REVISIONIST NEWS PAGE II

REVISIONIST NEWS PAGE I

Mainstream Mum
on Jewish Terror Attack

German Lawyer Charged
After Ending Legal Filing With 'Heil Hitler'
Tuesday , March 20, 2007

Latvia caught in
'historical minefield' over SS past
By Ben Nimmo
Mar 16, 2007, 19:44 GMT

Mainstream Revisionism
Horrors Visited On Germany In 1945
The Independent - UK 3-9-7
 

OPEN LETTER about Revisionism
in the Light of Anti-Imperialism
2-27-07

Virtuous Leaders or War Criminals?
by Chris Leithner -- Lew Rockwell.com

No Connection
Between Holocaust Conference
And Iran's Nuclear Issue
By Frosty Wooldridge 2-19-7

Carter enters lions' den
Despite criticism, his book
is work of a true patriot
By Paul Findley

A Jewish academic has shocked Italy
by claiming Jews murdered Christians
for their blood in the Middle Ages
so it could be used in rituals.

Iran Revolution Ends The 'Holocult'
Dr. Sahib M. Bleher writes
that the Iran conference on the Holocaust
cuts the Achilles heel of the current Anglo-Zionist world order

Bernard Schaub's presentation
at the Iranian Holocaust Conference
Dec. 11-12, 2006

UA Drafts Holocaust
Denial Resolution
By Justin Bergman
1-22-7

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN IRAN . . .
By Michael Collins Piper

Deborah Lipstadt is less popular
than Chicken Manure
By Curt Maynard

Holocaust naysayer ousted in New York
 

Berlin seeks to bar Holocaust denial in EU
By Dan Bilefsky / Published: January 12, 2007
 

Designer monsters
By William Blum

What is Holocaust Denial?

The Psychology of “Holocaustianity”
Address to the Teheran Conference
December 12, 2006
 by Lady Michèle Renouf, London, U.K.

Neturei Karta Head Returns
After Tehran Conference
Israel NationalNews.com 1-8-7

The Holocaust Wars
Written by Paul Eisen
Thursday, 22 June 2006

Mainstream Mum
on Jewish Terror Attack
 

German Lawyer Charged
After Ending Legal Filing With 'Heil Hitler'

Tuesday , March 20, 2007

BERLIN — 

Attorney Sylvia Stolz represented Zundel in his first trial, which collapsed after Stolz was banned from proceedings on grounds she was trying to sabotage the proceedings.

Zundel's second trial at the Mannheim state court ended last month with his conviction for incitement for denying the Holocaust. The 67-year-old, who was deported from Canada in 2005 and also once lived in Tennessee, was sentenced to the maximum five years in prison.

Mannheim prosecutors said in a statement that Stolz herself has now been charged with incitement, attempting to thwart a prosecution and using symbols of a banned organization.

During Zundel's trial, Stolz repeatedly disputed the Nazis' mass murder of Jews, called for hatred of the Jewish population and ended a legal document with the words "Heil Hitler," the statement said. The document was freely accessible on the Internet, it added.

Stolz does not deny making the statements or writing "Heil Hitler" on the document. However, she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that while she anticipated she might be charged, it was part of her fight against what she considers an illegitimate government built upon the postwar allied occupation of Germany.

"We are under foreign occupation, and this foreign occupation has portrayed Adolf Hitler as a devil for 60 years, but that is not true," she said. "But the real truth can only be told when someone attempts to break this taboo.

Stolz is also accused of trying to "force an end to the proceedings" with constant interventions and "provocations" that disturbed the conduct of the trial.

The presiding judge halted Zundel's trial last March to ask for Stolz's removal after she denounced the court as a "tool of foreign domination" and described the Jews as an "enemy people" in earlier sessions.

In April, she was carried out of the court room, shouting "Resistance! The German people are rising up," after defying an order for her removal.

Prosecutors said they are seeking a ban on Stolz working as a lawyer.

"This foreign occupation seems threatened and insulted," Stolz said. "So telling the truth is prosecuted for slander and the people who speak the truth are silenced, whether they're attorneys, doctors, engineers or any other profession."

No hearing dates had been set, Stolz said.

From Monsters and Critics.com

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/features/article_
1278591.php/Latvia_caught_in_historical_minefield_over_SS_past

Europe Features
Latvia caught in 'historical minefield' over SS past
By Ben Nimmo
Mar 16, 2007, 19:44 GMT

 

Riga - Sixty-two years after the guns of World War II fell silent in Latvia, the country is still bitterly divided over the implications of its bloody and chaotic past.

On March 16, Latvians commemorate the Latvian Legion - a Waffen-SS unit formed by the Nazis in 1943. Some in the Baltic state view its soldiers as patriotic heroes, but others see them as criminals.

'The whole concept of the Legion is a historical minefield. It's far easier to say what it wasn't than what it was,' Matthew Kott, an expert on non-German SS units, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

'It wasn't a Latvian national army, but equally, it wasn't a unit formed primarily to further German racial war aims,' he added.

Latvia's history during WWII is both complex and tragic. The country was occupied by the Soviets in 1940, invaded and occupied by the Nazis in 1941 and re-occupied by the Soviets in 1944.

During the first Soviet occupation, over 15,000 Latvians were deported or executed. As a result, many Latvians viewed the Nazi invasion of 1941 as a liberation, and saw the Legion as a way of fighting back against a worse enemy.

'I volunteered to join the Legion. My family was destroyed by the communists - they shot my father and uncle because they wanted to fight for Latvia,' said former legionary Imants Gravitis.

The Legion was formed in 1943 and served as a combat unit on the Eastern Front. During its two-year existence, over 100,000 Latvians fought in its ranks in Russia, Latvia and Germany.

Many of them were conscripts, a fact acknowledged by the Nuremberg tribunal and the US government, which ruled that the Legion as a whole could not be viewed as an ideologically-based unit.

But within the Legion, a significant number of soldiers were draughted from earlier, volunteer formations. Many of these had been directly involved in massacres across the Eastern Front.

'Not all in the Legion were involved in atrocities, but the Legion came to include those who had been,' Kott said.

For that reason, many observers both in Latvia and abroad view any attempt to honour the Legion as a whitewashing of SS crimes.

'It's hardly likely that anyone today would dare to say that there are only conscripts among the bouquet-carrying old men,' journalist Viktor Matiushenok wrote in Russian-language paper Chas.

'The Latvian-SS Legion should not be glorified nor should its members be considered Latvian heroes. If anything, many of them were criminals who, prior to joining the Legion, committed the crimes of the Holocaust,' added Dr. Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center.

But the debate over the Legion's historical role is no longer confined to the historical arena. In the past few years, Latvian far-right groups have regularly demonstrated on March 16 to promote their view of Latvia as a mono-ethnic state.

These ultra-nationalists are numbered in the dozens and have never won more than 1.5 per cent of votes in national elections.

But each year, Russian commentators in both Riga and Moscow say that the events of March 16 show that Latvia is quietly encouraging a 'rebirth of fascism.'

'Six decades after the defeat and condemnation of Nazism, there is every reason to speak of a rebirth of its ideology in an EU member state,' Matiushenok wrote.

The Latvian government has tried in vain to distance itself from events. Last March 16, it ordered that the Freedom Monument be closed to the public, banned all commemorative events and sent over 1,000 police into central Riga to keep order.

The ban was condemned in the constitutional court soon after. This year, the authorities have been reduced to pleading with the public not to become involved.

'I ask Latvian society to evaluate carefully the radical and extremist organizations' real motives, and (their) events, which could be used to divide society, provoke ethnic hatred and damage Latvia's image,' Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks said on Wednesday.

But given the strength of the emotions which the Legion still provokes, not all are willing to heed his call.

'The problem is that there are so many perspectives, and each has its grain of truth... Now (the Legion's history) is being used to heat up social and political tension,' Kott said.

Mainstream Revisionism
Horrors Visited On Germany In 1945
The Independent - UK 3-9-7

Is Nazi Germany a fit subject for sympathy?

In the case of individuals caught up in the conflagration of World War II's final days, three recently made films suggest that the answer may be a careful yes.

Paul Verhoeven's Black Book has its Jewish-Dutch resistance heroine falling for the humane SS chief she's sent to spy on.

Steven Soderbergh's The Good German is set in Allied-occupied Berlin in 1945, exploring its morally and physically devastated population, and corrupt US motives as the Cold War looms.

Reg Traviss's Joy Division, most remarkably, ignores the Holocaust, instead following a German boy soldier in 1944 through to his life as a Soviet spy in 1960s London, showing the experience of German civilians as they're bombed by the British and raped by the Russians, and the savagery an uncomprehending 14-year-old Nazi is subjected to.

This shift in perspective has arrived with the 21st century, with the war's reality six decades gone. Anthony Beevor's best-selling 2002 history book Berlin: The Downfall 1945 was one catalyst. It used newly uncovered Soviet documents to detail the Red Army's systematic rape of almost every woman in its path, as it bludgeoned its way through East Prussia towards Hitler's capital. The sheer horror of German civilian suffering, and the despairing heroism of its shattered armies, was impossible to avoid, even as Beevor fought to keep the Nazis' culpability for everything visited on them in view.

British bookshelves have since groaned with similar bestsellers, including Max Hastings's Berlin narrative, Armageddon, and Frederick Taylor's Dresden: February 13, 1945.

Cinema's newly humane view of Nazi Germany's last days began in parallel with this literature. The Austrian documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (2002) was the beginning, holding its camera on Traudl Junge as she recalled happy teenage days working for kind and funny Adolf Hitler, a man too squeamish to mention the Holocaust or see his country's bombed ruins through his train's blacked-out windows, until the deadly horror of the last days in the bunker, and Junge's subsequent, palpable life-long guilt at not seeing and resisting the nightmare unfolding in front of her.

Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (2004), in some ways an adaptation of both Blind Spot and Berlin, then dwarfed both in impact. This German film took us into the heart of the Berlin inferno, setting us alongside ragtag German platoons as the Red Army battered them back foot by foot toward's Hitler's lair, and the city became a hellish husk.

It also followed Junge in leading us inside the bunker and making the chief Nazis' evil clammily close, by at last making them human. Magda Goebbels's poisoning of her own children, and Hitler's hurling of Berlin's population into a knowingly futile last stand, gave a fresh angle on Nazi atrocities. In the final scenes of numbed Germans shuffling through the Third Reich's ruins, this international hit also forced audiences in Germany and elsewhere into something like sympathy for the generation that fought for Hitler, even as it renewed our sense of its disgrace.

Hollywood did not follow this lead. Aside from the caricature-Nazis of films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), its own revived interest in World War II has come from Steven Spielberg (also the director of Raiders), with Schindler's List (1993), then Saving Private Ryan (1998) and its television offspring, Band of Brothers. Though the first film's only slightly sentimental version of the Holocaust was valuable for a new generation, subsequent tales of GIs marching through a Europe shorn of political context stimulated only patriotic books and movies, which basked in America's part in what Studs Terkel's 1985 book called The Good War.

Despite the visceral violence of its D-Day scenes, Ryan's values and assumptions were the same as in Hollywood films made during the war. The fact that most anti-Nazi fighting was done by Stalin's Russia, a more efficiently cruel and brutal regime, can't find a place in this commonly held world view, which Hollywood did so much to construct. Of course, there have been previous British and American attempts to see humanity in their beaten enemies, notably Sam Fuller's anti-Nazi B-movie Verboten! (1958) and Carol Reed's The Man Between (1953), both set in Germany immediately after the war, when the suffering of millions of the country's refugees and its place in Cold War power plays with Russia were well understood. Reed's footage of the icy, burnt-out Berlin that Downfall recreates, and its orphan children, is especially unforgettable.

It is this morally grey world that Steven Soderbergh's The Good German returns to, becoming the first mainstream US film to attempt a new, radical perspective.

Based on Joseph Kanon's bestselling novel and starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire, it is very much in Third Man territory, with black marketeers, a missing German being hunted by both sides of the just-starting Cold War, and the Holocaust hanging over it all. Opening here in March, its title alone promises the ambiguity and nuance now entering perspectives on the war.

Black Book, Verhoeven's grand return to the Netherlands after time in Hollywood making films such as Basic Instinct, is in some ways a more traditional World War II movie, a rip-roaring adventure tale of the Dutch resistance in the final months of Nazi occupation. But Verhoeven, who was a child at the time and has worked on the script for 20 years, is not content just to show Dutch heroism: he vividly remembers seeing corpses of Nazi victims left lying in the street.

Black Book shows Nazi atrocities, especially against Dutch Jews, in unswerving detail. But its Jewish heroine and an SS chief with human foibles also fall in love, and the Dutch treatment of both at war's end is vicious. Influenced by a Dutch revisionist history book, Chris van der Heyden's Grijs Verleden (2001), it is Verhoeven's corrective to his own popular tale of Dutch resistance heroics, Soldier of Orange (1977). "I wanted to show what reality was like then," he has said. "Not black and white, but in shades of grey. That is what makes our film so provocative. Nobody has yet shown how we treated our prisoners in 1945."

But it is Traviss's low-budget British film, Joy Division that is perhaps the most daring of all. Heavily influenced by Beevor's Berlin, it interweaves narrative strands from the 1940s, '50s and '60s, to show the eventual moral awakening of a Hitler Youth boy turned Soviet spy. Early scenes, of its hero as a 14-year-old brownshirt in puppy love with his blonde neighbour, give way to his immersion in desperate streetfighting as the Red Army enters East Prussia, where its planes strafe refugees and his girlfriend is gang-raped. Captured by Russians, the Cold War continues his moral numbing. But it is the scenes of German suffering, with no alleviating context of Nazi aggression or atrocity, that are challenging and powerful. "It was a big script originally, with Polish Jews and a concentration camp survivor in early drafts," Traviss tells me. "In the final version, you don't see the Wehrmacht rushing east, you don't see the Holocaust, which I regret. But that knowledge is assumed. We're focusing on something that hasn't been seen before: from our perspective, the darker side of the war, where troops of our allies were not heroic. Of course there is truth in the idea the Russians committed atrocities in revenge. But there's also a dark side to human nature.

"And if you're mobilising an army over someone's border, and there's no defence, just women and kids, then that army's dark side may come too. I don't think all those civilians could be held accountable for the Third Reich's crimes. The teenage characters especially had just been born when Hitler came to power. They're innocent."

Traviss has a simple answer to why this new perspective is gaining ground. "Anthony Beevor talked about how enough time had passed to write books like his, and predicted that films would be next. And apart from the humanist aspect of wanting to understand such suffering, the war has been a huge part of popular culture as well, with films like The Dirty Dozen."

As a genre, after Spielberg's late-'90s realist approach, what could be next? "Well, the end of the war hadn't really been done. The search for stories is endless. And now filmmakers have found 1945, and found it's much richer than that Dirty Dozen stuff."

All these films are on delicate ground, trodden carefully for 60 years because no one wants to let Nazi horrors become just another bit of history, to be debated or forgotten. But in showing a fuller picture, of humanity and atrocity on both sides, they may teach truer lessons than the simple story of the Good War that Hollywood has told until now.

The Good German opened nationally on March 8. The Black Book will be released later this year.

OPEN LETTER about Revisionism
in the Light of Anti-Imperialism

Virtuous Leaders or War Criminals?

by Chris Leithner
 

Charles Munger is so deeply sceptical about the human condition, wrote Roger Lowenstein in Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1996), that Warren Buffett has called him "the abominable no-man." A tenet of Munger’s approach to investing – and to life in general – is constantly to ask what can and likely will go awry. "Invert, always invert," said the mathematician Carl Jacobi, and for decades Munger has faithfully applied this maxim. Invited to address high school graduands, he did not laud the habits and qualities that would promote health, wealth and wisdom; instead, he denigrated those that would ensure emotional penury and material misery. In effect, he counselled his young audience "If you don’t do the things I’m going to talk about, then chances are you’ll be just fine." More whimsically, he once wondered aloud where he would die "so that I never go there."

Clearly, to "invert, always invert" is to mitigate the downside and let the upside take care of itself. It is also to see things from another person’s point of view; and a particularly illuminating way is to consider a contentious situation from the perspective of an opponent or adversary. If we can avoid harming others, or offer amends to those whom we inadvertently harm, then we lessen their incentive to hurt us; and if we can make habits of civility and neighbourliness, we will likely reduce some of the misfortune that life routinely tosses into our paths. Umbrage and hatred seem to flourish longest and deepest among people who have lost – or never possessed – the capacity to empathise with those whom they have harmed, and also among the people who have retained the capacity to remember the harm they have suffered. How to avoid injuring others? We become more inclined to treat other people as we would want them to treat us, and thereby to increase the chances that we enjoy their goodwill, when we try to see their situation, predicament or grievance through their spectacles. A good way to avoid unintended consequences, and to mitigate what might go awry and return to haunt us, is to walk in others’ shoes.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, seemed to be thinking along these lines when he said "If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country … We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler and Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?" (See also John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy).

Alas, Ben-Gurion did not seem to be "inverting" when he declared "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Even more regrettably, this apparent lack of compassion for people other than his own also spread further afield. In 1948, the year the State of Israel was founded, he declared "We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai" (see Michel Bar-Zohar, The Armed Prophet: A Biography of Ben-Gurion, Barker, 1967).

Viewing things from an unaccustomed, unconventional or unpopular angle often helps to understand them more thoroughly, appreciate their worth and acknowledge their flaws. It thereby promotes humility and inoculates against narrow-mindedness and intransigence. "Inversion" does not necessarily corrode one’s principles; still less does it inevitably overturn them. Yet once in a great while, it triggers a fundamental alteration of outlook. But because it is so emotionally difficult – indeed, because something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome usually prevails – people go to extraordinary lengths to avoid reappraisals of their rulers. Perhaps that is why so few Australians, for example, think seriously about how their rulers’ policies affect people in other countries. After all, foreign lands are usually distant and unfamiliar; there are only so many hours in the day to inform oneself about them; and other matters, from mortgage rates to petrol prices, seem to be more pressing. Accordingly, are not such specialised matters best left to the anointed experts in Canberra, the universities, think tanks and editorial pages? And surely the motives of Australian politicians and their Anglo-American masters are unimpeachable?

But shortages of time do not provide very satisfactory explanations of this general abandonment of the classical liberal virtue of vigilance. It is clear to anybody who opens his eyes that the policies of the Western political class routinely create messes and disasters at home: so why on earth should they foment anything other than chaos and misery abroad? Alas, few of the ruled ask this question. Instead, many avert their eyes and blindly accept what their rulers tell them about foreigners and far-off parts of the world. Why? Perhaps because if they saw things from the point of view of people at the receiving end of Western governments’ foreign policies, an awful truth would stare them in the face: during and since the Second World War, some celebrated Western "leaders," particularly American and British, have, by the standards employed at Nuremberg, qualified as war criminals.

As an example, consider Harry S Truman. Ralph Raico, in "Harry S. Truman: Advancing the Revolution," concludes "the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was." To say the least, America’s most senior military men, including Dwight Eisenhower, Ernest King, Douglas MacArthur, Chester Nimitz and Carl Spaatz, expressed deep reservations about the bombings – and to say the most, they condemned them as pitiless, spiteful and unnecessary. The assessment of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, was typical: "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan … My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

In his memoirs, entitled I Was There (McGraw-Hill, 1950), Leahy compared the use of the atomic bomb to the treatment of civilians by Genghis Khan, and termed it "not worthy of Christian man." Truman himself eventually regretted his decision. In a private letter written just before he left the White House, he referred to the dropping of the bomb as "murder," and concluded that it "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale" (see Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," in Preventing a Biological Arms Race, MIT Press, 1990; John Denson, "The Hiroshima Myth"; Gary Kohls, "Whitewashing Hiroshima: The Uncritical Glorification of American Militarism"; and Ralph Raico, "Rethinking Churchill," particularly Part V).

What Is a War Crime, Anyway?

A war crime is a general label used to describe one of three specific crimes enumerated and described in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT). Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the governments of the "Big Four" (i.e., the U.S.A., Soviet Union, Britain and France) established the IMT in order to prosecute the leaders of National Socialist Germany and its allies. The Tribunal’s Charter, published on 8 August 1945 (ironically, shortly after the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima and just hours before the second detonation at Nagasaki), declared in Article 6: "The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility":

1. "Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing." In plain English, to invade a nation that has never threatened you and does not presently threaten you is a crime against peace.
2. "War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
3. "Crimes against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated."

Article 6 warns: "Leaders, organisers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan." Section 7 states "The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment." And Section 8 cautions: "The fact that the defendant acted pursuant [to an order of a superior] shall not free him from responsibility …"

At a series of trials at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945–49, these criteria were used to try more than 100 defendants. At the most important trial, of the top surviving leaders of Hitler’s government and military, twenty-two men were indicted on one or more of the charges listed in Article 6. Nineteen were convicted and three acquitted. Of those found guilty, twelve were sentenced to death by hanging, three to life in prison and four to terms of imprisonment ranging from ten to twenty years. No appeals were permitted, and the last surviving convict, Rudolf Hess, died at Spandau Prison in Berlin in 1989.

In late 1946, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution 95 (1), affirming The Principles of International Law Recognised in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal. In this and other respects, the premises, process, results and precedents of the Nuremberg Tribunal form cornerstones of civilised international behaviour.

The Trouble with Victors’ Justice

The Nuremberg Tribunal explicitly prohibited tu quoque ("you did it too!") defences – hardly a surprise, given that it rendered victors’ justice. The prosecuting powers sought to obscure the inconvenient fact that during the war their civilian and military leaders, as well as a few of their officers and enlisted men, had issued and obeyed orders that fell well short of the standards imposed upon Hitler’s henchmen. This prohibition set a bad precedent. Surely justice, if it is worthy of the name, cannot be restricted to particular times, places and people? That is, if the invasion of Poland was a crime against peace when Adolf Hitler and high-ranking German officers and diplomats planned and executed it in 1939, then (to cite but one example) surely the invasion of Iraq, when planned and committed in 2001–2003 by George W. Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and their military and diplomatic subordinates, is no less a crime against peace?

Apparently not – or, at any rate, few Americans, Australians and Britons believe that their leaders could contemplate, let alone commit, such crimes. But if one peruses the public record and considers how Anglo-American governments have planned and conducted military actions, then time after time one encounters prima facie evidence that certain of their politicians, bureaucrats, senior military officers and a few soldiers and airmen have committed crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity as defined by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945.

In light of the voluminous evidence that now crowds the public domain, a case can be made that in 2001–2003 American, British and Australian leaders and their military and civilian advisers engaged in or acquiesced to the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression." It was obvious at the time (see in particular Justin Raimondo, "The Lying Game," 7 February 2003), and today is as plain as the nose on one’s face, that neither Saddam Hussein nor the Iraqi military posed any threat to America, Australia or Britain. The many revelations by former insiders, coupled with the Downing Street Memo, Lewis Libby indictment and numerous other sources, leave little doubt that these insiders intentionally deceived their own citizens and the world in order to invade a country that did not threaten them.

Accordingly, and by the precedent set at Nuremberg, the misleading and ever-changing rationales uttered before, during and after the invasion exonerate nobody. Nor does the evasive special pleading uttered after the fact ("we acted on the best information available," Mr Howard has bleated repeatedly since the WMDs failed to materialise). To invade a country that has neither the means nor the intention to attack you – whether or not the invaders know it when they plan and execute their invasion – is a crime against peace. As Murray Rothbard put it in The Ethics of Liberty, "It is important to insist, however, that the threat of aggression be palpable, immediate, and direct; in short, that it be embodied in the initiation of an overt act. Any remote or indirect criterion – any ‘risk’ or ‘threat’ – is simply an excuse for invasive action by the supposed ‘defender’ against the alleged ‘threat.’" Whether waged by Nazis or neocons, a "pre-emptive" war is necessarily a crime against peace. The ironic and rather pathetic fact that between 1991 and 2003 Saddam Hussein was the only person who spoke truth to power about WMDs in Iraq speaks volumes about the determination of Western politicians and their lackeys to twist information in order to indulge their inflexible prejudices.

Moreover, and again in the light of the massive and growing body of evidence available to anybody prepared to consider it, it appears that American and British politicians and bureaucrats (and some military personnel obeying their orders) have committed "violations of the laws or customs of war," including "murder . . . of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war . . . plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." Acts that seem to fit this description have occurred at Falluja, Haditha, Mahmoudiya, Samarra, Tikrit, the Abu Ghraib Prison and other locations.

These incidents, it is reasonable to assume, are not isolated. Inevitably and by its very nature, war, occupation, insurgency and counter-insurgency breed atrocities (see, for example, "Beyond My Lai: New Revelations of Vietnam Atrocities" by Jon Wiener). Accordingly, when neoconservatives babble their despicable blather (i.e., "we must not cut and run," "we must stay the course," etc.), their use of the pronoun "we" is disingenuous. What they really demand is that somebody else must continue the destruction of faraway places and the murder of anonymous people. Equally deceitful is their invocation of a bogus and moronic "war on terror" and vast exaggeration of "the terrorist threat" (which, as Leithner Letter 33 shows, is in probabilistic terms actually quite trivial). Hence an inconvenient question for the foreign policy interventionists: if pleas of military necessity did not excuse leading Nazis, then how can the alleged imperatives of a war on terror excuse the Three Amigos and their subordinates?

The parallels are troubling. In the dock at Nuremberg, did Hermann Göring not plead that concentration camps were necessary in order to preserve order and stability? Did he not say, "It was a question of removing danger"? Göring also shed disturbing light upon the political tricks that demented shepherds use to frighten their docile flocks into the false belief they need more regulations, services and protection. During his trial, he mused to an interviewer "Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship" (see Gustave Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, DaCapo Press, 1995).

A Grave Responsibility Mocked and a Desperate Effort Repudiated

Today, more than three years after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, many Westerners have mostly forgotten (if, indeed, they ever knew them) the transgressions of this war, its 1990–1991 predecessor and the many others that preceded them. They don’t "invert" – that is, see things from others’ points of view – because, by and large, they have convinced themselves that their rulers are right and just and others’ are wrong and crazed. Hence it never occurs to them that their politicians, in their name, commit war crimes; and they respond with indifference, denial or even hostility to the proposition that today’s crop of Western politicians, like their predecessors at Versailles, are creating conditions under which extremists thrive.

Since 2003, much mainstream coverage and commentary about the second war against Iraq has focussed first upon the failure to send enough troops to pacify the country; and then upon the decision to disband Saddam’s army without training a new one; and more recently upon the failure to crush the insurgency and foresee the appalling communal violence; and now upon the highhandedness, incompetence, cruelty and utter pointlessness of the occupation. But little analysis has pondered the legal questions arising from this and previous aggressions. The UN’s Secretary-General has put his view in an unusually blunt fashion. In September 2004, Kofi Annan told the BBC: "the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN Charter."

If so, then the question arises: should Anglo-American politicians and their top civilian and military aides be prosecuted for their repeated violations over the years of the very laws devised in order to punish Nazis after the Second World War? Do the precedents established at Nuremberg apply to American and British officials? Or are they somehow exempt from the principles that their predecessors invoked? If not, why shouldn’t Bush, Blair, Howard and their inner circle be tried for the many deaths and untold misery their policies have caused?

If, on the same basis the Big Four employed to try Nazis at Nuremberg, the leading members of the American, Australian and British governments and armed forces were tried for actions taken in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in recent years, they might well be convicted (see Anwaar Hussein, "Dust Off the Nuremberg Files"; Michael Mandel, "Nuremberg Lesson for Iraq War: It’s Murder"; and Michael Gaddy, "The Ghosts of Nuremberg"). In his Opening Address at Nuremberg, Justice Robert Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court began with these words: "The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility." Alas, during the intervening years, Western politicians have mocked and debased this responsibility to such an extent that Nuremberg principles are today little more than rhetorical devices uttered on ceremonial occasions. So the Three Amigos need not worry. Apparently, these principles apply only to captured thugs from Balkan or Third World countries.

Yet reading the Nuremberg transcript, it is clear that all who were accused of crimes, from the humblest foot soldier to the highest and mightiest civilian and military leader, were considered responsible for their actions. In particular, the leaders and henchmen who initiated aggression were assigned primary criminal responsibility. None of the subsequent crimes would have been committed if the primary aggression – that is, the crime against peace – had not occurred. On 12 August 1945, Justice Jackson stated the objective of the American prosecution: "If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoner’s dock rather than the way to honours, we will have accomplished something toward making the peace more secure. … We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it."

Justice Jackson’s subsequent statements concerning the Nazi leadership in the dock go to the heart of the matter: "These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war. … We have here the surviving top politicians, militarists, financiers, diplomats, administrators and propagandists of the Nazi movement. Who was responsible for these crimes if they were not?"

On 1 October 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal delivered its judgement. Three Amigos, are you listening? "To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole … Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities; and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced." Had Bush, Blair and Howard not unleashed their aggression, then tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, thousands of American and hundreds of British and other military personnel would be alive today. Hence Justice Jackson’s last sentence of his closing statement applies to contemporary Anglo-American leaders as much as it did to the Germans on trial at the time: "If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime."

Justice Jackson’s words thus prompt one to wonder: how would he assess the legal basis of the Three Amigos’ decision to wage their unprovoked war? Neoconservatives would do well to remember his injunction: "Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling these grievances or for altering these conditions." And those who cannot visualise American, Australian and British defendants in a war crimes trial should also ponder Justice Jackson’s words: "Let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn, aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment … This trial represents mankind’s desperate effort to apply the discipline of the law to statesmen who have used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world’s peace and to commit aggression against the rights of their neighbours."

Sixty years later, it is clear that this desperate effort has failed. Ignore their babble: the Three Amigos are above any law and accountable to nobody. How on earth can this be? How can it be otherwise? The "leaders" of welfare-warfare states are nothing more than, and have never been anything more than, the chiefs of criminal gangs (see Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press, 1998). They are not protectors: they are predators. Further, major political parties (Liberal-National coalition versus Labor in Australia, Labour v. Conservative in Britain, etc.) are not separate entities offering distinct policies; instead, they are simply appendages of a single welfare-warfare party. They are, to use Butler Schaffer’s apt analogy, wings of the same bird of prey. Those who have yet to encounter – much less absorb – this self-evident truth cling ferociously to the fairy tale of the benevolent state. Accordingly, confronted with the evidence that some of their "statesmen" are better described as war criminals, they reply either with denial or vitriol.

Contempt of Criminality and Obedience to God

In the world of business, finance and investments, Charles Munger constantly asks what can and likely will go awry. Applied to rulers and their policies of welfare and warfare, the rule is: whether at home or abroad, interventionism creates unintended consequences; and these consequences inevitably worsen the very problems that the interventions allegedly sought to resolve. What, then, to do? A first step is to disengage. In the absence of compelling reasons to the contrary, regard anything uttered by any politician – and certainly any Anglo-American politician – as an evasion, distortion, delusion or outright fabrication. Don’t believe them when they assert, in effect, that they can wave a magic wand and give you something (be it "security" or "quality healthcare" or "affordable childcare" or low interest rates or cheap petrol) for nothing. And ignore their vilifications of people in far-away places: if you have no reason to meddle there, then what grounds have your rulers?

Why can’t you believe the wicked priests of the welfare-warfare caste? Jim Henley, in his blog Unqualified Offerings (3 February 2003), answers this question tartly:

Because they lie. Routinely and often and deliberately. They said there were 100,000 people in mass graves in Kosovo. That was a lie. They said Iraqi soldiers were tossing babies out of incubators. That was a lie. They said Iraqi troops in 1991 were massing on the Saudi border. That was a lie. They said Saddam’s attack on Kuwait was a total surprise. That was a lie. They said US troops had no combat role in Central America in the 1980s. That was a lie.

Right through the Gulf War, I believed that sh**. By the time of Kosovo, I knew better. I’m 42 years old, I knew the Middle East existed before September 11, 2001, and if today’s bunch sounds like a lot of previous bunches that turned out to be full of crap, my conclusion is that this bunch is full of crap too.

Today, neoconservative politicians scream that Hezbollah, Syria and Iran are "threats to Western security." These assertions, too, are bald-faced lies (see, for example, Justin Raimondo, The Lying Game Revisited). Another is that "they hate us for what we are." The truth is that the victims of interventionism hate Western politicians’ relentless aggression, and the death and destruction that it invariably generates. It is flatly wrong, in other words, to insist that suicide attacks at Bali, London, Madrid, New York and Washington, etc., have been conducted by "Islamofascists" engaged in a religious onslaught against the secular West (see in particular Our Fascism, and Theirs by Justin Raimondo). Instead, "suicide-terrorist attacks are not so much driven by religion as by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide terrorist campaign – over 95% of all incidents – has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw" (see Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, Random House, 2005). Suicide attacks, in short, are not a consequence of religious extremism: they are a response to political extremism – namely Western aggression and interventionism. Suicide attacks occur over here because our politicians meddle so brutally over there.

The good news, in Pape’s words, is that "The history of the last 20 years shows that once the [occupation forces] withdraw from the homeland of the terrorists, [the suicide attacks] often stop – and stop on a dime." If so, then the bad news is that the more our politicians intervene over there, the more the suicide bombers will retaliate over here. The Three Amigos’ alleged cure for terrorism is actually a cause of terrorism. Memo to politicians: Do you truly want to prevent suicide bombings? Then stop your aggression and invasions, withdraw the troops and renounce interventionism (see also Patrick Buchanan, "Why Are They Killing Us?").

The truth is that today’s neoconservative lies are simply the latest in a long series of statist lies. Anglo-American politicians have repeatedly manipulated their subjects into war. These wars created unintended consequences; and the next batch of politicians treated these consequences with more interventions, more deceptions – and more war. Woodrow Wilson, for example, lied America into the Great War (see Thomas Fleming, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I, Basic Books, 2003); and Wilson’s war, which he glorified as "The War to Make the World Safe for Democracy," became, in terms of its effects, "The War That Made the World Safe for Fascism." Similarly, Franklin Roosevelt bamboozled America into the Second World War (see Thomas Fleming, The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within World War II, Basic Books, 2001). FDR’s war, allegedly fought to defend and promote The Four Freedoms, became "The War That Made the World Safe for Communism." And so too the Bushies: they have lied repeatedly and shamelessly about Afghanistan and Iraq, and it appears that their aggressions will become known as "The Wars That Made the World Safe for Christian, Jewish and Islamic Extremism."

London’s Lord Mayor, "Red" Ken Livingston, one of the few politicians who seems to know that there are no traffic problems, only insufficiently clearly specified property rights, offered these wise words when asked what motivated the attacks in New York, Washington, London and elsewhere:

I think you’ve just had 80 years of Western intervention into predominantly Arab lands … We’ve propped up unsavoury governments, we’ve overthrown ones we didn’t consider sympathetic. And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s … the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan. They didn’t give any thought to the fact that once he’d done that he might turn on his creators … If at the end of the First World War we had done what we promised the Arabs, which was to let them be free and have their own governments, and kept out of Arab affairs, and just bought their oil, rather than feeling we had to control the flow of oil, I suspect [attacks by Muslim extremists in retaliation against the attacks of Western extremists] wouldn’t have arisen.

What to do? Secondly, respect history. That is, understand the course of events that has led to this sorry juncture, and extrapolate where the actions that have created it, if they continue, will lead. For the past century, America’s foreign relations can best be characterised as a series of subterfuges for empire-building (see in particular Ivan Eland, The Empire Has No Clothes, The Independent Institute, 2004); and for the past half-century, the foreign relations of countries like Australia, Britain and Canada have comprised little more than the running of fools’ errands for Uncle Sam. The trouble with meddling in foreign lands, in addition to the misery, death and destruction it wreaks upon its victims, is that it extinguishes liberty at home. And the trouble with overt imperialism is epitomised in a question that preoccupied Thucydides and Livy, absorbed America’s Founders and will likely overwhelm today’s political caste in Washington: when does empire corrupt and bankrupt a once-great republic beyond the point of no return? (See also Laurence Kotlikoff’s must-read Is the United States Bankrupt?).

The point for foreigners is that Anglo-American politicians have no right to dictate to the world and remake it in their image. The point for Americans is that by dictating to the world they cease to be the Americans in the sense that Thomas Jefferson understood that term – and Benjamin Franklin rightly feared would disappear within a century. For Americans and non-Americans alike, the extinction of Jeffersonian America is a sad loss.

Interventionist foreign policies, in short, breed war; and war spawns more interventionism. War, as Randolph Bourne famously put it, "is the health of the state." To advocate war is to promote big government; and to promote big government is to endorse failed programs. So make no mistake: war is just another failed government program. Given this insight, what will the "war on terror" achieve? Much killing, vast destruction of property and liberty, and growing hatred: it will, in other words, benefit the anointed and harm the benighted. Grieving the death of his only son during the war to end all wars, in 1919 Rudyard Kipling wrote "if any question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied." The same point applies to the Americans, Australians, Britons, Canadians, Dutch and others mired pointlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Peace will not come until Western and particularly Anglo-American politicians abandon what they arrogantly believe is their birthright – the treatment of the Arab and Muslim world like a pawn on a chessboard, drawing its boundaries, making and breaking incompatible promises, occasionally invading it and constantly meddling in its affairs, and establishing and supporting puppets that oppress local populations. At various points during the twentieth century, particularly at Versailles and during the 1920s, Western politicians did little that mitigated – and much that encouraged – the rise of extremism. Today, they are doing exactly the same thing. A just peace can come only if politicians stop creating a state of affairs in which extremists thrive. Given their past and present form, a long time will pass before they come to their senses. In the mean time, countries like Australia, Britain and Canada should indeed adhere strictly to a staunchly pro-American policy. But it must be "pro-American" in the proper historical sense of that term – one, alas, that is alien to the best and brightest in Canberra, Ottawa and Westminster. As Amir Butler expresses it in an outstanding article, Australia Must Follow Washington – George Washington, that is.

What to do? Thirdly and above all, Christians must abandon their moral relativism (whereby it’s OK when Christians kill Muslims over there, but it’s not OK if Muslims kill Christians over here) and worship of and craven submission to the state. They must recognise the strict limits of their duty towards the state (see in particular David Lipscomb’s "Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It," Michael Rozeff’s "Christians and Libertarians," Teresa Whitehurst’s "Why Are Some American Christians So Bloodthirsty?" and Leithner Letter 59). Lipscomb presents a biblical view of a voluntary society. He refutes the fantasy that governments are created for "the public good," and demonstrates that peace, progress and civilisation do not and cannot depend upon the state. If Christians participate in politics, they necessarily mock the Ten Commandments. Instead, they should persuade people to renounce the use of force – in all its forms, including taxation – embrace God and emulate the Carpenter of Nazareth.

Christians should pray that their earthly rulers rule justly. But they must not glorify them, and still less should they bomb and kill for them. What happens when Christians turn their backs to God and hail Caesar? Consider the words from 1 Samuel (8:11–18):

This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plough his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.

January 30, 2007

Chris Leithner [send him mail] is a Director of Leithner & Company, a private investment company in Brisbane, Australia.

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com

No Connection
Between Holocaust Conference
And Iran's Nuclear Issue
By Frosty Wooldridge

2-19-7

(IRNA) -- Secretary General of the Global Foundation of Holocaust Survey Mohammad-Ali Ramin said on Monday that the international conference on holocaust, dubbed `Holocaust: A Global Vision' (December 11-12) had not had the slightest effect on Iran's nuclear case.

Ramin told IRNA that the conference had been held to inform the world public opinion on the subject and Iran does not side with any group.

"The West's opposition to Iran has always been in effect and one can not build any connection between the UN Security Council resolution and a research conference," said Ramin.

Asked to comment on claims that such issues as Holocaust had diverted Iran's nuclear case from its main path and raised the possibility of issuance of an anti-Iran resolution, Ramin said whatever was raised during the conference was aimed at informing the audience about different points of view and attitudes of experts and researchers.

"The UN Charter does not ban acquaintance with intellectual, cultural and historical issues. Research and study of all subjects are among the most basic rights of human beings," he added.

"What mistake has Iran committed by holding an unbiased research conference, attended by many world experts, that it can serve as a pretext for the UN Security Council resolution?" questioned Ramin.

"These are empty claims; the conference aimed at illuminating the world public opinion on a historical claim and is not a sin in any culture and law," he added.

The official stressed, "I do not go with the claim that Holocaust had had an impact on Iran's nuclear case." He added that any such claims are invalid and illogical, lacking any evidence.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Ramin said many people around the world had provided his Foundation with valuable and interesting proof and evidence on Holocaust which would be investigated by the independent international fact-finding committee of the Foundation.

He said that jurors and experts have also announced readiness to be members of the fact-finding committee to undertake judicial and penal investigation into the case.

Furthermore, he said, scholars and experts from four corners of the global have announced readiness to take part in the upcoming Holocaust meetings and present articles to review the event.

He noted that timing of the next Holocaust meeting will be announced later.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0702070020feb07,0,5388645.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed

Carter enters lions' den
Despite criticism, his book is work of a true patriot

By Paul Findley

February 7, 2007

At the age of 82, Jimmy Carter entered the lion's den. With the publication of his latest book, "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid," he did what a patriot would do: rally Americans to vigorous debate of a critical issue that affects our future. He deserves a hero's praise. Instead, he has been attacked and defamed.

I had the honor to serve as the senior Republican on the Middle East Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee throughout the Carter administration. Carter frequently invited me to huddles in the White House; discussions that would ultimately lead to a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt. I know Carter well and consider him a friend.

I also experienced firsthand what Carter now faces. Toward the end of my 22-year tenure in Congress, I spoke in favor of Palestinian rights and was critical of Israeli policies of Palestinian land confiscation and Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian lands. These actions were counter to American policy and values. They dimmed chances for peace.

As a result of my evenhanded position, the pro-Israel lobby poured money into my opponent's campaign. I overcame their challenge in 1980 but lost in 1982 by a narrow margin. Still, the message was heard loudly on Capitol Hill: Criticize Israel and pay with your congressional seat.

In my 1985 book, "They Dare to Speak Out," I detailed the tactics used to silence criticism of Israeli policies. One of the groups employing these tactics is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. On its Web site, AIPAC calls itself "America's pro-Israel lobby" and boasts a New York Times description of it as "the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel."

All citizens have the right to band together and push for policies they believe are right. But AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobby groups do not plead the case for Israel on the stage of public opinion. Instead, they often resort to smear campaigns and intimidation to clear the floor so that only their side is heard.

Carter has dared to call a spade a spade. South African leaders, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and UN Envoy John Dugard, compare Israeli policies to apartheid. The Israeli press uses the term, as do Israeli politicians. Former Education Minister Shulamit Aloni said in a recent commentary, "Indeed apartheid does exist here." Pro-Israel lobby groups have not debated the credence of these claims. Instead, they lob accusations and insults, even insinuating that Carter is anti-Semitic. They do not prove him wrong with facts. They seek to discredit him with innuendo.

I do not believe these groups set out to discredit opponents and destroy free speech. I believe they had the singular purpose of ensuring U.S. government support for Israel. But after decades of Israeli actions running counter to American policies and values, it becomes difficult to do one without the other.

American policy has long held, for example, that Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land are illegal. Yet Israel continues to build them. American values demand that all people be treated equally, that rights be doled out in equal measure regardless of one's race, religion or ethnicity.

Yet, as Carter points out in his book, Israel endows Jewish settlers living on Palestinian land with full rights, while denying those rights to the Palestinians living on their own land.

If these issues were debated openly, U.S. policymakers would have to hold Israel accountable and demand that our financial and diplomatic support be contingent upon Israel upholding American values and policy positions.

Yet there is silence. Critical discussion of Israeli policies is non-existent in Congress. Rather than conducting vigorous committee hearings, as happens with other issues, members of Congress compete to outdo one another in statements of support for Israel. And American tax dollars keep flowing uninterrupted to Israel.

Our unconditional support of Israel damages our credibility on the world stage. It deprives us of potential allies in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It allows Israel to remain intransigent and condemns Palestinian and Israeli children to decades more of conflict.

Open discussion, where all perspectives are debated, leads to good policy. Carter took a stand for what is right: for Americans, for Palestinians and for Israelis. It is time for a sitting president and members of Congress to do the same.

----------

Paul Findley represented Illinois in the U.S. House for 22 years. He is the author of numerous books, including "They Dare to Speak Out" and "Silent No More."

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

A Jewish academic has shocked Italy
by claiming Jews murdered Christians
for their blood in the Middle Ages
so it could be used in rituals.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/08/wjews08.xml

Professor outrages Jews with book claim

By Andrew M Rosemarine

Last Updated: 1:24am GMT 09/02/2007

A Jewish academic has shocked Italy by claiming Jews murdered Christians for their blood in the Middle Ages so it could be used in rituals.

The details were revealed in the Italian newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, which published extracts of the book, Easter of Blood by Professor Ariel Toaff.

The claims were denied by leading Jewish figures including his father Elio, once the chief Rabbi of Rome.

advertisementIn the book, Prof Toaff alleges the ritual killing was carried out by members of a fundamentalist group in reaction to the persecution of Jews.

The book describes the mutilation and crucifixion of a two-year-old boy to recreate Christ’s execution at Pesach, the Jewish Easter. The festival marks the fleeing of the Jews from Egypt and Prof Toaff says Christian blood was used for "magic and therapeutic practices".

In some cases the blood was mixed with dough to make azzimo, unleavened bread, eaten at Pesach. He says the acts took place in around the city of Trento in modern northern Italy, between the 11th and 14th centuries.

Prof Toaff based his book on confessions he says came from Jews captured and tried for the practice. He said several were executed after confessing to the crucifixion of Christian children.

Italy’s senior rabbis, including Elio Toaff, issued a joint statement condemning the book. "There has never existed in Jewish tradition any permission or custom for using human blood for ritual purposes. Such a practice is considered with horror.

"It is absolutely improper to use centuries old statements, extracted under torture, to formulate singular and aberrant historical theses. The only blood shed in these stories is that of many innocent Jews."

Prof Toaff, who teaches mediaeval and Renaissance history at Bar Ilan University in Jerusalem, said the reaction was a "disgrace" as they had not read the book, which has yet to be published.

He emphasised the practice was confined to "a small group of fundamentalists."

He added that attacking the whole of Judaism would be similar to blaming Islam for the acts of extremist Muslims. "They had suffered from the trauma of mass suicides. [sic] It was both a kind of revenge and a way, for them, of seeking redemption."

Historian gives credence to blood libel

An Israeli historian of Italian origin has revived "blood libel" in an historical study set to hit Italian bookstores on Thursday. Ariel Toaff, son of Rabbi Elio Toaff, claims that there is some historic truth in the accusation that for centuries provided incentives for pogroms against Jews throughout Europe.

Toaff's tome, Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders, received high praise from another Italian Jewish historian, Sergio Luzzatto, in an article in the Corriere della Serra daily entitled "Those Bloody Passovers."

Luzzatto describes Toaff's work as a "magnificent book of history...Toaff holds that from 1100 to about 1500...several crucifixions of Christian children really happened, bringing about retaliations against entire Jewish communities - punitive massacres of men, women, children. Neither in Trent in 1475 nor in other areas of Europe in the late Middle Ages were Jews always innocent victims."

"A minority of fundamentalist Ashkenazis...carried out human sacrifices," Luzzatto continued.

Toaff offers as an example the case of Saint Simonino of Trent. In March 1475, shortly after a child's body was found in a canal near the Jewish area of Trent, the city's Jews were accused of murdering Simonino and using his blood to make matzot.

After a medieval trial in which confessions were extracted by torture, 16 members of Trent's Jewish community were hanged.

Toaff reveals that the accusations against the Jews of Trent "might have been true."

Toaff refers to kabbalistic descriptions of the therapeutic uses of blood and asserts that "a black market flourished on both sides of the Alps, with Jewish merchants selling human blood, complete with rabbinic certification of the product - kosher blood."

Dr. Amos Luzzatto, former president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities said, "I would expect a more serious statement than 'it might have been true.'" He also expressed dismay at the sensationalism with which Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading daily, treated the issue.

"It is totally inappropriate to utilize declarations extorted under torture centuries ago to reconstruct bizarre and devious historical theses," declared 12 of Italy's chief rabbis in a press release refuting Toaff's claims.

"The only blood spilled in these stories was that of so many innocent Jews, massacred on account of unjust and infamous accusations," the statement continued.

The town of Trent, near the Austrian border, commemorated Simonino's "martyrdom" for five centuries, until, in 1965, the Vatican published the Nostra Aetate, which aimed at extirpating anti-Semitsm from Catholic doctrine. The Bishop of Trent signed a decree proclaiming that the blood libel against the city's Jews of that city was unfounded.

Alessandro Martinelli, the Catholic Church's delegate for Interreligious Dialogue in the Diocese of Trent, recalls a well-documented DVD and historical monograph by historian Diego Quaglioni disproving Jewish responsibility for Simonino's death. A plaque the community had erected to mark the tragedy of the Jews who were martyred called for atonement and reconciliation between Catholics and Jews based on adherence to historical truth.

To all this, Dr. Amos Luzzatto comments, "Even if the author should manage to prove that a deviant sect existed for centuries...clearly it could never be identified as a Jewish group, or as part of a Jewish community. This would be comparable to saying that the rabbis who were present at [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial Conference in Teheran represent mainstream Judaism."

Iran Revolution Ends The 'Holocult'

Dr. Sahib M. Bleher writes
that the Iran conference on the Holocaust
cuts the Achilles heel of the current Anglo-Zionist world order

By Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher 1-31-7

The Iranians may not even be aware of it, but their hosting of the recent Holocaust conference may prove to be the most important milestone in their history since the Islamic Revolution under Khomeini. Western politicians and media certainly grasped the significance of the event, with Germany's premier Merkel standing shoulder to shoulder with prime minister Olmert of the "only-democracy-in-the-middle-east-that-is-not-a-democracy" - the apartheid state of Israel - and with BBC television news presenting the bizarre spectacle of discussing, rather than reporting on, an alleged anti-Semitic conference whilst the images in the background showed traditionally clad Orthodox Jews happily in attendance.

When the Islam-hating Western media attacked the prophet Muhammad under the pretence of freedom of speech, Iran retaliated by testing the limits of those freedoms with its own holocaust cartoon competition. In doing so they stumbled across the most jealously guarded dogma of secular Western society, the Holocult.

Whereas questioning and reviling religious beliefs is almost a cornerstone underpinning the mindset of those societies, even genuine historical research into the subject of a subsection of the 60 million who died in the second world war is prohibited and most certainly leads to being ostracised in public: The suffering of the Jews may not be questioned since "if it were to be proven that "The Holocaust" has, in fact, been stage-managed for political reasons in order to promote Israeli interests, then the State of Israel and the United States as public players, and the global Zionist organizations as private lobbying entities would have to accept their share of responsibility for the damage, suffering and hardship they have wrought upon the Middle East and the world and, accordingly, they should be held accountable."

The latter is a quote from communiqué no. 16 of Argentina's growing opposition movement MSRA or Argentine Second Republic Movement, who intend to host a Holocaust conference of their own in order to examine how the Holocaust has been used propagandistically for political ends following the end of World War II.

Rather than a one-off event, the Tehran conference is the beginning of the unravelling of the special status that Israel and Zionist Jews enjoy in the world justified by their special suffering at the hands of the Germans. The issue is not whether Jews suffered during World War II but that this suffering has been exploited since, in what Finkelstein called the "Holocaust Industry".

For the last half century, only Jews and retired politicians, the latter in their memoirs, were permitted to voice criticism of Israel and the Zionist lobby. Meanwhile, with some historical distance, many more people are demanding to have a say in the matter, although others, like the Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation, feel the need to curry favour by stating "True Muslims must never deny the Holocaust" and in the words of Ibrahim Ramey, the Director of their Human and Civil Rights Division: "The evidence of this crime, and the horrible magnitude of this killing, is irrefutable. From sources as varied as Nazi war records, film documentation, and most importantly, the testimony of survivors and witnesses, we know that the mass murder of European Jews was, indeed, the single greatest crime of genocide in the twentieth century." - whereas the communiqué from Argentina questions why, if World War II cost more than 60 million lives in Europe and Asia, mankind's attention is almost solely focused on the suffering of 10% of those victims and millions have been added since then "including almost 2 million Iraqis killed by the Bush Family and their Associates since the First Gulf War in 1991 to date".

Recognising that the label of unique suffering can no longer be worn unchallenged, researchers who questioned certain aspects of the official holocaust story were convicted in political show trials as a warning to others: in France Robert Faurisson or Roger Garaudy, the latter for his substantive book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel, in Austria David Irving, in Australia Fredrick Toeben, in Germany Germar Rudolf and Ernst Zundel. But with Iran state-sponsoring a conference on the subject and inviting eminent Rabbis to attend, all this effort has come to naught. The topic will not go away and awkward questions are going to be asked.

As a gentile European I may not ask these questions without penalty, but Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedman, chief Rabbi of the Orthodox anti-Zionist Jewish Community in Vienna, Austria, did not prostrate before the God of Zion and did not hesitate to attend the Tehran conference decried by the Muslim American Society as immoral and motivated by racial hatred. In his address to the conference he stated that the founder of the Zionism, Theodor Herzl, already spoke in his first diaries of a number of six million Jews who were allegedly threatened in Europe and that, according to Herzl, the so-called Jewish state would only have a chance if there was a disaster for these six million European Jews, as well as that the Bolshevists and the British government already used the six million figure in their war propaganda against Germany during the first world war. He further talked about the collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists, and added that he was sure that the last word about the real or actual number of the victims had not yet been spoken, mentioning that in 1990 the number originally specified of four million victims of Auschwitz had been reduced to approximately 900,000 to 1.1 million whilst the six million figure remained unchallenged.

Now to be consistent, Austrian prosecutors would have to charge the Vienna Chief Rabbi with Holocaust denial, but such a trial would further dent the credibility of the laws protecting the official version of events as well as that of the Shoah story itself, repeatedly embellished by Hollywood productions. It is, therefore, highly unlikely, that the Rabbi will be dragged before a court to answer on charges of anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile there are two strands to the unofficial debate about the holocaust: on the one hand historians demand that this episode of history must not be barred from proper scientific scrutiny in order to separate myth from reality. Guiseppe Furioso, for example, asks why there is no documentary evidence of the gassings nor any mention of it in Churchill's memoirs or by any other political figures of the time.

The other, and more potent, strand is the questioning of the Pax Americana or victor's justice established with the Nuremberg Trials and the propagandistic exploitation of Jewish suffering for imperial ends. Just as president Ahmedinejad of Iran convincingly argues that if the Germans tried to exterminate the Jews then they should be responsible for resettling them in their own country rather than making the Palestinians pay the price, others, like the Argentineans, point out that powers like Israel who stole Palestinian land and the United States of America who stole Native Indian land have no moral authority to play world policemen in the name of the International Community.

The tide is changing and the Argentinean press release points to the fact that its effect is not lost on the pro-Zionist camp: "Interestingly", it says, "the Zionist pro-Israeli mainstream media implicitly admits that any such investigation poses a grave danger to Zionism.

Amidst all the insults and threats from such newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, in their 13-Dec-06 issue however, they ran an article called Holocaust denial can be dangerous" which concludes by saying that, "...attacking the legitimacy of the Holocaust allows... (attacking) the legitimacy o Israel, which was created by the United Nations as a result of the Holocaust. If the first act didn't happen, then the second act wasn't necessary."

In a way this let the cat out of the bag. Israel's days are numbered if the last great "religious" taboo of not discussing the true facts and dimensions of the holocaust is broken, and with the dollar in accelerating decline and US marines taking a beating in Iraq, Iran - threatened with a pre-emptive strike by the United States for alleged nuclear weapons of mass destruction - seems to have successfully managed to cut the Achilles heel of the current Anglo-Zionist world order.

Dr. Bleher is a Mathaba Author and has his blog at:

http://www.flyingimam.com/  

Bernard Schaub's presentation
at the Iranian Holocaust Conference
Dec. 11-12, 2006

Bernhard Schaub - Chairman of the VRBHV (Society for the Rehabilitation of those Persecuted for Refuting the Holocaust)

Kirschgartenweg 20 CH-4143 Dornach, Switzerland Tel. 0041 61 701 87 82 Speech for the Conference in Teheran on 11th/12th December 2006

Honoured Hosts, dear Guests,

I would first of all like to thank the Islamic Republic of Iran, its ministries and scientific institutions, in particular however, its president His Excellency Dr. Mahmud Ahmadi-Nedschad, for making possible this conference for researching the Holocaust here in Teheran.

We recall the year 1943 when Teheran was forced to be the location of the conference of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - the representatives of those powers responsible for the suppression of the freedom and sovereignty of the nations, namely American-British capitalism and Soviet Bolshevism, both under the inspiration of world Zionism.

It is therefore highly significant that today, under the truth-loving and God-fearing Iranian government, it should be attempted to bring light into the darkness of black propaganda, a propaganda which Germany has been immersed in (after having been rendered defenseless) for the past sixty years, and which has been used to build the moral basis for the expulsion of the Palestinians out of their homes and which has been used to justify the creation of the state of Israel.

In addition to these few introductory words, I would also like to call to mind the spiritual and cultural connection between Persian and German culture:

One of the most important music-poetical creations of the German spirit - Richard Wagner's grail-drama "Parsifal" - had its name inspired by the Persian expression for the "pure Fool", the innocent one. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche placed his philosophy into the mouth of the great Persian sage Zarathustra. And Goethe, in awe of the medieval Persian poet Hafis, wrote a whole volume of poetry under the title "West-Eastern Divan". I would like to cite two verses from this work, which could aptly serve as a motto for our conference as they express divine justice:

To God belongs the Orient! To God belongs the Occident! Northern and Southern lands, Rest in His eternal Hands.

He, the only truly Just, For all desires Right. Of his many hundred names, May He be praised! Amen. ***

Honoured Guests, as you all know we are part of a mighty political struggle, one which is at once also a spiritual struggle of historical and global importance. It is a struggle between Truth and Lie.

In all cultures and religions Truth is one of the highest values. Both in religion and science, as well as before the courts, the quest for truth has the highest priority. He who denies the quest for truth and places the searchers for truth under fire, has something to hide - has a bad conscience.

And you can be sure, honoured ladies and gentlemen, the Western democracy has a bad conscience, and it has something to hide. If democracy truly were a "rule of the people", as it pretends to be, then democracy would not fear Revisionist research. The truth hurts nobody, except the liar. Thus, the mere fact that the West destroys the reputation of the Revisionists via the media, financially ruins them and imprisons these researchers, is a token of the fact that there must be something wrong with the gas-chambers and the number of the victims. If the representatives of the Holocaust theory have superior arguments in their hand, then they would engage in a public scientific debate, relaxed and certain of victory.

Instead of this, the rulers of the West have placed the Holocaust under a complete taboo, with help from the media, education system, politics and the judicial system. They have withdrawn the Holocaust from all controversial debate and have made the belief in the Holocaust a type of enforced European-American religion.

The purpose of the "Auschwitz-cudgel" (Martin Walser) is to frighten and knock down anybody who merely discovers the machinations and power-games of Jewish high finance and their vassals, e.g. if he asks why Benjamin Shalom Bernanke, the successor of the Jew Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve Bank is again a Jew. He, however, who dares to revise the common historical picture of World War Two and the German concentration camps, and who asks unusual questions (this being the very meaning of the word "Revisionism!") is attacked by the media with the foulest term there is: "Holocaust denier". This term is nasty and hateful because it not only contains refutation of the Holocaust, but because it suggests a refutation contrary to better knowledge. They therefore imply that the Revisionist historians lie on purpose, whenever these doubt the gas chamber murders.

At the same time, it is made impossible for the public to inform itself on the current arguments, because the press, radio and television exclusively deliver Holocaust propaganda, and because Revisionist works are not sold on the commercial book market, due to fear of the press and judiciary. The scientific explications and conclusions of the Revisionists are stubbornly ignored by the scientific community, whilst the media are quick to warn of the Revisionists' "low quality pseudo-scientific work".

This shows us, that the Western political system panics at the mere idea the Holocaust could prove to be a fabrication, and the American-European apparatus of rule defends itself with all force possible against a public debate.

Why?

He who discovers a lie, will sooner or later inquire about the liar, his motives and purposes. When it one day becomes evident that the gas chambers, and thus the millions of gas chamber murders are an invention then too, with absolute certainty, the question will arise: Who thought up such an ugly and vile lie? And what kind of group of un-humans has by these means secured the power to not only militarily conquer but also morally incarcerate for all time a great cultural nation - the Germans and their Reich.

The French author Roger Garaudy pointed to one of the essential reasons with the title of his book "Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israélinne" ("The Myths of Foundation of Israeli Politics"): The moral justification for the foundation of the Zionist state in Palestine.

But this is not all of it, and it is not even the most important point. The decisive point is the cementation, not only world-historically but more so in a religious dimension, of the idea that the Jewish people have a singular status of being victims. This places the Jews in a position where they are morally untouchable. It is basically postulated that this nation has attained a semi-divine status through its immeasurable suffering, and that it is thus outside of any critique and therefore has the right to behave towards its opponents as it sees fit.

This is not only true concerning Israel and the Palestinians but also concerning the whole "Western community of values", i.e. this is also true at least for Europe and North America and thus for the traditionally Christian areas. Whoever criticizes the Jews is considered an anti-Semite. And since the anti-Semitic National Socialists are said to have killed 6 million Jews in gas chambers, anti-Semitism is the worst thought-crime committable.

It is not at all necessary that the normal European or American is aware of the thoughts described above on a day-to-day basis. This conclusion is, owing to sixty years of non-stop brainwashing, so deeply imbedded that it has become a reflex, almost an instinct, in particular amongst the academically educated layers of society. This is the reason why the Holocaust-belief was able to subtly expand into the Holocaust-religion, inclusive of everything that belongs to a religion: martyrs, holy sites, feast days and rituals of remembrance. The Christian Churches above all - it must be said to their shame - have subjected themselves to the new Zionist world-religion.

Religion, however, not only needs a god and his chosen people, but also a devil with his chosen people. Thus just as Yahweh and his Jews represent the aspect of light, so Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Germany represent the dark side It is beaten into the heads of the Germans that they are the offspring of the Devil of that time, and that they must atone for the sins of their fathers for all eternity. And at present almost all Germans believe this.

This is the reason why it is so incredibly difficult to initiate an objective debate about Revisionist theories in the German-speaking countries. But not only there: Zionist propaganda has swept through the whole of Europe and America and has deeply implanted the new religion in the heads and hearts of these people.

Within the Holocaust-religion, not only criticism of the Jews (anti-Semitism) belongs to the mortal sins, but also the healthy self-consciousness of a nation, known as nationalism, as well as the desire of a nation to keep itself alive, known as racism and xenophobia.

With the aid of this new belief and this new catalogue of sins, the world-Zionists (of which the Israelite Zionists are only a small part) are able to extend their power into the unpredictable. Their mightiest opponent, the German Reich was defeated in two world wars, and now they stepped forth to their believed monocracy. According to plan culture, tradition and morals were destroyed step by step in Europe (but also amongst those who believed they were victors e.g. the English and French) until nothing remained of the proud Occident than a decadent rabble.

But within all the self-content cleverness and cunning of the Zionists they made a fatal, unforgivable mistake: They built their empire on a lie - the Lie of the six million gassed Jews.

And now they are trembling in fear of the truth. Not because they have scruples. This type of people lies totally scrupulously. It is because they are afraid of their subjects all over the world, who they have exploited and mocked. For not all Europeans have subjected themselves to their new lords and fallen on their knees before them. There are valiant fighters for the truth in all countries, namely the Revisionists. They are the ones standing trial, sitting in jail and driven into poverty, but they fight. The heroes of freedom, Arminius and Wilhelm Tell are not dead - they live on in the best men and women of all nations.

It is for these fighters that we founded the Society for the Rehabilitation of those Persecuted for Refuting the Holocaust - VRBHV (Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocausts Verfolgten) - in Germany on the 9th of November 2003, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Leading Revisionists from all over the world as well as publicists and sympathizers belong to this society, whose board of representatives is made up of Ursula Haverbeck, Arnold Höfs and myself. Our leading lawyer is Horst Mahler, who is currently in jail and his colleague Sylvia Stolz. Even the "Reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution" of the Federal Republic, as well as the system's media acknowledge that we are the leading Revisionist society in Germany (Westfalen-Blatt, 13.11.2006).

Our struggle is fought on two levels: Firstly in the courts, where the accused and the defense counsels try everything to breach the wall of judicial opportunism and system submissiveness. I would here like to call to mind the current trials against Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf.

Secondly, we are increasingly bringing our arguments to the attention of the public. After we were forced to realize that our writings and books have successfully been kept outside the public's awareness, that a scientific discussion is being avoided and that the judges are continually passing inquisitional sentences due to stubbornness and cowardice, we have decided for actions aimed for the public at large. In Switzerland, Westphalia, Berlin, Mannheim and hopefully soon in all German speaking countries fliers are distributed in order to educate and enlighten the citizens. I personally am confident that we can break through the phalanx of our enemies in this manner: the people on the street must begin to doubt these false myths. Then the pressure against the media will start to rise, followed by pressure against the courts and finally the politicians.

We may consider a great step forward the fact that the Swiss Minister for Justice, Dr. Christoph Blocher recently stated that he desires to remove the offence of denying genocide from the penal code, and that a little later his party, the Swiss People's Party (SVP) decided to discuss initiating a referendum with the aim of completely abolishing article 261 Penal Code, the so-called "anti-racism law". Even though these are merely declarations of intent, these are promising signs.

Let us never forget: Man, if he is at all human, will always want to know the truth. He despises the Lie. And this is something we can build upon even if in the meanwhile, we make many bad experiences.

But of course we need support. We need courageous co-workers, we need money, we need connections to influential people and we need every type of direct and indirect help for our struggle including help from foreign countries.

It is for this reason that we consider it a gift from God that the courageous and wise Iranian president, and with him a whole row of political and religious superiors of Islam have taken on the battle against the Holocaust myth.

We European strugglers for Right and Truth here want to call out to the Islamic realm: We have the same enemy! It is the corrupter of humanity who with the help from his American battle-elephant desires to subject the entire world to Jewish capital, and who desires to destroy all sovereign nations, cultures and religions until nothing is left but a faceless mass of spiritually and mentally inferior slave workers, there to toil for Zion.

That must never be! We will fight the enemy and his lies and liberate ourselves - so help us God!

Bernhard Schaub, 12.December 2006

UA Drafts Holocaust
Denial Resolution
By Justin Bergman
1-22-7

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States has drafted a U.N. resolution condemning the denial of the Holocaust, a spokesman said Monday, a month after Iran provoked widespread anger by holding a conference casting doubt on the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II.

 

According to a copy of the draft made available to The Associated Press, the proposed resolution urges all member states to "reject any denial of the Holocaust," saying that "ignoring the historical fact of these terrible events increases the risk they will be repeated."

 

The draft resolution "condemns without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust," but doesn't single out any specific country for criticism. The U.S. said it planned to circulate the draft to General Assembly members on Monday.

 

The December conference in Tehran gathered 67 writers and researchers from 30 countries, most of whom argue that either the Holocaust did not happen or that it was vastly exaggerated. It was backed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a "myth" and said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

 

Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the U.N., said the draft resolution was being circulated ahead of the U.N.'s International Day of Commemoration in memory of victims of the Holocaust on Jan. 27.

 

He said its purpose was to "make perfectly clear that denying or minimizing the importance of the Holocaust is unacceptable to the U.N. membership." It was targeted toward "any country, organization or individuals" who would act in such a way, he said, without naming any country specifically.

 

Gilad Cohen, a counselor in the Israeli mission, referred indirectly to the Iran conference, saying "these incidents cannot be ignored any longer."

 

"This is a matter for the U.N. to say loud and clear, 'Enough is enough,'" he said. "Iran is wanting to have nuclear weapons and deny the Holocaust. This is something nobody should accept."

 

The spokesman for the Iranian mission to the U.N. did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

 

Iran has been locked in a long-running dispute with the U.S. and its allies over its nuclear program, which Washington maintains is geared toward developing atomic weapons. Iran says its program is purely for peaceful purposes.

 

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last month imposing limited trade sanctions on Tehran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that produces the material for nuclear reactors or bombs. On Monday, Iran said it barred 38 members of a U.N. nuclear inspection team from entering the country in what appeared to be an act of retaliation.

 

 

 

 

Holocaust Survivors Owed Billions - Study

 

 

 

JTA.org

 

1-23-07

 

 

Holocaust survivors are still owed as much as $175 billion in reparations, according to a new study.

 

The Jewish Political Studies Review in Jerusalem said European nations had promised $3.4 billion in reparations, but only half of that had been paid by 2005.

 

Only about 20 percent of Jewish assets have been returned overall, according to the study, which was made public last Friday by Reuters.

 

The study said payments slowed after the United States stopped pressuring Europe on restitution.

 

Holocaust survivors, many of them poor, are frustrated with the lack of payments.

 

"Things are moving much too slowly,"   said Menachem Rosensaft, founder of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

 

The Claims Conference said it would not comment on the report.

http://jta.org:80/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=6540

 

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN IRAN . . .
 

What follows is a first-hand account of what did—and did not—take place at the historic Holocaust conference in Iran on December 11-12. The author, “American Free Press” correspondent Michael Collins Piper (who also broadcasts nightly at www.rbnlive.com ) was one of the speakers at the conference.

Earlier this year Piper met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when the Iranian leader visited New York City for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. This article is a combination of several articles that appeared in the January 1/8 issue of American Free Press.

By Michael Collins Piper

Take this for what it’s worth: what you may have heard on television or radio or read in your daily newspaper about the now-infamous international conference on the Holocaust in Iran is largely untrue, or, at the very least, seriously distorted and very much misrepresented.

In some respects, the conference was largely painted as a rally of anti-Semites, white racists, and Muslim extremists, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, the conference—which included some 67 invited researchers from 30 different countries—was a diverse and eclectic gathering which not only featured a group of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish rabbis but also included Black speakers from the African continent, as well as Palestinian Muslim attendees and European academics who insisted that the Holocaust, as it is popularly remembered, did happen, that it was a major tragedy in which many millions of Jews were deliberately exterminated.

Thus, the false image presented by the media—that the conference was some sort of “hatefest,” dedicated entirely to the proposition of what has been called “Holocaust denial”—is anything but the truth.

Thus, if anything, the tone of the conference itself was one of genuine open debate and freedom of expression, perhaps the first time ever in modern history that an international gathering actually addressed literally “all” sides of the controversy surrounding the events referred to as “the Holocaust.”

So the truth is that there were many very different points of view being expressed at the conference, and they were hardly in agreement on any particular issue except for one possible general area of convergence: the concept that the Holocaust has been used as a political tool to steal 8,019 square miles of Palestine for the Zionist scheme to eventually take over the entire Mideast.

In addition, however, there were many speakers—including voices from the Arab and Muslim world—who put forth the notion that it is the United States and Britain, as imperial powers, that are more so to blame for the dislocation of the Palestinian Christians and Muslims of the Middle East—rather than Israel itself.

Israel, these speakers said—and there were many reflecting this point of view—was not the problem, per se, but rather the guilty parties responsible for the ongoing crisis in Palestine are the imperial American and British powers that brought Israel into being as an outpost for their geopolitical designs in the region.

Many took the position that the basic story of the Holocaust, as it has been told in the media, was essentially what happened, but that whatever happened—to whatever degree—did not justify Israel’s ongoing treatment of the Palestinian people.

One speaker in particular broke the basic mold of the conference. That was Lady Michele Renouf of Britain. Acknowledging the potentially inflammatory nature of her remarks, Lady Renouf suggested that the root of the modern day conflicts between Jewish people and the people of Palestine has more historic antecedents, going back through the centuries.

Lady Renouf asserted that the often hateful (and indeed racist) attitudes toward non-Jews expressed in the Jewish religious reflections in the collective works known as the Talmud were the root of much opposition to Jewish people in the nations of the West. This in itself, she said, could be partial explanation for the foundational concerns of so many Europeans who supported measures taken by the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler to curtail the influence of the Jews of Europe before and during World War II.

Although the Western media relished pointing out that controversial American author, Dr. David Duke, who has been teaching political science in recent years at a prestigious private university in Kiev, Ukraine, was among the speakers—always harkening back to the already well-known fact that 30 years ago Duke was involved in the Ku Klux Klan—Duke was no more “featured” as a speaker than any of the wide-ranging number of speakers from around the globe, people of all races, creeds and colors.

And for the record, it should be noted, as noted later in this report, the mass media actually distorted what the articulate Duke really did say, literally putting words (and propositions) in his mouth that Duke never uttered once during his remarks to the conference.

Duke’s primary emphasis was not focused on the truth—or the lies—about the Holocaust, rather instead on the need for all nations to recognize and support freedom of speech and thought, no matter what the issue, no matter what special interest group might have the intention of dictating what can or can not be discussed about a particular subject.

So again, the mass media version of events was once again entirely off the mark of reality. It was, instead, a mass of lies. And it is to Duke’s credit that he took advantage of the mass media’s focus on his attendance at the conference to correct the record for those who care to know the truth.

WHAT THE CONFERENCE ACCOMPLISHED

In the end, given the many differences of opinion among those who lectured and attended the conference, what was probably the most profound result (and perhaps the original aim itself) of this momentous gathering was the very fact that this conference directly challenged perhaps the most hallowed icon of modern history, the Holocaust, and made clear and enunciated in no uncertain terms the basic principle that there can be no restrictions (by any single nation or ethnic group) on the discussion of historical events as those who have controlled the discussion of the Holocaust insist there must be.

That the conference was actually sponsored by the Institute for Political and International Studies, a division of the foreign ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was momentous indeed: this was the first time that any government since World War II dared to acknowledge the fact that there are serious questions being raised about the specifics of the Holocaust.

But the truth is that, since the end of World War II, there have been countless (and often unsung) historians and researchers who have diligently devoted their resources (often at risk to life and limb) to ferreting out the truth. Those relentless truth-seekers have been subjected to an unending campaign of hatred by the mass media, but with the advent of this conference the international media—as a whole—was forced to acknowledge their work, however grudgingly it may have been.

Great credit must be given to Dr. Fredrick Toben, often called the “international ambassador” of the Holocaust revisionist movement, for his singularly instrumental role in helping the Iranian sponsors of the conference bring the gathering to fruition.

Although Willis A. Carto, the publisher of the world’s most-widely-circulated revisionist magazine, “The Barnes Review”—6,500 subscribers strong—did not attend the conference, he took great satisfaction in seeing the Iran conference materialize as it did. When this reporter, who is on the editorial board of The Barnes Review, took the podium at the Iran conference, I extended Carto’s best wishes to the conference.

Beyond dispute the pioneer publicist of Holocaust revisionism, responsible for the publication of hundreds of books and research papers on the topic, many of which have been translated into multiple foreign languages, thereby laying the groundwork for a burgeoning global Holocaust revisionist movement, Carto told AFP: “The Holocaust giant has feet of clay. The myth can only be sustained by suppressing the truth. But the people of the world want the truth—or at least unfettered access to the facts. What will they do now—lock up the world? Too late! Their giant is crumbling.”

DUKE’S ARTICULATE RESPONSE

As noted previously, mass media reports in the West (in the United States in particular) often focused largely on the fact that one of the vast array of speakers at the Holocaust conference in Tehran was David Duke. Although the media repeated, ad nauseam, to the point of boredom, the well-known fact that in his younger days, Duke was the leader of a Ku Klux Klan group, the media failed to point out that Duke left the Klan some 30 years ago and that many of Duke’s fellow speakers in Iran were people of color from Africa and Asia and throughout the Middle East. The Iran conference was hardly the so-called “white supremacist” or “racist” conclave that the American media falsely portrayed.

Nor did the media bother to mention regarding Duke that he served as a popularly elected Republican state representative from a suburban district in Louisiana and that he ran two widely publicized campaigns for governor and United States senator (winning roughly 65-70% of the European-American vote statewide both times). Nor did the media bother to mention that Duke is a certified academic, holding a Ph.D. from a prestigious private university, and that he has taught political science courses at the university level.

Highly articulate and telegenic and a longtime and open critic of imbalanced U.S. policies in support of Israel, Duke has never particularly focused on what might be called “the Holocaust issue.” However, Duke is certainly familiar with the controversy and has often spoken critically of laws in European countries—where Duke spends much of his time researching and writing and lecturing—that impose prison sentences on those who dare to question details surrounding the subject of “the Holocaust.” And that’s what Duke focused on when he spoke in Iran.

Nonetheless, the Western media reports about Duke’s speech completely misrepresented not only the whole tone of the Holocaust conference in Tehran but the actual words spoken by the former Louisiana congressman himself.

I was with Duke at the time Duke fired off this corrective message (posted on Duke’s website at www.davidduke.com ) that exposed how very much the mass media was lying about the conference. In my estimation, Duke’s assessment is probably as succinct and as accurate as anything that has been or can be said about the conference and the way the media distorted the truth.

Duke pulls no punches. If you are politically correct and are sensitive to no nonsense language regarding the media, please read no further. However, if you are interested in truth, here’s what Duke said about the media’s misinformation:

“It is being reported around the world that in my speech in Tehran that I stated that the ‘gas chambers did not exist.’ I said no such thing! In fact I said specifically that I take no position on that issue but that I believe in freedom of speech and find it an outrage that men such as [historian] David Irving are in prison for simply voicing an intellectual, historical opinion.

“The Zionist-influenced media has maintained that the purpose of the conference was to deny the Holocaust—when the actual, stated purpose was to provide free speech on this important historical issue and to protest against the suppression of free speech in some European and North American countries. The record of the conference is clear. There were many speeches at the conference that maintained the mainstream Holocaust view.

“In an act of blatant deception, the Zionist-influenced media has headlined that in the closing session Iran’s President called for ‘wiping Israel off the map,’ suggesting that he advocated a genocide or destruction of the people of Israel. One more big lie.

“Any tape or transcript of his speech will show that he said support around the world for Zionism is dwindling and that the Zionist Regime will be replaced by a democratic state in the same fashion that the Soviet Regime was dissolved in Russia.

“He specifically advocated complete civil and political rights for all residents of the region, and specifically mentioned protection for the complete civil rights for Jews and Palestinians alike, and he repeatedly stressed that all peoples should love and respect one another and must disavow violence and war.

“How the Zionist media lies! Thank God we have an Internet where people can immediately learn the truth. Ten years ago these lies could be stated with no fear of contradiction, now you can hear with your own ears the truth rather than the lies of a pro-Israel media. The truth the Zionists are trying to create a catastrophic, murderous war with Iran so they are trying to stoke the fires of misunderstanding and hatred toward that country.

“Any fair-minded person who reads my actual words and the words of the academics at the conference and the words of the Iranian President can see for themselves that the media has made up colossal lies about this conference and its participants.

“Tony Blair and George Bush have called the Holocaust Conference ‘disgraceful.’ Why is it disgraceful to allow freedom of speech on historical issues? Isn’t the real disgrace that thousands of Europeans have been imprisoned for simply questioning small details of the historical period called the “Holocaust”?

“Why is a conference dedicated to free speech condemned, yet putting people in prison in Europe for exercising free speech is praised? Who are the real deniers of freedom? Aren’t they the Zionist puppets Bush and Blair and the Zionist controlled media that lie about this conference, my speech, the speech of the Iranian President and those who support imprisonment of human beings for free speech?”

THE AFTERMATH . . .

Although in the wake of the Holocaust conference there came the good news that an appeals judge ordered best-selling British historian David Irving freed from imprisonment in Austria, after serving a 13 month term for the “crime” of Holocaust denial—despite the Austrian government’s demand that Irving serve a full ten year sentence—there was also some bad news for Holocaust revisionists.

Proving precisely the point that those who dare to engage in genuine debate about the events and circumstances surrounding the Holocaust are subject to harassment, boycott and intimidation, news reports indicate that at least four individuals who attended the conference in Iran have now come under serious fire, at least one of them facing possible criminal prosecution.

ITEM: In Manchester, England a screaming mob attacked the home of Rabbi Ahron Cohen, one of the spokesmen for the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish group, Neturei Karta, which was prominently publicized in the mass media for its participation in the conference. The rabbi is being loudly and formally shunned by the Jewish community in which he lives and Jewish leaders have vowed to deny him a Jewish burial. Eggs were pelted on his home.

The irony of the abuse to which Rabbi Cohen has been subjected is that Cohen himself strenuously insisted—in absolute opposition to the views of many of the Revisionists at the conference—that many millions of Jews died during the Holocaust, noting that many of his own family disappeared during World War II.

ITEM: In France, President Jacques Chirac has ordered an official “investigation” into the remarks made by Professor Robert Faurisson during his appearance at the conference in Iran. French Justice Minister Pascal Clement will now determine whether Faurisson’s statements (made on Iranian soil) can be prosecuted under a 1990 French law that makes questioning details of the Holocaust a crime. According to an enthusiastic Associated Press report hailing the attack on Faurisson, the French will contend that if Faurisson’s statements were published on the Internet or in a newspaper distributed in France that Faurisson will thus be liable for what he said in Iran and that some other news source distributed. That’s the essence of “freedom of speech” and “liberty” in one of the “great democracies of the West.”

ITEM: In Canada, at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, political science professor Shiraz Dossa is under fire for speaking at the Holocaust conference even though Dossa himself is a Holocaust believer and even said that the conference “was unfortunately stained by the presence of a small number of Holocaust deniers.” Dossa spoke on the issue of how the Holocaust—which he accepts as being precisely what it is described in standard Western history texts—has been manipulated in the war on terror. Dossa has been called on the carpet by university authorities, been subjected to media defamation, been the target of angry letters from other academics and the question of his continuing tenure at the university has been raised.

ITEM: In Stockholm, Sweden, Jan Bernhoff, who spoke at the Holocaust conference in Tehran, was suspended from his job as a computer science teacher at an adult education college because of the fact that he lectured in Tehran. Although his job as a computer teacher has nothing whatsoever to do with history or the Holocaust, the action against him was taken. Currently, according to press reports, a “probe” of Bernhoff by the school is now under way. The primary complaint against Bernhoff’s lecture seems to be the fact that he said that, based upon his research and that of others, the allegation that 6,000,000 Jews died during World War II cannot be backed up by factual data and that the figure is considerably less than that. Even arguing with the figure of “Six Million” is thus considered “Holocaust denial” and even young Bernhoff’s attendance at the conference was “unacceptable,” as the Swedish cabinet’s Minister for Schools, Jan Bjorkland, self-righteously declared.

What further fall-out from the Iran conference there will occur remains to be seen but the bottom line is that the ongoing war against freedom of expression in regard to this issue is far from over. But Holocaust revisionism, by virtue of its stand in favor of intellectual freedom, continues to stand on the side of the angels, its brutal and vicious enemies notwithstanding.

CAN ONLY THE JEWS CLAIM VICTIMHOOD?

Among the many speakers at the Holocaust conference in Iran was Malaysian diplomat and attorney, Matthias Chang, best known to readers of American Free Press as the author of “Future Fast Forward” and “Brainwashed for War.” In his prepared text, entitled “The Zionists’ Insidious Benchmark for War Atrocities,” Chang expressed the view of many people around the world that it’s time to end the Zionist monopoly on suffering. What follows are excerpts from Chang’s remarks:

“Why talk about death and the horrors of a war that happened sixty years ago, when right at this moment, wanton destruction and massacres of the innocents are taking place in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and in many parts of Africa? Why indeed!

“It has been said that the first casualty of war is truth. As such we must be especially careful when reviewing history written by the victors and losers in war. We must not partake in the perpetuation of lies and propaganda that serve vested interests.

“The killings of the Jews cannot and must not be distinguished from the war crimes committed by all war criminals against all the victims of the Second World War. The German citizens who were incinerated by fire-bombs and the Japanese of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were vaporized by nuclear bombs are as much victims as the Jews. They were all victims of WWII. Those who continue to promote the political line that the Holocaust is a unique and an exceptional Jewish historical event, when compared to the sufferings of the other victims, such as the Chinese who were slaughtered in excess of 10 million, have to that extent minimized the atrocities committed by both sides in WWII. It is an attempt to white-wash the war crimes of the victors in WWII.

“The Holocaust is now being used as a benchmark by which all other atrocities are judged, such that when the full horror of the devastation in Iraq was exposed, the international media contemptuously dismissed the war crimes committed against the Iraqi people as the price of establishing democracy. The same goes for the Palestinians.

“No one race or community should be allowed to arrogate to itself and or demand exclusive memorials to their sufferings. The right to survive cannot be monopolized by one race or community. To accept that the Holocaust was an exceptional Jewish historical event is to deny the genocides, massacres and sufferings inflicted on the rest of mankind throughout history. This cannot be right.

“I cannot help but question the motives of those who seek to elevate the sufferings of the Jewish people above those who had suffered as much, if not more from the horrors of WWII. And when the sufferings of the Jewish people have turned into an industry we owe a moral duty to the departed to ensure that no one should profit from blood money, more so, when lies are perpetrated to further such profiteering.

“If we are gathered here to seek truth and to condemn war crimes, then we must condemn all war crimes, not just those allegedly committed by the defeated in WWII. If we judge Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo as war criminals, then we cannot but find Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin guilty as well.

“We must set up an International Commission of Jurists to review the findings of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal.

“We must set up a War Crimes Tribunal to adjudicate on the crimes of all Allied Powers leaders during WWII.

“We must set up a War Crimes Tribunal to adjudicate on the war crimes of all Zionist leaders, specifically the past and present leaders of the state of Israel. “

THE WORLD’S LEADING REVISIONIST FILM-MAKER . . .

Prominently on display at the international conference on the Holocaust were a number of video documentaries by an American filmmaker whose productions provide—for the first time ever—a fascinating look at little-known facts (and a deconstruction of the myths) about the Holocaust and the problems of the Middle East stemming from the establishment of the state of Israel which the media often tells us “rose from the ashes of the Holocaust.”

Although you’ve never heard of him, unlike the names of the big Hollywood filmmakers, Mark Farrell is one of the most talented young filmmakers today. And you can bet your live savings that none of Farrell’s documentaries will ever be nominated for an Academy Award, unlike the many Holocaust documentaries by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center which are always up for the Oscar—and win.

The reason, of course, is simple: Farrell’s films—which have not received the distribution they deserve—address some of the most controversial topics on the face of the planet today.

Although Farrell has no billionaire families promoting him, he has utilized his considerable talents to produce a variety of DVD documentaries that are “must” viewing for those interested in historical revelations that can’t be found on any other videos.

Farrell’s videos on the explosive topic of “the Holocaust” and the questions raised about that subject, much to the dismay of those who want to maintain a monopoly on what can—and cannot—be said about it should be noted first:

• “The Persecution of Revisionists: The Holocaust Unveiled.” Although there has been a lot in the news about the jailing of top-notch revisionist historians (which Farrell examines in overview), this video is particularly powerful in that it contains actual film footage taken inside World War II concentration camps that has been suppressed by the mass media which prefers to present views of stacks of dead bodies (most of which were filmed in two camps on German soil where even professional “Nazi-hunters” admit no gas chambers were ever used to kill anybody)..

• “Judea Declares War: A Critical Look at World War II.” While many have heard the official” rendition of the causes of the conflagration that ripped the world apart, this video presents a refreshing look at “the other side of the coin.” If Farrell presented this video in Germany today, he’d been sent to prison.

Farrell has also produced a number of other DVDs that are candid, high-quality presentations on “taboo” subjects related to the Middle East controversy:

• “Understanding Anti-Semitism.” A forthright look at a 3,000-year-old phenomenon that is much-discussed but seldom analyzed, explaining the reasons behind the growing discontent with the power of organized Zionist groups in America and around the world;

• “Rep. Paul Findley Dares to Speak Out.” A fascinating interview with the longtime congressman driven out of office by the Israeli lobby for daring to criticize U.S. support for Israel. Here’s Findley’s first-hand account;

• “Zionist War Crimes: The Case for the Prosecution.” Here’s the historic record—going back to even before the founding of Israel—regarding Zionist terrorism, featuring rare film footage from the Middle East, exposing Israeli “statesmen” as ruthless terrorist butchers;

This is just a brief look at some of the videos Farrell has undertaken. His commentary is candid—no-holds-barred. If you are “politically correct,” you may find it tough to absorb. But if you’re not afraid of difficult subjects and want to convey to others another side of history, these videos are just what you need.

In these videos, there’s no shrieking or grandstanding or “hard sell” as all-too-frequently found in some video presentations by some “celebrities” in the alternative media today. You won’t be embarrassed to show Farrell’s videos to friends who are “on the fence” and who may need a subtle push to come around to your point of view.

But Farrell is no shrinking violet. He makes his position clear and presents it in a factual, restrained way, supplemented with an amazing variety of illustrations, film footage and other material brought to the screen in such an effective way.

The videos are fast-moving, eye-catching and certainly unrivaled by any other videos that have addressed these topics. And, it should be noted, it is hard to even name any other videos of this kind whatsoever.

And that’s what makes Farrell’s work so powerful and much needed. Never before has a videographer challenged, head on, so many “treasured” historical lies and factual aberrations as Farrell has done so skillfully.

With these videos Farrell has established himself as “the” unrivaled video historian in the realm of bringing history into accord with the facts in the tradition of the late Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes and his modern-day heirs such as David Irving, Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zundel and untold thousands who are now (or who have been) consigned to prison for daring to question so-called “established” facts that are really no more than tired-and-worn repetitions of wartime propaganda and disinformation posing as historical truth.

These videos are available at $22 postpaid by writing: Mark Farrell, P.O. Box 141243, Dept. AFP1, Cincinnati, OH 45250-1243. Or go online to Farrell’s website at www.honestmediatoday.com  for further information as well as a wealth of additional commentary and information. H

SOME PARTING THOUGHTS . . .

The most important thing that I can convey about Iran in general—my most memorable reaction in retrospect—is this simple concept: Americans need to ignore anything and everything they hear about modern-day Iran, its leader, its culture, and its people from the mass media in America.

It wasn’t until I actually arrived in Tehran and spent a day or so there that it became so apparent to me that even I—who fancied myself as being reasonably well informed about that country—had come to Iran with a lot of misconceptions (prejudices, that is) that were imposed on me (and yes, it’s a type of brainwashing) by the major media in America: everything from the nightly “news” broadcasts to the feature stories and other information (largely propaganda, both subtle and not-so-subtle) in the major news magazines.

As our plane prepared to land in Tehran, a message across the loudspeaker was rather jarring. It said that “by government decree” all women were required to cover their heads upon arrival in Iran. I knew this was the case, but to actually hear it broadcast over the airplane’s public address system was, even for me, somewhat un-nerving. The mass media’s image of oppressed women, being beaten and abused and forced to cover themselves from head to toe in dark, mysterious-looking garb, immediately came to mind. But I looked about the plane, at the array of women—Iranian and otherwise, dark-skinned, light-skinned, blonde and brunette, Eastern and Western, you name it—and I didn’t see a single one of those ladies flinch. Not even the richest looking women aboard, Iranian ladies in elegant clothes and dripping in expensive jewelry, seemed to be fazed in the least.

And it was then, as I surveyed the people aboard that plane going to Tehran (from Frankfurt, Germany, my connection point from Washington, DC), I realized in my own mind, for the first time, that these were people who might soon be dead: innocent victims of a reign of fire from the sky (a very real Holocaust) either from American bombers or Israeli bombers or both. These Iranian people, living their lives, traveling freely back and forth from their country to others, are in the gunsights of America’s George Bush and his Zionist allies in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Those Iranians are among the people whom 1,000 American Jewish rabbis—representing, by their sheer numbers, an overwhelming proportion of the synagogue-going American Jewish community—recently petitioned President Bush to attack, using American military resources (and risking the precious lives of American men and women) to do it. “If those rabbis, supposedly ‘men of God,’ want to wage war against these Iranians,” I thought, “then let them do it. But they had better stop pestering Americans to fight another needless war for Israel.” The realization that these living, breathing human beings from all walks of life—these Iranians—were the targets of the wrath of those war-crazed rabbis stayed with me throughout my entire time in Iran, a great burden for me as an American, knowing that the president of the United States is more in line with the thinking of those 1,000 war-mongering “religious” leaders than he is with the vast numbers of peace-loving Americans.

Although I was in Iran—and only in the capital city of Tehran—for some five days (arriving early Sunday morning and departing early Thursday morning) and spent most of the time at my hotel and at the meeting hall for the Holocaust conference (both of which were in the northern part of that expansive, sprawling city of 14 million people), I did get the opportunity to see much of Tehran, as did the other foreign speakers and attendees at the conference.

At the close of the conference on Tuesday evening, we were shuttled to a government center in central Tehran where we were formally greeted en masse by President Ahmadinejad, who later graciously posed for photographs and signed autographs and spoke (through translators) with the attendees who enthusiastically surrounded him to personally thank him for having dared to face global media assault for his comments about the Holocaust and (even more so) for having convened that controversial gathering.

Later, that evening, we were taken to a banquet at the modern and functional headquarters of the Iraqi foreign ministry, high atop the city on the mountainside with a magnificent overlook of Tehran. There we had the opportunity to meet and speak personally with Iraqi foreign minister Manovchghr Mottaki who hosted the dinner and there pledged continuing support for foreign political dissidents who dared to continue to speak out on the issue of the Holocaust and regarding the global influence of the Zionist power bloc.

And believe it or not, right there on the grounds of the foreign ministry of the Islamic republic of Iran was a lighted Christmas tree. Yes, folks, Jesus Christ is revered by the Muslim people, and his birth is celebrated and honored in the capital of one of the world’s most dedicated Muslim nations.

This is a point that will confuse and fluster Muslim-bashing pro-Israel Christian fundamentalists in light of their steadfast devotion to a foreign entity (Israel) that would never, under any circumstances, raise a Christmas tree and, in fact, does all it can to suppress celebrations of Christ by Christians (and Muslims) in Palestine. So there it was: a Christmas tree in Islamic Iran.

So shuttling back and forth across Tehran, we got to see the city (and its people) live, in action, so to speak. And what a busy place it is, certainly the busiest city that I’ve ever seen (and I’ve been to New York, Moscow, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, very busy big cities all). In general, in my personal estimation, the Iranians I met—ranging from waiters and hotel workers to diplomats and scholars—are good natured, wry in their wit, very friendly and hardly “anti-American,” except perhaps for a naturally developing antipathy to George W. Bush and that small clique of his handlers and co-conspirators who want to kill the Iranian people, destroy their government, cripple their nuclear energy program, and turn their historic nation—the very land of Daniel of the Bible—into a cauldron of death and disaster as they have already done to Iraq, once a thriving republic.

Tehran is bustling, energetic, hardly the image that one would expect from the media coverage that the Western press conveys to its gullible audiences. There is no over-hanging sense of gloom in Tehran, no specter of oppression, no feeling that secret police and observation cameras are close by, monitoring one’s every move. People live their lives, going to and from work, just as they do anywhere else. Now, of course, the saloons have been shut down and certain forms of dress and decorum are expected of visitors and natives alike, but traveling through Tehran one doesn’t feel any different than one might feel in any other major city.

There is one notable and striking exception to this: the fact that the traffic in Tehran is enormously overwhelming and the pedestrians and the drivers seem to have overcome the conflict and have forged a bizarre (if cooperative) way of dealing with the mess.

Thanks to the good offices (and good driving) of Iranian film-maker Nader Talebzadeh—who was one of the featured speakers at the American Free Press free speech conference held in Washington over Labor Day weekend this past fall—I had the opportunity to get some additional travel time throughout the amazing city, during which time Talebzadeh interviewed me in his car on camera (with the city’s expanse in the background) for a documentary he is making.

Through Talebzadeh I also had the chance to meet the talented Muslim actor who lovingly portrayed Jesus Christ in Talebzadeh’s soon-to-be-released major motion picture on the last days of Christ on Earth (financed by the Iranian ministry of culture) that—by the estimation of critics who have seen advance screenings—rivals even Mel Gibson’s epic Passion of the Christ.

Just a few thoughts and impressions about one of the most misrepresented nations on Earth today. Much more could be said, but this gives a brief overview of some things that need to be said and understood.

—MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER, a correspondent for American Free Press (see www.americanfreepress.net ) and a contributing editor to THE BARNES REVIEW, the historical revisionist magazine (see www.barnesreview.org ) is the author of the following works: FINAL JUDGMENT, detailing the Mossad role in the JFK assassination conspiracy; THE HIGH PRIESTS OF WAR, the story of the rise of the Trotskyite “neo-conservative” Zionist warmongers; THE NEW JERUSALEM, an up-to-date accounting of Jewish and Zionist power in America; and THE JUDAS GOATS, an overview of the effort by Zionist elements to infiltrate and destroy the nationalist movement in America, through the use of phony “leaders” and controlled front groups. Piper broadcasts nightly on the Republic Broadcasting Network at www.rbnlive.com  at 8:00 pm Central Time (9:00 pm Eastern Time) and on shortwave at 5.050. He can be reached via email at: michaelcollinspiper1960@yahoo.com

Holocaust naysayer ousted in New York

By MICHAL LANDO / Jerusalem Post / Jan 16, 2007
NEW YORK

Moshe Aryeh Friedman, a member of the Natorei Karta, who attended the Holocaust denial conference in Teheran last month, was asked to leave a hotel in Brooklyn over the weekend, where he was staying with his wife and four children. It was the latest in a string of protests against the anti-Zionist sect.

Friedman entered the Park House hotel in Borough Park on Wednesday using his wife's maiden name, hotel managers said. On Friday, Friedman was recognized by people in the neighborhood. By Friday afternoon, a small group of people had gathered outside the hotel on 43rd St. to protest his presence.

When word reached hotel employees that Friedman was staying at the hotel, a manager called the New York Police Department to have him removed. But the police said they could not legally remove him, reported hotel manager Israel Tyberg.

"We told him to get out," Tyberg said. "We are Orthodox Jews and didn't want such a person in our hotel."

Some hotel guests left upon hearing that Friedman was staying there; others didn't come, said Tyberg. Employees posted a sign on the door saying the hotel was "not responsible for any guest staying at the Park House."

News spread throughout the community that Friedman was staying at the hotel, and several hundred demonstrators protested outside the hotel Saturday night, calling for his removal.

"I think that anybody who had gone through the Holocaust wouldn't want this person to stay on their property," Tyberg said. "It's about an ideology of what's right and what's wrong, and this was wrong. Nothing to do with Zionism, purely wrong."

Rumors were reported on Ynet Monday that Friedman's wife left him and fled Austria where they live to her family in Brooklyn. According to Ynet, Friedman's wife approached rabbis in Brooklyn to help her divorce her husband. But according to hotel staff, Friedman was at the hotel with his wife and children.

Friedman was removed with a police escort Saturday night when his reservation ended.

A group of protesters from the right-wing Zionist Defense Organization were allowed into the hotel late Saturday night to confirm that Friedman and his family had left.

Community members were incensed to hear that Friedman was in their neighborhood, said Zev Brenner, president and executive producer of Talkline Communications Network, a Jewish radio and television source.

"There is something wrong here that must be addressed, and the ultra-Orthodox need to deal with this," Brenner said. "The Natorei Karta find shelter and sustenance within the Orthodox community, and the community has been slow to recognize what they represent."

http://www.iht.com/pages/index.php 

Berlin seeks to bar Holocaust denial in EU

By Dan Bilefsky / Published: January 12, 2007

BERLIN: Germany wants to use its European Union presidency to push through legislation that would make denying the Holocaust punishable by stiff jail sentences in all 27 EU member states.

The country's justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, said Thursday night that Germany's commitment to combating racism and xenophobia — and keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive — was both an enduring historical obligation and a present-day political necessity.

"We have always said that it can't be the case that it should still be acceptable in Europe to say the Holocaust never existed and that six million Jews were never killed," she said. Under the German proposal, she said, those who deny the Nazi slaughter of Jews during World War II could face up to three years in prison.

Zypries said the proposal, which will be debated by the bloc's justice ministers in the next six months, would also seek to criminalize racist declarations that are an incitement to violence against a specific person or group. The aim, she said, was to harmonize national legal systems in their approach to combating racism and xenophobia.

Unifying hate crime rules in countries with vastly different legal cultures could prove difficult, analysts said. European leaders have been unanimous in condemning those who deny the Holocaust, and have sharply criticized the Iranian government for sponsoring a recent conference that cast doubt on it.

\But the question of whether to criminalize such acts has divided Europe between countries like Germany that view a common EU law as a moral imperative and other countries, like Britain, Italy and Denmark, that have resisted common rules as infringing on free speech and civil liberties.

Two years ago, Luxembourg tried to use its EU presidency to push through legislation to unify legal standards for Holocaust denial, but was blocked by Italy on the grounds that the legislation breached freedom of speech. At the time, several countries rejected attempts to ban Nazi symbols, which gained force after the release of photos of Prince Harry of Britain wearing a swastika armband at a costume party.

Zypries said she was confident Germany could now succeed in overcoming such resistance since Italy, under a left- of-center prime minister, Romano Prodi, had dropped its opposition. But she cautioned that the legislation would need to be sufficiently narrow in scope if it were to gain support.

The Luxembourg proposal, which Germany is studying with a view toward emulating it, states that racist declarations or Holocaust denial will not be prosecuted if they are expressed in a way that does not incite hatred against an individual or group of people.

Laws against denying the Holocaust already exist in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Spain. In a recent high-profile case, the British historian David Irving spent 13 months in jail in Austria for challenging the Holocaust before being released last month.

The debate about how to reconcile freedom of speech with the fight against racism gained added momentum recently when the French National Assembly passed a law making it a criminal offense to deny that the massacre of Armenians by Turks during World War I was a case of genocide. While the Armenian community applauded the law, Turkey accused France of restricting the freedom of expression and rewriting history for political ends.

The publication last year of Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad, which provoked fury in the Muslim world, has prompted some Muslims to accuse the EU of double standards in its fight against racism.

Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, last March called on European nations to review laws to ensure they outlaw defamation of all religions. He told a meeting of EU foreign ministers that many Muslims believed European laws protected established Christian religions, and banned anti- Semitism, while doing nothing to defend Muslims who felt offended.

Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch socialist of Turkish descent, who is president of a European Parliament working group aimed at combating racism, said the scope of the German proposal should be expanded. But she acknowledged that this could prove difficult.

"We have seen increasing xenophobia and racism in Europe, so the German proposal is a good idea," she said. "But member states have different legal cultures and different laws, and this is a difficult issue."

Designer monsters

 
By William Blum

12/18/06 "Information Clearing House" --- -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly custom-made for the White House in its endless quest for enemies with whom to scare Congress, the American people, and the world, in order to justify the unseemly behavior of the empire. The Iranian president has declared that he wants to "wipe Israel off the map". He's said that "the Holocaust is a myth". He recently held a conference in Iran for "Holocaust deniers". And his government passed a new law requiring Jews to wear a yellow insignia, à la the Nazis. On top of all that, he's aiming to build nuclear bombs, one of which would surely be aimed at Israel. What right-thinking person would not be scared by such a man?

However, like with all such designer monsters made bigger than life during the Cold War and since by Washington, the truth about Ahmadinejad is a bit more complicated. According to people who know Farsi, the Iranian leader has never said anything about "wiping Israel off the map". In his October 29, 2005 speech, when he reportedly first made the remark, the word "map" does not even appear. According to the translation of Juan Cole, American professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Ahmadinejad said that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." His remark, said Cole, "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all," which presumably is what would make the remark threatening.[1] Readers are advised that the next time they come across such an Ahmadinejad citation to note whether a complete sentence is being quoted, and not just "wipe Israel off the map".

At the conference in Teheran ("Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision"), the Iranian president said: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom."[2] Obviously, the man is not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union did not occur through force or violence.

As for the Holocaust myth, I have yet to read or hear words from Ahmadinejad's mouth saying simply and clearly and unequivocally that he thinks that the Holocaust never happened. He has commented about the peculiarity of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. And he argues that Israel and the United States have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own imperialist purposes. He also wonders about the accuracy of the number of Jews -- six million -- killed in the Holocaust, as have many other people of all political stripes, including Holocaust survivors like author Primo Levi. (The much publicized World War One atrocities which turned out to be false made the public very skeptical of the Holocaust claims for a long time.)

The conference gave a platform to various points of view, including six members of Jews United Against Zionism, at least two of whom were rabbis. One was Ahron Cohen, from London, who declared: "There is no doubt what so ever, that during World War 2 there developed a terrible and catastrophic policy and action of genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jewish People." He also said that "the Zionists make a great issue of the Holocaust in order to further their illegitimate philosophy and aims," indicating as well that the figure of six million Jewish victims is debatable. The other rabbi was Moshe David Weiss, who told the delegates: "We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed. They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression." His group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish religious law in that a Jewish state can't exist until the return of the Messiah .[3]

Another speaker was Shiraz Dossa, professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. In an interview after the conference, he described himself as an anti-imperialist and an admirer of Noam Chomsky, and said that he "was invited because of my expertise as a scholar in the German-Jewish area, as well as my studies in the Holocaust. ... I have nothing to do with Holocaust denial, not at all." His talk was "about the war on terrorism, and how the Holocaust plays into it. Other people [at the conference] have their own points of view, but that [Holocaust denial] is not my point of view. ... There was no pressure at all to say anything, and people there had different views."[4] Clearly, the conference -- which the White House called "an affront to the entire civilized world"[5] -- was not set up to be simply a forum for people to deny that the Holocaust, to any significant degree, literally never took place at all.

As to the yellow star story of this past May -- that was a complete fabrication by a prominent Iranian-American neo-conservative, Amir Taheri. There are as well other egregious examples of Ahmadinejad's policies and words being twisted out of shape in the Western media, making him look like a danger to all that's holy and decent. Political science professor Virginia Tilley has written a good account of this. "Why is Mr. Ahmadinejad being so systematically misquoted and demonized?" Tilley asks. "Need we ask? If the world believes that Iran is preparing to attack Israel, then the US or Israel can claim justification in attacking Iran first. On that agenda, the disinformation campaign about Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements has been bonded at the hip to a second set of lies: promoting Iran's (nonexistent) nuclear weapon programme."[6]

Ahmadinejad, however, is partly to blame for this "disinformation". I heard him in an interview while he was at the UN in September being asked directly about "the map" and the reality of the Holocaust, and he refused to give explicit answers of "yes" or "no", which I interpret as his prideful refusal to accede to the wishes of what he regarded as a hostile Western interviewer asking hostile questions. In an interview with the German news magazine, Der Spiegel (May 31 2006), Ahmadinejad states: "We don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust." The Iranian president is also in the habit of prefacing certain remarks with "Even if the Holocaust happened ... ", a rhetorical device we all use in argument and discussion.

It may already be too late. The conventional wisdom about what Ahmadinejad has said and meant may already be set in marble. Ban I Moon, at a news conference on December 14, after being sworn in as the new secretary-general of the United Nations, was asked by an Israeli reporter whether the United Nations was going to address the issue of Holocaust deniers. Ban replied: "Denying historical facts, especially on such an important subject as the Holocaust is just not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to call for the elimination of any state or people."[7] Let's hope that this is not very indicative of the independence of mind that we can expect from the new secretary-general. Myths die so hard.

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir. Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire www.killinghope.org 

NOTES [1] AlterNet, www.alternet.org/, May 5, 2006 [2] Associated Press, December 12, 2006 [3] nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/2006Iran-ACohen.cfm (Cohen's talk); Telegraph.co.uk, article by Alex Spillius, December 13, 2006; Associated Press, December 12, 2006 [4] Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 13, 2006 [5] Associated Press, December 12, 2006 [6] counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html [7] Washington Post, December 15, 2006, p.27

What is Holocaust Denial? In recent years, more and more attention has been devoted to the supposed danger of "Holocaust denial." Politicians, newspapers and television warn about the growing influence of those who reject the Holocaust story that some six million European Jews were systematically exterminated during the Second World War, most of them in gas chambers. In several countries, including Israel, France, Germany and Austria, "Holocaust denial" is against the law, and "deniers" have been punished with stiff fines and prison sentences. Some frantic Jewish community leaders are calling for similar government measures in North America against so-called "deniers." In Canada, David Matas, Senior Counsel for the "League for Human Rights" of the Zionist B'nai B'rith organization, says: [1] The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews, including two million children. Holocaust denial is a second murder of those same six million. First their lives were extinguished; then their deaths. A person who denies the Holocaust becomes part of the crime of the Holocaust itself. Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question: Just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Six Million? Should someone be considered a "Holocaust denier" because he does not believe -- as Matas and others insist -- that six million Jews were killed during World War II? This figure was cited by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-1946. It found that "the policy pursued [by the German government] resulted in the killing of six million Jews, of which four million were killed in the extermination institutions." [2] Yet if that is so, then several of the most prominent Holocaust historians could be regarded as "deniers." Professor Raul Hilberg, author of the standard reference work, The Destruction of the European Jews, does not accept that six million Jews died. He puts the total of deaths (from all causes) at 5.1 million. Gerald Reitlinger, author of The Final Solution, likewise did not accept the six million figure. He estimated the figure of Jewish wartime dead might be as high as 4.6 million, but admitted that this was conjectural due to a lack of reliable information. Human Soap? Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that the Nazis didn't use Jewish fat to make soap? After examining all the evidence (including an actual bar of soap supplied by the Soviets), the Nuremberg Tribunal declared in its Judgment that "in some instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap." [3] In 1990, though, Israel's official "Yad Vashem" Holocaust memorial agency "rewrote history" by admitting that the soap story was not true. "Historians have concluded that soap was not made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever happened, why give them something to use against the truth?," said Yad Vashem official Shmuel Krakowski. [4] Wannsee Conference? Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he does not accept that the January 1942 "Wannsee conference" of German bureaucrats was held to set or coordinate a program of systematic mass murder of Europe's Jews? If so, Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer must be wrong -- and a "Holocaust denier" -- because he recently declared: "The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at." In Bauer's opinion, Wannsee was a meeting but "hardly a conference" and "little of what was said there was executed in detail." [5] Extermination Policy? Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that there was no order by Hitler to exterminate Europe's Jews? There was a time when the answer would have been yes. Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, for example, wrote in the 1961 edition of his study, The Destruction of the European Jews, that there were two Hitler orders for the destruction of Europe's Jews: the first given in the spring of 1941, and the second shortly thereafter. But Hilberg removed mention of any such order from the revised, three-volume edition of his book published in 1985. [6] As Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has noted: [7] In the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler decision or Hitler order for the "Final Solution" have been systematically excised. Buried at the bottom of a single footnote stands the solitary reference: "Chronology and circumstances point to a Hitler decision before the summer ended." In the new edition, decisions were not made and orders were not given. A lack of hard evidence for an extermination order by Hitler has contributed to a controversy that divides Holocaust historians into "intentionalists" and "functionalists." The former contend that there was a premeditated extermination policy ordered by Hitler, while the latter hold that Germany's wartime "final solution" Jewish policy evolved at lower levels in response to circumstances. But the crucial point here is this: notwithstanding the capture of literally tons of German documents after the war, no one can point to documentary evidence of a wartime extermination order, plan or program. This was admitted by Professor Hilberg during his testimony in the 1985 trial in Toronto of German-Canadian publisher Ernst Zündel. [8] Auschwitz So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Surely a claim that most Auschwitz inmates died from disease and not systematic extermination in gas chambers would be "denial." But perhaps not. Jewish historian Arno J. Mayer, a Princeton University professor, wrote in his 1988 study Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution" in History': ... From 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably overall, more Jews were killed by so-called 'natural' causes than by 'unnatural' ones." [9] Even estimates of the number of people who died at Auschwitz -- allegedly the main extermination center -- are no longer clear cut. At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal, the Allies charged that the Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz. [10] Until 1990, a memorial plaque at Auschwitz read: "Four Million People Suffered and Died Here at the Hands of the Nazi Murderers Between the Years 1940 and 1945." [11] During a 1979 visit to the camp, Pope John Paul II stood before this memorial and blessed the four million victims. Is it "Holocaust denial" to dispute these four million deaths? Not today. In July 1990, the Polish government's Auschwitz State Museum, along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, conceded that the four million figure was a gross exaggeration, and references to it were accordingly removed from the Auschwitz monument. Israeli and Polish officials announced a tentative revised toll of 1.1 million Auschwitz dead. [12] In 1993, French Holocaust researcher Jean-Claude Pressac, in a much-discussed book about Auschwitz, estimated that altogether about 775,000 died there during the war years. [13] Professor Mayer acknowledges that the question of how many really died in Auschwitz remains open. In Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? he wrote (p. 366): ... Many questions remain open ... All in all, how many bodies were cremated in Auschwitz? How many died there all told? What was the national, religious, and ethnic breakdown in this commonwealth of victims? How many of them were condemned to die a 'natural' death and how many were deliberately slaughtered? And what was the proportion of Jews among those murdered in cold blood among these gassed? We have simply no answers to these questions at this time. Gas Chambers What about denying the existence of extermination "gas chambers"? Here too, Mayer makes a startling statement (on page 362 of his book): "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." While Mayer believes that such chambers did exist at Auschwitz, he points out that most of what is known is based on the depositions of Nazi officials and executioners at postwar trials and on the memory of survivors and bystanders. This testimony must be screened carefully, since it can be influenced by subjective factors of great complexity. Höss Testimony One example of this might be the testimony of Rudolf Höss, an SS officer who served as commandant of Auschwitz. In its Judgment, the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal quoted at length from his testimony to support its findings of extermination. [14] It is now well established that H°ss' crucial testimony, as well as his so-called "confession" (which was also cited by the Nuremberg Tribunal), are not only false, but were obtained by beating the former commandant nearly to death. [15] Höss' wife and children were also threatened with death and deportation to Siberia. In his statement -- which would not be admissible today in any United States court of law -- Höss claimed the existence of an extermination camp called "Wolzek." In fact, no such camp ever existed. He further claimed that during the time that he was commandant of Auschwitz, two and a half million people were exterminated there, and that a further half million died of disease. [16] Today no reputable historian upholds these figures. Höss was obviously willing to say anything, sign anything and do anything to stop the torture, and to try to save himself and his family. Forensic Investigations In his 1988 book, Professor Mayer calls for "excavations at the killing sites and in their immediate environs" to determine more about the gas chambers. In fact, such forensic studies have been made. The first was conducted in 1988 by American execution equipment consultant, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. He carried out an on-site forensic examination of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek to determine if they could have been used to kill people as claimed. After a careful study of the alleged killing facilities, Leuchter concluded that the sites were not used, and could not have been used, as homicidal gas chambers. Furthermore, an analysis of samples taken by Leuchter from the walls and floors of the alleged gas chambers showed either no or minuscule traces of cyanide compound, from the active ingredient of Zyklon B, the pesticide allegedly used to murder Jews at Auschwitz. [17] A confidential forensic examination (and subsequent report) commissioned by the Auschwitz State Museum and conducted by Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow has confirmed Leuchter's finding that minimal or no traces of cyanide compound can be found in the sites alleged to have been gas chambers. [18] The significance of this is evident when the results of the forensic examination of the alleged homicidal gas chambers are compared with the results of the examination of the Auschwitz disinfestation facilities, where Zyklon B was used to delouse mattresses and clothing. Whereas no or only trace amounts of cyanide were found in the alleged homicidal gas chambers, massive traces of cyanide were found in the walls and floor in the camp's disinfestation delousing chambers. Another forensic study has been carried out by German chemist Germar Rudolf. On the basis of his on-site examination and analysis of samples, the certified chemist and doctoral candidate concluded: "For chemical-technical reasons, the claimed mass gassings with hydrocyanic acid in the alleged 'gas chambers' in Auschwitz did not take place ... The supposed facilities for mass killing in Auschwitz and Birkenau were not suitable for this purpose ..." [19] Finally, there is the study of Austrian engineer Walter Lüftl, a respected expert witness in numerous court cases, and former president of Austria's professional association of engineers. In a 1992 report he called the alleged mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers "technically impossible." [20] Discredited Perspective So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Those who advocate criminal persecution of "Holocaust deniers" seem to be still living in the world of 1946 where the Allied officials of the Nuremberg Tribunal have just pronounced their verdict. But the Tribunal's findings can no longer be assumed to be valid. Because it relied so heavily on such untrustworthy evidence as the H°ss testimony, some of its most critical findings are now discredited. For purposes of their own, powerful special interest groups desperately seek to keep substantive discussion of the Holocaust story taboo. One of the ways they do this is by purposely mischaracterizing revisionist scholars as "deniers." But the truth can't be suppressed forever: There is a very real and growing controversy about what actually happened to Europe's Jews during World War II. Let this issue be settled as all great historical controversies are resolved: through free inquiry and open debate in our journals, newspapers and classrooms. Notes Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan. 22, 1992. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (IMT "blue series"), Vol. 22, p. 496. IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 496. Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 25, 1990; See also: M. Weber, "Jewish Soap," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991. Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), Jan. 30, 1992. See: Barbara Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die: Report of the Evidence in the Canadian 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zndel (Toronto: Samisdat, 1992), pp. 192, 300, 349. "The Revised Hilberg," Simon Wiesenthal Annual, Vol. 3, 1986, p. 294. B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), pp. 24-25. A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution' in History (Pantheon, 1988), p. 365. Nuremberg document 008-USSR.; IMT "blue series," Vol. 39, pp. 241, 261. B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), p. 441. Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," Jerusalem Post (Israel), Sept. 22, 1989; Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million," Daily Telegraph (London), July 17, 1990; "Poland Reduces Auschwitz Death Toll Estimate to 1 Million," The Washington Times, July 17, 1990. J.-C. Pressac, Les Cr¦metoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse (Paris: CNRS, 1993). See also: R. Faurisson, "Jean-Claude Pressac's New Auschwitz Book," The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.-Feb. 1994, p. 24. IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 485; Nuremberg document 3868-PS (USA-819), in IMT "blue series," Vol. 33, pp. 275-279. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235-237; C. Hitchens, "Whose History is it?," Vanity Fair (New York), Dec. 1993, p. 117. See: R. Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confession of Rudolf Höss," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87, pp. 389-403. A deluxe edition of The Leuchter Report is available from the IHR for $20.00, plus $2.00 shipping. The complete text of this report was published in English in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991. G. Rudolf, Gutachten ueber die Bildung und Nachweisbarkeit von Cyanidverbindungen in den 'Gaskammern' von Auschwitz (London: 1993). See: The Journal of Historical Review, Nov.-Dec. 1993, pp. 25-26. "The 'Lüftl Report'," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1992-93.

 

 

 

The Psychology of “Holocaustianity”

 
20 minute Address to the Teheran Conference December 12, 2006
 by Lady Michèle Renouf, London, U.K.

Thank you Mr Chairman.

Colleagues and our Iranian comrades, I shall speak with pauses to assist our hard-working translators!

I am deeply grateful for this generous invitation from the IPIS [Institute for Political and International Studies] to take part in these historic two days we share.

As Dr Mohammadi’s Opening Address reveals, this Conference has given voice to an urgent international need - felt by so many suppressed academics and people of conscience ... from so far and wide that the IPIS must have been overwhelmed with papers and willing participants! [UPDATE: Indeed, as the Iranian Foreign Office tells us, overwhelmed by some 800 papers ! ]

These two glorious, truth-expressing days remind me of a famous scene in Shakespeare’s play, King Henry V, when this medieval nobleman tells his modest band of comrades that those who where not here to stand firm with us, shall one day soon come to regret with shame and sorrow, their cowardice...

[ KING HENRY V, Act 4, Scene 3:

“...he which hath no stomach for this fight, Let him depart... That fears his fellowship to die with us.

...This story shall the good man teach his son;..... >From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother...

And gentlemen in England now a’bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s{/’Saint Mahmoud’s!} day.” ]

...for, the instrument of “Holocaustianity” is set “to play off the nations” [in the words of Theodore Herzl] , upon a fabricated collision course.

In our era, we have precious few noble statesmen. So, I come to Teheran to congratulate the Iranian people who voted Dr. Ahmadinejad as their President. For, this valiant statesman - ( just like my noble Revisionist colleagues whose right of open debate I proudly champion ) - seek to speak the truth, bravely, no matter if to their personal cost in being demonised, ostracised, or even imprisoned for expressing their rational opinions.

Indeed, when President Ahmadinejad called the so-called “Free-World” grotesquely hypocritical for its deceit to impose its so-called “democracy” on the Middle East and Iran, he has been fully vindicated - (proved indisputably correct) - for we, from the so-called “Free World”, are only free to voice our [culturally Hellenic source-sceptical] views, in peace-loving Iran.

Now I must at once apologize to my respectable hosts who do not want to include in their programme, a critique of Judaism.

[[ RENOUF noticed and interrupts her text to ad lib as Rabbi Moishe Friedman, head of the Austrian Orthodox Neturei Karta gets up to leave the Conference Hall: ]]

I’m sorry for those who feel they have to leave the room in order not to hear de-conditioning!

[[ Rabbi Moishe, midst peels of audience hilarity, returns quickly to his seat! ]]

Thank you for returning Rabbi. Incidentally, Rabbi Moishe from Austria kindly asked me to help him put into “good English” the speech he delivered to you yesterday, so I am very familiar with his speech and grateful for him to have given me that chance.

Well, this session’s programme topic is ‘”Nazism, Zionism and Holocaust”, and, I am sorry to say, these topics will get us no-where, for they are red herrings, as it were, - distractions - that throw us off the scent of the truly dangerous quarry which actually prompted the creation of each of them.

Therefore, I must stress that I speak independently and only in my own name. No platform should be ‘tainted’ by any association or endorsement.

For I believe that the two great prophets, Christ and Mohammed, saw in Judaism a dangerously misanthropic tendency, and that they each held up a mirror to the fundamentally anti-gentile narcissism in the pious deceit aroused by a Jewish Godfather’s “Election” of Chosen Children.

When I was reading, for two years, for a Masters Degree at the Jesuit College of Heythrop (part of the University of London ), I saw its College Principal preach to Jewish congregations in Reform Synagogues, that the two Biblical Covenants stand side by side. Thus, in spite of New Testament theology, Jesuits now defer to the first Covenant of the Old Testament (or Torah) between only the Chosen Children and their Jewish Godfather.

Not only theologically, but psychologically speaking, the Judaic Old Testament proved disastrous for being based on a bad father role-model. For we know as parents that, in life, a father who favours one of his children above all the others will increase that child’s natural self-centredness and, unattractively, increase its motivation to sustain this selfish, actually loveless, sense of self supremacy ... whilst, in the unfavoured children, a low morale or sibling rivalry will result. Both Mohammed and Christ warned mankind of this disaffection.

In the case of Christ, he warned us of the “brood of vipers” and “deceivers” and begged his Jewish brothers and sisters to disdain the anti-gentile oral teachings which later on became the written Talmud.

In the case of Mohammed, he warned of the same deceivers but said that Christians may be trusted.

Well, I am sorry to say that Christendom today has been so corrupted by the secular race supremacy religion of Holocaustianity that they are rendered quite untrustworthy by their collusion with Judaism.

Indeed, as Rabbi Friedmann has exposed in his speech yesterday, Holocaustianity has made traitors of Christendom. Christian leaders, drawn by an enthrallingly plausible holocaust narrative, began foresaking Christ’s warnings, officially since the 1960’s, to revere Auschwitz - the sacrificial burnt offering site of a so-called Covenantal bargain for Israel - as “The Holy of Holies”. Thus, theologically, Christian leaders no longer attest to the New Testament and its Only Son’s anti-vanity Covenant which was meant to supercede the dangerous election of one “Chosen” people above all others.

For pointing out in my university essays that this false and treacherous hypenating of Judaism with Christianity is like wearing a T-shirt saying:

“Jesus loves you... but I’m his favourite !”

...and thus this undermines completely, the humility message from Christ, and indeed from Mohammed - I was asked to “study elsewhere”!

Now, I know from the anti-Zionist, Neturei Karta Orthodox rabbis that there is a difference of approach, between Judaism and Zionism, from the interviews their brethren in London kindly gave me for my film documentary entitled “Israel In Flagrante: Caught in the Acts of Twistspeak”.

However, it is my considered view - based on the parallel teachings of Christ and Mohammed - as well as from the Soncino edition of the Jewish law books called the Talmud (by which Judaists interpret the Bible) - that Talmudic laws authorize Jews to deceive non-Jews in their over-riding Jewish race supremacy interests... just as per the not less secular motto of the Mossad which is: “By Way of Deception”.

Judaism and its followers do have a right to exist. They do! And a safe place on the planet must be found where Jews can follow their beliefs but without interferring with other cultures and without their WMDs which, as per the tenets of the Talmud, they do not care to reveal to us. This is typical of the teachings of Talmudic legal twistspeak, by which the focus of attention is turned away from their secretive behaviour to charge other nations - Iraq for instance - and now, Iran, for so much as maybe planning any right to create defensive WMD. Given Israel’s borderless state intentions to claim for itself, a “Promised Land” from The Nile to The Euphrates, surely its neighbours would be justified?

The world now knows that we were lied to when we (the “coalition” of the duped) went into yet another inter-gentile war (this time on an innocent Iraq) for no side’s benefit save the usual third party’s. For, the true cause and effect facts are as follows:

Organised World Jewry, in its all visibility as the Zionist entity of Israel, does have WMD...(curiously, since the 1940s); Iran and Iraq do not.

Israel has driven Palestinians “into the sea”; Iran has not.

Our Western criminal laws are based on acts, not misquoted rhetoric! We must speak the truth - the whole truth, bravely - as Christ and Mohammed did and urge their followers to do the same!

Yes I, too, like the Neturai Karta, believe in a peaceful dismantling of the Israeli entity in Palestine. And, of course, one should add, the proper reparations from Israel for its criminal pirating of Palestine - a pirating, planned then announced in 1897 by Theodore Herzl, to “disappear” the Palestinians when, incidentally, Adolf Hitler was aged 8 years old !

Let’s get the cause and the effect straight: Zionism predates Nazism by half a century; likewise, Judaism’s anti-gentilism predates so-called anti-semitism (that is, anti-Jewishness, for you do not have to be genetically Jewish to be Jew-ish! ).

But, unlike the Neturei Karta rabbis, I do not believe the answer is to re-disperse among the nations the Jewish people who are anti-gentile by their own misfortunate Biblical definition and mission.

This dispersement is unworkable, as their history has shown. For the one question we never hear asked in public discourse is this:

Why has Jewish group behaviour throughout the ages - (and even well before the arrival of Christianity, according to ancient Roman texts) - met everywhere, eventually, with angry pogroms, the best publicised being the expulsion policies of the1930s and 40s across Europe?

This question is not asked because it is considered “anti-semitic” even to draw attention to the fact that World “Judea” had openly declared its economic war on Germany in 1933 and so, naturally, that “Trojan Horse”, as leading Zionist Chaim Wiezmann called organised World Jewry, were put into concentration camps. Other normal wartime actions against enemy agents, according to truthful jewish observers like Benjamin Freedman, were taken.

I do not want to see any race or species of flora and fauna on our planet, eliminated. Equally, I do not want my own race eliminated through the mass migration policies, curiously undertaken as a global strategy since the establishment of Holocaustianity. The differences in our races - (and their cultures created authentically out of their placement on the planet where each is a part of its particular flora and fauna environs), is the glory of our planet.

We are being persuaded, by political mispackaging, to diminish the true nature of our races and cultures in this disastrous mass multi-cultural, multi-racial experiment - which curiously, is to be inplemented everywhere except Israel...and at our general self destruction. There is no hate in what I am saying - as will be smeared over me, of course, in the usual bid to discredit any critique of Jewish group behaviour. In truth and practice, I speak no negative hatred; I speak up positively for the planet and its peoples, as created.

In conclusion, let me repeat, this session is about “Nazism, Zionism and Holocaust”. In my view, these are red herrings - diversions. The real issue behind them all is the conflict between Judaism’s basic, anti- gentile supremacism, and the revisionisms of it - as I see it held up for us, to reflect upon the dangers - by the two wise prophets, Mohammed and Christ. As role-models they teach us to speak the whole truth, bravely.

No race, no species need be killed. Truth alone renders harmful liars impotent.

But if we fail to address the whole truth, and instead collude, like cowards, with useless half-truths (like being only anti-Zionist), Judaism’s chameleon tenacity to dupe the nations into bowing to its supremacy, will mean we keep performing inter-gentile wars by proxy for its sake, alone - like those of WW1 and WW2 and on Iraq ... (and next on Iran, we’re told). That is, wars for no benefit, ultimately, to either side’s eager pro-Zionist coat-tailing, gentile party: only to their usual third party “Trojan” beneficiaries.

Now, because of the big lie about Iraq - a big lie which has brought blood and shame upon all who were in the thrall of pro-Zionist foreign policies - the world is ready for realising that the instrument of “Holocaustianity” is set to “play off the nations”, big time culturally, upon a fabricated collision course.

“This story shall the good man teach his son...” about the perils of jewish “Election”.

I thank you for your patience with my point of view.

Moshe Aryeh Friedman left at Teheran Conference
 

Neturei Karta Head Returns
After Tehran Conference

 
Israel NationalNews.com 1-8-7

Contradictory reports continue to circulate about Moshe Aryeh Friedman, the 30+ Viennese Jew who led a controversial Neturei Karta delegation to last month's Holocaust denial conference in Tehran.

Was he arrested in Iran, or was he attending another conference there, or did he fear to return to Austria ­ where, like in Germany, Holocaust denial is a criminal offense?

On December 11, 2006 Friedman participated in the two-day International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust held in Tehran. It was sponsored by Iran's Foreign Ministry Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) for the purpose of "reviewing the Holocaust." Speaking at a forum hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ­ who has said that the Holocaust was a "myth" created by the West and called for the destruction of Israel ­ Friedman was quoted by media in attendance as claiming that the Holocaust is "a successful fiction."

Following the much-publicized conference and the publication of photos of the Neturei Karta leader and Ahmadinejad embracing, Friedman disappeared.

It was only at the end of last week that the self-described chief rabbi of Vienna ­ who is considered a "kook" by many in Austria's established Jewish community ­ was able to return to his home in Vienna.

Friedman denied, in an interview with the daily Haaretz, that he had been arrested by the Iranian authorities. Instead he claimed he was delayed because he was invited by the Iranian regime to another conference, in Isfahan, and that he then flew to Denmark to participate in "interfaith dialogue." However, he refused to give precise details about his location.

He also said he prays three times a day for the disappearance of the State of Israel - "in peaceful ways" - and that he would not deny Iran its right to develop nuclear power.

The Jewish and the ultra-Orthodox world is seething over the participation of the anti-Zionist delegation at last month's Tehran conference. In Brooklyn, the Satmar Orthodox group slammed the Neturei Karta. Friedman grew up in the Satmar community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which has disassociated itself from him because of his radical views. He is under a ban which precludes him from worshipping in Orthodox synagogues throughout Europe and New York

In Manchester, demonstrations were held in front of the home of Aron Cohen, an associate of Friedman, and its windows were broken. In Austria, too, the Jewish community hastened to disassociate itself from Friedman, whom it described as "posing for a number of years as the chief rabbi of Vienna." An open letter published by the umbrella organization of the Austrian Jewish community said Friedman, "a kook," came to Vienna some years ago from Antwerp, Belgium and was never ordained as a rabbi. Friedman, for his part, claims that he is the scion of a rabbinic family going back to the days of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian empire.

While often called by the title of rabbi in the media, Friedman has never received smicha (rabbinic ordination). His status as a rabbi has been challenged by Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, who placed a cherem (excommunication) on Friedman and the other Tehran delegates.

In contrast to some of his anti-Zionist colleagues who were present at the conference, Friedman makes no apologies for his participation. In a phone interview from his home, he said, "This was the first time in history that such an open event has taken place - and not one that exploits for political purposes the suffering of my family to legitimize the holocaust that the Israelis are bringing on another people [the Arabs of Judea and Samaria]."

According to Friedman, the conference was a "celebration of freedom of expression," and "Iran set an example to the whole world."

Friedman explained his trip to Tehran as reflecting his desire to "show my respect to the members of my family who died in the Holocaust."

But speaking from Vienna, his position is different than the one he expressed in Tehran, where he was quoted as saying that it is "legitimate to cast doubt on some of the statistics" with regard to the Holocaust. From Vienna, Friedman claimed that he does not deny that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen. In Austria, publicly doubting the Holocaust is an indictable criminal offence.

Friedman does not hide his admiration for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "I had more than one meeting with his excellency, President Ahmadinejad," Friedman said. "The president first recognized me at the conference in Tehran, and he was especially friendly. There may be only one picture in which we are photographed kissing, but in fact we kissed 20 or 30 times."

"The Iranian foreign ministry hosted me in a 'palace' of 150 square meters, and I was allowed to meet with anyone I wanted," he said. "They treated me in a way that no was else was treated."

Friedman also claims that on his earlier trip to Iran, he visited the presidential compound and reached "the bedroom of Khomeini." Ahmadinejad, he said, "is from a good family. There aren't too many people who know him better than I do."

According to Friedman, the second reason for his trip was to present an international peace plan, by which Israel would cease to exist, Jews of Polish and Eastern European origin (and their families) would return to their place of birth, and Jews of Iraqi origin would return to Iraq "the moment a functioning democracy is established there." Friedman said the Iranian president expressed support for his plan and promised "to give religious freedom to the Jewish minority that remains in Palestine." Friedman added that he "wanted to bring the situation back to what it was, before the establishment of Israel."

Friedman is no stranger to anti-Zionist activity. In the past he maintained good relations with the extreme right-wing party of Jorg Haider in Austria, met with Hamas ministers in Europe, and prayed for the health of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat while the latter was hospitalized in Paris.

With regard to the present scandal, Friedman says he is "afraid of the reaction to our participation in the conference."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=118907 

Reproduced from: www.Rense.com