Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday 29 September 2013


NEWS AND COMMENT

Robert A. Pape - Foreign Policy
... New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Although this pattern began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s, a wealth of new data presents a powerful picture. More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago's Project on Security and Terrorism ... The first step is recognizing that occupations in the Muslim world don't make Americans any safer -- in fact, they are at the heart of the problem.
Philip Giraldi
... Meanwhile, it is damned clever of the Israelis to make the peace talks go away, while simultaneously shooting unarmed Palestinian demonstrators and announcing the building of 1,500 new houses on the West Bank. It almost makes someone suspect that they might have been somehow behind the apparent use of chemicals on Syrian civilians since they also provided the intelligence implicating the Syrian government and sure are pushing hard for the United States to "do something" about al-Assad. That is called narrative shifting. Having a little war going on in the neighborhood is not half bad if you are up to no good yourself.
Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP Murray N. Rothbard
… The quantity and scope of his productive output would alone stamp Harry Elmer Barnes as a memorable scholar, but this alone barely begins to scratch the surface of how remarkable a man he was. For he was that rarity among scholars: a passionately committed man. It was not enough for Harry to discover and set forth the truth; he must also work actively and whole-heartedly in the world on behalf of that truth … Like Beard and Flynn, Barnes found himself hounded by former friends and colleagues and denounced as a "Nazi" merely for cleaving to the liberal and pro-peace principles which all alike had shared a few short months before.
Dan Spielberg
… Revisionism continued to be suppressed and obscured for most of the rest of Barnes' life, but before he passed away in late 1968 he had the gratifying experience of seeing revisionism make something of a come-back among the New Left who were beginning to criticize American war-making in general and not just the Vietnam war. I think it can be safely stated that if the foreign policy advocated by those such as Harry Elmer Barnes had been followed, we would not be in the dire situation we are in today, with the U.S. military occupying Iraq and preparing to take Iran …
The Guardian (Britain)
… The “London Cage” was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery. As horrific as conditions were at the London Cage, Bad Nenndorf was far worse … Prisoners were systematically beaten and exposed to extreme cold, where some were starved to death and, allegedly, tortured with instruments that his fellow countrymen had recovered from a Gestapo prison in Hamburg.
Maurice Bardèche
Bardèche’s Nuremberg or the Promised Land (Nuremberg ou la Terre Promise) was the first book-length critique of the Nuremberg Trial. This pioneering work was first published in Paris in 1948. For a Frenchman to criticize that trial in those years, and especially the French role in it, took great courage. For having written this book, the author was sentenced by a Paris court to one year in prison and fined 50,000 francs. (However, he served only a few weeks behind bars before being pardoned.) Copies of the book were seized and sale of the work was prohibited.
Karen Kwiatkowski and Mark Weber - American Forum – Audio
In this hard-hitting, hour-long broadcast, host Karen Kwiatkowski and Mark Weber discuss historical revisionism, US-Israel relations, the background of US support for Israel, including Pres. Truman's fateful decision to recognize the new Zionist state, and the corruption of politicians who put their careers ahead of US and world interests. Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., is a retired US Air Force Lt. Colonel who was with the Pentagon's Near East/ South Asia bureau, and worked on policy papers for the Secretary of Defense. She was assigned to the Pentagon's "Office of Special Plans," which promoted war with Iraq.
Maysam Behravesh - Foreign Policy in Focus
... Belying the blustery rhetoric about Iran’s supposed preoccupation with martyrdom, Israeli leaders constantly imagine themselves in the shoes of their Iranian counterparts and invariably conclude that it is only rational for the Islamic Republic to acquire the bomb ... That crude logic also characterizes how Israelis view Iran’s atomic venture. Put simply, if Tel Aviv had been in Tehran’s place, it would have done everything within its means to go fully nuclear. And indeed, it did: Israel remains the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East ... Apparently, nothing short of a powerless and pliant Iran under a different regime will pacify Israel.
The New York Times
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ramped up pressure on the White House on Sunday [July 14] to put the buildup of Iran’s nuclear program ahead of other crises in the Middle East, complaining of a lack of urgency on the issue and saying that the Obama administration must demonstrate “by action” to Iran’s newly elected president that “the military option which is on the table is truly on the table.” ... Mr. Netanyahu said those demands “should be backed up with ratcheted sanctions,” adding, “They have to know you’ll be prepared to take military action; that’s the only thing that will get their attention.”
Eric M. Uslaner - The Center for American Progress
Rising inequality over the past decades led Americans to lose faith in some key aspects of the “American Dream” of a future that will inevitably be better than the past ... Between 1973 and 1994 (the first and last times these questions were asked in a major national survey) the share of Americans who believed that the “lot of the average person is getting worse” rose from 56 percent to 69 percent ... Between 1968 and 2006 the share of Americans who believed that “most people can be trusted” fell from 56 percent to 34 percent. ... In 1968, 63 percent of Americans believed that the government in Washington could be trusted to do the right thing, but only 14 percent agreed in 2008.
Franklin Lamb
... Talking with average Iranians and shop keepers, and especially students, one gets a fairly good idea of just how engaged public opinion is in Iran on current events. It offers a very different picture than that presented by the western media ... One finds also among Iranians a smoldering anger over the current chemical weapons ‘red line’ issue in Syria, along with an awareness that this may well lead to regional war. The American campaign to bomb Syria is viewed here as utmost American governmental hypocrisy ... Given the Islamic Republic’s role as a key pillar of resistance to the Zionist occupation of Palestine and US-Israel regional hegemonic goals, few here, if any, believe the US attack on Syria is not aimed at them.
The New York Times
... In its most recent census, Germany discovered it had lost 1.5 million inhabitants. By 2060, experts say, the country could shrink by an additional 19 percent, to about 66 million. Demographers say a similar future awaits other European countries, and the issue grows more pressing every day as Europe’s seemingly endless economic troubles accelerate the decline. But bogged down with failed banks and dwindling budgets, few are in any position to do anything about it.
The Guardian (Britain)
The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow ... “The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.
James Petras
... If we want to identify and understand the minority, which secures its own militarist agenda in the White House and Congress against the majority of Americans, it is clearly marked by its swaggering, consistent and intrusive presence. It is a smaller, more cohesive new version of the’ 1%’-- and best described as the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) ... With Obama’s fall, we learn that the mass media are not all powerful and that Israel’s smiling well-wishers among the elite will not cool their insatiable appetite for power even though they comprise a tiny 1% minority. The majority can bring down the regime. The question is: Can they create an alternative?
Uri Avnery (Israel)
... One of the problems is that absolutely nobody knows what Netanyahu really wants. Perhaps not even he. The Prime Minister is now the loneliest person in Israel. He has no friends. He trusts nobody, and nobody around him trusts him. His colleagues in the Likud leadership quite openly despise him, regarding him as a man of no principles, without a backbone, giving in to every pressure ... There is not the slightest indication of any peace orientation. Quite the contrary. Our government is using the new “peace process” as a smoke screen behind which the settlement bulldozer is working full time.
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Legislation that would make Holocaust-denial committed overseas an offense under Israeli legal jurisdiction was approved unanimously in first reading by the Knesset on Tuesday [July 20, 2004]. The passage of the measure would enable Israel to demand the extradition of Holocaust-deniers for prosecution. The bill was drafted by MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) as a move against former Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) for his doctoral dissertation 20 years ago in which he estimated that the Nazis killed less than a million Jews ... The legislation expands the territorial jurisdiction of the Israeli law against Holocaust-denying outside of it borders.
Mark Weber – Audio recording
A major factor in America’s ever more obvious decline, says Weber in this insightful, informed and vigorously presented talk, is that the guiding ideologies and operative historical narratives of both conservatives and liberals are fundamentally defective. The often-repeated boast of American “exceptionalism,” he says, is not just ignorant and arrogant, it’s dangerous. Address given at an IHR meeting.
Jeremy Kuzmarov – History News Network
... History provides grounds for skepticism about the Obama administration's claims. Many wars in U.S. history have been fought on fraudulent pretexts, with the government stage-managing events that provided a rationale for intervention. ... The most famous case of the US going to war under fraudulent pretexts is the Spanish-American Cuban War after the McKinley administration charged the Spanish with sinking an American battleship, the Maine, near Havana harbor following an explosion on deck. It is likely the explosion however was caused by a fire, not the Spanish, and sunk on its own.
Thomas E. Woods
In April 1898 the United States went to war with Spain for the stated purpose of liberating Cuba from Spanish control. Several months later, when the war had ended, Cuba had been transformed into an American protectorate, and Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines had become American possessions… That American forces were engaged in a colonial war to suppress another people's independence led to a great deal of soul-searching among important American thinkers, writers, and journalists. What eventually became the American Anti-Imperialist League began at a June 1898 meeting at Boston's Faneuil Hall…
Beyond 50 Radio - Podcast
In this focused, hour-long broadcast, IHR director Mark Weber and host Daniel Davies review the long record of deceit by American presidents to generate public support for war, and the complicity of politicians and the media in this deceit. Weber looks at the lies of George W. Bush and other high-ranking US officials for the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq, President Johnson's campaign of deceit to build support for the Vietnam war, and President Franklin Roosevelt's fear-mongering campaign for war against Germany and Japan.
Daily Mail (Britain)
... Leading one of the most astonishing double lives in history, King was not just the Bible-thumping champion of the rights of man, but also an inveterate womaniser who cheated on his wife throughout their marriage ... Though it is beyond question that King was charismatic, tireless and courageous, it is also indisputably true that this brilliant man had a seamier side, as one of Dr King’s closest associates confirmed ... Abernathy related an extraordinary story that indicated King spent the last night of his life enjoying the attentions of not one but two lovers, followed by an encounter with a third woman whom he knocked sprawling across his motel room bed.
Video
Six days after the end of World War II in Europe, this color footage was taken of the war-ravaged, Soviet-occupied German capital city. This five minute color video, which includes aerial shots, shows a city in ruins. Editing and background music by “Romano Archives.”
 
J. P. Sottile – Antiwar. com
... When it’s time to fire up the Great American Fear Factory for another “lobbying blitz” and bellicose “product launch,” America’s policymakers conjure up the darkest star of human history. They say “Hitler.” Saddam Hussein? Say “Hitler.” Slobodan Milosevic? Say “Hitler.” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Say “Hitler.” And now, as if on cue, Secretary of State John Kerry said “Hitler.” Faced with sparse domestic and international support for launching expensive cruise missiles into the middle of a civil war, Kerry re-booted the Hitler franchise by comparing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to history’s first name in unchecked evil ... Evoking Hitler is the foreign policy equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.
The Economist (Britain)
Across the globe, schoolchildren study the industrialised slaughter of Jews by the Nazis. Holocaust museums in America, Israel and Poland each draw more than a million visitors annually. The UN has passed two resolutions in the past decade to institutionalise memory of the Holocaust worldwide. Yad Vashem, an Israeli museum and remembrance authority, trains 10,000 domestic and foreign teachers every year ... Membership of the Association of Holocaust Organisations (AHO) has increased from 25 in the late 1980s to over 300. Commemorative museums have opened from Germany and France to Brazil and Japan. Of the 16,000 books on the Holocaust listed in America’s Library of Congress, more than two-thirds were published in the past two decades.
The Independent (Britain)
Scotland Yard was given the names of British agents who allegedly murdered the Nazi Rudolf Hess in the infamous Spandau Prison but was advised by prosecutors not to pursue its investigations, according to a newly-released police report. Written two years after Hess’s death in 1987, the classified document outlines a highly-sensitive inquiry into the claims of a British surgeon who had once treated Adolf Hitler’s deputy that, rather than taking his own life, the elderly Nazi was killed on British orders to preserve wartime secrets.
The Voice of Russia – Interview
... Gabor Vona the leader of Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) talks about the crisis of globalized capitalism, the Syrian conflict and the struggle against the US-controlled world order / ... Globalized capitalism is in fact an economic-political world order controlled by the United States, which imposes its own rules of the game (liberal democracy, free trade, multinational capital, international bank networks, liberal cultural policy) on the rest of the world ... The American empire is trying to spread an order that was sick and distorted in the first place ... Today's "Rome", the USA, spreads a subhuman culture which has nothing but economic interests.
Robert W. Merry - The National Interest
President Obama’s June 13 decision to send light weapons and ammunition to Syrian rebels reflects a fundamental reality in the dialectic of American foreign policy. Within this administration and indeed throughout official Washington, humanitarian interventionism is the inevitable default position for policy makers and political insiders. There is no intellectual counterweight emanating from either party that poses a significant challenge to this powerful idea that America must act to salve the wounds of humanity wherever suffering is intense and prospects for a democratic emergence are even remotely promising.
L. Sweet – Chicago Sun Times
The maternal roots of presidential hopeful Sen. John Forbes Kerry (D-Mass.) go back to colonial Massachusetts. What Kerry did not know was that his paternal grandfather, born Fritz Kohn, came to Chicago from Europe and quickly became a successful businessman. ... Kerry only learned last month from a Boston Globe reporter that his grandfather was Jewish and that he committed suicide in 1921 in a Boston hotel washroom. Kerry learned about 15 years ago that his paternal grandmother, Ida Lowe, a Catholic convert, was born Jewish.
Moral Politics – Video
Henry Herskowitz, a pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist peace activist of Jewish ancestry, talks frankly about Jewish power in this 28 minute conversation with Bill Alford, host of the Seattle community-access show, Moral Politics. Contrary to what many believe, says Herskowitz, the problem of Zionism is rooted in the Jewish outlook. Jewish power, he also says, is not directed by a central group or cabal. Jews do not need a manipulating center to act as they do. Similarly, he says, a swarm of locusts acts in a concerted way without central direction.
Steven Malanga - City Journal
... Just a few years ago, most experts estimated that state and local governments owed about $2.5 trillion, mostly in the form of municipal bonds and other debt securities. But late last year, the States Project, a joint venture of Harvard’s Institute of Politics and the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government, projected that if you also count promises made to retired government workers and money borrowed without taxpayer approval, the figure might be higher than $7 trillion.
Paul Pillar - The National Interest
... A broader and more general way of posing the question the U.S. Congress now faces is: does the United States want to follow its powerful and privileged Israeli client on a path that not only brushes aside international law, international organization, and the peaceful pursuit of international objectives but also entails perpetual warfare, much isolation, and all of the costs and risks that go with that? ... Netanyahu's incessant saber-rattling on Iran is increasing the chance of the United States going to war against Syria, which in turn would increase his ability to sell a future U.S. war against Iran. That game works well for Netanyahu. It is an awful game for the United States.
Gary Hart
Some truths about the use of force: one, it is easier to start than to finish; two, public support for military operations wanes quickly; three, force is not a policy; fourth, military operations always have unintended consequences. A solution to the massive tragedy of the Syrian civil war will not arise from a foreign-policy establishment banging on about the need to “do something.” ... Unless we want to kill a great many people, and remain in Syria for much longer than in Iraq or Afghanistan, we cannot determine the outcome of this civil war. In neighboring Lebanon, a similar war raged for almost two decades ... The use of force is not a policy; it is a substitute for policy.
Philip Giraldi
... So AIPAC and the other components of the Israel Lobby, which are marching in lock step on this issue, are basically advocating a series of wars in which the United States will do the fighting and dying to make the world safe for Israel. They have chosen to go on the offensive over the issue of Syria to head off any developing peace agenda ... If congress eventually approves the Obama program, now temporarily on hold, it will be because it fears AIPAC more than it does the voters in this country ... If the United States is ever again to be free of the danger posed by well-funded special interests like AIPAC it must first recognize that it has a problem and then take steps to find a remedy.
Daily Mail (Britain)
These are the never-before-seen pictures of the Auschwitz commandant's daughter as a young fashion model before she moved to the U.S. where she succeeded in keeping her dark family secret for 40 years. Brigitte Höss, whose father Rudolf was in charge of the deadliest of the Nazi regime's concentration camps, smiles for the camera during what is thought to have been the early days of her Balenciaga modelling career. Now aged 80 and dying of cancer, she has revealed the full extent of what is a remarkable story in her first ever interview. Living in anonymous retirement in Northern Virginia, Höss, who gave an interview to the Washington Post, fears for her life should her identity ever be revealed.
The Washington Post
That Rudolf Höss’s daughter lives in Northern Virginia is not the only family story kept secret. ... When I point out that her father confessed to being responsible for the death of more than a million Jews, she says the British “took it out of him with torture.” “And your father, how do you remember him?” I ask. “He was the nicest man in the world,” she says. “He was very good to us.” She remembers them eating together, playing in the garden, and reading the story of Hansel and Gretel. Brigitte is convinced that her father was a sensitive man, and had guessed that he was involved with something bad. “I’m sure he was sad inside,” she recalls.
Robert Faurisson
Rudolf Höss was the first of three successive commandants of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is often called "the Commandant of Auschwitz," and the general public knows of him from a book published under the title Commandant in Auschwitz. He appeared before the [Nuremberg] International Military Tribunal as a witness on April 15, 1946, where his deposition caused a sensation. … He estimated that at Auschwitz 3,000,000 people had been exterminated, 2,500,000 of them by means of gas chambers. His confessions were false. They had been extorted from Höss by torture …
RT (Russia)
In his typically fervent and articulate style, British parliamentarian George Galloway speaks out against the Obama administration’s push for a US military attack against Syria. In discussion with RT host Abby Martin, Galloway stresses the US government’s brazen hypocrisy and utter disregard for principle. Runtime: 14 mins.
 
PolicyMic (New York)
Washington doesn't merely lack the legal authority for a military intervention in Syria. It lacks the moral authority. We're talking about a government with a history of using chemical weapons against innocent people far more prolific and deadly than the mere accusations Assad faces from a trigger-happy Western military-industrial complex, bent on stifling further investigation before striking. Here is a list of ten chemical weapons attacks carried out by the U.S. government or its allies against civilians.
The Associated Press
The income gap between the richest one percent and the rest of America widened to a record last year. The top one percent of U.S. earners collected 19.3 percent of household income in 2012, their largest share in Internal Revenue Service figures going back a century. U. S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. But until last year, the top one percent's share of pre-tax income had not yet surpassed the 18.7 percent it reached in 1927, according to an analysis of IRS figures dating to 1913 by economists ...
Rodney Martin and Mark Weber – Podcast
The dispute that triggered the conflict in Sept. 1939 was over the status of the ethnically German city-state of Danzig, which had been detached from Germany in 1919. Poland’s leaders, backed by Britain, rejected Hitler’s demand for self-determination and freedom for the Germans of Danzig and the “Corridor” region of Poland. Britain, with secret US backing, made the Danzig dispute a pretext for war. In this fact-packed podcast, historian Weber and host Martin also speak about Pres. Roosevelt’s secretive, illegal efforts to foment war in Europe, as well as German-Polish relations during the 1930s, Britain’s duplicity in its treatment of Poland, and more. Runtime: 71 mins.
George Monbiot - The Guardian (Britain)
... Obama's failure to be honest about his nation's record of destroying international norms and undermining international law, his myth-making about the role of the US in world affairs, and his one-sided interventions in the Middle East, all render the crisis in Syria even harder to resolve. Until there is some candour about past crimes and current injustices, until there is an effort to address the inequalities over which the US presides, everything it attempts – even if it doesn't involve guns and bombs – will stoke the cynicism and anger the president says he wants to quench.
WHDT 9 - Video
Historian and former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer speaks with experience and insight on the push for deeper US involvement in the Syria conflict. He emphasizes the central role of the American Jewish community and the Jewish-Israel lobby in the Washington in pressing for a US military strike against Syria. There is no authentic American interest in plunging into the Syria conflict, he says in this 20 minute interview. Instead, US policy in the Middle East is driven by concern for Israel’s interests. The US Congress, he says, is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby and the Jewish community.
Stephen Zunes – Truthout
... Here are some of the top talking points that should be raised before members of Congress as to why authorizing US airstrikes on Syria would be a bad idea: 1) A US military attack would be illegal ... 2) There is little strategic rationalization ... 3) Military intervention likely would lead to more death and destruction ... 4) The US has little credibility regarding chemical weapons ... 5) A military attack likely would strengthen the Syrian regime ... 6) A military strike likely would reduce the chances of successfully ending the war ... 7) The United States is isolated in the international community ... 8) The American public opposes military intervention in Syria ...
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Despite the Obama administration’s supposedly “high confidence” regarding Syrian government guilt over the Aug. 21 chemical attack near Damascus, a dozen former U.S. military and intelligence officials are telling President Obama that they are picking up information that undercuts the Official Story / ... Contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this.
McClatchy
The Obama administration’s public case for attacking Syria is riddled with inconsistencies and hinges mainly on circumstantial evidence, undermining U.S. efforts this week to build support at home and abroad for a punitive strike against Bashar Assad’s regime. The case Secretary of State John Kerry laid out last Friday contained claims that were disputed by the United Nations, inconsistent in some details with British and French intelligence reports or lacking sufficient transparency for international chemical weapons experts to accept at face value.
Los Angeles Times
In a parking lot behind a Pico Boulevard building, inside a makeshift tent made of metal poles and tarps, a man in a white coat and black skullcap grabs a white-feathered hen under the wings and performs an ancient ritual. He circles the chicken in the air several times and recites a prayer for a woman standing nearby whose aim is to symbolically transfer her sins to the bird. The young man then uses a sharp blade to cut the hen's throat. ... But the practice is increasingly drawing the ire of animal rights activists, and some liberal Jews, who say the custom is inhumane, paganistic and out of step with modern times

IHR NEWS AND VIEWS

By Mark Weber
In a remarkable but under-reported address, Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that the “immense” and “outsized” Jewish role in the US mass media and cultural life has been the single most important factor in shaping American attitudes over the past century, and in driving major cultural- political changes. “Jewish heritage has shaped who we are – all of us - as much or more than any other factor in the last 223 years. And that’s a fact," Biden told a gathering of Jewish leaders in Washington, DC.
By Harry Elmer Barnes
... Unless and until we can break through the historical blackout, now supported even by public policy, and enable the peoples of the world to know the facts concerning international relations during the last quarter of a century, there can be no real hope for the peace, security and prosperity which the present triumphs of science and technology could make possible. The well-being of the human race, if not its very survival, is very literally dependent on the triumph of revisionism.
By Mark Weber
In recent years prominent American politicians and other influential public figures have spoken repeatedly of the alleged danger of Iran’s nuclear program, and have again and again threatened war against this Middle East nation of 75 million ... How real is this “threat”? How dangerous is Iran? What’s behind the campaign for war? And what does all this mean for Americans? In fact, the so-called Iran “crisis” is artificial ... Often ignored amid the clamor for war are the sober warnings of informed scholars, historians, specialists, analysts, and military leaders, who point out some basic, key facts: Iran is not building nuclear weapons, Iran is not a threat to the US ... War is not the answer. What’s needed instead is a bold new reality-based approach toward Iran.
Institute for Historical Review
At an IHR meeting in southern California, three seasoned speakers provided informed perspective on Iran and Iranian society, the threats of war by Israel and the US, the impact of the US-organized sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic, and the prospects for military conflict. Paul Sheldon Foote, a California professor with years of experience in the Middle East, and Art Olivier, a filmmaker and former mayor in southern California, joined IHR director Mark Weber at the spirited gathering.
By Robert John -- Institute for Historical Review
The Balfour Declaration may be the most extraordinary document produced by any government in world history. It took the form of a letter from the government of the largest empire the world has even known to an international financier of the banking house of Rothschild who had been made a peer of the realm … Malcolm's belief in the Balfour Declaration as a means of bringing the United States into the war was confirmed by Samuel Landman, secretary to the Zionist leaders Weizmann and Sokolow, and later secretary of the World Zionist Organization.
By Mark Weber
... The ever more obvious symptoms of social decay are inevitable in a nation as unhealthy as today’s America. We understand that a nation guided by false principles, wishful thinking and unrealistic notions about society and history cannot and will not survive ... On this anniversary of American independence, it is altogether fitting that we recall the sacrifices and the outlook of the men who acted boldly out of principle, and risked everything in following the dictate of their conscience.
By Mark Weber
Writers, filmmakers and scholars from the US, France, Italy and other countries, together with Iranian cinema specialists, journalists, officials and others, gathered in north Tehran for a four-day “Hollywoodism” conference to critically examine the often harmful social-political impact of the US film industry, and to discuss how to counter it ... During this visit I gained a greater understanding of this ancient but vibrant nation of 75 million, which Israel and its allies in the US have demonized and threatened with military attack.
By Mark Weber – Institute for Historical Review
This past year has been one of our most productive and influential ever. It included talks to audiences in Canada, the US and Iran ... My nine-day visit to Iran also included a guest appearance on an influential prime-time public affairs television show, a meeting with the country’s president ... We produced, distributed and posted more than 30 podcasts by me on a range of historical topics and current affairs issues ... In April we launched a re-designed IHR website, with a “cleaner” and more modern look.
Institute for Historical Review - Video
Mark Weber explains why the work of the IHR in countering the forces of historical deceit, bigotry and cultural distortion is vitally important. An awareness of factual history is essential to an understanding of ourselves and the great issues of our age, says the IHR director in this five-minute presentation. Unless and until the interests that have gripped our nation are clearly identified and discredited, he says, there will be no change in basic policies or direction.
Mark Weber
... Even many of those who readily acknowledge the tremendous influence of American film and television seem not to fully comprehend the formidable scope of the power behind Hollywood, or the outlook and agenda of those who wield that power ... Hollywood, together with the rest of the Jewish-Zionist dominated US media, sensationalizes and distorts current events, systematically falsifies history, promotes debased “entertainment” and perverse cultural standards, and makes possible the Jewish-Zionist hold on American political life ...
By Grace Halsell
American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? ... The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere -- among those who support Israel but don't really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel - and Zionism - often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
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Institute for Historical Review
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, based in Los Angeles, is one of the most influential Jewish organizations in the world ... Although it claims to promote "tolerance," and makes a pretense of concern for humanity, the Center's real agenda is a narrowly Jewish-Zionist one. The Wiesenthal Center is a staunch supporter of Israel and its Jewish supremacist regime. It fervently defends Israel’s policies of oppression, occupation, dispossession, and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews.
By Martin Brech
... In Andernach about 50,000 [German] prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement ... I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty.
By Robert Morgan
Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War to free the slaves. While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad.
By Friedrich Stieve
Germany's enemies maintain today [1940] that Adolf Hitler is the greatest disturber of peace known to history, that he threatens every nation with sudden attack and oppression, that he has created a terrible war machine in order to bring misery and devastation everywhere. At the same time they intentionally conceal an all-important fact: they themselves drove the leader of the German people finally to draw the sword. They themselves compelled him to seek to obtain at last by the use of force that which he had been striving to gain by persuasion from the beginning: the security of his country ... A quick look at the most important events provides incontrovertible proof of this.
Prof. Tony Martin – Institute for Historical Review
... I’m going to try to extract from my experience certain basic sort of tactics that I think the Jewish lobby has used over the years pertaining to my particular situation ... The first and major tactic that I discovered in their attack on me was their reliance on lies -- just straight-up lies. There’s no other way to describe it, just telling lies. Many of the categories that I will enumerate overlap, and many of them could also come under this general rubric of telling lies. But I think that if one had to isolate a single tactic, it was a tactic of telling lies. I think they’ve elevated telling lies to a very high artistic form.
By Karl Otto Braun
... How did America come to war against Germany, the heart of Europe? Could not Roosevelt have acted as a great peacemaker by mediating the Danzig conflict in 1939, instead of instigating the Poles against Germany? ... The American President could very possibly have saved the peace in 1939. Instead, he fed the American people inventions about a hypothetical German plot to take over the United States and the whole world.
By Mark Weber
How accurate is this hallowed portrayal of America's role in World War II? As we shall see, it does not hold up under close examination ... The three Allied leaders accomplished what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany, Italy and Japan of conspiring to achieve: world domination ... Presidential deception to justify war did not start with George W. Bush. Americans who express admiration for the US role in World War II, and for Franklin Roosevelt's presidential leadership, have little moral right to complain when presidents follow his example and lead the country into war by breaking the law, subverting the Constitution, and lying to the people.
Rachelle Marshall
... Because the myth of Israel's birth was so closely linked to the horrors of the Holocaust, to question its truth was for years as unthinkable as doubting the truth of the Holocaust itself. But today a new breed of historians is challenging much of that myth. Palestinian and other Arab scholars, Western Middle East specialists, and non-Zionist Jews such as Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, and Norman Finkelstein have already published well-documented refutations of the official version of Israel's history. The current debunking process, however, is being carried out for the first time by Israeli Jews a younger generation of historians with impeccable credentials as Zionists, patriotic Israelis and scholars.
By Murray Rothbard
Revisionism as applied to World War II and its origins (as also for previous wars) has the general function of bringing historical truth to an American and a world public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda ... Revisionism brings to the artificial frenzy of daily events and day-to-day propaganda, the cool but in the last analysis glorious light of historical truth. Such truth is almost desperately needed in today's world.
By Robert Clive
… That atrocities were committed by the Allies against Germans and non-combatant civilians on both the Eastern and Western fronts is not often acknowledged. In large measure this reflects the fact that "victors write the history." … POWs, whether Germans or Axis allies, were often shot out of hand, or shortly after they had been questioned ... When the Red Army invaded German territory in late 1944, civilians who had been unable to flee before their advance were condemned to undergo a regime of ferocious brutality. At such towns as Goldap, Gumbinnen, and Nemmersdorf, even children were raped before being murdered by Russian soldiers.
By Mark Weber
Among the highlights of my nine-day visit to Iran was a guest appearance on an influential prime-time public affairs television show, a memorable meeting with the nation’s President, and a well-received lecture of more than two hours on “The Zionist Lobby in America," given to a gathering of several hundred university students.
By James Whisker
... Fascism was touted by Mussolini as a unique combination of thought and action, yet fascism was still seeking an ideology after the Second World War was over. The roots of fascism are many and complex. The fascist leadership, notably Mussolini, admitted the multi-faceted influences of liberalism, marxism, syndicalism, risorgimento, socialism, catholicism and nationalism on their ideology.
By Mark Weber
To deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression, both the US and German governments launched innovative and ambitious programs. Although President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” measures helped only marginally, the Third Reich’s much more focused and comprehensive policies proved remarkably effective. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was flourishing. And while Roosevelt’s record in dealing with the Depression is pretty well known, the remarkable story of how Hitler tackled the crisis is not widely understood or appreciated.
By King Abdullah I of Jordan (1947)
... The world in general, and America in particular, knows almost nothing of the true case for the Arabs ... We are frankly disturbed to find that for every word printed on the Arab side, a thousand are printed on the Zionist side. There are many reasons for this. You [Americans] have many millions of Jewish citizens interested in this question. They are highly vocal and wise in the ways of publicity ... I believe that you do not realize how directly you are, as a nation, responsible in general for the whole Zionist move and specifically for the present terrorism.
By Mark Weber
... During his lifetime he made a mark not only as a pioneering global aviator, but also as a prize-winning author, environmentalist and anti-war activist. Given the scarcity of truly heroic Americans during the past century, he towers as a man of exemplary accomplishment and courage. He deserves to be remembered today not only as an authentic American hero, but also because much of what he wrote and said is relevant in our own age. Indeed, some of his remarks have proven to be prophetic.
By Mark Weber
... 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.
By Yuri Teplyakov
… In August 1941 Hitler permitted a Red Cross delegation to visit the camp for Soviet POWs in Hammerstadt. It is these contacts that resulted in an appeal to the Soviet government, requesting that it should send food parcels for our officers and men. We are prepared to fulfill and comply with the norms of the Geneva convention, Moscow said in its reply, but sending food in the given situation and under fascist control is the same as making presents to the enemy … How great was Stalin's hatred for those who had found themselves behind enemy lines. It made no difference: who, where, how and why? Even the dead were considered to be criminals.
By Paul Findley
Nine-Eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the 9/11 catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president in recent decades had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people.
By Mark Weber
"The Sound of Music" is perhaps the most popular American musical picture ever produced. But whatever its merits as entertainment, the film's presentation of history is deceitful. In particular, its portrayal of the 1938 union or Anschluss of Austria with the German Reich is a gross distortion of historical reality.
Audio recordings of dozens of "Mark Weber Report" broadcasts. Information, analysis and commentary on current affairs and historical issues by the IHR director.
By Mark Weber
Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich Germany's chief publicist and spokesman, is widely portrayed as a master of lies and deceitful propaganda. But this familiar image, which is particularly entrenched in the United States, is itself a propaganda falsehood.
By Mark Weber
... America today is a society in denial. The country's political, cultural and intellectual leadership -- both liberal and conservative -- denies social reality and ignores the historical record, and therefore inevitably betrays the interests of the people, leading America down a path that means ever greater anxiety and ever more rapid decline ... The crying need in our nation today is candor, courage and truthfulness -- not childish slogans, simplistic nostrums, or wishful thinking about a mythologized past or a utopian future -- presented by media personalities who are little more than entertainers.
By Mark Weber
Fraudulent quotations attributed to Hitler and other Third Reich leaders have been widely circulated for years. Such quotes are often used by polemicists -- of both the left and the right -- to discredit their ideological adversaries by showing that Nazis held similar views. Here's a look at a few of the many remarks falsely attributed to Hitler and other top Nazis.
At one of the most spirited and successful IHR meetings in many months, Paul Fromm and Mark Weber delivered informed, well-received talks about social-political decline in America and Canada, and the factors behind this trend ... Canada is undergoing rapid and profound ethnic-cultural transformation, Fromm said. Parallel to what's also happening in the US, non-whites are replacing Canada's traditional, European-origin population ... In his address, Mark Weber spoke about how America has changed drastically over the past 60 years, as reflected in the country's high school history textbooks.
Websense company, a major US supplier of web content filtering software, says that the Institute for Historical Review promotes "racism and hate," and blocks access to the IHR website, on the basis of an unfair standard that deceives the public and its own customers. In a letter to the IHR, Websense Senior Legal Counsel Eric Proul makes clear that the company has no objective basis for its claim that the IHR promotes "racism and hate."
The IHR's recently launched campaign against internet censorship is making headway. In letters, by telephone, and in face-to-face meetings, the Institute has been contacting businesses and other institutions that block access to the IHR website to explain why this practice is unfair, defamatory and harmful, and to call on them to stop it.
By Tyler Kent
... In 1940, an obscure cypher clerk at the American Embassy in London came across documents which, in his judgment and that of many reputable historians subsequently, proved conclusively that Roosevelt both directly and through his agents was engaged in activities designed to foment a war and eventually to compel American participation in it. I was that cypher clerk ... The new basic law of nations requires only one clause, very simply: "It pays to be on the winning side."
By Mark Weber
This essay focuses on Roosevelt's secret campaign to provoke war in Europe prior to the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. It deals particularly with his efforts to pressure Britain, France and Poland into war against Germany in 1938 and 1939. Franklin Roosevelt not only criminally involved America in a war that had already engulfed Europe, he bears a grave responsibility for the outbreak of the most destructive war of all time. This paper relies heavily on a little-known collection of secret Polish documents that fell into German hands when Warsaw was captured in September 1939. These revealing documents also confirm the crucial role of Jewish power and influence on US foreign policy during these years.
By David Irving
... If I'm known for anything as a historian, apart from being a pain in the neck, it's because I uncover things. And uncovering things does not necessarily mean you go into the archives and see something and say: "Look at this, this is something quite extraordinary." If you go into the archives long enough, ten or twenty years, you become what I would call a "gap-ologist" ... Now what a scandalous statement that is! Here's the one country, Germany, trying to prevent anwar and the other country -- Roosevelt, neutral -- trying to fan the flames of anti-German feeling to fuel the war. Yet it is the Germans who are called the criminals, and the Americans who do the prosecuting.
Video based on interview with Mark Weber by Daniel Davis, host of the "Beyond 50" radio show. The United States, says Weber, has changed from a republic focused on its own prosperity and well-being to a globally intrusive military power. This worldwide military presence reflects an entrenched American view that the US is a social-political model for all nations, and therefore has a right, based on perceived moral superiority, to intervene everywhere. He traces the evolution of this outlook from the fateful Spanish-American War of 1898, and the false pretexts and promises used since then to justify wars. Going to war to fight "evil" or "terrorism," says Weber, is a recipe for endless strife and conflict.
By Mark Weber
... We hear a lot about terrible crimes committed by Germans during World War II, but we hear very little about crimes committed against Germans. Germany's defeat in May 1945, and the end of World War II in Europe, did not bring an end to death and suffering for the vanquished German people. Instead the victorious Allies ushered in a horrible new era of destruction, looting, starvation, rape, "ethnic cleansing," and mass killing.
By Joseph Sobran
The news that I would be addressing the Institute of Historical Review came to some people as, well, news. It was mentioned in the Jewish newspaper Forward and on the Zionist Wall Street Journal OnLine. The editors of two conservative magazines called and wrote me to express their concern that I might damage my reputation, such as it is, by speaking to "Holocaust deniers." ... In short, the Holocaust has become a device for exempting Jews from normal human obligations. It has authorized them to bully and blackmail, to extort and oppress. This is all quite irrational, because even if six million Jews were murdered during World War II, the survivors are not entitled to commit the slightest injustice.
By Mark Weber
... A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to any country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish community ... Zionist Jews and their non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double standard. Jewish-Zionist organizations, along with their non-Jewish allies, support one social-political ideology for Israel and the world Jewish community, and a completely different one for the United States and other non-Jewish countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is evil and bad for non-Jews, while at the same time they vigorously support ethnic nationalism -- that is, Zionism -- for Jews.
By Mark Weber
Jews played a highly disproportionate and probably decisive role in the infant Bolshevik regime, effectively dominating the Soviet government during its early years ... With the notable exception of Lenin, most of the leading Communists who took control of Russia in 1917-20 were Jews ... The US ambassador in Russia warned in a dispatch to Washington: "The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution."
By Mark Weber
... The Six Million figure is hammered into the public consciousness, not only in newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, and television, but also routinely in our schools ... An information sheet issued by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council describes the grand Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, as a "living memorial to the six million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi fanaticism who perished in the Holocaust." Just what is the basis for this familiar figure?
By Mark Weber
America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives ... General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."
By Mark Weber
.. By supporting Israel and its policies, the United States betrays not only its own national interests, but the principles it claims to embody and defend. The only country in the world that has a nuclear weapons arsenal, that occupies territory of its neighbors, and which is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions - is Israel. In fact, if the United States were to hold Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq, Serbia, and other countries, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and American troops would seize Israel's leaders and punish them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By Mark Weber
A little-known chapter of history is the wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler's Third Reich. During the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared similar views on how to deal with the "Jewish Question." They agreed that Jews and Germans were distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in Germany.
By Mark Weber
So if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack? Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush's decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America's Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush -- who was already fervently committed to Israel -- resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel's chief regional enemies.