Saturday, January 31, 2009

Hugo Chavez' promotion of anti-Semitism paying off. Synagogue vandalized by armed thugs in Caracas.


CNN reports from Venezuela

artsynagoguemesscnn

Armed men forced their way into a Caracas synagogue, defacing its administrative offices with anti-Semitic graffiti and vandalizing an interior room where the Torah is kept, officials said.
Vandals smashed items in an interior room where the Torah is kept, officials said.

About 15 men forced their way into the Mariperez Synagogue in Venezuela’s capital about 10 p.m. Friday, staying until about 3 a.m., police said. They tied up a security guard at the synagogue before vandalizing the rooms.

Graffiti left at the scene included the phrases “Damn the Jews,” “Jews out of here” and “Israel assassins.” The men also left behind a picture of a devil, authorities said.

There will be no soul searching. There will be no boycotts. There will be no riots.

IRAN

Gene adds: Remember Chavez’s warning to Venezuela’s Jews during the Israeli military operation in Gaza?

Chavez… condemned the Israelis carrying out the military campaign as “murderers” and urged Jews in Venezuela to take a stand against the Israeli government.

“Now I hope that the Venezuelan Jewish community speaks out against this barbarism. Do it. Don’t you strongly reject all acts of persecution?” Chavez said.

A pro-Chavez website, Aporrea.org (”Popular communication for building 21st century socialism”), recently published the following “plan of action”:

- publicly denouncing by name, the members of powerful Jewish groups in Venezuela, names of their companies and businesses in order to boycott them

- avoiding products, stores, supermarkets, restaurants, and where Kosher food is sold which either belongs or has links with ‘Zionist Jews’

- questioning the existence of Jewish educational institutions

- shouting pro-Palestine and anti-Israel slogans at Jews on the street

- inviting anti-Zionist Jews living in Venezuela to publicly express their disassociation from ‘Zionist war crimes’ and the imposition of artificial State of Israel on Palestine

- nationalization of companies, confiscation of properties of those Jews who support the Zionist atrocities of the Nazi-State of Israel, and donate this property to the Palestinian victims of today’s Holocaust

- sending all type of aid to Palestinians including weapons

- hacking pro-Zionist websites including governments or institutions that have relations with Israel

- organizing an international conference about the creation of the theocratic - Nazi state of Israel as a genocidal European colony, and about the myths and facts of the alleged Jewish Holocaust or Holohoax (a blackmailing industry)

- support the dissolution of the artificial State of Israel

I don’t know exactly what the relation of Aporrea.org is to the Venezuelan government or Chavez. But based on recent history, neither is likely to reject or denounce this hateful “plan.”

Haaretz reports:

The president of the Jewish community in Venezuela on Monday accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of promoting anti-Semitism and giving the phenomenon legitimacy.

Speaking at the World Jewish Congress conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Abraham Levy Ben Shimol said “you probably hear of many anti-Semitic incidents, but where we live, the anti-Semitism is sanctioned; it comes from the president, through the government, and into the media. Since the government is very involved in the day-to-day lives of its constituents, its influence is much more effective.”

This is more than simply “Anti-Zionism Gone Wild.”

Anti-Gypsy rally by Magyar Garda banned in Hungary



A local Hungarian police force has banned a rally planned by the Magyar Garda, a radical nationalist movement connected to the Jobbik party, in NW Hungary, a police official told MTI on Wednesday.

The Magyar Garda, originally registered as an organisation, now describes itself as a "movement".

Local police press officer Tunde Kocsis said the event, which the Garda planned for Ivan village on Saturday, would disrupt traffic in the area.

Representatives of the Magyar Garda said earlier they wanted to demonstrate because of a recent rise in thefts and rowdiness in the village, which they insist is owing to the local Roma community.

Ivan, with a population of 1,400, has a Roma community of 270 people, including 60 who are school-age.

Jobbik registered "Magyar Garda" in June 2007 as a "cultural organisation" to "prepare youth spiritually and physically for extraordinary situations when it might be necessary to mobilise the people."

A Budapest court of first instance recently gave a ruling banning the organisation, which it is appealing against.



Read here and here and here and here for some background on the Magyar Garda and their parent party, Jobbik.  Jobbik is a far right party which is described as  fascist, neo-fascist or far right.  Typical of such parties, Jobbik claims that it is not racist but pro-Hungarian, pro-family values, etc., yet makes anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsy racism key aspects of its program and rhetoric.   The Magyar Garda are their political shock troops, frequently demonstrating against Jews and Gypsies in paramilitary uniforms.   These groups are attempting to capitalize on high levels of anti-Semitism in Hungary.  A 2007 polling report by the ADL found to be the highest of six European nations surveyed, connecting it with economic fears.  (Read pdf here.)  By the way Jobbik is currently suing in Hungary's supreme court to have Israel cited for war crimes in Gaza.  (Read here.)

On the march


Here's what the English version of Spiegel Online has to say about the Magary Garda in a must-read article headlined Neo-Fascist Magyar Garda Is 'Hungary's Shame':

The Magyar Garda -- "Magyar means "Hungarian" -- has pledged to train its members in the use of firearms and its members wear a uniform of black pants and vests with white shirts, and a cap emblazoned with a medieval coat of arms, the Arpad Stripes.  The striped, red and white symbol is a centuries old Hungarian banner, a version of which was used by the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party that briefly ruled Hungary toward the end of World War II.  The party murdered thousands of Jews and deported hundreds of thousands more to Nazi death camps.  Jewish groups, including the World Jewish Congress, have condemned the founding of the new "guard" and have called on the government in Budapest to act against it.

Karl Pfeifer, writing in the British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight in October 2007, described the Magyar Garda as increasingly using violent demonstrations as a deliberate strategy to gain political power, perhaps with an eye towards a future coup attempt.  (Read here.)   The Magyar Garda recently drew official condemnation from the Budapest municipal council in response to an anti-Gypsy rally by the group which targeted teenagers at a high school in Budapest.  (Read here.)  




One of the last official acts of the late Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos, himself a Holocaust survivor and partisan against the Hungarian fascists, was to introduce a bill to ban members of the Magyar Garda from entering the U.S.   (Read here and here and about his rescue by Raoul Wallenberg here.  Here is the bill's full text.  It has yet to be voted on.)





Members of extreme-right

One of Jobbik's leaders has set up shop in the U.K and has ties to the BNP. (Read here and here.)  According to the Sun:

Zoltan Fuzessy, 35, uses his terraced house in Gravesend, Kent, as an HQ to promote his far-right movement.

Fuzessy is vice-president of the Jobbik party, whose members freely boast of their hatred towards Jews and make sick jokes about the Holocaust.

The party, called “the shame of Hungary” by the country’s PM, has paramilitaries who dress in black uniforms like Hitler’s SS and has close ties to the British National Party.


Fuzessy also stated that:

"Those who call us Nazi are just Communists."



Nick Griffin and Zoltan Fuzessy


And here's a video of Griffin speaking at a Jobbik rally:





(For those interested, the Magyar Garda are making extensive use of YouTube, but their videos are pretty dull stuff if you can't speak Hungarian -- probably even if you can. View this and this and this and this.)


[Note regarding use of the term "Gypsy": I understand that this term is considered offensive by many Roma and Sinti. I use it only so a general readership, who may be unfamiliar with the correct terms, will know what I'm talking about. I apologize to all who find it offensive. Any ideas about how to better phrase this would be appreciated. -- ADAM HOLLAND]

Bernie Sanders: "Put Wall Street Under Oath"

John Nichols writing at The Nation:

The current economic crisis is often compared with the Great Depression, especially when it comes to making calls for rapid and sweeping responses to the mess that has been made by Wall Street bankers and speculators.

But what is not so frequently noted is that Franklin Roosevelt and his congressional allies did not merely act. They also investigated wrongdoing and pointed fingers of blame at the practices and practitioners that created the crisis.

The powerful Senate Banking and Currency Committee, prodded by its brilliant chief counsel, a New York prosecutor named Ferdinand Pecora, unearthed and revealed what the New York Times referred to as "a secret financial history of the 1920s, demystifying the assorted frauds, scams and abuses that culminated in the 1929 crash."

Roosevelt and the congressional leaders with whom he was aligned left no doubt that they thought Percora's eyes-wide-open examination--which actually began during the waning days of the failed presidency of Herbert Hoover, the man FDR swept from office--was an essential part of making a clean break with the thoughts and deeds that led to the collapse of the stock market, the shuttering of banks, factory closings, farm foreclosures and mass unemployment.

In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt indicted the bankers and speculators, declaring that:

Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

As the current crisis has unfolded, there has been plenty of action -- much of it misguided -- but little in the way of accountability.

This imbalance -- which FDR, Ferdinand Pecora and their allies so wisely recognized as dangerous folly -- may be changing, however.

Congress, having failed to establish a staisfactory system for monitoring the expenditure of last fall's $800 billion Wall Street bailout at a point when it might have been able to require a measure of responsibility on the part of the Treasury Department and the beneficiaries of its largesse, is now endeavoring to determine how the money is being spent.

That makes sense.

But a key senator is bluntly declaring that it would make even more sense -- at a point when allocated funds are being spent and more allocations are being requested -- to try and determine how the crisis was created.

That's what Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose track record of demanding accountability stands him in stark contrast from most of his colleagues, is suggesting.

"We have an enormous responsibility to explain to the American people what led to this financial crisis, how did we get here, who is responsible, and what we can do to make sure that this never happens again," Sanders wrote in a letter sent Friday to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada. "In order to accomplish this very important goal. We need to examine what responsibility should be borne by individuals, corporations, and institutions for the poor decisions and foolish investments that have in large measure created this monumental crisis."

The Vermont Independent is proposing that the congressional oversight panel charged with examining the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which is chaired by Harvard University Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, should expand the scope of its investigation so that it can study the causes of the economic collapse.

"The TARP Oversight Panel is already in place," explains Sanders, the steadiest Senate critic of wasteful TARP spending and irresponsible bailout schemes. "A sensible next step would be to expand its charge from that of scrupulously examining how the TARP monies are spent, to also exploring why the financial crisis occurred in the first place. The panel should have subpoena power necessary to assure that it receives sound information and direct answers to the questions it is charged with answering."

Seventy-five years ago, in another time of economic turmoil, Ferdinand Pecora said he "put Wall Street under oath."

He did so with the backing of new president and a courageous Congress.

Bernie Sanders proposes to renew the investigation.

Barack Obama and Harry Reid should support Sanders and give Elizabeth Warren the charge and the authority to put Wall Street under oath once more.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Obama Moves to Reverse Bush Labor Policies

President Obama: "You cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement."

from the New York Times:


The orders he signed, which union officials say will undo Bush administration policies that tilted toward employers, would require federal contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change, and would make it more difficult for federal contractors to discourage union activities.

In addition, Mr. Biden said the first meeting of the previously announced task force “to bring together those Cabinet members who have the greatest impact on the well-being of the middle class” would be Feb. 27 in Philadelphia. The task force will look at issues as diverse as health care and college opportunities, Mr. Biden said, and will focus on “restoring the balance in the workplace.”

The task force will be led by Jared Bernstein, a prominent liberal economist who has been writing a study on the impact of Mr. Obama’s stimulus plan. The focus of the first meeting will be “green jobs, those jobs that pay well, can’t be outsourced and will help us move toward a cleaner, more self-sufficient energy future,” Mr. Biden said.

Future monthly meetings will be held across the country to discuss the mundane but essential concerns of working people like child care, workplace safety and retirement security, the vice president said. The administration has set up a Web site, AStrongMiddleClass.gov, that Mr. Biden said would tell people what their government was doing and invite them to share their thoughts.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Voter Fraud Fraud

By Ken Silverstein (Harper's Magazine)

Remember last fall when Republicans claimed that they had discovered hundreds of cases of voter fraud in Ohio? A special prosecutor was even appointed to investigate. He has reported his findings and he did find voter fraud — exactly one case, “from a Connecticut man who told on himself.”

South African Politician: "Jews Run America"

from Ben Cohen at Z-Word blog: South African Deputy Foreign Minister: “Jewish Money Controls America”

“The control of America, just like the control of most Western countries, is in the hands of Jewish money and if Jewish money controls their country then you cannot expect anything else.” These words were spoken by South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Fatima Hajaig, at a Palestinian solidarity rally organized by the Cosatu trade union federation in the town of Lenasia on January 14th.

Jewish leaders in South Africa have now lodged a complaint of hate speech against her. Wendy Kahn of the South African Jewish Board of Deputiescorrectly declared: “Deputy Minister Fatima Hajaig had crossed all limits.”

Observes David Saks:

Comrade Fatima’s brazen invocation of the spectre of Jewish money exercising its malign behind-the-scenes influence in shaping world events was greeted with a particularly enthusiastic roar of appreciation by the audience. She even used the words “Jew” and “Jewish” rather than the code-word “Zionist”.

In addition to such revolting conspiracy theorising, various other speakers at the Lenasia rally made threatening statements against the local Jewish community.This included calls that anyone with Zionist sympathies be expelled from the country, that “Israeli” businesses be boycotted (a list of Jewish-owned businesses is in fact now doing the rounds within the Muslim community and further afield) and that action be taken against South African Jews who served in the Israeli military.

As the consistently excellent It’s Almost Supernatural blog points out, it was a shameful day in South Africa.

Greek politician compares Israel to Hitler

from the JTA:

The leader of a far-right political party in Greece compared Israel's actions in Gaza to Hitler.

The statements Monday by George Karatzaferis, the leader of the far right LAOS party, come a day after a daily newspaper in Greece blamed Jews for the world financial crisis and the Israeli operation in Gaza.

Karatzaferis released a statement that read, in part, "Someone has to pull the ear of the darling child of the West, Israel. Its aggressiveness and malice against non-combatants, whose only precedent can be found during Hitler's time, cannot leave the international community indifferent."

Israeli Ambassador to Greece Ali Yahya said in response to the statement, "Racism is not in Greece's culture. I'm saddened by the pathetic statement made by Mr. Karatzaferis; it shows, if nothing else, complete historic ignorance. It is the Jewish people that were the prey of racism."

Meanwhile, the Avriani newspaper led its front page with anti-Semitic accusations for the second time in several weeks. Sunday's headline read: "After the American Jews acquired once again the world's wealth and plunged the planet into an unprecedented financial crisis, they started rehearsing for WWIII."

Midway through the paper's story on Israel's operation in Gaza, the story, under the heading "The Plan," explains that a Jewish plutocracy, having made the "wealth of the century at the expense of the economies of the world," is preparing to put in motion "war machines" in various hot spots around the world in order to control the price of oil, redistribute the world's natural resources and start a new cycle of weapons production.

Avriani also blames U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for "playing dead" in the present crisis by not saying anything against the Jews, urging him to prove that he is not owned by the Jewish lobby.

On Nov. 4, the day after Obama was elected president, the paper ran a headline that said, "The end of Jewish domination. Everything changes in the U.S.A. and we hope that it will be more democratic and humane."

Jewish groups protested the headline.

Boston area racist murders three strangers; goal was shul





Maria DeSilveira stood on the front porch of a relative's home yesterday clutching a framed photograph of her handsome father as tears rolled down her face.

"My dad didn't deserve this,'' she said of Arlindo DePina Goncalves, 72. "There's too much racism in this world.''

Police said Goncalves was the third and final victim of Keith Luke, a 22-year-old Brockton man who authorities said devised an "evil plan'' fueled by racism to kill as many "nonwhites'' and Jews as he could before taking his own life.

Luke, authorities alleged yesterday, killed Goncalves and a 20-year-old woman, raped and shot the woman's 22-year-old sister, but failed in his plans to attack a Jewish synagogue and end his life.

Luke stood in Brockton District Court, hands manacled behind his back, his face scratched and bruised, the outcome of a gun battle, police chase, and car crash.

Luke pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, one count of aggravated rape, and two counts of armed assault with intent to kill. He was ordered held without bail by Judge James Sullivan.


. . . and . . .

One 20-year-old woman was shot and killed and her older sister was repeatedly raped and shot, but survived. She was listed in stable but serious condition at a Boston hospital yesterday.

The Globe is not naming the sisters because its policy is not to identify victims of sex crimes without their permission.

In court, First Assistant District Attorney Frank Middleton described Luke's alleged rampage and how two men -- one white, the other described as a person of color -- braved gunfire to try to help the mortally wounded woman.

"Yesterday this defendant methodically began an evil plan of mass murder and rape in the City of Brockton targeting victims he identified as nonwhite,'' said Middleton. Luke wanted to "kill as many Jews, blacks, and Hispanics as humanly possible ... before killing himself,'' he said.

. . . and . . . 


Luke allegedly forced his way inside the sisters' apartment with a 9mm handgun and a backpack containing two pairs of handcuffs, a blindfold, and a gag he had bought with his mother's credit card. He used the handcuffs to bind the elder sister's hands and then repeatedly raped her. When her sister came to the door and banged on it, Luke shot her multiple times, police said.

After shooting the woman at the door, Luke looked to her sister in a bedroom covering herself with a white teddy bear. He shot her through the stuffed animal, according to the police report.

Out on the street, as two men tried to help the younger sister, who had retreated from the door, Luke fired at the nonwhite would-be rescuer, but missed and then drove off, police said.

A few blocks away, Luke happened upon Arlindo Goncalves, whom he knew from the neighborhood, police said. Luke stepped out of his van and fired, police said.

"Goncalves raised one hand in front of his face to protect himself,'' police wrote. They said Luke shot him again in the back to make sure he was dead. A passerby who had followed Luke provided police with his license plate number.

Luke reportedly fired on and missed two Brockton police officers as they pursued the van until it plowed into two vehicles and crashed near East Ashland and North Quincy streets.

Police said Luke told them he bought a handgun on the street six months ago and purchased 200 rounds of ammunition.

"I'm sorry I shot at the cops,'' he said, according to a police report. "But I am not sorry I shot those people at the house.''

After he shot as many "nonwhites'' as he could, he reportedly told the police his plan was to head to a synagogue near his mother's Pleasant Street home and kill as many Jews as he could as they left a bingo game. He would then kill himself.

Rabbi Joshua Cohen of Temple Beth Emunah, the Conservative synagogue Luke planned to attack, said he had never heard of Luke and believes he randomly targeted the synagogue. He said investigators told him Luke was acting alone.

"As much as we like to think we've moved forward in our society and culture, hate and racism still exist, and it's really unfortunate,'' Cohen said.

German Far-Right Hails SSPX Holocaust Denier Williamson

More about the anti-Semitic "Bishop" Richard Williamson of the "traditionalist Catholic" SSPX.

from der SPIEGEL ONLINE :



Germany's far right has welcomed the move by German Pope Benedict XVI to lift the excommunication of British bishop Richard Williamson, who denied the Holocaust in an interview last week. German Jewish leaders are appalled at the decision.

In the churches and chapels of the Society of Saint Pius X, the incense burners at the holy masses have been swung with even greater vigor since the weekend in joy over the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to lift the excommunication of their founding father, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the bishops he ordained, among them Archbishop Richard Williamson.

Germany's far right is equally pleased with the decision and is hailing Williamson as a hero -- because he has denied the Holocaust.

. . . and . . .

"A bishop is saying what he believes," said one far-right supporter in the Internet blog German Wehrmacht which featured the transcript of the interview along with a video clip of it. "One must distance oneself from the content of the video if one wants to avoid any kind of trouble," the author goes on to warn, in reference to the fact that denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. Nevertheless, he adds, "thoughts are free."

Another far-right site, Störtebeker-Network, also celebrates the Society of Saint Pius X. Williamson, says an editorial posed on the site, has shown "how one should position oneself as a true Christian these days against general materialistic decay and decadence, by holding on to the original values of one's faith."

One commentator writes: "His Excellency Williamson: after David Irving there's a further Briton who has given us Germans a big reconciliation gift."

The closing of ranks between the German pope and the right fringe of his church is threatening to turn into the biggest mistake of his term.

The head of the Society of Saint Pius, Bernard Fellay, knows why Benedict XVI announced the lifting of the excommunication of Williamson and other brethren of the society: "1,703,000 rosaries were said to Our Dear Lady to bring about the end of this disgrace," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Meanwhile the head of the German arm of the Society of Saint Pius, Pastor Franz Schmidberger, is attempting damage control in the wake of Williamson's comments on the Holocaust. "It's clear that the comments Bishop Williamson is reported to have made don't mirror the stance of the Society of Saint Pius X and only the author himself is responsible," he declared in a statement.
Williamson himself has made no further comment and is believed to be in Argentina. If he were to travel to Germany he would very soon have to contend with the Regensburg public prosecutor's office, which has opened an enquiry into his remarks, which constitute an illegal offense in Germany.

Schmidberger's argument that the Society of Saint Pius isn't anti-Semitic despite the comments of its senior bishop Williamson isn't especially convincing given that Schmidberger merely states: "Our Lord Jesus Christ in his human nature is Jewish, his sacred mother is Jewish, all the apostles are Jewish. For that reason no upstanding Christian can be anti-Semitic."

The Central Council of Jews in Germany begs to differ. It had pointed out what it said was an anti-Semitic passage in a letter written by Schmidberger and his brethren before Christmas. The letter was sent to all bishops of the 27 Catholic dioceses in Germany, and none of the Roman Catholic bishops protested against it.

In the letter, Schmidberger stated: "We look on with sorrow as Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI go into a Jewish synagogue." Another passage reads: "The Jews of our days (are) not only our older brothers in faith as the pope claimed during his visit to the synagogue in Rome in 1986; rather they are complicit in the murder of Christ as long as they do not distance themselves from the guilt of their forefathers by acknowledging the divinity of Christ and through baptism."

Schmidberger now says: "The statement that today's Jews bear the guilt of their fathers" only refers to "those Jews who welcome the killing of Jesus Christ."


.

Correction: Nazi 'Angel of Death' NOT responsible for town of twins

Okay.  I'm a bit embarrased that I sort of fell for this story.  I mean, just how is Mengele supposed to have created blond, blue-eyed twins in a remote South American village anyway?  (Please remember that I did give the story my "grain of salt alert" warning -- and be kind.) 


Brazilian scientists have rejected claims that the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele – notorious for his experiments at Auschwitz – was responsible for creating a tribe of twins in a small town near the border with Argentina.

In his book, Mengele: The Angel Of Death In South America, Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa claims that Mengele made regular trips to Linha São Pedro, a small and predominantly German settlement near the city of Cândido Godói in Brazil, during the 1960s. Shortly afterwards, the birth rate of twins began to spiral, he says.

However, Ursula Matte of the medical genetics unit at Porto Alegre Hospital in Brazil and her colleagues reject any notion that Mengele was responsible for the phenomenon. Her team was invited to Linha São Pedro during 1994 to investigate reports of a higher than average number of twin births in the town.

Generation hop

From 1990 to 1994, the proportion of twin births in Linha São Pedro was 10%, compared to 1.8% for rest of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

"Even though we could not find a definitive explanation for this higher incidence, the existence of other 'twin towns' around the world Рmost of them in remote isolated areas with high levels of inbreeding just as Linha Ṣo Pedro Рshows that external influence is not needed for this to happen," Matte says.

Her team interviewed and conducted blood tests on 17 of the 22 pairs of twins living in Linha São Pedro, around half of which were identical twins.

Genealogical analysis showed a high recurrence of multiple births within families, as well as a high level of inbreeding within the community, suggesting the presence of genetic twinning factors.

The high level of inbreeding, combined with an absence of twins every other generation would suggest a recessive trait, Matte adds.

Teutonic traits

Although Camarasa argues that the high prevalence of blonde hair and blue eyes among the twins could be evidence of Mengele's "Aryanising" influence, Matte points out that the village was founded by German immigrants who often have such features.

"In addition, I don't think Mengele would have the knowledge, not to mention the means, to engender the rise in twin births in this community," she says. "It's noteworthy that twin births occurred there in almost every time period, even in the 1990s, so what kind of long-lasting manipulation could he have perpetrated?"

Twin births have been linked to exposure to toxic waste and increased use of IVF, but even now, says Matte, we don't fully understand the mechanisms involved, "and it is extremely hard for me to think that Mengele would have known it in the late 1960s," she says.

Former Czech Nazi concentration camps inmates mark Holocaust Day


About one hundred former Czech Nazi concentration camps prisoners and some 50 guests paid tribute to Holocaust victims on the Holocaust Remembrance Day today, honouring the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust in World War Two.

The world marks Yom Hashoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the day of the liberation of the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) Nazi extermination camp.

In the Czech Republic, Holocaust Remembrance Day started to be commemorated five years ago.

"It is very important to commemorate Yom Hashoah. To forget about what had happened will mean to increase the risk of the things to be repeated. This can never be ruled out," Czech Federation of Jewish Communities head Jiri Danicek told journalists today.

He said for him the Holocaust meant the dark side of human nature.

"If it gets out of control it is capable of doing everything. If you look around and listen to news you will see that such things happen on a smaller scale very often," Danicek said.

Brno's Museum of Romany Culture director Jana Horvathova who as a Romany historian has been studying the topic of Romanies' extermination during World War Two said that the "Holocaust was not a historical anomaly but the result of dark corners in human thinking."

One hundred men and women who came through the Terezin ghetto and survived the internment in the extermination camp attended today's meeting.

The guests included Czech Chief Rabbi Karol Sidon, Prague Archbishop Miloslav Vlk and newly appointed Minister for ethnic minorities and human rights Michael Kocab (for the junior government Green Party, SZ).

Senate chairman Premysl Sobotka (senior ruling Civic Democrats, ODS) spoke about the current situation in the Gaza Strip where Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas movement waged war recently.

He said it was necessary to fight against "carriers of evil."

"We should not allow the passivity to backfire on Europeans," Sobotka said.

Six million Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps. In the Terezin ghetto alone 155,000 Jews from the entire of Europe were interned and 117,000 of them did not survive the war. Further thousands of Jews perished in extermination camps in which thousands of Romanies also died.

According to estimates, the Nazis exterminated 90 percent of the Czech Romany population.



On the other hand, also from the Romano Vodi:

Czech pig farm should be moved from Romany Holocaust site

The pig farm on the site of the wartime camp for Romanies in Lety, south Bohemia, should be removed, Jiri Leschtina writes in the daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) today in connection with the promise of new Czech Human Rights and Minorities Minister Michael Kocab to pull the farm down.

The bad smell from the pig farm filling the air during commemorative events organised at the memorial of the internment camp's victims recalls the unwillingness to admit that it is not only Nazi Germans but also Czech guards who contributed to the death of more than 300 Romanies in Lety, Leschtina writes.

He says the Czech commander of the camp and several pathological guards killed tens of the inmates by beating them up and making them starve and freeze to death even before many of the others died of epidemic typhus.

Out of the 1,308 Romanies who were gradually interned in the camp in the early 1940s, 327 died there and more than 500 were transferred to the extermination camp in Oswiecim (Auschwitz).

The Czechoslovak communist regime decided to bury the memories of the genocide by building a large pig farm instead of the camp, Leschtina writes.

The pig farm is a symbol of the deformed view of the Romany Holocaust: unless the farm is removed, the Czechs continue to show that they have less respect to Romany victims of World War Two than to Jewish victims, Leschtina says.

The problem is similar to that of the postwar deportation of Germans from the country's border regions where they had lived for many generations. The Czechs try to ignore that they have part of the responsibility for the injustice done and crimes committed during the deportation, Leschtina writes.

He says the indefinite discussion on whether the sum demanded by the present owners of the farm as compensation for the removal is acceptable is pointless.

The farm should be removed at any cost because the Romany survivors and the descendants of those who died in the camp wish it, Leschtina points out.

Kocab should remember his excellent mixture of diplomatic skills and firmness thanks to which he pushed through that Soviet troops left Czech territory in the early 1990s, Leschtina writes.

He says Kocab has a hard nut to crack, recalling that Kocab's predecessor Dzamila Stehlikova and all government human rights commissioners, including Petr Uhl and Svatopluk Karasek, have so far failed to get rid of the pig farm despite their efforts.

SSPX "Bishop" Williamson's Letters reveal pathological anti-Semitism

A great deal has already been written about Pope Benedict's decision to rehabilitate four excommunicated followers of Marcel Lefebvre's "traditionalist Catholic" Society of St. Pius X ("SSPX"). These four are called "bishops" by the SSPX although not recognized as such by the church. One of these four, "Bishop" Richard Williamson, has drawn considerable attention by stating in a Swedish television interview that he does not believe the Holocaust occurred. In that interview (viewable here), Williamson has a bit of logical trouble, vacillating between stating that six million Jews were not gassed in concentration camps and stating that no Jews were gassed at all. Suffice it to say that the confused Mr. Williamson believes that only between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis, a figure which he apparently pulled from his mitre.




Williamson has provided us with a tremendous service, however, by encapsulating in one sentence the fundamental belief of the SSPX in particular and "traditionalist Catholics" in general (read here):

Just as the chief priests and ancients hated Jesus unto death, but they needed an Apostle to betray him, so we may blame Jews and Freemasons and others like them for engineering the destruction of the Church, but it has taken churchmen from within to do the actual betraying and destroying.

The belief that the Vatican is under the sway of a conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons, far from being incidental to this group, is absolutely essential to "traditionalist Catholic" theology. They believe it to be part of God's plan for humanity.


Lefebvre used to say that we have little idea of all that the Freemasons and their collaborators inside the Vatican are plotting and contriving in order to deliver the Catholic Church bound hand and foot into the power of Christ's enemies, but God has obviously known every detail from all eternity.

They also believe that this the existence of this conspiracy is being concealed by an even larger conspiracy. Williamson states (here) his belief that:


in Western democracies today a politician dares to breathe a word, for instance, against welfare or against the Jews, he knows he will be shouted down and voted out at the next election. In other words, the politicians are virtually controlled by public opinion, which is fabricated by the media, which are tightly controlled by a handful of Judeo-masons (sic), the people who also control finance and the governments.

He also writes (here):


Well over a century ago Judeo-Masonry is known to have been envisaging three World Wars to achieve its unified global domination.

By lies, Judeo-Masonry brought about the first two World Wars. To get Americans to enter the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson told them that it would be the "war to end all wars." In fact, WWI established the Masonic League of Nations in Geneva and the Communist Revolution in Russia, and crushed numerous Christian monarchies, in particular the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the Masonic Treaty of Versailles ending WWI deliberately paved the way for WWII, of which President F.D. Roosevelt promised it would "make the world safe for democracy." In fact, WWII established the Masonic United Nations, hugely promoted socialism in the USA and in the Western "democracies," and crushed the Eastern "democracies" under Communism.

By lies, Judeo-Masonry is preparing for the Third World War. As the Depression of the 1930's necessitated WWII, triggered for the US by the supposed treachery of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, so we see all the conditions created for another much worse Depression in the US, with the supposed treachery of Arabs last year against the Twin Towers in New York already igniting American public opinion to go to war against Afghanistan and now Iraq. And as we now in 2002 know with certainty that our governments and media told us far from the complete truth in 1941 as to who was truly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, so we will eventually know that those truly responsible for the attack on the Twin Towers were certainly not those primarily held up as being responsible by our governments and media.


The depths of the paranoia behind this world view are difficult for the uninitiated to fathom. Personally, I found what Williamson had to say on Oct. 1, 2001 (three weeks after 9/11) to be particularly helpful.


On the political level, we can be virtually certain that the vile media will not tell us the full story. There is serious reason to believe--that in 1898, it was not the Spaniards who sank the "USS Maine"; that in 1917, it was not the Germans who set up the "Lusitania" as a target; that in 1941 it was not the Japanese who set up Pearl Harbor for attack; that in 1963 it was not Lee Harvey Oswald who killed President Kennedy. In 1990 it was certainly not Saddam Hussein who promised not to react if he invaded Kuwait. In 1994 it was certainly not Timothy McVeigh's van exploding outside the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City which brought the front of the building down. In 2001...? Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, now Osama bin Laden, from CIA-assets to personal enemies of the American people -how many more times will the trick work?

Politically, behind the Arab terrorists are most likely the would-be architects of the New World Order, who have long been using the United States as an instrument to achieve their control of the world. Long ago they planned three World Wars to achieve their aim. It is they who provoked the sinking of the "Lusitania" and the attack on Pearl Harbor to bring the USA into the first two. Now they seem to be using the Arabs also. Humanly, they are clever. They are even diabolically clever. But little do they realize that they are in turn mere instruments of God who uses them for the salvation of souls.

For the last fourteen hundred years Mohammedans, whether Saracens or Arabs or Moors or Turks, have served God as a scourge to punish faithless Christians, or slack Christendom. When Catholics are fervent, God can grant them miraculous victories over the Mohammedans, as at the sea-battle of Lepanto in 1571. When Catholics are slack, God can allow the very survival of their nations to be threatened, as now, by birth-rates in Europe, by terrorism in the USA. When Spanish Catholics were slack in the 700's, God allowed the Jews to betray Spain to the Arabs. When Spanish Catholics were truly Catholic, God granted them by 1492 to reconquer Spain from the Arabs, and then granted them to create a Catholic empire in the Americas. Either way, God writes straight with crooked lines for the salvation of souls.

The Jews are a similar case. As early as 200 the Church author Tertullian remarked that as Catholic faith goes up, so Jewish power goes down, while as Catholic faith goes down, so Jewish power goes up. In the Catholic Middle Ages the Jews we're relatively impotent to harm Christendom, but as Catholics have grown over the centuries since then weaker and weaker in the faith, especially since Vatican II, so the Jews have come closer and closer to fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion.

If we return for a moment to politics, the United States is now caught precisely between these two scourges of God. Unquestionably one main grievance of Arabs against the United States, provoking their terrorists to lash out as we have seen, is the United States' one-sided favoring of Israel over the Arabs for the last forty years. But each time the United States attempts to act even-handedly towards the Arabs, Jewish power inside the United States - e.g. virtual control of finance and the media - blocks the attempt, and the United States returns to oppressing the Arabs.

This problem of the United States is politically insoluble, because it is a religious problem! The United States is caught between these two scourges of God, because it has turned away from God. God chastises those whom He loves (Heb. XII, 6), so that if God were not now chastising the United States, it would be the proof not that He loved, but that He did not love the United States! Let us be grateful that God is using Arab and Jew to chastise us! And let us therefore, with no thought of hating Arab or Jew, because they are NOT the real problem, turn to the real problem, which is the sins by which we offend God. Let us take the Ten Commandments in reverse order, culminating in the first.

In this single document, Williamson reveals himself as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist par excellence. He proclaims his belief in a single international conspiracy which caused the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, the Kennedy assasination and the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as backing Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic andOsama bin Laden. For God's sake, he regards the Spanish Inquisition as a high point in Catholic history, and calls Arabs and Jews "scourges of God"! Here he praises the Inquistion again, stating that:

the Inquisition rendered extraordinary service to Western civilization (then called Christendom) by picking out those heretics who were its worst enemies. The condemnation of Galileo was designed to block not scientific truth but his personal arrogance in the name of science which has been giving "science" a bad name ever since. And the condemnations of the Synagogue, which is the religion not of Abraham and Moses, but of Anas and Caiphas, have been elementary self-defence on the part of the Catholic Church, because the spiritual descendants of those two judicial murderers of Jesus Christ have for 2,000 years been continuing their work of hatred against the Mystical Body of Christ, the Catholic Church.


In other of his writings, he uses the Nazi phrase "Talmudic Jews" (here), and claims that for "2,000 years Jews have repeatedly sought to undermine the Catholic Church and to take Christ out of Christendom" (here). He also states (here) that


(U)ntil they re-discover their true Messianic vocation (i.e. convert to Christianity), (the Jewish people) may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem. So we may fear their continuing to play their major part in the agitation of the East and in the corruption of the West. Here the wise Catholic will remember that, again, the ex-Christian nations have only their own Liberalism to blame for allowing free circulation within Christendom to the enemies of Christ. As these make society more and more oppressively anti-Christian, he will profit to raise his sights above this world and look to the things of heaven –“When these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption is at hand” (Lk XXI,28). Remembering also that Anas and Caiphas induced but never obligated Judas to betray Jesus, and that the Apostle's betrayal was a crime far worse than the Jews' deicide, He will look at the state of the Catholic Church today, and see why the enemies of Christendom are being given so much power....


Deborah Lipstadt has been covering this story well on her blog (read here). Referring to a report by Sylvia Poggioli on NPR (available here), Lipstadt points out (here) that the SSPX in general, and the four rehabilitated "bishops" in particular, promote the belief that Jews alive today are collectively guilty for killing Jesus. This belief was deemed unacceptable for the Catholic Church by Vatican II. Apparently Pope Benedict is not so sure.

CONTACT

adamhollandblog [AT] gmail [DOT] com
http://www.wikio.com