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. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New York, Jerusalem, Paris, Miami, Toronto and Buenos Aires, it reports a membership of more than 300,000 and an annual income of some $30 million.The Center’s imposing “Museum of Tolerance” in West Los Angeles, which presents a relentlessly Jewish-Zionist version of history, draws some 350,000 visitors each year, including tens of thousands of school children who are brought in busloads. Tolerance” in West Los Angeles, which presents a relentlessly Jewish-Zionist version of history, draws some 350,000 visitors each year, including tens

Neocons Plan War Against Iran, Says Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter
Steve Selley

Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, made a strong case that the Bush administration is preparing to take the war to Iran in a speech he gave at the United Church on the Green in New Haven on Sept. 17 before an attentive crowd of about 250. Ritter spoke the day before the visit of Cindy Sheehan, the mother who still wants President George W. Bush to tell her why her son died. In his speech, titled "Parallel Deceptions: The Bush Agenda for War in Iraq and Iran," Ritter made it clear that her son died because of deceptions by the Bush administration that led to the Iraq war and that are preparing us for war in Iran. It is all laid out in the Wolfowitz-Cheney gang's document "Project for a New American Century" where the neocons plan for military domination of the Middle East.

Senior Jewish Lawmakers Warn US to Stop Iran's Nuclear Program -- Or Israel Will
David R. Sands

The United States and its allies must act to stop Iran's nuclear programs -- by force if necessary -- because conventional diplomacy will not work, three senior Israeli lawmakers from across the political spectrum warned yesterday. As a last resort, they said, Israel itself would act unilaterally to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear arms. Iran will not be deterred "by anything short of a threat of force," said Arieh Eldad, a member of Israel's right-wing National Union Party, part of a delegation of Knesset members visiting Washington this week. "They won't be stopped unless they are convinced their programs will be destroyed if they continue," he said. Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said the best hope was for the United States and other major powers to make it clear to Iranian leaders now there was "no chance they will ever see the fruits of a nuclear program."  "Threats of sanctions and isolation alone will not do it," said Mr. Steinitz.

Teachers to Travel for 'Holocaust' Education
Lawrence Silver

The death of famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal on Monday is another reminder that we should never forget. Two educators in Waukesha County are taking an extra step to ensure students have a comprehensive understanding of the catastrophic events of the Holocaust. Tina Bergemann, a sixth-grade teacher at Templeton Middle School, and Susannah Thompson, an associate pastor at Brookfield Congregational Church, will be traveling to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday for an education seminar. Both said they hope the trip, organized by the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, will enrich their own and ultimately their students’ understanding of the Holocaust.

Germany's Defense Minister Praises Jewish Role in German Armed Forces

"The intensive 10-year relationship between the American Jewish Committee and the Bundeswehr fills us all with gratitude. We are grateful not only because of Germany's special obligation to the Jewish people. We are also grateful that we have found in the American Jewish Committee a partner that has worked so successfully for international understanding and German-Jewish dialogue. We have you to thank for the fact that Bundeswehr soldiers are no longer thought of in connection with the Wehrmacht, but are understood and perceived as the armed forces of a democracy who stand up for human rights. It is also the AJC that is to be thanked for the fact that people in Germany have a better understanding of the culture and interests of Jews, and not only American Jews."

The European Volunteer Movement in World War II
Richard Landwehr

They called themselves the "assault generation" and they had largely been born in the years during and after World War I. Coming from every nation of Europe, they had risen up against the twin hydra of communism and big capitalism and banded together under one flag for a common cause. Fully a million of them joined the German Army in World War II, nearly half of them with the Waffen-SS. And it was in the Waffen-SS, the elite fighting force of Germany, where the idea of a united, anti-communist Europe became fully developed. It was also in the Waffen-SS where a new society emerged from among the "front fighters" of thirty different nations. Many countries sent more volunteers into the Waffen-SS than they could raise for their own national armies, so something truly phenomenal was taking place.

Galloway Speaks in Los Angeles
Butler Shaffer

The theme that ran through his presentation was the presence of the “double standard” by which Western and Middle Eastern interests are measured. The attacks of 9/11 emerged “not out of a clear blue sky,” but from a “deep swamp of anger and hatred” generated by decades of American, British, and Israeli atrocities committed against Arab and Muslim people. He emphasized that the core of the “terrorist” problem can be traced not to religious differences, but to over fifty years of “injustices imposed upon the Palestinian people” by American and Israeli politics. The 1982 slaughter – with the sanction of Ariel Sharon – of helpless men, women, and children in Beirut refugee camps, also came in for discussion.

Britain to Pull Troops from Iraq
Peter Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff

British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month, The Observer can reveal. The document being drawn up by the British government and the US will be presented to the Iraqi parliament in October and will spark fresh controversy over how long British troops will stay in the country. Tony Blair hopes that, despite continuing and widespread violence in Iraq, the move will show that there is progress following the conflict of 2003. Britain has already privately informed Japan - which also has troops in Iraq - of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May, a move that officials in Tokyo say would make it impossible for their own 550 soldiers to remain.

New British Censorship Plan
Simon Jenkins

The home secretary has promised the prime minister that he will lock away for five years anyone who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" a terrorist act committed in the past 20 years. He does not care if glorification was not meant. If someone, somewhere takes anything that I say or write as encouraging to terror, even if they do not act on it, I have committed a criminal act. Nor is this all. Lest any crackpot thinks he can dance up and down any old high street praising Hitler, Mao or Uncle Joe as outside the 20-year limit, Clarke is preparing a list of earlier terrorist acts that also render their celebrants criminals.

How Hitler Consolidated Power in Germany and Launched a Social Revolution
Leon Degrelle

Half a century later, few people understand the crisis Germany faced at that time. Today, it's easy to assume that Germans have always been well-fed and even plump. But the Germans Hitler inherited were virtual skeletons. During the preceding years, a score of "democratic" governments had come and gone, often in utter confusion. Instead of alleviating the people's misery, they had increased it, due to their own instability: it was impossible for them to pursue any given plan for more than a year or two. Germany had arrived at a dead end. In just a few years there had been 224,000 suicides - a horrifying figure, bespeaking a state of misery even more horrifying.

China's Star Is Rising As Economic Superpower
Georgie Anne Geyer

China is indeed rising as a superpower, albeit a dangerously unbalanced one economically and socially. Nevertheless, in its "rise" (the word everyone uses nowadays), it is rapidly (and ironically, given its secluded and fearful past) taking over the multilateral, peacekeeping, good-neighbor role that America always played in the world. It is changing America's relations everywhere, whether in Africa, the Middle East, Iran, Central Asia or Latin America, where, for instance, it is wooing Venezuela for oil and the Dominican Republic for access to American markets. (Thus, the letters to the American ambassadors; unfortunately, they underline the fact that we have no policy there ourselves.)

Jewish Image Deteriorating in France?

It is true that, as a whole, the French seem to believe what the media, the politicians, the schools and universities keep trotting out for them on the alleged extermination of the Jews. They are unaware of just about all the revisionist argumentation. They persist in confusing crematoria with "gas chambers". They take the images of dead camp detainees (inmates having succumbed to epidemics) for images of killed detainees. They do not know that the piles of shoes, hair and eyeglasses in the concentration camps simply testify to the fact, in a Europe at war and prey to blockade, of the organised recovery of everything that could be re-used or recycled for a variety of purposes. (Even today, in our consumer society, are not certain items such as unused eyeglasses or crutches collected for the benefit of people in the Third World?)

Travels in Palestine - Horror Story
Kathleen and Bill Christison

It all quickly comes together traveling through the West Bank: the separation wall encircling Anata; the verdant natural spring in the Israeli settlement of Anatot -- the spring, along with the mountains and wadis surrounding it and even the settlement's very name, all stolen from Palestinians by Israel and its settlers; the wall encroaching on the small, heroic village of Bil'in; the Israeli trash and garbage heaps that loom over Wadi Fuqin and other Palestinian villages, wherever there is a settlement under construction or expanding; the Israeli construction everywhere, everywhere, cutting through the land, destroying the land, building for Israelis, destroying what is Palestinian; the ecological devastation throughout the West Bank.

Connecting the Dots: Iraq and Palestine
Mazin Qumsiyeh

The lobby knew that the best way to advance closer working relationship with the right would be that Israel is a good and willing “tool” for advancing US interests.  Such a formulation helps deflect criticism from patriotic Americans who worry about the growing influence of this lobby.  On the other side, left leaning Zionists wanted to work with a democratic left that occasionally complained  about “US Imperialism” and corporate interests.  In that case, it was easier to claim Israel helps US public interests or that Israel is a democratic ally.  When push comes to shove, even Zionists on the left would deflect any critique of the Zionist lobby claiming that criticism should be solely directed to the masters (corporate or other elites) who merely “use” Israel as a tool.  

Jewish Groups Press for Iran Sanctions
Ori Nir

As Washington struggles to secure world support for slapping international sanctions on Iran over its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, Jewish organization are stepping up their efforts to trigger a crackdown on Tehran. Pro-Israel activists in Washington are pressing Congress to tighten American sanctions on Iran. And last week, on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly, Jewish communal leaders in New York urged world leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to act against Tehran. The appeal to Singh — to support American and European efforts to bring the issue of anti-Iran sanctions before the United Nations Security Council — came after a meeting earlier this month between Jewish communal leaders and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. At the meeting, Rice expressed frustration with India's refusal to support American and European policy on Iran.

The Inevitable War in Iran
Mike Whitney

If Washington wants a war with Iran, there'll be a war with Iran. That's the great lesson of the Iraq war; once the decision is made, there's no turning back. So, why are the main-players; England, France and Germany stumbling over themselves trying to placate Bush as though the conflict can be avoided? Threatening to bring Iran before the Security Council won't alter the administrations plans one bit. Like the Downing Street memo stated, "The facts and intelligence were fit to meet the policy". It's the same here. No amount of groveling from the EU-3 will appease Washington once Tehran is in its crosshairs. The EU-3 would be better off sending arms and ammunition to Iran so the people can defend themselves once bombs start to fly.

US-Israel Alliance Closer
Shmuel Rosner

In addition, U.S. President George W. Bush appeared before an audience of Jewish supporters of Israel twice in one week: last week, during the festivities marking 350 years of Jewish settlement in America, and yesterday, during a conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Twice he spoke about Israel with warmth and friendliness. Our two countries have a lot in common, said Bush: They're both communities of immigrants who fled from religious persecution, they're both democratic, and both were created out of a basic belief that there is an omnipotent God who watches human deeds and takes all living beings into account. It's an arguable description, but it led Bush to a conclusion that Israel will certainly be happy to adopt: These ties have made us into natural allies, and they will never be broken, he said.

Jewish Terrorist Gets 20 Year Prison Sentence

A member of the Jewish Defense League was sentenced today to 20 years for his role in a plot to blow up a Los Angeles-area mosque, the office of an Arab-American congressman, and the office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Earl Krugel and the militant group's leader, Irv Rubin, were charged in December 2001 with conspiring in the bomb plot. Rubin died a year later from injuries suffered in what authorities said was a jailhouse suicide attempt. Under his 2003 plea bargain, Krugel admitted conspiracy to violate the civil rights of worshippers at the King Fahd Mosque and also a weapons count tied to explosives that prosecutors said were meant for the field office of Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA).

The Zionist Terror Network

This booklet documents the background and criminal activities of Jewish Zionist terrorist groups, and especially the Jewish Defense League. Particular emphasis is given here to terror -- including murder -- against "thought criminals" who question the Holocaust story that six million Jews were systematically killed during the Second World War. Zionist terrorists openly proclaim an arrogant Jewish-supremacist ideology and acknowledge their readiness to use violence against those who disagree with them. With a well-documented record of bigotry and crime, they pose a serious danger to our society, and to men and women everywhere who treasure freedom.

'Nazi Hunter' Wiesenthal Dead at 96

Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down Nazi war criminals following World War II and spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice, died Tuesday. He was 96. A statement on the Simon Wiesenthal Center Web site said he died early Tuesday in Vienna, Austria. With more than 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust, including 89 members of his own family, Wiesenthal felt driven to track down those involved in the atrocities. In his book "Justice, Not Vengeance," Wiesenthal wrote: "Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what I can do for those who have not survived.

Simon Wiesenthal: Fraudulent 'Nazi Hunter'
Mark Weber

For more than 40 years, Simon Wiesenthal has been tracking hundreds of "Nazi criminals" from his "Jewish Documentation Center" in Vienna. For his work as the world's most prominent "Nazi hunter," he has been awarded several honorary degrees and numerous medals, including Germany's highest decoration. In a formal White House ceremony in August 1980, a teary-eyed President Carter presented him with a special gold medal awarded by the US Congress. President Reagan praised him in November 1988 as one of the "true heroes" of this century.

Wiesenthal's Faked 'Holocaust' Memoirs

As the physical evidence for mass exterminations at Nazi camps is missing (see a review of Auschwitz and Treblinka), much credence is placed on "holocaust survivors'" eye witness accounts. This is a mistaken trust: One of the world's most famous Holocaust survivors is the Austrian Jew, Simon Wiesenthal, who, after being interned at the Mauthausen concentration camp during the war, devoted his life to hunting ex-Nazis the world over. Wiesenthal also has an organization, devoted to Jewish interests and promoting the mass extermination propaganda, named after him. Yet it is a little known fact that Wiesenthal's own personal Holocaust memoirs, entitled "KZ Mauthausen, Bild und Wort" (Concentration Camp Mauthausen - pictures and words) which was published in 1946, contains one of the most blatant forgeries of all Holocaust memoirs.

Stormy IHR Rally Against Wiesenthal Center Defies Zionist Thugs

In a “Rally for Justice and Peace” organized by the Institute for Historical Review, some 15-20 men and women demonstrated at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles to focus public attention on what IHR director Mark Weber called the Center’s “record of deceit and lies in support of war, Zionist oppression and Jewish supremacism, and to protest the give-away of millions of dollars in public funds to this bastion of Jewish-Zionist power.” Participants gathered outside the Center’s offices on Friday, July 29, 2005, from noon to one, defying verbal and physical assaults, threats and intimidation by obscenity-shouting Zionist counter-demonstrators.

Iran Calls for UN Probe Into Israeli Nuclear Weapons
Shlomo Shamir and Aluf Benn

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday a UN committee should investigate how Israel acquired nuclear weapons. In an unyielding speech to the General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said his country had the inalienable right to produce nuclear energy and accused the United States of violating a treaty banning the spread of atomic weapons. Seeking to turn the tables of Western powers that suspect Tehran of developing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad offered to allow other countries and private companies to participate in his country's uranium enrichment program to prove that Tehran is not producing nuclear weapons.

Will Neocon Fanatacism Destroy America?
Paul Craig Roberts

What could the U.S. have possibly done to give America a worse name than to invade Iraq and murder its citizens? According to news reports, at Ted Forstmann's annual meeting of movers and shakers last weekend, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad predicted that US troops will soon enter Syria. Simultaneously, the Bush administration is desperately trying to orchestrate a case that it can use to attack Iran. Stalemated in Iraq, the White House moron intends to attack two more countries. At the Human Rights Conference on Sept. 9, the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, described Americans as "people with blood-soaked hands." "Who are the terrorists," asked Mahathir, the Iraqis or the Americans? The entire world is asking this question.

University Students in Oklahoma Pay Tribute to 'Murdered' Holocaust Children
Mark SchlachtenhAufen

A somber bell tolled, each clang representing one life, one child murdered during the Holocaust. The whistle of an approaching steam locomotive, chugging into the depot, pierced the air. During the performance, a somber processional of actors, walking in step to the tolling bell, took a silver star and placed it in the "fire" of the crematorium, represented by a display board, increasingly covered by the stars. The student actors were performing a tribute to the children of Terezin, written by Stephen Hilton, an adjunct UCO theater professor. Produced by the UCO theater, dance and media arts department, the tribute was inspired by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's traveling exhibit opening today at Untitled [Art Space] in Oklahoma City. Hilton said he wanted to construct a theater piece appropriate for non-theater majors, whom he teaches.

America Has Fallen to a Jacobin Coup
Paul Craig Roberts

With the exception of right-wing talk radio, everyone in America now knows that the invasion of Iraq was based on false information. Yet, 40 percent of the public and both political parties in Congress still support the ongoing war. The CIA has issued a report that the war is working only for Osama bin Laden. The unprovoked American aggression against Iraq, the horrors perpetrated against Muslims in Abu Ghraib prison, and the slaughter and mistreatment of Iraqi noncombatants, have radicalized the Muslim world and elevated bin Laden from a fringe figure to a leader opposed to American hegemony in the Middle East.

Dates Set for Zundel Trial in Germany

Political kidnapping victim Ernst Zundel (pictured, speaking at an Institute for Historical Review conference), who was torn from his home and wife in Tennessee and held under inhuman conditions for almost three years -- until very recently without any charge and now under the Alice-in-Wonderland charges of doubting what Jews say about certain historical events -- will get another 'Holocaust' trial, this time in his native Germany. Charges have been laid against Mr. Zundel under the highly controversial and undemocratic "Paragraph 130," which makes it a criminal offense in Germany to "doubt the Holocaust" and "defame the memory of the dead." In the past twelve years, more than 100,000 people have been charged in Germany for these and similar thought "crimes."

Jewish Chapel Built with Federal Funds

Catholic League president William Donohue commented today about the absence of outcry from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) over the building of a Jewish chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy.  From September 16-18, several events will take place at the Naval Academy celebrating the opening of the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel; formal dedication will take place Sunday.  Here is what Donohue had to say: “To the applause of the ADL, ACLU and AU, Catholic schools are denied government money for the purchase of maps in the classroom, but the federal government can spend nearly 2 million dollars to build a Jewish chapel at the Naval Academy without a word of protest from any of them."

Soviet Writer's Frank WWII Notes Published
Mike Collett-White

The personal notebooks of Vasily Grossman, the Soviet author best known for his World War Two masterpiece "Life and Fate," offer a harrowing and sometimes surprising insight into life along the Nazis' eastern front. They include Grossman's implicit criticism of the Soviets' lack of readiness for the Nazi onslaught, generals' petty preoccupation with medals and glory and the collaboration between German forces and Soviet citizens. In one dispatch from the southern front, Grossman details how a Soviet citizen in Elista served in the police force under the Nazis and a woman played the piano in a German cafe and lived with a German orderly.

Fraud Exposed in Defamatory German Exhibition
Mark Weber

A highly publicized German exhibition of atrocities allegedly carried out by regular German army forces during the Second World War has been closed down in the wake of revelations that many of the harrowing photographs it displayed are deceitful. The organizers of "War of Annihilation: Crimes of the German Armed Forces, 1941-1944," announced the shutdown on November 5, 1999, after ever more evidence had come to light proving that much of the controversial exhibit is fraudulent. In one exhibition photo, Musial explains, the corpses shown were actually Ukrainians who had been killed by the Soviet security police in Borislav (in Galicia, western Ukraine).

Jews in the Porn Industry
Nathan Abrams

A story little told is that of Jews in Hollywood’s seedier cousin, the adult film industry. Perhaps we’d prefer to pretend that the ‘triple-exthnics’ didn’t exist, but there’s no getting away from the fact that secular Jews have played (and still continue to play) a disproportionate role throughout the adult film industry in America. Jewish involvement in pornography has a long history in the United States, as Jews have helped to transform a fringe subculture into what has become a primary constituent of Americana. Though Jews make up only two per cent of the American population, they have been prominent in pornography. Many erotica dealers in the book trade between 1890 and 1940 were immigrant Jews of German origin.

Malaysian Leader Denounces US, British 'Terrorism'

US and British pilots whose bombs killed Iraqi civilians were murderers, and actions taken by those two countries during the invasion and occupation of Iraq amounted to terrorism, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has said. Mahathir decried the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians as a result of the US-led military invasion and occupation. He compared American and British actions in Iraq to rocket attacks by Israel on Palestinians, and referred to those countries as "these terrorist nations".

Washington's Fateful Cover-Up of Israel's Attack on the USS Liberty
Rep. Paul Findley

When attacked, the Liberty, an unarmed reconnaissance ship of the U.S. Navy, was moving slowly in international waters off the coast of Gaza and the Sinai. The assault was deliberate. It was committed in broad daylight during a two-hour span in the afternoon, following a series of close-in aerial surveillance flights by Israeli aircraft hours earlier. The attack began three hours after Israel’s naval command precisely identified the target as an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel. The American flag flew in a brisk breeze at the ship’s stern.

Why We Fight
Rep. Ron Paul

Immediately after 9/11 the American people were led to believe that Saddam Hussein somehow was responsible for the attacks. The truth is Saddam Hussein never permitted al Qaeda into Iraq out of fear that his secular government would be challenged. The most important misjudgment regarding Iraq that must be dealt with is the charge that Muslim terrorists attack us out of envy for our freedoms, our prosperity, and our way of life. There is no evidence this is the case. On the contrary, those who have extensively researched this issue conclude that the #1 reason suicide terrorists attack anywhere in the world is because their land is occupied by a foreign military power. If we deny this truth we do so at our own peril.

US Financial Aid to Israel - What Every American Should Know
Richard H. Curtiss

Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. The lobby that Israel and its supporters have built in the United States to make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion of it from the national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with its $15 million budget, its 150 employees, and its five or six registered lobbyists who manage to visit every member of Congress individually once or twice a year. AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel.

Canada Supports UN International 'Holocaust' Day
Paul Lungen

Canada has signed on to a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asking the General Assembly to consider setting aside a special day to mark the Holocaust. “In doing so, member states will demonstrate their commitment to the cause of Holocaust remembrance and education, act to help prevent future acts of genocide and advance the fulfilment by the United Nations of its core mission and founding principles,” the letter states. A draft resolution included in the letter suggests Jan. 27, the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces, be set aside as “an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust”.

Court Rules US Can Detain Citizens Indefinitely
Jerry Markon

A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who was arrested in Chicago in 2002 and designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. The government contends that Padilla trained at al Qaeda camps and was planning to blow up apartment buildings in the United States. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, has been held without trial in a U.S. naval brig for more than three years, and his case triggered a legal battle with vast implications for civil liberties and the fight against terrorism.

Colin Powell Says UN Speech A Blot on His Reputation

Powell, in an interview to be aired on ABC's "20/20," said his reputation was tarnished by the speech he gave at the United Nations prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In that speech Powell made a strong case that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, allegations that proved wrong. "It's a blot," Powell said of the speech. "I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world and (it) will always be part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now." Powell told ABC he did not blame former CIA Director George Tenet for the wrong information but, "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up."

Israeli Troops Were Given Shoot-to-Kill Order
Conal Urquhart

Israeli military prosecutors have opened criminal investigations following allegations by soldiers that they carried out illegal shoot-to-kill orders against unarmed Palestinians. The investigations cover a range of allegations, including misuse of weapons and other misuses of power. Some of the soldiers, who also spoke to the Guardian, say they acted on standing orders in some parts of the Palestinian territories to open fire on people regardless of whether they were armed or not, or posed any physical threat.

Bush Is the Real Threat
Tony Benn

Now that the US president has announced that he has not ruled out an attack on Iran, if it does not abandon its nuclear programme, the Middle East faces a crisis that could dwarf even the dangers arising from the war in Iraq. Even a conventional weapon fired at a nuclear research centre - whether or not a bomb was being made there - would almost certainly release radioactivity into the atmosphere, with consequences seen worldwide as a mini-Hiroshima. We would be told that it had been done to uphold the principles of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) - an argument that does not stand up to a moment's examination.

Israel Urges Ukraine to Ban 'Anti-Semitic' University Head's Parliament Candidacy
Yossi Melman

Israel is demanding that Ukraine bar the parliamentary candidacy of Prof. Georgy Tchokin, president of Ukraine's largest private university and considered the country's most influential disseminator of anti-Semitic propaganda. Israel Ambassador to Ukraine Naomi Ben-Ami and senior Foreign Ministry officials have made it clear to colleagues at the Ukrainian foreign ministry and presidential bureau that if they do not take harsh measures against Tchokin, it will cloud Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko's planned official visit to Israel in two months.Yushchenko, who is interested in promoting Ukraine's relations with the United States and other Western countries, ascribes great importance to the visit.

US Plans A Long, Long Stay In Iraq
Eric Margolis

The catastrophe inflicted by hurricane Katrina unfortunately obscured some bombshell news about Iraq last week. The US Air Force’s senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated US warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime `more or less indefinitely.’ Gen. Jumper let the cat out of the bag. While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection. Jumper’s revelation confirms what this column has long said: the Pentagon plans to copy Imperial Britain’s method of ruling oil-rich Iraq.

Most Europeans Dislike Bush's Foreign Policies
Andrew Grice

George Bush's attempt to charm Europe in his second term has failed to make an impact with the people of the continent, a survey shows. Some 72 per cent of Europeans disapprove of the US President's handling of international policies while more than half (55 per cent) want Europe to adopt a more independent approach from the US on international security and diplomacy - up four points since last year. Conversely, a majority (54 per cent) of the 1,000 Americans surveyed want a closer partnership between the US and Europe.

Troops Back from Iraq Find Another War Zone: New Orleans
Ann Scott Tyson

Spec. Frank Atkinson, wearing his tan desert fatigues from his recent deployment in Iraq, alternately drove a Humvee through downtown New Orleans streets littered with debris and putrid garbage and held suspected looters at gunpoint with his M-4 rifle. "It's just so much like Iraq, it's not funny," said Atkinson, of Woodlawn, Ark., "except for all the water, and they speak English." For a year ending this spring, Atkinson's infantry company of the Arkansas National Guard patrolled Baghdad's deadly Haifa Street, and scores of its members were awarded Purple Heart medals after fighting insurgents. Those war-zone images and instincts came flooding back Friday when Atkinson and 300 other Arkansas guardsmen, wearing helmets and full body armor, rolled into the chaos of central New Orleans. "It's like Baghdad on a bad day," said Spec. Brian McKay, 19, of Mount Ida, Arkansas.

The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of the War in Iraq

The U.S. controls 106 military bases across Iraq. Congress has budgeted $236 million for permanent base construction in FY2005. At least 23,589 to 26,705 Iraqi civilians have been killed. On average 155 members of the Iraqi security forces have died every month since the January 2005 elections, up from an average of 65 before they were held. Suicide attack rates rose to 50 per month in the first five months of 2005, up from 20 per month in 2003 and 48 in 2004. Iraq’s resistance forces remain at 16,000-40,000 even with the U.S. coalition killing or capturing 1,600 resistance members per month. And the World's Less Safe: The State Department reported that the number of “significant” terrorist attacks reached a record 655 in 2004, up from 175 in 2003. The U.S. military has also violated the Geneva Convention, making it more likely that in the future, other nations will ignore these protections in their treatment of civilian populations and detainees.

'Holocaust' Education Program Promotes Tolerance
Perry Beeman

All Des Moines high schools and middle schools will get information from the foundation, with the middle-school versions edited to remove some of the most disturbing information. Swift said Des Moines was chosen because it didn't already have a large collection of Holocaust materials or a Holocaust museum, and because the city had declared "zero tolerance" for hate crimes. Swift plans to hold workshops for teachers in October or November. The foundation hopes to sponsor student-run diversity clubs at schools, and Des Moines coordinators hope to start a community-based program using the materials to fight intolerance of all kinds, Swift said. Spielberg created the foundation with proceeds from "Schindler's List." Educational materials have been provided to 30,000 schools, that enroll 2 million students collectively.

Noontide Press: Dachau: Reality and Myth
John Cobden

For millions of Americans, the Dachau concentration camp has for years been regarded as proof positive of Nazi genocide. This well-written, illustrated booklet systematically demolishes a major historical legend, including the extermination "gas chamber," and exposes its makers. Also documents real, but little-known (Allied) war crimes committed at Dachau, including the summary slaughter of the captive camp personnel. Written with passionate devotion to truth and sensitivity for the suffering of the camp's victims.

How New Orleans Was Lost
Paul Craig Roberts

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." Why can't the U.S. government focus on America's needs and leave other countries alone? Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting our own borders from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants?

Prominent Neocon Suggests Repressive Measures Against 'Real Threats'
Charles Krauthammer

In 1977, when a bunch of neo-Nazis decided to march through Skokie, a suburb of Chicago heavily populated with Holocaust survivors, there was controversy as to whether they should be allowed. I thought they should. Why? Because neo-Nazis are utterly powerless. Had they not been -- had they been a party on the rise, as in late-1920s Germany -- I would have been for not only banning the march but also for practically every measure of harassment and persecution from deportation to imprisonment. A tolerant society has an obligation to be tolerant. Except to those so intolerant that they themselves would abolish tolerance. But when a real threat -- such as jihadism -- arises, a liberal democratic society must deploy every resource, including the repressive powers of the state, to deter and defeat those who would abolish liberal democracy.

Was Heinrich Himmler Murdered?

Although the Allied accounts insist that not a hair on Himmler's head was harmed during the course of his 15 minute 'processing,' the facts as I uncovered them reveal a much different and sinister story - that Himmler was in fact brutally mishandled before his death.  Thus, the idea that there is somehow a paucity of facts which prove Himmler was murdered is untenable. In fact, just the opposite is true - all the most updated information conclusively shows that Himmler was murdered, which deflates the entire proposition which would relegate the circumstances of his death to the 'fictional what-if-scenario.'

Middle East 'Analyst' Named in AIPAC Indictment
Mathew E. Berger

Middle East analyst Kenneth Pollack is one of two US government officials referenced in the indictment against two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), JTA has learned. But Pollack, who was a staffer on President Clinton's National Security Council, said he didn't give the AIPAC staffers any classified information. Pollack also said the information that Steve Rosen, AIPAC's former director of foreign policy issues, was accused of passing on to a reporter could not have come from him. "I believe I am USGO-1," Pollack told JTA on Monday, using a term in the indictment for US Government Official No. 1. A second source, speaking on condition of anonymity, has verified the information.

Jews Criticize Jodie Foster for 'Defending' Riefenstahl

Foster said in a just-released interview that Riefenstahl has been "libeled so many times" by people accusing her of membership in the Nazi Party or of having a romance with Adolf Hitler. But according to Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies: "It's irrelevant if Leni Riefenstahl wasn't a member of the Nazi Party or wasn't Hitler's girlfriend. She was the leading artist making propaganda for the most evil regime in human history. Instead of defending Riefenstahl as an alleged victim of 'libel', Jodie Foster should frankly confront the reality that Riefenstahl is an example of how art can be perverted to promote fascism, racism, and genocide. Sadly, it appears from Ms. Foster's statements that her intention is to defend Riefenstahl."

What About the 99.5 Percent Remaining in Gaza?
Amira Hass

"Is it possible," he continued with his question, "that the Israelis, who are so nice and good ... are unaware of the injustice they have caused here? I am a Jew, and my father is a Holocaust survivor, and I grew up on totally different values of Judaism - social justice, equality and concern for one's fellow man." As naive as it may have been, the question was like a breath of fresh air. Here was a Jew who was moved by what have become dry numbers - 1,719 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip from the end of September 2000 until today; and according to various estimates, some two-thirds of them were unarmed and were not killed in battles or during the course of attempts to attack a military position or a settlement.

South African Educators Study 'Holocaust'
Moira Schneider

Educators in a country that confronted its own racist past recently learned new ways to teach about Nazism in the nation's schools. A four-day seminar for educators was held August 1-4 at the initiative of the Cape Town Holocaust Center in consultation with South Africa's National Department of Education. Facilitated by Stephen Feinberg, the national outreach director for the education division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, "Understanding Social Darwinism, Race, Eugenics and Human Rights" attracted more than 60 curriculum advisers, administrators, education managers and teachers. The subject forms part of the new 11th grade history curriculum, which examines how social Darwinism, race and eugenics motivated Nazi ideology and also partially influenced apartheid ideology.