and demands that U.S. troops be brought home, no matter the consequences  Absent a deus ex machina, we are on the road to defeat. The timing alone remains in doubt.

How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel
Ali Abunimah

I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic … But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." … If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.

Prominent Holocaust Survivor Accused of Collaborating With Nazis
European Jewish Press

A Holocaust survivor who went on to become one of Britain’s most famous orchestra conductors has been accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, in an explosive academic study which has left his family devastated. Rudolf Schwarz arrived in Britain as a refugee at the end of World War Two after surviving the notorious Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen Concentration camps ... Schwarz, a Jew of Austrian upbringing who spent much of his early professional life in Germany, went on to conduct … the prestigious BBC Symphony Orchestra, becoming one of Britain’s best-known musicians.

Not So Free in Germany
Joseph Quesnel – Winnipeg Sun (Canada)

I will forgo the pleasure of drinking German lager and eating sauerkraut for the foreseeable future and I ask freedom lovers to consider joining me. I am joining an international boycott of German goods because of that country's drift away from fundamental freedoms … Call me a fool, but ideas and thoughts should be challenged in the forum of open debate, not through criminal sanction. The Holocaust is one of the most documented events in history, so there is a reason Zundel is marginalized. Freedom is nothing if it does not protect the most vulnerable and reviled.

Jews Celebrate Killing of Iranian Anti-Semites
Arutz Sheva – INN (Israel)

Jews in Israel and throughout the world Saturday night began celebrating the thwarting of a genocidal decree in 356 BCE, which was followed by the two-day killing of tens of thousands of the Iranian anti-Semites who were poised to wipe out the Jews. The Festival of Purim celebrates the hidden hand of G-d working through a seemingly fortuitous sequence of events that brought a Jewess named Hadassah to the Persian King’s palace under the assumed name Esther (meaning “hidden”) and allowed her to use her position to thwart the genocidal plans of the monarch’s Jew-hating advisor Haman.

Bush and Olmert and the Next War
Uri Avnery (Israel)

The neocons, who still reign supreme in Washington, are convinced that a rain of many hundreds of smart bombs on all the nuclear, military, governmental, and public installations in Iran could "do the job." Their friends in Israel will applaud, since that would relieve Israel of the need to do something similar, if on a smaller scale. But an American and/or Israeli adventure would be a disaster. Bombs can devastate a country, but not a people like the Iranians. Only the wildest imagination can foresee how the more than a billion Muslims in scores of countries – including all our neighbors – would react to the destruction of a Muslim country (even a Shi'ite one). This is playing with fire, which may start a worldwide conflagration.

Sometime this spring or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran, President Bush is likely to go on national television and announce that he has ordered American ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran. We must still sit through several months of soap opera at the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes to pass, and it is always possible that a diplomatic breakthrough will occur – let it be so! – but I am convinced that Bush has already decided an attack is his only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to satisfy his European allies. 

Israel will ask the U.S. government to significantly increase its military assistance to the country as part of a new multi-year aid agreement. A high-level Israeli economic delegation led by Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer and Finance Ministry Director General Yarom Ariav will meet with an American team in Washington this week. The present package, which ends this year, covers $2.4 billion in annual military aid. Israel's request comes due to the military challenges and restraints it will have to face in the upcoming years and the weakening dollar.

Israel: US Foreign Assistance
Congressional Research Service 

Israel is not economically self-sufficient, and relies on foreign assistance and borrowing to maintain its economy. Since 1985, the United States has provided $3 billion in grants annually to Israel. Since 1976, Israel has been the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, and is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II. In addition to U.S. assistance, it is estimated that Israel receives about $1 billion annually through philanthropy, an equal amount through short- and long-term commercial loans, and around $1 billion in Israel Bonds proceeds. 

Mobile 'Death Vans' Used for Executions in China
The Age (Australia)

China is equipping its courts with mobile execution vans as it shifts away from the communist system's traditional bullet in the head, towards a more "civilised" use of lethal injection…. Chinese authorities keep execution numbers a secret, but Western human rights monitors believe it is about 15,000 a year, more than the rest of the world's judicial executions combined. … The execution vans are converted 24-seater buses. The windowless execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. A police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe plunges a lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. 

Not Oil, But Israel: Behind the Iraq War
Stephen Sniegoski

The most popular argument of the critics of the Iraq war has been that the United States went to war for oil – that is, that the war had nothing to do with combating terrorism. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor before the war, Brendan O'Neill reported that "for many in the antiwar movement, the idea that the Bushies' plan to invade the Gulf to get their greasy hands on more oil has become an article of faith, an unquestionable truth repeated like a mantra." … That goes against what I regard as the fundamental reason for the war: the war was led by neoconservatives and fought in the interests of Israel, at least as Likudniks envision Israel's interests.

Chalmer Johnson’s 'Nemesis': A Review
Stephen Landman

Our democracy and way of life are now threatened because of our single-minded pursuit of empire with a well-entrenched militarism driving it that's become so powerful and pervasive it's now an uncontrollable state within the state. History is clear on this teaching we can choose as could all empires before us. We can keep ours and lose our democracy, but we can't have both. Rome made the wrong choice and perished. Britain chose more wisely and survived. We must now choose, and so far the signs are ominous.