The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

A free public service of the Institute for Historical Review July 10, 11, and 16, 2008

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US Reportedly Gives Israel `Amber Light’ for Iran Strike
Haaretz (Israel)
http://www.haaretz. com/hasen/ spages/1001526. html

U.S. President George W. Bush has given Israel an “amber light” to begin preparations for a military attack on Iran, a Pentagon official told The Sunday Times this week. “Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. The official told the Times that Bush informed the Israeli government he would back an Israeli plan to strike Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range aerial weapons if diplomatic talks over Tehran’s contentious atomic program broke down. Bush’s voice of support comes despite U.S. military officials’ opposition to the risks of an aerial strike on Iran, the official told The Times.

President Bush Backs Israeli Plan for Strike on Iran
The Sunday Times (Britain)
http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ tol/news/ world/middle_ east/article4322 508.ece

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official. Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.

British `Race Hate’ Men Seek Asylum in US
Yorkshire Post (Britain)
http://www.yorkshir epost.co. uk/news/Racehate -pair-flee- to-US.4291680. jp

Two men convicted of publishing race-hate articles on the internet have skipped bail and fled to the United States to claim political asylum, the Yorkshire Post can reveal. Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle were given bail by a judge at Leeds Crown Court on Friday, despite having been found guilty of a series of race-related offences. The pair were due to return to court on Monday while a jury continued deliberating over further charges, but they failed to show up. Last night Sheppard, 51, and Whittle, 41, were being held by immigration officials at Los Angeles Airport - outside the jurisdiction of the British court system.

In Britain, `Holocaust Denier’ Convicted of Rate Hate Incitement
Yorkshire Post (Britain)
http://www.yorkshir epost.co. uk/news/Holocaus t-denier- convicted- of-trying. 4282421.jp

A man who claims accounts of the Holocaust are “exaggerated” and describes Anne Frank’s diary as “evil” has been convicted of putting articles on the internet that could stir up race hate. A jury at Leeds Crown Court yesterday found Simon Sheppard, 51, guilty of nine counts of publishing racially inflammatory written material on his website between March 2005 and April 2006. The court heard Sheppard’s website attracts 4,000 visitors a day. Four of the articles were penned by Stephen Whittle, 41, who was yesterday convicted of four counts of publishing racially inflammatory written material.

Austrian City Removes Aphrodite Statue Given by Hitler
Reuters
http://uk.reuters. com/article/ worldNews/ idUKL11188649200 80711

The Austrian city of Linz has removed a statue of Aphrodite from a park after learning that it was a present from Hitler, officials said on Friday. Authorities in Austria’s third largest city said they checked the origins of the bronze statue after someone left an unsigned note on it stating that the statue of the Greek goddess of love was a gift from the Nazi leader. Research in Linz’s city archives determined that the claim was correct, and the statue was immediately removed and put in storage, a city statement said.

`Warriors for Zion’ at California University
Jon Wiener — The Nation (New York)
http://www.thenatio n.com/doc/ 20080707/ wiener

Columbia and Barnard aren’t the only campuses where right-wing Zionists have fought bitter campaigns in the name of defending Israel and Jewish students. The unlikely site of the latest battle, as intense and angry as anything in Manhattan, is the University of California, Irvine (UCI). I should know - I teach there. While the campaigns at Columbia and Barnard failed to persuade those schools to deny tenure or otherwise penalize faculty members the right-wing Zionists found objectionable, at UCI the professor who occupies the chair in Jewish history, Daniel Schroeter, has decided to leave after being condemned for failing to support the right-wing Jews’ campaign.

Israel Hints at Pre-Emptive Attack on Iran
The Independent (Britain)
http://www.independ ent.co.uk/ news/world/ middle-east/ israel-hints- at-preemptive- attack-on- iran-865068. html

The sabre-rattling over Iran’s nuclear progamme has grown louder as a defiant Tehran claimed to have conducted missile tests for a second day running, the US warned that it would defend its interests and its allies in the region, and Israel hinted it was ready to stage a preventive attack to destroy Iranian nuclear installations. With the latest tests - and the wide front-page coverage given to them by the national media - Tehran is signalling it will not be cowed by international pressure to end a programme which the West suspects is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, and that any attack by the US or Israel will be answered in kind.

Congress Considers `Virtual Iran War’ Resolution
Rep. Ron Paul
http://www.dailypau l.com/node/ 53522

… We listened to the rhetoric for years and years before we went into Iraq. We did not go in the correct manner, we did not declare war, we are there and it is an endless struggle. And I cannot believe it, that we may well be on the verge of initiating the bombing of Iran! … This resolution, H.J. Res 362 [H. Con. Res. 3620 is a virtual war resolution. It is the declaration of tremendous sanctions, and boycotts and embargoes on the Iranians. It is very, very severe.

Famed Symbol of Rome is 1,000 Years Younger Than Thought
The Independent (Britain)
http://www.independ ent.co.uk/ news/world/ europe/symbol- of-rome-found- to-be-1000- years-too- young-863937. html

Mussolini cherished her as a symbol of the “new Rome” he was bringing into being; and 60 years on, the bronze she-wolf with the gaping eyes, heavy udders and mouth half-open in a growl still says “Rome” as eloquently as the Colosseum. But to the chagrin of Rome romantics everywhere, scientists have now proved that the Lupa Capitolina, the life-size bronze of a wolf with two human infants suckling her, on view in the city’s Capitoline Museum, dates not from the time of togas and chariot races but from the 13th century, more than 1,000 years later.

General Motors Announces Job and Cost Cutting Plans
BBC News
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/business/ 7507091.stm

US carmaker General Motors (GM) has announced it will cut white collar employment costs by 20 percent as it seeks to counteract falling sales. GM also said it would sell as much as $4 billion of assets, and borrow about $2 billion to bolster its finances. The largest US carmaker said it would also suspend its common stock dividend. GM and other carmakers are under pressure because of high fuel prices and a dip in demand for larger cars such as sports utility vehicles (SUVs). In the first half of 2008, truck sales sank 21%, while overall sales fell 16%.

German Ex-Judge Disputes `Holocaust Denial’ Ban
JTA (New York)
http://www.jta. org/cgi-bin/ iowa/breaking/ 109417.html

A former German Supreme Court justice has come under fire for saying Holocaust denial should not be banned. “If I were a lawmaker, I would not make Holocaust denial a punishable offense,” Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem said Wednesday at a program at the Berlin Social Science Research Center. According to a report in the Berlin Tagesspiegel newspaper, the retired judge also criticized the state for what he considered an exaggeratedly tough confrontation with right-wing extremism. German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries proposed a Europe-wide ban on Holocaust denial during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s tenure as EU president in 2007.

Contact Information email: news@ihr.org phone: 949-631-1490 web: http://www.ihr. org/

IHR News and Comment A free public service of the Institute for Historical Review July 11, 2008 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

Your tax-deductible help is needed. Please donate.

Weber, Edwards to Tackle World War II on Sunday Broadcast
The Political Cesspool
http://www.thepolit icalcesspool. org/

Mark Weber is scheduled to appear on Sunday, July 13, with radio show host James Edwards to talk about the new books, articles and television broadcasts that are challenging the familiar view of World War II history, including recently published books by Patrick J. Buchanan and Nicholson Baker. The IHR director will be on from 4:45 to 5:45 p.m., Central time, or 2:45 to 3:45 p.m., Pacific coast time. He’ll explain why the growing skepticism about the official “Good War” mythology is important. In addresses at three recent IHR meetings, and in a lengthy essay posted on the IHR website, Weber has been emphasizing the dangers of myths about World War II.

Zionist ADL Denounces Pat Buchanan for Radio Show Appearance
Anti-Defamation League (New York)
http://www.adl. org/PresRele/ Extremism_ 72/5310_72. htm

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today said conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan “stooped into the cesspool of extremism” by appearing on a radio show run by a well-known white supremacist. On June 29, Buchanan appeared on “Political Cesspool,” a Tennessee-based AM radio show run by white supremacist James Edwards, to promote his book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.

Independence Lost
Patrick J. Buchanan
http://buchanan. org/blog/ 2008/07/pjb- independence- lost/

… No longer free of foreign entanglements, as Thomas Jefferson urged, we now have commitments to defend 50 countries. The old Hamiltonian policy of “Prosper America First” has given way to worship of a Global Economy, at whose altars we sacrifice daily the vital interests of our own manufacturers and workers. “Interdependence” is now the desired end of the new elite. And so we have become again a dependent nation. We borrow from Europe and Japan to defend the oil of Europe and Japan in the Persian Gulf. We borrow from China to buy the goods of China. We are as dependent on foreign borrowing as we are on foreign oil.

Russia Bans Hitler `Table Talk’ Book
Reuters
http://www.reuters. com/article/ email/idUSL08640 26220080708

A Russian court has banned a book about Adolf Hitler by late British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, saying quotes attributed to the Nazi leader insult Russians and Jews, prosecutors said on Tuesday. Under anti-extremism laws the court banned the 1953 book “Hitler’s Table Talk: 1941-1944″, which records Hitler’s sometimes racist ramblings on a wide range of topics. Trevor-Roper, Regis professor of history at Oxford University between 1957 and 1980, wrote what is considered one of the classic accounts of the fall of Nazi Germany: “The Last Days of Hitler”.

Looking Into the Lobby: At the AIPAC Conference
Philip Weiss - The American Conservative
http://amconmag. com/2008/ 2008_06_30/ article3. html

… This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its “roll call,” where the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia.

More US Mayors Publicly Oppose US Strike Against Iran
Cities for Progress
http://citiesforpro gress.org/ index.php? option=com_ content&task=view&id=724

As many as 36 mayors from across the United States have signed a resolution opposing US military action against Iran. The mayors declare that “no compelling evidence has been presented to document that Iran poses a real and imminent threat to the security and safety of the United States that would justify an unprovoked unilateral pre-emptive military attack.” They conclude by urging “Congress to prohibit the use of funds to carry out any military action against Iran without explicit Congressional authorization. ”

Revealing Auschwitz Photo Album
The Telegraph (Britain)
http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/arts/ main.jhtml? xml=/arts/ 2008/07/06/ sv_auschwitz. xml&page=1

Amid the horror, camp officers and staff went about their lives: sunbathing, going on picnics, putting up decorations. As these astonishing photographs show, Auschwitz was not hell for everyone.

Auschwitz Through the Lens of the SS: Album Photos of the Camp
US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC)
http://www.ushmm. org/museum/ exhibit/online/ ssalbum/

Karl Höcker’s photograph album includes both documentation of official visits and ceremonies at Auschwitz as well as more personal photographs depicting the myriad of social activities that he and other members of the Auschwitz camp staff enjoyed. Many of the most remarkable photographs are taken at Solahütte, a little known SS resort some 30 km south of Auschwitz on the Sola River.

Jews Who Counterfeited British Notes for the Nazis
Forward (New York)
http://www.forward. com/articles/ 13635/

“The Counterfeiters” purports to tell the story of how Jews at Sachsenhausen concentration camp produced near-perfect forgeries of the British pound for the Nazis … What is perhaps the greatest irony of the whole saga, which was left out of the Ruzowitsky film entirely, is that after the defeat of the Third Reich, large bundles of fake pounds ended up in the hands of the Jewish underground, which used the forged notes to buy equipment and to bring displaced persons to the Holy Land …

Did British Double Agent Philby Murder Polish General Sikorski?
The Telegraph (Britain)
http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/news/ worldnews/ europe/poland/ 2225955/Did- British-double- agent-Kim- Philby-murder- Polish-war- hero-General- Sikorski. html

General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of Poland’s wartime government in exile, died 65 years ago this month when his plane plunged into the sea off Gibraltar. A British inquiry in 1943 found that the crash was caused by the plane’s controls jamming. But rumours persist of a plot to kill Gen Sikorski, whose defence of the Polish national cause threatened to derail Britain’s relationship with the Soviet Union. Now Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski, and his prime minister, Donald Tusk, have demanded that Gen Sikorski’s body be exhumed from its tomb in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, the traditional burial place of Polish heroes.

Rabbi and Banker Plead Guilty in Tax-Evasion Scam
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes. com/business/ la-me-taxscam28- 2008jun28, 0,5730327. story

Federal prosecutors secured guilty pleas Friday from a Tel Aviv-based banker and a New York-based rabbi for their involvement in a decade-long international tax-evasion scam centered around an Orthodox Jewish sect that defrauded the U.S. government of millions in tax revenue. Joseph Roth, 66, an account manager for Israel-based United Mizrahi Bank, and Rabbi Moshe Zigelman, 60, admitted to their parts in a scheme in which people made bogus tax-exempt donations to charitable organizations related to Spinka, an Orthodox Jewish sect.

Contact Information email: news@ihr.org phone: 949-631-1490 web: http://www.ihr. org/

IHR News and Comment A free public service of the Institute for Historical Review July 10, 2008 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

Your tax-deductible help is needed. Please donate.

New War Brewing: US, Israel Take Dangerous Steps
Eric Margolis
http://www.commondr eams.org/ archive/2008/ 07/06/10160/

… Senior Israeli officials are openly threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear installations before President George W. Bush’s term expires. Early, this month Israel staged a large, U.S.-approved exercise using F-15s and F-16s to rehearse an attack over 900 miles - precisely the distance to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The highly regarded American journalist Seymour Hersh just confirmed that the U.S. Congress authorized a $400-million plan to overthrow Iran’s government and incite ethnic unrest. This column reported a year ago that U.S. and British special forces were operating in Iran, preparing for a massive air campaign.

Preparing the Battlefield: Secret US Moves Against Iran
Seymour M. Hersh — The New Yorker
http://www.newyorke r.com/reporting/ 2008/07/07/ 080707fa_ fact_hersh

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Seymour Hersh on US Covert Operations in Iran
NPR (Interview)
http://www.npr. org/templates/ player/mediaPlay er.html?action= 1&t=1&islist=false&id=92025860&m=92028303

In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker article, titled ‘Preparing the Battlefield’ , renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals further details of his findings. (Runtime: 4:40 mins.) The US may be closer to war with Iran than many think, he says. The aim of the US covert operations inside Iran, he explains, is to create a pretext for attack with the goal of regime change.

U.S. Attack on Iran? Not Coming Soon
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonito r.com/2008/ 0708/p01s05- usfp.html

A preemptive US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities may be unlikely anytime soon. But that does not mean it is off the table forever. And Israel - worried about the possibility of a hostile, nuclear-armed regional neighbor - may have its own timetable for possible military action. That is the bottom-line conclusion of a number of US-based experts who have talked in recent days about the possibility of any preemptive strike on Iran intended to halt its uranium enrichment program. US-Iranian relations may well be one of the two or three toughest foreign-policy problems the next American president will have to handle.

It’s All One War
Adam Buckman — New York Post
http://www.freerepu blic.com/ focus/f-news/ 2036936/posts

Members of the Greatest Generation - especially those with weak hearts - might want to steer clear of a PBS documentary that suggests the Allied victory in World War II was “tainted” and questions whether it can even be called a victory. Moreover, the documentary, titled “The War of the World: A New History of the 20th Century,” asserts that the war could only be won by forming an unholy alliance with a dictator - Joseph Stalin, who was as brutal as the one they were fighting, Adolf Hitler - and by adopting the same “pitiless” and “remorseless” tactics practiced by the enemy.

Historian Ferguson’s `Chilling’ PBS Series
David Hinckley — New York Daily News
http://www.nydailyn ews.com/entertai nment/tv/ 2008/06/30/ 2008-06-30_ historian_ niall_ferguson_ speaks_his_ peac.html

… British historian Niall Ferguson gets a little more specific in the chilling “War of the World,” a three-part series about 20th century armed conflict that runs three Mondays on PBS. But in some ways, his explanation isn’t that much more complex. To Ferguson, 20th-century man was a cold, greedy, selfish lot, too often indifferent to morality and basic decency. Ferguson challenges the whole conventional view of the 20th century that it was the story of the triumph of the good guys over the bad guys - twice on the battlefields of Europe and years later in the Cold War.

Jefferson Bible Reveals Founding Father’s View of God, Faith
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes. com/news/ local/la- me-beliefs5- 2008jul05, 0,7730914. story

Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper — alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin … Like many other upper-class, educated citizens of the new republic, including George Washington, Jefferson was a deist.

U.S. `Permitted’ South Korean Executions
The Associated Press
http://www.npr. org/templates/ story/story. php?storyId= 92270043

In the early days of the Korean War, American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950. Extensive archival research by The Associated Press has found no indication Far East commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur took action to stem the summary mass killing, knowledge of which reached top levels of the Pentagon and State Department in Washington, where it was classified “secret” and filed away.

Who’s Planning Our Next War ?
Patrick J. Buchanan
http://buchanan. org/blog/ 2008/06/pjb- whos-planning- our-next- war/

… Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation three times as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight, would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and a criminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power to authorize war. Yet Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with a naked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup.

Iraq Insists on US Withdrawal Timetable
Reuters
http://abcnews. go.com/US/ wireStory? id=5330901

Iraq will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it includes dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government’s national security adviser said on Tuesday. But the government’s spokesman said any timetable would depend on security conditions on the ground. Their differences underscore the debate in Baghdad over a deal with Washington that will provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to remain when a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

Iran Warns US, Israel Against Attack
The Associated Press
http://www.time. com/time/ world/article/ 0,8599,1820878, 00.html

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have begun a military exercise and issued a warning that Israel and U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf would be prime targets if Iran is attacked. The website of the elite Iranian force posted a statement late Monday announcing the military drill, which it said involved “missile squads,” but did not say where it was taking place. Iran’s guards and national army hold regular exercises two or three times a year, but the statement did not say whether this drill was one of them or if it was a special exercise.

Contact Information email: news@ihr.org phone: 949-631-1490 web: http://www.ihr. org/