by Craig Murray | |
Global Research, July 24, 2007 | |
Daily Mail | |
This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.
The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan – up to ten per cent – led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.  Killing fields: Farmers in Afghanistan gather an opium crop which will be made into heroin But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan. But do these answers stand up to close analysis? There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the 'good' war, while the war in Iraq is the 'bad' war, the blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to attacking Afghanistan after 9/11. Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq – which was an enemy of Al Qaeda and no threat to us – was plainly irrational in terms of the official justification. So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of occupation are clearly another.  Head of the Afghan armed forces: General Abdul Rashid Dostrum Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of Iraq may last for decades. Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is 'winnable'. Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win? In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not? The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen. The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium. That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker. They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war. That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact. Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger. Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations. It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops. How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect. When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers. President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin. My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe. I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan. Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander Litvinenko – the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last November after being poisoned with polonium 210 – had suffered the same frustration over the same topic. There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling. But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan. Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov's people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga. The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through. But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility. Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia. I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai's coalition, and to the West's pretence of a stable, democratic government. Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east – Dostum's territory. Again, our Government's spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there. That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst. Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them. Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense. Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London. Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK. They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy. | |
Sunday 29 July 2007
Afghanistan: Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time
Lies, scams and threats – banks are condemned
Britain’s banks and building societies have lied to and threatened customers who complain about overdraft charges, the Government’s financial regulator said.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has rebuked current account providers for making “false or misleading statements” to customers. The City watchdog said that some institutions had lied to account holders to deter them from reclaiming unauthorised overdraft charges.
It said that some banks and building societies had closed or threatened to close customers’ accounts to punish them for making a claim.
In a letter to the chief executives of every bank and building society, the FSA said: “Whilst there may be some circumstances that warrant the termination of the commercial relationship, we would expect this to be a relatively rare occurrence . . . and not as part of a standardised (and seemingly punitive) policy towards those who have merely exercised their right to complain.”
Customers who have their bank accounts closed are often forced to miss mortgage payments and other important direct debit deadlines. This can harm their credit rating. The FSA has taken enforcement action against two firms, which could lead to hefty fines.
Deficiencies identified by the FSA from a sample of banks and building societies, and set out in the regulator’s letter, include:
— A failure to respond to complaints fairly and consistently, to address adequately the subject matter of complaints, or to ensure that complaints are resolved at the earliest possible opportunity;
— Unfair closure of accounts, or threats to do so;
— False or misleading statements made to complainants.
Hundreds of thousands of account holders have reclaimed more than £200 million in overdraft penalty charges this year, complaining that the fees are illegal. Some banks charge £39 for slipping into the red without permission. Four million template letters used to reclaim the charges have been downloaded from consumer websites.
Overdraft charges boost the coffers of banks and building societies by around £1.7 billion a year.
The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) brushed the watchdog’s findings aside. A spokeswoman said: “This is part of what the FSA do, the FSA do these periodic reviews. We’ve worked entirely hand in hand with the FSA.”
Only last week, a report from the BBA praised Britain’s banks for their transparency and value for money.
The FSA has refused to name the two companies that have been referred to its enforcement division.
Lloyds TSB, Barclays, RBS/Natwest, HSBC, HBOS and Abbey between them control more than 80 per cent of the current account market, according to figures from Datamonitor, the business intelligence provider.
The FSA letter came on the day that the regulator agreed to give banks and building societies a reprieve from refunding bank charges to customers. The watchdog granted the waiver as eight institutions, including HBOS, Nationwide, Barclays and Lloyds TSB, began legal proceedings in conjuction with the Office of Fair Trading to establish the legality of unauthorised overdraft charges. The OFT has been reviewing overdraft charges since last year.
Customers who have made a claim or who are intending to do so will have to wait until the court case is decided before their complaint will be dealt with by their bank or building society. The case is expected to be heard before the end of the year.
Some customers have been forced to go to court to seek a refund, but these cases have been heard in county court and do not set a precedent. If the ruling goes against the banks, they could be forced to repay more than £10 billion of penalty charges dating back six years.
The BBA spokeswoman said: “If the FSA believed there had been a problem they wouldn’t have granted a waiver.” But consumer groups were unhappy at the FSA decision to stop refunds. Martin Lewis, of MoneySavingExpert, the consumer website, said: “The FSA may have slapped the banks’ wrists but I suspect the banks are jumping for joy. What they have done is stop people reclaiming money.”
Doug Taylor, of Which?, the consumer organisation, said: “We call on the FSA to name and shame the worst offenders and give consumers all the facts on which to base their banking decisions. Switching current accounts is a lot easier than people think. Vote with your feet and show the banks who is boss.”
John Howard, chairman of the Financial Services Consumer Panel, said: “The wide range of criticisms in this letter to chief executives, especially in relation to closing the accounts of customers who complain, suggests that some banks are having difficulty making judgments about the fair treatment of customers.”
Lockerbie: Evidence Fabricated by CIA
| |||||
| Long before the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) announced its spectacular decision to grant a fresh appeal to the Libyan man convicted of the worst act of terror in the U.K., Lord Fraser, who issued the warrant for his arrest, had expressed doubts about the initial verdict. Family members of the 270 victims promptly grasped the significance of Lord Fraser's admission. "Lord Fraser had detailed knowledge of events and I think we have to take seriously anything he says now that is relevant to those who gave evidence at Zeist. It is significant that a man who has been as close as he has to the investigation should be making comments like this," said Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the tragedy and currently represents the U.K. Families Flight 103 association. A careful reading of the news release by the SCCRC justifying the commission decision to declare the verdict without reasonable basis, can only led one to conclude that the crown had no evidence, let alone conclusive evidence, in the case against Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi. Why then did Lord Fraser issue an arrest warrant against him in the first place? The answer to this rather intriguing question is both simple and extraordinary. Lord Fraser indicted Megrahi based on fabricated evidence provided by U.S. authorities. One year into the Zeist trial, the prosecutors were told for the first time that the evidence had been fabricated by a former Libyan agent who had become a CIA asset in 1988. Internal CIA cables show that the agency was well aware since 1988 that the man was a fabricator. The Zeist trial constitutes the only case in history where internal CIA documents were used in a foreign court. As a rule, the Scottish Prosecution Authorities have a duty to investigate the credibility of their witnesses before they issue an arrest warrant. In the Megrahi's case, they did not. As they blindly trusted their U.S. partners, they failed to perform one of their most basic obligations. Instead of admitting the fact, they tried to cover it up, thus violating Scottish Criminal Law, which requires the prosecution to provide the defense with any significant information susceptible to help their cause. Abdul Majid Giaka was a member of the Libyan Intelligence Service, or at least so he claims. In August 1988, Giaka offered his services to the CIA. As soon as he defected, his handlers in Malta began to send cables to CIA headquarters in Langley concerning his credibility. About a year later, his CIA handlers had reached the conclusion that Giaka was just some kind of a con artist. They doubted that he had ever been a Libyan agent and feared that he could not possibly provide any valuable information, in which case his CIA stipend should be terminated. Clearly, we can deduce from the CIA agents' disappointment that -- nine months after the Lockerbie bombing -- Giaka had provided no relevant information whatsoever about the affair. During the next two years, he never told his handlers anything about the Lockerbie bombing, even when explicitly asked if he knew anything about the possibility that the bomb may have been planted on Pan Am 103 while the plane was sitting on the tarmac of Luqa airport in Malta. Under cross-examination, he admitted that much during the trial. Then after a dubious witness (who has since been discredited) made a very tentative identification of Megrahi, Giaka suddenly metamorphosed into an eyewitness who could link Megrahi directly to the bombing. Giaka's credibility was quickly destroyed and the three judges on the panel came to the obvious conclusion that they could not accept Giaka as a credible and reliable witness. And that should have been the end of it. Without any credible evidence against him, Megrahi should have been acquitted. Yet the panel found him guilty in a verdict that many legal observers have described as one of the most spectacular miscarriages of justice in history. Last month, after three years of investigation, the SCCRC concluded that no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned such a verdict. As I consider beyond belief that a three-year U.S.-U.K. joint investigation could not uncover a single shred of authentic evidence linking Megrahi to the bombing, I have little choice but to conclude, as many have suspected over the years, that an innocent man is serving a life sentence in a Scottish jail. The conclusion has profound effects as it also implies that U.N. sanctions may have been wrongly imposed over a nation for almost a decade. It also means that the culprits of this odious act of terror have escaped justice. Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair have consistently opposed the independent inquiry of the Lockerbie bombing so much desired by the families of the victims. In the words of Justice Secretary Jack Straw, nothing further could be learned from such inquiry. Yet, the former foreign secretary's position on the matter stands clearly at odd with a cryptic, yet abundantly clear, statement by the Iron Lady. About the 1986 U.S. bombing of Tripoli, which made use of U.K. air bases and during which the two-year-old daughter of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi died, Thatcher wrote in her 1993 memoirs: "There were revenge killings of British hostages organized by Libya, which I bitterly regretted. But the much vaunted Libyan counter-attack did not and could not take place." | |||||
2007/07/18 오전 5:06 © 2007 Ohmynews | |||||
North American Union -- connecting the dots
by Kevin Parkinson
Global Research
My previous article explains in detail the lead up to the North American Union under the pretense of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the cleverly disguised methods the governments of Mexico, Canada and the United States have used and will continue to use to change the face and the future of our North American continent.
The upcoming, so-called SPP Conference in Montebello, Quebec from August 20-21 will bring the leaders of the three countries together to ‘ratify’ the SPP, about which their respective citizens know almost nothing. This is all part of a carefully laid out plan, and is no accident. Our government leaders are not at all interested in discussing this issue with the people who elected them. Democracy with a different twist.
The media is complicit in this fascist act by government in collusion with the corporate multinationals, and have either refused to publish anything relevant, or have glossed over the entire issue in true lapdog fashion.
For further background information of the effects on Canada because of the impending North American Union, you can do no better than to read Maude Barlow’s “Too Close for Comfort” wherein Ms Barlow provides painstaking and shocking facts into the economic pillage that will affect all citizens except the wealthiest of the elite.
The purpose of this article is to analyze what else is going on in our countries right now, and then to determine what relationship this activity has with the NAU. I am stating up front that these arguments will be conjectural but need to be addressed.
Decline of U.S. economy
There’s no shortage of articles on the Internet explaining the ‘life-support’ system that the U.S. economy is on. The Washington Post referred to the upcoming bust earlier this month. Stock prices and company valuations are set to take a fall and government may have to raise taxes. Interest rates are starting to rise, and the staggering debt-financed consumption in the U.S. will lead to massive defaults on mortgages and a huge ‘asset grab’ by the rich. China and Middle East oil magnates, who will not permit interest rates to come down, are propping up the United States.
Predictions vary but we may start seeing major monetary shocks by December 2007, but more likely in 2008.
American dollar = Canadian dollar = 10 pesos
The Canadian dollar this week hit a thirty-year high and traded at $.96 American. It is expected to achieve parity with the American dollar this year. This will mean that both the American and Canadian dollar will trade for somewhere around 10 Mexican pesos.
I find this sudden parity of currencies to be extremely coincidental since one of the tenets of the North American Union will be a new currency. This is not speculation. It is part of the SPP agreement that will assuredly be ratified in Montebello next month. So, with the currencies of the three countries now closely aligned, it will be a lot easier to introduce a new North American currency, the AMERO!
United States immigration crisis
There are an estimated 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, living in the United States. The administration of George W. Bush has deliberately allowed this to happen and is now doing a tap dance to stall any immediate action to resolve this huge problem.
The point is, if you knew we were heading into a North American Union in 2010, to which Bush is a proponent, why would this worry you?
All he needs to do is stall until 2009, and let the new president stall for another year. By 2010, it will all be academic since the ‘illegals’ will become ‘legal’ overnight. In the European Union the countries are virtually borderless. People travel from France to Spain just like people travel from Ontario to Quebec or from Vermont to New Hampshire. The borders will disappear overnight. The illegal immigration problem will disappear as well.
Passport issue
A prior Global Research article deals with the passport issue between Canada and the United States. The requirements between the two countries keep changing, and people are very confused. Now the idea of a ‘smart card’ has surfaced and is currently be ‘tested.’
My sense is that, as with the imminent Amero currency, officials are stalling because there will be new requirements, or perhaps no requirements, since we will all become part of one North American Union, and would only require a passport when we leave or enter that union.
Conclusion
Other articles on this subject suggest that the general public will resist such huge changes, having had no input, information or rebuttal to the whole idea of a North American Union. By now, we should all understand that we are part of a fascist state since we are being denied ANY opportunities for democratic participation into what amounts to the most abrupt, fraudulent and pervasive change in our governance since Confederation.
The question is: how will the elite, the corporate rulers and the government leaders ‘sell’ this bill of goods to the electorate?
Traditionally, instilling a climate of fear and using the tried and true ‘problem-reaction-solution’ method achieves this.
Whether it be a thoughtful, well planned and executed economic crash, or whether some tragic and unforeseen ‘event’ happens, a frightened population will always react to the problem and demand a solution from its government.
And lo and behold, the government will just happen to have a solution in its back pocket, something that has been in the making since former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed the Free Trade Agreement in Canada in 1984. Since 1984 our governments have been working towards one final goal.
Welcome to 2010. Welcome to the North American Union.
Author's website at http://realitycheck.typepad.com/
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6382.Full story/Permalink
COMMUNIST UNITED STATES
At a Republican National Convention many years ago, I visited in the
In
So, every couple of days, he stole a part. When he had all the parts at home, he assembled them. What he wound up with was not a baby carriage, but a machine gun – which recalls the fact that in the beginning Hitler built his war machine with subterfuge. By the time the world became aware of it, it was too late.
Today, here in the United States, all the elements of totalitarian dictatorship that, because of modern technology would leave Hitler, and Stalin, etc., breathless with envy, have been meticulously installed, from the Patriot Act, which the congressmen who voted on it were not allowed to read, to Patriot II, the existence of which the White House denied, through the emasculation of the Posse Comitatus Act that forbade the domestic use of our military, to the act that cancels habeas corpus.
Most Americans don’t realize that the
Yes, we fought Communism for years. Most Americans still naively assume that means we fought to win. Why else would you fight? No! We didn’t win, because our policy was not to win; it was to fight, to keep fighting endlessly while we drained ourselves of treasure, money and human.
We created the
How would you decide whether a country is Communist? Why not go to the expert? Would you take the word of Karl Marx? In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx set forth a list of ten steps to Communism. Marx said a country that takes those ten steps is Communist.
So, how many of those ten steps have we taken in the
The only thing
And on July 17th el presidente Jorge W. Boosh adopted Plank Four. From now on, if you are found to be “undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people,” or if you are discovered to “pose a significant risk of committing”
So, what does this mean? What does it mean to “undermine efforts?” What does it mean not just to commit an act of violence, but to “pose a significant risk of committing” one? However broad and sloppy it is, doesn’t this language obviously refer to violent Islamic terrorists? Shouldn’t we give our own government the benefit of the doubt?
Remember that until the Socialist Herbert Hoover Administration, immediately reinforced by the Socialist Franklin Roosevelt Administration, Americans did not give government the benefit of the doubt. They were intensely suspicious of government, an attitude bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers in the separation of powers, until Republican Hoover and then Democrat FDR turned the federal government into troughs and beguiled the pigs to slop.
I would give the benefit of the doubt to Tom Jefferson or to Andy Jackson or to Grover Cleveland. I don’t give it to a President who says he is fighting terrorism, but who refuses to protect our borders from terrorists, a President who imprisons our Border Patrol but rewards drug smugglers and coyotes, a President who is trying to dissolve our country in a world government, a President who says he is fighting terrorism in Iraq, but whose Rules of Engagement prevent our military from winning, give the crucial edge in combat to the enemy and put our finest officers on trial.
What does it mean to “undermine efforts?” Could it mean to criticize severely? If an American sincerely opposes spending our money to effect the economic reconstruction of
Indeed, remember, the language of the new presidential Executive Order says nothing about undermining the American war effort. It says nothing about interfering with the military. The new offense consists of “undermining” the administration’s foreign economic policy. If you do that, you become, in the terminology of the Communist Manifesto, a “rebel” whose property the government can legally seize.
So, if we now have taken, or are about to take, without exception, every single one of the Communist Manifesto’s steps to Communism, wouldn’t that make us a Communist country? Yes, we fought the Communist countries we founded. So what? Dion O’Bannion fought Al Capone. Did that make him any less a gangster?
Four star general Tommy Franks, our former commander in
Yes, maybe that is true. But there was “nothing to fear” from Hitler until he put everything in place. Remember the Enabling Act? There was “nothing to fear” from Stalin until he consolidated power. There was “nothing to fear” from Mao until
Everything to do what they did and then some is now in place here.
The Boosh EO typically uses
Cover the country with propaganda leaflets clearly and calmly explaining that every round we fire – be it from a personal weapon, chopper or artillery – will henceforth be soaked in pig guts, that every Mohammedan terrorist we kill will routinely be buried with a hog and that his children will be raised on pork chops. At the very least, this tactic would separate the Muslims and the Reds.
And guess what? This tactic would not undermine efforts to reconstruct the Iraqi economy! If you spread word about it, there is no danger you could lose your property.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com
Full story/Permalink
'Brown's EU fraud exposed by letter'
By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
The new European Union Treaty has been designed to "keep the advances" of the old constitution "that we would not have dared present directly", a senior Brussels figure has admitted.
Hans-Gert Poettering, president of the European Parliament and a close ally of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, made the admission in a letter to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the architect of the discarded EU Constitution. Mr Poettering stressed that the new treaty, while complicated, would preserve the constitution by a different, more indirect method. Responding to the claim, Mark Francois, the Conservatives' spokesman on Europe, said: "Hans-Gert Poettering has exposed the cynical fraud Gordon Brown is trying to foist on the British people. "All Mr Brown's talk about trust and consultation will be uncovered as pure spin if he does not keep his promise to give the British people the final say in a referendum." Adding to the criticism of the Government yesterday was a Labour MP who helped draw up the EU constitution, which was rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago. Gisela Stuart, MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, told the Commons it was "extremely misleading" to suggest that the Treaty gave more power back to member states than the abadoned constitution. She added: "If we are so confident that it is good, we should have the confidence to ask the people." |
Saturday 28 July 2007
Make a Tabletop Biosphere
Join Bre Pettis as he makes a tabletop biosphere, then go out and get the materials and make your own!
This project is found in Make: Volume 10 and the article was written by Martin John Brown.
Download the pdf here and create a closed system to live on your windowsill! If you have an aquarium, you probably have all the chemicals you need for this. If you have to buy new chemicals, you’ll have enough for hundreds of biospheres!Full story/Permalink
Tuesday 24 July 2007
Is the Brain Really Necessary?
Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking.
This is true only of certain persons.
- Will Cuppy
This was the question asked by British neurologist John Lorber when he addressed a conference of pædiatricians in 1980. Such a frivolous sounding question was sparked by case studies Lorber had been involved in since the mid-60s. The case studies involve victims of an ailment known as hydrocephalus, more commonly known as water on the brain. The condition results from an abnormal build up of cerebrospinal fluid and can cause severe retardation and death if not treated.
Two young children with hydrocephalus referred to Lorber presented with normal mental development for their age. In both children, there was no evidence of a cerebral cortex. One of the children died at age 3 months, the second at 12 months. He was still following a normal development profile with the exception of the apparent lack of cerebral tissue shown by repeated medical testing. An account of the children was published in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology.
Later, a colleague at Sheffield University became aware of a young man with a larger than normal head. He was referred to Lorber even though it had not caused him any difficulty. Although the boy had an IQ of 126 and had a first class honours degree in mathematics, he had "virtually no brain". A noninvasive measurement of radio density known as CAT scan showed the boy's skull was lined with a thin layer of brain cells to a millimeter in thickness. The rest of his skull was filled with cerebrospinal fluid. The young man continues a normal life with the exception of his knowledge that he has no brain.
Although anecdotal accounts may be found in medical literature, Lorber is the first to provide a systematic study of such cases. He has documented over 600 scans of people with hydrocephalus and has broken them into four groups:
 | those with nearly normal brains |
| those with 50-70% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal fluid |
| those with 70-90% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal fluid |
| and the most severe group with 95% of the cranial cavity filled with cerebrospinal fluid. |
Of the last group, which comprised less than 10% of the study, half were profoundly retarded. The remaining half had IQs greater than 100. Skeptics have claimed that it was an error of interpretation of the scans themselves. Lorber himself admits that reading a CAT scan can be tricky. He also has said that he would not make such a claim without evidence. In answer to attacks that he has not precisely quantified the amount of brain tissue missing, he added, "I can't say whether the mathematics student has a brain weighing 50 grams or 150 grams, but it is clear that it is nowhere near the normal 1.5 kilograms."
Many neurologists feel that this is a tribute to the brain's redundancy and its ability to reassign functions. Others, however, are not so sure. Patrick Wall, professor of anatomy at University College, London states "To talk of redundancy is a cop-out to get around something you don't understand."
Norman Geschwind, a neurologist at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital agrees: "Certainly the brain has a remarkable capacity for reassigning functions following trauma, but you can usually pick up some kind of deficit with the right tests, even after apparently full recovery."
References
Anthony Smith The Mind New York Viking Press, 1984, page 230
Roger Lewin "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?"Science 210 December 1980, page 1232
Full story/PermalinkMONEY FOR THE PEOPLE AND BY THE PEOPLE
Just as we need government for the people, and by the people, so we need money for the people, and by the people.
Money Reformers advocate essentially two things - firstly, that we change from a debt-based to a debt-free economy. That is, to a society where money, or a great deal of it, is supplied into the economy debt-free, meaning it does not require to be paid back.
And secondly, Money Reformers advocate that the creation of money should be a public service, under public control for the public good.
THE MONEY TRICK
The essence of a viable money system is confidence. Once confidence is established, a trick can be played.
Historically, money lenders kept stocks of gold which they had acquired, or were keeping safe for others.
However, they soon discovered that instead of actually lending out the physical gold and precious metals in their safes, they could give out promissory notes which "promised to pay" the equivalent amount in gold.
They soon found that if, say, only one tenth of their clients would at any particular time insist on payment in actual coin or bullion, then the money lenders could safely make "promises to pay" totaling ten times the value of their actual reserves of coin and bullion.
All that was necessary was that people believed in the convertibility of the promises to pay. Soon, people were trading the "promissory notes" instead of the actual coin and bullion.
Thus was born the basic principles of the modern banking system.
SO, WHAT IS MONEY?
Money is simply the medium we use to exchange goods and services. Without it, buying and selling would be impossible except, of course, by direct barter exchange.
Notes and coins are virtually worthless in their own right. They take on value only because people accept them, in exchange for goods and services. All the money in the world is useless in the middle of a barren desert.
To keep trade and economic activity functioning, there has to be enough of this medium of exchange called money in existence to allow economic activity to take place.
Hence the importance of ensuring that there is sufficient money in the economy to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, and hence the crucial importance that the creators of this money are under the direct control of the very people who need it to survive. That's you and me.
WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM?
Someone has to be responsible for making sure that there is enough money in existence. It's not you. It's not me. So who is it?
Each nation has a Central Bank to do this - in Britain, it's the Bank of England.
Central Banks act as banker for the commercial High Street banks, and the government - just as individuals and businesses keep accounts at commercial banks, so commercial banks and government keep accounts at the Central Bank - in our case, the Bank of England.
If the government wants to spend money on some public project such as a school or hospital then it will collect the money from taxes, but every year the government fails to collect enough money in taxes to pay for all its spending requirements. There is always a shortfall. So what does it do? Where does it go for money?
The government "borrows" the money this way: It prints and sells "gilt edged securities". These are simply pieces of paper which promise an additional return to the buyer, in the future. The securities are auctioned several times a year to meet the shortage of government revenue as it arises. They are bought by individuals, insurance companies, pension funds, trust funds, and banks.
The government takes the money it has raised by these sales, and spends it on its public projects. The sum owed by the government is called "the National Debt". These securities are becoming due regularly. That is, the government has to pay back the amount, with interest.
When the non-banking sector (individuals, insurance, pension and trust funds) buy securities, then saved money is being recycled back into the economy through government spending.
However, when banks buy government securities, then entirely new money - which has been created out of nothing by the banks specifically for these purchases - is spent into the economy by the government. The government has to find the money to repay them in full, with interest, which it does by selling even more securities and raising taxes even further!
Now that's just government debt that we're saddled with, and have to pay back in our taxes.
ALMOST ALL MONEY ENTERS SOCIETY AS A DEBT
Money enters in other ways. There is also the money which enters society via our private debts as individuals, which we owe to commercial private High Street banks.
It is a myth that these banks lend money they already have. When was the last time you went to your bank and found there was money missing from your account because it had been lent to someone else! Like the ancient money lenders of old, banks can lend out more than they actually hold!
The fact is that banks create money out of nothing and lend it to you at interest.
There is also commercial company debts owed to High Street banks, and there is international, or what is called "Third World" debt.
The crucial point to realise is that all of these debts - government, private, commercial and international - are debts owed to the banking system in one way or another.
Almost the entire stock of money circulating in every country in the world today represents a debt owed to the banking system. Only the note and coin issue is debt-free.
The entire financial system of all nations today is what we call debt-based; meaning that the process of going into debt is relied upon, almost exclusively, by governments, to create and supply money to their economies.
The world runs on debt. We live in a debt-based society. We cannot get money into society without almost all of it entering, at source, as a debt.
THE POSITIVE VERSUS THE NEGATIVE ECONOMY
Money Reformers make two distinctions when we look at the economic world around us. On one hand we recognise and support the positive economy, which is characterised by mutual trade for mutual benefit, and productive, just, sustainable enterprise.
On the other hand, we have the negative economy, characterised by poverty, cut-throat competition, oppression, exploitation, war, waste, inflation, and starvation.
When we look around ourselves we are often forced to acknowledge that the economy we live in is often not a positive economy of mutual trade for mutual benefit, but rather a dog-eat-dog economy, a cannibal capitalism which has a tendency to eat itself and all those caught in it.
Money Reformers are alone today in recognising that many of the ills of the world are due directly to the twin facts that the economy of the world is based on debt - rather than on debt-free principles - and the power to create the money in the first place, is vested in the hands of a tiny minority.
We recognise that the debt-engine drives the world economy in many negative directions. Richard Greaves has laid out the negative consequences of the debt-based economy in his article which appeared in the November 2001 issue of Prosperity.
Moreover, while some people highlight "the redistribution of wealth" as a possible solution, Money Reformers, highlight the fundamental monopoly power of money creation enjoyed by the few to the detriment of the many.
We are highlighting the fundamental question of who has the power to create the money in the first place.
We point to the fact that many of the economic and social ills which beset society and the world today are due to the power to create money being concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority, rather than democratically distributed in the hands of the People.
This democratic imperative can be summed up in the slogans: It's the People's Money and Money for the People, and by the People.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR DEMOCRACY
What does this mean for government of the people, by the people?
Banks are businesses out to make profits. Since they alone decide to whom they will lend, they effectively decide what is produced, where it is produced and who produces it, and all on the basis of profitability to the bank, rather than what is beneficial to the community.
Our money, instead of being supplied debt-free as a means of exchange, now comes as a debt owed to bankers providing them with vast profits, power and control, as the rest of us struggle with an increasing burden of debt.
By supplying money to those of whom they approve and denying it to those of whom they disapprove, financiers can create boom or bust, and support or undermine individuals, organisations, economies and governments.
We, the people, don't have the power to create the money. The money we require just to survive is only available from the banks. To a large extent, we are at the mercy of the banking system and we are effectively enslaved by them. We cry Freedom from Debt Slavery!
As Richard Greaves said in the November 2001 issue of Prosperity, until the power to create money is taken out of the hands of the banks, and the hands of the private interests who do it for profit and control, then we can never say that we live in a democracy.
He continued: "The nation's economy is our economy. We create the real wealth through our ingenuity, enterprise and hard work. The current banking system operates as a massive drain on that public wealth as well as concentrating power and control in the hands of a tiny, private minority."
So what do we need to do? Essentially, we need to move towards an economy based upon debt-free principles where much more money than at present comes into society debt-free, and we need to move towards democratic control over the money creation process.
PRINCIPLES OF DEBT-FREE FINANCE
And in this effort we can be guided by the principles on money creation laid out in the Bromsgrove Statement.
We believe that money must be based on the real wealth of society - that is, on people, skills and materials. If you have the people, skills and materials, then that which is physically possible and socially desirable can be made financially possible.
If the people have something they want to do in their community, and if they have the skills and the materials, then they should not be prevented for "lack of money".
The overall purpose of an economic system is simply to provide goods and services - as, when and where required - in order to satisfy human needs.
Money is simply the means of exchange for the goods and services produced by the people and their skills and resources. It is not a commodity in itself.
In this regard, money should be our servant - not our master. And since money, at source, is created out of nothing, there is no need for it to be scarce.
SO HERE'S THE LEAST WE SHOULD BE DEMANDING
For a start, we can see that we're paying our taxes to enrich a banking system which never had the money in the first place!
We can see that the government is raising money it doesn't have, by borrowing from banks which don't have the money either, but only the legal authority to create out of nothing.
The government then expects us, through our taxes, to pay back the banks with the real money that we've worked for! The obvious question arises: Why doesn't the government just create the money itself?
Instead of borrowing the money from the banking system, and forcing us to pay it back in our taxes, the government could simply create the money itself, spend it into society and not need to ask for it back.
And, yes, the government - or a state appointed authority - could do exactly that. Instead it enslaves us all to the banking system … and that's a scandal!
Full story/PermalinkSunday 22 July 2007
BBC apologises in row over 'mistake' in SNP survey
THE BBC has suffered another credibility blow after admitting that it made up a Newsnight survey suggesting that most of Britain and Scotland's leading businesses were not in favour of independence.
Presenter Jeremy Paxman had told SNP leader Alex Salmond that 'not one' of 50 firms, made up of 25 in Britain and 25 north of the border, supported the party's independence policy on a TV special shown before the Holyrood elections in May.
The Sunday Herald has discovered the BBC has since apologised after a viewer complained the 'straw poll' was mis-represented by Paxman because only a handful of companies replied to the survey.
Full story/PermalinkFriday 20 July 2007
$75,000 Offered For MD to Publicly Drink Vaccine Additives
Jock Doubleday, director of the California non-profit corporation Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc., has offered $75,000 to the first medical doctor or pharmaceutical company CEO who publicly drinks a mixture of standard vaccine additives.
The additives would be the same as those contained in the vaccines recommended for a 6-year-old according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, and the dose would be body-weight calibrated. It would include, but not be limited to:
- Thimerosal (a mercury derivative)
- Ethylene glycol (antifreeze)
- Phenol (a disinfectant dye)
- Aluminum
- Benzethonium chloride (a disinfectant)
- Formaldehyde (a preservative and disinfectant)
On August 1, 2007, if no one has taken the challenge, the offer will be increased to $90,000 and will increase at a rate of $5,000 per month until someone accepts.
Vaccination Liberation Press Release
Man with tiny brain shocks doctors
- 12:17 20 July 2007
- NewScientist.com news service
- New Scientist and Reuters
A man with an unusually tiny brain manages to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, which was caused by a fluid build-up in his skull.
Scans of the 44-year-old man's brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue (see image, right).
The large black space shows the fluid that replaced much of the patient’s brain (left). For comparison, the images (right) show a typical brain without any abnormalities (Images: Feuillet et al.The Lancet)
“It is hard for me [to say] exactly the percentage of reduction of the brain, since we did not use software to measure its volume. But visually, it is more than a 50% to 75% reduction,” says Lionel Feuillet, a neurologist at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France.
Feuillet and his colleagues describe the case of this patient in The Lancet. He is a married father of two children, and works as a civil servant.
Not retarded
The man went to a hospital after he had mild weakness in his left leg. When Feuillet's staff took his medical history, they learned that, as an infant, he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus – water on the brain.
The shunt was removed when he was 14. But the researchers decided to check the condition of his brain using computed tomography (CT) scanning technology and another type of scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They were astonished to see "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles – usually tiny chambers that hold the cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the brain.
Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled.
"The whole brain was reduced – frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes – on both left and right sides. These regions control motion, sensibility, language, vision, audition, and emotional and cognitive functions," Feuillet told New Scientist.
Brain adaptation
The findings reveal "the brain is very plastic and can adapt to some brain damage occurring in the pre- and postnatal period when treated appropriately," he says.
"What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life," comments Max Muenke, a paediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, US.
"If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side," adds Muenke, who was not involved in the case.
Journal reference: The Lancet (vol 370, p 262)
Full story/PermalinkThursday 19 July 2007
Why Germans Supported Hitler
Jacob G. Hornberger
Lew Rockwell.com
Thursday July 19, 2007
It has long intrigued me why the German people supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. After all, every schoolchild in America is taught that Hitler and his Nazi cohorts were the very epitome of evil. How could ordinary German citizens support people who were so obviously monstrous in nature?
Standing against the Nazi tide was a remarkable group of young people known as the White Rose. Led by Hans and Sophie Scholl, a German brother and sister who were students at the University of Munich, the White Rose consisted of college students and a college professor who risked their lives to circulate anti-government pamphlets in the midst of World War II. Their arrest and trial was depicted in the German movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, which was recently released on DVD in the United States.
Of all the essays on liberty I have written in the past 20 years, my favorite is “The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent,” which I am pleased to say was later reprinted in Voices of the Holocaust, an anthology on the Holocaust for high-school students. The story of the White Rose is the most remarkable case of courage I have ever come across. It even inspired me to visit the University of Munich a few years ago, where portions of the White Rose pamphlets have been permanently enshrined on bricks laid into a plaza at the entrance to the school.
A contrast to the Scholl movie is another recent German movie, Downfall, which details Hitler’s final days in the bunker, where he committed suicide near the end of the war. Among the people around Hitler was 22-year-old Traudl Junge, who became his secretary in 1942 and who faithfully served him in that capacity until the end. For me, the most stunning part of the film occurred at the end, when the real Traudl Junge (that is, not the actress who portrays her in the film) says,
All these horrors I’ve heard of ... I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn’t know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse.... And at that moment I actually realized ... that it might have been possible to get to know things.
So here were two separate roads taken by German citizens. Most Germans took the road that Traudl Junge took – supporting their government in time of deep crisis. A few Germans took the road that Hans and Sophie Scholl took – opposing their government despite the deep crisis facing their nation.
Why the difference? Why did some Germans support the Hitler regime while others opposed it?
Each American should first ask himself what he would have done if he had been a German citizen during the Hitler regime. Would you have supported your government or would you have opposed it, not only during the 1930s but also after the outbreak of World War II?
After all, it’s one thing to look at Nazi Germany retrospectively and from the vantage point of an outside citizen who has heard since childhood about the death camps and of Hitler’s monstrous nature. We look at those grainy films of Hitler delivering his bombastic speeches and our automatic reaction is that we would have never supported the man and his political party. But it’s quite another thing to place one’s self in the shoes of an ordinary German citizen and ask, “What would I have done?”
What we often forget is that many Germans did not support Hitler and the Nazis at the start of the 1930s. Keep in mind that in the 1932 presidential election, Hitler received only 30.1 percent of the national vote. In the subsequent run-off election, he received only 36.8 percent of the vote. It wasn’t until President Hindenburg appointed him as chancellor in 1933 that Hitler began consolidating power.
Among the major factors that motivated Germans to support Hitler during the 1930s was the tremendous economic crisis known as the Great Depression, which had struck Germany as hard as it had the United States and other parts of the world. What did many Germans do in response to the Great Depression? They did the same thing that many Americans did – they looked for a strong leader to get them out of the economic crisis.
Hitler and Franklin RooseveltIn fact, there is a remarkable similarity between the economic policies that Hitler implemented and those that Franklin Roosevelt enacted. Keep in mind, first of all, that the German National Socialists were strong believers in Social Security, which Roosevelt introduced to the United States as part of his New Deal. Keep in mind also that the Nazis were strong believers in such other socialist schemes as public (i.e., government) schooling and national health care. In fact, my hunch is that very few Americans realize that Social Security, public schooling, Medicare, and Medicaid have their ideological roots in German socialism.
Hitler and Roosevelt also shared a common commitment to such programs as government-business partnerships. In fact, until the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which cartelized American industry, along with his “Blue Eagle” propaganda campaign, was the type of economic fascism that Hitler himself was embracing in Germany (as fascist ruler Benito Mussolini was also doing in Italy).
As John Toland points out in his book Adolf Hitler, “Hitler had genuine admiration for the decisive manner in which the President had taken over the reins of government. ‘I have sympathy for Mr. Roosevelt,’ he told a correspondent of the New York Times two months later, ‘because he marches straight toward his objectives over Congress, lobbies and bureaucracy.’ Hitler went on to note that he was the sole leader in Europe who expressed ‘understanding of the methods and motives of President Roosevelt.’”
As Srdja Trifkovic, foreign-affairs editor for Chronicles magazine, stated in his article “FDR and Mussolini: A Tale of Two Fascists,” Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust,” the architects of the New Deal, were fascinated by Italy’s fascism – a term which was not pejorative at the time. In America, it was seen as a form of economic nationalism built around consensus planning by the established elites in government, business, and labor.
Both Hitler and Roosevelt also believed in massive injections of government spending in both the social-welfare sector and the military-industrial sector as a way to bring economic prosperity to their respective nations. As the famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith put it,
Hitler also anticipated modern economic policy ... by recognizing that a rapid approach to full employment was only possible if it was combined with wage and price controls. That a nation oppressed by economic fear would respond to Hitler as Americans did to F.D.R. is not surprising.
One of Hitler’s proudest accomplishments was the construction of the national autobahn system, a massive socialist public-works project that ultimately became the model for the interstate highway system in the United States.
By the latter part of the 1930s, many Germans had the same perception about Hitler that many Americans had about Roosevelt. They honestly believed that Hitler was bringing Germany out of the Depression. For the first time since the Treaty of Versailles, the treaty that had ended World War I with humiliating terms for Germany, the German people were regaining a sense of pride in themselves and in their nation, and they were giving the credit to Hitler’s strong leadership in time of deep national crisis.
Toland points out in his Hitler biography that Germans weren’t the only ones who admired Hitler during the 1930s:
Churchill had once paid a grudging compliment to the Führer in a letter to the Times: “I have always said that I hoped if Great Britain were beaten in a war we should find a Hitler who would lead us back to our rightful place among nations.”
Hitler was a strong believer in national service, especially for German young people. That was what the Hitler Youth was all about – inculcating in young people the notion that they owed a duty to devote at least part of their lives to society. It was an idea also resonating in the collectivist atmosphere that was permeating the United States during the 1930s.
Hitler and anti-SemitismWhile U.S. officials today never cease to remind us that Hitler was evil incarnate, the question is: Was he so easily recognized as such during the 1930s, not only by German citizens but also by other people around the world, especially those who believed in the idea of a strong political leader in times of crisis? Keep in mind that while Hitler and his cohorts were harassing, abusing, and periodically arresting German Jews as the 1930s progressed, culminating in Kristallnacht, the “night of the broken glass,” when tens of thousands of Jews were beaten and taken to concentration camps, it was not exactly the type of thing that aroused major moral outrage among U.S. officials, many of whom themselves had a strong sense of anti-Semitism.
For example, when Hitler offered to let German Jews leave Germany, the U.S. government used immigration controls to keep them from immigrating here. In fact, as Arthur D. Morse pointed out in his book While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy, five days after Kristallnacht, which occurred in November 1938, at a White House press conference, a reporter asked Roosevelt, “Would you recommend a relaxation of our immigration restrictions so that the Jewish refugees could be received in this country?” The president replied, “This is not in contemplation. We have the quota system.”
Let’s also not forget the infamous 1939 (i.e., after Kristallnacht) “voyage of the damned,” in which U.S. officials refused to permit German Jews to disembark at Miami Harbor from the German ship the SS St. Louis, knowing that they would be returned to Hitler’s clutches in Nazi Germany.
(The Holocaust Museum in Washington, to its credit, has an excellent exhibition on U.S. government indifference to the plight of the Jews under Hitler’s control, a dark period in American history to which all too many Americans are never exposed in their public-school training. See also my June 1991 Freedom Daily article “Locking Out the Immigrant.”)
Check out this interesting website, which details a very nice pictorial description of Hitler’s summer home in Bavaria published by a prominent English magazine named Home and Gardens in November 1938. Now, ask yourself: If it was so obvious that Hitler was evil incarnate during the 1930s, would a prominent English magazine have been risking its readership by publishing such a profile? And let’s also not forget that it was Hitler’s Germany that hosted the worldwide Olympics in 1936, games in which the United States, Great Britain, and many other countries participated. Ask yourself: Why would they have done that?
The Great Depression was not the only factor that was leading people to support Hitler. There was also the ever-present fear of communism among the German people. In fact, throughout the 1930s it could be said that Germany was facing the same type of Cold War against the Soviet Union that the United States faced from 1945 to 1989. Ever since the chaos of World War I had given rise to the Russian Revolution, Germany faced the distinct possibility of being taken over by the communists (a threat that materialized into reality for East Germans at the end of World War II). It was a threat that Hitler, like later American presidents, used as a justification for ever-increasing spending on the military-industrial complex. The ever-present danger of Soviet communism led many Germans to gravitate to the support of their government, just as it later moved many Americans to support big government and a strong military-industrial complex in their country throughout the Cold War.
Hitler’s war on terrorismOne of the most searing events in German history occurred soon after Hitler took office. On February 27, 1933, in what easily could be termed the 9/11 terrorist attack of that time, German terrorists fire-bombed the German parliament building. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Adolf Hitler, one of the strongest political leaders in history, would declare war on terrorism and ask the German parliament (the Reichstag) to give him temporary emergency powers to fight the terrorists. Passionately claiming that such powers were necessary to protect the freedom and well-being of the German people, Hitler persuaded the German legislators to give him the emergency powers he needed to confront the terrorist crisis. What became known as the Enabling Act allowed Hitler to suspend civil liberties “temporarily,” that is, until the crisis had passed. Not surprisingly, however, the threat of terrorism never subsided and Hitler’s “temporary” emergency powers, which were periodically renewed by the Reichstag, were still in effect when he took his own life some 12 years later.
Is it so surprising that ordinary German citizens were willing to support their government’s suspension of civil liberties in response to the threat of terrorism, especially after the terrorist strike on the Reichstag?
During the 1930s, the United States faced the Great Depression, and many Americans were willing to accede to Roosevelt’s assumption of massive emergency powers, including the power to control economic activity and also to nationalize and confiscate people’s gold.
During the Cold War, the fear of communism induced Americans to permit their government to collect massive amounts of income taxes to fund the military-industrial complex and to let U.S. officials send more than 100,000 American soldiers to their deaths in undeclared wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Since the 9/11 attacks, Americans have been more than willing for their government to infringe on vital civil liberties, including habeas corpus, involve the nation in an undeclared and unprovoked war on Iraq, and spend ever-growing amounts of money on the military-industrial complex, all in the name of the “war on terrorism.”
Crises versus libertyWhile the American people faced these three crises – the Great Depression, the communist threat, and the war on terrorism at three separate times, the German people during the Hitler regime faced the same three crises all within a short span of time. Given that, why would it surprise anyone that many Germans would gravitate toward the support of their government just as many Americans gravitated toward the support of their government during each of those crises?
Even Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans eagerly joined the Hitler Youth when they were in high school. In the ever-growing crisis environment of the 1930s, millions of other ordinary Germans also came to support their government, enthusiastically cheering their leaders, supporting their policies, and sending their children into national service and looking the other way when the government became abusive. Among the few who resisted were Robert and Magdalena Scholl, the parents of Hans and Sophie, who gradually opened the minds of their children to the truth.
The three major crises faced by Germany in the 1930s – economic depression, communism, and terrorism – pale to relative insignificance compared with the crisis that Germany faced during the 1940s – World War II, the crisis that threatened, at least in the minds of Hitler and his cohorts, the very existence of Germany. That Hans and Sophie Scholl and other German students began circulating leaflets calling on Germans to oppose their government in the midst of a major war, when German soldiers were dying on two fronts, makes the story of the White Rose even more remarkable and perhaps even a bit discomforting for some Americans.
The most remarkable part of the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is the courtroom scene, which is based on recently discovered German archives. Sophie and her brother Hans, along with their friend Christoph Probst, stand before the infamous Roland Freisler, presiding judge of the People’s Court, whom Hitler had immediately sent to Munich after the Gestapo’s arrest of the Scholls and Probst.
The People’s Court had been established by Hitler as part of the government’s war on terrorism after the terrorist firebombing of the German parliament building. Displeased with the independence of the judiciary in the trials of the suspected Reichstag terrorists, Hitler had set up the People’s Court to ensure that terrorists and traitors would receive the “proper” verdict and punishment. Judicial proceedings were conducted in secret for reasons of national security, which is why Freisler threw Hans’s and Sophie’s parents out of the courtroom when they tried to enter.
At the trial, Freisler railed at the three young people before him, accusing them of being ungrateful traitors for having opposed their government in the midst of the war. His rant went to the core of why many Germans supported Hitler during World War II.
From the first grade in public (i.e., government) schools, it was ingrained in German children that, during times of war, it was the duty of every German to come to the support of his country, which, in the minds of the German officials, was synonymous with the German government. Once a war was under way, the time for discussion and debate was over, at least until the war was over. Opposition to the war would demoralize the troops, it was said, and, therefore, hurt the war effort. Opposing the government (and the troops) in wartime, therefore, was considered treasonous.
Keep in mind that at the time the Scholls were caught distributing their anti-war and anti-government leaflets – 1943 – Germany was fighting a war for its survival on two fronts: the Eastern front against the Soviet Union and the Western front against Britain and the United States. Thousands of German soldiers were dying on the battlefield, especially in the Soviet Union. Whether they agreed with the war effort or not, the German people were expected to support the troops, which meant supporting the war effort.
Lies and wars of aggressionOne might object that, since Germany was the aggressor in the conflict, the German people should have refused to support the war. That objection, however, ignores an important point: that in the minds of many Germans, Germany was not the aggressor in World War II but rather the defending nation. After all, that’s what they had been told by their government officials.
An aggressor nation will inevitably try to manipulate events so as to appear to be the victimized nation – that is, the nation that is defending itself against aggression. In that way, government officials can tell the citizenry, “We are innocent! We were just minding our own business when our nation was attacked.” Naturally, the citizenry can then assume that there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the war and will be more willing to defend their nation against the attackers.
That is exactly what happened in Germany’s invasion of Poland, which precipitated World War II. After several weeks in which tensions between the two nations were heightened, German soldiers on the Polish-German border were attacked by Polish troops. Hitler followed the time-honored script by dramatically announcing that Germany had been attacked by Poland, requiring Germany to defend herself with a counterattack and an invasion of Poland.
There was one big problem, however – one that the German people were unaware of: the Polish troops who had done the attacking were actually German troops dressed up in Polish uniforms. In other words, German officials had lied about the cause of the war.
Now, some might argue that Germans should not have automatically believed Hitler, especially knowing that throughout history rulers had lied about matters relating to war. But Germans took the position that they had the right and the duty to place their trust in their government officials. After all, Germans felt, their government officials had access to information that the people did not have. Many Germans felt that their government would never lie to them about a matter as important as war.
Also, keep in mind that under the Nazi system Hitler had the sole prerogative of deciding whether to send the nation into war. While he might consult with the Reichstag or advise it of his plans, he did not need its consent to declare and wage war against another nation. He – and he alone – had the power to decide whether to go to war. Therefore, given that Hitler was not required to secure a declaration of war from the Reichstag before going to war against Poland, there was no real way to test whether his claims of a Polish attack were in fact true.
After the German “counterattack” against Poland, England and France declared war on Germany. (Oddly, neither country declared war on the Soviet Union, which also invaded Poland soon after Germany did.) Thus, in the minds of the German people, England and France were coming to the aid of the aggressor – Poland – necessitating Germany’s defending itself against all three nations.
Loyalty and obeying ordersGerman soldiers, of course, were also expected to do their duty and follow the orders of their commander in chief. Under Germany’s system, it was not up to the individual soldier to reach his own independent judgment about whether Germany was the aggressor in the conflict or whether Hitler had lied about the reasons for going to war. Thus, German soldiers, both Protestant and Catholic, understood that they could kill Polish soldiers with a clear conscience because, again, it was not up to the individual soldier to decide on the justice of the war. He could entrust that decision to his superior officers and political leaders and simply assume that the order to invade was morally and legally justified.
Once troops were committed to battle, most German civilians understood their duty – support the troops who were now fighting and dying on the battlefield for their country, for the fatherland. The time for debating and discussing the causes of the war would have to wait until the war’s end. What mattered, once the war was under way, was winning.
Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo, explained the strategy:
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....
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Recognizing and opposing evil
Some might argue that Germans, unlike people in other nations, should not have trusted and supported their government officials during the war because it was obvious that Hitler and his henchmen were evil. The problem with that argument, however, is that throughout the 1930s many Germans and many foreigners did not automatically come to the conclusion that Hitler was evil. On the contrary, as we saw in part one of this article, many of them saw Hitler as exercising the same kind of strong leadership that Franklin Roosevelt was exercising to bring the United States out of the Great Depression and, in fact, as implementing many of the same kinds of programs that Roosevelt was implementing in the United States. (For more on this point, see the excellent book published last year Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933–1939, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.)
Moreover, while it’s true that throughout the 1930s Hitler was harassing, abusing, and mistreating German Jews, many people all over the world didn’t care, because anti-Semitism was not limited to Germany but instead extended to many parts of the globe.
Don’t forget, for example, about how the Roosevelt administration used immigration controls to prevent German Jews from immigrating to the United States.
Even as late as 1938 U.S. officials refused to let German Jews disembark at Miami Harbor from the SS St. Louis, knowing that they would have to be returned to Hitler’s Germany.
Even after the outbreak of the war, when the severity of the Nazi threat to Jews skyrocketed, the constantly shifting maze of U.S. immigration rules and regulations prevented Anne Frank and her family, along with lots of other Jewish families, from immigrating to the United States.
Some might say that the German people should have ceased supporting their government once the Holocaust began. There are two big problems with that argument, however. First, the German people didn’t know what was going on in the death camps and, second, they didn’t want to know. After all, the death camps and the Holocaust didn’t get established until after the war was well under way and when Hitler’s power over the German people was absolute – and brutal.
How was the average German supposed to know about what was going on inside the death camps? Suppose a German walked up to a concentration camp, knocked on the gates, and said, “I have heard that you are doing bad things to people inside this camp. I would like to come in and inspect the premises.” What do you think would have been the answer? Most likely, he would have been invited inside the compound, as a permanent guest with a very shortened life span.
After all, what government is going to permit its citizens to know its most secret operations, especially during times of war? Not even the U.S. government does that.
For example, what do you think would happen if an American citizen today discovered the location of one of the CIA’s secret overseas detention facilities and then knocked on the front door, saying, “I’ve heard rumors that you are torturing people here. I would like to come in and inspect the premises to see whether those rumors are true.”
Does anyone honestly think that the CIA would let the person inside those supersecret facilities? Now, imagine a situation in which the United States is fighting a major war for its survival against, say, China on one side, and an alliance of Middle East countries on the other. Suppose also that the United States is almost certain to lose the war and that foreign troops are slowly but surely closing in on the U.S. president and his cabinet. What are the chances that the CIA would permit an American citizen to inspect the insides of its prisoner facilities under those circumstances? Indeed, what are the chances that any American is going to make such a demand under those circumstances?
Most Germans did not want to know what was going on inside the concentration camps. If they knew that bad things were occurring, their consciences might start bothering them, which might motivate them to take action to bring the wrongdoing to a stop, which could be dangerous. It was easier – and safer – to look the other way and simply entrust such important matters to their government officials. In that way, it was believed, the government, rather than the individual citizen, would bear the legal and moral consequences for wrongful acts that the government was committing secretly.
Of course, government officials encouraged that mindset of conscious indifference. Don’t concern yourselves with such things, they suggested; just leave them to us – after all, we are at war and these are things that are best left to your government officials.
No doubt that by the time World War II was well under way some Germans were thinking that the time for protesting had been during the 1930s, when Germans were reaching out for a “strong leader” to get them out of “crises” and “emergencies,” and when protests against the government were much less dangerous.
Patriotism and courageAll this, obviously, places Hans and Sophie Scholl and the other members of the White Rose in a remarkable light, one that even many Americans might find discomforting. After all, it’s easy for an American to look at Nazi Germany from the perspective of an outsider and one who has the benefit of historical knowledge, especially about the Holocaust. The interesting question, however, is, What would Americans have done if they had been German citizens during World War II? Would they have opposed their government, as the members of the White Rose did, or would they have supported their government, especially knowing that the troops were fighting and dying on the battlefield?
In one of their leaflets, the members of the White Rose wrote, “We are your bad conscience.” They were asking Germans to rise above the old, degenerate concept of patriotism that entailed blindly supporting one’s government in time of war. They were asking German soldiers to rise above the old, degenerate concept of blind obedience to orders. They were asking Germans to confront openly the rumors of what German officials were doing to the Jews in the concentration camps. They were asking German citizens, both civilian and military, to make an independent judgment on both the Hitler regime and the war, to judge both the government and the war as immoral and illegitimate, and to take the necessary steps to put a stop to both.
They were asking Germans to embrace a different and higher concept of patriotism – one that involves a devotion to a set of moral principles and values rather than blind allegiance to one’s government in time of war. It was a type of patriotism that involved opposition to one’s own government, especially in time of war, when government is engaged in conduct that violates moral principles and values.
The story of the White Rose is one of the most remarkable stories of courage in history. At the trial, Christoph Probst asked Freisler to spare his life, an understandable request given that his wife had recently given birth to their third child. Neither Sophie nor her brother Hans flinched. Sophie bluntly told Freisler that the war was lost and that German soldiers were being sacrificed for nothing, a statement that, from the looks on the faces of the military brass attending the trial in the film, momentarily hit home. She said that one day Freisler and his ilk would be sitting in the dock being judged by others for their crimes. She bluntly told him, “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”
Freisler quickly issued the preordained verdict – Guilty – and sentenced the defendants to death, a sentence that was carried out at the guillotine three days after they had been arrested. After all, as Freisler declared, Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friend Christoph Probst had opposed their government during time of war. In Freisler’s mind – indeed, in the minds of many Germans – what better evidence of treason than that? Full story/Permalink
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