Risks of America’s Proxy War Against Iran
The Guardian (Britain)

The growing US focus on confronting Iran in a proxy war inside Iraq risks triggering a direct conflict in the next few months, regional analysts are warning. US-Iranian tensions have mounted significantly in the past few days, with heightened rhetoric on both sides and the US decision to establish a military base in Iraq less than five miles from the Iranian border to block the smuggling of Iranian arms to Shia militias … "The proxy war that has been going on in Iraq may now cross the border. This is a very dangerous period," Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.

Israel Not Worth American Lives or Money, Says Ex-CIA Official
Michael Scheuer (video)

"I hope Israel flourishes but I don't think its worth an American life or an American dollar,” says Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit. He is speaking on the Bill Maher television show. Runtime: 7:05 minutes.

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America’s Hegemonic Status Slipping Away
Paul Craig Roberts

…Bush’s wars are about American hegemony, not oil. The oil companies did not write the neoconservatives’ “Project for a New American Century,” which calls for US/Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East, a hegemony that would conveniently remove obstacles to Israeli territorial expansion … The US is on a path to economic Armageddon. Shorn of industry, dependent on offshored manufactured goods and services, and deprived of the dollar as reserve currency, the US will become a third world country. 

Clips From German Wartime Newsreels
YouTube (Videos)

A remarkable collection of more than 400 clips from German World War Two newsreels. Some with English subtitles. New clips are being added continually.

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European Countries at Top of Quality of Life Survey
Agence France Presses

Nordic countries take the greatest care of their environment and their people, according to a ranking published on Thursday by the publication Reader's Digest. Finland comes top of the 141-nation list, followed by Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and then Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Australia … The United States comes in 23rd, China 84th and India 104th. The ranking combines environmental factors, such as air and water quality, respect for biodiversity and greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as social factors, such as gross domestic product, access to education, unemployment rate and life expectancy.

A Scary Lack of Urgency on US National Debt
David Lazarus -- Los Angeles Times

It's become an all-too-familiar ritual: The federal government maxes out the national credit card and the White House, rather than exercise greater fiscal prudence, simply asks Congress for a higher credit limit… The nation's debt load will almost certainly result in significantly higher taxes down the road, economists say, as well as a likelihood of higher interest rates due to the greater risk our profligate ways will pose to creditors … According to Riedl's calculations, the debt-to-GDP ratio could climb as high as 300% over the next 40 years unless steps are taken to reverse the trend. In other words, we'd owe three times as much as all our goods and services are worth in a single year.

Your Job in Germany
US War Department (1945) – Video

US government film for US soldiers in occupied Germany. Wartime hate propaganda, childishly simplistic, with an absurd portrayal of history. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”). Runtime: 10:40 mins.

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Young Americans Know Little About History
USA Today

Students don't know much about history, and colleges aren't adding enough to their civic literacy, says a report out today. The study from the non-profit Intercollegiate Studies Institute shows that less than half of college seniors knew that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution or that NATO was formed to resist Soviet expansion. Overall, freshmen averaged 50.4 percent on a wide-ranging civic literacy test; seniors averaged 54.2%, both failing scores if translated to grades.

Rewrite British History, Says British Official
The Telegraph (Britain)

Parts of British history need to be rewritten to emphasise the roles played by other races and religions like Muslims, a prominent race relations campaigner has said. Trevor Philips, the chairman of the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, said the history of Britain did not properly reflect the contribution of other cultures. Rewriting the country’s history would demonstrate to Britons in the 21st century how other groups apart from Anglo Saxons shaped the nation.

War Costing $720 Million Each Day, Group Says
The Washington Post

The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which displayed those statistics on large banners in cities nationwide Thursday and Friday. The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.

New Book on Mass Killings and Brutal Mistreatment of Germans
Mark Weber

Germany ’s defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era that, in many ways, was worse than the destruction wrought by war. In a sobering and courageous new book, After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation, British historian Giles MacDonogh details how the ruined and prostrate Reich (including Austria) was systematically raped and robbed, and how many Germans who survived the war were either killed in cold blood or deliberately left to die of disease, cold, malnutrition or starvation.

Diversity is Not Black and White
Christopher Caldwell -- The Financial Times (Britain)

… One of the cherished shibboleths of public policy, corporate identity and interpersonal relations - the idea that "diversity is strength" - is losing its legitimacy. Mr Putnam studied 30,000 people, urban and rural, rich and poor, young and old, male and female, across the US. He found a steady correlation between ethnically mixed environments and withdrawal from public life. People living amidst diversity tend to "hunker down", in his words. They trust their neighbours less (whether of other races or their own), vote less and give less to charity. About the only things they excel at, in Mr Putnam's account, are television-watching and protest marching. They lead sadder lives.

A New Look at Wartime Germany’s Jewish Labor Program
Frank Buscher - H-German (Review)

… He [Wolf Gruner, in Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis] challenges widely accepted notions and identifies what he considers misinterpretations of the historical record … He maintains this approach in this monograph, contesting several standard views of Jewish forced labor under the Nazis. These matters include the belief that Jews performed forced labor principally in the SS-run camp empire … Gruner challenges historians who argue that in the final analysis National Socialists preferred systematic and complete annihilation to economic exploitation.

Hillary Clinton: Unquestioning Devotion to 'Jewish State'
Clinton Campaign Position Paper

From her first trip to Israel on New Year’s Day in 1982 through her years as a U.S. Senator, Hillary Clinton has a long history of steadfast leadership on behalf of a strong US-Israel relationship … She stands as one of Israel’s leading defenders and supporters in the United States Senate … Hillary Clinton believes that Israel’s right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, secure from violence and terrorism, must never be questioned … She was a strong supporter of Israel’s right to build a security barrier and spoke out against the International Court of Justice for questioning Israel’s right to do so. 

Americans Are Losing Their Economic Future
Paul Craig Roberts

The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity … Americans are consuming $800 billion more than they are producing. They pay for it by giving up ownership of existing assets -- stocks, bonds, companies, real estate, commodities. America used to be a creditor nation. Now America is a debtor nation… Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.

Demographics and Destiny
Patrick J. Buchanan

…Nor is it only the Slavic peoples who are expiring. So, too, are the native-born populations of Western and Southern Europe, as the empty nurseries of Europa fill with bawling Muslim babies. Americans of European ancestry are also declining as a share of the U.S. population, down from near 90 percent into 1960 to 66 percent today. Anglos, as they are called now, are now minorities in our two largest states, Texas and California, and, by 2040, will be a minority in the nation that people of British and European stock built… If demography is destiny, the West is finished. And, if so, does it really matter all that much who rules in Baghdad?

Russia and China Warn Against War With Iran
The Telegraph (Britain)

Russia and China have criticised France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner for talking of "war" with Teheran. After meeting his French counterpart in Moscow, Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, gave warning of the possible consequences of any military strike designed to disable Iran's nuclear programme. "We are convinced that no modern problem has a military solution, and that applies to the Iranian nuclear programme as well," said Mr Lavrov. "We are seriously concerned about increasingly frequent reports that military action against Iran is being seriously considered." … Earlier, China's foreign ministry also criticised Mr Kouchner for raising the possibility of war.

Jews Angry Over CNN Report on Religious Extremists
Forward (New York)

A CNN documentary about religious extremists has prompted an unprecedented outcry from the organized Jewish community, including a call to advertisers to pressure the network. The three-episode special, “God’s Warriors,” by CNN’s chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, is being characterized by Jewish groups as equating Jewish extremists in West Bank settlements with Muslim jihadists… Amanpour interviews a member of the former Jewish underground who not only planted bombs in cars of Palestinian mayors but also plotted to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount.

The Israel Lobby
CNN – Video clip

Segment about the Israel Lobby, from the six-hour CNN television report, “God’s Warriors,” on religious fundamentalism as a political force. Includes interviews with Jimmy Carter, John Mearsheimer, and Morris Amitay. Presented by Christiane Amanpour. Runtime: 8:09 minutes

Israel Refuses to Cooperate in War Crimes Inquiry
Russia Today (Russia)

Israel has refused a request from Lithuania’s chief prosecutor to question Yitzhak Arad, former Director of the Israeli Holocaust Museum. The prosecutor alleges that Arad was involved in the killing of Lithuanian civilians as a partisan fighter during World War II. The dispute started with a small article in a local Lithuanian magazine, but grew to involve the governments of Israel and Lithuania, who are now deadlocked over what steps to take next.

Men and Women Look for Different Qualities in a Mate
Agence France Presse

The face of dating may have changed down the years, but the laws of attraction have not changed since the days of the Neanderthals, a new study says. It seems that men still seek out the most attractive women and women are drawn to the men that make the best providers - leveraging their looks to snag the best mate they can. Or at least that's what a group of researchers found when they observed some modern singles at work - in a speed-dating session in Munich, Germany … The men homed in on the most attractive women, while the women were drawn to material wealth and security.

Jews Assail Congressman for Remarks About Israel Lobby
The Washington Post  

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) has again come under fire from local Jewish organizations for remarking in a magazine interview that the "extraordinarily powerful" pro-Israel lobby played a strong role promoting the war in Iraq. In an interview with Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, Moran said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is "the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don't think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful -- most of them are quite wealthy -- they have been able to exert power."

New Study Reveals Israel Lobby’s Criminal History
Terry Walz (Review) – Council for the National Interest

… Grant F. Smith's new book, Foreign Agents, decisively pushes this debate forward and shows just how brazen and criminal the [Israel] lobby has acted since its beginnings… Foreign Agents shines light on the murky world of AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and its efforts to divert policy and push Israel's rightwing interventionist agenda in Washington. It garnered support for a war and occupation of Iraq in Congress … This book makes a convincing case that America - and the world - would be better off without AIPAC.

Wine Labels With Hitler's Image Seized in Italy
AFP

A prosecutor in Bolzano, northern Italy, seized wine bottle labels on Wednesday bearing a portrait of Hitler and other Nazis from a winery near the Austrian border, the company said. The 20 labels from the "Der Fuehrer" line show Hitler raising the Nazi salute and his generals… The incriminating labels constitute a glorification of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, according to state prosecutor Cuno Tarfusser. The Lunardelli company said it had sold around 20,000 bottles featuring the Hitler labels per year.

Bush Setting Up US for War With Iran
The Sunday Telegraph (Britain)

Senior American intelligence and defense officials believe that President George W. Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons program are doomed to fail. Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated program of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

The Shakespeare Debate: Arguments For and Against
BBC News

One of literature's great conspiracy theories has new impetus with Sir Derek Jacobi questioning whether William Shakespeare of Stratford really wrote the works associated with him. So what are the arguments for and against this man really being the Bard?

Zundel Sentence Upheld by High German Court
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Holocaust 'denier' Ernst Zundel will not avoid prison. The German Federal High Court confirmed Monday that it has upheld the 68-year-old Zundel's five-year prison sentence. On Sept. 12, the court rejected a 600-page proposed revision in the sentence, according to German news reports. After a yearlong trial Zundel … was sentenced Feb. 15 by the Mannheim district court on charges of denying the Holocaust on his Canada and U.S.-based Internet site.

Billions Over Baghdad
Vanity Fair (New York)

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency - much of it belonging to the Iraqi people - was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed … The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn't care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur.

The Course Of History
Dan Lieberman

The Middle East crisis, originally a struggle between native Palestinians and early Zionists for control of a land, has grown into a battle between Israel and the Arab world. A solution to the conflict has defied resolution - and for good reason… Israel is the most obvious place in the world where Jews are less safe; attacks against Israel are common. A November 2003 European Union poll selected Israel as the greatest threat to world peace … About 600,000 Israelis had left the country to live abroad … Future demographics favor the Palestinians.

U.S. Officials Begin Crafting Iran Bombing Plan
Fox News

A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime, FOX News confirmed Tuesday … According to a well-placed Bush administration source, "everyone in town" is now participating in a broad discussion about the costs and benefits of military action against Iran, with the likely timeframe for any such course of action being over the next eight to 10 months, after the presidential primaries have probably been decided, but well before the November 2008 elections.

Israeli Holocaust Historian Suspected of War Crimes
Agence France Presse

Lithuania wants to grill leading Israeli Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad over his alleged role in war crimes against civilians and prisoners during World War II, a prosecutor said Tuesday … The 81-year-old Arad, who served as the director of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Authority for 21 years, rejected the allegations … A probe launched in May 2006 showed that Arad, who was a member of the Soviet NKVD secret service, may have been involved in the killing of Lithuanian resistance figures at the end of World War II.

Millions Were Killed in India in British Reprisals, Says Historian
The Guardian (Britain)

A controversial new history of the Indian Mutiny, which broke out 150 years ago and is acknowledged to have been the greatest challenge to any European power in the 19th century, claims that the British pursued a murderous decade-long campaign to wipe out millions of people who dared rise up against them. In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an "untold holocaust" which caused the deaths of almost ten million people over ten years beginning in 1857. 

Industrial Revolution: Survival of the Richest
The Telegraph (Britain)

… Prof Clark concluded that wealth, not social status or literacy, was [then] the best predictor of the number of surviving children. Overall, the rich were leaving twice as many children as the poor. Survival of the fittest here meant survival of the richest … Consequently, today's population is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages … As well as passing on these cultural traits, Prof Clark thinks the genes linked with them began to spread, meaning that in biological terms, people were better mentally equipped to learn about and accept mechanisation. 

Belgium: Time to Call it a Day
The Economist (Britain)

… Nearly three months after its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But, if so, will anyone notice? And, if not, will anyone mind? Even the Belgians appear indifferent … The prime minister designate thinks Belgians have nothing in common except “the king, the football team, some beers”, and he describes their country as an “accident of history” … In short, Belgium has served its purpose. A praline divorce is in order. Belgians need not feel too sad. Countries come and go.  

A Boycott of Israel: Something is Changing
John Pilger

… The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16 August, the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30 billion military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. … There is nothing like it in UN history. But something is changing … The swell of a boycott is growing inexorably …

Learning From Nine-Eleven
Mark Weber (2001)

Our political leaders and the American mass media promote the preposterous fiction that the September 11 attacks are entirely unprovoked and unrelated to United States actions. … Over the long run, the attacks will encourage public awareness of our government's imperial role in the world, including a sobering reassessment of this country's perverse "special relationship" with the Jewish ethnostate. Along with that, rage will grow against those who have subordinated American interests, and basic justice and humanity, to Jewish-Zionist ambitions.

Liberating America From Israel
Paul Findley

Nine-Eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president during the past 35 years had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president — even President Bush this very day — could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people …

A New Motto for America
Charley Reese

… Isolationism, as defined by George Washington, is an exceedingly good policy. Washington warned us in his "Farewell Address" to steer clear of entangling alliances, foreign quarrels and feuds … There are a handful of honorable public servants, but they are such a minority and so studiously ignored by the corporate media that chances of improvement from within are slim to none. And let's face it: We the American people, beneficiaries of a free republic, are on the whole woefully ignorant, woefully apathetic and woefully selfish.

Britain’s Cities Rapidly Becoming Non-White
The Telegraph (Britain)

Ethnic minorities becoming the main population group could create social tensions, experts warn. White people living in the UK's second biggest city are likely to find themselves in a minority in 20 years' time, according to researchers. A team of demographers from Manchester University has claimed that the number of white people living in Birmingham will be overtaken by the number of those with other ethnic origins by 2027. The news came as it emerged that 35 towns and cities in Britain have at least one ward which is "minority white".

The 'Anti' Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul
The New York Times Sunday Magazine

… Alone among Republican candidates for the presidency, Paul has always opposed the Iraq war. He blames "a dozen or two neocons who got control of our foreign policy," chief among them Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Bush advisers Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, for the debacle. On the assumption that a bad situation could get worse if the war spreads into Iran , he has a simple plan. It is: "Just leave." … Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats

A Prosecutorial Brief Against Israel and Its Supporters
William Grimes – The New York Times

… The problem, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue [in their new book on the Israel Lobby], is that Israel has become a strategic liability with the end of the cold war and a moral pariah in its dealings with the Palestinians and, most recently, the Lebanese. Uncritical American support for its closest Middle East ally has … in every way made America’s international position weaker and more dangerous … “It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism.

Anger Over Neo-Nazi Group in Israel
BBC News

Israelis have been shocked by the story of a group of young immigrants from the former Soviet Union who allegedly formed a neo-Nazi cell in the Jewish state - founded as a haven from the European anti-Semitism that led to the Nazi Holocaust in World War II. The group, from the central town of Petah Tikva, are said to have filmed themselves carrying out hate crimes, wearing Nazi insignia and proclaiming their allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Eight young men are being held over 15 assaults of Orthodox Jews, foreign workers and other minority groups. 

German TV Sacks Presenter Who Praised Nazi Values
Reuters

A German public television network on Sunday sacked a popular talk show host and former news presenter after she had praised the Nazi's family policies at a news conference for her new book on child-rearing… Eva Herman, who was a news presenter for the network's flagship "Tagesschau" news program for 18 years to 2006, has also hosted several other talk shows on NDR. While presenting her book, … she said family values that were nurtured in the Nazi era were cast away by the turmoil of the late 1960s.

The Austrian army has charged three conscripts in connection with a video posted on YouTube showing young soldiers exchanging Nazi salutes. Two men can be seen in the footage. The third is suspected of having filmed them on his mobile phone. Those seen doing the salutes will also be taken out of military service. Any display of Nazi propaganda or symbols is a crime in Austria. 

Was Stalin to Blame for World War II?
Tom Segev – Haaretz (Isreal)

… A few years ago Shauli read "Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War," … From out of the sea of details, a coherent thesis emerges: Stalin dragged Hitler into war to force Europe into chaos and facilitate a communist revolution on the continent. According to Shauli, there is evidence to back up this theory, including a speech by Stalin himself as well as a report obtained by the U.S. Consulate in Prague … The document is in his possession, and now the history of World War II may have to be rewritten: It was Stalin's fault.

Embarrassing History: Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Arnaud de Borchgrave -- United Press International

The Palestinians call Israel’s 1948 war of independence their nakba, or catastrophic ethnic cleansing, or forced exile. The Israelis, for their part, have steadfastly rejected any suggestion of ethnic cleansing as calumny in all its anti-Semitic horror. Historic revisionism is now under way … Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and Haifa University lecturer, whose ninth book is titled “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” documents how Israel was born with lands forcibly seized from its Palestinian inhabitants who had lived there for hundreds of years.

Finkelstein Agrees to Resign from DePaul University
Associated Press

A Chicago university professor who has drawn criticism for accusing some Jews of improperly using the legacy of the Holocaust agreed Wednesday to resign immediately "for everybody's sake." DePaul University officials and political science professor Norman Finkelstein issued a joint statement announcing the resignation, which came as about a hundred protesters gathered outside the dean's office to support him. Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors, was denied tenure in June after spending six years on DePaul's faculty. His remaining class was cut by DePaul last month.

Most Israelis Back US Strike Against Iran if Talks Fail
Haaretz (Israel)

Fully 71 percent of Israelis believe that the United States should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program, according to a new poll. The survey, commissioned by Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center and the Anti-Defamation League, found that 59 percent of Israelis still believe the war in Iraq was justified, while 36 percent take the opposite view. Some 65 percent believe that the United States is a loyal ally of Israel, with only 11 percent saying the opposite. A slightly higher proportion, 73 percent, described U.S. President George W. Bush as friendly. 

Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran
Jean Bricmont

… All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized … The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not ­according to our views -- but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none … Both U.S. political parties are equally under the control of the Israel lobby, and so are the media. The antiwar movement is far too preoccupied with the security of Israel to seriously defend Iran, and it won't attack the real architects of this coming war -- the Zionists -- for fear of "provoking antisemitism". 

The suicide rate among pre-teen and teenage girls in the United States rose to its highest level in 15 years, and hanging surpassed guns as the preferred method, federal health officials reported Thursday. The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests a surprising reversal in recent trends. The biggest jump — about 76 percent — was in the suicide rate for girls ages 10-14 from 2003 to 2004 … Overall, suicide was the third leading cause of death among young Americans in 2004, accounting for 4,599 deaths. It is surpassed by only car crashes and homicide, Arias said.

A 'Depressing' Book on the Israel Lobby
Max Hastings (Review) – The Sunday Times (Britain)

The authors [John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard] support Israel’s right to exist. But they are dismayed by America’s unconditional support for its government’s policies, including vast sums of cash aid for which there is no plausible accounting process. They reject the view … that Israel and America share common values, and their national interests march hand in hand… There will be no peace in the Middle East until the United States faces its responsibilities there in a much more convincing fashion than it does today, partly for reasons given in this depressing book.

The Israel Lobby: An Important New Book
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt deepen and expand their argument and confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran … [They] provocatively contend that the [Israel] lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East — in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America’s national interest nor Israel’s long-term interest … The publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is certain to widen the debate and to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

… The manner of the book is amazingly calm… As for solidity, I am simply awed by the field of reference … But the main reason the book cannot be ignored is that the arguments go much further, and are devastating. Simply put, the book proves that the tail has wagged the dog on the greatest foreign policy mistake of the last 40 years, a mistake that has caused incredible suffering in Iraq and the U.S., and blasted my country's image.

Paul Craig Roberts

“No American President can stand up to Israel." These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader … Many Americans are unaware of the influence of the Israel lobby. Instead they think of the US as "the world's sole superpower," a macho new Roman Empire …

Japan Still Honors a Dissenting War Crimes Judge
The New York Times

An Indian judge, remembered by fewer and fewer of his own countrymen 40 years after his death, is still big in Japan … Radhabinod Pal, the only one out of eleven Allied justices who handed down a not guilty verdict for Japan’s top wartime leaders at the post-World War II International Military Tribunal for the Far East, or the Tokyo trials. “Justice Pal is highly respected even today by many Japanese for the noble spirit of courage he exhibited during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East,” Mr. Abe told the Indian Parliament.

Pentagon 'Three-Day Blitz' Plan for Iran
The Sunday Times (Britain)

The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert. Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

The Telegraph (Britain)

… News that elements of the American government are working in earnest on how to deal with the fallout of an attack on Iran come at a tense moment. … Mr Bush's escalation of the rhetoric was deliberate. A former White House aide said that the reference to a "nuclear holocaust" was a precise attempt to bracket Mr Ahmadinejad's quest for nuclear weapons and stated desire to wipe Israel off the map with Hitler's destruction of the Jews.

The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran … Bush's war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to justify naked aggression against Iraq … Last summer the Bush administration demonstrated to the entire world its total disdain for Muslim life when Bush supported Israel's month-long air attack on Lebanese civilian infrastructure and civilian residences … Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy.

Randall Hansen -- National Post (Canada)

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has decided to "adjust" its plaque about Bomber Command during the Second World War in response to veterans' complaints. This is a great mistake … The numbers are also not in dispute. Official statistics put [German] civilian deaths at 593,000. Civilians were burned, boiled, crushed, drowned and asphyxiated. Most died cowering in cellars, and most were women, children or old men. Some 60 German cities -- Dresden, but also Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Hannover, Darmstadt, Pforzheim and many, many others -- were obliterated.

Britain Tested Poison Gas on Indian Soldiers
Associated Press

British military scientists tested mustard gas on hundreds of Indian soldiers during more than a decade of experiments that began before World War II, a British newspaper reported Saturday. The experiments to determine whether mustard gas damaged Indians' skin more than British soldiers' began in the early 1930s and lasted more than ten years at a military site in Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan, The Guardian reported, citing newly discovered National Archive documents. The tests caused large numbers of burns…