The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

A free public service of the Institute for Historical Review

December 24, 2007
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CHRISTMAS GREETINGS

Best wishes for a joyful Christmas season and a fulfilling new year.

Mark Weber and the IHR Staff

Bomb After Bomb
Howard Zinn
http://www.counterp unch.org/ zinn12152007. html

… It was not until after the war, when I read John Hersey’s interviews with Japanese survivors of Hiroshima, who described what they had endured, that I became aware, in excruciating detail, of what my bombs had done … I learned of the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945, in which perhaps a hundred thousand people died. I learned about the bombing of Dresden, and the creation of a firestorm which cost the lives of 80,000 to 100,000 residents of that city. I learned of the bombing of Hamburg and Frankfurt and other cities in Europe. We know now that perhaps 600,000 civilians — men, women, and children - died in the bombings of Europe. And an equal number died in the bombings of Japan.

American Jews on War and Peace
James Petras
http://petras. lahaine.org/ articul o.php?p=1723&more=1&c=1

… Given these issues, a serious analyst clearly must distinguish between ‘opinions’ and ‘commitment’ . While a majority of American Jews may voice private progressive opinions, their commitments based on their identity as Jews rests with the State of Israel and its principal mouthpieces in the US. This probably explains the unwillingness of progressive Jews to criticize the principal reactionary Jewish leaders and their mass organizations, even worse to attack and slander any critics of the pro-Israel power configuration. Progressive Jews have subordinated their progressive opinions to their loyalty and identity with Israel.

Israel’s ‘Knife in the Back’ Attack Against America
Phillip Tourney
http://www.ihr. org/jhr/v21/ v21n3p17_ tourney.html

June 8 marks the anniversary of probably the most shameful day in American history. That day America’s banner and honor were treacherously trashed by our so-called ally, Israel. Thirty-four Americans were brutally slaughtered, 172 wounded, including myself. America’s most sophisticated intelligence ship was so badly damaged it had to be scrapped. Israel deliberately attacked America’s virtually unarmed USS Liberty in international waters, knowing full well our identity, in an assault that lasted as long as the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Six Inconvenient Truths About the US and Slavery
Michael Medved
http://www.townhall .com/Columnists/ Mi chaelMedved/ 2007/09/26/ six_inconvenient _truths_abo ut_the_us_and_ slavery

Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre- eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation … An honest and balanced understanding of the position of slavery in the American experience requires a serious attempt to place the institution in historical context and to clear- away some of the common myths and distortions … In short, politically correct assumptions about America’s entanglement with slavery lack any sense of depth, perspective or context.

Nazi Propaganda Films More Prevalent on Websites
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
http://www.jpost. com/servlet/ Satellite? cid=1188392556858&pagename=JPost% 2FJPArticle% 2FShowFull

… Such incidents are at the heart of a new campaign by the German government to crack down on neo-Nazi groups that are disseminating information through the Internet. But it’s an uphill struggle … Hitler rally archive footage and other Nazi propaganda films are increasingly being uploaded, translated, and disseminated through YouTube. Other networking sites, such as Facebook.Com and Myspace.Com have faced similar rises in anti-Semitism.

No More Slam Dunks: The New Assessment of Iran’s Nuclear Capability
Philip Giraldi — The American Conservative
http://amconmag. com/2008/ 2008_01_14/ article 2.html

The bombshell National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program asserted with a “high degree of certainty” that Tehran had abandoned its nuclear weapons in 2003 due to international pressure and as part of a negotiated agreement with the Europeans … An alarmed Israel, where the report’s conclusions have been rejected by both politicians and media, is considering taking unilateral action against the principle Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz … The critics of the NIE curiously engage in their own groupthink when they claim that the CIA’s record of failures in the past mean that it has likely failed again. This time, however, the CIA has gotten it right.

The Most Dreaded Enemy of Liberty
James Madison
http://www.informat ionclearinghouse .info/a rticle18562. htm

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few … The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war … the power of raising armies … The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.

Immigration ‘Reform’ is Top Issue for Zionist ADL
The Anti-Defamation League
http://www.adl. org/PresRele/ CvlRt_32/ 5043_32.ht m

The need for meaningful immigration reform [sic] topped the agenda of the League’s annual Shana Amy Glass National Leadership Conference. ADL leaders heard an array of perspectives on the issue from government and administration officials, Congressional representatives and leaders of organizations representing the Hispanic community in the United States. Capping the two days of meetings, April 29 - May 1 in Washington, D.C. was an address calling for comprehensive immigration reform by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who described the need to protect the rights of immigrants as “a test of our own humanity.”

Ethnic Discrimination Not Only Based on Prejudice
Uppsala University (Sweden)
http://info. uu.se/press. nsf/pm/ethnic. d iscrimination. idB26.html

Our belief in power hierarchies is important in how we view and treat people. This is shown in a dissertation by Alexandra Snellman from Uppsala University that examines how racist and sexist prejudice creates social hierarchies and ethnic discrimination in various situations … The dissertation shows that social dominance is linked to how much one identifies with manly social behavior. This was true of both men and women participating in the study the greater the identification with manliness, the higher the social dominance.

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