TBR News January 3, 2017

Jan 03 2017

The Voice of the White House 

Washington, D.C. January 3, 2017:” Hezbollah currently has a stockpile of over 130,000 surface-to-surface missiles, many GPS directed as well as many surface-to-air missiles. In point of fact, Hezbollah has more such missiles, and anti-aircraft and anti-ship missles that all of the Nato members, excluding the United States. This number includes long-range rockets and M-600 ballistic missiles, which carry a high payload and would be able to destroy a significant area from the point of impact. Hezbollah also has approximately 200,000 short-range rockets that are not guided but fired in the general direction of potential military, civilian and governmental targets deep inside Israel.

Hezbollah possesses, among other weaponry, the Katyusha-122 rocket, which has a range of 18 miles and carries a 33-lb warhead. Hezbollah also possesses about 18,000 long-range missiles to  include the Iranian-made Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, the latter with a range of 75 47 mi, enabling it to strike the Israeli port of Haifa, and the Zelzal-1, with an estimated 93 mi range, which can reach Tel Aviv. Fajr-3 missiles have a range of 40 25 mi and a 99-lb warhead, and Fajr-5 missiles, which extend to 45 mi, also hold 45-99-lb warheads. Hezbollah also is in possession of Scud missiles that were provided to them by Syria. Further, Hezbollah has many very effective anti-tank guided missiles, the Russian-made AT-3 Sagger, AT-4 Spigot, AT-5 Spandrel, AT-13 Saxhorn-2 ‘Metis-M’, АТ-14 Spriggan ‘Kornet’; Iranian-made Ra’ad (version of AT-3 Sagger), Towsan (version of AT-5 Spandrel), Toophan (version of BGM-71 TOW); and European-made MILAN missiles.

For air defense, Hezbollah has anti-aircraft weapons that include the ZU-23 artillery and the man-portable, shoulder-fired SA-7 and SA-18 surface-to-air missile (SAM). One of the most effective weapons deployed by Hezbollah has been the C-802 anti-ship missile.

The enormous Hezbollah missile arsenal is stored mainly in areas of southern Lebanon but also in built-up areas such as Beirut.

Hezbollah’s intelligence service has been described as “one of the best in the world”, and have even infiltrated the Israeli army. Hezbollah’s secret services collaborate with both the Lebanses, Syrian and, to a lesser degree, the Russian intelligence agencies.

Israel also has claimed that Syria has provided Hezbollah with these weapons. Syria has denied supplying these weapons and views these claims as an Israeli excuse for an attack on both Syria and Lebanon.

Hezbollah has long been an ally of the Ba’ath government of Syria, led by the Al-Assad family. Hezbollah has materially assisted the Syrian government during their American-sponsored Syrian civil war in its fight against the Saudi/US organized, trained and armed Syrian opposition. Hezbollah’s support for al-Assad in the Syrian civil war has elevated it from a Sunni force of great strength whose main aim is the destruction of Israel.

Russian intelligence-intercepted top secret cables from American diplomats in Israel to the State Department in Washington make it clear that the United States had tried, without any success, to force Syria to cease and desist supplying weaponry to Hezbollah.

This is the basic reason for American unsuccessful attempts to force a regeime change in Syria and this has led to a vicious civil war in that country. Hezbollah is also known to be heavily armed with chemical and biological weapons, as well as many 70-mile range anti-ship missiles that could sink US naval units supporting Israeli-demanded strategic attacks.”Ford cancels $1.6 billion Mexican plant

January 3, 2017

Reuters

Ford Motor Co (F.N) said Tuesday it will cancel a planned $1.6 billion factory in Mexico and will invest $700 million at a Michigan factory as it expands its electric vehicle and hybrid offerings.

The second largest U.S. automaker had come under harsh criticism from President-elect Donald Trump for its Mexican investment plans.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Can Trump and Putin Avert Cold War II?

January 3, 2017

by Patrick J. Buchanan

AntiWar

In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland’s Eastern shore.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that 35 U.S. diplomats would be expelled. But Vladimir Putin stepped in, declined to retaliate at all, and invited the U.S. diplomats in Moscow and their children to the Christmas and New Year’s party at the Kremlin.

“A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger,” reads Proverbs 15:1. “Great move,” tweeted President-elect Trump, “I always knew he was very smart!”

Among our Russophobes, one can almost hear the gnashing of teeth.

Clearly, Putin believes the Trump presidency offers Russia the prospect of a better relationship with the United States. He appears to want this, and most Americans seem to want the same. After all, Hillary Clinton, who accused Trump of being “Putin’s puppet,” lost.

Is then a Cold War II between Russia and the U.S. avoidable?

That question raises several others.

Who is more responsible for both great powers having reached this level of animosity and acrimony, 25 years after Ronald Reagan walked arm-in-arm with Mikhail Gorbachev through Red Square? And what are the causes of the emerging Cold War II?

Comes the retort: Putin has put nuclear-capable missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

True, but who began this escalation?

George W. Bush was the one who trashed Richard Nixon’s ABM Treaty and Obama put anti-missile missiles in Poland. After invading Iraq, George W. Bush moved NATO into the Baltic States in violation of a commitment given to Gorbachev by his father to not move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army withdrew.

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, says John McCain.

Russia did, after Georgia invaded its breakaway province of South Ossetia and killed Russian peacekeepers. Putin threw the Georgians out, occupied part of Georgia, and then withdrew.

Russia, it is said, has supported Syria’s Bashar Assad, bombed U.S.-backed rebels and participated in the Aleppo slaughter.

But who started this horrific civil war in Syria?

Was it not our Gulf allies, Turkey, and ourselves by backing an insurgency against a regime that had been Russia’s ally for decades and hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean

Did we not exercise the same right of assisting a beleaguered ally when we sent 500,000 troops to aid South Vietnam against a Viet Cong insurgency supported by Hanoi, Beijing and Moscow?

That’s what allies do.

The unanswered question: Why did we support the overthrow of Assad when the likely successor regime would have been Islamist and murderously hostile toward Syria’s Christians?

Russia, we are told, committed aggression against Ukraine by invading Crimea.

But Russia did not invade Crimea. To secure their Black Sea naval base, Russia executed a bloodless coup, but only after the U.S. backed the overthrow of the pro-Russian elected government in Kiev.

Crimea had belonged to Moscow from the time of Catherine the Great in the 18th century, and the Russia-Ukraine relationship dates back to before the Crusades. When did this become a vital interest of the USA?

As for Putin’s backing of secessionists in Donetsk and Luhansk, he is standing by kinfolk left behind when his country broke apart. Russians live in many of the 14 former Soviet republics that are now independent nations.

Has Putin no right to be concerned about his lost countrymen?

Unlike America’s elites, Putin is an ethnonationalist in a time when tribalism is shoving aside transnationalism as the force of the future.

Russia, it is said, is supporting right-wing and anti-EU parties. But has not our National Endowment for Democracy backed regime change in the Balkans as well as in former Soviet republics?

We appear to be denouncing Putin for what we did first.

Moreover, the populist, nationalist, anti-EU and secessionist parties in Europe have arisen on their own and are advancing through free elections.

Sovereignty, independence, a restoration of national identity, all appear to be more important to these parties than what they regard as an excessively supervised existence in the soft-dictatorship of the EU.

In the Cold War between Communism and capitalism, the single-party dictatorship and the free society, we prevailed.

But in the new struggle we are in, the ethnonational state seems ascendant over the multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual “universal nation” whose avatar is Barack Obama.

Putin does not seek to destroy or conquer us or Europe. He wants Russia, and her interests, and her rights as a great power to be respected.

He is not mucking around in our front yard; we are in his.

The worst mistake President Trump could make would be to let the Russophobes grab the wheel and steer us into another Cold War that could be as costly as the first, and might not end as peacefully.

Reagan’s outstretched hand to Gorbachev worked. Trump has nothing to lose by extending his to Vladimir Putin, and much perhaps to win.

Netanyahu questioned by police over gifts; AG: Evidence has mounted over last month

Police found enough evidence to support the questioning of Netanyahu under caution, attorney general says. ‘Don’t celebrate yet,’ Netanyahu said earlier.

January 3, 2017

by Yaniv Kubovic and Chaim Levinson

Haaretz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged Monday night after three hours of police questioning regarding suspicions of graft.

The police questioned Netanyahu over suspicions that he received illicit gifts and other benefits. Haaretz reported last week that the prime minister and his family received benefits worth hundreds of thousands of shekels from businesspeople.

A statement issued by Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit late Monday said police found enough evidence to support the questioning of Netanyahu as a possible criminal suspect.

The decision to question Netanyahu was made in light of evidence collected in the past month, Mendelblit said. The new development “changed the evidentiary situation,” he said, warranting a full-blown investigation into the prime minister, as opposed to a preliminary inquiry.

Responding in a tweet, Netanyahu said on Tuesday : “The years-long, daily persecution of me and my family yesterday turned out to be nothing. I repeat and say, there will be nothing, because there is nothing.”

Mendelblit’s statement chronicled the inquiry but did not provide details as to the nature of the developments or the suspicions in the graft case.

“The claims that ultimately led to the decision to question Netanyahu came up three months ago as initial suspicions,” the statement said. “Since then, the police have made major efforts to examine them and find evidence to support them.”

According to the attorney general, the police have been examining “a long list of claims” against the prime minister since July.

“The inquiry developed and branched out in directions different from the ones that initially launched it,” he said, explaining that new claims were raised as the inquiry continued. As a result, Mendelblit said, the police were periodically instructed to expand the inquiry.

The statement also detailed suspicions that had been dropped.

Mendelblit said Netanyahu had been cleared of receiving forbidden campaign funds for the 2009 elections. Another was the claim that the results of the Likud party primaries in 2009 had been tampered with. Mendelblit also said that Netanyahu had been cleared of receiving double funding for trips abroad in the case known as Bibi-Tours.

The statement said additional information would be released to the public pending the development of the investigation.

Hours before he was to be questioned, Netanyahu cautioned his critics, “don’t celebrate yet.

“Nothing will come [of this investigation] and you will continue to spew out  hot air,” Netanyahu said.

The interrogation focused on the less serious of two cases involving Netanyahu that police are looking into – suspicions that he and his family received gifts and other benefits worth hundreds of thousands of shekels from businesspeople.

As Haaretz previously reported, police have deposed witnesses abroad as well as in Israel about the case. One witness whose deposition led to a breakthrough was Jewish American businessman Ron Lauder, a longtime friend of Netanyahu’s.

Lauder confirmed to police that he had given Netanyahu various gifts, including a suit, and that he had also financed a trip abroad for the prime minister’s son, Yair.

The police believe the value of the gifts Lauder gave Netanyahu is greater than what he admitted to and that they were not given in friendship, but in hopes of gaining some benefit.

Police are hoping their interrogation of Netanyahu will also shed additional light on a second, more serious case whose full details have not yet been made public, sources privy to the investigation say. Details of this case were presented to Mendelblit a few months ago.

Netanyahu has strongly denied all the allegations against him.

“All previous so-called affairs have proved baseless and so it will be with the allegations now published in the media,” Netanyahu said on Friday. “They won’t come to anything, because there isn’t anything.”

Knesset Member David Amsalem, chairman of the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee, and a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, lashed out at the police’s investigations and intelligence department in a Facebook post on Sunday, accusing them of taking steps that amount to political persecution of the prime minister.

“The police’s conduct is different when it comes to investigations of the prime minister,” wrote Amsalem, whose committee oversees the police. “With regard to ordinary people, the police lack motivation. I assume that if Netanyahu weren’t prime minister, they wouldn’t summon his son to check if he’d been invited to some hotel or other.”

“There’s an entire enormous army here that’s trying to replace the prime minister,” he continued. “In my opinion, there’s also funding from abroad. They’re doing everything possible in order to oust Netanyahu and bring the left-wing agenda to power.”

“The situation we’re witnessing is unbelievable. You replace a prime minister at the polls, not via Meni Yitzhaki,” Amsalem wrote, referring to the head of the investigations department.

Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid also addressed the investigation on Monday. During a Knesset faction meeting he said that he “Wishes that no flaw is found in Bibi’s behavior,” referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.

“If two prime ministers go down because of corruption, it will be difficult to restore people’s trust in politics,” Lapid said, referring to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s convictions. “Netanyahu has the presumption of innocence. For the sake of the country this has to be quick. We cannot allow what happened to Olmert – months and months of investigations – to happen again. I’m calling on everyone involved to finish this without dragging it out. Clear all schedules and let the police get to the truth.”

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) said, “This is a tough day for Israel, with a prime minister under investigation. We don’t have a bit of schadenfreude. The basic thing is that this is a state of the rule of law.”

Herzog decried efforts to pass legislation that would give a sitting premier immunity from investigation and prosecution.

Turkish police hunt for IS-linked New Year’s shooter

Turkish police continued the search for the perpetrator of a mass shooting at a high-end Istanbul nightclub in the early hours of New Year’s Day that left 39 people dead and nearly 70 badly wounded.

January 3, 2017

DW

The Turkish authorities have been conducting a manhunt for the assailant, who was able to escape the scene of the shooting and was still at large on Tuesday. The attack, which took place at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul’s Ortakoy district, was the first on Turkish soil to have been formally claimed by the “Islamic State” group.

Turkey’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, said on Tuesday that a state of emergency in place in Turkey since July “may be extended.” Dozens of people injured in the attack are still receiving treatment in hospitals across the city.

Police have so far arrested 20 people in relation to the attack, including two foreign nationals detained Tuesday afternoon in Istanbul airports.

The Turkish police originally leaked information to the press indicating a 28-year-old Kyrgyz national was the prime suspect, but later established that the man in question was not involved in the attack.

The investigation in search of the perpetrator is ongoing and is focused on Central Asian and North Caucasus nationals in Turkey.

The assailant’s attack on the front of the nightclub was captured by camera number 43 of the club’s security system. The club’s bouncers are seen crouching down and fleeing inside. A large man in a red jacket cowers in the corner of the club’s entrance as shots coming from the right of the frame appear to ricochet off the building. Another man dives over the rail surrounding the club’s porch as the attacker appears from the right. A dog scuttles off away from the attacker, who is hunched over an assault rifle that he moves sharply and precisely between the two men as he fires.

“A terrorist with a long range weapon came to the nightclub, he killed a police officer waiting in front, then shot a citizen and went inside,” said Vasip Sahin, the governor of Istanbul in a statement early on Sunday morning.

“He rained bullets brutally and mercilessly over innocent people who were only there to celebrate the New Year,” Sahin said.

Once he had entered the club, the assailant moved to the first floor and began firing on the patrons before returning to the ground floor and continuing the attack. Police believe that the assault lasted seven minutes in total, after which the assailant was able to change his clothes and escape.

“I saw the shooting so I went to the toilet. We were eight or nine people hiding in one cubicle. I was just thinking it could be me too,” said Tuvana Tugsaval, a nightclub employee.

IS claims attack for the first time

The “Islamic State” is widely considered by the Turkish authorities and expert analysts to have conducted a string of attacks inside Turkey, beginning with a slew of bombings targeting the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party’s (HDP) offices and rallies in mid 2015.

However the New Year’s Day attack is the first to have been officially claimed by the group.

“One of the heroic caliphate soldiers, using an assault rifle and grenades,” the IS statement reads, “attacked an idolatrous Christian celebration” as part of the fight “waged by Islamic state against protectors of the cross in Turkey.”

The group refers explicitly to Turkey’s military operations in Syria as a motivation for the attack. “[This attack will] teach the apostate Turkish government that the Muslim blood it spills with its bombs and its guns will, with god’s permission, start a raging fire in its own lands,” the statement reads.

Turkish police had conducted anti-IS sweeps across the country just before the attack and the Turkish army has recently taken part in airstrikes on the IS-held town of al-Bab in northern Syria.

Conservative and religious elements inside Turkey spent much of the preceding week denigrating New Year’s celebrations as impious and foreign. Several conservative newspapers, including dailies “Yeni Akit” and “Yeni Safak,” carried prominent articles on New Year’s Eve against the celebrations.

“Turkish security raided and exposed many Turkish national IS cells and sympathizers in recent months. With the [Turkish military intervention] Euphrates Shield in Syria and recent security operations inside Turkey, IS lost the opportunity to shell Turkish border cities or to use its Turkish national hidden cells,” said Omer Behram Ozdemir of Sakarya University Middle East Institute and an expert on jihadist recruitment in Turkey.

“Using foreign nationals, who likely have military experience from Syria/Iraq, in attack against Turkey may be a new strategy from IS to hurt Turkey,” Ozdemir told DW.

“The IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and their new spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, are now directly targeting Turkey in their speeches, and call their sympathizers to target Turkish interests all over the world,” he said.

‘Cream of IS’

According to Ahmet Yayla of George Mason University, an expert on Islamic State and the co-author of Isis Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate, the identity of the assailant as a Central Asian may provide important clues regarding IS strategy in Turkey.

“In my experience interviewing IS defectors, members of IS’s Caucasus emirates are considered the cream of the force, or the special forces of IS fighters – they are the most reliable forces IS has,” Yayla told DW.

“In the past, IS attacks in Turkey have generally been suicide bombings that require little training: they send them with a button and they push it. But this attack required training and skills: the assailant was very comfortable killing people, standing there, keeping his cool, changing the magazines and still shooting.”

Yayla points out that the attack succeeded despite a heightened police presence following the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara.  A special police operation in Istanbul has seen 35,000 police officers stationed around the city for the past two weeks.

“Before the al-Bab campaign that Turkey is waging right now in Syria, Turkey and IS were not really in all-out war against one another, but now they are. IS has taken the gloves off with Turkey as a result of this and Turkey’s cooperation with Russia,” Yayla said.

According to Yayla, this attack may prove to mark a change of policy for IS towards Turkey and to be a signal of more attacks to come.

“IS has established several cells inside Turkey and the Turkish counter-terrorismapparatus has been crippled by the post-coup purges in the security forces,” he said. “Unfortunately this will be a very bloody fight.”

Experts say Turkey set for terror attack increase in 2017

Following the deadly attack on a nightclub in Istanbul, security experts say that terror attacks will continue to set the agenda in Turkey in 2017. The government’s policy in Iraq and Syria plays a significant role.

January 3, 2017

DW

In the wake of Turkey’s failed coup in July, the government launched a military incursion into neighboring Syria to clear “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist militia fighters from its border. Turkey has also stepped up its campaign against Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast as well as northern Iraq. Experts told DW both IS and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, pose a threat to Turkey.

“The resolution about Syria goes [over] well, but there is a hidden side to it. There is a huge fight between the US and Russia west of the Euphrates and this fight has reached a climax as high as in the Cold War days,” said Ibrahim Cevik, a security and terror expert at the Turkish Centre for International Relations & Strategic Analysis (TURKSAM). “The lack of control in Syria, the fact that guns lack control and terrorists are walking freely, will hurt us more.”

Syria, Iraq policy

Turkey and Russia brokered a ceasefire deal between Syrian government and opposition forces that took effect on December 30. The country has been embroiled in civil war since 2011, and the conflict has had a direct impact on the security of neighboring Turkey.

The Iraqi army, meanwhile, is attempting to recapture IS-controlled Mosul. Ankara considers the situation in the city a significant threat to its national security, and has sought to take on a larger role in the operation.

Nihat Ali Ozcan, a security and PKK expert at the TOBB University of Economics and Technology, said that 2017 will not be a good year for Turkey “because the ecosystem in the region – in Iraq and Syria [specifically] – is changing very quickly and there are reasons related to that.”

“Secondly, there are many terror organizations active in Turkey and they target each other, the state and the public,” he said. “Both PKK and [IS] and on the other side the [banned far-left] Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) – they are all active.”

The United States, the European Union and Turkey list the DHKP-C group as a terrorist organization.

Crackdown sparks backlash

Ozcan said the government purge following the July 15 coup attempt could also pose a security threat.

“There are some problems with the state institutions responsible for preventing this. Many people have been suspended, reassigned, reappointed or arrested in the gendarmerie, the army, the police, the judiciary and the penal institutions due to [alleged ties with] the Gulen movement,” he said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of being behind the failed coup.

Ozcan said that the government has politicized important government positions all the way up to the presidency. “When you put all of this together, I think this year security will be a significant problem for us,” he said.

The Council of Europe, the continent’s ‘s leading human rights organization with 47 member states including Turkey, said last month that over 125,000 people in the country had been dismissed from their jobs as of December 9, and almost 40,000 people had been arrested amid the government purge.

‘Signal’ for 2017

Mesut Hakki Casin, a professor of International Relations at Ozyegin University Faculty of Law and an international terrorism and security strategy expert, said that the precision of the New Year’s Eve attack on a nightclub in Istanbul, which left 39 people dead, suggested to him that it was planned, and the fact that it was done after midnight sends a clear message for 2017.

“I think it gives a signal that in 2017 terror will disturb Turkey,” he said. “I think it was an organized attack… For the first time an entertainment venue has been targeted in Turkey.”

IS on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack, which was carried out by a lone gunman still at large. The militant group said it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria and described the targeted nightclub as a gathering point for Christians celebrating their “apostate holiday.”

Turkey has been shaken by numerous terrorist attacks in the past year-and-a-half and IS has been blamed for at least half a dozen of them.

Kurdish tension

Last month, two bombs exploded outside a soccer stadium in Istanbul, killing 44 people. A car bomb killed at least 13 soldiers a week later in the central city of Kayseri. Kurdish militants claimed responsibility for both of the attacks.

Since a two-and-a-half-year ceasefire ended in July 2015, Turkey has continued to clash with militants from the PKK, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the US, EU and Turkey, in the southeast.

Tensions flared recently after lawmakers from the country’s main pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were arrested and local HDP mayors in the southeast were detained and replaced by government officials.

Ozcan said that he expected the PKK to escalate its attacks in the spring.

“In terms of the PKK issue, it looks like tensions will increase as well as the clashes,” he said. “Towards the spring, the trend could increase. It was calm due to weather conditions.”

Germany sees ‘overwhelming’ sales of Hitler’s Mein Kampf

January 3, 2017

BBC News

The German publisher of a special annotated edition of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf says sales have soared since its launch a year ago.

About 85,000 German-language copies of the anti-Semitic Nazi manifesto have been sold. Publisher Andreas Wirsching said “the figures overwhelmed us”.

He is director of the Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich.

At the end of January the IfZ will launch a sixth print run. The book contains critical notes by scholars.

Unlike the Nazi-era editions, the IfZ’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle) has a plain white cover – without a picture of Hitler. The swastika and other Nazi symbols are banned in Germany.

Mr Wirsching told the German news agency DPA that the IfZ was planning a shorter, French-language edition. “But two-thirds of our commentaries will be translated” for it, he said.

The first print run in Germany in 2016 was 4,000 copies.

The decision to republish the inflammatory book was criticised by Jewish groups. Mein Kampf was originally printed in 1925 – eight years before Hitler came to power.

It sets out racist ideas that the Nazis put into practice later, including the denigration and oppression of Jews and Slavs.

Bavarian ban

After Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, the Allied forces handed the copyright to the state of Bavaria. Under German law copyright lasts for 70 years.

While the Bavarian regional government held the copyright, reprinting of the book was banned. But the copyright expired a year ago.

Mr Wirsching said he favoured “clever” teachers using the IfZ edition in the classroom. He warned against “repeating the absurd 1950s discussion, when people said ‘it was all Hitler’s fault’.”

He said the IfZ had obtained solid legal advice before republishing the book on a limited scale. And the scholarly edition was aimed partly at pre-empting any editions put out by Nazi sympathisers.

“It would be irresponsible to just let this text spread arbitrarily,” he told DPA.

‘Mein Kampf’: The Original  Murphy translation

January 3, 2017

There have been a number of translations of Hitler’s seminal book. Most have been heavily edited so as to promulgate disinformation about Hitler’s views and remove passages that might offend the sensitive. The Murphy translation is considered to be the most accurate and is being reprinted in toto here.

Title:      Mein Kampf

Author:     Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

Translated into English by James Murphy (died 1946).

Production notes:

* This translation of the unexpurgated edition of “MEIN KAMPF” was first published on March 21st, 1939 by HURST AND BLACKETT LTD.

* Italics in the book have been converted to upper case in this translation

* Notes appear at the end of the paragraph in which the note reference

appears.

 

Title:      Mein Kampf

Author:     Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

Translated into English by James Murphy (died 1946).

INTRODUCTION

VOLUME I: A RETROSPECT

CHAPTER I    IN THE HOME OF MY PARENTS

CHAPTER II   YEARS OF STUDY AND SUFFERING IN VIENNA

CHAPTER III  POLITICAL REFLECTIONS ARISING OUT OF MY SOJOURN IN VIENNA

CHAPTER IV   MUNICH

CHAPTER V    THE WORLD WAR

CHAPTER VI   WAR PROPAGANDA

CHAPTER VII  THE REVOLUTION

CHAPTER VIII THE BEGINNING OF MY POLITICAL ACTIVITIES

CHAPTER IX   THE GERMAN LABOUR PARTY

CHAPTER X    WHY THE SECOND REICH COLLAPSED

CHAPTER XI   RACE AND PEOPLE

CHAPTER XII  THE FIRST STAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALIST LABOUR PARTY

VOLUME II: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

CHAPTER I    WELTANSCHAUUNG AND PARTY

CHAPTER II   THE STATE

CHAPTER III  CITIZENS AND SUBJECTS OF THE STATE

CHAPTER IV   PERSONALITY AND THE IDEAL OF THE PEOPLE’S STATE

CHAPTER V    WELTANSCHAUUNG AND ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER VI   THE FIRST PERIOD OF OUR STRUGGLE

CHAPTER VII  THE CONFLICT WITH THE RED FORCES

CHAPTER VIII THE STRONG IS STRONGEST WHEN ALONE

CHAPTER IX   FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS REGARDING THE NATURE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE STORM TROOPS

CHAPTER X    THE MASK OF FEDERALISM

CHAPTER XI   PROPAGANDA AND ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER XII  THE PROBLEM OF THE TRADE UNIONS

CHAPTER XIII THE GERMAN POST-WAR POLICY OF ALLIANCES

CHAPTER XIV  GERMANY’S POLICY IN EASTERN EUROPE

CHAPTER XV   THE RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENCE

EPILOGUE

INTRODUCTION

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

 

On April 1st, 1924, I began to serve my sentence of detention in the Fortress of Landsberg am Lech, following the verdict of the Munich People’s Court of that time.

After years of uninterrupted labour it was now possible for the first time to begin a work which many had asked for and which I myself felt would be profitable for the Movement. So I decided to devote two volumes to a description not only of the aims of our Movement but also of its development. There is more to be learned from this than from any purely doctrinaire treatise.

This has also given me the opportunity of describing my own development in so far as such a description is necessary to the understanding of the first as well as the second volume and to destroy the legendary fabrications which the Jewish Press have circulated about me.

In this work I turn not to strangers but to those followers of the Movement whose hearts belong to it and who wish to study it more profoundly. I know that fewer people are won over by the written word than by the spoken word and that every great movement on this earth owes its growth to great speakers and not to great writers.

Nevertheless, in order to produce more equality and uniformity in the defence of any doctrine, its fundamental principles must be committed to writing. May these two volumes therefore serve as the building stones which I contribute to the joint work.

The Fortress, Landsberg am Lech.

 

At half-past twelve in the afternoon of November 9th, 1923, those whose names are given below fell in front of the FELDHERRNHALLE and in the forecourt of the former War Ministry in Munich for their loyal faith in the resurrection of their people:

Alfarth, Felix, Merchant, born July 5th, 1901

Bauriedl, Andreas, Hatmaker, born May 4th, 1879

Casella, Theodor, Bank Official, born August 8th, 1900

Ehrlich, Wilhelm, Bank Official, born August 19th, 1894

Faust, Martin, Bank Official, born January 27th, 1901

Hechenberger, Anton, Locksmith, born September 28th, 1902

Koerner, Oskar, Merchant, born January 4th, 1875

Kuhn, Karl, Head Waiter, born July 25th, 1897

Laforce, Karl, Student of Engineering, born October 28th, 1904

Neubauer, Kurt, Waiter, born March 27th, 1899

Pape, Claus von, Merchant, born August 16th, 1904

Pfordten, Theodor von der, Councillor to the Superior Provincial Court,

born May 14th, 1873

Rickmers, Johann, retired Cavalry Captain, born May 7th, 1881

Scheubner-Richter, Max Erwin von, Dr. of Engineering, born January 9th,

1884

Stransky, Lorenz Ritter von, Engineer, born March 14th, 1899

Wolf, Wilhelm, Merchant, born October 19th, 1898

So-called national officials refused to allow the dead heroes a common

burial. So I dedicate the first volume of this work to them as a common

memorial, that the memory of those martyrs may be a permanent source of

light for the followers of our Movement.

The Fortress, Landsberg a/L.,

October 16th, 1924

 

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

In placing before the reader this unabridged translation of Adolf Hitler’s book, MEIN KAMPF, I feel it my duty to call attention to certain historical facts which must be borne in mind if the reader would form a fair judgment of what is written in this extraordinary work.

The first volume of MEIN KAMPF was written while the author was imprisoned in a Bavarian fortress. How did he get there and why? The answer to that question is important, because the book deals with the events which brought the author into this plight and because he wrote under the emotional stress caused by the historical happenings of the time. It was the hour of Germany’s deepest humiliation, somewhat parallel to that of a little over a century before, when Napoleon had dismembered the old German Empire and French soldiers occupied almost the whole of Germany.

In the beginning of 1923 the French invaded Germany, occupied the Ruhr district and seized several German towns in the Rhineland. This was a flagrant breach of international law and was protested against by every section of British political opinion at that time. The Germans could not effectively defend themselves, as they had been already disarmed under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. To make the situation more fraught with disaster for Germany, and therefore more appalling in its prospect, the French carried on an intensive propaganda for the separation of the Rhineland from the German Republic and the establishment of an independent Rhenania. Money was poured out lavishly to bribe agitators to carry on this work, and some of the most insidious elements of the German population became active in the pay of the invader. At the same time a vigorous movement was being carried on in Bavaria for the secession of that country and the establishment of an independent Catholic monarchy there, under vassalage to France, as Napoleon had done when he made Maximilian the first King of Bavaria in 1805.

The separatist movement in the Rhineland went so far that some leading German politicians came out in favour of it, suggesting that if the Rhineland were thus ceded it might be possible for the German Republic to strike a bargain with the French in regard to Reparations. But in

Bavaria the movement went even farther. And it was more far-reaching in its implications; for, if an independent Catholic monarchy could be set up in Bavaria, the next move would have been a union with Catholic German-Austria, possibly under a Habsburg King. Thus a Catholic BLOCwould have been created which would extend from the Rhineland through Bavaria and Austria into the Danube Valley and would have been at least under the moral and military, if not the full political, hegemony of France. The dream seems fantastic now, but it was considered quite a practical thing in those fantastic times. The effect of putting such a plan into action would have meant the complete dismemberment of Germany; and that is what French diplomacy aimed at. Of course such an aim no longer exists. And I should not recall what must now seem “old, unhappy, far-off things” to the modern generation, were it not that they were very near and actual at the time MEIN KAMPF was written and were more unhappy then than we can even imagine now.

By the autumn of 1923 the separatist movement in Bavaria was on the point of becoming an accomplished fact. General von Lossow, the Bavarian chief of the REICHSWEHR no longer took orders from Berlin. The flag of the German Republic was rarely to be seen, Finally, the Bavarian Prime Minister decided to proclaim an independent Bavaria and its secession from the German Republic. This was to have taken place on the eve of the Fifth Anniversary of the establishment of the German Republic (November 9th, 1918.)

Hitler staged a counter-stroke. For several days he had been mobilizing his storm battalions in the neighbourhood of Munich, intending to make a national demonstration and hoping that the REICHSWEHR would stand by him to prevent secession. Ludendorff was with him. And he thought that the prestige of the great German Commander in the World War would be sufficient to win the allegiance of the professional army.

A meeting had been announced to take place in the Bürgerbräu Keller on the night of November 8th. The Bavarian patriotic societies were gathered there, and the Prime Minister, Dr. von Kahr, started to read his official PRONUNCIAMENTO, which practically amounted to a proclamation of Bavarian independence and secession from the Republic. While von Kahr was speaking Hitler entered the hall, followed by Ludendorff. And the meeting was broken up.

Next day the Nazi battalions took the street for the purpose of making a mass demonstration in favour of national union. They marched in massed formation, led by Hitler and Ludendorff. As they reached one of the central squares of the city the army opened fire on them. Sixteen of the marchers were instantly killed, and two died of their wounds in the local barracks of the REICHSWEHR. Several others were wounded also. Hitler fell on the pavement and broke a collar-bone. Ludendorff marched straight up to the soldiers who were firing from the barricade, but not a man dared draw a trigger on his old Commander.

Hitler was arrested with several of his comrades and imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg on the River Lech. On February 26th, 1924, he was brought to trial before the VOLKSGERICHT, or People’s Court in Munich. He was sentenced to detention in a fortress for five years. With several companions, who had been also sentenced to various periods of imprisonment, he returned to Landsberg am Lech and remained there until the 20th of the following December, when he was released. In all he spent about thirteen months in prison. It was during this period that he wrote the first volume of MEIN KAMPF.

If we bear all this in mind we can account for the emotional stress under which MEIN KAMPF was written. Hitler was naturally incensed against the Bavarian government authorities, against the footling patriotic societies who were pawns in the French game, though often unconsciously so, and of course against the French. That he should write harshly of the French was only natural in the circumstances. At that time there was no exaggeration whatsoever in calling France the implacable and mortal enemy of Germany. Such language was being used by even the pacifists themselves, not only in Germany but abroad. And even though the second volume of MEIN KAMPF was written after Hitler’s release from prison and was published after the French had left the Ruhr, the tramp of the invading armies still echoed in German ears, and the terrible ravages that had been wrought in the industrial and financial life of Germany, as a consequence of the French invasion, had plunged the country into a state of social and economic chaos. In France itself the franc fell to fifty per cent of its previous value. Indeed, the whole of Europe had been brought to the brink of ruin, following the French invasion of the Ruhr and Rhineland.

But, as those things belong to the limbo of a dead past that nobody wishes to have remembered now, it is often asked: Why doesn’t Hitler revise MEIN KAMPF? The answer, as I think, which would immediately come into the mind of an impartial critic is that MEIN KAMPF is an historical document which bears the imprint of its own time. To revise it would involve taking it out of its historical context. Moreover Hitler has declared that his acts and public statements constitute a partial revision of his book and are to be taken as such. This refers especially to the statements in MEIN KAMPF regarding France and those German kinsfolk that have not yet been incorporated in the REICH. On behalf of Germany he has definitely acknowledged the German portion of South Tyrol as permanently belonging to Italy and, in regard to France, he has again and again declared that no grounds now exist for a conflict of political interests between Germany and France and that Germany has no territorial claims against France. Finally, I may note here that Hitler has also declared that, as he was only a political leader and not yet a statesman in a position of official responsibility, when he wrote this book, what he stated in MEIN KAMPF does not implicate him as Chancellor of the REICH.

I now come to some references in the text which are frequently recurring and which may not always be clear to every reader. For instance, Hitler speaks indiscriminately of the German REICH. Sometimes he means to refer to the first REICH, or Empire, and sometimes to the German Empire as founded under William I in 1871. Incidentally the regime which he inaugurated in 1933 is generally known as the THIRD REICH, though this expression is not used in MEIN KAMPF. Hitler also speaks of the Austrian REICH and the East Mark, without always explicitly distinguishing between the Habsburg Empire and Austria proper. If the reader will bear the following historical outline in mind, he will understand the references as they occur.

The word REICH, which is a German form of the Latin word REGNUM, does not mean Kingdom or Empire or Republic. It is a sort of basic word that may apply to any form of Constitution. Perhaps our word, Realm, would be the best translation, though the word Empire can be used when the REICH was actually an Empire. The forerunner of the first German Empire was the Holy Roman Empire which Charlemagne founded in A.D. 800. Charlemagne was King of the Franks, a group of Germanic tribes that subsequently became Romanized. In the tenth century Charlemagne’s Empire passed into German hands when Otto I (936-973) became Emperor. As the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, its formal appellation, it continued to exist under German Emperors until Napoleon overran and dismembered Germany during the first decade of the last century. On August 6th, 1806, the last Emperor, Francis II, formally resigned the German crown. In the following October Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph, after the Battle of Jena.

After the fall of Napoleon a movement set in for the reunion of the German states in one Empire. But the first decisive step towards that end was the foundation of the Second German Empire in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War. This Empire, however, did not include the German lands which remained under the Habsburg Crown. These were known as German Austria. It was Bismarck’s dream to unite German Austria with the German Empire; but it remained only a dream until Hitler turned it into a reality in 1938′. It is well to bear that point in mind, because this dream of reuniting all the German states in one REICH has been a dominant feature of German patriotism and statesmanship for over a century and has been one of Hitler’s ideals since his childhood.

In MEIN KAMPF Hitler often speaks of the East Mark. This East Mark–i.e. eastern frontier land–was founded by Charlemagne as the eastern bulwark of the Empire. It was inhabited principally by Germano-Celtic tribes called Bajuvari and stood for centuries as the firm bulwark of Western

Christendom against invasion from the East, especially against the Turks. Geographically it was almost identical with German Austria.

There are a few points more that I wish to mention in this introductory note. For instance, I have let the word WELTANSCHAUUNG stand in its original form very often. We have no one English word to convey the same meaning as the German word, and it would have burdened the text too much if I were to use a circumlocution each time the word occurs. WELTANSCHAUUNG literally means “Outlook-on-the World”. But as generally used in German this outlook on the world means a whole system of ideas associated together in an organic unity–ideas of human life, human values, cultural and religious ideas, politics, economics, etc., in fact

a totalitarian view of human existence. Thus Christianity could be called a WELTANSCHAUUNG, and Mohammedanism could be called a WELTANSCHAUUNG, and Socialism could be called a WELTANSCHAUUNG, especially as preached in Russia. National Socialism claims definitely to be a WELTANSCHAUUNG.

Another word I have often left standing in the original is VÖLKISCH. The basic word here is VOLK, which is sometimes translated as PEOPLE; but the German word, VOLK, means the whole body of the PEOPLE without any distinction of class or caste. It is a primary word also that suggests what might be called the basic national stock. Now, after the defeat in 1918, the downfall of the Monarchy and the destruction of the aristocracy and the upper classes, the concept of DAS VOLK came into prominence as the unifying co-efficient which would embrace the whole

German people. Hence the large number of VÖLKISCH societies that arose after the war and hence also the National Socialist concept of unification which is expressed by the word VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT, or folk community. This is used in contradistinction to the Socialist concept of the nation as being divided into classes. Hitler’s ideal is the VÖLKISCHER STAAT, which I have translated as the People’s State.

Finally, I would point out that the term Social Democracy may be misleading in English, as it has not a democratic connotation in our sense. It was the name given to the Socialist Party in Germany. And that Party was purely Marxist; but it adopted the name Social Democrat in order to appeal to the democratic sections of the German people.

JAMES MURPHY.

Abbots Langley, February, 1939

Raids of Illegal Immigrants Bring Harsh Memories, and Strong Fears

January 2, 2017

by Amy Chozick

The New York Times

NEW HAVEN — Anthony Barroso was 13 and getting ready for school when they came for his father.

As soon as Anthony opened the door, he knew the half-dozen men outside were not local police officers. They carried heavy weaponry, and their bulletproof vests read “ICE,” short for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

They arrested and deported Anthony’s father, an Ecuadorean who had been illegally working as a contractor here for over a decade. One officer warned Anthony, as his infant sister cried, that they would soon return for his mother.

“Everything fell apart after that,” said Anthony, whose single mother fell deeper into poverty after the family breadwinner was deported. He is now a student at a community college and was allowed to stay in the United States under a reprieve signed by President Obama.

The 2007 raid was one of the hundreds of coordinated federal sweeps targeting illegal immigrant workers carried out during President George W. Bush’s second term. The headline-grabbing roundups of illegal workers slowed under the Obama administration, which has deported a record 2.5 million immigrants since 2009, largely by focusing on recent border crossers, employers who hired illegal workers and immigrants with criminal convictions.

But as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office and promises to swiftly deport two million to three million undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, bipartisan experts say they expect a return of the raids that rounded up thousands of workers at carwashes, meatpacking plants, fruit suppliers and their homes during the Bush years.

“If Trump seriously wants to step up dramatically the number of arrests, detentions and removals, I think he has to do workplace raids,” said Michael J. Wishnie, a professor at Yale Law School who represents detainees in civil rights cases.

Since the election, Mr. Trump has suggested that he plans to focus on deporting criminals. “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers,” he told CBS News in November. “We’re getting them out of our country.”

But Mr. Trump’s advisers have said that to promptly reach his target number of deportations, the definition of who is a criminal would need to be broadened. In July 2015, the Migration Policy Institute, a bipartisan think tank, estimated that of the roughly 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, 820,000 had criminal records — a definition Mr. Obama mostly adhered to during his second term, evicting some 530,000 immigrants convicted of crimes since 2013.

Mr. Trump would need to expand the basket to include immigrants living in the United States illegally who have been charged but not convicted of crimes, those who have overstayed visas, those who have committed minor misdemeanors like traffic infractions, and those suspected of being gang members or drug dealers.

Targeting workers for immigration-related offenses, such as using a forged or stolen Social Security number or driver’s license, produced a significant uptick in deportations under Mr. Bush. But the practice was widely criticized for splitting up families, gutting businesses that relied on immigrant labor and taking aim at people who went to work every day, rather than dangerous criminals.

During Mr. Bush’s second term, deportations increased to 360,000 from 246,000, while the number of immigrants convicted of crimes who were deported remained virtually stagnant, according to government statistics. And a 2007 report by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute that analyzed work site raids in Massachusetts, Colorado and Nebraska said a majority of the children affected by the arrest and deportation of their parents were United States citizens and were infants, toddlers or preschoolers.

In 2009, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that federal identity-theft laws may not be used against illegal workers who used fake Social Security numbers to get jobs, unless those workers knowingly used numbers that belonged to real people.

“This is the low-hanging fruit in the system: nondangerous undocumented immigrants with families,” said John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE under Mr. Obama. “Those people don’t hide. Criminals hide.”

Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security secretary under Mr. Bush, defended workplace raids. He said these sweeps proved a potent way to protect workers by tamping down on the “ecosystem of smuggling,” which emboldens migrants to sneak into the country and empowers employers to hire them to work illegally, in unregulated and often inhumane conditions.

“We found it to be effective in a targeted way,” Mr. Chertoff said in an interview. “We didn’t willy-nilly stop at a workplace and raid it.”

Mr. Trump has not said specifically how he plans to deport several million undocumented immigrants, or if he plans to use work site raids. In an interview with Fox News during the campaign, Mr. Trump said he would draw on the approaches of Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, but “with a lot more energy.”

A spokesman for the incoming president, Jason Miller, said, “We are inheriting the worst illegal immigration crisis in modern U.S. history and will need to develop a multifaceted approach to protect America’s economic and national security.”

A spokeswoman for ICE, Sarah Rodriguez, said she could not speculate on what the incoming administration would do.

Work site raids became a cornerstone of Mr. Bush’s second term and increased sharply after his efforts at an overhaul of the immigration system failed.

In a coordinated 2006 operation, federal immigration officials raided six Swift & Company meatpacking plants in several Midwestern states, leading to the arrest of an estimated 1,300 immigrant workers. Two years later, ICE officers stormed a kosher meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa, arresting 400 workers, or roughly 20 percent of the rural town’s population.

Stories of ICE agents flooding a factory floor or restaurant kitchen, or following workers home to arrest them there, led to such fear of “La Migra,” the Spanish slang for American immigration officials, that they inspired a genre of Mexican ballads, known as “migra corridos.”

Activists say the powerful scenes of ICE agents hauling off undocumented workers en masse could appeal to Mr. Trump, a former reality TV star who is savvy about media. In November, Mr. Trump earned widespread cable TV coverage — and controversy — for publicly pressuring a Carrier air-conditioner plant in Indianapolis to keep roughly 1,000 jobs from moving to Mexico.

“If you want to do enforcement by creating images, this fits the bill,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer and director of the Migration Policy Institute’s New York University office.

But he added that the raids could also “run counter to Trump’s image for being an economic engine president,” because the practice hurts business owners.

Mr. Chertoff said that ideally, Congress would grant “hard-working people” a legal path to temporarily fill jobs in industries like meatpacking and agriculture, where labor shortages exist. “Until that happens, the law is the law, and if you don’t enforce the law, you end up incentivizing people to break it,” he added.

By 2011, workplace raids had dropped by 70 percent since the final year of the Bush administration, and Republicans lawmakers implored Mr. Obama to return to the era of mass work site apprehensions.

Instead, Mr. Obama initiated a drastic increase in “paper raids,” or investigations into employers suspected of hiring illegal workers. Since January 2009, ICE has audited more than 8,900 employers and imposed more than $100.3 million in fines, according to government data. Mr. Obama also oversaw a spike in apprehensions at border crossings, which contributed to his administration’s record number of deportations.

“With Obama, we thought he was going to walk on water, and he threw us under the bus,” said Frank Sharry, the founder and executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group.

Work site raids became the subject of lawsuits claiming that immigration officials had violated constitutional protections against racial profiling and unreasonable searches.

Teresa Vara Gonzalez, 46, originally from Morelos, Mexico, had been in the United States for 26 years when ICE agents arrested her in 2007, part of the nationwide effort known as Operation Return to Sender.

Ms. Vara Gonzalez and other immigrants arrested in the New Haven area filed a lawsuit. ICE settled, without admission of wrongdoing, and the immigrants received cash payments and permission to remain in the country temporarily.

Now, Ms. Vara Gonzalez worries that she will be targeted again under Mr. Trump. “He says even if we have papers he doesn’t like us,” she said on a break from her job at a taco truck painted with offerings such as tacos al pastor and lengua.

In May, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona, an early supporter and adviser to Mr. Trump during his campaign, won a legal victory when a federal appeals court lifted a court order blocking Mr. Arpaio’s use of workplace raids to enforce state laws that make it illegal for immigrants to use stolen identification to get a job. Still, his hard-line approach to the issue contributed to his being voted out of office in November.

In an interview, Mr. Arpaio declined to say whether he had advised the president-elect on his border and immigration policies, but said, “There’s a way to stop the problem, but you have to have the will of the president.” He added, “I’m optimistic.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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