Saturday, December 26, 2009
What War Is and Does to People:'The Girl I met on Christmas Day’ Dan Nang 1968.
This was originally a letter sent to my
son, Kyle, and then, my daughter, Nora.
I've added to it since, and will more as it
will be part of a novel.
I was trying to explain why I was not an ordinary
father with a 9-5 job, career etc...much of the terror,
trauma, and grief was and had to be suppressed at the
time...because I had a bigger concern...just surviving
that night. I never heard from them...
It's only later when we return that it comes over us.
For me, it meant drinking as much as I could, and any
drugs I could take during my first 2 1/2 years back to
shut out the thought,images, pain and hurt.
Each Christmas is harder to survive in a way because
I landed in Da Nang, VietNam on Christmas Day 1968
at about 2-3 am...and if you read far enough below
you will read of 'The Girl I met on Christmas Day’
Dan Nang 1968.
But, this year I started writing about it. I felt so
fucked up in pain that at some point i took a pen into
my hand.
What she did...without ever speaking a word was to show me
what war is and does to people. She took this hard marine and
ripped his heart out and humanized him! I think of her, and have
never forgotten her.
I came to Vietnam with Marine Corps training that taught me to hate.
But, I left her feeling awful...and feeling love for her and also, hurt,
pain, and the beginnings of a new awakening.
What War Is and Does to People:
Dear Kyle and Nora,
It was 40 years since (now 43 years) I was in Vietnam as a young boy of 18. I was
a Marine Corps 'grunt' (a rifleman). This Christmas will be 41 years.
The first time I was 18 and 4 months when I was medivaced from a place
of terror. I felt guilty for leaving my platoon, and especially, Chief,
my team leader and a Seminole Indian who had saved my life at least once.
I was walking point , but as I made it to the top of the hill I
stopped. I felt uncomfortable with the layout. The hill was a
large area with chest high grass, and surrounded by trees. I felt
inside somewhere that this could be it for me. I didn't think that
I could turn around and say I got a bad feeling about this...can we
go back to the fire base? No, I was there. I was a FNG (fucking new
guy) walking point.
But, before I could take another step my Chief, (Paul Bowers) my team
leader stopped me. I really think that it was for Chief to take a look
for himself. If i fucked up and stepped on a landmine it would not be
just my life. He saved many lives by stopping me.
He turned his back to the hill, and told me if you see anything don't
look directly at it, or they may open up on us if they think you've
seen them...or words to that effect. He had me look at him and said
not to look at the hill, then he told me that there may be something
at 1 o'clock, or between 1 and 2 o'clock. his neck was 12 o'clock.
I turned my head to my left away from the hill, and smiled like we were
sharing a something funny, but my right eye was looking over the spot, and
I had a sinking feeling in my heart or stomach...and nodded.
I was waiting for Chief to get back into his spot when I was told to 'freeze'.
Chief came back, and motioned me to step back. He carefully went through
the bushes, and vines I’d been pushing through, and showed me a green vine
that was flat against my chest. It was a trip wire. He had it between his
thumb and forefinger. My next half-step and I’d been blown to bits by an
anti-tank mine on one side of me and an anti-personnel mine on the other side.
It would've taken 8-12 men dead and wounded. My own death was one thing,
but I would've felt awful to have caused the death of others. If we were ambushed
as well, then much of the platoon would be gone. That’s how sharp Chief and
aware of everything around him, and why he was important to the platoon. He
came up; took a look, and remembered something that wasn't right and came
back. I and others are alive as a result.
Bobby traps, particularly, the 'bouncing betty' killed more US troops than
anything else.
It was a special to see Paul (Chief) laugh or smile, or share good moments with him.
He saved my life, and I learned to watched for everything in a way I hadn't
before that. And, I had been very alert and aware.
Weeks later, our platoon (about 45 men) were used as bait for a battalion
of NVA (North Vietnamese Army regulars). We were put in a small
abandoned Marine fire base. Hall, a state (high school) wrestling champion
came up to me and patted me on my right shoulder and said, (I thought)
'Are you okay?' And I said 'ya, i'm just getting my gear; i'm doing the
first watch.’
But, then Hall said 'your okay.' and patted me on the shoulder. I looked at him,
and he tapped my radio, stood in front of me, and said there were three on that
(the radio) before you. I was the platoon Sgt’s radioman). Plus there was a guy
from Vegas (I think) who got shot up bad when he was the radioman...then
there were three in the 4-5 months he was in the hospital, and then...me.
I had transferred from Fox 2/3 2cn Battalion (Batt) 3rd Marines (regiment)
because 2nd Platoon golf 2/3 had 'lost' a radioman and needed another.
"Vagas" never spoke to me that I can remembered. He nodded to me. Daily,
the main radioman for the LT was friendly if I asked for, or about anything,
but later I realized that to them and some others I was just a "DEAD MAN WALKING" who didn´t know it and hadn´t fallen ...yet.
Hall was just telling me you're okay and you've been okay(and LUCKY-mine).
I really respected him. He had a good sense of humor, was strong, and
Always made people laugh and was good even nice to this F-cking New
Guy FNG. It meant that there was some talk of me:-) I couldn't have
asked to be placed with a better group of Marines, or fellas than those
in the second platoon of Golf Co.
Then, and this is what happens in war...a terrible irony…he pointed to
all the firing pins from hand grenades scattered around and told me not
to touch them. He said they’re dangerous. He said that it’s safe to pick
them up one side, but...as he picked one up (it was dusk) to show me he said, but if you
pick up the wrong side your own body heat is enough to set off the charge.
And then, his hand opened up in front of me from the explosion, and he was
screaming and screaming. It looked as if someone took a knife and sliced his
hand open.
With explosions or bullets...you see the results and then hear the noise.
There was a loud explosion after I was looking at his hand, and blood flying
both ways. He was in immense pain, shock. I was in shock and have never
forgotten that night.
I've always felt bad that if he hadn't been nice to me...
About a week or less from my being medivaced (seizure and dysentery)
to the USA we landed on a ridge (Co Ca Va?) in the A Shau valley;
the ‘ Valley of Death ’. It was Fire Support Base (FSB) Cunningham;
the HQ for Operation Dewey Canyon I.
Being a radioman is one of the most dangerous jobs; (a snipers
delight). They could ambush a platoon, but if just one man
survived he could call in air strikes within 10 minutes. So they go
for the radio first, and the platoon is a bit f-cked. Someone (Hall?)
explained this to me after I survived a month (as radioman) and snipers.
When word got out that we were replacing Mike Co., 3/9 (3rd Battalion
9th Marine regiment) it had a chilling effect. 1/9 (1st Battalion 9th Marines
was known as 'The Walking Dead'- a casualty rate over 90% dead, wounded,
and missing...93.?% of every 100 young boys like me...year in and year out...
every year of that war. War is criminal. I had hoped to join them...was I daft.
But, even 3/9 meant bad, bad shit was going to happen. The Ninth 9th Marines
meant only one thing: 'heavy combat' and casualties like not seen before. We missed
the main attack (below) 'Sapper Attack in the A Shau During the Vietnam War'
http://www.historynet.com/sapper-attack-in-the-a-shau-during-the-vietnam-war.htm
But we were replacing the men who had endured that assault-to rub out
the base, plus nightly sapper attacks…night terror. Sappers were four men
teams with explosives in their backpacks, and plenty of hand grenades to
toss into other holes. They were brave men trying to rid their country of
foreign occupiers...as the Vietnamese people had for thousands of years.
Our first night we(Chief and I) were sent to a share a bunker with some
(grunts) from Mike 3/9; they were leaving the next morning. After we had
made the introductions...some men started to cry; and these were tough
marines...who had been exposed to too much night terror. They said the
things like...'we're all gonna be die'. ´They said they get in every night.´
I had no idea of what they were saying. Is he talking about a ground attack?
I had not even thought, nor probably heard about 'sappers.' They said sappers
get in every night...we're gonna die. Chief immediately grabbed one covered his mouth and told them to 'shut the fuck up' etc. It was a powerful lesson for
me.
As he did this we suddenly heard loud screams from beyond the perimiter
wire. They were silenced immediately by a very loud explosion, and then, there
were no more screams. The other men started to break down, and the first one said
'See, that's the fourth LP in a row. An LP is a listening post, and on that ridge
it was four men. With that explosion the total went to 16. 4 men each night for four
nights. North Vietnamese Army Regular (NVA) sappers had crawled up on the LP and one
sapper sacrificed his life to blow four Marines away.
The men started to sob again and Chief drew his knife. I got in front of another Marine and drew my K-Bar (combat knife) and stood in front of the other Marine.
He probably had much more time in Vietnam than me, and it felt strange to be
doing this. They don't teach these things in boot camp and infintry training.
When they quieted down, Chief took me away from that fortified bunker and went pointed to two
small three foot deep holes forward of all the bunkers with no sandbags or
any protection, and right out in the open. He got in front of me; our faces
weren´t far apart, and as he pointed to the hole that was to be mine that night he
said 'will watch each other each other's back. We'll be okay, (as he pointed to the bunker we just left) he said but we got to get away from that' (panicking-mine).
And we were. We survived a scary night.
I trusted Chief, and would have followed him in any situation.
The next morning, Mike 3/9 were gone. That night our company,
Golf 2/3 were facing what had terrorized the men from Mike 3/9. Of the
three platoons in the company, ours, the second platoon, had to send
out the first LP. Everyone was nervous because by then we knew what had
happened to the other LP's/ It came down to our squad and then, our four
man fire team-Chief’s. But, Chief had a plan to make sure that we didn’t
get blown away. I wasn't surprised that Chief was chosen to take out the
first fire team!
I thought that Chief stood the best chance in the whole company. I'm just
glad that I was with him. In 2010 he joked me that he just thought that "they
(command) were trying to get me killed."
Chief's plan was simple, yet like everything he did...he had put a lot
of thought into it...and that night, Chief wasn't exactly leading the
cream of the Corps (myself included--still green;-) men he could have,
but he made it work.
The plan was this: if we try to stay out all night...we'll be dead.
They'll-the NVA creep up on us like they did the other LP's. We were
going to have to be faster, and sharper. the others were blown away within
an hour or two.
When we heard movement...even before they could get within hand grenade
of us...I would notify our LT (Lieutenant) that we had contact and were
going to toss hand grenades to break contact,and come back into the
perimeter...this is how it´s done...the grenades allow for...time and cover...
That night it wasn´t when we heard contact, but when we thought we heard contact?
They were there, we didn´t know how close...but we're alive.
But, the brass didn't want us to come in. When I called in-radio-to the CP
they said we need more information on how many there are, the direction
of attack etc...you know the types of things that would get us blown to bits
if we stayed out all night like they wanted us too. I whispered to the next man
what was said, and it was passed to Chief. Chief and I leaned forward, and
looked at each other. Chief shook his head back N forth "NO!' a few times,
and made a sign with his hand and that was good enough for me, and I went
to squelch on the radio. This meant that I could not talk (make verbal
transmissions...as someone is to close:-) And, I could only use (key)
my handset.
We had tossed our frags (grenades) in front of us, to give us time and cover
to get back into the perimeter. I was the the last one out-position, I was
'Tail End Charlie. And when I got up I realized that they were closer
than we thought. As I got up to run I heard noise to my right and almost
right rear and saw someone in the darkness...where we hadn't thrown frags.
I was terrified that they had gotten so close. I sprayed a burst emptying my magazine. I was more than nervous...'scared shitless' is the word.
I ran forward through the zig-zag like coils of concertina wire, whilst
looking behind me for anyone who wasn't supposed to be there. I was last.
I was changing the magazine in my rifle while listening for the sound of a 'frag'(hand grenade)dropping near me(theirs-none). I was trying to catch up
with the others. As I came through the last twist and turn of the wire all
hell broke loose. I thought that the NVA had opened fire on the hill, or had
launched a ground attack, and ours were returning fire.
As we came through the wire,someone set off a trip flare, and we were
visible to all. We came the shortest way...across our kill zone, and
were almost cut to pieces by our own machine guns, and every trigger happy
grunt(or as we say 'every swinging dick with a rifle.') I had radioed in,
but no one had told the fellas we were on our way.
We almost got torn to shreds; the bullets were all around me, and I was about
to drop to the ground to my right when bullets tore up the earth; I was terrified.
I went towards my left but bullets sent wood, rocks and everything flying all around me on my left and just above where my head would land. I saw the others looking at me like ´What the Fuck are you doing standing?´ But, I was the only standing target...and they were zeroing in on me.I was terrified, fell in place
and screamed into the radio. We survived; Chief’s plan worked. God bless Chief.
When someone asks me how I survived I say I know there is a God because I
can't understand the times I was almost been killed and Chief wasn't there:-)
Secondly, Chief handled everything that God was far too busy at the moment!
And, that was a lot!!
Third, I was lucky.
Again, there was Chief and my own good instincts…which were constantly
honed and corrected by Chief
On night after Mike 3/9 was gone we had our own sapper attacks; they
must start about 2:30 am because i'm always awake then and till later...
daylight. Chief and I had the bunker on the extreme flank. The night´s
darkness was pierced by the screams of the two men from the next bunker. They
came running towards us screaming hysterically ‘The gooks are all around
us ...we’re gonna get killed.’
Chief and I each grabbed one, (I was following Chief's lead from the first
night)and covered their mouths. I put the flat handle of my K-Bar against
the back of the neck of my man so he couldn't move. Then I put my K-Bar to
his throat. In his eyes I saw sheer terror that I remember to this day.
I kept looking over my man's shoulder, and all around me.
Chief whispered 'Shut the fuck up. Get back into your
hole. Keep your head down, and your eyes and ears open.' And, for
good measure, Chief added 'and don't bring them over here.'
I had also run my knife down the man's throat to his chest and I gave
him a look that was meant to scare him as much as what had just
terrorized him. I was scared too, but knew that panic is deadly.
They ran back. We evacuated our bunker; everyone knew it by then,
and Chief said something to the effect that we could only use our
knives and hand grenades from here on in. The flash of a rifle would
give our position away.
After a few minutes a sapper made it into their bunker and began
knifing them to keep them there until his satchel detonated. We
listened to them scream and scream in agony and terror of their
last seconds (6-7) of their lives…They were fifty feet away…begging
and one cried aloud ‘Oh God’ just before the explosion. It was awful.
I was standing behind a massive tree and a single tear wnet down from my left eye, but I got over their deaths in a snap of my fingers. I was worried that the
sounds might mask someone approaching us. I was 110% adrenalin.
All they had to do was get within hand grenade range. And I was worried about tigers. They´re better hunters.
Later that morning my platoon Sgt. said ‘we got two new men coming in
on the copter, and we don’t want them seeing it (the bunker) like that. I
nodded and took the rags, and went in to clean it up. My training hadn't
taught me how to clean up the exploded remains of marines...From the top
of the bunker to the dirt floor and on every wall and crevice was
blood, bits of flesh, bone and whatever. I almost cracked. It was horrible.
Most of all, God, I didn’t want another Marine to see me crying…so I
stuffed it. At one point I said to myself 'You can't do this. You can't do
this(cry). So, I stuffed way down, but have cried many times since leaving
that hill.
I have since felt that on the Judgement Day even if Allah-God himself, and those
two men come over to me and smile and say it's okay now...I will always feel like shit for what happened that night..and I know that we had no other choice.
The rags were too small, and their blood and whatever got on my hands,
and I ran out of the bunker and wiped my hands in the dirt. War can make
someone superstitious. Stuff got on my clothes, hair, and then the rags were
soaked...that's when it got to me, plus it seemed like i didn't know how to do
it...and I just wanted to be done.
The medivac copter that took me out set down at another firebase for 10
minutes...and in an 'Irish mist' I sat there counting body bags stacked like
cordwood on the tarmac. I stopped at 240.
The screams of those two men, and the terror and pain are with me
every day...even on Christmas eve and Day.
I am just giving you this so you know what I experienced, and why I was
not the ordinary guy with a 9-5, and got down. War is horrible and
criminal. It scars deeply within as surely as it does on the outside.
But my real purpose is also to tell you of an incident that preceded
all the terror and death(even before I touched a rifle)...and humanized
my heart and soul. I am speaking of...
'The Girl I met on Christmas Day’ Dan Nang 1968
I landed in Da Nang early on Christmas morning...2-3am. Later
I would fly north to Dong Ha, and then by truck to Quang Tri to
join the 3rd Marines.
We were taken into Da Nang city briefly after being warned that
begging children might steal. We came upon a group of 30-40
such children.. I had some money to give and sweets.
At first it felt good to give to people in need, but I felt bad that they
had to beg...why? And why aren't they being fed by the military
(my first awaking that things weren't right).
Almost all were under 10, but some had amputations, shrapnel
damage and more. Most were okay, but this was what this hard
marine so eager for combat saw on his first day in Viet Nam .
But, I felt someone's presence at the back of the group. I knew
she was looking at me, and when I looked up I saw a lovely girl
of between 11-13. She looked right into my eyes (softly) for a bit, then
lowered (bowed) her head. But, by then she had torn my heart out.
She did not hold her hand out like the others. I think she felt different...not
as young as the others)...and marred
She raised her head again, made eye contact...kept it for a bit and
lowered her head again. I waded through the crowd till I stood in front
of her and she raised her head again and we looked at each other. I took
her hand and gave her whatever money I could get, and disguised it to
seem like I was just giving her sweets. I didn’t care if I had any money
left after giving to her.
We both nodded to each other, and I know I was holding back tears.
We shared a special and poignant moment in space and time that I
will never forget.
You see this beautiful Vietnamese girl had no right eye and, had minimal
treatment because she didn't wear an American uniform! But she was a
beautiful young girl. And, it is that young girl, and her soulful look, and
her situation that has been with me ever since.
Da Nang did not have an eye hospital until 1998. Plenty of money for war,
but not for people.
I know she appreciated whatever I gave her, but it felt inadequate to me.
She was marred; not even a patch, but I could see the whole her, and
my heart ached(s) for her. Ive' always wondered what became of her?
I would have food, water, medical care, but she?
It is those things-what happens to children, old people, and especially
(young girls and women, homes, families, villes, cultures, societies, and
also, to other Marines blown to bits, maimed, traumatized for a fucking
medal that hurts and causes pain most every day of my life.
Those of us who survived had to fight our own government for recognition
that their wounds/conditions merited treatment. But,the children of Vietnam
Afghanistan, Iraq or any country America wages war upon...have to fend
for theirselves.
But she is 'The Girl I Met on Christmas Day 1968’ ' or 'The Christmas Girl'
and she can make me cry easy...when I think of her.
War is a criminal enterprise!Or, as Major-General Smedley D. Butler said,
'War is a Racket'.
Vietnam is over there, but the war is still inside. All of the hurt you see or
feel and suppress at the time...you feel later when you are home...and forever.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
I closed my facebook and twitter accounts yesterday
I closed my facebook and twitter accounts yesterday.
December is the hardest month for me...I landed in
Vietnam on Christmas Day.
Monday, December 20, 2010
'The Girl I Met On Christmas Day 1968-DaNang’ Revisited
http://bit.ly/hsJnGU
December 20, 2010
Tues. 26, January 2010
Saturday, December 26, 2009
What War Is and Does to People:'The Girl I met on Christmas Day’
Dan Nang 1968.
http://bit.ly/a8c96f
I´m divorced and am exiled or shunned from my children.
One never talks to me, the other was kinder, but there is no
meaningful relationship, or healthy contact between us.
It´s not their fault...it´s the stuff they´ve heard
from my ex, and her family...the awful things someone
can do or say after a separation and divorce.
I thought things would be different; I was a counselor,
but I under-estimated the wrath a person can have when they
feel their partner took their love away. No matter what she has
said or told the children I have the bitter letters from her.
Love just died.
When two people get divorced one isn´t supposed to try
and get the children to ´effectively´ divorce their father.
But, that is what it´s like.
To have children and be ignored by them is hard...
very, very hard.
From December through February is the hardest from my
time in Vietnam.´The Girl I Met On Christmas Day 1968-DaNang’
tugs at my heart. I try to make it through each day in December.
Each day gets harder and harder.
I´m struggling financially...living in hostels mostly.
I have to constantly search for cheaper ones, and I´ve
been looking for an apartment. I´ve nothing yet.
No place feels like home to me. There is none. I have no
home, nor family... and I´m tired of searching and looking
and wonder if I´ll end up buying a sleeping bag...for financial
reasons. But, I don´t ever, ever want to do that.
I had a bad accident on November 18th...and know something
is wrong with my wrist and forearm. I had a bad head injury,
and it took almost 8 days before I realized what a whack I
took hitting the floor.
things...life is hard...i´m just trying to get by...
I came to a wall...and couldn´t go on doing Twitter...
I hardly used facebook...
If I have a seizure or am in the hospital for an
accident, or anything I don´t want anyone in my
immediate or family of origin to be notified or
let in to see me.
I was the only one with my mother when she was in
the hospital and know from my time with her and also
being with people in Vietnam and hospitals during the
war that what is most important is to have people around
you who love or care for you...not there out of a sense
of obligation...or having to be there.
If ever like that I don´t want people
in to see me because they feel obligated.
When I hear from my children it´s just out of feeling they
have to, and it hurts....I´ve been carrying a lot of pain
from Vietnam...but I was a wonderful, good and loving father
to them and at one time they loved me.
I´m just at a low point...I feel empty inside...dead...almost
the way i felt when i came back from Vietnam. i´ll be okay
somehow.
Vietnam, Vietnam and Vietnam...and having a family, but being alone
December is the hardest month for me...I landed in
Vietnam on Christmas Day.
Monday, December 20, 2010
'The Girl I Met On Christmas Day 1968-DaNang’ Revisited
http://bit.ly/hsJnGU
December 20, 2010
Tues. 26, January 2010
Saturday, December 26, 2009
What War Is and Does to People:'The Girl I met on Christmas Day’
Dan Nang 1968.
http://bit.ly/a8c96f
I´m divorced and am exiled or shunned from my children.
One never talks to me, the other was kinder, but there is no
meaningful relationship, or healthy contact between us.
It´s not their fault...it´s the stuff they´ve heard
from my ex, and her family...the awful things someone
can do or say after a separation and divorce.
I thought things would be different; I was a counselor,
but I under-estimated the wrath a person can have when they
feel their partner took their love away. No matter what she has
said or told the children I have the bitter letters from her.
Love just died.
When two people get divorced one isn´t supposed to try
and get the children to ´effectively´ divorce their father.
But, that is what it´s like.
To have children and be ignored by them is hard...
very, very hard.
From December through February is the hardest from my
time in Vietnam.´The Girl I Met On Christmas Day 1968-DaNang’
tugs at my heart. I try to make it through each day in December.
Each day gets harder and harder.
I´m struggling financially...living in hostels mostly.
I have to constantly search for cheaper ones, and I´ve
been looking for an apartment. I´ve nothing yet.
No place feels like home to me. There is none. I have no
home, nor family... and I´m tired of searching and looking
and wonder if I´ll end up buying a sleeping bag...for financial
reasons. But, I don´t ever, ever want to do that.
I had a bad accident on November 18th...and know something
is wrong with my wrist and forearm. I had a bad head injury,
and it took almost 8 days before I realized what a whack I
took hitting the floor.
things...life is hard...i´m just trying to get by...
I came to a wall...and couldn´t go on doing Twitter...
I hardly used facebook...
If I have a seizure or am in the hospital for an
accident, or anything I don´t want anyone in my
immediate or family of origin to be notified or
let in to see me.
I was the only one with my mother when she was in
the hospital and know from my time with her and also
being with people in Vietnam and hospitals during the
war that what is most important is to have people around
you who love or care for you...not there out of a sense
of obligation...or having to be there.
If ever like that I don´t want people
in to see me because they feel obligated.
When I hear from my children it´s just out of feeling they
have to, and it hurts....I´ve been carrying a lot of pain
from Vietnam...but I was a wonderful, good and loving father
to them and at one time they loved me.
I´m just at a low point...I feel empty inside...dead...almost
the way i felt when i came back from Vietnam. i´ll be okay
somehow.
Vietnam, Vietnam and Vietnam...and having a family, but being alone
Friday, November 18, 2011
trips, falls and head whacks off for a few days
I was supposed to leave Lisboa today.
I can´t afford where I´m at; though
the people are nice.
Since the end of August i´ve been living in
hostels in Spain and Portugal.
Today, I was in a restaurant that I´ve gone to
for my first coffee, and bolo de arroz (rice cake).
It´s shaped like a tall muffin; thin.
I was seated at a table for the first time; I usually
stand. A delivery man came with his arms full and as
he was trying to open the door I got up to do it for him.
I tripped over a strap of my backpack, and went flying.
I landed on my knees. My hands (L) (and arms(mostly Left),
mostly broke my fall; they were like shock absorbers). And,
then my head wacked the floor on the right side hard.
Something very similar happened in February 2011. I had a
small seizure while taking a shower. It was a small bathroom
(Cork, Ireland), and I had touble getting up. That time my hands
and right side of my head...same area as today took the full impact.
My concern? The shower was running, and would get the floor wet:-
Shit, can´t let that happen:-
My arms couldn´t move me that day in February. I was stunned.
I finally laid there and let myself feel the injury....and
from somewhere deep down I said to myself ´you´ve got a stun
injury...get up,´ (beside the physical ones), and I struggled
with where was the best place for my hands...they kept slipping.
After several slips I found it and my way up.
When I finished the shower I took out my shower bag and took out
a spray bottle of iodine...looked into the mirror and covered the
injured area. I had very little ice, but used it all, and then
covered the injured area.
Since I came back from Vietnam I learned to carry my own first aid
kit as it were. Not much, antiseptic, band-aid and a roll of gauge.
I wanted to cry, but suppressed it. I always had a good relationship
with my children, particularly me daughter...I was a stay at home dad,
and raised her much in the early years. And my son is a wonderful human
being as well.
But, since my ex-wife and I got separated...eventually divorced I came
to realize that how good, nice and loving (and firm when they needed a
parent to be)all those nice times are gone...and it wouldn´t matter if I
couldn´t get up, and was found there.
Sometimes children realize and remember how nice you were after you´re
gone. That´s what I thought of that day, and others days when I had
seizures. If I texted that I had one there was no response. So I stopped.
It´s not their fault; it´s the lies and untruths that have been said by
their mother as happens in these things.
Today, I felt and feel worse now. The woman cashier at the restaurant
came over with a good ice bag, and sprayed antiseptic on the cut. She´d
make a good combat medic. There were a couple of areas. mostly a good hard
whack-thump-bump.
I told the man not to worry; I would be okay; I hurt myself, but I said
I have a ´stun injury.´
I went back to the hostel and in bed. Later I felt the pain in my right
knee. My right knee, right side of the head, and left wrist, and arm were
the shock absorbers today.
I got up a few hours later, and had trouble lifting and turning my left arm
and wrist. I didn´t want to see a doctor. God that costs money.
But in 1987 our family was moving into a new home in Vermont from Boston,
and I was unloading more things from the truck when I had waves of small
seizures, and fell of the back of the truck. I landed on my back and heard
three snaps or pops. I thought oh shit.
I tied and wiggled my toes, then fingers, arms and hands and got up. My
right elbow was sore I brushed it off mentally. In the morning when I woke
up my right arm was across my chest. I knew my elbow was broke. I went to
the local doc. He took Xrays and said no break. I said my elbow´s broke.
Later I went back to Boston, had Xrays...and my arm was in a sling:
it was broke.
Today, I finally went to the hospital, and after seeing the doc he told
me no breaks; i´m okay. He asked if I needed pain killers. I told him I
take seizure medication and don´t want to add to it, and that I was in the
Vietnam War...and that there are different levels of pain.
I felt more pain when I got the bill €160 cash.
If I´m off for a couple of days i´m healing. I feel, much worse than I did
that day in February 2011. nausea and more pain. it´s time for a good rest.
ciao
I can´t afford where I´m at; though
the people are nice.
Since the end of August i´ve been living in
hostels in Spain and Portugal.
Today, I was in a restaurant that I´ve gone to
for my first coffee, and bolo de arroz (rice cake).
It´s shaped like a tall muffin; thin.
I was seated at a table for the first time; I usually
stand. A delivery man came with his arms full and as
he was trying to open the door I got up to do it for him.
I tripped over a strap of my backpack, and went flying.
I landed on my knees. My hands (L) (and arms(mostly Left),
mostly broke my fall; they were like shock absorbers). And,
then my head wacked the floor on the right side hard.
Something very similar happened in February 2011. I had a
small seizure while taking a shower. It was a small bathroom
(Cork, Ireland), and I had touble getting up. That time my hands
and right side of my head...same area as today took the full impact.
My concern? The shower was running, and would get the floor wet:-
Shit, can´t let that happen:-
My arms couldn´t move me that day in February. I was stunned.
I finally laid there and let myself feel the injury....and
from somewhere deep down I said to myself ´you´ve got a stun
injury...get up,´ (beside the physical ones), and I struggled
with where was the best place for my hands...they kept slipping.
After several slips I found it and my way up.
When I finished the shower I took out my shower bag and took out
a spray bottle of iodine...looked into the mirror and covered the
injured area. I had very little ice, but used it all, and then
covered the injured area.
Since I came back from Vietnam I learned to carry my own first aid
kit as it were. Not much, antiseptic, band-aid and a roll of gauge.
I wanted to cry, but suppressed it. I always had a good relationship
with my children, particularly me daughter...I was a stay at home dad,
and raised her much in the early years. And my son is a wonderful human
being as well.
But, since my ex-wife and I got separated...eventually divorced I came
to realize that how good, nice and loving (and firm when they needed a
parent to be)all those nice times are gone...and it wouldn´t matter if I
couldn´t get up, and was found there.
Sometimes children realize and remember how nice you were after you´re
gone. That´s what I thought of that day, and others days when I had
seizures. If I texted that I had one there was no response. So I stopped.
It´s not their fault; it´s the lies and untruths that have been said by
their mother as happens in these things.
Today, I felt and feel worse now. The woman cashier at the restaurant
came over with a good ice bag, and sprayed antiseptic on the cut. She´d
make a good combat medic. There were a couple of areas. mostly a good hard
whack-thump-bump.
I told the man not to worry; I would be okay; I hurt myself, but I said
I have a ´stun injury.´
I went back to the hostel and in bed. Later I felt the pain in my right
knee. My right knee, right side of the head, and left wrist, and arm were
the shock absorbers today.
I got up a few hours later, and had trouble lifting and turning my left arm
and wrist. I didn´t want to see a doctor. God that costs money.
But in 1987 our family was moving into a new home in Vermont from Boston,
and I was unloading more things from the truck when I had waves of small
seizures, and fell of the back of the truck. I landed on my back and heard
three snaps or pops. I thought oh shit.
I tied and wiggled my toes, then fingers, arms and hands and got up. My
right elbow was sore I brushed it off mentally. In the morning when I woke
up my right arm was across my chest. I knew my elbow was broke. I went to
the local doc. He took Xrays and said no break. I said my elbow´s broke.
Later I went back to Boston, had Xrays...and my arm was in a sling:
it was broke.
Today, I finally went to the hospital, and after seeing the doc he told
me no breaks; i´m okay. He asked if I needed pain killers. I told him I
take seizure medication and don´t want to add to it, and that I was in the
Vietnam War...and that there are different levels of pain.
I felt more pain when I got the bill €160 cash.
If I´m off for a couple of days i´m healing. I feel, much worse than I did
that day in February 2011. nausea and more pain. it´s time for a good rest.
ciao
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
The Occupy Movement: Stop the Police in their tracks from brutalizing people
I have watched scenes of policemen who thought
and felt that they were big tough beat people up,
and commit other criminal acts against American citizens
who have been exercising their First Amendment Rights to
exercise their freedom of speech, and assemble peacefully.
The police are suppose to protect citizens in the exercise
of their rights. When they brutalize them,
when they pepper spray peaceful assemblies of citizens
petitionioning the Government (and the Real Government-
the moneyed interests) for a redress of grievances,
then the police are no longer protectors, of the people,
nor are they guardians of their rights and liberties...
when the police beat up 84 year old women,
when they break up lawful assemblies,
when the pepper spray citizens exercising their rights,
then the police are a criminal force, not a police force,
then the police are a criminal gang who are protecting
the 1%... the moneyed interests who are the Real Government.
When the police do so, then they become, and they are,
the enemy of the people and destroyers of the rights, and
privilages of the American people.
The American people have a duty, they have an obligation
to defend themselves, their fellow citizens, and future
generations from what is becoming a criminal force.
When the police of New York find millions of people chasing
and hunting them down, then perhaps they will think about what
they are doing.
When a police force of thousands in New York gets ready break
up a lawful assembly as sees that they are quickly being surrounded
by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who break up their
unlawful assembly...perhaps they will think twice about what they do.
And, the America armed forces should ask themselves why are they being
used abroad to brutalize nations into submission at the same time that
the police forces in America does the same to the American people.
Perhaps, they will consider taking over ships, airfields, military bases
and refusing to let them be used against innocent people accross the world.
And, they should confront the police forces and mercenaries in waiting to
stop the brutality against the American people.
Meanwhile, the American people have the right to arm themselves and stop
the police from acting like criminal thugs, and must do so in as peaceful
way as possible. But, they have the right to disarm and strip these thugs
from doing further damage to the people.
Below is the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Perhaps we should occupy the police stations. Print the names and
addresses of the offending officers, and demand criminal prosecution
against those who are see to do criminal acts against the people
Yours...without spellcheck:-
Paul Meuse
Revolutionary since Vietnam
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
and felt that they were big tough beat people up,
and commit other criminal acts against American citizens
who have been exercising their First Amendment Rights to
exercise their freedom of speech, and assemble peacefully.
The police are suppose to protect citizens in the exercise
of their rights. When they brutalize them,
when they pepper spray peaceful assemblies of citizens
petitionioning the Government (and the Real Government-
the moneyed interests) for a redress of grievances,
then the police are no longer protectors, of the people,
nor are they guardians of their rights and liberties...
when the police beat up 84 year old women,
when they break up lawful assemblies,
when the pepper spray citizens exercising their rights,
then the police are a criminal force, not a police force,
then the police are a criminal gang who are protecting
the 1%... the moneyed interests who are the Real Government.
When the police do so, then they become, and they are,
the enemy of the people and destroyers of the rights, and
privilages of the American people.
The American people have a duty, they have an obligation
to defend themselves, their fellow citizens, and future
generations from what is becoming a criminal force.
When the police of New York find millions of people chasing
and hunting them down, then perhaps they will think about what
they are doing.
When a police force of thousands in New York gets ready break
up a lawful assembly as sees that they are quickly being surrounded
by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who break up their
unlawful assembly...perhaps they will think twice about what they do.
And, the America armed forces should ask themselves why are they being
used abroad to brutalize nations into submission at the same time that
the police forces in America does the same to the American people.
Perhaps, they will consider taking over ships, airfields, military bases
and refusing to let them be used against innocent people accross the world.
And, they should confront the police forces and mercenaries in waiting to
stop the brutality against the American people.
Meanwhile, the American people have the right to arm themselves and stop
the police from acting like criminal thugs, and must do so in as peaceful
way as possible. But, they have the right to disarm and strip these thugs
from doing further damage to the people.
Below is the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Perhaps we should occupy the police stations. Print the names and
addresses of the offending officers, and demand criminal prosecution
against those who are see to do criminal acts against the people
Yours...without spellcheck:-
Paul Meuse
Revolutionary since Vietnam
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Vatican stunned by Irish embassy closure´ Yahoo news comment separate
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/vatican-stunned-irish-embassy-closure-125727302.html
Vatican stunned by Irish embassy closure
By Philip Pullella | Reuters – 1 hour 9 minutes ago 4 Nov. 2011
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Catholic Ireland's stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See's prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The closure brought relations between Ireland and the Vatican, once ironclad allies, to an all-time low following the row earlier this year over the Irish Church's handling of sex abuse cases and accusations that the Vatican had encouraged secrecy.
Ireland will now be the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition without an embassy in the Vatican.
"This is really bad for the Vatican because Ireland is the first big Catholic country to do this and because of what Catholicism means in Irish history," said a Vatican diplomatic source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
He said Ireland informed the Vatican shortly before the announcement was made on Thursday night.
Dublin's foreign ministry said the embassy was being closed because "it yields no economic return" and that relations would be continued with an ambassador in Dublin.
The source said the Vatican was "extremely irritated" by the wording equating diplomatic missions with economic return, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values.
Diplomats said the Irish move might sway others to follow suit to save money because double diplomatic presences in Rome are expensive.
It was the latest crack in relations that had been seen as rock solid until a few years ago.
DAMNING REPORT
In July, the Vatican took the highly unusual step of recalling its ambassador to Ireland after Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the Holy See of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests.
The Irish parliament passed a motion deploring the Vatican's role in "undermining child protection frameworks" following publication of a damning report on the diocese of Cloyne.
The Cloyne report said Irish clerics concealed from the authorities the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, after the Vatican disparaged Irish child protection guidelines in a letter to Irish bishops.
While Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore denied the embassy closure was linked to the row over sexual abuse, Rome-based diplomats said they believed it probably played a major role.
"All things being equal, I really doubt the mission to the Vatican would have been on the list to get the axe without the fallout from the sex abuse scandal," one ambassador to the Vatican said, on condition of anonymity.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, said he was profoundly disappointed by the decision and hoped the government would "revisit" it.
"This decision seems to show little regard for the important role played by the Holy See in international relations and of the historic ties between the Irish people and the Holy See over many centuries," Brady said in a statement.
The Vatican has been an internationally recognised sovereign city-state since 1929, when Italy compensated the Catholic Church for a vast area of central Italy known as the Papal States that was taken by the state at Italian unification in 1860.
It has diplomatic relations with 179 countries. About 80 have resident ambassadors and the rest are based in other European cities.
The Vatican guards its diplomatic independence fiercely and in the past has resisted moves by some countries to locate their envoys to the Holy See inside their embassies to Italy.
Dublin said it was closing its mission to the Vatican along with those in Iran and East Timor to help meet its fiscal goals under an EU-IMF bailout. The closures will save the government 1.25 million euros (864 thousand pounds) a year.
(Additional reporting by Carmel Crimmins and Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by Tim Pearce)
Vatican stunned by Irish embassy closure
By Philip Pullella | Reuters – 1 hour 9 minutes ago 4 Nov. 2011
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Catholic Ireland's stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See's prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The closure brought relations between Ireland and the Vatican, once ironclad allies, to an all-time low following the row earlier this year over the Irish Church's handling of sex abuse cases and accusations that the Vatican had encouraged secrecy.
Ireland will now be the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition without an embassy in the Vatican.
"This is really bad for the Vatican because Ireland is the first big Catholic country to do this and because of what Catholicism means in Irish history," said a Vatican diplomatic source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
He said Ireland informed the Vatican shortly before the announcement was made on Thursday night.
Dublin's foreign ministry said the embassy was being closed because "it yields no economic return" and that relations would be continued with an ambassador in Dublin.
The source said the Vatican was "extremely irritated" by the wording equating diplomatic missions with economic return, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values.
Diplomats said the Irish move might sway others to follow suit to save money because double diplomatic presences in Rome are expensive.
It was the latest crack in relations that had been seen as rock solid until a few years ago.
DAMNING REPORT
In July, the Vatican took the highly unusual step of recalling its ambassador to Ireland after Prime Minister Enda Kenny accused the Holy See of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests.
The Irish parliament passed a motion deploring the Vatican's role in "undermining child protection frameworks" following publication of a damning report on the diocese of Cloyne.
The Cloyne report said Irish clerics concealed from the authorities the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, after the Vatican disparaged Irish child protection guidelines in a letter to Irish bishops.
While Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore denied the embassy closure was linked to the row over sexual abuse, Rome-based diplomats said they believed it probably played a major role.
"All things being equal, I really doubt the mission to the Vatican would have been on the list to get the axe without the fallout from the sex abuse scandal," one ambassador to the Vatican said, on condition of anonymity.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, said he was profoundly disappointed by the decision and hoped the government would "revisit" it.
"This decision seems to show little regard for the important role played by the Holy See in international relations and of the historic ties between the Irish people and the Holy See over many centuries," Brady said in a statement.
The Vatican has been an internationally recognised sovereign city-state since 1929, when Italy compensated the Catholic Church for a vast area of central Italy known as the Papal States that was taken by the state at Italian unification in 1860.
It has diplomatic relations with 179 countries. About 80 have resident ambassadors and the rest are based in other European cities.
The Vatican guards its diplomatic independence fiercely and in the past has resisted moves by some countries to locate their envoys to the Holy See inside their embassies to Italy.
Dublin said it was closing its mission to the Vatican along with those in Iran and East Timor to help meet its fiscal goals under an EU-IMF bailout. The closures will save the government 1.25 million euros (864 thousand pounds) a year.
(Additional reporting by Carmel Crimmins and Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by Tim Pearce)
Friday, October 21, 2011
Two stories of Police Brutality
Let me tell you a story about ´Boston´s finest.´
Geez there are so many...the ones who frisked people
for drugs...for themselves, and cash too. That goes back
to the early to mid 1980´s.
Then there´s the ones on my old street who operated a towing
scam. Back then, if your car got towed it cost $35 to get it back.
Certain cops went through our and other streets in blocks and
would have between ten and fifteen cars towed on our street in
winter.
So, if it was 10 cars they got a kickback of $15 apiece. If one cop
was on our street that meant $150 for the day. Not a bad days work.
But, these guys were eager. They would go through six or eight
streets in a day. You´re talking close to $1,000.
I figured that out after they got arrested.
There were many, many more dirty cops that I knew...not
always by name. But, this story is about your first amendment
rights.
I am a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran. I was a grunt and volunteered
twice. I wasn´t there long, and was lucky to survive where I was.
Before I went to Vietnam I was pro-war; I had eaten up all the propaganda
our government fed us on what was called the news, but was really nothing
more than propaganda. I came back against the war and joined Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, and later Veterans For Peace.
In 1967 or 1968 I skipped school to go to an anti-war protest at Post Office
Square outside the Post Office and government buildings. I went to beat up
anti-war protesters. I went by myself, but I wasn´t the only pro-war person there
for that reason.
At a certain point, and after yelling between our crowd against the protesters-who
were protesting peacefully some of us ran in to smack a few. That´s a criminal
offense assault and battery. As we did, the Boston Police moved right in with
their German Shepard police dogs.
I was worried about being bitten or grabbed by one of those dogs, but I later realized
that the police dogs were only to be used against the anti-war protesters. You see
what happened was after I hit someone(s) and started to run away I was grabbed by
one of ´Boston´s Finest.´
I thought ´Oh shit, my old man will kill me, and the school will know that I left the
building, and I´ll get suspended for that. But, none of that happened. I was put in the
back seat of the cruiser; there was a man in blue at the wheel.
I sat quietly, and after several minutes the other cop came in, and the car took off.
I wasn´t feeling to good at that point. But, it was just then that the guy in front of me
on the passenger side turned around to me and with a big smile on his face said
"wasn´t that great?" I really didn´t know what to say until he patted me knee, then I
nodded.
They went up the street a couple of blocks turned and stopped, the man in front of me
again said how good it was, and that I could go but not to go back to that area, so I
promised him I wouldn´t. I took the train home and went to work that afternoon like it
was anyday. But, I did notice on TV that the police had arrested some of the anti-war
protesters!
Almost three years later, after Vietnam my friend, Jimmy and I were hitchhiking
on the New Jersey pike. It was about 3am, (I´m not positive of the time); we were
going to his house on a New Years leave. Some got Christmas, and others like us
got New Years. We were walking and saw several police vehicles and I think an
ambulance on the other side of the highway. Then, we noticed a police cruiser
come over to us, and I said to Jimmy ´Let me do the talking.´ It was illegal to hitchhike.
The State Police officer rolled down the window on our side, and said smiling ´Are
you boys in the army?´and I said ´No, we´re Marines.´He said ´come on in.´ He
had been in the Marines too. He told me he cracked some hippies heads; he said
´they were hitchhiking.´ He told us how much he liked that part of his job.
He was enthused, and showed me his ´Billy club´; it was red from the blood he´d
just spilled. He drove us to a place; dropped us off and wished us well.
So, remember; the police are not neutral. Don´t let them push you around anymore
than the revolutionaries of 1776 would let the British push them around.
Yours in Struggle
Paul Meuse
Geez there are so many...the ones who frisked people
for drugs...for themselves, and cash too. That goes back
to the early to mid 1980´s.
Then there´s the ones on my old street who operated a towing
scam. Back then, if your car got towed it cost $35 to get it back.
Certain cops went through our and other streets in blocks and
would have between ten and fifteen cars towed on our street in
winter.
So, if it was 10 cars they got a kickback of $15 apiece. If one cop
was on our street that meant $150 for the day. Not a bad days work.
But, these guys were eager. They would go through six or eight
streets in a day. You´re talking close to $1,000.
I figured that out after they got arrested.
There were many, many more dirty cops that I knew...not
always by name. But, this story is about your first amendment
rights.
I am a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran. I was a grunt and volunteered
twice. I wasn´t there long, and was lucky to survive where I was.
Before I went to Vietnam I was pro-war; I had eaten up all the propaganda
our government fed us on what was called the news, but was really nothing
more than propaganda. I came back against the war and joined Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, and later Veterans For Peace.
In 1967 or 1968 I skipped school to go to an anti-war protest at Post Office
Square outside the Post Office and government buildings. I went to beat up
anti-war protesters. I went by myself, but I wasn´t the only pro-war person there
for that reason.
At a certain point, and after yelling between our crowd against the protesters-who
were protesting peacefully some of us ran in to smack a few. That´s a criminal
offense assault and battery. As we did, the Boston Police moved right in with
their German Shepard police dogs.
I was worried about being bitten or grabbed by one of those dogs, but I later realized
that the police dogs were only to be used against the anti-war protesters. You see
what happened was after I hit someone(s) and started to run away I was grabbed by
one of ´Boston´s Finest.´
I thought ´Oh shit, my old man will kill me, and the school will know that I left the
building, and I´ll get suspended for that. But, none of that happened. I was put in the
back seat of the cruiser; there was a man in blue at the wheel.
I sat quietly, and after several minutes the other cop came in, and the car took off.
I wasn´t feeling to good at that point. But, it was just then that the guy in front of me
on the passenger side turned around to me and with a big smile on his face said
"wasn´t that great?" I really didn´t know what to say until he patted me knee, then I
nodded.
They went up the street a couple of blocks turned and stopped, the man in front of me
again said how good it was, and that I could go but not to go back to that area, so I
promised him I wouldn´t. I took the train home and went to work that afternoon like it
was anyday. But, I did notice on TV that the police had arrested some of the anti-war
protesters!
Almost three years later, after Vietnam my friend, Jimmy and I were hitchhiking
on the New Jersey pike. It was about 3am, (I´m not positive of the time); we were
going to his house on a New Years leave. Some got Christmas, and others like us
got New Years. We were walking and saw several police vehicles and I think an
ambulance on the other side of the highway. Then, we noticed a police cruiser
come over to us, and I said to Jimmy ´Let me do the talking.´ It was illegal to hitchhike.
The State Police officer rolled down the window on our side, and said smiling ´Are
you boys in the army?´and I said ´No, we´re Marines.´He said ´come on in.´ He
had been in the Marines too. He told me he cracked some hippies heads; he said
´they were hitchhiking.´ He told us how much he liked that part of his job.
He was enthused, and showed me his ´Billy club´; it was red from the blood he´d
just spilled. He drove us to a place; dropped us off and wished us well.
So, remember; the police are not neutral. Don´t let them push you around anymore
than the revolutionaries of 1776 would let the British push them around.
Yours in Struggle
Paul Meuse
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Is the banking crisis really a scam to get countries to pay tribute (a share) of America´s wars
I spent thirty nights in Badajoz, España,
and during that time I finish reading the
´History of the Peloponnesian War´ by
Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 395 BC).
It was an amazing story of the downfall of
the Athenian empire, which like the USA was
based mostly upon sea power - her navy.
Those that they called their allies were
for the most part were in a subordinate
relationship with Athens.
Thucydides, and others in the story make the point
over and over that a successful prosecution of a war
lies in large part upon money.
Those with the greatest resources stand the best chance
of coming out victorious...so long as their policies,
tatics and strategy are off.
But, war requires loads of money. Athens, and Sparta both
had their so-called allies paying them tribute in one form
or another, whether in building a certain number of ships,
providing troops, or mercenaries, or in cash.
So, the thought occurred to me is this so-called banking
crisis really a scam (well we all know it is), but really a
way of raising tribute to pay for the ongoing cost of America´s
wars of aggression?
I think it´s very possible that that is why the banks demand money.
Banks prosecute wars, or wars are prosecuted for their benefit,
and anyone who doesn´t think that this is so ought to read ´War is
A Racket´by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
and during that time I finish reading the
´History of the Peloponnesian War´ by
Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 395 BC).
It was an amazing story of the downfall of
the Athenian empire, which like the USA was
based mostly upon sea power - her navy.
Those that they called their allies were
for the most part were in a subordinate
relationship with Athens.
Thucydides, and others in the story make the point
over and over that a successful prosecution of a war
lies in large part upon money.
Those with the greatest resources stand the best chance
of coming out victorious...so long as their policies,
tatics and strategy are off.
But, war requires loads of money. Athens, and Sparta both
had their so-called allies paying them tribute in one form
or another, whether in building a certain number of ships,
providing troops, or mercenaries, or in cash.
So, the thought occurred to me is this so-called banking
crisis really a scam (well we all know it is), but really a
way of raising tribute to pay for the ongoing cost of America´s
wars of aggression?
I think it´s very possible that that is why the banks demand money.
Banks prosecute wars, or wars are prosecuted for their benefit,
and anyone who doesn´t think that this is so ought to read ´War is
A Racket´by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
Avoid LAN Airlines
I am traveling and living in the least expensive places
I can find in España and Portugal after LAN airlines
didn´t let me board a flight to Quito, Ecuador on August
26th, 2011.
I´m trying to save another airfare. LAN didn´t let
me proceed past the ticket booth unless I either bought
a return ticket or a ticket for a forwarding flight to
another South American country.
They had a separate counter set up where people could
purchase either ticket. I was told that if I bought a ticket to
Medellin, Colombia for €350, then I could get on the plane and then
cancel that flight the next day in Quito. The woman said that LAN
airlines would then reimburse me.
I asked if LAN would reimburse me in cash, and they woman said "Oh,
we never do it in cash; we put it back on your credit card." The
problem for me was that I had no credit card; just €450 cash, so
if I did that I would only have about $140 until September 1st.
I thought that I might be able to make it on that, but realized
that they could refuse me entry for ´insufficient funds.´ So I
was stuck in Spain; I lost my flat in the process and am then
found myself living out of cheap hostels or hotels.
I spent 30 nights in Badajoz, Spain; it was a lovely place and I
saved just under €300, but I need another €1,000 tops.
I spend 7 nights in Lisboa, Portugal, a lovely city, but couldn´t
afford €30 a night. I am now in Porto for my first night in a place
for €20 a night. All the places have been very nice, and the people
at this one are great, and the place looks good. If not for a friend´s
help I would be spending nights on the street.
In fact, I have been looking for camping gear as I reasoned that 20-30
nights camping would save much more money quicker. I figured that I could
spend every 4th and 5th night in a hostel that way.
I am trying to save money to get back over to Ecuador. I wanted to travel
in South America; it is much cheaper and would ease my financial burden.
I make more than enough to live comfortably in South America.
I am a Vietnam veteran and I am writing a novel.
It seemed hypocritical for the airlines LAN not to let me board the
flight unless I bought a ticket that I could cancel the next day.
That´s a scheme, or what I would call a scam.
I lost €758+ in airfare, my apartment, and I found out that I am not
the only one that LAN has done that to. It´s a morally and ethically
bankrupt policy for them to do that, but it is also very profitable
for them.
So, if you intend to travel to South America avoid LAN Airlines.
I can find in España and Portugal after LAN airlines
didn´t let me board a flight to Quito, Ecuador on August
26th, 2011.
I´m trying to save another airfare. LAN didn´t let
me proceed past the ticket booth unless I either bought
a return ticket or a ticket for a forwarding flight to
another South American country.
They had a separate counter set up where people could
purchase either ticket. I was told that if I bought a ticket to
Medellin, Colombia for €350, then I could get on the plane and then
cancel that flight the next day in Quito. The woman said that LAN
airlines would then reimburse me.
I asked if LAN would reimburse me in cash, and they woman said "Oh,
we never do it in cash; we put it back on your credit card." The
problem for me was that I had no credit card; just €450 cash, so
if I did that I would only have about $140 until September 1st.
I thought that I might be able to make it on that, but realized
that they could refuse me entry for ´insufficient funds.´ So I
was stuck in Spain; I lost my flat in the process and am then
found myself living out of cheap hostels or hotels.
I spent 30 nights in Badajoz, Spain; it was a lovely place and I
saved just under €300, but I need another €1,000 tops.
I spend 7 nights in Lisboa, Portugal, a lovely city, but couldn´t
afford €30 a night. I am now in Porto for my first night in a place
for €20 a night. All the places have been very nice, and the people
at this one are great, and the place looks good. If not for a friend´s
help I would be spending nights on the street.
In fact, I have been looking for camping gear as I reasoned that 20-30
nights camping would save much more money quicker. I figured that I could
spend every 4th and 5th night in a hostel that way.
I am trying to save money to get back over to Ecuador. I wanted to travel
in South America; it is much cheaper and would ease my financial burden.
I make more than enough to live comfortably in South America.
I am a Vietnam veteran and I am writing a novel.
It seemed hypocritical for the airlines LAN not to let me board the
flight unless I bought a ticket that I could cancel the next day.
That´s a scheme, or what I would call a scam.
I lost €758+ in airfare, my apartment, and I found out that I am not
the only one that LAN has done that to. It´s a morally and ethically
bankrupt policy for them to do that, but it is also very profitable
for them.
So, if you intend to travel to South America avoid LAN Airlines.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Letter sent to the Irish Times Mon. 26 Sept. 2011 ´The Áras race´
The Áras race
I am reading of the race for the Áras from Spain,
while traveling and writing a novel. After living in
Ireland for ten out of fourteen, and will return to
Cork I have a different view of things.
There are many things said about Martin McGuinness having
´blood on his hands´´ and the like. Have those who make these
comments forgotten that the very founders of Ireland like any
revolutionaries had blood on their hands.
Being a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran gives me a unique view.
There is not one past Taoiseach going back as far as Bertie
Ahern without blood on their hands for complicity in the CIA´s
Rendition and torture scheme. Successive Taoiseach´s have
guaranteed the Irish people that Ireland is not being used in the
program that kidanps people and brings them to be tortured.
Yet planes like the Boeing 737 (N368CE) that are known to be
part of the rendition fleet regularly landed on Irish soil refueled and
left.
Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, has a responsibility to investigate,
and prosecute if it is found that certain Irish officials had knowledge
of and did nothing to prevent these events. Ireland is obligated to investigate
and prosecute under Article 2 of the UN CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE!
But, successive Irish authorities have done nothing about torture just as they
stood by and did nothing while Catholic church officials engaged in the ´Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment´ of Irish children.
were complicit in the torture.
I am reading of the race for the Áras from Spain,
while traveling and writing a novel. After living in
Ireland for ten out of fourteen, and will return to
Cork I have a different view of things.
There are many things said about Martin McGuinness having
´blood on his hands´´ and the like. Have those who make these
comments forgotten that the very founders of Ireland like any
revolutionaries had blood on their hands.
Being a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran gives me a unique view.
There is not one past Taoiseach going back as far as Bertie
Ahern without blood on their hands for complicity in the CIA´s
Rendition and torture scheme. Successive Taoiseach´s have
guaranteed the Irish people that Ireland is not being used in the
program that kidanps people and brings them to be tortured.
Yet planes like the Boeing 737 (N368CE) that are known to be
part of the rendition fleet regularly landed on Irish soil refueled and
left.
Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, has a responsibility to investigate,
and prosecute if it is found that certain Irish officials had knowledge
of and did nothing to prevent these events. Ireland is obligated to investigate
and prosecute under Article 2 of the UN CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE!
But, successive Irish authorities have done nothing about torture just as they
stood by and did nothing while Catholic church officials engaged in the ´Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment´ of Irish children.
were complicit in the torture.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
9/11 ten years after: Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B. Myers et al be brought to justice.
9/11 Ten Years After: Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George
Bush, General Richard B. Myers et al be brought to justice.
It was ten years ago Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 that the
American people suffered one of the worst of evils a nation can suffer;
a planned terror attack launched by those in control of their own
government. 9/11 was a giant criminal fraud and mass murder, and those
responsible are still alive, doing well and at large. Something like 2,996
people died on that day, and more are dying from inhaling dust and other
toxins released that day.
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Americans and the world´s people were told that the attack was the
result of four planes being hijacked by so-called Muslim extremists. Yet,
the preponderence of evidence refutes the official story put out by the
US Government. The official story´is actually part of the cover-up.
First, between seven and nine of the identified hi-jackers are alive
and well.They categorically deny any involvement in the crime of 9/11. As
early as Sunday 23 September 2001 the BBC reported ´Hijack 'suspects' alive
and well.´Waleed Al Shehri, a Saudi Arabian pilot, who allegedly crashed into
the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Mr. Al Shehri contacted the media
when he heard that he was a hijacker and gave an interview denying that
assertion by the US Government.
Less than one week before 9.11, Mohammed Atta and several alleged
hijackers were seen aboard a SunCruz Casino boat, which at the time was
by Jack owned Abramoff a wealthy lobbyist convicted of mail fraud and
conspiracy in 2006. Abramoff’s casino boats. He was, as they say, ´well-
connected´being on the Bush Transition Advisory Team in 2001.
Mr. Atta, was know to have a liking for prostitutes and drinking. As
an ex-Marine I can´t throw the first stone. I think I just did, but after it
was officially reported.
In the rubble of 9/11 Mr. Atta´s passport and will were found. This
raises a question. If the steel beams were supposed to have been melted from
the fire of the airplanes, then how did Mohammed Atta´s passport and will
somehow survive? What kind of fireproof material were they made of?
Secondly, if Mohammed Attat intended to fly into the World Trade Center-
okay we know it´s bullshit- but, let´s just pretend just for a minute. Why
would he bring his will onto the plane when it was going to blow up? I mean,
like why would you bring your last will and testament on a plane that was
going to be a torch?
Then there are the reports from firefighters who were on the scene.
report They hearing and seeing explosions as they towers impolded. See:9/11
Firefighter Oral Histories. First-Hand Reports (http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=LV5qED5NaaA short link http://bit.ly/nosS5R ). Also see:
firefightersfor911truth.org
343 firefighters died on 9/11. Who killed them?
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
I remember watching a man and a woman jumping to their deaths while
holding hands to avoid vaporization from the heat of all the explosives rigged
in those towers. They weren´t the only ones to jump.
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Even if you take the government´s snow job-cover-up story that it was the
intense heat from the two planes that made the two towers collapse what about
Building No. 7? No plane crashed into it, yet it came down at free-fall speed
andcame down in 7 seconds!
In the whole history of steel-framed buildings only three steel-framed
buildings have collapsed due to fire. They were all on September 11th, 2001.
They were WTC 1, 2 and building number 7!
In February 2005 a fire broke out in a steel framed building in Madrid,
Spain. It burned for 24 hours. Guess what? It didn´t collapse!
On February 23rd, 1991 a fire broke out at One Meridian Plaza in
Philadelphia. The building is a 38 floor skyscraper. It burned for 18 hours
and guess what? It didn´t collapse!
In Caracas, Venezuela a serious fire broke out in the tallest skyscraper
in the city on the 34th floor. before it was over it had spread to 26 floors
and burned for 17 hours. Guess what? It didn´t collapse!
On February 9th, 2009 Beijing´s Hotel Mandarin Oriental went up in flames.
The structure was 520 feet tall; a skyscraper. The whole building became
engulfed in flames, and the fire lasted for three hours. Guess what? "No
portion of the large structure collapsed!"
For three or four weeks after 9/11 there was molten steel at the WTC basement.
Melted steel still in liquid form!
Who did this crime?
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
The smoking gun is the nano-thermite found in the dust of the WTC. See:
`danish scientist Niels Harrit, on nano-thermite in the WTC dust ( english
subtitles )´ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o Short link:
http://bit.ly/ZR4a ).
´´The scientific paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust
the 9/11 from World Trade Center Catastrophe conclusively shows the presence
of unignited aluminothermic explosives in dust samples from the Twin Towers,...
See: (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html
short link http://bit.ly/1Hfz2 ).
A team of physicists found packets of unexploded nan-thermite in the dust of
the World Trade Ceter. This is like finding exploded firecrackers and
unexploded firecrackers. It´s a smoking gun.
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Pilotsfor911truth.org raise two points. One is that ant commercial plane
attempting such manoeuvre as done at the TWC towers would lose control of
the plane. Secondly, the ´Overwhelming Evidence Pentagon Aircraft Data Is Not
From An American Airlines 757´ See: (http://pilotsfor911truth.org
/lateestnews.html )
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Bush, General Richard B. Myers et al be brought to justice.
It was ten years ago Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 that the
American people suffered one of the worst of evils a nation can suffer;
a planned terror attack launched by those in control of their own
government. 9/11 was a giant criminal fraud and mass murder, and those
responsible are still alive, doing well and at large. Something like 2,996
people died on that day, and more are dying from inhaling dust and other
toxins released that day.
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Americans and the world´s people were told that the attack was the
result of four planes being hijacked by so-called Muslim extremists. Yet,
the preponderence of evidence refutes the official story put out by the
US Government. The official story´is actually part of the cover-up.
First, between seven and nine of the identified hi-jackers are alive
and well.They categorically deny any involvement in the crime of 9/11. As
early as Sunday 23 September 2001 the BBC reported ´Hijack 'suspects' alive
and well.´Waleed Al Shehri, a Saudi Arabian pilot, who allegedly crashed into
the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Mr. Al Shehri contacted the media
when he heard that he was a hijacker and gave an interview denying that
assertion by the US Government.
Less than one week before 9.11, Mohammed Atta and several alleged
hijackers were seen aboard a SunCruz Casino boat, which at the time was
by Jack owned Abramoff a wealthy lobbyist convicted of mail fraud and
conspiracy in 2006. Abramoff’s casino boats. He was, as they say, ´well-
connected´being on the Bush Transition Advisory Team in 2001.
Mr. Atta, was know to have a liking for prostitutes and drinking. As
an ex-Marine I can´t throw the first stone. I think I just did, but after it
was officially reported.
In the rubble of 9/11 Mr. Atta´s passport and will were found. This
raises a question. If the steel beams were supposed to have been melted from
the fire of the airplanes, then how did Mohammed Atta´s passport and will
somehow survive? What kind of fireproof material were they made of?
Secondly, if Mohammed Attat intended to fly into the World Trade Center-
okay we know it´s bullshit- but, let´s just pretend just for a minute. Why
would he bring his will onto the plane when it was going to blow up? I mean,
like why would you bring your last will and testament on a plane that was
going to be a torch?
Then there are the reports from firefighters who were on the scene.
report They hearing and seeing explosions as they towers impolded. See:9/11
Firefighter Oral Histories. First-Hand Reports (http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=LV5qED5NaaA short link http://bit.ly/nosS5R ). Also see:
firefightersfor911truth.org
343 firefighters died on 9/11. Who killed them?
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
I remember watching a man and a woman jumping to their deaths while
holding hands to avoid vaporization from the heat of all the explosives rigged
in those towers. They weren´t the only ones to jump.
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Even if you take the government´s snow job-cover-up story that it was the
intense heat from the two planes that made the two towers collapse what about
Building No. 7? No plane crashed into it, yet it came down at free-fall speed
andcame down in 7 seconds!
In the whole history of steel-framed buildings only three steel-framed
buildings have collapsed due to fire. They were all on September 11th, 2001.
They were WTC 1, 2 and building number 7!
In February 2005 a fire broke out in a steel framed building in Madrid,
Spain. It burned for 24 hours. Guess what? It didn´t collapse!
On February 23rd, 1991 a fire broke out at One Meridian Plaza in
Philadelphia. The building is a 38 floor skyscraper. It burned for 18 hours
and guess what? It didn´t collapse!
In Caracas, Venezuela a serious fire broke out in the tallest skyscraper
in the city on the 34th floor. before it was over it had spread to 26 floors
and burned for 17 hours. Guess what? It didn´t collapse!
On February 9th, 2009 Beijing´s Hotel Mandarin Oriental went up in flames.
The structure was 520 feet tall; a skyscraper. The whole building became
engulfed in flames, and the fire lasted for three hours. Guess what? "No
portion of the large structure collapsed!"
For three or four weeks after 9/11 there was molten steel at the WTC basement.
Melted steel still in liquid form!
Who did this crime?
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
The smoking gun is the nano-thermite found in the dust of the WTC. See:
`danish scientist Niels Harrit, on nano-thermite in the WTC dust ( english
subtitles )´ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o Short link:
http://bit.ly/ZR4a ).
´´The scientific paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust
the 9/11 from World Trade Center Catastrophe conclusively shows the presence
of unignited aluminothermic explosives in dust samples from the Twin Towers,...
See: (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html
short link http://bit.ly/1Hfz2 ).
A team of physicists found packets of unexploded nan-thermite in the dust of
the World Trade Ceter. This is like finding exploded firecrackers and
unexploded firecrackers. It´s a smoking gun.
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Pilotsfor911truth.org raise two points. One is that ant commercial plane
attempting such manoeuvre as done at the TWC towers would lose control of
the plane. Secondly, the ´Overwhelming Evidence Pentagon Aircraft Data Is Not
From An American Airlines 757´ See: (http://pilotsfor911truth.org
/lateestnews.html )
Truth and Justice demand that Dick Cheney, George Bush, General Richard B.
Myers et al be brought to justice.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Libya another nation overthrown:recolonizing Africa
Libya another nation overthrown:recolonizing Africa
To paraphrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt this is a Day ‘that will live in Infamy.’
August 22, 2011 the day that armed mercenaries created by the CIA, and armed and
trained by US and SAS forces and who else we don’t know with the terror bombing by NATO (read North Atlantic Terrorist Organization) came to be in control of Tripoli, the capital of Libya.
These are very ominous times, and I repeat to all we are in the opening stages of World War III.
The main aggressor is the United States of America. Its co-aggressors are the Zionist regime of Israel, the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Other European powers are bit players and play a supporting role.
On September 11, 2001 the criminal element within the United States and Israel- Zioinists on both sides - (google ‘Five Dancing Israelis - 9/11 Anniversary Edition - Part 1: Mossad Conspiracy’ http://bit.ly/b7Oqtu ) launched attacks within the United States and blamed them on ‘Muslim extremists.’
At that point the plans to invade Afghanistan which were completed in the summer of 2001 were put into place. America invaded Afghanistan and have never left.
In 2003 lie after lie, fabrication after fabrication were put before the American people and the people of the world to convince them that Saddam Hussein’s regime threatened the entire Western world, and was close to developing, or had nuclear weapons. America has never left. The invasion of Iraq was a gift to the Zionists regime in Israel.
Many millions have paid with their lives, and they had nothing to do with 9/11. Want to know?
Who was involved? Get a water board and Dick Cheney! Of course I’m not, nor would ever suggest doing that:- But you better believe he’d spill his guts.
The US instigated a War between Georgia and Russia, (South Ossetia War, Russo-Georgian War-take your pick- in 2008).
The United States is waging a war for world domination, and the only reason most people, historians, lawyers, politicians, military men et al do not in world war III is because the big guys haven’t come to blows yet.
These wars the United States is waging are to kick the Russians (naval base) out of Syria; the Chinese out of Libya and Africa. To initiate a major war the aggressor puts itself in the best strategic position that it can, and that’s what the US is doing.
Muammar Gaddafi was the one African ruler that didn’t buckle under the to the US.
Muammar Gaddafi helped the other African nations become more independent by helping pooer nations with money.
Muammar Gaddafi proposed that all African nations use the same currency the Gold Dinar, not the worthless US Dollar, or the Euro, but a currency based on gold.
Libya had the highest of standard of living in all of Africa .
Unlike Mubarak, Ben Ali et al Muammar Gaddafi was not in the back pocket of the US
And western imperialist.
Gaddafi helped Africa establish RASCOM (Regional African Satellite
Communication Organization), in 1992. Forty-five other African nations
joined in the venture. Libya provided $300 million out of the necessary $400
million to enable Africa to have its own satellite.
Before that Africa paid European countries US$500 million fee annually
to use their satellites. It was a good source of income for Europe.
Gaddafi’s Libya provided US$50 million for the African Development Bank
and US$27 million for the West African development Bank
What Gaddafi did was to try and help Africa become independent.
Today, as in the past, Africa provides the natural resources, minerals, oil
and the like cheaply to the west. It is to the detriment of Africa’s development
as a continent.
Africa has massive amounts of every resource and mineral to make it as
prosperous and industrialized as the richest Western countries. But, these
bankers, oil companies, corporations use the military to try to re-colonize
(keep enslaved by economic chains) the African continent.
The ultimate irony is that they use an African-American president to do so…
to give their actions the fig leaf of legitimacy.
They do not say we are grabbing up your feckin oil; no when they go to war
Nowadays they say ‘We’re humanitarians; we’re trying to protect the prople’
War is peace. Welcome to 1984!
The most despicable part of this is the use of the so-called International Criminal
Court (ICC) to indict those African leaders like Gaddafi who stand up against the
West’s greed for control. Glen ford of Black Agenda Report rightly said that the ICC
isn’t an international criminal court as it seems to have an ‘indict Africans only policy.’
The Libyan people, like the Iraqi, and the people of Afghanistan have had their lives and nations devastated for the sole reason that they live in a country rich in oil and other resources. And, also like Afghanistan and Libya, or Egypt live in a place that is considered strategically important to those powers who seek to dominate the planet.
If soybeans, or green beans were the only crop, or national resource of these countries they would not have been invaded.
What is to be done, as Lenin said? Those who live in the major Western imperial powers must resist and confound every step that their leaders take. At home the Banking class mugs, thugs, plunders, and robs its own people while waging war abroad.
We must wage a non-violent revolution, and once and for all times destroy all weapons from the face of the earth
We must bring the OBOMBAS, CAMERONS, SARKOZYs, NETANYAHUS, the criminals
with CIA, MOSSAD, MI6 and the military leaders who carry out the orders of the bankster to jail.
We must never rest. Truth, justice and peace must reign
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Hiroshima and Nagaskai: Terror Bombing and Evaporation of Innocents
It was on this day 56 years ago 9 August 1945 that the U S Military and political leaders committed mass murder on the Japanese people of Nagasaki, Japan. This was three days after the first Atomic bomb in history was used in war. Both bombs were used against civilian population centres, and they vaporized these people in an instant.
And, they were the lucky ones considering the terrible pain and deaths inflicted upon those who did not die in an instant.
There was absolutely no reason, nor military necessity to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who ran the American Empire had various motives to drop the bombs.
For President Truman it was principally revenge and racism of Japanese, or Asian peoples.
But, Truman lied to the people of America, and the world when in announcing the detonation of the Hiroshima bomb he stated “SIXTEEN HOURS AGO an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.” Hiroshima was not an army base it was a city.
(Harry S. Truman 93 - Statement by the President Announcing the Use of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima
August 6, 1945 http://bit.ly/pbD4nb )
Imagine if Japanese leaders dropped an Atomic Bomb on Los Angeles and said this, “SIXTEEN HOURS AGO an Japanese airplane dropped one bomb on Los Angeles, an important American Army base.” It would not just be a lie, but an attempt to cover up the truth of the barbarity of such a crime.
That is what it was, and that is also why there was a complete blackout of news photos showing the reality on the ground.
I do not mean the sanitized photos of the cities reduced to rubble, but of the people with their horrible injuries, and of the silhouettes of people burned into the walls of buildings.
So the very announcement was the beginning of great lies about these horrible weapons.
Truman gave as his principle reason for using the bomb on Hiroshima “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold… It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power
has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”
Privately, Truman excitedly said to confidant’s “Wasn’t it great?” And, he referred to the Japanese as ‘Japs.’ And he said “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city…Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war…. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
Those are the words of a man who seems to lack an ability to reflect on what it means to wipe erase, to vaporize 80,000 people in an instant of time.
But, it is his statement after the Nagasaki bombing that is stunning to this writer. He says this as his reasoning for using the bomb. “"Having found the bomb we have used it.” That statement sounds like the bomb was something that was ‘found’ on the street, not the deliberate result to create the most destructive weapon in history. (PRESIDENT HARRY S TRUMAN http://bit.ly/q2eV6L )
Truman’s Nagasaki statement went to on say “We have used it against those who attacked us
without warning at Pearl Harbor.” This was completely untrue, as the US had broken the Japanese naval code, and knew precisely where the attack would be. That is also why NO American aircraft carriers were anywhere near Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
President Truman also said that the bombs were dropped “against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare.”
Those precise reason would justify bombs being dropped on America because of all those detainees killed in the custody of the CIA and US military. And, since 9/11 it is America which has “abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare.”
Other reasons given were to shorten the war and to save American lives. The following are taken verbatim from ‘HIROSHIMA WHO DISAGREED WITH THE ATOMIC BOMBING?’ The overall opinion of US military leaders was that there was no military necessity to drop the bombs at all!
BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE ‘The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors said this
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
*********************************************************************
"Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.
"Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.
"I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."
ELLIS ZACHARIAS
(Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence) ‘How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, ‘Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.
********************************************************************************
PAUL NITZE
(Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary."
Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 44-45.
*****************************************************************************
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
There was “no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
*****************************************************************************
ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.
*************************************************************************
DWIGHT EISENHOWER
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63
******************************************************************
I believe that what the Prophet Jesus (Peace Be Upon Him) said “As Ye Sow; Ye Reap” applies to nations as well as individuals. And, as Truman stated “the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces.” I believe that we are just a matter of six months, more or less before the United States and Israel begin World War III using even worse devastation. I hope I’m wrong, but…
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
A Letter to African-American and all soldiers, sailors,marines and air force personnel: REVOLT
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Once again the Banksters and political and military leaders
of America are waging war against people of colour. From Korea
(where General MacArthur acknowledged in his first press conference
after the outbreak of hostilities that it was South Korea who attacked
North Korea. He changed his story within hours)
To Vietnam where the United States paid for 75%-80% of the French
war expenses to retake their colony. When they lost to the heroic
Vietnamese men and women the US stepped in and killed over 2 million
Vietnamese peasants in less than a decade.
In that war America poisoined food supplies, water, and dummped
millions of gallons of one of the most toxic poisoins Dioxin (known as Agents
Orange, Purple, et al) which kills and causes the most horrific birth defects
in both Vietnamese and the children of Americans who served in that war.
In Vietnam, the United States dropped napalm bombs (cannisters) on the
civilian population. these are not nice to see, but they show the girl who is known as the 'Napalm Girl' Phan Thị Kim Phúc or the Girl who Brought Naplm into
the public's consciousness. ( http://bit.ly/oF1zlN ) ( http://bit.ly/oDBz6R http://www.youngviet.com/vietnam-napalm-girl/)
Napalm is a chemical like gellied gasoline that has one purpose, and
that is to peel the skin of off human beings like you would peel a banana peel.
This picture shows her many years later hugging her own child(http://bit.ly/nYF6Ll) and this is another one. http://bit.ly/ngwrP4
To those in the military, afther the America's Revolutionary War, america's first foreign war was the Barbary War of 1801-1805. the barbary States were
what is presently Morocco, Libya (the words of the Marine Corps Hymmn 'From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli' date back to these wars).
The Second Barbary War was 1815.
Today America is back to where it was then at the beginning of the
19th Century. The US Navy Department was formed as a result of these wars.
There was no National Security at stake. Private American commercial interests dragged the United States into war to protect their 'free shipping.' Meanwhile,
American private interests continued to kidnap and import slaves until 1807, but
there were ways around that ban too.
To those in uniform your enemy is not in Libya. Your enemy are those senior officers who prosecute these illegal wars, torture people and more.
Your enemy is on Wall St. Goldman Sachs is one of the biggest enemies
of the American people. You would do much better to over take your own ships
and head back to New York Harbour and give the banksters an ultimatum to hand
back the billions that they have stolen or you will send a boarding party ashore
to capture them and if necessary to shell places which plan financial and other terror and financial terrorist unless they surrender.
Your enemy is those at the CIA, the NSA, the NRO and Pentagon who engage in illegal wars, and you have an obligation to stop them, just as German troops in
WWII should have turned their guns around, or put them down and refuse to fight.
It is well past time for the troops to rise up and revolt.
your enemy is the White House and Congress. The real place of terror being
planned is in the White House. Most members of Congress are guilty of giving 'Aid, comfort ande material support' by funding these wars. How many of them were ever in combat?
It is morally, ethically and legally wrong to do what America has been doing this past decade.
It is no coincidence that the banksters chose a Black president when they
knew that they would be waging wars upon the African continent for control of resources.
Stand tall. talk among yourselves. Be brave and take action to end these wars,
and mostly to arrest the utterly corrupt leaders that America has had since 2000!
You Are either Part of the Solution, or You Are Part of the Problem.
Brothers and Sisters in uniform 'THE ONLY SOLUTION IS REVOLUTION'!
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL WHEN YOUR COUNTRY'S LEADERS ARE THE MAIN SOURCE OF
TERRORISM IN THE WORLD.
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL WHEN YOUR COUNTRY'S LEADERS ARE WAGING AGGRESSIVE
WARS AGAINST THE PEOPLES, OF THE WORLD AND CALLING IT HUMANITARIANISM!
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL WHEN YOUR COUNTRY'S LEADERS ARE OPPRESSING THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA AND HAVING YOU FIGHT A FICTIOUS ENEMY.
THE ENEMY IS AT HOME.
THE ENEMY IS AT 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE.
THE ENEMY IS ON WALL STREET.
THE ENEMY IS IN THE CIA HQ.
THE ENEMY IS IN THE PENTAGON.
IT IS THE US MILITARY THAT KILLS MOST YOUNG AMERICAN MEN AND WOMEN
BY CONSTANTLY SENDING THEM TO DIE IN WARS FOR WALL STREET!
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL! IT IS THE ONLY THING TO DO
Once again the Banksters and political and military leaders
of America are waging war against people of colour. From Korea
(where General MacArthur acknowledged in his first press conference
after the outbreak of hostilities that it was South Korea who attacked
North Korea. He changed his story within hours)
To Vietnam where the United States paid for 75%-80% of the French
war expenses to retake their colony. When they lost to the heroic
Vietnamese men and women the US stepped in and killed over 2 million
Vietnamese peasants in less than a decade.
In that war America poisoined food supplies, water, and dummped
millions of gallons of one of the most toxic poisoins Dioxin (known as Agents
Orange, Purple, et al) which kills and causes the most horrific birth defects
in both Vietnamese and the children of Americans who served in that war.
In Vietnam, the United States dropped napalm bombs (cannisters) on the
civilian population. these are not nice to see, but they show the girl who is known as the 'Napalm Girl' Phan Thị Kim Phúc or the Girl who Brought Naplm into
the public's consciousness. ( http://bit.ly/oF1zlN ) ( http://bit.ly/oDBz6R http://www.youngviet.com/vietnam-napalm-girl/)
Napalm is a chemical like gellied gasoline that has one purpose, and
that is to peel the skin of off human beings like you would peel a banana peel.
This picture shows her many years later hugging her own child(http://bit.ly/nYF6Ll) and this is another one. http://bit.ly/ngwrP4
To those in the military, afther the America's Revolutionary War, america's first foreign war was the Barbary War of 1801-1805. the barbary States were
what is presently Morocco, Libya (the words of the Marine Corps Hymmn 'From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli' date back to these wars).
The Second Barbary War was 1815.
Today America is back to where it was then at the beginning of the
19th Century. The US Navy Department was formed as a result of these wars.
There was no National Security at stake. Private American commercial interests dragged the United States into war to protect their 'free shipping.' Meanwhile,
American private interests continued to kidnap and import slaves until 1807, but
there were ways around that ban too.
To those in uniform your enemy is not in Libya. Your enemy are those senior officers who prosecute these illegal wars, torture people and more.
Your enemy is on Wall St. Goldman Sachs is one of the biggest enemies
of the American people. You would do much better to over take your own ships
and head back to New York Harbour and give the banksters an ultimatum to hand
back the billions that they have stolen or you will send a boarding party ashore
to capture them and if necessary to shell places which plan financial and other terror and financial terrorist unless they surrender.
Your enemy is those at the CIA, the NSA, the NRO and Pentagon who engage in illegal wars, and you have an obligation to stop them, just as German troops in
WWII should have turned their guns around, or put them down and refuse to fight.
It is well past time for the troops to rise up and revolt.
your enemy is the White House and Congress. The real place of terror being
planned is in the White House. Most members of Congress are guilty of giving 'Aid, comfort ande material support' by funding these wars. How many of them were ever in combat?
It is morally, ethically and legally wrong to do what America has been doing this past decade.
It is no coincidence that the banksters chose a Black president when they
knew that they would be waging wars upon the African continent for control of resources.
Stand tall. talk among yourselves. Be brave and take action to end these wars,
and mostly to arrest the utterly corrupt leaders that America has had since 2000!
You Are either Part of the Solution, or You Are Part of the Problem.
Brothers and Sisters in uniform 'THE ONLY SOLUTION IS REVOLUTION'!
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL WHEN YOUR COUNTRY'S LEADERS ARE THE MAIN SOURCE OF
TERRORISM IN THE WORLD.
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL WHEN YOUR COUNTRY'S LEADERS ARE WAGING AGGRESSIVE
WARS AGAINST THE PEOPLES, OF THE WORLD AND CALLING IT HUMANITARIANISM!
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL WHEN YOUR COUNTRY'S LEADERS ARE OPPRESSING THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA AND HAVING YOU FIGHT A FICTIOUS ENEMY.
THE ENEMY IS AT HOME.
THE ENEMY IS AT 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE.
THE ENEMY IS ON WALL STREET.
THE ENEMY IS IN THE CIA HQ.
THE ENEMY IS IN THE PENTAGON.
IT IS THE US MILITARY THAT KILLS MOST YOUNG AMERICAN MEN AND WOMEN
BY CONSTANTLY SENDING THEM TO DIE IN WARS FOR WALL STREET!
IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL! IT IS THE ONLY THING TO DO
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
A PROPOSAL FOR A NEW UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION
When in the course of human history an organization, such as the United Nations, which was intended to serve the interest of humanity, to advance the cause of justice, and to promote ‘the economic and social advancement of all peoples,’1
When an international organization like the United Nations comprised of virtually all states that proclaimed their dedication to the maintenance of ‘international peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;’ 2
When such an organization is subverted, perverted and becomes a glove that the dominant group of imperial powers use as a ‘rubber stamp’ for their aggressive wars, for their wars of conquest upon peaceful peoples and nations,
When despite the stated aims of affirming the ‘fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, ’
When such an organization turns its eyes to the conquest of a country, Palestine, by European colonizers intent on the ethnic cleansing of a whole country, driving the indigenous peoples from their homes, farms, businesses, villages, towns and cities, and turning the whole country into an armed camp that keeps the conquered living in squalor and in a state of Apartheid, and with the support of the imperial powers,
When the most powerful of countries on the face of the Earth, most notably, the United States of America wages continuous wars, overthrows governments, has its intelligence agency, the CIA, kidnap and take as hostage innocent persons, and denies them due process, the most fundamental human rights, tortures and murders human persons without charge, trial or any sense of due process,
such a country makes a complete mockery of its commitment ‘To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;’ 3
When a handful of great powers with a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) do not work ‘to strengthen universal peace;’4 but use their monopoly of such weapons to threaten, bully and intimidate the rest of the planet full of peace loving peoples,
When a handful of such countries wage continuous wars for the domination and conquest over other countries, regions and continents for control of their natural resources and minerals for the benefit of private bankers, corporations and ruling classes,
When the promise of commitment ‘to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,’5 becomes empty words as the dominant financial powers attempt to drive all of humanity into a new form of serfdom as is occurring now,
When all of these abuses, outrageous, manipulations and bullying renders the organization an effective puppet of the dominant powers, and these powers work against the interests of all humanity,
And threatens the very survival of the human race, or large parts of it with extinction from nuclear war, and uses nuclear blackmail as part of its policy,
Then, it is long past time for the community of nations to take steps and measures that will isolate these imperial tyrants in the eyes of the world, and call them out for what they are persistent violators of the peace, and a threat to humanity, and aggressive war-like forces on the world stage.
In such a time it is most important to take away any legitimacy that they lay claim to for their barbaric and aggressive conduct and wars.
It is time for the nations of the world to withdraw en masse form the present United Nations, and to found a new international organization that will be reflective of the needs and desires of the human family to live in peace, and to truly
‘reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and’6
and to make it a supreme principle that the use of ‘armed force shall’7 never be used, and any
forces of the Community of Human Nations shall be used to disarm aggressors.
A new organization is needed that truly serves the interests of humanity, and not a dominant group of criminal financial and imperialist powers. The new organization must seek to organize newer methods of interactions that will, in time, eventually eliminate the use of money as we know it. For if we, the human race are to evolve to a higher state as a species, then we must learn to become more cooperative and eliminate the use of money, which allows a few to dominate the many.
The human race is chained to fossil fuels that are no longer needed. We are chained to their use by the banks and energy companies even though Nikola Tesla showed that energy is everywhere and that the energy of the universe can be tapped freely and with no pollution.
The present United Nations claims to ‘based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.’ 8 This is absolutely untrue, and must be acknowledged. At present, a handful of nuclear powers sit as permanent members of the Security Council, and they have veto power in their hands over the wishes, needs and demands of the rest of the nations on the face of the Earth.
This is not an organization ‘based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.’9
The present United Nations is a vehicle to serve the interests of the dominant powers and give it the cloak of respectability, a pretence of democracy. But, it is not. One nation using its veto can thwart the wishes of humanity. That is not democratic; it is tyranny!
Article 2.3 of the Charter states ‘All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.’10 This is not so; the dominant powers use armed force regularly to enforce their wishes. To these powers, principally, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Israel ‘War is…nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means,’ as stated by Karl Von Clausewitz in his essay of 1812 ‘Principles of War.’11
The present Charter lays down as a requirement for membership in the world body that ‘Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.’ 12
At this time the United States of America, Israel, the United Kingdom, and France, more than any other nations have been persistent violators during the whole of their membership. They have continually waged wars upon people of colour throughout the world from Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Malaysia, Laos, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Palestine to name a few.
Therefore when such is the reality I submit that the non-nuclear nations of Africa, Asia, South America, and the islands of the seas, and very few if any European countries, perhaps with the exception of Ireland, and some former Soviet republics should withdraw en mass from the present United Nations and set up a new organization of peace loving countries dedicated to the advancement of the human family. All indigenous peoples within all countries must be treated as equals in all respects in the new organization.
It is submitted that the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, the Russian Federation, The People's Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Republic of India and the Commonwealth of Australia, Germany and Canada should be barred from the new nations of the human family until, and under inspection thoroughly and completely rid themselves of all weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, biological; all.
Secondly such countries must reduce their military forces to patrolling their coastlines.
Their military industries must be closed and shut down, and prosecution be initiated for any political, military or economic leaders who committed war crimes, or profited from aggressive war.
The rights of indigenous people, and this also means the Palestinian people, and the descendants of former slaves must be fully recognized, their lands returned and reparations made as a fundamental principle to begin to address the most egregious violations committed by majority populations.
It is submitted that The Holy See, or the Vatican should not have, nor be granted membership to the new organization. The very existence of this so-called state derives from the ‘Lateran Pacts of 1929 or Lateran Accords’13 and agreement between the Catholic Hierarchy and the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, in which the Catholic bishops swore allegiance to the fascist government. It should not be treated any different than the state of Manchukuo set up by the Japanese government during World War II, and not recognized, and non-existent today.
The time is overdue and I humbly submit this proposal for the betterment of humanity
Paul Meuse
27 July 2011
1. Preamble to ‘The Charter of the United Nations’ signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco.
2. Ibid. Article 1.1 CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES.
3. Ibid. Article 1.2
4. Ibid.
5. Preamble, op. cit.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Article 2.1 ‘The Charter of the United Nations.’
9. Ibid.
10. Article 2.3
11. Clausewitz K. P. G. Von. ‘Principles of War,’ 1812.
12. Article 4.1 ‘The Charter of the United Nations.’
13. ‘Lateran Pacts of 1929 or Lateran Accords’ http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/hist/jpetropoulos/holocaust/laterantreaty.htm
http://bit.ly/pXt3mg.
14. ‘MANCHUKUO: Puppet's Poppies’ Monday, Nov. 13, 1933
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,746304,00.html
http://ti.me/4HMXGh
When an international organization like the United Nations comprised of virtually all states that proclaimed their dedication to the maintenance of ‘international peace and security, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;’ 2
When such an organization is subverted, perverted and becomes a glove that the dominant group of imperial powers use as a ‘rubber stamp’ for their aggressive wars, for their wars of conquest upon peaceful peoples and nations,
When despite the stated aims of affirming the ‘fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, ’
When such an organization turns its eyes to the conquest of a country, Palestine, by European colonizers intent on the ethnic cleansing of a whole country, driving the indigenous peoples from their homes, farms, businesses, villages, towns and cities, and turning the whole country into an armed camp that keeps the conquered living in squalor and in a state of Apartheid, and with the support of the imperial powers,
When the most powerful of countries on the face of the Earth, most notably, the United States of America wages continuous wars, overthrows governments, has its intelligence agency, the CIA, kidnap and take as hostage innocent persons, and denies them due process, the most fundamental human rights, tortures and murders human persons without charge, trial or any sense of due process,
such a country makes a complete mockery of its commitment ‘To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;’ 3
When a handful of great powers with a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) do not work ‘to strengthen universal peace;’4 but use their monopoly of such weapons to threaten, bully and intimidate the rest of the planet full of peace loving peoples,
When a handful of such countries wage continuous wars for the domination and conquest over other countries, regions and continents for control of their natural resources and minerals for the benefit of private bankers, corporations and ruling classes,
When the promise of commitment ‘to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,’5 becomes empty words as the dominant financial powers attempt to drive all of humanity into a new form of serfdom as is occurring now,
When all of these abuses, outrageous, manipulations and bullying renders the organization an effective puppet of the dominant powers, and these powers work against the interests of all humanity,
And threatens the very survival of the human race, or large parts of it with extinction from nuclear war, and uses nuclear blackmail as part of its policy,
Then, it is long past time for the community of nations to take steps and measures that will isolate these imperial tyrants in the eyes of the world, and call them out for what they are persistent violators of the peace, and a threat to humanity, and aggressive war-like forces on the world stage.
In such a time it is most important to take away any legitimacy that they lay claim to for their barbaric and aggressive conduct and wars.
It is time for the nations of the world to withdraw en masse form the present United Nations, and to found a new international organization that will be reflective of the needs and desires of the human family to live in peace, and to truly
‘reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and’6
and to make it a supreme principle that the use of ‘armed force shall’7 never be used, and any
forces of the Community of Human Nations shall be used to disarm aggressors.
A new organization is needed that truly serves the interests of humanity, and not a dominant group of criminal financial and imperialist powers. The new organization must seek to organize newer methods of interactions that will, in time, eventually eliminate the use of money as we know it. For if we, the human race are to evolve to a higher state as a species, then we must learn to become more cooperative and eliminate the use of money, which allows a few to dominate the many.
The human race is chained to fossil fuels that are no longer needed. We are chained to their use by the banks and energy companies even though Nikola Tesla showed that energy is everywhere and that the energy of the universe can be tapped freely and with no pollution.
The present United Nations claims to ‘based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.’ 8 This is absolutely untrue, and must be acknowledged. At present, a handful of nuclear powers sit as permanent members of the Security Council, and they have veto power in their hands over the wishes, needs and demands of the rest of the nations on the face of the Earth.
This is not an organization ‘based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.’9
The present United Nations is a vehicle to serve the interests of the dominant powers and give it the cloak of respectability, a pretence of democracy. But, it is not. One nation using its veto can thwart the wishes of humanity. That is not democratic; it is tyranny!
Article 2.3 of the Charter states ‘All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.’10 This is not so; the dominant powers use armed force regularly to enforce their wishes. To these powers, principally, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Israel ‘War is…nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means,’ as stated by Karl Von Clausewitz in his essay of 1812 ‘Principles of War.’11
The present Charter lays down as a requirement for membership in the world body that ‘Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.’ 12
At this time the United States of America, Israel, the United Kingdom, and France, more than any other nations have been persistent violators during the whole of their membership. They have continually waged wars upon people of colour throughout the world from Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Malaysia, Laos, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Palestine to name a few.
Therefore when such is the reality I submit that the non-nuclear nations of Africa, Asia, South America, and the islands of the seas, and very few if any European countries, perhaps with the exception of Ireland, and some former Soviet republics should withdraw en mass from the present United Nations and set up a new organization of peace loving countries dedicated to the advancement of the human family. All indigenous peoples within all countries must be treated as equals in all respects in the new organization.
It is submitted that the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, the Russian Federation, The People's Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Republic of India and the Commonwealth of Australia, Germany and Canada should be barred from the new nations of the human family until, and under inspection thoroughly and completely rid themselves of all weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, biological; all.
Secondly such countries must reduce their military forces to patrolling their coastlines.
Their military industries must be closed and shut down, and prosecution be initiated for any political, military or economic leaders who committed war crimes, or profited from aggressive war.
The rights of indigenous people, and this also means the Palestinian people, and the descendants of former slaves must be fully recognized, their lands returned and reparations made as a fundamental principle to begin to address the most egregious violations committed by majority populations.
It is submitted that The Holy See, or the Vatican should not have, nor be granted membership to the new organization. The very existence of this so-called state derives from the ‘Lateran Pacts of 1929 or Lateran Accords’13 and agreement between the Catholic Hierarchy and the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, in which the Catholic bishops swore allegiance to the fascist government. It should not be treated any different than the state of Manchukuo set up by the Japanese government during World War II, and not recognized, and non-existent today.
The time is overdue and I humbly submit this proposal for the betterment of humanity
Paul Meuse
27 July 2011
1. Preamble to ‘The Charter of the United Nations’ signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco.
2. Ibid. Article 1.1 CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES.
3. Ibid. Article 1.2
4. Ibid.
5. Preamble, op. cit.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Article 2.1 ‘The Charter of the United Nations.’
9. Ibid.
10. Article 2.3
11. Clausewitz K. P. G. Von. ‘Principles of War,’ 1812.
12. Article 4.1 ‘The Charter of the United Nations.’
13. ‘Lateran Pacts of 1929 or Lateran Accords’ http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/hist/jpetropoulos/holocaust/laterantreaty.htm
http://bit.ly/pXt3mg.
14. ‘MANCHUKUO: Puppet's Poppies’ Monday, Nov. 13, 1933
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,746304,00.html
http://ti.me/4HMXGh
Friday, July 22, 2011
Zionism and the Third Reich' by Mark Weber an excellent piece
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n4p29_Weber.html
http://bit.ly/bpdf4B
Institute for Historical Review
Zionism and the Third Reich
by Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the German port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name, "Tel Aviv," while a swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many years later a traveler aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a "metaphysical absurdity."1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a little-known chapter of history: The wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler's Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with the "Jewish question": that is, what is the proper role of Jews in non-Jewish society? During the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed that Jews and Germans were distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in Germany. Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as "Germans of the Jewish faith," but rather as members of a separate national community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the "Jewish homeland." They could hardly regard themselves as sincere Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other "foreign" country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize reality and live in a separate state of their own. "The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers," he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. "Where it does not exist, it is brought in by arriving Jews ... I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew, without hate or fear." The Jewish question, he maintained, is not social or religious. "It is a national question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international political issue ..." Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.2 Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered the world a welcome "final solution of the Jewish question."3
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a detailed memorandum to the new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally offered Zionist support in "solving" the vexing "Jewish question." The first step, it suggested, had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one's own tradition. Zionism recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend, symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear ...
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people, which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its Christian and national character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community and collective responsibility ...
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question, take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will have to be dealt with by most European peoples ...
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the cultural domain, we -- having been brought up in the German language and German culture -- can show an interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration and internal sympathy ...
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment especially the German people ...
Boycott propaganda -- such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways -- is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build ...
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions for other peoples.
The Federation's paper, the Jüdische Rundschau ("Jewish Review"), proclaimed the same message: "Zionism recognizes the existence of a Jewish problem and desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro- or anti-Jewish, because, in its view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested."5 A young Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz, who later settled in the United States and became head of the American Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden ("We Jews"), that the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant "Jewry for the Jews." He explained: "No subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race." 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what each group believed was in its own national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until 1940-1941, when the Second World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews, probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about pulling up roots to begin a new life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews turned to Zionism during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation's bi-weekly Jüdische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books were published. "Zionist work was in full swing" in Germany during those years, the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected "in its composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists."7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging support for Zionism by the government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of Germany's Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish self-awareness. Jewish schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations -- in short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and self-awareness - should be promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess Zionist development there. Based on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff that appeared in late 1934 under the heading "A Nazi Travels to Palestine." The series expressed great admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had produced a new kind of Jew. He praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the entire world. A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article, "pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the world: the Jewish question." Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von Mildenstein was promoted to head the Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: "The time may not be too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who have been lost to it for more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official goodwill, go with them."10 Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not on religion leads the German government to guarantee without reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing "strictly kosher food on its ships, under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate." 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to "reeducate" Germany's Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his 1985 survey, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question: "Zionists were encouraged to take their message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on Palestine and generally to educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them." 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation: "The Gestapo did everything in those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often received their help when we required anything from other authorities regarding preparations for emigration." 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag adopted the so-called "Nuremberg laws" that prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed the Jews an alien minority nationality. A few days later the Zionist Jüdische Rundschau editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany ... is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own schools, its own theatre, and its own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of national life ...
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the Jewish minority: Jewry's process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the "Revisionist" Zionist State Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the Berlin Jewish Community, declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for living together without conflict... I have long supported such a separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien nationality. The Nuremberg Laws ... seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect... This interruption of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress, told a New York rally in June 1938: "I am not an American citizen of the Jewish faith, I am a Jew... Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the Jewish people a race and we are a race." 17
The Interior Ministry's Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard Lösener, expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a November 1935 issue of the official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of opposition to the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout Germany where prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine. Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German flag, Jews were specifically guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler's Germany. 19
Himmler's security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid Haganah official Feivel Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah was kept well informed about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included secret deliveries of German weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs. 21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 "Kristallnacht" outburst of violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist organization to get back on its feet and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful Jewish communities in the United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize "their" governments and fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained implacably hostile toward National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the Zionist "promised land," a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really "solve" the international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign. German backing for Zionism was therefore limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats in June 1937, would not be in Germany's interest because it would not be able to absorb all Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as a base for international Communism.24 Reflecting something of a shift in official policy, the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when tension and conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, "it would nevertheless be a mistake to assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the anti-German agitation of international Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the world."26 "The proclamation of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine," warned an internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, "would create for Germany a new enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the Near East." Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state "would work to bring special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry."27 In January 1939, Hitler's new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned in another circular bulletin that "Germany must regard the formation of a Jewish state as dangerous" because it "would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry." 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938 and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and misgivings that his policies might contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of ridding Germany of its Jews, he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and 1939. In response, the SS security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several convoys of ships succeeded in reaching Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and illegal, from Germany (including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and 1939. Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30 Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist "kibbutz" training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate in Hitler's Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era was the Transfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of German Jews to migrate to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the Haavara (Hebrew for "transfer"), was concluded in August 1933 following talks between German officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps, fertilizer, and so forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the Jewish-owned Haavara company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to his deposit in Germany. German goods poured into Palestine through the Haavara, which was supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which Palestine oranges were exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing Jewish settlers and development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine the international Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Haavara arrangement, stressed that the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped negotiate the pact, pointed out that "the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a result of the agreement..." 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting in Switzerland, overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the Zionist "shadow government" in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha'avara, which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany's Consul General in Jerusalem, Hans Döhle, for example, sharply criticized the Agreement on several occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact would bring if sold elsewhere. The Haavara monopoly sale of German goods to Palestine through a Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there. Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also resented the arrangement.34 A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the "foreign exchange sacrifices" that resulted from the Haavara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: "There is no doubt that the Haavara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided not only the largest source of money (from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants, and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial products essential for development." The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most desirable target country as far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important drawbacks pointed out by Consul Döhle and others. The Interior Minister, it went on, had concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and each time decided to maintain the Haavara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria, through which Jews in foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost $900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in Palestine.38 Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha'avara. In 1937 Poland authorized the Halifin (Hebrew for "exchange") transfer company. By late summer 1939, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar arrangements. The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Haavara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine through the Ha'avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about ten percent of Germany's 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews made up about 15 percent of Palestine's 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha'avara emigrants transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: "Many of these people, especially in the late 1930s, were allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories -- indeed rough replicas of their very existence."40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the Ha'avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million pounds or 139.57 million German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a major impact on a country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed out. Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile firm. The influx of Ha'avara goods and capital, concluded Black, "produced an economic explosion in Jewish Palestine" and was "an indispensable factor in the creation of the State of Israel."42
The Ha'avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli state. A January 1939 German Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that "the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha'avara agreement] contributed to no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine."43
Former officials of the Ha'avara company in Palestine confirmed this view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972: "The economic activity made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the country's development. Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important even today in the economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara."44 Dr. Ludwig Pinner, a Ha'avara company official in Tel Aviv during the 1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha'avara immigrants "decisively contributed" to the economic, social, cultural and educational development of Palestine's Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of cooperation between Hitler's Germany and international Zionism. Through this pact, Hitler's Third Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made by the radical underground "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel," better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical nationalist "National Military Organization" (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over the group's attitude toward Britain, which had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal "for the solution of the Jewish question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in the war on the side of Germany" is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question by evacuation. ("Jew-free Europe")
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
1. Common interests can exist between a European New Order based on the German concept and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as embodied by the NMO.
2. Cooperation is possible between the New Germany and a renewed, folkish-national Jewry [Hebr_ertum].
3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of maintaining and strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East.
On the basis of these considerations, and upon the condition that the German Reich government recognize the national aspirations of the Israel Freedom Movement mentioned above, the NMO in Palestine offers to actively take part in the war on the side of Germany.
This offer by the NMO could include military, political and informational activity within Palestine and, after certain organizational measures, outside as well. Along with this the Jewish men of Europe would be militarily trained and organized in military units under the leadership and command of the NMO. They would take part in combat operations for the purpose of conquering Palestine, should such a front by formed.
The indirect participation of the Israel Freedom Movement in the New Order of Europe, already in the preparatory stage, combined with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem on the basis of the national aspirations of the Jewish people mentioned above, would greatly strengthen the moral foundation of the New Order in the eyes of all humanity.
The cooperation of the Israel Freedom Movement would also be consistent with a recent speech by the German Reich Chancellor, in which Hitler stressed that he would utilize any combination and coalition in order to isolate and defeat England.
There is no record of any German response. Acceptance was very unlikely anyway because by this time German policy was decisively pro-Arab.47 Remarkably, Stern's group sought to conclude a pact with the Third Reich at a time when stories that Hitler was bent on exterminating Jews were already in wide circulation. Stern apparently either did not believe the stories or he was willing to collaborate with the mortal enemy of his people to help bring about a Jewish state. 48
An important Lehi member at the time the group made this offer was Yitzhak Shamir, who later served as Israel's Foreign Minister and then, during much of the 1980s and until June 1992, as Prime Minister. As Lehi operations chief following Stern's death in 1942, Shamir organized numerous acts of terror, including the November 1944 assassination of British Middle East Minister Lord Moyne and the September 1948 slaying of Swedish United Nations mediator Count Bernadotte. Years later, when Shamir was asked about the 1941 offer, he confirmed that he was aware of his organization's proposed alliance with wartime Germany. 49
Conclusion
In spite of the basic hostility between the Hitler regime and international Jewry, for several years Jewish Zionist and German National Socialist interests coincided. In collaborating with the Zionists for a mutually desirable and humane solution to a complex problem, the Third Reich was willing to make foreign exchange sacrifices, impair relations with Britain and anger the Arabs. Indeed, during the 1930s no nation did more to substantively further Jewish-Zionist goals than Hitler's Germany.
Notes
1.W. Martini, "Hebr_isch unterm Hakenkreuz," Die Welt (Hamburg), Jan. 10, 1975. Cited in: Klaus Polken, "The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941," Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring-Summer 1976, p. 65.
2.Quoted in: Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen: Die "Reichskristallnacht" (Tübingen: Grabert, 1981), p. 212. See also: Th. Herzl, The Jewish State (New York: Herzl Press, 1970), pp. 33, 35, 36, and, Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (New York: Macmillan, 1984), p. 73.
3.Th. Herzl, "Der Kongress," Welt, June 4, 1897. Reprinted in: Theodor Herzls zionistische Schriften (Leon Kellner, ed.), erster Teil, Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1920, p. 190 (and p. 139).
4.Memo of June 21, 1933, in: L. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (New York: Behrman, 1976), pp. 150-155, and (in part) in: Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1985), p. 42.; On Zionism in Germany before Hitler's assumption of power, see: Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: 1980), pp. 94-95, 126-131, 140-143.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich (Austin: 1985), pp. 1-15.
5.Jüdische Rundschau (Berlin), June 13, 1933. Quoted in: Heinz H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (New York: Ballantine, pb., 1971, 1984), pp. 376-377.
6.Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, 1971, 1984), p. 376.
7."Berlin," Encyclopaedia Judaica (New York and Jerusalem: 1971), Vol. 5, p. 648. For a look at one aspect of this "vigorous life," see: J.-C. Horak, "Zionist Film Propaganda in Nazi Germany," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1984, pp. 49-58.
8.Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), pp. 54-55.; Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois, 1970, 1990), pp. 178-181.
9.Jacob Boas, "A Nazi Travels to Palestine," History Today (London), January 1980, pp. 33-38.
10.Facsimile reprint of front page of Das Schwarze Korps, May 15, 1935, in: Janusz Piekalkiewicz, Israels Langer Arm (Frankfurt: Goverts, 1975), pp. 66-67. Also quoted in: Heinz H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, 1971, 1984), p. 377. See also: Erich Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: FZ-Verlag, 1988), p. 184.
11.Das Schwarze Korps, Sept. 26, 1935. Quoted in: F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), pp. 56-57.
12.Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), p. 83.
13.F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), p. 60. See also: F. Nicosia, "The Yishuv and the Holocaust," The Journal of Modern History (Chicago), Vol. 64, No. 3, Sept. 1992, pp. 533-540.
14.F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), p. 57.
15.Jüdische Rundschau, Sept. 17, 1935. Quoted in: Yitzhak Arad, with Y. Gutman and A. Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), pp. 82-83.
16.Der Angriff, Dec. 23, 1935, in: E. Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: 1988), p. 148.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 56.; L. Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), p. 138.; A. Margaliot, "The Reaction...," Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem), vol. 12, 1977, pp. 90-91.; On Kareski's remarkable career, see: H. Levine, "A Jewish Collaborator in Nazi Germany," Central European History (Atlanta), Sept. 1975, pp. 251-281.
17."Dr. Wise Urges Jews to Declare Selves as Such," New York Herald Tribune, June 13, 1938, p. 12.
18.F. Nicosia, The Third Reich (1985), p. 53.
19.Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Bantam, pb., 1976), pp. 253-254.; Max Nussbaum, "Zionism Under Hitler," Congress Weekly (New York: American Jewish Congress), Sept. 11, 1942.; F. Nicosia, The Third Reich (1985), pp. 58-60, 217.; Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (1984), p. 175.
20.H. H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, pb., 1984), pp. 380-382.; K. Schleunes, Twisted Road (1970, 1990), p. 226.; Secret internal SS intelligence report about F. Polkes, June 17, 1937, in: John Mendelsohn, ed., The Holocaust (New York: Garland, 1982), vol. 5, pp. 62-64.
21.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 63-64, 105, 219-220.
22.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 160.
23.This distinction is also implicit in the "Balfour Declaration" of November 1917, in which the British government expressed support for "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, while carefully avoiding any mention of a Jewish state. Referring to the majority Arab population there, the Declaration went on to caution, "...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The complete text of the Declaration is reproduced in facsimile in: Robert John, Behind the Balfour Declaration (IHR, 1988), p. 32.
24.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 121.
25.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 124.
26.David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics 1889-1945 (Bar-Ilan University, Israel, 1974), p. 300.; Also in: Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, Vol. 5. Doc. No. 564 or 567.
27.K. Schleunes, The Twisted Road (1970, 1990), p. 209.
28.Circular of January 25, 1939. Nuremberg document 3358-PS. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg: 1947-1949), vol. 32, pp. 242-243. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, DC: 1946-1948), vol. 6, pp. 92-93.
29.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 141-144.; On Hitler's critical view of Zionism in Mein Kampf, see esp. Vol. 1, Chap. 11. Quoted in: Robert Wistrich, Hitler's Apocalypse (London: 1985), p. 155.; See also: F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 26-28.; Hitler told his army adjutant in 1939 and again in 1941 that he had asked the British in 1937 about transferring all of Germany's Jews to Palestine or Egypt. The British rejected the proposal, he said, because it would cause further disorder. See: H. v. Kotze, ed., Heeresadjutant bei Hitler (Stuttgart: 1974), pp. 65, 95.
30.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 156, 160-164, 166-167.; H. H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, pb., 1984), pp. 392-394.; Jon and David Kimche, The Secret Roads (London: Secker and Warburg, 1955), pp. 39-43. See also: David Yisraeli, "The Third Reich and Palestine," Middle Eastern Studies, October 1971, p. 347.; Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (1979), pp. 43, 49, 52, 60.; T. Kelly, "Man who fooled Nazis," Washington Times, April 28, 1987, pp. 1B, 4B. Based on interview with Willy Perl, author of The Holocaust Conspiracy.
31.Y. Arad, et al., eds., Documents On the Holocaust (1981), p. 155. (The training kibbutz was at Neuendorf, and may have functioned even after March 1942.)
32.On the Agreement in general, see: Werner Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1972).; David Yisraeli, "The Third Reich and the Transfer Agreement," Journal of Contemporary History (London), No. 2, 1971, pp. 129-148.; "Haavara," Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), vol. 7, pp. 1012-1013.; F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin: 1985), pp. 44-49.; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), pp. 140-141.; The Transfer Agreement, by Edwin Black, is detailed and useful. However, it contains numerous inaccuracies and wildly erroneous conclusions. See, for example, the review by Richard S. Levy in Commentary, Sept. 1984, pp. 68-71.
33.E. Black, The Transfer Agreement (1984), pp. 328, 337.
34.On opposition to the Haavara in official German circles, see: W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (1972), pp. 31-33.; D. Yisraeli, "The Third Reich," Journal of Contemporary History, 1971, pp. 136-139.; F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, pp. 126-139.; I. Weckert, Feuerzeichen (1981), pp. 226-227.; Rolf Vogel, Ein Stempel hat gefehlt (Munich: Droemer Knaur, 1977), pp. 110 ff.
35.W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer (1972), p. 31. Entire text in: David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics 1889-1945 (Israel: 1974), pp. 298-300.
36.Interior Ministry internal memo (signed by State Secretary W. Stuckart), Dec. 17, 1937, in: Helmut Eschwege, ed., Kennzeichen J (Berlin: 1966), pp. 132-136.
37.W. Feilchenfeld, et al, Haavara-Transfer (1972), p. 32.
38.E. Black, Transfer Agreement, pp. 376-377.
39.E. Black, Transfer Agreement (1984), pp. 376, 378.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 238-239 (n. 91).
40.E. Black, Transfer Agreement, p. 379.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich, pp. 212, 255 (n. 66).
41.W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer, p. 75.; "Haavara," Encyclopaedia Judaica, (1971), Vol. 7, p. 1013.
42.E. Black, Transfer Agreement, pp. 379, 373, 382.
43.Circular of January 25, 1939. Nuremberg document 3358-PS. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg: 1947-1949), Vol. 32, pp. 242-243.
44.Werner Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1972). Quoted in: Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen (Tübingen: Grabert, 1981), pp. 222-223.
45.W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (1972). Quoted in: I. Weckert, Feuerzeichen (1981), p. 224.
46.Original document in German Ausw_rtiges Amt Archiv, Bestand 47-59, E 224152 and E 234155-58. (Photocopy in author's possession).; Complete original German text published in: David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics 1889-1945 (Israel: 1974), pp. 315-317. See also: Klaus Polkhen, "The Secret Contacts," Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring-Summer 1976, pp. 78-80.; (At the time this offer was made, Stern's Lehi group still regarded itself as the true Irgun/NMO.)
47.Arab nationalists opposed Britain, which then dominated much of the Arab world, including Egypt, Iraq and Palestine. Because Britain and Germany were at war, Germany cultivated Arab support. The leader of Palestine's Arabs, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, worked closely with Germany during the war years. After escaping from Palestine, he spoke to the Arab world over German radio and helped raise Muslim recruits in Bosnia for the Waffen SS.
48.Israel Shahak, "Yitzhak Shamir, Then and Now," Middle East Policy (Washington, DC), Vol. 1, No. 1, (Whole No. 39), 1992, pp. 27-38.; Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's Fateful Hour (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), pp. 213-214. Quoted in: Andrew J. Hurley, Israel and the New World Order (Santa Barbara, Calif.: 1991), pp. 93, 208-209.; Avishai Margalit, "The Violent Life of Yitzhak Shamir," New York Review of Books, May 14, 1992, pp. 18-24.; Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), pp. 266-269.; L. Brenner, Jews in America Today (1986), pp. 175-177.; L. Brenner, "Yitzhak Shamir: On Hitler's Side," Arab Perspectives (League of Arab States), March 1984, pp. 11-13.
49.Avishai Margalit, "The Violent Life of Yitzhak Shamir," New York Review of Books, May 14, 1992, pp. 18-24.; Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), pp. 266-269.; L. Brenner, Jews in America Today (1986), pp. 175-177.; L. Brenner, "Skeletons in Shamir's Cupboard," Middle East International, Sept. 30, 1983, pp. 15-16.; Sol Stern, L. Rapoport, "Israel's Man of the Shadows," Village Voice (New York), July 3, 1984, pp. 13 ff.
From The Journal of Historical Review, July-August 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 4), pages 29–37.
Mark Weber studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). In March 1988 he testified for five days in Toronto District Court as a recognized expert witness on Germany's wartime Jewish policy and the Holocaust issue.
http://bit.ly/bpdf4B
Institute for Historical Review
Zionism and the Third Reich
by Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the German port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name, "Tel Aviv," while a swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many years later a traveler aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a "metaphysical absurdity."1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a little-known chapter of history: The wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler's Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with the "Jewish question": that is, what is the proper role of Jews in non-Jewish society? During the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed that Jews and Germans were distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in Germany. Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as "Germans of the Jewish faith," but rather as members of a separate national community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the "Jewish homeland." They could hardly regard themselves as sincere Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other "foreign" country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize reality and live in a separate state of their own. "The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers," he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. "Where it does not exist, it is brought in by arriving Jews ... I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew, without hate or fear." The Jewish question, he maintained, is not social or religious. "It is a national question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international political issue ..." Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.2 Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered the world a welcome "final solution of the Jewish question."3
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a detailed memorandum to the new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally offered Zionist support in "solving" the vexing "Jewish question." The first step, it suggested, had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one's own tradition. Zionism recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend, symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear ...
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people, which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its Christian and national character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community and collective responsibility ...
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question, take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will have to be dealt with by most European peoples ...
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the cultural domain, we -- having been brought up in the German language and German culture -- can show an interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration and internal sympathy ...
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment especially the German people ...
Boycott propaganda -- such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways -- is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build ...
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions for other peoples.
The Federation's paper, the Jüdische Rundschau ("Jewish Review"), proclaimed the same message: "Zionism recognizes the existence of a Jewish problem and desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro- or anti-Jewish, because, in its view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested."5 A young Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz, who later settled in the United States and became head of the American Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden ("We Jews"), that the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant "Jewry for the Jews." He explained: "No subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race." 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what each group believed was in its own national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until 1940-1941, when the Second World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews, probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about pulling up roots to begin a new life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews turned to Zionism during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation's bi-weekly Jüdische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books were published. "Zionist work was in full swing" in Germany during those years, the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected "in its composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists."7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging support for Zionism by the government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of Germany's Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish self-awareness. Jewish schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations -- in short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and self-awareness - should be promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess Zionist development there. Based on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff that appeared in late 1934 under the heading "A Nazi Travels to Palestine." The series expressed great admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had produced a new kind of Jew. He praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the entire world. A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article, "pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the world: the Jewish question." Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von Mildenstein was promoted to head the Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: "The time may not be too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who have been lost to it for more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official goodwill, go with them."10 Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not on religion leads the German government to guarantee without reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing "strictly kosher food on its ships, under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate." 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to "reeducate" Germany's Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his 1985 survey, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question: "Zionists were encouraged to take their message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on Palestine and generally to educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them." 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation: "The Gestapo did everything in those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often received their help when we required anything from other authorities regarding preparations for emigration." 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag adopted the so-called "Nuremberg laws" that prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed the Jews an alien minority nationality. A few days later the Zionist Jüdische Rundschau editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany ... is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own schools, its own theatre, and its own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of national life ...
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the Jewish minority: Jewry's process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the "Revisionist" Zionist State Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the Berlin Jewish Community, declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for living together without conflict... I have long supported such a separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien nationality. The Nuremberg Laws ... seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect... This interruption of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress, told a New York rally in June 1938: "I am not an American citizen of the Jewish faith, I am a Jew... Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the Jewish people a race and we are a race." 17
The Interior Ministry's Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard Lösener, expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a November 1935 issue of the official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of opposition to the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout Germany where prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine. Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German flag, Jews were specifically guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler's Germany. 19
Himmler's security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid Haganah official Feivel Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah was kept well informed about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included secret deliveries of German weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs. 21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 "Kristallnacht" outburst of violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist organization to get back on its feet and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful Jewish communities in the United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize "their" governments and fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained implacably hostile toward National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the Zionist "promised land," a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really "solve" the international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign. German backing for Zionism was therefore limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats in June 1937, would not be in Germany's interest because it would not be able to absorb all Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as a base for international Communism.24 Reflecting something of a shift in official policy, the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when tension and conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, "it would nevertheless be a mistake to assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the anti-German agitation of international Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the world."26 "The proclamation of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine," warned an internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, "would create for Germany a new enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the Near East." Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state "would work to bring special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry."27 In January 1939, Hitler's new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned in another circular bulletin that "Germany must regard the formation of a Jewish state as dangerous" because it "would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry." 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938 and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and misgivings that his policies might contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of ridding Germany of its Jews, he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and 1939. In response, the SS security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several convoys of ships succeeded in reaching Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and illegal, from Germany (including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and 1939. Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30 Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist "kibbutz" training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate in Hitler's Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era was the Transfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of German Jews to migrate to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the Haavara (Hebrew for "transfer"), was concluded in August 1933 following talks between German officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps, fertilizer, and so forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the Jewish-owned Haavara company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to his deposit in Germany. German goods poured into Palestine through the Haavara, which was supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which Palestine oranges were exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing Jewish settlers and development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine the international Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Haavara arrangement, stressed that the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped negotiate the pact, pointed out that "the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a result of the agreement..." 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting in Switzerland, overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the Zionist "shadow government" in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha'avara, which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany's Consul General in Jerusalem, Hans Döhle, for example, sharply criticized the Agreement on several occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact would bring if sold elsewhere. The Haavara monopoly sale of German goods to Palestine through a Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there. Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also resented the arrangement.34 A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the "foreign exchange sacrifices" that resulted from the Haavara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: "There is no doubt that the Haavara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided not only the largest source of money (from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants, and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial products essential for development." The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most desirable target country as far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important drawbacks pointed out by Consul Döhle and others. The Interior Minister, it went on, had concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and each time decided to maintain the Haavara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria, through which Jews in foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost $900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in Palestine.38 Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha'avara. In 1937 Poland authorized the Halifin (Hebrew for "exchange") transfer company. By late summer 1939, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar arrangements. The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Haavara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine through the Ha'avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about ten percent of Germany's 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews made up about 15 percent of Palestine's 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha'avara emigrants transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: "Many of these people, especially in the late 1930s, were allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories -- indeed rough replicas of their very existence."40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the Ha'avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million pounds or 139.57 million German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a major impact on a country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed out. Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile firm. The influx of Ha'avara goods and capital, concluded Black, "produced an economic explosion in Jewish Palestine" and was "an indispensable factor in the creation of the State of Israel."42
The Ha'avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli state. A January 1939 German Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that "the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha'avara agreement] contributed to no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine."43
Former officials of the Ha'avara company in Palestine confirmed this view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972: "The economic activity made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the country's development. Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important even today in the economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara."44 Dr. Ludwig Pinner, a Ha'avara company official in Tel Aviv during the 1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha'avara immigrants "decisively contributed" to the economic, social, cultural and educational development of Palestine's Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of cooperation between Hitler's Germany and international Zionism. Through this pact, Hitler's Third Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made by the radical underground "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel," better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical nationalist "National Military Organization" (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over the group's attitude toward Britain, which had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal "for the solution of the Jewish question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in the war on the side of Germany" is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question by evacuation. ("Jew-free Europe")
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
1. Common interests can exist between a European New Order based on the German concept and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as embodied by the NMO.
2. Cooperation is possible between the New Germany and a renewed, folkish-national Jewry [Hebr_ertum].
3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of maintaining and strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East.
On the basis of these considerations, and upon the condition that the German Reich government recognize the national aspirations of the Israel Freedom Movement mentioned above, the NMO in Palestine offers to actively take part in the war on the side of Germany.
This offer by the NMO could include military, political and informational activity within Palestine and, after certain organizational measures, outside as well. Along with this the Jewish men of Europe would be militarily trained and organized in military units under the leadership and command of the NMO. They would take part in combat operations for the purpose of conquering Palestine, should such a front by formed.
The indirect participation of the Israel Freedom Movement in the New Order of Europe, already in the preparatory stage, combined with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem on the basis of the national aspirations of the Jewish people mentioned above, would greatly strengthen the moral foundation of the New Order in the eyes of all humanity.
The cooperation of the Israel Freedom Movement would also be consistent with a recent speech by the German Reich Chancellor, in which Hitler stressed that he would utilize any combination and coalition in order to isolate and defeat England.
There is no record of any German response. Acceptance was very unlikely anyway because by this time German policy was decisively pro-Arab.47 Remarkably, Stern's group sought to conclude a pact with the Third Reich at a time when stories that Hitler was bent on exterminating Jews were already in wide circulation. Stern apparently either did not believe the stories or he was willing to collaborate with the mortal enemy of his people to help bring about a Jewish state. 48
An important Lehi member at the time the group made this offer was Yitzhak Shamir, who later served as Israel's Foreign Minister and then, during much of the 1980s and until June 1992, as Prime Minister. As Lehi operations chief following Stern's death in 1942, Shamir organized numerous acts of terror, including the November 1944 assassination of British Middle East Minister Lord Moyne and the September 1948 slaying of Swedish United Nations mediator Count Bernadotte. Years later, when Shamir was asked about the 1941 offer, he confirmed that he was aware of his organization's proposed alliance with wartime Germany. 49
Conclusion
In spite of the basic hostility between the Hitler regime and international Jewry, for several years Jewish Zionist and German National Socialist interests coincided. In collaborating with the Zionists for a mutually desirable and humane solution to a complex problem, the Third Reich was willing to make foreign exchange sacrifices, impair relations with Britain and anger the Arabs. Indeed, during the 1930s no nation did more to substantively further Jewish-Zionist goals than Hitler's Germany.
Notes
1.W. Martini, "Hebr_isch unterm Hakenkreuz," Die Welt (Hamburg), Jan. 10, 1975. Cited in: Klaus Polken, "The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941," Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring-Summer 1976, p. 65.
2.Quoted in: Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen: Die "Reichskristallnacht" (Tübingen: Grabert, 1981), p. 212. See also: Th. Herzl, The Jewish State (New York: Herzl Press, 1970), pp. 33, 35, 36, and, Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (New York: Macmillan, 1984), p. 73.
3.Th. Herzl, "Der Kongress," Welt, June 4, 1897. Reprinted in: Theodor Herzls zionistische Schriften (Leon Kellner, ed.), erster Teil, Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1920, p. 190 (and p. 139).
4.Memo of June 21, 1933, in: L. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader (New York: Behrman, 1976), pp. 150-155, and (in part) in: Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1985), p. 42.; On Zionism in Germany before Hitler's assumption of power, see: Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: 1980), pp. 94-95, 126-131, 140-143.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich (Austin: 1985), pp. 1-15.
5.Jüdische Rundschau (Berlin), June 13, 1933. Quoted in: Heinz H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (New York: Ballantine, pb., 1971, 1984), pp. 376-377.
6.Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, 1971, 1984), p. 376.
7."Berlin," Encyclopaedia Judaica (New York and Jerusalem: 1971), Vol. 5, p. 648. For a look at one aspect of this "vigorous life," see: J.-C. Horak, "Zionist Film Propaganda in Nazi Germany," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1984, pp. 49-58.
8.Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), pp. 54-55.; Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois, 1970, 1990), pp. 178-181.
9.Jacob Boas, "A Nazi Travels to Palestine," History Today (London), January 1980, pp. 33-38.
10.Facsimile reprint of front page of Das Schwarze Korps, May 15, 1935, in: Janusz Piekalkiewicz, Israels Langer Arm (Frankfurt: Goverts, 1975), pp. 66-67. Also quoted in: Heinz H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, 1971, 1984), p. 377. See also: Erich Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: FZ-Verlag, 1988), p. 184.
11.Das Schwarze Korps, Sept. 26, 1935. Quoted in: F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), pp. 56-57.
12.Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), p. 83.
13.F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), p. 60. See also: F. Nicosia, "The Yishuv and the Holocaust," The Journal of Modern History (Chicago), Vol. 64, No. 3, Sept. 1992, pp. 533-540.
14.F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (1985), p. 57.
15.Jüdische Rundschau, Sept. 17, 1935. Quoted in: Yitzhak Arad, with Y. Gutman and A. Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), pp. 82-83.
16.Der Angriff, Dec. 23, 1935, in: E. Kern, ed., Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: 1988), p. 148.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 56.; L. Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), p. 138.; A. Margaliot, "The Reaction...," Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem), vol. 12, 1977, pp. 90-91.; On Kareski's remarkable career, see: H. Levine, "A Jewish Collaborator in Nazi Germany," Central European History (Atlanta), Sept. 1975, pp. 251-281.
17."Dr. Wise Urges Jews to Declare Selves as Such," New York Herald Tribune, June 13, 1938, p. 12.
18.F. Nicosia, The Third Reich (1985), p. 53.
19.Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Bantam, pb., 1976), pp. 253-254.; Max Nussbaum, "Zionism Under Hitler," Congress Weekly (New York: American Jewish Congress), Sept. 11, 1942.; F. Nicosia, The Third Reich (1985), pp. 58-60, 217.; Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (1984), p. 175.
20.H. H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, pb., 1984), pp. 380-382.; K. Schleunes, Twisted Road (1970, 1990), p. 226.; Secret internal SS intelligence report about F. Polkes, June 17, 1937, in: John Mendelsohn, ed., The Holocaust (New York: Garland, 1982), vol. 5, pp. 62-64.
21.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 63-64, 105, 219-220.
22.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 160.
23.This distinction is also implicit in the "Balfour Declaration" of November 1917, in which the British government expressed support for "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, while carefully avoiding any mention of a Jewish state. Referring to the majority Arab population there, the Declaration went on to caution, "...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The complete text of the Declaration is reproduced in facsimile in: Robert John, Behind the Balfour Declaration (IHR, 1988), p. 32.
24.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 121.
25.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), p. 124.
26.David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics 1889-1945 (Bar-Ilan University, Israel, 1974), p. 300.; Also in: Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, Vol. 5. Doc. No. 564 or 567.
27.K. Schleunes, The Twisted Road (1970, 1990), p. 209.
28.Circular of January 25, 1939. Nuremberg document 3358-PS. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg: 1947-1949), vol. 32, pp. 242-243. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, DC: 1946-1948), vol. 6, pp. 92-93.
29.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 141-144.; On Hitler's critical view of Zionism in Mein Kampf, see esp. Vol. 1, Chap. 11. Quoted in: Robert Wistrich, Hitler's Apocalypse (London: 1985), p. 155.; See also: F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 26-28.; Hitler told his army adjutant in 1939 and again in 1941 that he had asked the British in 1937 about transferring all of Germany's Jews to Palestine or Egypt. The British rejected the proposal, he said, because it would cause further disorder. See: H. v. Kotze, ed., Heeresadjutant bei Hitler (Stuttgart: 1974), pp. 65, 95.
30.F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 156, 160-164, 166-167.; H. H_hne, The Order of the Death's Head (Ballantine, pb., 1984), pp. 392-394.; Jon and David Kimche, The Secret Roads (London: Secker and Warburg, 1955), pp. 39-43. See also: David Yisraeli, "The Third Reich and Palestine," Middle Eastern Studies, October 1971, p. 347.; Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (1979), pp. 43, 49, 52, 60.; T. Kelly, "Man who fooled Nazis," Washington Times, April 28, 1987, pp. 1B, 4B. Based on interview with Willy Perl, author of The Holocaust Conspiracy.
31.Y. Arad, et al., eds., Documents On the Holocaust (1981), p. 155. (The training kibbutz was at Neuendorf, and may have functioned even after March 1942.)
32.On the Agreement in general, see: Werner Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1972).; David Yisraeli, "The Third Reich and the Transfer Agreement," Journal of Contemporary History (London), No. 2, 1971, pp. 129-148.; "Haavara," Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), vol. 7, pp. 1012-1013.; F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin: 1985), pp. 44-49.; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), pp. 140-141.; The Transfer Agreement, by Edwin Black, is detailed and useful. However, it contains numerous inaccuracies and wildly erroneous conclusions. See, for example, the review by Richard S. Levy in Commentary, Sept. 1984, pp. 68-71.
33.E. Black, The Transfer Agreement (1984), pp. 328, 337.
34.On opposition to the Haavara in official German circles, see: W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (1972), pp. 31-33.; D. Yisraeli, "The Third Reich," Journal of Contemporary History, 1971, pp. 136-139.; F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, pp. 126-139.; I. Weckert, Feuerzeichen (1981), pp. 226-227.; Rolf Vogel, Ein Stempel hat gefehlt (Munich: Droemer Knaur, 1977), pp. 110 ff.
35.W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer (1972), p. 31. Entire text in: David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics 1889-1945 (Israel: 1974), pp. 298-300.
36.Interior Ministry internal memo (signed by State Secretary W. Stuckart), Dec. 17, 1937, in: Helmut Eschwege, ed., Kennzeichen J (Berlin: 1966), pp. 132-136.
37.W. Feilchenfeld, et al, Haavara-Transfer (1972), p. 32.
38.E. Black, Transfer Agreement, pp. 376-377.
39.E. Black, Transfer Agreement (1984), pp. 376, 378.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich (1985), pp. 238-239 (n. 91).
40.E. Black, Transfer Agreement, p. 379.; F. Nicosia, Third Reich, pp. 212, 255 (n. 66).
41.W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer, p. 75.; "Haavara," Encyclopaedia Judaica, (1971), Vol. 7, p. 1013.
42.E. Black, Transfer Agreement, pp. 379, 373, 382.
43.Circular of January 25, 1939. Nuremberg document 3358-PS. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg: 1947-1949), Vol. 32, pp. 242-243.
44.Werner Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1972). Quoted in: Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen (Tübingen: Grabert, 1981), pp. 222-223.
45.W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (1972). Quoted in: I. Weckert, Feuerzeichen (1981), p. 224.
46.Original document in German Ausw_rtiges Amt Archiv, Bestand 47-59, E 224152 and E 234155-58. (Photocopy in author's possession).; Complete original German text published in: David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics 1889-1945 (Israel: 1974), pp. 315-317. See also: Klaus Polkhen, "The Secret Contacts," Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring-Summer 1976, pp. 78-80.; (At the time this offer was made, Stern's Lehi group still regarded itself as the true Irgun/NMO.)
47.Arab nationalists opposed Britain, which then dominated much of the Arab world, including Egypt, Iraq and Palestine. Because Britain and Germany were at war, Germany cultivated Arab support. The leader of Palestine's Arabs, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, worked closely with Germany during the war years. After escaping from Palestine, he spoke to the Arab world over German radio and helped raise Muslim recruits in Bosnia for the Waffen SS.
48.Israel Shahak, "Yitzhak Shamir, Then and Now," Middle East Policy (Washington, DC), Vol. 1, No. 1, (Whole No. 39), 1992, pp. 27-38.; Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's Fateful Hour (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), pp. 213-214. Quoted in: Andrew J. Hurley, Israel and the New World Order (Santa Barbara, Calif.: 1991), pp. 93, 208-209.; Avishai Margalit, "The Violent Life of Yitzhak Shamir," New York Review of Books, May 14, 1992, pp. 18-24.; Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), pp. 266-269.; L. Brenner, Jews in America Today (1986), pp. 175-177.; L. Brenner, "Yitzhak Shamir: On Hitler's Side," Arab Perspectives (League of Arab States), March 1984, pp. 11-13.
49.Avishai Margalit, "The Violent Life of Yitzhak Shamir," New York Review of Books, May 14, 1992, pp. 18-24.; Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), pp. 266-269.; L. Brenner, Jews in America Today (1986), pp. 175-177.; L. Brenner, "Skeletons in Shamir's Cupboard," Middle East International, Sept. 30, 1983, pp. 15-16.; Sol Stern, L. Rapoport, "Israel's Man of the Shadows," Village Voice (New York), July 3, 1984, pp. 13 ff.
From The Journal of Historical Review, July-August 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 4), pages 29–37.
Mark Weber studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). In March 1988 he testified for five days in Toronto District Court as a recognized expert witness on Germany's wartime Jewish policy and the Holocaust issue.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)