[wvns] Indonesia quake levels villages

The lack of coverage for the Indonesian earthquake in US media (outside of the CSMonistor) is truly amazing.

Indonesia quake levels villages, 8 trapped in hotel

(Reuters)

3 October 2009

PADANG, Indonesia - Eight people were believed to be still alive under piles of crumbling masonry in the ruins of a hotel on Saturday, three days after a powerful earthquake devastated Indonesia’s port city of Padang.

In most places only bodies were found by rescue teams combing through collapsed buildings for thousands of people still feared trapped beneath the wreckage. The colossal damage that destroyed buildings and roads was hampering the aid effort.

In remoter areas outside Padang the full scale of the disaster was only starting to become clear, with TV footage showing villages obliterated by landslides, and survivors drinking coconut water after their drinking sources were contaminated.

“We have not received a thing. We need food, clothes, blankets, milk. It seems like the government has forgotten about us,” said Siti Armaini, sitting outside her collapsed home in Pariaman, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Padang and nearer to the quake’s epicentre.

In Padang, eight people were believed to be trapped in the ruins of the Dutch-colonial era Ambacang Hotel, once a prominent landmark in this university town of 900,000 famous across Indonesia for its spicy cuisine and buildings with dramatic curved roofs, influenced by the ethnic Minang group.

International rescue teams, including sniffer dogs from Japan and an orange-clad Swiss team, were helping in the effort.

“We think there are eight people alive in there. One sent an SMS to a relative in a village, who got the text at 3 p.m. yesterday,” said Arkamelvi Karmani, an Indonesian army officer involved in the rescue operation at the site of the hotel.

The message called for help and implored rescuers: “Be careful that the excavator doesn’t cause the building to collapse on us.”

Those trapped were believed to be on the 6^th floor. Rescuers were building a tunnel into the rubble to try to reach them.

“We think there are 40 bodies left in the hotel,” Karmani said. A seminar organised by an insurance company was taking place there when the 7.6 magnitude quake hit on Wednesday.

The quake from one of the world’s most active seismic fault lines along the Pacific “Rim of Fire” struck with a force that shook buildings hundreds of kms away in Singapore and Malaysia.

Masks, Sniffer Dogs

The international aid effort was cranking up on Saturday and an Australian naval vessel set sail for Sumatra equipped with a mobile 40-bed hospital with surgical facilities, and Sea King helicopters, the country’s defence ministry said.

Testos, an Indonesian Red Cross worker at an aid station in central Padang, said they now had around half what was needed.

“We also need drinking water and clothes because many peoples clothes were burnt in fires,” he said. “We also need medicines to stop infection.”

The United Nations estimated more than 1,000 had been killed in and around Padang. Indonesia’s disaster management agency put the toll of confirmed dead and missing so far at 806.

Rescue teams, many wearing masks to cover the stench of bodies as they worked in the tropical heat, were fanning out from Padang to some of the worst-hit surrounding areas.

On the route to Pariaman devastation became steadily worse.

Roofs of collapsed houses are now flush to the ground, while families shelter in makeshift tents made of blankets next to the road, which has giant cracks in places.

Schools and mosques in this staunchly Muslim area have also collapsed and girls wearing head scarves joined other villagers holding out donation buckets to passing cars.

Asked about rescue efforts in Pariaman, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said bluntly it was now about retrieving bodies.

“We can be sure that they are dead. So now we are waiting for burials,” he said in footage shown on Metro TV.

Indonesia’s health minister Siti Fadillah Supari predicted on Friday the number killed would be in the low thousands.

“I predict the number will not reach 4,000,” she was quoted as saying by news website detik.com.

The three provinces affected by Wednesday’s disaster, and a second quake inland on Thursday, are major producers of rubber, palm oil, coal and other commodities, although together they accounted for less than 3 percent of Indonesia’s overall GDP, according to a report by Bank Danamon in Jakarta.

===

More than 600 missing in Indonesia landslides

(AFP)

3 October 2009

PADANG, Indonesia – More than 600 people are missing in landslides that hit villages northwest of the quake-hit Indonesian city of Padang, a disaster official said on Saturday.

‘More or less, there are 600 missing. We’ve only found three dead,’ local health ministry crisis centre chief Jasmarizal told AFP of the landslides, which occurred after Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude quake on Sumatra island.

===

The following article contains videoclips that may be viewed by clicking the title.

Pacific Earthquake Emergency

Islamic Relief teams have already been deployed and will be assessing the needs of victims after multiple earthquakes rocked the Pacific Rim region over the past few days.

On September 29, an 8.3 magnitude quake struck Samoa, generating waves as high as 15ft in some areas and leaving at least 149 people dead and tens of thousands in need.

The Samoan Prime Minister told the BBC "the devastation caused was complete."

The very next day, at least another 2,000 people were badly injured and another 528 killed after a pair of earthquakes, the first a 7.6 magnitude and the second a 6.2 magnitude, struck off the coast of Padang in Indonesia, according to Indonesian national news figures.

Some news stations are reporting casualties as high as 1,000 people.

There are reports of widespread destruction to buildings, roads and bridges; several subsequent landslides; and fires have been reported around Padang city, including one which caused severe damage to the local market.

Many victims are in desperate need of medical attention and humanitarian aid.

You can make a difference! Donate today to support Islamic Relief's efforts.

Islamic Relief's Response

Islamic Relief USA has launched an emergency fundraising appeal in response and is teaming with local organizations to maximize the reach of concerned American communities.

Dubbing the appeal the "Pacific Earthquake Emergency," Islamic Relief USA will be aiding victims in both American Samoa and Indonesia.

Concerned Americans are urged to donate to Islamic Relief USA's "Natural Disasters Fund," by visiting Islamic Relief USA's website (www.IslamicReliefUSA.org) or calling (888) 479 - 4968.

In American Samoa, Islamic Relief is teaming with partner organizations in the field to distribute aid in an efficient and effective manner.

With many development projects and more than 80 staff members already in Indonesia, Islamic Relief plans to support 2,000 households in the next few days and has already deployed an emergency team by road that is scheduled to arrive in one of the most affected regions, Padang, tomorrow.

Islamic Relief is also in constant contact with United Nations agencies, and members of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene cluster. Islamic Relief is currently preparing to provide the following aid from the stocks available:

-150 tents
-One water purifier machine to produce 5,000 liters per hour
-Two generators
-7 vehicles; 30 motorcycles

You can help support a displaced family with food and shelter. Please donate today.

Islamic Relief in the Pacific Rim

This is not the first time Islamic Relief responds to an emergency in Indonesia.

In 2006, Islamic Relief responded again to the Java earthquake, distributing necessary food items to 17 sub-districts in just four hours after the quake hit.

Islamic Relief began working in Indonesia in 2000 and registered its field office there in 2003 to implement development projects. In 2004, Islamic Relief spearheaded a large-scale emergency response to the devastating tsunami, distributing food, tents and hygiene supplies to hundreds of survivors.

In 2008 and 2009, Islamic Relief Indonesia implemented a water and sanitation project in Padang District drilling 22 wells and training local community members in water supply systems.

DONATE NOW

http://www.islamicreliefusa.org/

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Holocaust: Gentile Deaths Don't Count!

There are so many factual problems in the following article from the Detroit Metro Times that I could probably spend 60 pages to make corrections.

Yet the article is worth reading, for it shows how little non-Jewish deaths count in modern Holocaust religion.

Holocaust by bullets
A race to record the untold stories of aging survivors

By Sandra Svoboda

For more than 50 years, Esther Lupyan kept to herself memories of the "monsters."

Monsters that imprisoned her father.

Monsters that forced her and her mother to live in a ghetto, behind barbed wire, in constant fear of death.

Monsters that killed her 12-year-old brother.

Monsters that marched her neighbors out of town, shot them and left their bodies in mass graves.

Monsters that led her as a 7-year-old, clinging to her mother's skirts, within yards of a portable gas chamber where her neighbors were being killed.

Living most of her life in the Cold War-era Soviet Union, it took Lupyan, now 74, decades to realize her family was part of one of the worst genocides in human history: Adolf Hitler's campaign to eliminate Jews.

"Everybody just tried to survive. Nobody think about word — genocide," she says in accented and not-perfect English. It wasn't discussed. "Never, not in school, not where I work. In Russia. I never talk about that. Because that was the typical feeling of Jews who survived."

Now a retired chemist living in Southfield, Lupyan immigrated to Michigan in 1989. Hundreds of thousands of European Jews left the postwar upheaval mainly for the United States, Israel and Canada. Lupyan and most other survivors remaining in the Soviet Union didn't have that option. "They don't allow us to leave the country," she says.

The communist leaders who forbade emigration also kept the events of the Jewish Holocaust largely unrecognized during the 20th century, favoring a collective, nationalistic interpretation of war that denied what had happened to Jews.

[To read the entire article, click here.]

Soviet leaders had good reason to favor "a collective, nationalistic interpretation of war" that denied a specific Judeocentric interpretation of the mass murder on the Eastern front.

Christopher Browning writes in The Origins of the Final Solution on pp. 244-5.

From the beginning, Germany adopted a policy of terror that, though fore foreshadowed in earlier plans for this war of destruction, gathered momentum over time. Already by the end of 1941, the death toll among noncombatants was devastating. Between 500,000 and 800,00 Jews, including women and children, had been murdered -- on average 2,700 to 4,200 per day -- and entire regions were reported "free of Jews." While many Jewish communities, especially in rural areas, were targeted later, the murder of Soviet POWs reached its climax in this early period. In the fall of 1941 [before mass murder of Jews became German Nazi policy], Red Army soldiers were dying in German camps at a rate of 6,000 per day; by the spring of 1942, more than 2 million of the 3.5 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Wehrmacht had perished. By the time of their final withdrawal in 1943/44, the Germans had devastated most of the occupied territory, burned thousands of villages, and depopulated vast areas. Reliable estimates on total Soviet losses are difficult to arrive at; a figure of at least 20 million seems likely.

Browning discusses the mindset and rhetoric that justified such barbarism on p. 250.

The Nazi concept of ideological war implied replacing traditional rules of discipline and subordination with a more flexible system that allowed German functionaries on all levels to act promptly and aggressively. In early May 1941 Colonel General Hoepner , commander of Panzer Group 4, which was to be deployed with Army Group North, legitimized the coming war as a "defense of European culture against a Muscovite-Asiatic deluge" (Verteidigung europäischer Kultur gegen moskowitisch-asiatische Überschwemmung) and a "warding off of Jewish Bolshevism" (Abwehr des jüdischen Bolschewismus) Days later, General Müller stated, in regard to the treatment of commissars and the local population, that this campaign would be different from previous ones, the Wehrmacht had to expect resistance from the "carriers of Jewish-Bolshevist ideology," and it was called upon to shoot "locals who participate in the fighting as partisans or intend to do so ... during battle or while trying to escape." Any crimes committed by members of the Wehrmacht as a result of "exasperation about atrocities or the decomposition efforts by the carriers of the Jewish Bolshevist system" were not to be persecuted as long as they did not threaten discipline. This was the tenor of the Erlass über Ausübung der Gerichtsbarkeit und über besondere Massnahmen der Truppe (Decree on the exercise of military court jurisdiction and special measures of the troops) signed by Keitel on May 13, 1941, and sent down by Brauchitsch to the level of army commanders on May 24.

Note the similarity to Jewish Zionist and Jewish Neoconservative discourse about Islamofascism and Arab jihadism, but keep in mind that today an increasing number of scholars of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union generally accept the reality of the Judeo-Bolshevik threat during the first half of the twentieth century.

In contrast Islamofascism is a racist Jewish fantasy that tries to explain within the delusional Zionist framework why Arabs and Muslims refuse to acknowledge the righteousness of the theft of Palestine from the native population by Eastern European invaders, interlopers, and thieves while present day salafi Arab Jihadism is purely a reaction to Western-supported Zionist aggression, terrorism, and genocidalism.

In other words, today there is no Judeo-Bolshevik menace, for it has been completely supplanted by the clear and present danger of the Zionist intelligentsia supported and funded by politically mobilized Jewish Zionist political economic oligarchs.

These racist Jewish Zionists care as little about the mass slaughter that they have orchestrated throughout the Arab and Muslim world as the standard racist Zionist Holocaust narrative pays attention to the massive murder of gentiles that accompanied the killing of Jews during WW2.

[See Haaretz Confirms: Two Separate Holocausts for more information.]

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Anne Frank and Marek Edelman

Even though the memory of Anne Frank has been prostituted to serve Zionism, I have little doubt that she would have joined pro-Palestinian activists to oppose the state of Israel if she had survived the WW2.

Here is some footage of Anne Frank that has recently surfaced.

To find out more information, click here.

Marek Edelman, who like Anne Frank is strongly remembered for his role in the Holocaust, has just died.

I am intrigued that the English language obituaries fail to mention Edelman's anti-Zionism.

Compare Warsaw ghetto uprising leader dies with Mort de Marek Edelman, commandant de l'insurrection du ghetto de Varsovie.

Here is a letter that the eminent historian Norman Davies wrote to Commentary in 1987 and that mentions Marek Edelman. Everyone involved in the struggle against racist Zionist Jews on campus should read it carefully. (I don't remember the original Commentary article to which Davies is replying, but I believe that he is referring to the H. Bruce Franklin case.)

To the Editor:

It is not for me to descend to the levels of good humor displayed by Lucy S. Dawidowicz in her article on Marek Edelman and myself. I rather doubt whether anyone who knows me, or who has actually read my books, will give her much credence.

However, Mrs. Dawidowicz has unwittingly drawn attention to a state of affairs which many Americans find too embarrassing to discuss. Many of us were brought up to think of Jews as the natural allies of civil liberty and of intellectual tolerance. Mrs. Dawidowicz's performance can only fuel the opposite impression, namely, that, in a number of controversies relating to Jewish interests, the crudest examples of intolerance and indeed belligerence are emanating nowadays from the Jewish side, especially in America.

With regard to Polish-Jewish relations, this is a time in the U.S. when a distinguished task force is at work to foster dialogue and understanding. In England, an Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies, with its journal Polin. has recently been founded for the same purpose. In Poland, the regime seems to have modified its former hostility to Jewish topics, while a marvelously self-critical, and frequently philo-Semitic, debate is being conducted in both the Catholic and the underground press. In Israel, academic contacts are being renewed with Polish universities, and a major conference is in preparation for January 1988 in Jerusalem. Yet COMMENTARY, which is published by the American Jewish Committee, does not hesitate to give Mrs. Dawidowicz a platform for the most discordant sentiments.

Indeed, one must seriously wonder whether Mrs. Dawidowicz has any intention of contributing to the contemporary debate. As an ex-leftist, who is now the adherent of an ultra-chauvinistic, right-wing faction among the broad streams of Zionism, she may well have flipped from one extreme of the political spectrum to the other; but she shares the hallmark of all Communist polemicists, namely, the habit of trying to destroy her opponents' reputation, without examining their ideas. If such attitudes were ever allowed to prevail, we would soon find that anyone who chose to dissent from Mrs. Dawidowicz's version of the truth would be promptly hounded from the media and from academic life in general.

It is revealing, I think, that Mrs. Dawidowicz's silly bull of anathema against Marek Edelman and myself does not actually say what the source of our offense is supposed to be. One suspects that it has less to do with the rights and wrongs of Poland's unhappy past than with the defense of a political dogma. Marek Edelman, though one of the greatest living Jewish heroes, does not happen to believe in Zionism. He has called the state of Israel “a historic failure,” whose fate will be sealed as soon as American foreign policy changes tack. Norman Davies, though sympathetic enough to the broad-minded traditions of Israel's founding fathers, is not happy with the nationalistic trends of the last twenty years, and disagrees, in particular, with his subject, Polish history, being expounded in terms of American Jewish mythology and collective guilt. So, when Davies writes a favorable review about Edelman, Mrs. Dawidowicz takes double offense. Unable to brand Edelman an anti-Semite, she implies that he is psychologically unstable. Unequipped to cope with Davies's line of thought, she tries to suggest that his scholarship is worthless.

Mrs. Dawidowicz singled out my use of one quotation from Edelman, about the Poles being “a tolerant people” which she delicately suggested could be grounds for a suit of historical malpractice. Needless to say, she was making a mountain out of a molehill. But having explained the point at some length in my recent exchange with Abraham Brumberg (New York Review of Books. April 9, 1987), I see no need to repeat it here.

Mrs. Dawidowicz also writes that I am “well known” for my “virtuosity in erasing anti-Semitism from Polish history.” It is odd that a hundred or so specialist reviewers, whose competence in the field is somewhat broader than that of Mrs. Dawidowicz, have all failed to notice such a spectacular feat. It may be that I sometimes use phrases such as “ethnic hatred” or “inter-communal antagonism,” simply because I consider the conventional term, “anti-Semitism,” to be greatly overworked. But that does not mean that the subject itself has been ignored. Let your readers judge for themselves! If the “computer error” which kept the paperback title out of the U.S. Books in Print has been rectified, God's Playground: A History of Poland (Columbia University Press) should be readily available from all American bookstores.

As the recipient of so many favorable reviews—see, for example, the New York Times Book Review, August 15, 1983—I may have become complacent about my book's ability to pander to all the political interests which Polish history stands to offend. But I am not unaware of its shortcomings. Nor can I fail to notice that generous critics have applauded perhaps the first anti-nationalist history of Poland which gives Polish Jewry (and other ethnic minorities) a prominent and honorable place in the narrative. To date, the only people to express their dismay have been the old-fashioned Polish nationalists—a group with whom Mrs. Dawidowicz seems to have a strong generic affinity.

Like Abraham Brumberg, Mrs. Dawidowicz is adept at railing against statements that were never made. She says, for instance, that “according to Davies, anti-Semitism . . . was an invention of the Zionists.” Davies has never written anything remotely like that. She says that Davies “proceeds to assert repeatedly that there was good reason to dislike the Jews”—Davies has never asserted any such thing, even once—“who, being Communists, ‘did much to launch the popular stereotype of the Zydokomuna.’” On that subject, Davies wrote something entirely different. If space permitted, I would be glad to expose each of these apparently willful misreadings in detail.

Space permitting, I would also take issue with Mrs. Dawidowicz's version of Jewish life in prewar Poland, which must strike many informed readers as defective. For one thing, it is obsessively Judeocentric, bypassing entirely the distress and exploitation of all other nationalities and social groups. For another, it is peculiarly slighting to the memory of the Polish Jews themselves, who for all their problems prior to the Nazi Holocaust, had great dynamism and achievements to their credit. By eternally harping on Polish anti-Semitism, Mrs. Dawidowicz paints a picture where the Jews in Poland appear as nothing more than pathetic, downtrodden victims. One would never guess that prewar Poland had its Jewish generals, its Jewish sportsmen, its Jewish film stars, its Jewish tycoons, its famous Jewish professors, musicians, senators, writers, and actresses.

Mrs. Dawidowicz talks as if discrimination was something experienced only by Jews, for example in higher education. True enough, in the late 1930's there were some ugly anti-Semitic events, including the attempt to enforce a numerus clausus. Yet one has to recognize that in several prewar Polish faculties, especially in law and medicine, the Jewish student body formed an absolute majority. How many leading American universities can honestly claim that a numerus clausus has never operated on their campus? How many leading American universities, even today, can boast that ethnic minority students make up over half the entrants?

In all these matters, the main difference between Mrs. Dawidowicz and myself is one of proportion. Mrs. Dawidowicz seems to think that anti-Semitism is the main, if not the only, worthwhile theme in Polish history. I hold that anti-Semitism is one theme among many.

Without the least attempt at substantiation, Mrs. Dawidowicz dismisses my chapter on “The Jewish Community” in Poland for being “replete with errors, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and prejudices.” Any freshman who made such bald assertions would be told to go away and do some homework.

Without citing any single example, Mrs. Dawidowicz charges me with the “peppering,” and the editor of the New York Review of Books with the publishing, of “anti-Semitic tidbits.” That sounds like a common slur.

Mrs. Dawidowicz sees fit to bruit it around that others have been “bruiting around” the activities of “Zionist cells.” Clearly Mrs. Dawidowicz would not have repeated the unfounded rumors if she had not wanted them to be believed.

Yet these slurs, smears, and insinuations come from a woman who also wants to talk about “scholarly standards.” Fair-minded readers will recognize Mrs. Dawidowicz's standards for what they are.

In which light, one begins to recognize the vocabulary. “Scholarly standards,” it appears, are reserved for those whose opinions coincide with the chosen ideology. “Partisanship” is the word for opinions which are disliked but cannot be contested. “Uncritical,” “unscientific,” or “unscholarly” are the words for discrediting people who fail to follow the ideological line.

To anyone who knows Eastern Europe, such tricks are all too familiar. A colleague from Poland now in the West once explained how, during the vicious anti-Semitic purge of 1968, the party contrived to dismiss virtually all the Jewish professors of Warsaw University. The victims were simply told that their work was “unscholarly,” and were advised that their contracts would be terminated. They were denied all means of demanding an explanation, then warned to keep quiet, and told to leave the country as soon as possible. In a Communist state, where the same party clique controls the courts and the media, as well as the universities, there was no way either to publicize the fraud or to fight it. Fortunately, in the U.S. things are not yet so bad.

With regard to the Stanford lawsuit, I have repeatedly refrained from comment. However, since Mrs. Dawidowicz has not shrunk from using COMMENTARY's pages to pass judgment on a case about which she cannot properly possess any inside information, I feel obliged to offer some clarification. (If, on the contrary, Mrs. Dawidowicz does claim to be authoritatively informed, my lawyers would be happy to make arrangements for receiving her evidence.) It is important to recognize that I am not challenging the right of a great American university to decide on its own appointments, even in those instances where the decision may be based on ignorance and incompetence. Nor do I challenge the principle of confidentiality as properly applied to academic appointments. Least of all am I suggesting that the numerous Jewish faculty and officials at Stanford were mobilized into some sort of vast Semitic cabal. The suit is based on other considerations. Among the various causes of action, headed by misrepresentation, the suit has emphasized Stanford's departure from normal academic procedures: Stanford's failure to honor its contractual obligations; Stanford's admission of nonacademic criteria into an academic appointment; Stanford's acceptance of secret accusations concealed at the appropriate time even from the search committee; Stanford's subsequent publication of bogus and unsubstantiated criticism of the candidate's scholarship and teaching; Stanford's public manipulation of confidential references; Stanford's defamatory press releases concerning my “pernicious” and “egregious” self; Stanford's formal denial to an academic employee of the standard provisions for grievance and appeal.

Recourse to the law was necessary, not because Stanford's own hearing of the case produced unsatisfactory results, but because Stanford ruled out any sort of internal hearing whatsoever. It is difficult without going into great detail to explain what exactly is involved. But many who know university procedures will rightly suspect the academic equivalent of insider-trading.

When the time comes to discuss the case fully and openly, I have no doubt that it will be quickly resolved. I am confident that the people who come to my assistance will include both courageous Jewish colleagues from California, and specialists in the field from the United States, from Europe, and from Israel.

In their different ways, both Poles and Jews are traumatized nations; and it is not surprising that memories of World War II in Poland still provoke pain for all concerned. Since some three-quarters of Jews in the world today can trace their origins to historic Poland, it is only natural that American Jews should have strong feelings about Polish history. All one asks is that the subject be approached with restraint, and with respect for a variety of honest differences of opinion. If Americans were only better informed, they might find that Poles and Jews have much more than suffering in common, and that each side has much to admire in the other.

Norman Davies

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Lying About Palestinian Archeological Site

Note how the Israel Antiquities Authority consistently and propagandistically uses the term Jewish where Judaic should be written.

2nd Temple Judaism having neither Mishna nor Jerusalem Talmud nor Babylonian Talmud was far closer to Greek Orthodox or Syrian Christianity in its elite Temple version and to Islam in its popular version.

Modern Israeli Zionist interlopers have no ancestral, cultural, or religious connection to the people that actually patronized the synagogue described below. The members of this synagogues community had a high probability of being ancestors to the population of al-Majdal, who were ethnically cleansed by racist murderous genocidal Zionist invaders in 1948.

One of the Oldest Synagogues in the World was Exposed at Migdal (9/13)

A synagogue from the Second Temple period (50 BCE-100 CE) was exposed in archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting at a site slated for the construction of a hotel on Migdal beach, in an area owned by the Ark New Gate Company. In the middle of the synagogue is a stone that is engraved with a seven-branched menorah (candelabrum), the likes of which have never been seen. The excavations were directed by archaeologists Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The main hall of synagogue is c. 120 square meters in area and its stone benches, which served as seats for the worshippers, were built up against the walls of the hall. Its floor was made of mosaic and its walls were treated with colored plaster (frescos). A square stone, the top and four sides of which are adorned with reliefs, was discovered in the hall. The stone is engraved with a seven-branched menorah set atop a pedestal with a triangular base, which is flanked on either side by an amphora (jars). According to the excavation director, Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “We are dealing with an exciting and unique find. This is the first time that a menorah decoration has been discovered from the days when the SecondTemple was still standing. This is the first menorah to be discovered in a Jewish context and that dates to the Second Temple period/beginning of the Early Roman period. We can assume that the engraving that appears on the stone, which the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered, was done by an artist who saw the seven-branched menorah with his own eyes in the Temple in Jerusalem. The synagogue that was uncovered joins just six other synagogues in the world that are known to date to the SecondTemple period”. According to the Minister of Culture and Sport, MK Limor Livnat, “This important find attests to the extensive Jewish settlement in the northern region at the time of the Temple. I am certain that the site will constitute an attraction for tourists from abroad and from Israel and will shed light on life in the Jewish settlement during the Second Temple period”. Jose Miguel Abat, legal representative of "Ark New Gate" company, expressed his joy for the finding and said it reinforces the company's intention to establish a center of dialogue and respect between the different religions and cultures. Abat said that "we are sure this finding and the planned center will attract tourists and visitors from Israel and from around the World".

The synagogue is located in Migdal (‘Magdala’ in Aramaic), which is mentioned in Jewish sources. Migdal played an important role during the Great Revolt and was actually the main base of Yosef Ben Matityahu (Josephus Flavius), commander of the rebellion in the Galilee. Migdal also continued to resist the Romans after both the Galilee and Tiberias had surrendered. ‘Magdala’ is mentioned in Christian sources as the place whence Mary Magdalene came, one of the women who accompanied Jesus and the apostles and who Christian tradition has sanctified. After it was conquered by the Romans, the city was destroyed and many of its residents were killed. At the end of the Second Temple period Migdal was an administrative center of the western basin of the Sea of Galilee. Until the founding of Tiberias in the year 19 CE, Migdal was the only important settlement along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The site is currently closed to visitors and will be opened to the public in the future.

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[Harvard] Mobilization for Attacking Iran

The following event may be of interest to readers in the Boston area.

The Israel Lobby is sponsoring these events all over the country (see Facing the Iranian Threat) in order to get as many Jews as possible on the same page before making the big push for an attack. (See Jewish Majority Now Backs Attack On Iran, Disagrees with Obama on Settlements.)

THE CHALLENGE OF THE IRANIAN REGIME: GENOCIDAL ANTI-SEMITISM IN A TIME OF SILENCE
When: Mon, 10/05/2009 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Where: Lowell JCR

Join us for a presentation by Professor Charles Small, Director of the Yale Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, on the Challenge of the Iranian Regime. This timely event is crucial to those interested in the political situation in Iran and the tense standoff regarding its nuclear program. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

This event is sponsored by HSI. Questions? Contact Matt (cohen5@fas)

Helen Cobban attributes the drumbeating for war at the Washington Post to individual insanity, but the combination of newspaper articles, broadcast news reports, and incitement throughout the organized Jewish community looks more methodical than mad.

[Note that the Boston Sunday Globe continued the scare-mongering with an article entitled Iran may be able to build A-bomb.]

BTW, here is more material on Small's efforts at Yale. Notice the focus on demonizing Iran, Islam, and Arabs as anti-Semitic.

Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective

Anti-Judaism, or the controversial term coined in the 1870s by Wilhelm Marr, Antisemitism, is one of the most complex and, at times, perplexing forms of hatred. It spans history, infecting different societies, religious and philosophical movements, and even civilizations. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, some contend that Antisemitism illustrates the limitations of the Enlightenment and modernity itself. Manifestations of Antisemitism emerge in numerous ideological based narratives and the constructed identities of belonging and otherness such as race and ethnicity, nationalisms, and anti-nationalisms.

This seminar series, co-sponsored with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, aims to explore this subject matter in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary framework from an array of approaches and perspectives as well as regional contexts. Eminent scholars and researchers are invited to present seminar papers in an informal setting. To enhance the level of discussion, papers will be made available online one week prior to the seminar.

The Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective seminar series meets on Thursdays from 4:15-5:45 p.m. at ISPS, 77 Prospect Street, Room A002 OR Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, Room 101 OR 102.

Organizer: Charles Small, Director, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA).

Contact for information: Lauren Clark, (203) 432-5239

Links to current papers are provided by clicking on the speaker's name when underlined.

Archived seminar papers and videos:2008-2009 Seminar Series; 2007-2008 Seminar Series 2006-2007 Seminar Series 2005-2006 Seminar Series

Seminar Series 2009-2010

Current Fall 2009 Semester

Oct. 1 ISPS A-002 Orly Rahimiyan PhD Candidate, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Ben-Gurion University; Phyllis Greenberg Heideman and Richard D. Heideman Fellow, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum "Representations of Jews in Revolutionary Iran" Oct. 1 TBA *7:45pm* Professor Jytte Klausen Professor, Comparative Politics, Brandeis University; Affiliate, Center for European Studies, Harvard University "Blasphemy and Inquiry: 'The Cartoons That Shook the World'" Oct. 7 SSS 114 *7:30pm* Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law Gloria Greenfield, Film Producer, Doc Emet Productions, Inc "The Case For Israel" - Free Public Screening Oct. 8 ISPS A-002 Brandon Friedman Research Fellow, Center for Iranian Studies, Tel Aviv University "Iran: Ideology and Foreign Policy, from Khomeini to Khamene'i" Oct. 15 LC 101 Professor Barry Rubin Director, Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA); Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya Israel “How the PLO 'Adapted' Antisemitism as 'Anti-Zionism'” Oct. 22 ISPS A-002 Jennifer Roskies Consultant, YIISA; PhD Candidate, Gender Studies, Bar Ilan University "Missing from the Map: Feminist Theory and the Omission of Jewish Women" Oct. 22 Luce Auditorium *7:30pm* Ben-Dror Yemini Editor, Maariv Daily Newspaper, Israel “The Industry of Lies: Myths and Facts regarding the Middle East Conflict” Oct. 29 LC 101 Shoaib Choudhury Journalist, Editor and Publisher, Weekly Blitz newspaper, Bangladesh "Hate Speech and Political Islam: Root Cause of Religious Extremism, Terrorism and Jihad" Paper Nov. 5 LC 101 Judge Hadassah Ben-Itto Honorary President, The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists "The 'Jewish Conspiracy': A Strategic Weapon to Demonize Jews and Delegitimize Israel" Nov. 12 ISPS A-002 Professor Ernest Sternberg Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Buffalo, SUNY "Purifying the World: What the Radical Anti-Empire Ideology Stands For" Nov. 19 LC 101 Professor Gregory Stanton Founder and President, Genocide Watch; James Farmer Professor in Human Rights, University of Mary Washington "Lecture Title TBA" Dec. 3 ISPS A-002 Dr. Florette Cohen, The College of Staten Island, CUNY Dr. Lee Jussim, Rutgers University "The New Antisemitism Israel Model: An Empirical Approach to Modern Antisemitism"

Spring Semester 2010

Jan. 21 ISPS A-002 Professor Robert Wistrich Director, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), Hebrew University, Jerusalem “The New Antisemitism” Jan. 28 Luce Auditorium Professor Michael Walzer Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) “A Conversation with Michael Walzer: The Implications of Contemporary Global Antisemitism” Feb 4 ISPS A-002 Dr. Diana Gregor European Affairs Associate/Political Analyst/Researcher, Réalité EU, New York “Austria's Marriage with Iran - Support for Nuclear Program Versus Historic Responsibility?” Feb. 18 ISPS A-002 Ayala Tamir Assistant Director, Kupferberg Holocaust Center, Queensborough Community College, CUNY “Architecture and Exhibition in Holocaust Centers: A Case Study” Mar. 4 ISPS A-002 Berthe Kayitesi PhD Candidate, University of Ottawa “Our World of Contradictions: Faces of a New Antisemitism, Denial of Genocide Against Tutsis in Rwanda and Never Again” Mar. 25 TBA Reuvan Paz Director, The Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM), The Gloria Center, The Interdiscpilinary Center Herzliya “Between Islamist Anti-Israelism and Anti-Judaism: Is There A Difference" Apr. 15 ISPS A-002 Professor Bryan Cheyette Chair, Modern Literature; Professor, School of English and American Literature, University of Reading, UK “Lecture Title TBA” Apr. 22 TBA Professor Asher Susser Senior Fellow, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Tel Aviv University; Senior Visiting Fellow, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University “Israel, Jordan and Palestine: One State, Two States or Three?”

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[Khaleej Times] The Business of Lobbying in American Politics

[Karin Friedemann] The Business of Lobbying in American Politics

Karin Friedemann

3 October 2009

A lot of aging leftists invite us to march in the streets. Some say, “Mass action will defeat the empire.” Will protesting stop war? Everyone who has been paying attention probably already knows that marching on Washington will not even disturb President Obama’s breakfast.

In fact, by causing havoc on the streets we actually distract the public’s attention from the real crimes taking place like AIPAC’s lobbying of Congress to bomb this or that country or like Haliburton’s pocketing of our tax money. Americans and their politicians need to understand that invading other countries hurts America. This approach is the only way to get the anti-war movement into the mainstream and away from the fringes of society.

The Israel Lobby has made sure the Zionist perspective permeates American discourse from grammar school through the highest levels of government. No child is too young for brainwashing.

An official diverging one iota gets 
his knees shot metaphorically. Holocaust Studies in the public school curriculum can start as early as Pre-K. Anyone that wants to discuss the role the Holocaust plays in US policy-making is an insane Holocaust denier. The Israel Lobby makes no distinction between national, transnational, and international politics.

Obama told AIPAC, “... the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and 
forever.” As long as Zionist subver-sives dictate to Obama, patriotic Americans will not make much headway in attempting a direct effort to change US policy. Activists need to change tactics by focusing on the danger that 
the Israel Lobby represents to the American political system and by attack-
ing the discourse on which the Israel Lobby stands.

The pro-Israel lobby operates on every level of American society. Holocaust propaganda serves to shield the most privileged group in America from just criticism of many of its members and of its collective conduct—especially in relation to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the destruction of America’s Constitutional liberties.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was one of the main proponents of the Patriot Act, which monitors the reading history of library patrons. Zionist organisations are heavily involved with Homeland Security and they use book banning and far worse methods to squelch criticism of Israel. While there is no limit to the amount of hate speech against Muslims or Christians that is tolerated now in the western world, the mere suggestion that Muslims and Christians should have equal rights with Jews in the Holy Land, or that the Hollywood version of the Holocaust is not entirely accurate, have in recent times resulted in the deportation, imprisonment, and even assassination of the speakers, writers, or publishers, and in the banning of their books or films because of Zionist pressure on western governments to abandon the principle of freedom of expression.

How about a turn-around in rhetoric? Instead of trying to make Americans care about Arabs—too hard—we need to increase their awareness that Jewish Lobby is undermining American democracy and costing taxpayers money. Since activists can destroy a movement if they dwell upon who the good guys are (there are various opinions), we should concentrate on what we can all agree on: The Lobby needs to be stopped. That’s the only way to stop war and war taxes. The Israel Lobby is the enemy of all Americans. I would suggest a public rhetoric campaign against all Israel lobbyists suggesting prison. It should be social suicide to participate with Hillel or other pro-Israel organizations training future lobbyists.

There are plenty of ways to address this issue in town meetings, parent-teacher conferences, and other mundane ways. Causing a huge stir at a Martin Luther King school assembly or sending a mass mailing to all the high school students will create a lot more word-of-mouth grassroots pressure than a protest in DC, which doesn’t even get discussed. We are at war because we allowed our country and our minds to be taken over by Zionists and other opportunists. We refused to take responsibility for our country or for our children’s education.

Every town has a web of pro-Israel groups that work together to undermine American democracy to promote their personal interests. Pro-peace advocates need to identify the Zionist individuals who are pushing their agenda in the local school system. As soon as you start engaging in anti-Israel activism, all the Israel lobbyists will come crawling out of the woodwork to try and discredit or stop you.

Once you know who these individuals are, then you will be able to protest directly to the local leadership and law enforcement specifically about those who are personally responsible for pushing Americans to die for Israeli interests. You probably know where they live. If Americans started talking to their neighbours we could probably stop this insanity.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women

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[Haaretz] Poles Apart and Historical Obliviousness

Before anything else I have to point that the story of the ger tzedek mentioned below is far more complex than the alleged conversion of a Polish nobleman to Judaism: THE LEGEND OF GER ZEDEK OF WILNO AS POLEMIC AND REASSURANCE.

The Haaretz story Poles Apart (reproduced below) suggests that neither ethnic Poles nor ethnic Ashkenazim have much grasp of historical Polish Jewish or ethnic Polish political economics.

The major defining characteristic of linked Jewish and Polish history in Commonwealth Poland was the role of the ethnic Ashkenazi community as the main mercantile-economic caste.

In divided Poland ethnic Ashkenazim served the Germans and Austrians as native collaborators.

In Russian Poland ethnic Ashkenazim wanted to act as native collaborators, but generally the Czarist government rebuffed them.

Once this simple point is grasped, the dynamic of interactions among ethnic Ashkenazim, ethnic Poles, Germans, Austrians, Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians is much more comprehensible.

In addition without a thorough understanding of modern Polish Jewish history in E. Europe, understanding modern Israeli Society is practically impossible.

For example, even though it is historical trivia, it says much about the nature of the New Yishuv (the Zionist colony in Palestine) that the most popular author among 1920s Zionist immigrants to Palestine was the Nobel prize winning Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, who was himself of Polish Tatar Muslim heritage.

Poles apart

By Yuval Ben Ami and Osnat Skoblinski

In a fortress overlooking the Polish town of Przemysl, 17 tourists listen to the entertaining tale of "the Good Soldier Schweik," who disappeared among the fortifications surrounding the city. The storyteller is Shulamit Wolner, a Polish-born Israeli. Her audience consists of colleagues, Israeli tour guides who lead groups of Israelis abroad and generally come to Poland with youth groups to see the Nazi death camps. This week-long trip, billed as "There Is a Polish Poland, too," is different. It is designed to familiarize the guides with a side of Poland that is not specifically connected to Judaism or the Holocaust. It is an annual trip, sponsored by the Polish Ministry of Tourism and the Polish Institute. Each year the visiting Israelis are brought to a different region of the country; this year it is the turn of southeast Poland. If there is one place where Polish and Jewish history are intertwined, it is in Przemysl, on the Ukrainian border. Before World War II almost half the population of the region's cities was Jewish. The Polish organizers do not ignore the connection, and make a point of adding synagogues and other Jewish and Holocaust-related sites to the itinerary of castles and museums. Nobody questions that there is a Polish Poland, but how that resonates for Israelis is another matter. "Did they dump Jewish bodies here?" asks one Israeli as they walk along the moat. No, she was told. "Then why did they bring us here?" Throughout the trip the Israelis try to demonstrate a polite patience for the Polish sites, all the while looking for things related to their own culture. In Kozlowka Castle, north of Lublin, they are distracted as they follow the guide past the painted portraits of members of the noble family of Zamoyski to the restored 19th-century kitchen. Only when they notice the wood-carved coat of arms of the Potocki family, to which the Zamoyskis were related by marriage, do their eyes light up. The Israelis know the name by virtue of the fact that one of the Potockis converted to Judaism, causing a rift in the family. A sawn-off branch on the coat of arms recalls the event, providing visual evidence of anti-Semitism among the old Polish nobility and suggesting its presence in Poland altogether. Sense of mission As the tour moves deeper into eastern Poland, the members of the group find less and less interest in Polish sites, and request Jewish ones instead. For example, on the one day in the itinerary when no Jewish sites are included, they insist on seeing the synagogues of every town they go through. In the end, instead of touring a factory for natural oils in the town of Krosno, they visit the synagogue of Rymanow; and by the end of the day, they have added three more synagogues and two Jewish cemeteries to their list. The group is not homogeneous, and its members have differing views on the trip's itinerary and on Poland itself. The differences become sharper when the discussion touches on guiding Jewish youth there. "I don't tell them what they should learn [from the experience] and what conclusions they should reach," says Ehud Pe'er. "They will take away what they can, each according to his or her own insights. But in general I hear three things from them: It should never happen again; Israel must exist; and it has to be strong." The Israelis are highly motivated and bring a sense of mission to the youth tours they guide. With one exception, they have all been doing the Israel-Poland route for years now. The itinerary always includes the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Warsaw Ghetto, and interchangeable sites like the Treblinka and Majdanek camps, or the Lodz Ghetto. Exceptions are made if one of the students has a special request, some site or an address with personal significance. What characterizes the Israeli who feels the need to inculcate the memory of the Holocaust? One of the group confesses that she reads no newspapers, and searches the Internet only for topics related to the Holocaust. Another speaks about the "Holocaust bug" that bit him and changed his life. The general feeling throughout the tour is far from morbid, however. The atmosphere on the bus is light-hearted and pleasant, and it is obvious that the group's members share something powerful, something historical. "There are personal aspects of this as well," explains Oren. "People often take on a responsibility like this because they have some unresolved issue - a family history, for example." Missed opportunity These tour leaders identify themselves first and foremost as Israelis, and only after as Jews. The Poles they meet do not make the distinction between Jewishness in Poland and the Israeli version; the Israelis view them as ignoramuses. The comment of a local guide at the Open Museum that "I have learned about Jews, and I expected 'Fiddler on the Roof'" meets with derision from members of the group. "If she wants to find out what Jews are, let her learn about the IDF," one of them says. The tours are long and arduous, the food is simple, and the group is on the road for some 12 hours a day. They only get to their hotel rooms in the evening, knowing that at 8 A.M. they have to be back on the bus. The Polish guides do not miss the name of a single nobleman buried in this or that crypt, but they are not accustomed to the Israeli style of flavoring their explanations with colorful stories and anecdotes. The Israelis, on the other hand, are an impressive source of original ideas. On this particular tour, however, their unique guiding abilities are secondary: What counts is their ability to listen. In light of reports about departures from the planned itinerary and cancellation of visits to Polish sites, the Polish Ministry of Tourism is considering suspending the "Polish Poland" program. Is the missed opportunity just an example of a characteristically Israeli lack of interest? Not necessarily. "Polish Poland," as per its Ministry of Tourism, is a string of formal gardens and open museums that present examples of rural architecture. Rzesznow, on the other hand, is an example of urban renewal, where the key is culture, creativity, a certain local chic and a sense of design, yet the visit there gets no further than a walk through underground chambers full of not-very-interesting historical artifacts. The most interesting aspect of contemporary Poland is its current renaissance. It is an exciting country, but the excitement lies far beyond the windows of the bus as it rolls along toward yet another night of too little sleep.

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Unending Jewish Delusions About Holocaust

Gabe Pressman's article entitled A Visit to Auschwitz That Ahmadinejad Will Never Make is such a classic of Jewish delusion that I am reproducing it below.

Despite Pressman's claim Ahmadinejad never denied the Holocaust, but the Iranian president definitely does want to open up a dialogue with the USA with regard to US Mideast policy.

Because a false conception of the Holocaust seems to be a controlling factor in US behavior toward Iran, Arabs, and Muslims, Ahmadinejad's desire to discuss the associated Jewish Zionist mythology is hardly illogical.

In any case, even if everything that Americans believed about the Holocaust were true, there is no reasonable ethical system in which Jews would be justified in stealing Palestine from the native population on the basis of Jewish suffering in Europe.

In addition, the absolute and relative numbers of Jews perpetrating mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide by the end of the 30s were far larger than those of similarly culpable Germans by the end of WW2. (See Jewish Peril 1933 versus 2009.)

If the government of Germany paid reparations to Jews and to the State of Israel for the actions of relatively few German Nazis, not only should Jews and the State of Israel have paid even larger reparations to the victims of a very large number of Jewish communists, but the world Zionist population should also be totally stripped of everything it owns to compensate the native Palestinian population and neighboring ME countries for the crimes of Zionism! In addition, the US should clawback at least $6 trillion from American Zionists for fraudulently manipulating the USA into supporting the State of Israel.

Not only is it total hubris and arrogance for Jewish Zionists to believe that the world owes them recognition of a bogus Jewish claim to Palestine because of the Holocaust, but Americans should certainly be discussing the removal of Zionist interlopers from Palestine as a means to restore American moral stature.

Anyway, after Pressman's essay I have included a comment previously posted in World War: 1939, 2009 because it remains especially relevant as Obama's ME policy becomes more and more Zionist.

A Visit to Auschwitz That Ahmadinejad Will Never Make

By GABE PRESSMAN

Updated 10:28 AM EDT, Fri, Sep 25, 2009

Getty Images

It was a bitterly cold day in January 1948. I can never forget it.

A former inmate of Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi extermination camps, was leading the way. We walked over the frozen ground through the gate bearing the words in large letters: "Arbeit Macht Frei." (Work Makes You Free).

The words themselves were a mockery of the poor souls who lived there for a brief time before being gassed to death in the execution chambers.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rants about the Holocaust never having happened I think of this cold day in Poland. And I remember how angry I was as I saw evidence of Nazi efficiency and cruelty in this supreme death factory.

My guide, who was wearing a tattered American military coat and limping, was very matter of fact as he showed me the evidence. We visited the barracks buildings where hundreds of thousands were held. When the Russians were advancing late in the war, the Nazis had to flee in a hurry. They left behind many remnants of the lives that were taken there.

One building held thousands of clumps of women's hair, shaved off the heads of victims after they were gassed. It was part of the Auschwitz routine to ship this hair back to Germany to be used in the manufacture of mattresses. In one large barracks building were mounds of shoes, taken from the victims' feet before death, the guide told me.

There were men's shoes and women's shoes and children's shoes -- a sad testimony to what happened here.

Few Americans, at that time, fully realized the extent of the tragedy, the systematic killing that happened. I was so stunned -- and furious -- that I decided to take home some souvenirs. I had a paper bag and, in it, I placed some woman's hair that still smelled faintly from Zyklon, the gas that killed her, and a baby's shoe.

Later, outside, the guide explained that when the ovens got too full toward the end of the war, bodies were burned out here in ditches. He got on his knees and started digging with his hands, pulling out a silver-capped tooth. And, I, obsessed with the idea of recording this moment, started digging too. I came up with a few chips of bone.

The guide said, "Because of all the bodies buried underneath, this is probably some of the richest soil in Europe."

In another building, we found hundreds of suitcases with addresses stenciled on them. Sadly, the people to be executed had brought some of their belongings to Auschwitz because they had been told they should be prepared to stay a while.

I remember all the features of this horrible place, including the railroad tracks that led right to the center of the camp. Some of the victims were housed in barracks buildings and put to work for a while. Others went directly from the trains to the gas chambers. They were told to undress so they could take a shower. Then the rooms were sealed and the gas poured out and killed them.

When I got back to the press hotel in Germany a few days later, I had to confront somebody so I picked on the room clerk. He was a handsome, ex-Luftwaffe officer about my age.

I poured the contents of the bag on the reception desk. And he blurted out in a heavy German accent, ''We didn't know about these things!"

I got similar reactions from other Germans until I dumped the contents of the bag on the bedspread and my cleaning lady saw what was there and started to cry. She obviously understood about these things.

After I told her about the experience, my mother wrote me from New York: "I don't give a damn what your hatred of the Germans will do to them. I do care very much what it will do to you."

Sixty years have passed. I have marveled at the transformation in Germany, where the younger generations have, for the most part, expressed regret for what happened and the major political leaders have spoken out against the Holocaust and what happened in their country.

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has denounced the Iranian president for his "anti-Semitic rants."

He commended those who walked out on Ahmadinejad. And then added dramatically, "To those who gave this Holocaust denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?"

The Polish government has made a museum, a shrine out of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. It would be wonderful if the UN could ship Ahmadinejad there -- just for a day, just long enough to see evidence of the crimes he denies. It's just a fantasy, of course, but wouldn't it be great to put this bum on a plane to Cracow and have him go there, to proclaim, again, on the soil of Poland, that it never happened?

The h-event is being used to strenghten the relationship

by Kenneth Sorensen on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 2:29pm

Quote:I thought about posting something about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's most recent fit of Holocaust denial, but Juan Cole said everything

You Americans really ought to forget everything that has got to do with socalled holocaust.* Typically of you Americans you got to know the term from a television series. Churchill, Eisenhower and De Gaulle have between them written tens of thousands of pages about WW2 without ever mentioning the word. You Americans are smart, and Walt is one of your finest. Surely you have grasped why some people want you to pay disproportionate homage to this event, which affected only a small part of all those killed in WW2. [The reality is, of course, that it is always a perilous situation to be a minority in a dictatorship, and being disliked by that dictatorship. And there is very little outside forces can do about it] It is used to generate sympathy towards Israel, and to lend moral justifications to Israels actions, and to lessen the crimes that Israel has committed towards the indigenous population of Palestine. You Americans learned the term in the 70'ties, at the same time as your help [in the form of gifts, not loans (See Mearsheimer & Walt: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy)] increased 6 times following the October War, and Israel from 1976 onwards became the biggest recipient of US foreign aid (ie. gifts). Actually Mearsheimer and Walt quotes a scholar, who says the relationsship from then on got the character of an alliance. And in this alliance this h-event has got a role of....a thing that can keep the two together and alligned. When the Cold war ended, Israel felt it needed a new glue for the relationsship, and it chose radical Islam - and by implication Iran - as the new enemy. But it has made sure that the h-event still features prominently by directing education programmes [Mind you, to a people that have zero guilt in the persecution of Jews in Europe], and building museums in the very Capital of the free world.

_____________________

Ad.* )

When the Iranian President speaks on the subject it should be seen as a Middle Eastern protest, that racism in Europe has led to a country that spurs racism on natives of the region. The Arbas and the Iranians have zero to do with the h-event, and it is written nowhere that they should show any particular respect to it. Why should they? To them other more recent events in their area looms far larger.

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[wvns] FBI manipulating Patriot Act debate

To put the report below in perspective, one must remember that the FBI has been thoroughly subverted by Jewish Zionist operatives like Matthew Levitt.

ACLU: FBI ‘manipulating’ debate on Patriot Act reform

By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 -- 1:38 pm

The FBI is abusing the powers given to it under the Patriot Act in a way that is stifling the current debate about reforming that law, says the American Civil Liberties Union.

"The FBI continues to use the gag order provision of the Patriot Act's national security letter (NSL) statute to suppress key information about the agency's misuse of NSLs," the group said in a statement released Wednesday.

National security letters (NSLs), created under the Patriot Act security bill that was passed in the aftermath of 9/11, allow the FBI to demand sensitive information about users of facilities like libraries and Internet service providers, and then bar those organizations from revealing that the order was ever given.

The ACLU's claim comes weeks after Senate Democrats introduced the Justice Act, an omnibus security bill its authors, including Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), say is designed to protect civil rights threatened by the Patriot Act.

Several elements of the Patriot Act are set to expire at the end of the year. The Obama administration has backed the renewal of three of those elements.

The ACLU says the FBI's continued use of gag orders is making it impossible for the public to evaluate how national security letters have been used, and what needs to be done to fix them.

The group is challenging the NSLs in a lawsuit known as Doe V. Holder, in which an Internet service provider is fighting the gag order placed on it by the FBI, in a case it says was misuse of government power. Because of the gag order, very few details are known about the case. The public does not know who the Internet provider is, or what the gag order is related to.

In 2008, a federal court of appeals ruled that the FBI could not maintain the gag order without giving the court a justification for it. Earlier this year, the Obama administration decided not to challenge that ruling, and the FBI complied by handing over a justification.

But, as Jon Stokes reported at Ars Technica, the FBI reported to the judge in secret. Not even the defendants knew what justification the FBI gave for demanding information from the Internet provider. The ACLU challenged that in court, and the court allowed parts of the FBI's justification to be made public.

"One of the legal documents recently made public reveals that the FBI continues to use the gag order to prohibit the disclosure of an 'attachment' to the NSL Doe received that, if disclosed, would show that the FBI tried to obtain records that it was not entitled to obtain under the NSL statute," the ACLU says.

"The FBI's misuse of its gag power continues to prevent NSL recipients like Doe – who have the best first-hand knowledge of the FBI's use and abuse of NSL power – from participating in the Patriot Act debate in Congress," ACLU staff attorney Melissa Goodman said in the ACLU's statement.

"The gag power has allowed the FBI to manipulate the debate, to suppress evidence of its misuse of the NSL power, and to deprive Congress and the public of important information it needs to inform whether these intrusive surveillance and gag powers should be reformed."

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