Middle-Class Families in Worse Shape Than Ever
Reuters

The typical double-income family is worse off financially than ever, a study released Thursday said, warning that few Americans have saved enough to brace for financial setbacks. Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. "In our estimates, it's becoming harder for families to afford what we consider a typical middle-class lifestyle," said economist Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress.

New Military Trials Law Will Sharply Restrict Defendants’ Rights
The Washington Post

The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system. President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights. The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II.

Challenging the Power of the Israel Lobby: What’s to Be Done?
James Petras

A number of writers have recently written critical articles or reviews about the power of the pro-Israel or Jewish Lobby and its influence on US policy in the Middle East. Most of these writings emphasize the power of the lobby over Congress, the two major parties (especially the Democrats) and the Executive branch… The image of a near-omniscient and omnipotent Jewish lobby overlooks its vulnerability and significant issues around which an opposition or counter-hegemonic movement can be organized in the United States.

A Look At The 'Powerful Jewish Lobby'
Mark Weber

To sum up: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. As long as the "very powerful" Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the U.S. political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.

Cost of Iraq War Nearly $2 Billion a Week
The Boston Globe

A new Congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week -- nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year -- as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases to support the extended deployment and scrambles to fix or replace equipment damaged in combat... The United States maintains it is not building permanent military bases in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the local population distrusts America's long-term intentions. But for the first time, a major factor in the growth of war spending is the result of a dramatic rise in "investment costs," or spending needed to sustain a long-term deployment of American troops in the two countries, the report said.

Bush Misleads America About Iraq, Says Bob Woodward
CBS News

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year. In Wallace’s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on “60 Minutes” this Sunday, the reporter also claims that Henry Kissinger is among those advising Mr. Bush. According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public.

Volunteers for Nationalist Spain Remembered
BBC News

Stories of young men drawn to Spain to fight Franco have been told countless times. But Wednesday marks the 70th anniversary of a call to arms for the lesser-known fascist volunteers -- including many from the British Isles… The exploits of ideological young volunteers -- George Orwell and Laurie Lee, among them -- who flocked to Spain to fight for the Republican cause are often celebrated today. But the story of their counterparts on the other side, foreigners drawn to fight for the fascists, is little known. They numbered about 1,000, many of them from Ireland.

Treatment of Palestinians is 'Ethnic Cleansing,' Says UN Official
Ynet News (Israel)

The United Nations Human rights envoy to the Palestinian territories John Dugard has published a report Tuesday that does not shy away from sharply criticizing Israel and the West for the situation in Gaza. "Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians and have thrown away the key," he said, adding that "in other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing." In the report handed to the UN Human Rights Council Dugard wrote that "life in Gaza has turned to be intolerable, appalling and tragic." Dugard also mentions the situation in the West Bank where there is a danger of a humanitarian crisis because of the security fence which is as bad as in Gaza.

Most Iraqis Approve Attacks on US Troops, Want Americans Out
Associated Press

About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more than that want their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year, a poll finds. The early September poll of 1,150 Iraqis, done for University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, also found that nearly four in five say that U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents. About 61 percent approved of the attacks -- up from 47 percent in January. A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks, according to the poll. Three-fourths say they think the U.S. plans to keep military bases in Iraq permanently.

Iraq War for ‘Hearts and Minds’ Was Already Lost in 2004
Neil Mackay – The Sunday Herald (Scotland)

The Pentagon has admitted that the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq have increased support for al-Qaeda, made ordinary Muslims hate the US and caused a global backlash against America because of the “self-serving hypocrisy” of George W Bush’s administration over the Middle East. The mea culpa is contained in a shockingly frank “strategic communications” report, written this autumn [2004] by the Defence Science Board for Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld. On “the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds”, the report says, “American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended”.

Muhammad's Sword
Uri Avnery (Israel)

The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"? Well, they just did not. For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

The Church and Jewish Ideology
Joe Sobran

The prevalent Jewish myth today is not the founding myth of Abraham or Moses on Sinai, but the story of Jewish persecution. In our time the Jews are defined less by ancestry than by “anti-Semitism,” which is cited for many purposes, including the legitimation of the state of Israel. Most Zionists no longer claim that God gave the Holy Land to the Jews; instead they contend that the Jewish state is necessary as a haven for world Jewry. According to this modern myth, the Jews are in no way responsible for their own unpopularity from ancient times... Today, in American politics, journalism, and ecclesiastical circles, fear of Jewish power is overwhelming.

The United States of Barbarism
James Bovard

The U.S. Senate is cutting a deal with President Bush to make America a banana republic. Last week, three senators reached an agreement with the White House that will de facto permit the CIA to continue torturing people around the world. And the deal will prevent anyone – including Bush administration officials – from being held liable for the torture. This is latest sign that our elected representatives in Washington believe that the federal government deserves absolute power over everyone in the world.... But more important, the Senate-White House torture deal should cause Americans to doubt the moral basis of their entire government.

The Jews Behind the Chicago Mob
Chicago Tribune

Author Gus Russo… pointedly uses the term "Supermob" to describe a band of Jewish lawyers, politicians and businessmen who acted as cat's-paws for some of the Outfit's most ambitious scams… Suggesting a gang of white-collar kingpins as ruthless and tightly knit as a Mafia family. He is also serious about the "Super," claiming that the members of his "Kosher Nostra" would ultimately profit more from their "amoral, and frequently criminal careers" than did their Outfit allies.... [The arrangement] helped launch some of the most prominent names in Chicago's Jewish community. For example, according to Russo, Outfit funds and connections formed the foundation on which lawyer Abe Pritzker's family built the Hyatt hotel chain.

Myths of British Ancestry
Stephen Oppenheimer -- Prospect (Britain)

Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands …There is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words "Celtic" or "Anglo-Saxon." What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.

Pro-Israel Lobby Controls the West, Says British Politician
Ynet News (Israel)

Baroness Jenny Tonge, a former British parliament member from the Liberal-Democrat party, was invited for a clarification discussion with the party leader following outbursts she made against 'the Israeli lobby' at a pro-Palestinian solidarity event. "The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the Western World, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a certain grip on our party," Tonge said. Senior sources in the Liberal-Democrat party expressed revulsion from her comments. Jewish and Israeli sources in Britain described her comments as being anti-Semitic, and pointed out that Tonge was removed from her parliamentary job in 2004, after she said she understood the hearts of Palestinian suicide bombers.

As Crazy as it Sounds, Bush Likely to Attack Iran
Charley Reese

As crazy as it sounds, President George Bush might be planning to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. There are two currents of speculation flowing through Washington these days. One current says that the Bush administration is planning the bombing campaign, but only as a bluff to force the Iranians to negotiate. The other current says that the Bush administration actually plans to launch the attack. Unfortunately, I think the latter is the accurate one. So far, the Bush administration has eerily followed the exact same pattern it used to justify the attack against Iraq. Bush keeps insisting, without a shred of evidence, that Iran, despite its denials, is seeking nuclear weapons. Remember how he kept insisting that Iraq had huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?

Are We Mice or Men?: Standing Up to the Neocons
Karen Kwiatkowski

The chickenhawks are at it again. They may tragically succeed in their quest, this time Operation Target Iran. Perhaps it was always about Iran. Will we ever really know? ... The information we need from valiant reporters with outstanding contacts on the inside of the Pentagon is already available... Word is out about what is happening… If Israel, with American support and without much trouble, could obliterate southern Lebanon’s infrastructure and a thousand civilians, then America, with Israel’s support, can obliterate the productive infrastructure of northern and southern Iran, and kill several thousand Iranians and get away with it.

Canadian Soldiers Often Killed Surrendering Germans in World War I
The Gazette (Montreal)

One of the country's leading war historians has amassed disturbing evidence that German troops trying to surrender during the First World War were "frequently executed" by Canadian soldiers gripped by fear or hungry for revenge. In a lengthy article that appears in the latest Journal of Military History, the field's top scholarly publication, Canadian War Museum historian Tim Cook explores the complex and volatile "politics of surrender." He found, in a startling number of cases, "unlawful" killings of Germans after they had given up the fight, laid down their guns and thrown up their hands.

Subverting the Disney Legacy: Eisner and the 'Magic Kingdom'
Mark Weber

For more than 40 years, the company founded and built by Walt Disney offered popular, well-crafted entertainment that upheld American values and traditions. Its films and television programming -- even if sometimes sugary -- epitomized, to use the much-mocked phrase, wholesome family entertainment... A lust for profits does not adequately explain the social-cultural agenda of [Michael] Eisner and the others who control the American media. Rather, they seem driven by priorities that are fundamentally hostile to this nation's most vital traditions and basic values... Eisner's transformation of Disney parallels, and contributes to, the cultural, social and political transformation of the United States as a whole.

Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat, Say US Spy Agencies
The New York Times

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

From Venice, a Lesson on Empire
The Washington Post

What do the struggles of 15th-century Venice have to do with America's troubles in Iraq? A lot, in the view of a group of old-guard Washington conservatives who sponsored a conference last week to discuss the lessons for today of the "serene republic" of Venice... The canny mercantilism of Venice's ruling families was another advantage for La Serenissima. The merchant families protected their republican form of government at home, even as their trading empire expanded. In contrast to imperial Rome, whose senate became a shell, Venice maintained its system of a non-hereditary ruler, known as the "doge"; its Great Council, where every adult male aristocrat was represented...

German Historian Joachim Fest 'Distorted,' Complains Cesarani
David Cesarani -- The Guardian (Britain)

Joachim Fest, who died this week, was a conservative historian who played a leading role in shaping the new German nationalism and cultivating the sense of victimhood among Germans that lies at its core… In July 1986, Fest, as an editor on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published an article by the historian Ernst Nolte arguing that it was time to end the "demonisation" of the Third Reich. Nolte maintained that Auschwitz was only a reaction "to the acts of annihilation that took place during the Russian revolution". The Nazis' exterminatory war against the Jews was merely a "German copy" of earlier genocides during a century typified by mass slaughter. Fest then weighed in with an article supporting Nolte and went even further.

Ernst Nolte: Changing Perspectives on History in Germany
Mark Weber

For decades Ernst Nolte has been one of Germany's best known historians, as well as one of the most reviled... His provocative views on 20th-century European history, and especially Third Reich Germany and World War II, have stimulated wide discussion about the past, even among non-historians... Nolte's detractors -- especially his Jewish critics -- have been particularly distressed by his suggestion that Hitler's wartime treatment of the Jews might legitimately be regarded, at least in part, as a defensive response to the threat of Bolshevik mass murder of Germans.

Japan's Next Prime Minister Wants More National Pride
The Washington Post

To glimpse the brave new Japan of Shinzo Abe -- the hawkish 51-year-old poised to replace Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister next week -- take a peek inside the eighth-grade history classes at this city's prestigious Tamagawa Academy. Using new textbooks with lessons hailed by Abe as the foundation of a more confident nation, junior high students at the elite private school are this year being taught something that has been largely taboo in post-World War II Japan -- to take pride in their country. The texts omit or soften references to atrocities committed by Japanese troops during the war, assure students that the war was waged primarily in self-defense and promote the ideal of a proud and independent Japan.

Why We Can’t Win
Jon Basil Utley

...Look how we fought the Second World War to give half of Europe (and Manchuria) to communists, thereby making them into a greater threat than Hitler. Now, we're losing our allies and making ourselves into the enemy of most of the Muslim world, nearly a quarter of the human race. America simply does not have the will, resources, patience, care, or ability to "run" an empire or even an effective counterinsurgency. War for Americans is like a football game: one "wins" and then goes home. For many Americans, war means watching Oliver North on Fox TV and then cursing the foreigners for not doing what we tell them. Few care that America has now become so hated in the world.

A Foreign Policy of Failure
Doug Bandow

Rare is it to find a president whose foreign policy has imploded as dramatically and catastrophically as has that of George W. Bush. Little more than a year after taking office, the candidate who espoused humility turned into the chief executive who embraced empire. Four years later, the administration's drive for global primacy irrespective of the needs of America, interests of other nations, and wishes of other peoples has dramatically sapped Washington's power and influence. Washington's fulminations – about defeating Iraq's insurgents, preventing North Korea's missile launches, dismantling Iran's nuclear program – look increasingly hollow.

A Warning to the West, Not the East
Charles H. Featherstone

Benedict XVI is trying something very difficult, thinking he needs to instill enough backbone to allow people to be strong and confident in who they are without making them arrogant and cruel... From the vantage point of North America, parts of Europe seem drenched by an existential dread that it will drown and disappear, the victim of fecund immigrants who neither understand nor want much of what Europe has to offer and surrounded by people who desperately want to live as Europeans without any comprehension of just how much hard work Europeans had to do in order to get there... Perhaps nothing can save Europe or the residue of Christendom it represents.

US Threatened to Bomb Pakistan Back to Stone Age, Says Musharraf
Associated Press

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the U.S. threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age if he did not assist the administration's war on terrorism. The threat was delivered after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by Richard L. Armitage, then deputy secretary of State, to Musharraf's intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS' "60 Minutes" for Sunday's broadcast. Musharraf said the intelligence chief quoted Armitage as saying, "Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age." It was insulting, Musharraf said. "I think it was a very rude remark." Armitage told CNN on Thursday that he never threatened to bomb Pakistan, wouldn't say such a thing and didn't have the authority to do it.

Pressures Mount on Bush to Bomb Iran
Patrick Seale

President George W Bush is coming under enormous pressure from Israel -- and from Israel's neoconservative friends inside and outside the US administration -- to harden still further his stance toward Iran... Hard-liners in Israel and the United States believe that only military action, or the credible threat of it, will now prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, with all that this would mean in terms of Israel's security and the balance of power in the strategically vital Middle East… But the neoconservatives have lost ground in Washington. The war in Iraq has turned into a strategic catastrophe, with another disaster looming in Afghanistan. Anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim worlds is at record levels.

What Would War Look Like?
Michael Duffy – Time magazine

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

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

Risk of Global Economic Crash is Increasing, Says IMF
The Independent (Britain)

Financial markets have failed to price in the risk that any one of a host of threats to economic stability could materialise and deliver a massive shock to the world economy, the International Monetary Fund warned yesterday. The world's chief financial watchdog said the financial system had so far proved resilient in the face of recent price falls but warned the risk of a crash had increased. And when it comes to worrying about a crash in the financial markets that could deliver a body blow to the world economy, it seems that all roads lead to the US.

Neanderthal's 'Last Refuge' in Southern Europe
BBC News

Our evolutionary cousin the Neanderthal may have survived in Europe much longer than previously thought. A study in Nature magazine suggests the species may have lived in Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar up to 24,000 years ago. The Neanderthal people were believed to have died out about 35,000 years ago, at a time when modern humans were advancing across the continent. The new evidence suggests they held on in Europe's deep south long after the arrival of Homo sapiens .The research team believes the Gibraltar Neanderthals may even have been the very last of their kind.

Henry Ford and the Jewish Question
Kevin MacDonald

Beginning in 1881, this perceived idyllic Anglo-Saxon culture of Ford’s youth began to be invaded by a wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. This provided an additional impetus to anti-Jewish feelings, culminating in the immigration restriction legislation of 1924... A major intellectual influence on Ford was David Starr Jordan, first president of Stanford University and a prolific writer on racial and cultural issues... After Ford died, his company distanced itself from his anti-Jewish writings. The Ford Motor Company became a generous supporter of Jewish charities and the state of Israel...

Was Dresden a War Crime?
Christopher Hitchens

Hundreds of thousands of German civilians, including the flower of the German anti-Nazi labour movement, were burned or buried alive in these incredible bombardments. Churchill's advisers told him to blast working-class districts because the houses were more tightly packed together... Anthony Grayling, a very deft and literate English moral philosopher, [has written a] new book, Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the World War II Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan. He argues that "area bombing" was not really intended to shorten the war, and did not do so. And he further asserts that the policy was an illegal and immoral one by the standards that the Allies had announced at the onset of hostilities.

China Replaces U.S. As World's Largest Exporter
Manufacturing and Technology News

China's surging trade surplus this year, driven by continued increases in high-tech exports, "constitutes a major challenge to U.S. global competitiveness," declares the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI. If the issue is not addressed and the trade imbalance continues to grow -- "like the gallows" -- then "sooner rather than later the markets will trigger the inevitable adjustment, with what will almost certainly be more grim financial reaping," says the analysis prepared by Ernest Preeg, MAPI's senior fellow in trade and productivity. During the first six months of this year, China surpassed the United States as being the world's largest exporter. Only five years ago, the United States exported more than double the amount of China.

Bush’s Disastrous War
Sen. Robert C. Byrd

The war in Iraq has backfired, producing more recruits for terrorism, and deep divisions within our own country. It is a war we should never have begun. The detour from our attack on Bin Laden and his minions, hiding in the cracks and crevices of the rough terrain of Afghanistan, to the unwise and unprovoked attack on Iraq has been a disastrous one. Mr. Bush’s war has damaged the country because he drove our blessed land into an unnecessary conflict, utterly misreading the consequences, with the result now being a daily display of America’s vulnerabilities to those who wish us ill. The United States is a weaker power now, especially in the Middle East, but also in the court of world opinion.

Germans Reconsider Religion
The Christian Science Monitor

...Some may be surprised at the receptivity in Germany this week to visiting Pope Benedict XVI's message: Europe needs to rethink the thesis that secularism and economic progress go hand in hand. Coincidentally, some of Europe's stalwart secularists are challenging the idea that religious reasoning inevitably retreats from the public sphere as countries modernize. Germans themselves are modeling a growing acceptance of religion's role in shaping society: ... Church attendance is no longer declining, and in one state the number of young churchgoers is going up, says Voigt. Approximately two thirds of the 82 million citizens are church members. About 26 million are Roman Catholics, and a similar number are Protestants.

U.S. House Panel Report on Iran is 'Dishonest,' Say U.N. Inspectors
The Washington Post

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims. Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." ... Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate.

Le Pen to Face Trial For Remarks on France in World War II
The Times (London)

The French far-Right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, will stand trial for justifying the Nazi occupation of France after next year's presidential elections, a Paris court decided today. The leader of the National Front party caused an outrage last year when he said that the German occupation of France during the Second World War was "not especially inhumane" and that any massacres had been "blunders" rather than deliberate. Today a court in Paris confirmed that M Le Pen, who is 78, will stand trial at the beginning of June 2007, leaving him free to take part in presidential elections, where he is expected to stand as a nationalist, anti-immigrant candidate for the fifth time since 1981.

Mao: The Unknown Story
The Atlantic Monthly

This volume, the most complete and assiduously researched biography of its subject yet published, presents a detailed portrait of Mao as an opportunistic gangster and a sadist (not even a committed ideologue!) who was, the authors convincingly argue, responsible for "well over 70 million deaths in peacetime" — more than Hitler's and Stalin's tolls combined… No earlier work comes close to matching the density of detail here, and in many cases — such as their account of Mao's scheming with the Japanese during World War II — the authors have performed brilliant historical detective work. Better books on Mao will eventually be written, but probably not until the regime that still reveres him reforms itself a good deal more.

Why Men At War Pull Together
BBC News

Having a common enemy brings out the best in men, a new study has shown. Psychologists created an economics game, asking groups of volunteers to decide whether to keep money for themselves or invest in a group fund. The men in the study were much kinder to groupmates if they thought that other groups were competing with them. The findings, reported at the British Association's Science Festival, may help explain the evolutionary roots of men's interest and behaviour in war… The scientists found that when people thought that their group was competing against outsiders from other universities, the group dynamic became different to when everyone was competing for themselves.

Beyond Comparison
Gilad Atzmon

There is a trend amongst us all, the critical voices of Israel and Zionism. Time after time we compare Israel to the Third Reich.... I myself have fallen into this very trap more than once. But I have now made up my mind. This fashion of speaking must be stopped once and for all. To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook. To compare Olmert to Hitler is to provide Israel and Olmert with a metaphorical moral shield. It maintains Hitler at the lead and allows Olmert to stay in the tail.

Israel Fired More Than a Million Cluster Bomblets in Lebanon
Haaretz (Israel)

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war. Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets. In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final ten days of the war.

Mussolini Heir Wants Investigation of Duce’s Death
The Wall Street Journal

Guido Mussolini is unabashedly seeking publicity for his campaign to reopen the official investigation into his notorious ancestor's death. Photographs of the battered bodies of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, hanging upside down at a Milan gas station, are among the most familiar images of World War II. Many details of the killings remain obscure, however, and over the last six decades the mystery has inspired a level of speculation and suspicion in Italy comparable to that surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination in the U.S. The dossier that Mr. Mussolini has submitted to the prosecutor of Como describes 19 different versions of the story.

Bush's Vision of Victory is 'Pure Fantasy'
Zbigniew Brzezinski -- Der Spiegel (Germany)

...Terrorism is essentially a technique of killing people and not the enemy as such. If one wages war on an invisible, unidentifiable phantom, one gets into a state of mind that virtually promotes dangerous exaggerations and distortions of reality.... With his very loose formulations, the president is now creating a climate of fear that is destructive for American morale and distorting of American policy… Any attempt to seek his definition of victory is pure fantasy. Still, there will be a government dominated by Kurds and Shiites, and some Sunni elements.... Iraqis are not primitive people who need American colonial tutelage to resolve their problems.

New York City School Curriculum Even More Pro-Israel
Yediot Aharonot (Israel)

The New York City Council's education committee approved a curriculum on Israel initiated by the public relations department of the Israeli Consulate in New York. The curriculum will be integrated into the training program for educators teaching in 1,400 public high schools in New York City. The teachers will be able to register to a 30-hour course dealing with the history of the State of Israel, its economy, the high-tech industry, Israeli art and Ethiopian Jews.... Israeli Consul General in New York Aryeh Mekel said that "through the teachers a generation of leaders will be educated to maintain the special relations between the United States and Israel."

Historical Myth Justifies Israel’s Golan Heights Occupation
Institute for Historical Review

For decades Israel has cited vital security concerns to justify its seizure of the Golan Heights. Israelis have claimed that from 1948 to June 1967, Syrian military forces repeatedly used the Heights to shell Jewish settlements and installations below. These artillery bombardments, in the widely accepted Israeli and American view, justified Israel's conquest of the Heights in 1967, and its occupation ever since. Actually, Israel's seizure and occupation of this territory is based on a historical lie. This was frankly acknowledged by Israel General and cabinet minister Moshe Dayan in an interview given in 1976, but which was not made public until April 1997. Dayan, who died in 1981, was a key organizer of Israel's victory in the June 1967 Israel-Arab war.

The Cornered Empire and the Legacy of 9/11
Tom Engelhardt and Ira Chernus

In retrospect, it may be – as perceptive scholars of imperial decline like Immanuel Wallerstein have long argued – that we were already definitively on the way down; or, put another way, that there was no victor but there were two losers in the Cold War; that the Soviet Union, the weaker of the two great powers, simply imploded first; while the U.S., enwreathed in a rhetoric of triumph and self-congratulation, was slowly making its way to the door without waving goodbye… Looking back, it's easy to see what a big mistake they made – even in their own terms. Their unilateralism and militarism accelerated to near warp speed the decline of U.S. power and influence around the world.

Gloves Off On Iran: Bush's Logic Suggests Strike
John Podhoretz – New York Post

... Bush has now said in the strongest sentence he has yet spoken on the matter that Iran will not go nuclear. He is unconditional about it.... Like most people, I've presumed for the past few years that our commitment in Iraq and the extreme difficulty of targeting the proper sites had basically foreclosed a serious military option in Iran. Certainly the hesitant and cautious behavior of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the past few months suggested as much. Now it seems to me that, barring a miraculous change of heart on the part of the Iranian regime, a military strike is all but inevitable. Bush himself will view his own presidency as a failure if he doesn't act. So act he will.

State of Chutzpah
Uri Avnery (Israel)

The king of chutzpah, its very personification, is the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. If he had a gram of shame, the minimum of decency, he would have resigned the day after the cease-fire... Chutzpah must not be allowed to reign. The acceptance of personal responsibility by the directors of the government and the army is an essential feature of a healthy society. It is a simple moral imperative, like the categorical imperative of Kant, an imperative that does not allow for any compromise. The Talmud warns against "chutzpah towards heaven" (God). We must warn against chutzpah towards civil society, the sovereign on earth.

Perpetrators of Mass Killings in Ukraine Finally Identified as Soviets
Radio Polonia (Warsaw)

A Ukrainian government commission has concluded that thousands of people buried in a mass grave outside Kiev were killed during Stalin's purges, not by Nazi soldiers. The commission's conclusion supports the testimony of elderly witnesses in the nearby village of Bykovnia, who said they saw trucks dripping blood en route to the site in the 1930s, before the Nazis occupied the area. Unofficial estimates put the number of bodies in the grave at 200,000 to 300,000. Villagers in Bykovnia broke five decades of silence to accuse Stalin's secret police after the Ukrainian government erected a monument in May 1988 blaming Nazi occupiers for the crime.

Iraq and 9/11: The Truth Is Out
Jason Leopold

Nine-Eleven gave the Bush administration the excuse they needed to execute a long-planned military strike against Iraq. President Bush and his cabinet duped Congress and the American people into believing the country had ties to al-Qaeda, and helped the terrorist organization plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon five years ago.... As early as January 2000, [Condoleezza] Rice was trying to sell a war with Iraq. It was then that she wrote an article for Foreign Affairs Magazine titled “Campaign 2000 – Promoting the National Interest,” in which she advocates a policy of regime change in Iraq, but fails to mention threats from Islamic fundamentalist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Five Years In, Bush is Losing Terror War
Jim Lobe – Inter Press Service

To consider whether U.S. President George W. Bush is winning his "global war on terror" five years after al-Qaeda's devastating 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, one has only to look at the news of the past few days… In that context, Washington's enthusiastic support for Israel in its war against Hezbollah could prove as counter-productive to its war against terrorism as the decision to go to war with Iraq without U.N. approval. "Five years after 9/11, the United States is losing the war on terrorism," declared Flynt Leverett, who headed the Middle East desk at the National Security Council during Bush's first term....

The Law of Opposites
Rep. Ron Paul

The Law of Opposites is just a variation of the Law of Unintended Consequences. When we attempt to achieve a certain goal – like, "make the world safe for democracy," a grandiose scheme of World War I – one can be sure the world will become less safe and less democratic regardless of the motivation. The First World War was sold to the American people as the war to end all wars. Instead, history shows it was the war that caused the 20th century to be the most war-torn century in history. Our entry into World War I helped lead us into World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Even our current crisis in the Middle East can be traced to the great wars of the 20th century.

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....

Learning from Nine-Eleven
Mark Weber (2001)

Jewish and Zionist leaders, and their American servants, have predictably lost no time exploiting the September 11 attacks to further their own interests. Taking advantage of the current national mood of blind rage and revenge, they demand new U.S. military action against Israel's many enemies.... Over the long run, the September 11 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.

Not All Americans Now
Gerard Baker - The Times (London)

Far from driving us together in the face of a common threat, the events of September 11 have ripped the West apart. Now, the world’s distrust of and disdain for America borders on pathology. It doesn't stop at opposition to US policies but seeks deeper explanations for American behaviour in society, economics and culture.... It is not just Europeans or British who think that the US is misguided. Since last summer the proportion of Americans who believe that their country is on the right track has been about 25 per cent. More than 60 per cent say that the US is heading in the wrong direction. Majorities now believe that the war in Iraq was a mistake and that US policy has made the world less safe.

Tens of Thousands Killed in the 'Terror' War
The Independent (Britain)

The "war on terror" - and by terrorists - has directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth. If estimates of other, unquantified, deaths - of insurgents, the Iraq military during the 2003 invasion, those not recorded individually by Western media, and those dying from wounds - are included, then the toll could reach as high as 180,000. The extraordinary scale of the conflict's impact, claiming lives from New York to Bali and London to Lahore, and the extent of the death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan, has emerged from an Independent on Sunday survey to mark the fifth anniversary of 11 September.

Blair is Paying the Price for His Support of Israel
Haaretz (Israel)– Editorial

The person most damaged so far by George Bush's policy of waging war on the axis of evil is Tony Blair, his unwavering partner. Now, the British leader is about to pay with his job for the war in Iraq and support of Israel.... When Tony Blair retires within the next year as he has announced, it is doubtful whether his successor will even want to touch the Middle East conflict.... At the Labor Party conference in Manchester, Blair's colleagues will castigate him more for his support for Israel in the Lebanon war than for his domestic policies. Israel will have to take note of the anti-Semitic undercurrents in this.

Israeli-US Strategy: Lebanon and Iran
James Petras

Even as the bricks were still smoldering from 9/11, Israeli ideological point men, Senator Lieberman and Undersecretary for Defense Wolfowitz urged Washington to attack Iran by launching either simultaneous or sequential wars. In pursuit of Israel’s regional priorities, its representatives in the US Government, in the Pentagon (Wolfowitz, Feith and Shulsky), in the National Security Council (Abrams), in the Vice President’s Office (Libby) and in the President’s Office (Speech writer Frum) falsified intelligence, designed the propaganda (War Against Terror, Axis of Evil) and planned the War against Iraq, and with the Lobby secured near unanimous Congressional acquiescence.

No Saddam Link to al-Qaeda, Says Senate Report
BBC News

There is no evidence of formal links between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq prior to the 2003 war, a US Senate report says. The finding is contained in a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate's Intelligence Committee on Friday. US President George W. Bush has said that the presence of late al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a link. Opposition Democrats say the report has harmed Mr Bush's case for going to war. The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says that the US president has again and again tried to connect the war in Iraq, which most Americans think was a mistake, with the so-called war on terror, which has the support of the nation.

Americans Are Losing Faith in US Military Interventionism
Jim Lobe – Inter Press Service

Five years after 9/11, the U.S. public is considerably less enthusiastic about projecting military power abroad, according to a major new survey, the first of a spate of polls that are likely to released in the run-up to Monday's fifth anniversary of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.... The survey of more than 1,500 randomly selected adults also found that nearly half (46 percent) of the respondents consider U.S. support for Israel a "major reason" for the rise in anti-U.S. sentiment around the world, a significant increase since Pew last posed the question 10 months ago.

Dresden Palace Opens Gilded Treasure Vault
The Times (London)

One of the most sumptuous European treasure chambers will reopen to the public today with the inauguration of the historic Green Vault in the Royal Palace in Dresden, which was destroyed in the Allied bombing raids that reduced the city to rubble in February 1945. The museum, one of the oldest in Europe, was founded in 1729 by the Saxon King August the Strong and has been restored to its baroque glory. It is being celebrated as another symbol of Dresden’s rebirth less than a year after the consecration of the baroque Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), which was rebuilt from scratch after collapsing after the February 13 bombing raid that unleashed a firestorm and killed tens of thousands.

The Timeless Work of H. L. Mencken
Doug French

Imagine an America when a writer occupied the rarified air in the public consciousness that movie stars and athletes do today.... It was the 1920s and H. L. Mencken was both America's favorite pundit and literary critic. He was a journalist, satirist and social critic, a cynic and a freethinker, known as either the "Sage of Baltimore" or the "Bad Boy of Baltimore." While he is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century, sadly, many people today, even those considered educated, have never heard of Mencken.... Although he was writing about politicians of 80 years ago, his work is timeless, with insights still relevant today, maybe even more so. Mencken knew where America was headed long before it got there.

The War Is Lost
Paul Craig Roberts -- Counterpunch

Having lost the Iraq war, the neoconservatives are determined to initiate war with Iran. It is now established beyond a reasonable doubt that the neocons intentionally cooked up false intelligence in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, an invasion that has resulted in tens of thousands of Iraqi and American casualties, both dead and maimed. Alarmed by the neoconservative drive to start a war with Iran before the US can extricate itself from the Iraq catastrophe, the CIA firmly declared that any Iranian nuclear weapon is a decade away. This undermines the neoconservatives' urgency to attack Iran now.

The Brutal 'Russian' Mafia
St. Petersburg Times (Russia)

Being international in outlook gives Russian mobsters an advantage in drug sales, money laundering and the illegal trade of military equipment. And being mostly Jewish gives them a safe haven in Israel where many Russian Mafia types are citizens and thus immune from extradition to the United States when the feds get after them. As they did during Soviet times, crime and government function more or less as one in post-communist Russia. Today, though, the same thing may be happening in Israel, which, Friedman claims, is close to becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian crime syndicates.

Iran President Ahmadinejad's Letter to the German Chancellor
Fars News Agency

Sixty years have passed since the end of the war. But, regrettably the entire world and some nations in particular are still facing its consequences. Even now the conduct of some bullying powers and power-seeking and aggressive groups is the conduct of victors with the vanquished… Regrettably, the influence of the Zionists in the economy, media and some centers of political power has endangered interests of the European nations and has robbed them of many opportunities. The main alibi for this approach is the extortion they exact from the Holocaust. One can imagine what standing some European countries could have had and what global role they could have played, if it had not been for this sixty-year old imposition.

Israel Plans for War With Iran and Syria
The Times (London)

Threatened by a potentially nuclear-armed Tehran, Israel is preparing for a possible war with both Iran and Syria, according to Israeli political and military sources. The conflict with Hezbollah has led to a strategic rethink in Israel. A key conclusion is that too much attention has been paid to Palestinian militants in Gaza and the West Bank instead of the two biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the region, who pose a far greater danger to Israel’s existence, defence insiders say. “The challenge from Iran and Syria is now top of the Israeli defence agenda, higher than the Palestinian one,” said an Israeli defence source.

Austrian Court Upholds Verdict in Irving 'Holocaust Denial' Case
Agence France-Presse

An Austrian court has upheld a guilty verdict imposed on British historian David Irving for denying the existence of the Holocaust, the Austrian Press Agency (APA) reported Monday. Another court has yet to rule on Irving’s appeal of his three-year prison sentence, which he is now serving in a Vienna jail. This ruling is not expected for at least two months. Irving, 68, has been in jail since a one-day trial on February 20 at which he pleaded guilty to a charge dating from 1989 of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry. But Irving insisted at the trial that he no longer questioned the existence of gas chambers at the Nazi’s Auschwitz concentration camp.

David Irving: Profile and Update
Institute for Historical Review

A biographical sketch of the prominent historian, with update on his arrest and imprisonment in Austria. David Irving, the controversial British historian, is the author of numerous books on military history and World War II, including several international bestsellers. On November 11, 2005, he was arrested during a visit in Austria for the "thought crime" – committed in 1989 (!) - of having referred to "mythical" gas chambers at Auschwitz. Denied bail, he was held in jail until his trial on February 20, 2006, when a court in Vienna sentenced him to three years in prison for having "denied the Holocaust."

The Ultimate Jewish Conspiracy Theory
David Aaronovitch -- The Guardian (Britain)

For the past 40 years, the common explanation for US partiality towards Israel has been the power of the Jewish lobby. It is an explanation that, broadly, has united leftwingers and rightwingers.... The lobby explanation has been outlined with great clarity by Mark Weber, who is director of the American Institute for Historical Review. In a long article ["A Look at the 'Powerful Jewish Lobby'"], Weber brought together the comments and analyses of various Jewish academics, such as Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins University, and writers such as Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab.

A Look At The 'Powerful Jewish Lobby'
Mark Weber – Institute for Historical Review

To sum up: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. As long as the "very powerful" Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.

Iraq Isn’t the Philippines
Jon Wiener -- Los Angeles Times

Does history provide any models suggesting that the unhappy war in Iraq might have a happy ending? Journalists and military experts are pointing hopefully to the U.S. war in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century as an example of how Americans can fight a tough guerrilla insurgency and eventually win.... U.S. history provides a much better model for the future of Iraq: the withdrawal from Vietnam. Yes, that withdrawal was followed by a lot of suffering, but nothing like what came before it, when Americans killed something like three million Vietnamese. Because the United States got out in 1975, Vietnam today is a much better place — and so is the United States.

New Chinese History Books Play Down Mao and Communism
The New York Times

When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization. Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette. Nearly overnight the country’s most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist template that had dominated standard history texts since the 1950’s.

Polls Show Opposition to Iraq War at All-Time High
Christian Science Monitor

A series of polls taken over the last few weeks of August show that support for the war in Iraq among Americans is at an all-time low. Almost two-thirds of Americans in each of three major polls say that they oppose the war, the highest totals since pollsters starting asking Americans the question three years ago. Many of the polls were conducted in advance of the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York. A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll that surveyed the country, and more specifically residents of Washington and New York, shows that many feel the cost in blood and money in Iraq may already be too high and that Osama bin Laden will never be found.

The Lobby and the Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
James Petras

All the national, state and local Jewish organizations have launched a $300 million fundraising and propaganda campaign in support of the 21 Jewish civilians and 116 soldiers killed during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (but not the 18 Israeli Arabs who were excluded from Jews-only bomb shelters). As adjuncts of the Israeli foreign office not a single one of the 52 organizations which make up The Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations in the US voiced a single public criticism of Israel's massive destruction of civilian homes, hospitals, offices, supermarkets, refugee convoys and churches and mosques, and the deliberate killing of civilians, UN peacekeepers and rescue workers with precision bombing.

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

For the past several decades the centrepiece 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 jeopardised 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'.

Killing in the Name of Democracy
James Bovard

President George W. Bush perpetually invokes the goal of spreading democracy to sanctify his foreign policy. Unfortunately, he is only the latest in a string of presidents who cloaked aggression in idealistic rhetoric. Killing in the name of democracy has a long and sordid history.... Franklin Roosevelt painted World War II as a crusade for democracy — hailing Joseph Stalin as a partner in liberation. Roosevelt praised Stalin as “truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia” … Since the Eisenhower era, U.S. government bogus efforts to spread democracy have sprouted like mushrooms....