An Open Look at How the CIA Has Failed
Tim Rutten - Los Angeles Times

In [Tim] Weiner's view, the story that emerges [in his new book, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA] is "how the most powerful country in the history of Western civilization has failed to create a first-rate spy service. That failure constitutes a danger to the national security of the United States…” … Even its storied "successes" in Iran, Guatemala, Chile and Afghanistan — all of which are examined in fresh new light in this book — turned out to be long-term failures. The agency — despite the incalculable cost of its technical and analytic component — has failed to give warning of every significant international event from the onset of the Korean War to 9/11.

Boycott Movement Targets Israel
George Bisharat -- San Francisco Chronicle

When does a citizen-led boycott of a state become morally justified? That question is raised by an expanding academic, cultural and economic boycott of Israel. The movement joins churches, unions, professional societies and other groups based in the United States, Canada, Europe and South Africa. It has elicited dramatic reactions from Israel's supporters… If politicians cannot lead the way, then citizens must. That is why boycotting Israel has become both necessary and justified.

An initial compilation of facts documenting the discriminatory practices implemented by the Israeli academic system, as well as this system’s active and ongoing involvement in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Through this document, the AIC aims to support the Palestinian and international academic boycott campaigns with concrete facts and details proving that not only have Israeli academic institutions not publicly condemned Israel’s occupation, but that these very institutions are themselves part and parcel of Israel’s colonial system of oppression against the Palestinians.

Sunic’s New Book, Homo Americanus: A Review
Paul Gottfried

A polyglot Croatian scholar, Tomislav Sunic, provides in his newest book, Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age, reasons that a good European should distrust the US … Sunic gives the proper reasons that Europeans should despise us, namely, because we are hostile to European national identities, because we have contributed to bringing to Central Europe Frankfurt School brain-laundering and last but not least, because we try to substitute for concrete historical traditions such notions as propositional nationhood and the ideology of human rights.

Behind the 'Bratz' Characters
Forward (New York)

… Bratz, a collection of multi-cultural tweens with such names as Sasha and Jade. The impetus behind these dolls is an Iranian Jew by the name of Jasmin Larian whose father, Isaac, owns the company that puts out the line… Bratz — made up of Sasha, Jade, Yasmin and Cloe, all ambiguously multicultural — rival Barbie in toy sales, selling more than 100 million. Now, Bratz’s popularity has culminated in a live-action film based on the dolls. In it, the character Yasmin, named after Jasmin, is a Hispanic Jewish teen living in Los Angeles, fully equipped with a bubbe played by Lainie Kazan.

Has Bush Boxed Himself In?: Pushing for a New War
Patrick J. Buchanan

As Americans anguish over how to extricate this country from Iraq without a disaster greater than what we now have, and without our friends suffering the fate of our friends in Cambodia and Vietnam, they had best brace themselves. This escalator is going up. George Bush and his generals are laying out the case for a new war. And there has been no resistance offered either by a vacationing Congress or the major presidential candidates.

More War on the Horizon
Paul Craig Roberts

No pullout from Iraq while I'm president, declares George W. Bush. On to Iran, declares Vice President Cheney. Israel is a "peace-seeking state" that needs $30 billion of US taxpayers' money for war, declares State Department official Nicholas Burns. The Democratic Congress, if not fully behind the Iraqi war, at least no longer is in the way of it. Nor are the Democrats in the way of the Bush regime's build up for initiating war with Iran… Lies, unprovoked aggression, and delusional expectations -- the same ingredients that produced the Iraq catastrophe -- all over again. The entire Bush regime and both political parties are complicit, along with the media and US allies.

Fatigue Cripples US Army in Iraq
The Observer (Britain)

Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare… As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis… `The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began… The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the destruction, or wearing out, of 40 per cent of the US army's equipment, totalling at a recent count $212 billion.

U.S. Highways Badly in Need of Repair
MSNBC

The U.S. highway system is broken. And it’s not clear where the money is going to come from to fix it. Amid a steady rise in congestion and ongoing deterioration of decades-old roads and bridges, federal and state funding is failing to keep up with the need to maintain existing infrastructure and increase capacity. And the cash shortfall is only going to get worse, with the Federal Highway Trust Fund — supported by a tax on gasoline — projected to run dry in 2009.

Bavaria Wins Legal Fight to Ban Hitler Book in Turkey
Today’s Zaman (Turkey)

Bavaria, one of Germany’s federal states, has won a legal battle to get the publication and sale of Adolf Hitler’s infamous book “Mein Kampf” banned in Turkey after the book became a best-seller here, a Turkish news report said yesterday. The court case was the latest attempt on the part of Bavaria to stop Turkish publication and sale of the book written by Hitler in prison before he rose to power, reports the daily Hürriyet. After becoming a best-seller in Turkey earlier this year, with publishers saying more than 100,000 copies have been sold, Bavaria took action to intervene. 

Learn From the Fall of Rome, US Official Warns
The Financial Times (Britain)

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned. David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”… Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America ’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome …

US Government Agencies Are Editing Wikipedia
United Press International

The Department of Homeland Security is among the top five U.S. agencies where computers have been used to anonymously edit Wikipedia entries. The figures come from a new software package called Wikiscanner, which lists the owners or hosts of Internet Protocol addresses associated with edits to Wikipedia -- the popular online encyclopedia, collectively written and edited by its readers.

Middle East Turmoil Could Spark World War, Says US Envoy
Reuters

Upheaval in the Middle East and Islamic civilization could cause another world war, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was quoted as saying in an Austrian newspaper interview … Zalmay Khalilzad told the daily Die Presse the Middle East was now so disordered that it had the potential to inflame the world as Europe did during the first half of the 20th century … "Europe was just as dysfunctional for a while. And some of its wars became world wars. Now the problems of the Middle East and Islamic civilization have the same potential to engulf the world," he was quoted as saying.

Starving Gaza
Chris Hedges

… Israel, in an action similar to that of the Serbs in Bosnia, has surrounded and cut off nearly a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the Islamic militant group Hamas took control in June. Electric fences and watch towers manned by Israeli soldiers keep the Palestinians trapped inside the strip. The land and sea blockade, the halting of all but minimal humanitarian aid and the refusal to allow Gaza to receive financial support are crushing Gaza’s industry, farming and infrastructure… The looming humanitarian crisis, manufactured and orchestrated by the Israeli government, in violation of international law, is a brutal form of collective punishment.

Anthology of Bigotry
Jonathan Cook

… Israel's parliament last week approved by an overwhelming majority the first reading of a bill to ensure that much of the country's inhabited land remains accessible to Jewish citizens only -- a move described by one leading local newspaper as turning Israel into a "racist Jewish state" … The legislation is designed to nullify the threat posed by a Supreme Court judgment, reached in 2000, that potentially opens the door to thousands of Arab families leaving the tightly controlled areas assigned to them and choosing where they live. Currently Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of the population, are barred from buying homes in most of the country.

DePaul University Cancels Prof. Finkelstein’s Class
Associated Press

DePaul University canceled the one remaining class taught by a controversial professor who has accused some Jews of improperly using the legacy of the Holocaust. Norman Finkelstein, whose work led to a long-running public feud with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, says he may respond by committing civil disobedience when classes resume Sept. 5. Finkelstein, 53, was denied tenure in June after six years on the DePaul faculty, but he was permitted to teach for the one year remaining on his contract. On Friday, however, the university e-mailed students saying that Finkelstein's sole political science course had been canceled.

Jewish Scholar’s Book on 'Ritual Murder' Available in English

The complete text in English translation of an important book about “Jewish ritual murder” is now posted on-line. Italian-Jewish scholar Ariel Toaff concludes in “Pasque di Sangue" ("Bloody Passover") that there is a historical basis to the infamous “ritual murder” claims, and affirms that some fundamentalist Jews did, in fact, mutilate, murder and crucify Christian children during the Middle Ages. Dr. Toaff is a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. His father was the Chief Rabbi of Rome. Shortly after it was published in Italy in February 2007, Toaff responded to protests from Jewish groups by agreeing to “recall” the book.

How Britain Abducted Germans in Plunder Program
The Telegraph (Britain)

German scientists and technicians were abducted at the end of the Second World War and made to work in Britain as part of a secret programme to plunder the defeated nation's trade secrets and intellectual assets, declassified government documents have revealed. An elite British Army unit captured hundreds of Germans in possession of Nazi scientific and technical know-how and transported them across the Channel to work in government ministries and private companies. Others were forced to travel to Britain, where they were interviewed by commercial rivals and detained if they did not reveal trade secrets.

Diversity May Not Be The Answer
Gregory Rodriguez -- Los Angeles Times

 … You've heard the rap: Diversity is our strength. We should celebrate it, blah, blah, blah…. But according to a provocative new study by Robert Putnam, one of America's preeminent political scientists, it's just not true. … Diversity, he argues, is turning us into a nation of turtles, hunkered down with our heads in our shells. According to the study, there is a strong positive relationship between interracial trust and ethnic homogeneity. In other words, the less diverse your community, the more likely you are to trust the people in it who are different from you. The flip side is also true: The more ethnically diverse the people you live around, the less you trust them.

'Hate' Charge for German Who Called for Nobel Prize for Hess

German police have charged the leader of a leading far-right political party with inciting racial hatred after he recommended Adolf Hitler's former deputy for the Nobel peace prize. Police in the eastern city of Jena said on Friday they had filed the charge against Udo Voigt, head of the National Democratic Party (NPD), after he proposed the late Rudolf Hess for the prestigious award during a speech last weekend. If convicted of incitement, Voigt could face a jail term of up to three years or a fine, police said.

US To Give Israel $30 Billion in Military Aid
BBC News

US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns has signed a deal that will provide Israel with $30 billion of military aid over the next ten years. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said the aid will preserve his country's military advantage over other countries in the Middle East. The new military aid package represents a 25 percent increase from present levels. The US announced multi-billion-dollar arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Gulf states last month. Washington says it wants to help its allies in the Middle East meet their security needs and counter the growing power of Iran in the region.

The new $30 billion American defense package for Israel is not conditioned on diplomatic progress or concessions to the Palestinians, a top U.S. aide said Thursday as representatives from both countries signed the memorandum of understanding in Jerusalem. U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said the aid to Israel was meant to counter "an axis of cooperation between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas that is responsible for the violence in the region."

Saving England Wasn’t Worth It
Scott Horton

Most Americans can't believe that their government maintains an overseas empire of as many as 1,000 military bases. U.S. interventions are always portrayed to us as defensive in nature, and for one simple reason: Americans don't want empire … The USSR was preserved by American intervention. The U.S.-UK invasion of Europe simply popped the lid off the jar wherein the two most despicable regimes in the world were stuck fighting each other. Had America not helped, the Soviets would likely have met defeat, with the vastly overextended Nazi empire on course for the same fate soon after.

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam
Henry Siegman -- London Review of Books

… In fact, all previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Bush nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank … Israel ’s disingenuous commitment to a peace process and a two-state solution is precisely what has made possible its open-ended occupation and dismemberment of Palestinian territory. 

Congress Considers Federal Funds for 'Holocaust Education'
The Jewish Advocate (Boston)

With more than 62 years having passed since the Shoah, local and state lawmakers are working to give Holocaust education a boost. Currently being reviewed by committees in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Education Assistance Act – if passed – would provide select organizations nationwide with competitive grants to be used to develop Holocaust curriculum guides as well as training for teachers. The act would distribute $10 million – $2 million yearly for five years – in federal funding to establish these programs …

'Real Men Go to Tehran': What War With Iran Would Mean
Gwynne Dyer

It’s impossible to say whether the United States will attack Iran before President George W. Bush leaves office in 17 months’ time, because nobody in the White House knows yet either. It is easy to predict what would happen if the US did attack Iran, however… The Iranian regime would not collapse: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now unpopular due to his mishandling of the economy, but patriotic Iranians would rally even around him if they were attacked by foreigners. What would collapse, instead, is the world’s oil supply and the global economy.

Armenian Genocide Debate Exposes Rifts at ADL
Forward (New York)

It has been a long, hot, difficult summer for Abraham Foxman. Faced with the fight of his professional life, the indefatigable director of the Anti-Defamation League was forced into a rare and reluctant retreat by the unlikeliest of adversaries: an ethnic minority charging one of the world’s most famous Holocaust survivors with suppressing recognition of a genocide. For weeks, Foxman, 67, faced mounting criticism for refusing to back Armenian Americans in their quest to pass a congressional resolution recognizing as genocide the World War I-era massacre of Armenians at the hands of their Ottoman rulers. 

… Foxman’s comment that “the Jewish community should not be the arbiter of that history, nor should the U.S. Congress” is indeed startling since Foxman’s career as ADL National Director has been devoted to opening the scabs of bitter historical memories. “He has resorted to scaremongering to fill its [the ADL’s] coffers.” … Enthusiastic support for Israel, and of a kind that leans toward the Zionist Right, has been paired at the ADL with hatred for Western Christian societies, and unswerving endorsement of anti-Christian leftist agendas, even when such agendas have conflicted with Jewish communal interests.

Israel Seems Determined to Dig its own Grave
Patrick Seale

… To most independent observers it seems plain that Israel's cruel, aggressive and expansionist policies have resulted in a steady deterioration in its strategic environment. It has acquired, or rather created, enemies on several fronts … Some other trends should cause Israeli alarm bells to ring. Educated European opinion is increasingly outraged by Israel's behavior… As an acute observer remarked to me this week, 'The Middle East today is like Europe on the eve of the Great War of 1914-18. It needs only a spark to set the whole region on fire.'  

Austrian Writer Arrested in Spain for 'Holocaust Denial'
Associated Press

Spanish police on Thursday arrested a right-wing writer and publisher wanted in his home country of Austria for repeatedly denying the existence of the Jewish Holocaust and the use of gas chambers, officials said. Gerd Honsik was arrested in the southern city of Malaga, a police spokeswoman said. No more details on his arrest were immediately available. Honsik had fled to Spain after being convicted in 1992 in Austria of neo-Nazi activities and sentenced to one year in prison for writings that defended Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

Backlash Over Book on the Israel Lobby
The New York Times

“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is not even in bookstores, but already anxieties have surfaced about the backlash it is stirring, with several institutions backing away from holding events with the authors… In the book, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and embargoed until Sept. 4, they elaborate on and update their case. “Now that the cold war is over, Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States,” they write. “Yet no aspiring politician is going to say so in public or even raise the possibility” because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful. 

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'.

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. 

US Steps Closer to War With Iran
Asia Times (Hong Kong)

The Bush administration has leaped toward war with Iran by, in essence, declaring war with the main branch of Iran's military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which it plans to brand as a terrorist organization. A logical evolution of US President George W. Bush's ill-defined, boundless "war on terror", the White House's move is dangerous to the core, opening the way for open confrontation with Iran. This may begin in Iraq, where the IRGC is reportedly most active and, ironically, where the US and Iran have their largest common denominators.

Human Evolution Continuing
Nicholas Wade – The New York Times

Historians often assume that they need pay no attention to human evolution because the process ground to a halt in the distant past. That assumption is looking less and less secure in light of new findings based on decoding human DNA. People have continued to evolve since leaving the ancestral homeland in northeastern Africa some 50,000 years ago, both through the random process known as genetic drift and through natural selection.

Who Was This 'Great Liberator'?: Lincoln and Slavery
David Gordon

Thomas DiLorenzo [in his book, Lincoln Unmasked] calls attention to a vital fact that demolishes the popular view that one of Lincoln's primary motives for opposing secession in 1861 was his distaste for slavery … Lincoln opposed extension of slavery because this would interfere with the prospects of white workers … Blacks, in his opinion, would be better off outside the United States; and, throughout his life, Lincoln supported schemes for repatriation of blacks to Africa and elsewhere. If blacks left the country, they could not compete with whites, the primary objects of Lincoln 's concern. 

Mussolini Takes on the Mafia
Mike La Sorte

… Mussolini announced to Sicily, to the nation, and to the world that the Mafia was dead, that no force "ever again would be able to revive it." Several nations sent congratulatory telegrams and the dictator’s popularity soared. After Mori was recalled to Rome in 1929, where he was nominated a senator, many of the imprisoned were released after giving their allegiance to Fascism. With the liberation of Sicily, they forgot about that allegiance and went over to the Allied side. The end of Fascism for Sicily came in 1943 with the American military occupation of the island. The mafiosi saw their opportunities and took them. In virtually every town they were named as mayors.

A Do-Over for Russian History?
The Wall Street Journal

A new manual for Russia's history teachers succinctly distills President Vladimir Putin's drive to rekindle patriotism, retelling events of the past six decades according to the Kremlin's preferred storyline: Russia is a great power that shouldn't be ashamed of its past. Backed by support from the president himself, the book, which rails against U.S. hegemony, is raising fears among some historians that the Kremlin is -- quite literally -- trying to rewrite history in a way that risks breeding ultranationalism and whitewashing the darkest chapters of Russia's past.

Among Strangers: Bigotry Among the Orthodox
David Klinghoffer (1994)

… While many things have surprised me about the Orthodox [Jewish] world, nothing has surprised me more than the unapologetic bigotry of more than a few Orthodox Jews… A rabbi of the Talmud declared, "Kill the best of the gentiles! Crush the heads of the best of the snakes!" But Simeon ben Yohai had seen Rabbi Akiva burned alive by the soldiers of the Emperor Hadrian. He had a reason to curse. In 1994, we American Jews, I would say, do not … Our great-great-grandparents would be astonished at the way the surrounding society pets and caresses us, stepping gingerly around our delicate feelings on a diversity of subjects.

Media Backtracks on Iran President’s 'Threat’ to Israel
Arash Norouzi

For close to two years, the media has stubbornly clung to a long discredited story about the Iranian President’s alleged threat to “destroy Israel” with nuclear weapons Iran doesn’t have and denies any intent to acquire. ‘Wiped off the map, wiped off the map,’ they bleat incessantly, even though his actual words, “The Imam [Khomenei] said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,” were paralleled with the fall of regimes like the Soviet Union and Iran’s former U.S.-installed monarchy.

The Invisible Government
John Pilger

… I too had grown up on stories of the good war against Germany and Japan, that ethical bath that cleansed the Anglo-American world of all evil. But the longer I stayed in Vietnam, the more I realized that our atrocities were not isolated, nor were they aberrations, but the war itself was an atrocity. That was the big story, and it was seldom news… From right to left, secular to God-fearing, what so few people know is that in the last half century, United States administrations have overthrown 50 governments — many of them democracies. In the process, thirty countries have been attacked and bombed, with the loss of countless lives.

Whey They Hate Us?
Sheldon Richman

What’s more obnoxious than a person who constantly whines about the injustices committed against him while ignoring his own injustices against others? A country that does the same thing… The last century-plus of U.S. foreign policy has largely been a story of aggression and empire-building. American presidents have intervened and interfered in every region of the world, not in self-defense, but in the name of U.S. “national interest,” which in reality means the interest of well-connected corporations and their ambitious political agents who felt appointed to bring order to the world. As a whole, the American people haven’t gained by this — in fact, they have paid dearly in money and lives.

Free Press or Ministry of Truth?
Paul Craig Roberts

… Allegedly, the U.S. is a free and open country with a free press and a government accountable to the people. Yet the information fed to the American people is as thoroughly false as that fed to the citizens of Oceania by Big Brother through the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's famous novel. In Orwell's novel, despite the totalitarian power of the government, nothing happens to people as long as they accept the government's intrusive monitoring of their lives and do not become interested in truth or facts.

Only one out of 20 would-be teachers on a Cambridge University history and education course knew anything about Christopher Columbus, a conference was told yesterday. The figure was revealed by Kate Pretty, pro-vice chancellor of Homerton College, as evidence of the decline in history in primary and secondary schools. Later this month, a report by Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, will reveal that seven out of ten pupils have ditched the subject by the time they are 14. Only 30 per cent go on to study it to GCSE level.

The German Disease
Paul Gottfried

While in Western Europe, particularly among obsessively guilt-ridden Germans, “European integration would be a systematic form of institutionalized security to prevent Nazi recidivism,” Eastern Europeans, who had to contend with Soviet deportations and Stalinist concentration camps, have a less dated picture of the postwar past … In Germany such mythologizing has worked because freedom and nationhood have been sacrificed on the altar of antinational indoctrination… Everything being equal, countries that respect their national identity and ancestral religion will outstrip the vanishing Germans in population replacement.

US Middle East Wars: Social Opposition and Political Impotence
James Petras

The US is the only country in the world where the peace movement is unwilling to recognize, publicly condemn or oppose the major influential political and social institutions consistently supporting and promoting the US wars in the Middle East. The political power of the pro-Israel power configuration, led by the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supported within the government by highly placed pro-Israel Congressional leaders and White House and Pentagon officials has been well documented in books and articles by leading journalists, scholars and former President Jimmy Carter.

Return of the Robber Barons
Paul Craig Roberts

As the Bush Regime outfits B-2 stealth bombers with 30,000 pound monster “bunker buster” bombs for its coming attack on Iran, the US economy continues its 21st century decline.  While profits soar for the armaments industry, the American people continue to take it on the chin. The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the real wages and salaries of US civilian workers are below those of five years ago. It could not be otherwise with US corporations offshoring good jobs in order to reduce labor costs and, thereby, to convert wages once paid to Americans into multi-million dollar bonuses paid to CEOs and other top management.

British Schools Encourage Anti-German Feeling
Telegraph (Britain)

Schools are perpetuating damaging stereotypes of Germans because of their "obsession" with Hitler and the Second World War, it was claimed yesterday. The vast numbers of pupils who choose to study the Nazi period in history is fuelling anti-German feeling, the Church of England said. This undercurrent is reinforced by the large number of war films shown on television and the "drip feed" of anti-German comments in the media, a report said.

British Schools Told to Dump Churchill From History Lessons
Daily Mail (Britain)

Secondary schools will strip back the traditional curriculum in favour of lessons on debt management, the environment and healthy eating, ministers revealed. Even Winston Churchill no longer merits a mention after a drastic slimming-down of the syllabus to create more space for "modern" issues. Along with Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King, the former prime minister has been dropped from a list of key figures to be mentioned in history teaching… Historical figures cut from curriculum include Churchill, Gandhi and Hitler. The two world wars and the Holocaust remain statutory topics, and there’s more emphasis on the Empire. New topics include the slave trade.

Britain 's World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools, a government agency says. The radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds is designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach, the government said. But although Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin and Martin Luther King have also been dropped from the detailed guidance accompanying the curriculum, Churchill's exclusion is likely to leave traditionalists aghast....

False Prophets
Neil Clark

… The pundits who parroted the U.S. and Britain's deceitful propaganda on Iraq have never been properly held to account. Far from it, they've actually been rewarded for getting things so badly wrong… Of course, the ultimate responsibility for the war in Iraq must lie with the politicians who authorized the illegal military action. But they would never have been able to gain a measure of public support for the war without the work of journalists and writers who failed to challenge the lies Bush, Blair, and their representatives were turning out on an almost daily basis… It's time that we treated the journalists and writers who made them with the opprobrium they deserve.

Russia ’s Bleak Demographic Future
St. Petersburg Times (Russia)

Demographers have provided dire statistics depicting a sharp decline in Russia’s population in the next few decades — and said that St. Petersburg, which loses an average of 70 people every day and has the lowest birth rate in the nation, could be hit hardest.… But “the real concern in Russia’s official circles is about an extinction of Russians as a race, rather than population decline in its traditional sense,” says Dubrovsky, adding that it was one of the factors that prompted President Vladimir Putin last year to adopt a special policy aimed at “calling ethnic Russians abroad back home, but restricting migration for other nationalities.”

Stalin Good, Migrants Must Go, Say Many Young Russians
Reuters

Russia 's youths admire Soviet dictator Josef Stalin -- who presided over the deaths of millions of people -- and want to kick immigrants out of Russia, according to a new poll… The majority of respondents thought the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy and two thirds thought that America was a rival and enemy. Only a fifth viewed Iran as a potential rival or enemy. Most young people also wanted immigrants kicked out of Russia: 62 percent said they agreed with the statement that the Russian government should evict most immigrants.

German Historian Urges 'Refuted' Edition of Mein Kampf
Haaretz (Israel)

A German historian has called for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic book Mein Kampf to be reprinted and put back on sale in German bookshops with notes on its errors, saying this would be preferable to a flood of unrefuted editions. Horst Moeller, director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, said this would be better than waiting until 2015 when anybody could publish it after copyright in Germany lapses on the book. It would be better, he said, to issue an edition now, with footnotes explaining page by page how Hitler was wrong. 

Bush Authorizes Covert Action Against Iran
ABC News

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

Europe Warns US on Iran Sanctions
The Financial Times (Britain)

European governments are warning Congress that US legislation aimed at Iran could hit European energy groups, undermine transatlantic unity on Tehran’s nuclear programme and provoke a dispute at the World Trade Organisation. Diplomats from France, Germany and the UK, among other countries, have stepped up a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill against moves that would mandate sanctions on energy companies that invested more than $20 million in Iran. Among such companies – already marked out by a US campaign to disinvest in energy companies that trade with Iran – are Royal Dutch Shell, Total of France and Repsol of Spain.

Ernst Zundel and the Politics of 'Gotcha'
Bruce Leichty

… For over a year, I had been relishing the opportunity to stand in front of a panel of judges at the 6th Circuit and essentially challenge them to find any error in my airtight legal argument - that Ernst Zundel, a [controversial] Holocaust revisionist who was awaiting U.S. permanent residence through his U.S. citizen wife Ingrid, had been arrested and whisked out of the United States illegally in 2003 based on premises that could not possibly hold up under impartial judicial scrutiny.