Germans Should Reject Holocaust Guilt, Says Iran President
Reuters

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Germans they should no longer allow themselves to be held prisoner by a sense of guilt over the Holocaust and reiterated doubts that the Holocaust even happened. In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Ahmadinejad said he doubted Germans were allowed to write "the truth" about the Holocaust and said he was still considering traveling to Germany for the World Cup soccer tournament. "I believe the German people are prisoners of the Holocaust…, “ he said in the interview published on Sunday.

'We Are Determined,' Says Iran's President
Interview with Iran President Ahmadinejad - Spiegel Online

In an interview with the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discusses the Holocaust, the future of the state of Israel, mistakes made by the United States in Iraq and Tehran's nuclear conflict with the West. “We don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust. We oppose every type of crime against any people. But we want to know whether this crime actually took place or not. If it did, then those who bear the responsibility for it have to be punished, and not the Palestinians. Why isn't research into a deed that occurred 60 years ago permitted? …”

Revisionism in Iran, in France and in the World
Robert Faurisson

The accusation brought by the Jews against the German people constitutes a slander. Marked with the sign of Cain, that people has thus far had no other recourse than to lose itself in contrition for a crime that it never committed. … The German (and Austrian) leaders ceaselessly ask the Jews' forgiveness and lay out colossal financial "reparations" to Jewish or Zionist organisations and the State of Israel. For sixty years, those countries' rulers have lived in dread of arousing the Jews' wrath; consequently they can be seen stifling any sign of historical revisionism. The imposture of the "Holocaust" is the sword and shield of the Jewish State, its No. 1 weapon. 

For China , it's Paul Revere's ride and Washington crossing the Delaware in one. The Luding Bridge battle is the most famous moment in the Long March, itself the defining legend of modern China . The Red Army is hotly pursued in 1935. Soldiers hoof it 24/7 for 140 miles. They must cross the Dadu River , or be wiped out! But a 300-year-old chain-suspension bridge is closely guarded. So a suicide squad shimmies over the chains, under machine-gun fire, and wipes out the dreaded Nationalist enemy. The Red Army crosses! The China of Mao is saved! … Just one problem: A "battle" never quite happened.  

Enough is Enough: People Have Had It With The Lobby
Justin Raimondo

,,,The power of the Lobby is waning. With an espionage investigation and upcoming trial of its chief Washington lobbyist at hand, the Walt-Mearsheimer controversy, and indications of a growing chasm between Washington and Tel Aviv over the latter's arms sales to China and covert activities in the U.S., the power of the Lobby is being openly challenged as never before. What Walt and Mearsheimer describe as the distortion of American foreign policy in favor of a foreign power – Israel – has now become a major topic of debate. And how that debate has been conducted shows that the future does not bode well for the Lobby…

The Second Wave Against Mearsheimer and Walt
Stephen J. Sniegoski

The initial reaction to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay "The Israel Lobby" consisted of a relentless barrage of vituperative insults, smears, character assassination, misrepresentations, and other inflammatory rhetoric that condemned the essay in toto. In large part, the vicious pillorying of the piece came from members of the Israel lobby denying their own power and even existence. … This more recent approach to the "Israel Lobby" study represents a variant of what Harry Elmer Barnes, the great revisionist historian of the two world wars, described as the smother-out approach.  

Orwell Rolls in His Grave
Video by Robert Kane Pappas

This chilling documentary film examines the relationship between the media, corporate America, and government. In a country where the "top 1% control 90% of the wealth", the film argues that the media system is a "subsidiary of corporate America."

Steering Into a Third Intifada
Patrick J. Buchanan

What is the Bush plan to advance our interests in the Middle East? There is none. For five years, the Bush policy has been to sign off on whatever Sharon put in front of him. And now that Bush is weak, he is not going to pick a fight he cannot win and, in candor, he does not want. … Western Europe, its Muslim populations growing in numbers and militancy, will neither recognize Israel's borders nor endorse U.S. policy. Europe is not going to side with 5 million Israelis, whom they believe to be in the wrong, against 300 million Arabs, who will be 500 million at mid-century.

… The state of US foreign affairs is the worst it has been since World War II …Pushed by the war hawk neoconservatives in the Bush administration, the United States invaded Iraq, one of Israel's more vocal if ineffective enemies, with the idea that American military might would roll right over Saddam Hussein's regime there and then be in a position to take on two other of Israel's enemies, Iran and Syria. Instead, Americans' patience and resources now find themselves three years later pushed to the limit in Iraq …

The Challenge of Jewish-Zionist Power
Mark Weber

What is emerging is a new bi-polar world, with the United States and Israel on one side, and the rest of the world on the other. This new alignment of forces, this shift in power relationships in the world, is strikingly reflected in the United Nations, where, time and time again, votes on issues in both the General Assembly and the Security Council pit the United States and Israel on one side, and virtually the entire rest of the world on the other. …By supporting Israel and its policies, the United States betrays not only its own national interests, but the principles it claims to embody and defend. … In the years to come, the cost of the US alliance with Israel is certain to rise much more.

Is Boudicca Buried in Birmingham, England?
BBC News

The burial ground of Queen Boudicca could be next to a burger restaurant in Birmingham, England, it has been claimed. An excavation is to take place at the site in Kings Norton after evidence it has Roman remains buried there. Queen Boudicca, who led ancient tribes in battle against the Romans, died in 62 AD, possibly in the Midlands. It would be a "world-shattering" find, said Councillor Peter Douglas Osborn. But experts warned there is no evidence the site is linked to Boudicca.

Iran The Target of Disinformation Campaign
Jim Lobe – Inter Press Service

A story authored by a prominent US neoconservative regarding new legislation in Iran allegedly requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive color badges circulated around the world this weekend before it was exposed as false. The article by a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-American Amir Taheri, was initially published in Friday's edition of Canada's National Post, which ran alongside the story a 1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow, six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat, as required by Nazi legislation at the time. The Post subsequently issued a retraction.

Historical Sound Recordings
The Free Information Society

Historical Sound Recordings in MP3 Format. Hear Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison, Lenin, Fidel Castro, Charles Lindbergh, Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, and others.

The nation-state is dying. Men have begun to transfer their allegiance, loyalty and love from the older nations both upward to the new transnational regimes that are arising, and downward to the sub-nations whence they came, the true nations, united by blood and soil, language, literature, history, faith, tradition and memory. … Imperial and ideological nations appear, for the foreseeable future, to be finished. The British and French, greatest of the Western Empires, are long gone. … As the Old Republic trudges to its death, less and less do we hear that incessant blather about the American Empire, "the world's last superpower" and "our unipolar moment."

Wilhelm Stäglich is Dead
Institute for Historical Review

Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich, a German judge and historian who wrote an important revisionist book about Auschwitz, is dead. He died, age 89, on April 5. During World War II he served from mid-July to mid-September 1944 as an orderly officer on the staff of an anti-aircraft detachment stationed near the Auschwitz camp. His detailed study, Der Auschwitz-Mythos, published in 1979, was banned in Germany a short time later. A few years later an English-language edition was published by the IHR under the title Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence.

Proposed Immigration Law Would Permit 193 Million More Aliens by 2026
The Washington Times

The Senate immigration reform bill would allow for up to 193 million new legal immigrants -- a number greater than 60 percent of the current U.S. population -- in the next 20 years, according to a study … It is more likely that about 103 million new immigrants actually would arrive in the next 20 years. … As part of the bill, the annual flow of legal immigrants allowed into the U.S. would more than double to more than 2 million annually. In addition, the guest-worker program in the bill would bring in 325,000 new workers annually who could later apply for citizenship. That population would grow exponentially from there because the millions of new citizens would be permitted to bring along their extended families.

DNA Tests Confirm Columbus' Bones in Spain
Associated Press

Scientists said Friday they have confirmed that at least some of Christopher Columbus' remains were buried inside a cathedral in Seville, Spain, a discovery that could help end a century-old debate over the explorer's final resting place. DNA samples from 500-year-old bone slivers could contradict the Dominican Republic's competing claim that the explorer was laid to rest in the New World, said Marcial Castro, a Spanish historian and teacher who devised the study that began in 2002. However, some of Columbus' remains also could have been buried in the Dominican Republic, he said.  

Iran, Bush and Nuremberg
Peter Dyer – The Consortium for Independent Journalism

One of the most pernicious consequences of the invasion of Iraq is that in the United States it is now apparently accepted virtually without challenge that aggressive war is a legitimate tool of American foreign policy. I have seen nothing in the mainstream American media discussion of the pros and cons of a "preemptive" assault on Iran by the United States which deals with the possibility that this may be illegal or even morally wrong. So far this is simply not part of the debate. We Americans are afflicted with historical, legal and moral amnesia. It used to be that most of us thought it was wrong to invade a country which had neither harmed us nor was imminently ready to harm us. There is a solid legal and moral foundation for this belief.

Etruscans Not Ancestors of Today’s Tuscany Italians
ANSA (Italy)

The Tuscans' proud claim to be the descendants of the ancient Etruscans has taken a knock. A DNA comparison of Etruscan skeletons and a sample of Italy’s living Tuscans has thrown up only "tenuous genetic similarities", said lead researcher Guido Barbujani of Ferrara University . "If the Tuscans were the direct descendants of the Etruscans the DNA should be the same," said Barbujani, a genetecist who coordinated the study with Stanford University in the United States. The study concludes that most modern Tuscans are descended from a non-Etruscan people.

In France, Six Month Prison Sentence for 'Holocaust' Skeptic
Reuters

Georges Theil, a former elected representative, must serve six months in prison, and pay a fine of 10,000 euros, for skeptical remarks he made during an October 2004 interview about gas chamber killings during World War II, an appeals court in Lyon, France, has ruled. Theil is the first person to be given a prison sentence on the basis of France’s 1990 “Gayssot law,” which criminalizes remarks th at “dispute crimes against humanity.” Earlier victims of the law, which is used against “Holocaust deniers,” have been punished with fines.  "In my opinion, belief in the gas chambers shows blind admiration for German ingenuity,” Theil said during the 2004 interview. “The more Zyklon B the Germans used, the more lives they saved, because Zyklon B is a disinfectant.”

Increased Repression of Revisionists In France
Robert Faurisson

My own trial is to take place on Tuesday July 11 [in Paris] … I am accused of having granted, last year, an interview of revisionist nature to the Iranian radio and television station Sahar … On March 3, 2006 Georges Theil, 65, a retired telecommunications engineer, had seen his conviction for "Holocaust denial" upheld by the court of appeal of Limoges. … On May 17 in Lyon he was convicted on appeal for having made a brief revisionist statement on October 14, 2004 in front of a local television journalist's camera, and sentenced to a new six-month prison term without remission, fined another 10,000 euros, and ordered to pay 40,500 euros in damages as well as to cover the costs of having the judgment published in two newspapers…

The Storm Over The Israel Lobby
Michael Massing - The New York Review of Books

Not since Foreign Affairs magazine published Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations?" in 1993 has an academic essay detonated with such force as "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," by professors John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Published in the March 23, 2006, issue of the London Review of Books and posted as a "working paper" on the Kennedy School 's Web site, the report has been debated in the coffeehouses of Cairo and in the editorial offices of Haaretz.  The nasty campaign waged against John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has itself provided an excellent example of the bullying tactics used by the lobby and its supporters.  

The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt – London Review of Books

For the past several decades the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel . The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? The thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'.

Is America Number One?
Michael Ventura

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." … We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. … No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.  The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Scandalously Bad American Textbooks
MSNBC

American textbooks are both grotesquely bloated (so much so that some state legislatures are considering mandating lighter books to save students from back injuries) and light as a feather intellectually, flitting briefly over too many topics without examining any of them in detail. Worse, too many of them are pedagogically dishonest, so thoroughly massaged to mollify competing political and identity-group interests as to paint a startlingly misleading picture of America and its history. “They are sanitized to avoid offending anyone who might complain at textbook adoption hearings in big states, they are poorly written, they are burdened with irrelevant and unedifying content, and they reach for the lowest common denominator,” ….

British Prime Minister Baldwin Praised Hitler in Letter
BBC News

A letter written by former prime minister Stanley Baldwin where he pays tribute to Hitler as "a remarkable man" is to go on sale at auction next month.  Baldwin wrote in glowing terms about the German leader to a friend in 1936, talking of his "great achievements", three years before World War II. Baldwin was prime minister three times between 1923 and 1937. He died in 1947. His letter, which carries an estimated value of £300 to £500, reads: "Like you, I acknowledge (Hitler's) great achievements since taking over that troubled country.  The German people obviously love him, even if that love puts a burden on them both and is not extended to the Jews who are tormented.  Yes, Herr Hitler is a remarkable man but I feel he must use these gifts wisely or I fear greatly for the consequence."

Abdication of British King Tied to Simpson’s 'Nazi Connection'
BBC News

FBI files released in early 2003 suggest the alleged Nazi connections of Wallis Simpson prevented her marrying King Edward while he was monarch. The revelations are contrary to the long-held belief that the stumbling block was the American's status as a divorcee. King Edward abdicated the throne in December 1936, following a constitutional crisis, and married her in exile the following year. These FBI files were written in the 1940s but were released under America's Freedom of Information Act. They suggest stronger connections between the Duchess of Windsor –  as she was known after marriage - and the Germans than previously believed.  

US Spells Out Plan to Bomb Iran
The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland)

The US is updating contingency plans for a non-nuclear strike to cripple Iran's atomic weapon program if international diplomacy fails, Pentagon sources have confirmed. Strategists are understood to have presented two options for pinpoint strikes using B2 bombers flying directly from bases in Missouri, Guam in the Pacific and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The main plan calls for a rolling, five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets in Iran, including 24 nuclear-related sites, 14 military airfields and radar installations, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters. At least 75 targets in underground complexes would be attacked with waves of bunker-buster bombs.

US History Lesson: Stop Meddling
Stephen Kinzer - Los Angeles Times

The United States is facing a major crisis in Iran, where the clerical regime, despite its denials, is evidently embarked on an effort to develop nuclear weapons. Because American leaders say they will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, this has led to intense speculation that the Bush administration is preparing a military attack. History suggests, however, that such an attack would have disastrous long-term consequences. Iranians know as well as anyone how terribly wrong such foreign interventions can go.  

Israel at 58: Where is the Global Outcry?
Ghada Karmi – The Guardian (Britain)

Israel is 58 years old today. Israelis have already celebrated with barbecues and parties. And so they should for they've pulled off an amazing stunt: the creation of a state for one people on the land of another -- and at their massive expense -- without incurring effective sanction. Some of those not celebrating, the Arab citizens of Israel, were also there, demonstrating to remind the world that Israel displaced 250,000 to take their land without compensation. Millions more Palestinians will demonstrate today in the refugee camps of Gaza, the West Bank and neighbouring Arab states against their expulsion by Israel. The world, however, is not listening …

America the Titanic
James Carroll – Boston Globe

… After the fact, what came to be called World War I could only be understood as an act of civilizational suicide. … The entry of the United States into the war was decisive, but it remained marginal to the agonies and the destructiveness, and so inherited the century. … That sense of relatively immune superiority was only confirmed by World War II. Though US losses were greater than before, so was the benefit when the '' New World" emerged uniquely whole, soon to become the engine of the global economy. … Oddly, the blow of 9/11 reinforced this exceptionalism. The anguish of that day was real, but it equaled neither what other nations suffered in the world wars, nor what the earth narrowly survived in the Cold War. Nor does it compare to what lies dead ahead if the captains of our ship hold course -- ''Steady as she goes."

Israel Plans for Ballistic Missile Strike Against Iran
Arnaud de Borchgrave - The Washington Times 

At Israel's National Day reception in Washington last week, an Israeli official, speaking privately and not for attribution said he believed Israel would strike first in the next "month or two or three" and that fighter bombers would not be involved as they were to take out Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor before it went critical in 1981. For Osirak, Israel used 14 F-15s and F-16s. This time, the Israeli said, it will be missiles. … For world opinion, rightly or wrongly, Israeli action against Iran could not take place without a green light from the White House.

US Military Sends Mentally Ill Troops Into Combat
Associated Press

US military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported in its Sunday editions. The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq .

Anniversary of 'The Great Catastrophe'
Karma Nabulsi - The Guardian (Britain)

In the last week of April 1948, combined Irgun-Haganah [Zionist] forces launched an offensive to drive the Palestinian people out of the beautiful port city of Jaffa, forcing the remaining inhabitants to flee by sea; many drowned in the process. … Each Palestinian refugee family grows up hearing again and again the stories of those final moments in Palestine, the decisions, the panic, as we live in the midst of their terrible consequences. Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear. The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there for centuries.

Across the US, Every State Fails Teacher Competency Test
Associated Press

Not a single state will have a highly qualified teacher in every core class this school year as promised by President Bush's education law. Nine states along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico face penalties. The Department of Education on Friday ordered every state to explain how it will have 100 percent of its core teachers qualified -- belatedly -- in the 2006-07 school year. In the meantime, some states face the loss of federal aid because they didn't make enough effort to comply on time, officials said.

Touching the Third Rail: Reviewing the US-Israel Alliance
Arnaud de Borchgrave – UPI 

President Truman's cabinet was against it [US recognition of Israel]. The most formidable naysayer was then secretary of state Gen. George Marshall. Following World War II, foreign policy professionals wrote scores of position papers that warned that an independent Jewish state would trigger a "reject phenomenon" throughout the Middle East. David K. Niles, in charge of Jewish affairs at the White House, was a persuasive advocate of, and organizer for, Israel. The Holocaust of 6 million Jews, the telegrams and the marchers in New York clinched it for Truman. ... Israel was born at midnight (local time) May 14, 1948. US recognition followed 11 minutes later.

Truman’s Fateful May 1948 Decision to Recognize Israel
Richard Curtiss

With US President George Bush increasingly frustrated by the Israeli-Palestinian problem, a new generation of Americans is asking an old question: Why must the US deal with this seemingly intractable dispute? The answer, unfortunately, is that the US is largely responsible for the problem because of two American decisions in 1947 and 1948. An "insider's account" of the discussions leading up to these decisions has been published by former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, one of the few living parties to the discussions leading to partition. Most people who knew the Middle East at first hand opposed the partition plan, adopted by the United Nations on November 29, 1947.

Why Truman Overrode State Dept. Warning on Palestine
Donald Neff

It was on Sept. 22, 1947, that Loy Henderson strongly warned Secretary of State George C. Marshall that partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was not workable and would lead to untold troubles in the future. Henderson was director of the State Department's Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs and his memorandum, coming less than a month after a United Nations special committee had recommended partition, stands as one of the most perceptive analyses of the perils that partition would bring. Henderson informed Marshall that his views were shared by "nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems." 

A Failing Economy
Paul Craig Roberts

The US current account deficit as a percent of Gross Domestic Product is unprecedented. As more jobs and manufacturing are moved offshore, Americans become more dependent on foreign made goods. This year the deficit could reach $1 trillion. The US pays its current account deficit by giving up ownership of its existing assets or wealth. …  As Americans have ceased to save, the federal government is dependent on foreigners to lend it the money to operate and to wage war in the Middle East. American economists have failed their country as badly as have the Republican and Democratic parties. The sad fact is that there is no leader in sight capable of reversing the rapid decline of the United States of America.

'Comrade Wolf' and the Mullahs: Iran Does Not Want War
Patrick J. Buchanan

Under Bush II, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, though it appears Saddam neither had weapons of mass destruction nor played a role in 9-11. Yet, in this same quarter century when the US military has been so busy it is said to be overstretched and exhausted, Iran has invaded not one neighbor and fought but one war: an eight-year war with Iraq where she was the victim of aggression. And in that war of aggression against Iran, we supported the aggressor. …There is no reason to believe Iran wants war with us.

US  'Democratization' Initiative in the Middle East is Insincere
Mark Weber

… The American “democratization” effort is hypocritical and insincere. If the United States were to hold Israel to the same standards that it held Iraq, and is now holding Iran, American war planes would be bombing Tel Aviv. Around the world, there is almost universal rejection of American and Israeli policy in the Middle East. This is reflected in numerous votes in the United Nations General Assembly, where – time and time again – the United States and Israel are alone against the rest of the world.

Decline and Fall of the Roman 'Barbarian' Myth
The Times (London)

The unique feature of Rome was not its arts or its science or its philosophical culture, not its attachment to law. The unique feature of Rome was that it had the world’s first professional army. Seen through the eyes of people who possessed trained soldiers to fight for them, they were easily portrayed as simple savages. But that was far from the truth. The fact that we still think of the Celts, the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths and so on as “barbarians” means that we have all fallen hook, line and sinker for Roman propaganda.  … In the past 30 years, however, the story has begun to change. Archeological discoveries have shed new light on the ancient texts that have survived and this has led to new interpretations of the past. 

Jewish Groups Urge Bush to Drop Iran-Israel Linkage
Forward (New York)

Jewish community leaders have urged the White House to refrain from publicly pledging to defend Israel against possible Iranian hostilities, senior Jewish activists told the Forward. Messages were passed to the White House through several channels, Jewish activists said. And it seems to have worked. … Communal leaders say that although they deeply appreciate the president's repeated promises to come to Israel's defense, public declarations to that effect do more harm than good. Such statements, they say, create an impression that the United States is considering a military option against Iran for the sake of Israel - and could lead to American Jews being blamed for any negative consequences of an American strike against Iran .

A Grim Legacy: Brutal 'Ethnic Cleansing' of Germans
Prague Post 

A forgotten war crime to some and a necessary consequence of Hitler's rampage across Europe to others, the moral questions raised by the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia following World War II simply will not go away. … A flurry of recent editorials and activity reveals a new openness in the once-taboo discussion of the often brutal, even murderous state-sponsored expulsion of nearly 3 million Germans between 1945 and '46 who lost their citizenship and property. An estimated 30,000 ethnic Germans died during the expulsions …

Dead German Children: A Dark Chapter of Danish History
Manfred Ertel - Der Spiegel (Germany)

Thousands of German children -- many of them toddlers fleeing the Soviet advance -- died in Danish refugee camps at the end of World War II. In the final weeks of the war, 1945, about 250,000 German refugees fled across the Baltic Sea to escape the sinking German Reich. Most were fleeing the Soviet Army. And most were women, children or elderly. A third of the refugees were younger than 15 years old. When they landed, they found themselves at the start of a new martyrdom. The refugees were interned in hundreds of camps from Copenhagen to Jutland, placed behind barbed wire and guarded by heavily armed overseers. … They either starved or were unable to fight infections due to extreme malnutrition. 

How Are We Doing?
Institute for Historical Review

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Why Are We Baiting Putin?
Patrick J. Buchanan

Cheney's remarks were directed straight at the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin … We Americans consider the Monroe Doctrine -- no foreign power is to come into our hemisphere -- to be holy writ. Why, then, can we not understand why Russia might react angrily to our interference in her politics or the politics of former Russian republics? The effect of U.S. expansion of NATO deep into Eastern Europe, U.S. interference in the politics of the former Soviet republics, and U.S. siting of military bases in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia has been to unite Russia and China, and undo the diplomacy of several successive U.S. presidents.

'Saving the Nation is Utmost Priority'
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Moscow News

The overall condition of the [Russian] people's life is still difficult and there is much chaos. Indeed, "saving the nation" - numerically, physically, and morally - is the utmost task for the state. All measures to raise living standards - housing, diet, healthcare, education, morality, etc. - are in effect designed to save the nation. This is an overriding priority. … Considering our condition and our potentialities, the country's foreign policy today is sensible and increasingly pragmatic. Russia, however, has yet much to do to overcome the heavy burden of the past.

Israel Leader Vows to Ensure Jewish Majority
Ynet News (Israel)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a speech that "we must ensure that there will be a proven Jewish majority in the State of Israel, otherwise the term Jewish state becomes empty of meaning. The obligation of the national leadership is to be responsible to the vision of Herzl and to ensure a Jewish majority in the State." Olmert said that "this special Knesset session is dedicated not only to marking Herzl's birthday but also the discussion of his heritage. The Law of Zion was passed in the Knesset in order to ensure that the heritage and vision of the State's founding father is preserved.“

US Must Ensure Israel’s Security, Bush Says
Jerusalem Post (Israel)

President George W. Bush said Thursday at the American Jewish Committee conference in Washington that the United States had a strong and inalienable obligation to ensure the security of Israel, referring to the threats Iran had made against the Jewish state. In a remarkable show of support for one of America's most important Jewish organizations, US President George W. Bush, German Chancellor Andrea Merkel and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan attended a gala event here Thursday marking the centennial of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Bush vowed to maintain the strong ties between the US and Israel. "America's commitment to Israel's security is strong, enduring and unshakable," Bush said.   

The US's Geopolitical Nightmare
F. William Engdahl

The most fascinating indication of a sea-change within the US political establishment toward the Bush Doctrine and those who are behind it is the debate around the 83-page paper criticizing the dominant role of Israel in shaping US foreign policy. The paper, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” was written by two highly respected US foreign-policy realists and consultants to the State Department. ... Some of their conclusions about the Israel lobby's goals: "No lobby has managed to divert foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical." US supporters of Israel promoted the war against Iraq . ... A similar effort is now under way to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.

Thinking About Neoconservatism
Kevin MacDonald

Over the last year, there’s been a torrent of articles on neoconservatism raising (usually implicitly) some vexing issues: Are neoconservatives different from other conservatives? Is neoconservatism a Jewish movement? Is it “anti-Semitic” to say so? … Count me among those who accept that the Jewish commitment of leading neoconservatives has become a critical influence on U.S. policies, and that the effectiveness of the neoconservatives is greatly enhanced by their alliance with the organized Jewish community.

Neoconservatives: Who They Are, What They Believe
Christian Science Monitor

"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action. … Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel , which they see as crucial to US military sufficiency in a volatile region.

Prof. MacDonald Responds to a Critic
Kevin MacDonald

Jacob Laksin has written a general critique of my work for FrontPageMagazine.com. To the extent that this article is based on any rational criticism at all, it relies on a compendium of the criticisms that I have already replied to on this website. ... We are increasingly approaching a situation where being labeled an anti-Semite is a badge of honor. As a general take-home point, I would emphasize the following quotation from my work as a central focus of Laksin's ire: "Jews were unique as an American immigrant group in their hostility toward American Christian culture and in their energetic, aggressive efforts to change that culture." This is the bottom line, and I completely stand behind this claim based on the research presented in The Culture of Critique. 

The Uproar Over the Israel Lobby
Alexander Cockburn

For the past few weeks a sometimes comic debate has been simmering in the American press, focused on the question of whether there is an Israeli lobby and, if so, just how powerful it is. I would have thought that to ask whether there's an Israeli lobby here is a bit like asking whether there's a Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor … The Democratic Party has long been hospitable to, and supported by, rich Zionists. In 2002, for example, Haim Saban, the Israel-American who funds the Saban Center at the Brooking Institute and is a big contributor to AIPAC, gave $12.3 million to the Democratic Party. In 2001, the magazine Mother Jones listed on its website the 400 leading contributors to the 2000 national elections. Seven of the first 10 were Jewish, as were 12 of the top 20, and 125 of the top 250. 

Wilson’s War
Review by George C. Leef

In Wilson’s War, the nonliberal and unconventional historian Jim Powell buttresses Karp’s assessment, regarding Wilson as the worst of our presidents for having so blindly pursued a belligerent policy calculated to involve the United States in the European bloodbath of World War I. The book not only exposes the utter foolishness of Wilson’s moves to bring the United States into the war against Germany, but also makes it clear that the horrors of World War II would probably have been averted had it not been for Wilson ’s intervention. … It is easy to make the case that Woodrow Wilson must be listed among the greatest malefactors in history.

Zionism is Nobody's Friend
Judy Andreas

Our public has been and continues to be duped. It is a process which begins early and is unrelenting. It begins in homes and schools. It begins on the radio and television. It begins in the print media. And, ultimately, a Pavlovian reaction occurs; man is no longer a critical thinker. Man has become a machine.  I know the process all too well; I was a part of it for more years than I care to admit. And now that I am able to see beyond the curtain, even if only partially, I want nothing more then to alert people to the game that is being played at their expense. Jews have played an important role in this duping drama and yet, the average Jew remains ignorant of what is transpiring. 

America's Rags-to-Riches Dream an Illusion
Reuters

America may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world, according to a new study published on Wednesday. The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent is just one percent, according to "Understanding Mobility in America", a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University. … He also found the United States had one of the lowest levels of inter-generational mobility in the wealthy world, on a par with Britain but way behind most of Europe.

IHR News and Comment
Institute for Historical Review

The Institute’s “IHR News & Comment” e-mail service continues to grow, attracting ever more subscribers who appreciate these informative, timely roundups of news, analysis and commentary. To subscribe to this free service, send a note to news@ihr.org.

Bush in 'Ceaseless Push for Power'
Financial Times (London)

President George W. Bush had shown disdain and indifference for the US constitution by adopting an "astonishingly broad" view of presidential powers, a leading libertarian think-tank says. The critique from the Cato Institute reflects growing criticism by conservatives about administration policy in areas such as the “war on terror” and undermining congressional power. The pattern that emerges is one of a ceaseless push for power, unchecked by either the courts or Congress, one in short of disdain for constitutional limits,” the report concludes.

Israel Impatient With Iran 'Monster'
WorldNetDaily

If the visit to Washington last week by the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, was not enough to communicate Israel's growing impatience with the international community's failure to deal with Tehran's unchecked development of nuclear technology and bellicose threats to wipe the Jewish state "off the map," Ehud Olmert, Israel’s new prime minister, made it clear by denouncing Iran's president as a "psychopath" and comparing him to Hitler.

Will Germany Arrest Iran President for 'Holocaust Denial'?
The Times (London)

The thorniest dilemma facing Germany as it prepares to host the World Cup is what to do about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran 's hardline President, if he insists on coming to watch his team play next month. Germany is obliged to admit the head of state of a participating nation, and the tournament's official motto is "A Time To Make Friends". But Ahmadinejad has demanded Israel's destruction and has repeatedly denied the Holocaust - a crime in Germany .

Exporting the American Model
Chalmers Johnson

There is something absurd and inherently false about one country trying to impose its system of government or its economic institutions on another. Such an enterprise amounts to a dictionary definition of imperialism. … If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the [ First World ] war between the British and German empires. … We Americans have never outgrown the narcissistic notion that the rest of the world wants (or should want) to emulate us.

This essay focuses on Roosevelt's secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. It deals particularly with his efforts to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany in 1938 and 1939. Franklin Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war that had already engulfed Europe. He bears a grave responsibility before history for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time. This paper relies heavily on a little-known collection of secret Polish documents that fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in September 1939.

Israel: The Country That Wouldn’t Grow Up
Tony Judt – Haaretz (Israel)

Something is changing in the United States. … It seems to me of no small significance that the recent essay on "The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has aroused so much public interest and debate. Mearsheimer and Walt are prominent senior academics of impeccable conservative credentials. … Ten years ago they would not - and probably could not - have published it at all. And while the debate that has ensued may generate more heat than light, it is of great significance. ... That essay is thus a straw in the wind - an indication of the likely direction of future domestic debate here in the U.S. about the country's peculiar ties to Israel.  

President Bush Disobeys Hundreds of Laws
The Boston Globe

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Endgame for the Constitution
Paul Craig Roberts

The Bush administration has done more damage to Americans and more harm to America 's reputation than any other administration in history. Yet, a majority of Republicans still support Bush.  … On Bush's watch, three million US manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Tens of thousands of highly qualified US engineers have lost their employment. US job growth has fallen six to seven million jobs behind population growth. Recent college graduates are employed as waitresses and bartenders. … Illegal immigration has continued to explode. While Bush spends $1 trillion and many lives trying to control borders in the Middle East, America 's borders remain undefended and over run.  

The Untold Story of Israel’s Bomb
Avner Cohen and William Burr - The Washington Post

With the aid of recently declassified documents, we now know that NSSM 40 was the Nixon administration's effort to grapple with the policy implications of a nuclear-armed Israel . These documents offer unprecedented insight into the tense deliberations in the White House in 1969 -- a crucial time in which international ratification of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was uncertain and U.S. policymakers feared that a Middle Eastern conflagration could lead to superpower conflict. Nearly four decades later, as the world struggles with nuclear ambitions in Iran , India and elsewhere, the ramifications of this hidden history are still felt.

Israel 's Secret Weapon
BBC Two (Video)

Video report on Israel ’s secret nuclear weapons program, the revelations of Mordechai Vannnu, and his kidnapping by Israeli agents. Originally broadcast on BBC Two television, March 17, 2003.

Ferment Over 'The Israel Lobby'
Philip Weiss – The Nation

Intellectuals can only dream of having the impact that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have had this spring. Within hours of their publishing a critique of the Israel lobby in The London Review of Books for March 23, the article was zinging around the world, soon to show up on the front pages of newspapers and stir heated discussion on cable-TV shows. Virtually overnight, two balding professors in their 50s had become public intellectuals, ducking hundreds of e-mails, phone messages and challenges to debate.  … The shock waves from the article continue to resonate. 

The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt – London Review of Books

For the past several decades the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel . The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? The thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'.

Germans Should Stop Feeling Guilty, Says Iran President
DPA

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad declared Thursday that it was time for Germans to stop feeling guilty for "crimes" of Nazi Germany more than 60 years ago. In a speech in Zanjan, north-west Iran , carried live on state television, Ahmadinejad did not directly mention the Holocaust, the term for the mass extermination of Jews in Europe during the Nazi German regime. But he spoke of how "every new-born child in Germany is still regarded as being in debt to a mob of impudent and insatiable Zionists." The Germans should no longer permit themselves to be made to accept guilt, Ahmadenijad said.

Germany ’s Payoff of Billions in Holocaust Reparations
Mark Weber 

Since 1951 Germany has paid more than 102 billion marks, about $61.8 billion at 1998 exchange rates, in federal government reparation payments to Israel and Third Reich victims. In addition, Germans have paid out billions in private and other public funds, including about 75 million marks ($49 million) by German firms in compensation to wartime forced laborers, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported. These figures are based on calculations by the German Finance Ministry.