Former UN Mideast Envoy Says UN Subservient to US, Israel
Reuters

A former UN Middle East envoy quit his job last month with bitter allegations that UN policy in the region had failed because it was subservient to U.S. and Israeli interests, a newly leaked document shows. In a confidential end of mission report, Alvaro de Soto … blasted what he called "the tendency that exists among U.S. policy-makers ... to cower before any hint of Israeli displeasure and to pander shamelessly before Israeli-linked audiences." But much of his criticism was directed at the United Nations itself, where, he said, "a premium is been put on good relations with the U.S. and improving the UN's relationship with Israel."

Smith Presents Revisionist Film at Mexico Film Festival
Bradley Smith - CODOH

Bradley Smith, director of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), presented a Holocaust revisionist film, “The Great Taboo,” at the recent “Corto Creativo 07” film festival in northern Mexico. The first 32-minute cut of the film was shown to an appreciative audience of some 200 persons at the festival, an annual event sponsored by a Mexican university. The film features Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zundel, and Smith discussing revisionist theory, free speech, Zionism, 9/11, and other topics. Smith, a revisionist writer and veteran activist, called this presentation “an unprecedented step forward for the Holocaust revisionist movement.”

New Talk by US and Israeli Officials About Attacking Iran
The Christian Science Monitor (Boston)

Statements by US and Israeli officials in recent days on the possibility of attacking Iran have been met with increased posturing on both sides, warnings of retaliation from Tehran, and worries by the head of the international nuclear watchdog of a "brewing confrontation." … Over the weekend, Israel officials indicated that a strike against Iran was an option being considered if diplomacy fails. The Associated Press reports that Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said the US and Israel would review the effectiveness of sanctions against Iran at the end of the year, and that the two allies share a strategy on dealing with Tehran.

FBI Terror Watch List 'Out of Control'
ABC News

A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names. Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror. The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified. A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.

Russia’s President Expresses Concern About Cultural Level of Youth
Interfax (Russia)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his concern about the lowering cultural level of the modern youth. "According to the experts, people, and especially young ones, are losing their skills to vividly express their minds, to identify inflections and nuances. Many young people are hardly aware or even isolated of their cultural roots," Putin said on Wednesday as he opened a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art in the Kremlin.

The Neocon Threat to Peace and Freedom
Paul Craig Roberts 

The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three-to-six-week affair, now tells us that the U.S. occupation is permanent.  …  As I have previously explained, the neoconservatives' plan is to escape the failure of their Iraq plan by orchestrating a war with Iran in which the U.S. can prevail only by using nuclear weapons … If Americans understood the enormity of the deception behind the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pending attack on Iran, Bush and Cheney would be impeached and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, and AIPAC would be forced to register as a foreign agent.

US Plans Long-Term Military Presence in Iraq
Patrick Seale -- The Guardian (Britain)

Almost unnoticed, the war in Iraq entered a new phase last week. Laconic statements from the White House and the Pentagon confirmed what had long been suspected -- the US is planning a long-term military presence in Iraq. This is a geopolitical development of the first importance. In spite of current difficulties … the United States firmly intends to maintain control of Iraq and its vast oil reserves … Yet the building of US military bases in Iraq continues apace, at a cost of over $1bn a year….

Military Plan Against Iran is Ready
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)

Predicting that Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon within three years and claiming to have a strike plan in place, senior American military officers have told The Jerusalem Post they support President George W. Bush's stance to do everything necessary to stop the Islamic Republic's race for nuclear power … A high-ranking American military officer told the Post that senior officers in the US armed forces had thrown their support behind Bush and believed that additional steps needed to be taken to stop Iran. Predictions within the US military are that Bush will do what is needed to stop Teheran before he leaves office in 2009, including possibly launching a military strike against its nuclear facilities.

Israel is a 'Zionist Ghetto,' Says Prominent Israeli
Press TV (Israel)

Israel's former parliament speaker has branded Israel as a 'Zionist ghetto', scoffing at the regime's self-definition as a Jewish state. In an interview published in Ha'aretz daily on Friday, Avraham Burg said that this self-definition is the key to the regime's ruin. "It [Israel] can't work anymore. It's explosive. It's dynamite." said Burg, parliamentary speaker from 1999 to 2003. Burg has newly written a book, Defeating Hitler in which Ha'aretz says he describes Israel as a "Zionist ghetto" and compares Israeli behavior in the occupied Palestinian territories against Palestinians to that of Nazi Germany.

The High Cost of US Subservience to Israel
Paul Findley

Despite this grim record, U.S. subservience to the wishes of Israel’s leaders does not change.  Unconditional aid to Israel keeps flowing, as does Israel’s savage treatment of Palestinians and other Arabs ... The principal source of Israel’s influence is the fear it seems to instill in every sector of our society... Nationwide, the lobby’s influence is pervasive, sustained and deep, a phenomenon unprecedented in U.S. history … The situation is highly dangerous.  America has already paid a towering price for our subservience to Israel, and great additional burdens seem inevitable.

Bush Dedicates Memorial to Communism’s Victims
Agence France Presse

President George W. Bush paid tribute to the estimated tens of millions killed under communism at a new memorial to their suffering and linked the Cold War to the struggle against terrorism. … His remarks came at the dedication ceremony of a new memorial to the "more than 100 million people" who have died under communism since Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "And like the Communists, the followers of violent Islamic radicalism are doomed to fail," said Bush, who has often compared Islamist extremists to Germany's Nazis or Soviet Communists.

The Price of Delaying the Inevitable in Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul

Good intentions frequently lead to unintended bad consequences. Tough choices, doing what is right, often leads to unanticipated good results. The growing demand by the American people for us to leave Iraq prompts the naysayers to predict disaster in the Middle East if we do.  Of course, these merchants of fear are the same ones who predicted that invading and occupying Iraq would be a slam dunk operation; that we would be welcomed as liberators, and oil revenues would pay for the operation with minimal loss of American lives. … It’s time for a change in our foreign policy.

Former Killing Grounds Become Shrine to Stalin’s Victims
The New York Times

Barbed wire still lines the perimeter of the secret police compound here on the southern edge of Moscow where more, perhaps far more, than 20,000 people were shot and buried from August 1937 through October 1938, at the height of Stalin’s purges. Now, gradually, Butovsky poligon — literally, the Butovo shooting range — is becoming a shrine to all of the victims of Stalin’s murderous campaigns. Grass-covered mounds holding the victims’ bones crisscross the pastoral field, which is now dotted with flowers and birch trees.

Is Anti-Semitism Good for the Jews?
Eugene Volokh – The Wall Street Journal 

Modest amounts of anti-Semitic speech and unfair criticism of Israel, it seems to me, can strengthen American Jews' self-identity as Jews, and thus indirectly both support the preservation of the American Jewish community as a community, and strengthen support for Israel. Feeling embattled as a group tends to strengthen group solidarity. Hearing unfair criticisms for Israel tends to strengthen the sense that Israel is unfairly embattled and deserves more support. Feeling some fear of anti-Semitism reminds American Jews of the value of preserving American Jewish institutions. And it reminds American Jews of the value of protecting Israel …

Time for the Truth About the Liberty
Ward Boston, Jr. – San Diego Union -Tribune

Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8, 1967, bombing of the Navy intelligence ship Liberty … Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd – president of the Court of Inquiry – that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”

Finkelstein Denied Tenure by DePaul University
The New York Times

Norman Finkelstein, the political scientist whose bid for a permanent position at DePaul University stirred up charges of anti-Semitism, personal vendettas and outside interference in the hiring process, was informed Friday that he had been denied tenure by the university. Mr. Finkelstein said he clearly “met the publishing standards and the teaching standards required for tenure” and that DePaul’s decision was based on “transparently political grounds” and an “egregious violation” of academic freedom.   

So Much for the New European Century
Walter Laqueur

Europe as we once knew it is bound to change, probably out of recognition, for a number of reasons, partly demographic and cultural, but also political and social. Even if Europe should unite and solve the various domestic crises facing it, its predominant place in the world and predominant role in world affairs is a thing of the past. What kind of new Europe is likely to emerge as a successor to the old Continent? … In brief, by the turn of the millennium, at the very latest, it should have been clear that Europe was no longer on the road to superpower status, but that it faced an existential crisis — or, perhaps more accurately, a number of major crises, of which the demographic problem was the most severe. 

In Britain, Muhammed is Number Two Boy’s Name
The Times (Britain)

Muhammad is now second only to Jack as the most popular name for baby boys in Britain, and is likely to rise to Number 1 by next year, a study by The Times has found. The name, if all 14 different spellings are included, was shared by 5,991 newborn boys last year, beating Thomas into third place, followed by Joshua and Oliver. Scholars said that the name’s rise up the league table was driven partly by the growing number of young Muslims having families, coupled with the desire to name their child in honour of the Prophet.

German 'Brain Drain' at  Highest Level Since 1940s
The Independent (Britain)

… Germany is facing the sobering fact that record numbers of its own often highly-qualified citizens are fleeing the country to work abroad in the biggest mass exodus for 60 years. Figures released by Germany's Federal Statistics Office showed that the number of Germans emigrating rose to 155,290 last year … The statistics, which also revealed that the number of immigrants had declined steadily since 2001, were a stark reminder of the extent of the German economy's decline from the heady 1960s … OECD figures show that Germany is near the top of a league of industrial nations experiencing a brain drain which for the first time since the 1950s now exceeds the number of immigrants.

The Russian Bear Awakes
Eric Margolis

As Washington and Moscow exchange increasingly angry accusations and rebukes these recent weeks, it is hard to avoid a sense of Cold War déjà vu … Behind the barrages of invective, what’s really going on is that Russia is finally returning to being Russia , as this writer has long predicted it would. Russia the lap dog is gone. The Russian bear has awakened from a hibernation of two decades and is both hungry and ill-tempered … Putin long made clear his desire to rebuild the Soviet Union – minus communism – and restore his nation as a world power. This means asserting Russia’s historic interests in Eastern Europe and the Mideast, using energy exports to advance foreign policy, and increasingly standing up to the United States.

A New Peril From the East?
Doug Bandow

The United States dominates the globe, but analysts who make a living proclaiming America to be the essential nation, the unipower, the global rulemaker and policeman, are nervous. China refuses to remain supine and is increasingly investing in its military. U.S. policymakers who believe in inevitable and unending American global hegemony can glimpse the emergence of a very different world, one in which Washington no longer even try to unilaterally impose its will on friend and foe alike.

The Baton Passes to China
Walter T. Molano -- Asia Times

China's ascent is occurring faster than anyone imagined. The first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 11.1 percent year on year was a surprise for many, but not for all. China is on fire, marking the fourth consecutive year of double-digit expansion … The baton is passing to China. It is now setting the tempo for the global economic orchestra. The transformation is still in the early stages. China will soon move into higher-value-added sectors, such as automobiles, aerospace and pharmaceuticals. A larger swatch of the population has to be incorporated into the new economy. That means that sunny skies lie ahead for most emerging-market countries as they help feed the ravenous needs of the new rising superpower.

Prominent Israel Rabbi Advocates Carpet Bombing of Palestinians
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)

All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam attacks on Sderot, former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has written in a letter to Israel’s Prime Minister. Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings. The letter, published in Olam Katan [Small World], a weekly pamphlet to be distributed in synagogues nationwide this Friday, cited the biblical story of the Shechem massacre (Genesis 34) and Maimonides' commentary (Laws of Kings 9, 14) on the story as proof texts for his legal decision.

Iraq War Cannot be Won, Says Former British General
The Australian

There is "no way" the war in Iraq can be won by the United States and its allies, a former British Army commander said as he called for the troops to be withdrawn. General Sir Michael Rose, who commanded the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia-Hercegovina from 1994 to 1995, said coalition forces in Iraq were facing an impossible situation. "There is no way we are going to win the war and (we should) withdraw and accept defeat because we are going to lose on a more important level if we don't,'' he said.

Forty Years Of Occupation: Anniversary of the 'Six Day War'
Stephen Lendman

This June will mark an anniversary that will live in infamy for the people affected by the event it commemorates following a far greater one 19 years earlier on May 14, 1948. On June 5, 1967, Israel launched its so-called "Six-Day (preemptive) War" against three of its neighboring Arab states – Egypt, Jordan and Syria – claiming it was in self-defense to avoid annihilation Israeli leaders later admitted was spurious and false cover for a large-scale long-planned, calculated war of aggression it believed it could easily win and did.

USS Liberty: Dead In The Water
BBC Television (Video)

British television documentary from 2002 about the June 1967 attack by Israel against the USS Liberty. Shows that US and Israel authorities continue to suppress important facts about the murderous attack. Also includes revelations about the still secret Israel-US “Operation Cyanide” project, in which the US military deceitfully aided the Zionist state in its devastating “preemptive” assault against Egypt. Runtime: one hour, nine minutes.

Immigration ‘Compromise’ Sells Out Our Sovereignty
Rep. Ron Paul 

The much-vaunted Senate “compromise” on immigration is a compromise alright: a compromise of our laws, a compromise of our sovereignty, and a compromise of the Second Amendment. That anyone in Washington believes this is a credible approach to solving our immigration crisis suggests just how out of touch our political elites really are. The reality is that this bill will grant amnesty to virtually all of the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in the country today. Supporters use very creative language to try and convince us that amnesty is not really amnesty, but when individuals who have entered the United States illegally are granted citizenship – regardless of the fees they are charged – what you have is amnesty.

Republicans Unhappy with Bush on Immigration Issue
ABC News

President Bush's immigration reform package has badly damaged his ratings on the issue from his core supporters, with his approval rating for handling immigration plummeting among Republicans and conservatives. Fewer than half of Republicans, 45 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll, now approve of how Bush is handling immigration, down from 61 percent in April - that's a 16-point drop in six weeks. Just 35 percent of conservatives approve, down from 48 percent … Among all Americans, just 29 percent now approve of his handling of immigration, a career low. And the public trusts the Democrats in Congress over Bush to handle the issue by 48 percent to 31 percent, essentially the same as in December.

Rapid Minority Growth in US Schools
The New York Times

Driven mainly by an extraordinary influx of Hispanics, the nation’s population of minority students has surged to 42 percent of public school enrollment, up from 22 percent three decades ago, according to an annual report issued yesterday by the government. The report, a statistical survey of the nation’s educational system, portrays sweeping ethnic shifts that have transformed the schools. The changes, with important implications for educators and policy makers, have been most striking in the West, where, the survey says, Hispanic, black and Asian students together have outnumbered whites since 2003. 

Six Days of War, 40 Years of Secrecy
The Age (Australia)

Was the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty deliberate? The US is morally bound to find out. Forty years ago in a quiet corner of the Mediterranean off the Sinai Desert, an extraordinary attack was launched by Israeli jet fighters and torpedo boats on the USS Liberty. It was the fourth day of the Six-Day War. The large intelligence-gathering ship was in international waters, proudly flying the US flag and clearly marked … By day's end 34 American sailors were killed and 172 injured. … There is still a fierce debate over the question of whether the attack by Israeli forces was deliberate, allegedly mounted to disrupt US intelligence collection and provide cover for the day-five invasion of Syria and capture of the Golan Heights. 

Facts About Israel’s Assault on the USS Liberty
USS Liberty Memorial Web Site

This web site is dedicated to the memory of 34 fine young men who gave their lives on June 8, 1967, defending the USS Liberty against a sustained air and sea attack by the armed forces of the State of Israel. During the Six Day War between Israel and the Arab States [40 years ago], the American intelligence ship USS Liberty was attacked for 75 minutes in international waters by Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats. Thirty-four men died and 174 were wounded. The attack, which was a war crime, has been a matter of controversy ever since. 

Professor in Canada Defends Role in Iran Holocaust Conference
CBC News (Canada) 

A Muslim professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia has denounced the university and the media that earlier denounced him for attending a conference in Iran allegedly about Holocaust denial. Prof. Shiraz Dossa delivered a paper at the conference in Tehran last December that was widely criticized for being a forum for Holocaust denial. But in a rebuttal published in the Literary Review of Canada on Monday, Dossa rejected the accusation that the meeting was about Holocaust denial, and that it was organized by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Explanation We Never Heard
Prof. Shiraz Dossa -- Literary Review of Canada

It would be a shocking event in any university. It was doubly so in a university that takes pride in its "Catholic character." Last December, St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, authorized a small Spanish Inquisition of its own to denounce a St. FX Muslim professor. It was launched by two Jewish professors and the Christian chair of the political science department (Michael Steinitz, Samuel Kalman and Yvon Grenier). My sin: I attended a conference in a Muslim nation on the Holocaust entitled The Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision. It took place in Tehran, Iran, in December 2006, and it was widely-and erroneously-described in the western media as a "Holocaust-denial conference."

Soviet-Style 'Torture' Becomes 'Interrogation'
When Used by US
The New York Times

How did the United States, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, come to adopt interrogation techniques copied from the Soviet Union and other cold war adversaries? Investigators for the Senate Armed Services Committee are examining how the methods, long used to train Americans for what they may face as prisoners of war, became the basis for American interrogations … Some of those techniques have been used on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at the C.I.A.’s secret overseas jails … The article shows that methods embraced after 2001 were once considered torture that would produce false information.

Remember the Liberty!
Justin Raimondo – Antiwar.com

It was 40 years ago this June 8 that the USS Liberty – a large, armorless, refitted freighter that was gathering intelligence in the Mediterranean at the outset of the Six Day War – was attacked by Israeli fighter jets and torpedoes. Thirty-four U.S. sailors were killed, and 172 were wounded. The Liberty limped back to Malta … The stunning fact of the American government's complicity in hiding the truth about an attack on its own soldiers is all we need to know about what's wrong with American foreign policy – and what is the exact source of the problem.

Her War, Her Way: Hillary Clinton and the Iraq War
The Nation (New York)

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign would like voters to forget that she supported the war in Iraq. "Senator Clinton believes things are not going well [In Iraq], wants to begin phased withdrawal, wants to end the war," her spokesman Howard Wolfson told MSNBC on Friday. It wasn't always that way. A new book by two New York Times investigative reporters, excerpted in the NYT Magazine, painstakingly details that not only did Hillary support the war, but did so in a way that echoed many of the Bush Administration's most dubious talking points and undercut antiwar opponents. For the better part of three years, Clinton stuck to her support for the war. As public opinion began to change, so did her position, albeit slowly.

Swiss Official’s 'Holocaust' Conference Offer Sparks
Jewish Protests
European Jewish Press

A European Jewish leader has written to Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey demanding that she withdraw a reported offer to host a Conference on ’Selective Perceptions of the Holocaust’. Calmy-Rey is believed to have made the offer to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Jalili during a meeting in Berne in December 2006 when Calmy-Rey was then the foreign minister of Switzerland. The meeting was revealed by Zurich-based paper Die Weltwoche in a report last week. Weltwoche claimed to possess a confidential document detailing Calmy-Rey’s proposal to Iran. 

New Novel Takes Acerbic Look at the Holocaust Industry
Tom A. Peter -- Christian Science Monitor

Can any one group lay claim to the Holocaust? … Does the genocide define the Jewish identity? Or, speaking more broadly, was the destruction of the Jewish population so great that the Holocaust deserves more attention than other genocides? These are questions normally handled with the highest degree of caution and deference, but not in the case of author Tova Reich. In her fourth and latest novel, My Holocaust, Ms. Reich takes these issues on in a delightfully irreverent style certain to break even the sternest of readers. Though the book will undoubtedly ruffle the feathers of the politically correct, anyone with reasonably thick skin and a sense of humor would be challenged to make it all the way through My Holocaust without laughing out loud.

Rethinking Israel's David-and-Goliath past
Sandy Tolan – Salon.com

Little-noticed details in declassified U.S. documents indicate that Israel's Six-Day War may not have been a war of necessity. Little-noticed details in declassified documents from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, indicate that top officials in the Johnson administration -- including Johnson's most pro-Israeli Cabinet members -- did not believe war between Israel and its neighbors was necessary or inevitable, at least until the final hour. In these documents, Israel emerges as a vastly superior military power, its opponents far weaker than the menacing threat Israel portrayed, and war itself something that Nasser, for all his saber-rattling, tried to avoid until the moment his air force went up in smoke.

The Seventh Day: Revisionist History and Israel
David Remnick -- The New Yorker

...Rigorous revisionism is, of course, at the heart of historical practice, and to practice it in the face of a state-endorsed orthodoxy can require a considerable measure of gall, as well as craft ... Nowhere has revisionist history played a more crucial role in the political and moral consciousness of a nation than in Israel. The state came into being in 1948, and, almost immediately, its prehistory -- the origins of Zionist ideology, the behavior of the British during the Mandate period, and, critically, the relationship with the Other, the Palestinian Arabs -- became matter for schoolbooks, journalism, military indoctrination, scholarship, and public rhetoric. 

A Holy City Loses Faith: Jerusalem After Forty Years
Kevin Peraino -- Newsweek

...Even as they celebrate the 40th anniversary of the war this week, a growing number of Israeli voices are saying the once unthinkable: that Jerusalem may never truly be united. The city is now Israel's poorest metropolis; ambitious young people prefer making their living in the country's high-tech corridor along the Mediterranean coast. A vastly disparate standard of living divides Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews, who only rarely mix. A concrete barrier cuts through the city, locking more than 50,000 East Jerusalemites outside the wall. Not a single foreign nation keeps its embassy there anymore. "The story of Jerusalem is a story of decay and deterioration," says historian Tom Segev. "All these dreams of 1967 were actually illusions."

Immigration: Bush's Domestic Iraq
Mickey Kaus – Los Angeles Times

The rigid thinking leading us to failure in the Mideast spawned 'comprehensive immigration reform.' Mainstream editorialists like to praise President Bush's immigration initiative as an expression of his pragmatic, bipartisan, "compassionate conservative" side, in presumed contrast to the inflexible, ideological approach that produced the invasion of Iraq. But far from being a sensible centrist departure from the sort of grandiose, rigid thinking that led Bush into Iraq, "comprehensive immigration reform" is of a piece with that thinking. And it's likely to lead to a parallel outcome. Here are 10 similarities…

Dershowitz Threatens 'Legal War' Against Anti-Israel Academics
Financial Times (Britain) 

A top American lawyer has threatened to wage a legal war against British academics who seek to cut links with Israeli universities. Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor renowned for his staunch defence of Israel and high-profile legal victories, including his role in the O.J. Simpson trial, vowed to "devastate and bankrupt" lecturers who supported such boycotts. This week's annual conference of Britain 's biggest lecturers' union, the University and College Union, backed a motion damning the "complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation [of Palestinian land]".

Israel's Wasted Victory: 40 Years After the Six Day War
The Economist (Britain)

On the seventh day Jews everywhere celebrated Israel's deliverance from danger. But 40 years after that tumultuous June of 1967, the Six-Day War has come to look like one of history's pyrrhic victories. That is not to say that the war was unnecessary … And yet, in the long run, the war turned into a calamity for the Jewish state no less than for its neighbours … For peace to come, Israel must give up the West Bank and share Jerusalem; the Palestinians must give up the dream of return and make Israel feel secure as a Jewish state. All the rest is detail.

European Man Found in Ancient Chinese Tomb, Study Reveals
National Geographic News

Human remains found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb belonged to a man of European origin, DNA evidence shows. Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia. The tomb, in Taiyuan in central China, marks the easternmost spot where the ancient European lineage has been found. "The [genetic group] to which Yu Hong belongs is the first west Eurasian special lineage that has been found in the central part of ancient China," said Zhou Hui, head of the DNA laboratory of the College of Life Science at Jilin University in Changchun, China. 

Lecture Cancelled at Harvard After Scientist Denounces Dershowitz
Inside Higher Ed

On Thursday, Robert L. Trivers took a train to Boston to give a talk at Harvard University the next day. Trivers is a prominent evolutionary biologist and anthropologist at Rutgers University and he had been invited to Cambridge in honor of his having won this year’s Crafoord Prize in Biosciences, a top international award that many consider a notch below the Nobel. Trivers never got to give his talk. He says that hours before he was scheduled to lecture, he was called by an organizer and told that the appearance was being called off because of statements he had made about and to Alan Dershowitz, a law professor at Harvard. 

Humiliation at Israeli Checkpoints: Strip-Searching Children
Alison Weir

Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades, some of them American citizens. While organizations that focus on Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials regularly strip search men and women, If Americans Knew appears to be the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of strip searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have also been strip searching young girls as young as seven and below.

U.S. History Enjoys a Renaissance
Reuters

In a high-tech age of instant communication, old-fashioned history is enjoying a renaissance in U.S. popular culture. History tomes crowd best-seller lists. Historical documentaries fill the airwaves. And people pay thousands of dollars to spend whole weekends with noted historians, much the way rock-n-roll or baseball fans attend fantasy camps with their heroes. "At all levels of American society there is this hunger to understand the past and relate it to the present," historian David Nasaw said at one such event. "The people who are fascinated reach from the top income bracket to ordinary folk."

War is a Racket
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

Canada Revokes Citizenship of Alleged Nazi Enablers
Reuters

The government of Canada has revoked the citizenship of two aged men it said had been involved in Nazi war crimes during World War Two. It said on Thursday that one of them, Helmut Oberlander, had concealed his membership in Einsatzkommando 10a, a unit that systematically carried out mass executions of civilians, particularly Jews, in the occupied Soviet Union … Oberlander had said the Nazis had forced him into service as a translator when he was a teenager.

Online Petition of Support for Helmut Oberlander

On May 17, 2007, the Canadian federal government revoked Helmut Oberlander’s Canadian citizenship for the second time. This revocation order comes in spite of a Federal Court of Appeal ruling on May 31, 2004, which restored Mr. Oberlander’s citizenship in a unanimous ruling of three judges, after first bring revoked in 2001. The Federal Court found that Mr. Oberlander was not involved directly or indirectly in any war crimes in World War II… We urge the federal Government to restore Mr. Oberlander’s citizenship.

Israel: A Country Without Defined borders
BBC News

… The modern Israeli state was forged in the fires of the first Middle East war in 1948-1949, but from the beginning it was a state without clear borders. The fact that complete, permanent borders still haven't been drawn 60 years later is testimony to the rancour of Israel's relations with neighbouring Arab states. Peace talks have taken place -- Jordan and Egypt signed treaties with Israel turning 1949 ceasefire lines into state borders. But the absence of a final settlement with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians mean Israel's borders and the state itself remain inherently unstable.