TBR News July 10, 2010

Jul 10 2010

The Voice of the White House

            Washington, D.C. July 10, 2010: “Up until the piracy against the Gaza aid flotilla by the IDF, the subject of Israel was more or less sacred to the Western media. But following that brutality and murder, the attitudes of said media have begun to change. Now, we see a good deal of negative material concerning Israel…and rightfully so…and even in some of the American media we can find more objectivity. The deficient Senator Lieberman and the AIPAC boys can yap like small dogs at a passing cat but American politicians are slowly, but surely, moving away. This notwithstanding occasional puff pieces in the media praising Israel and claiming their ties with America are stronger than ever. They were only strong in a few areas and since one of these, the banking industry, has been savagely beaten in the eyes of the public and very few people pay any attention to Lieberman any more.  Now, ideas like declaring a national holiday called ‘Remembrance Day’ to honor the 60 billion Jews who were turned into soap and ashes by the evil Nazis (many of whom went to work for our CIA after the war) vanished into the mud like a dead turtle. It is high time that the United States followed the excellent dictum of George Washington and stand back from the battle of others. Neutrality in the Middle East would sooth the tempers of Islamic terrorists who have only attacked this country and its citizens because of our perceived closeness to and perpetual support of, the State of Israel.”:

U.S. eavesdropping agency says Private Citizen is purely R&D

July 8, 2010

by Jim Wolf

Reuters

            WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A contract has been awarded for research to help counter computer-based threats to national-security networks, the chief U.S. code-cracking and eavesdropping agency said, amid mounting concern over cyber vulnerabilities.

The program, dubbed Perfect Citizen, is “purely a vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract,” Judith Emmel, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, said in an email to Reuters.

“This is a research and engineering effort,” she said. “There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor.”

The Wall Street Journal, in its Thursday editions, described Perfect Citizen as relying on sensors it said would be deployed in networks running critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants.

Raytheon Co won a classified contract for the classified work’s initial phase valued at up to $100 million, the report cited a person familiar with the project as saying.

Joyce Kuzmin, a Raytheon spokeswoman, told Reuters in response: “We have no info on this.”

The NSA, a Defense Department arm, did not confirm or deny that the contract in question had been awarded to Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon.

“This contract provides a set of technical solutions that help the National Security Agency better understand the threats to national security networks,” Emmel said.

It would be inappropriate to confirm or deny details of the Journal report because of “the high sensitivity of what we do to defend our nation,” she added.

“Any suggestions that there are illegal or invasive domestic activities associated with this contracted effort are simply not true,” Emmel said. “We strictly adhere to both the spirit and the letter of U.S. laws and regulations.”

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn said last month that more than 100 intelligence agencies and foreign militaries were actively trying to penetrate U.S. computer systems, and “weapons-system blueprints are among the documents that have been compromised.”

The United States must be able to operate freely in cyberspace amid dangers of “remote sabotage,” General Keith Alexander said June 3 in his first public remarks as head of U.S. Cyber Command. It was activated in May to harmonize offensive and defensive U.S. operations in cyberspace.

(Reporting by Jim Wolf)

Water: Will There Be Enough?

July 4, 2010

by Sandra Postel

Yes! Magazine,

 

For at least three decades, Americans have had some inkling that we face an uncertain energy future, but we’ve ignored a much more worrisome crisis—water. Cheap and seemingly abundant, water is so common that it’s hard to believe we could ever run out. Ever since the Apollo astronauts photographed Earth from space, we’ve had the image of our home as a strikingly blue planet, a place of great water wealth. But of all the water on Earth, only about 2.5 percent is freshwater—and two-thirds of that is locked up in glaciers and ice caps. Less than one hundredth of one percent of Earth’s water is fresh and renewed each year by the solar-powered hydrologic cycle.

Across the United States and around the world, we’re already reaching or overshooting the limits of that cycle. The Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers are now so overtapped that they discharge little or no water to the sea for months at a time. [1] In the West, we’re growing food and supplying water to our communities by overpumping groundwater. This creates a bubble in the food economy far more serious than the recent housing, credit, or dot-com bubbles: We are meeting some of today’s food needs with tomorrow’s water. [2]

The massive Ogallala Aquifer, which spans parts of eight states from southern South Dakota to northwest Texas, and provides 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation in the country, is steadily being depleted. [3] As of 2005, a volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie had been pumped out of this water reserve. Most farmers will stop irrigating when the wells run dry or the water drops so far down that it’s too expensive to pump.

At the same time, climate change is rewriting the rules about how much water we’ll have available and when. Climate scientists warn of more extreme droughts and floods, and of changing precipitation patterns that will make weather, storms, and natural disasters more severe and less predictable. [4] The historical data and statistical tools used to plan billions of dollars worth of annual global investments in dams, flood control structures, diversion projects, and other big pieces of water infrastructure are no longer reliable. [5]

While farmers in the Midwest were recovering from the spring flood of 2008 (in some areas the second “100-year flood” in 15 years), farmers in California and Texas fallowed cropland and sent cattle prematurely to slaughter to cope with the drought of 2009. In the Southeast, after 20 months of dryness, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue stood outside the State Capitol in November 2007 and led a prayer for rain, beseeching the heavens to turn a spigot on for his parched state. Two years later, Perdue was pleading instead for federal aid after intense rain storms near Atlanta caused massive flooding that claimed eight lives. [http://geology.com/events/iowa-flooding; “Governor Sonny…” href=”#-iowa-flood-midwest”>6]

Although none of these disasters can be pinned directly on global warming, they are the kinds of events climate scientists warn will occur more often as the planet heats up. It’s through water that we’ll feel the strains of climate change—when we can no longer count on familiar patterns of rain, snow, and river flow to irrigate our farms, power our dams, and fill our city reservoirs.

In answer to the climate crisis, the economy will need to move away from fossil fuels toward solar, wind, and other non-carbon energy sources. But there is no transitioning away from water. Water has no substitutes. And unlike oil and coal, water is much more than a commodity: It is the basis of life. A human being can only live for five to seven days without water. Deprive any plant or animal of water, and it dies. Our decisions about water—how to use, allocate, and manage it—are deeply ethical ones; they determine the survival of most of the planet’s species, including our own.

Shifting Course

For most of modern history, water management has focused on bringing water under human control and transferring it to expanding cities, industries, and farms. Since 1950, the number of large dams worldwide has climbed from 5,000 to more than 45,000—an average construction rate of two large dams per day for half a century. [7] Globally, 364 large water-transfer projects move 105 trillion gallons of water annually from one river basin to another—equivalent to transferring the annual flow of 22 Colorado Rivers. Millions of wells punched into the Earth tap underground aquifers, using diesel or electric pumps to lift vast quantities of groundwater to the surface.

Big water schemes have allowed oasis cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas to thrive in the desert, world food production to expand along with population, and living standards for hundreds of millions to rise. But globally they have also worsened social inequities, as poor people are dislocated from their homes to make way for dams and canals, and as downstream communities lose the flows that sustained their livelihoods.

Such approaches also ignore water’s limits and the value of healthy ecosystems. Today, many rivers flow like plumbing works, turned on and off like water from a faucet. Fish, mussels, river birds, and other aquatic life no longer get the flows and habitats they need to survive: 40 percent of all fish species in North America are at risk of extinction.

As we face the pressures of climate change and growing water demands, many leaders and localities are calling for even bigger versions of the strategies of the past. By some estimates the volume of water moved through river transfer schemes could more than double globally by 2020. But mega-projects are risky in a warming world where rainfall and river flow patterns are changing in uncertain ways.

Such big projects also require giant quantities of increasingly expensive energy. Pumping, moving, treating, and distributing water takes energy at every stage. Transferring Colorado River water into southern California, for example, requires about 1.6 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per cubic meter (about 264 gallons) of water; the same quantity of water sent hundreds of kilometers from north to south through California’s State Water Project takes about 2.4 kWh. As a result, the energy required to provide drinking water to a typical southern California home can rank third behind that required to run the air conditioner and refrigerator. [8]

Planners and policy-makers are eyeing desalination as a silver-bullet solution to water shortages. But they miss—or dismiss—the perverse irony: By burning more fossil fuels and by making local water supplies more and more dependent on increasingly expensive energy, desalination creates more problems than it solves. [9] Producing one cubic meter of drinkable water from salt water requires about 2 kWh of electricity.

Water for People and Nature

As the limitations of big‑infrastructure strategies have become more apparent, a vanguard of citizens, communities, farmers, and corporations are thinking about water in a new way. They’re asking, what do we really need the water for, and can we meet that need with less? The upshot of this shift in thinking is a new movement in water management that is much more about ideas, ingenuity, and ecological intelligence than it is about big pumps, pipelines, dams, and canals.

These solutions tend to work with nature, rather than against it. In this way, they make effective use of “ecosystem services”—the benefits provided by healthy watersheds and wetlands. And through better technologies and more informed choices, they seek to raise water productivity—to make every drop count.

Communities are finding, for example, that protecting watersheds is the best way to make sure water supplies are clean and reliable. A healthy watershed can do the work of a water treatment plant—filtering out pollutants, and at a lower cost to boot. New York City, for instance, is investing some $1.5 billion to restore and protect the Catskill-Delaware Watershed (which supplies 90 percent of its drinking water) in lieu of constructing a $6 billion filtration plant that would cost an additional $300 million a year to operate. [10] A number of other cities across the United States—from tiny Auburn, Maine, to Seattle—have saved hundreds of millions of dollars in avoided capital and operating costs by opting for watershed protection over filtration plants. [11]

Communities facing increased flood damage are achieving cost-effective flood protection by restoring rivers. After enduring 19 flood episodes between 1961 and 1997, Napa, Calif., opted for this approach over the conventional route of channelizing and building levees. In partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the $366 million project is reconnecting the Napa River with its historic floodplain, moving homes and businesses out of harm’s way, revitalizing wetlands and marshlands, and constructing levees and bypass channels in strategic locations. In addition to increased flood protection and reduced flood insurance rates, Napa residents will benefit from parks and trails for recreation, higher tourism revenues, and improved habitat for fish and wildlife. [12]

Similarly, communities facing increased damage from heavy stormwater runoff can turn roofs, streets, and parking lots into water catchments. Portland, Ore., is investing in “green roofs” and “green streets” to prevent sewer overflows into the Willamette River. [13] Chicago now boasts more than 200 green roofs—including atop City Hall—that collectively cover 2.5 million square feet, more than any other U.S. city. The vegetated roofs are providing space for urban gardens and helping to catch stormwater and cool the urban environment. [14]

Many communities are revitalizing their rivers by tearing down dams that are no longer safe or serving a justifiable purpose. Over the last decade more than 500 dams have been removed from U.S. rivers, opening up habitat for fisheries, restoring healthier water flows, improving water quality, and returning aquatic life to rivers. [15] In the 10 years since the Edwards Dam was removed from the Kennebec River near Augusta, Maine, populations of alewives and striped bass have returned in astounding numbers, reviving a recreational fishery that adds $65 million annually to the local economy. [16]

Conservation remains the least expensive and most environmentally sound way of balancing water budgets. Many cities and towns have reduced their water use through relatively simple measures like repairing leaks in distribution systems, retrofitting homes and businesses with water-efficient fixtures and appliances, and promoting more sensible and efficient outdoor water use. Motivated by a cap on groundwater pumping from the Edwards Aquifer in south-central Texas, San Antonio has cut its per capita water use by more than 40 percent, to one of the lowest levels of any Western U.S. city. [www.edwardsaquifer.org; water use from 2008 Annual Report, San Antonio Water System; the 130 gallon…” href=”#edwards-aquifer-authority-website”>17] Even more impressive, a highly successful conservation program started in 1987 in Boston cut total water demand 43 percent by 2009, bringing water use to a 50-year low and eliminating the need for a costly diversion project from the Connecticut River. [18]

But the potential for conservation has barely been tapped. It is especially crucial in agriculture. Irrigation accounts for 70 percent of water use worldwide and even more in the western U.S., so getting more crop per drop is central to meeting future food needs sustainably. In California, more famers are turning to drip irrigation, which delivers water at low volumes directly to the roots of crops. Between 2003 and 2008, California’s drip and micro-sprinkler area expanded by 630,000 acres, bringing its total to more than 2.3 million acres—62 percent of the nation’s total area under drip irrigation. [19]

As individuals, we’ll also need to make more conscious choices about what and how much we consume. Some products and foods—especially meat—have a high water cost. It can take five times more water to supply 10 grams of protein from beef than from rice. So eating less meat can lighten our dietary water footprint (while also improving our health). If all U.S. residents reduced their consumption of animal products by half, the nation’s total dietary water requirement in 2025 would drop by 261 billion cubic meters per year, a savings equal to the annual flow of 14 Colorado Rivers. [20]

We’ll need to change how we use water in and around our homes and neighborhoods. Turf grass covers some 40.5 million acres in the United States—an area three times larger than any irrigated farm crop in the country. [21] Particularly in the western United States, where outdoor watering typically accounts for 50 percent or more of household water use, converting thirsty green lawns into native drought-tolerant landscaping can save a great deal of water. Las Vegas now pays residents up to $1.50 for each square foot of grass they rip out, which has helped shrink the city’s turf area by 125 million square feet and lower its annual water use by 7 billion gallons. [22, 23] Albuquerque, New Mexico, has reduced its total water use by 21 percent since 1995, largely through education and rebates to encourage water-thrifty landscapes. [24]

Energy and water are tightly entwined, and all too often public policies to “solve” one problem simply make the other one worse. For example, the 2007 congressional mandate [25] to produce 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol a year by 2015 would require an estimated 1.6 trillion gallons of additional irrigation water annually (and even more direct rainfall)—a volume exceeding the annual water withdrawals of the entire state of Iowa. [26] Even solar power creates a demand for water, especially some of the big solar-thermal power plants slated for the sunny Southwest. [27]

It’s still possible to have a future in which all basic food and water needs are met, healthy ecosystems are sustained, and communities remain secure and resilient, even in the face of climate disruptions. Just as the economic crash is forcing Americans to reassess what they value financially, the water crisis requires us to pay attention to how we value and use water. Across the country, communities will need to learn to take care of the ecosystems that supply and cleanse water, to live within their water means, and to share water equitably.

Sources:

1.       Where Have All the Rivers Gone?, Sandra Postel, World Watch 8, May/June 1995; When the Rivers Run Dry, Fred Pearce, Boston, Beacon Press, 2006.

2.       Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? Sandra Postel, New York, W.W Norton & Co., 1999.

3.       Ground Water Depletion in the High Plains Aquifer, Predevelopment to 2005, V.L. Mcguire, U.S. Geological Survey, USGS Fact Sheet 2007-3029, 2007. http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/; 30 percent figure from “High Plains Regional Ground Water (HPGW) Study,” USGS, http://co.water.usgs.gov/nawqa/hpgw/HPGW_home.html

4.       Climate Change 2007 – The Physical Science Basis, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); and Climate Change 2007 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, “Summaries for Policymakers,” IPCC, Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 2007.

5.       “Stationarity is Dead: Whither Water Management?,” P.C.D. Milly et al., Science, February 1, 2008.

6.       “Iowa Flood, Midwest Flooding: Videos, Maps, News and Background,” Geology.com, http://geology.com/events/iowa-flooding; “Governor Sonny Perdue Prays for Rain in Georgia, WDEF.com, November 14, 2007; “Rain Stops, but 8 are Dead in Southeast Floods,” Robbie Brown and Liz Robbins, The New York Times, September 22, 2009

7.       Number of large dams (those at least 15 meters high) from Dams and Development, World Commission on Dams, London, Earthscan Publications, 2000; “Interbasin Water Transfers and Water Scarcity in a Changing World—A Solution or a Pipedream?,” Jamie Pittock et al., Frankfurt, World Wildlife Fund Germany, August 2009.

8.       Methodology for Analysis of the Energy Intensity of California’s Water Systems, and an Assessment of Multiple Potential Benefits Through Integrated Water-Energy Efficiency Measures, Robert Wilkinson, Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara 2000; Electricity Efficiency Through Water Efficiency, Report for the Southern California Edison Company, QEI, Inc., Springfield, NJ, 1992.

9.       Debbie Cook, former Mayor of Huntington Beach, Calif., has said “The next worst idea to turning tar sands into synthetic crude is turning ocean water into municipal drinking water.”, quoted in “Desalination – Energy Down the Drain,” The Oil Drum, March 2, 2009. www.theoildrum.com/node/5155.

10.   Liquid Assets: The Critical Need to Safeguard Freshwater Ecosystems, Sandra Postel, Worldwatch Paper 170, Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 2005.

11.   “Watershed Protection: Capturing the Benefits of Nature’s Water Supply Services,” Sandra Postel and Barton H. Thompson, Jr., Natural Resources Forum  29, no.2, May 2005.

12.   Valuing Ecosystem Services: Toward Better Environmental Decision-Making, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., The National Academy Press, 2005; $366 million figure from “Sacramento District Project Wins Public Works Project of the Year,” David G. Killam,  website of the U.S. Army, February 12, 2009. www.army.mil

13.   Natural Security: How Sustainable Water Strategies are Preparing Communities for a Changing Climate, Will Hewes and Kristen Pitts,  Washington, DC: American Rivers, 2009.

14.   “Chicago Green Roof Program,” Emily Pilloton, Inhabitat, August 1, 2006 www.inhabitat.com

15.   Figure from Serena McClain at American Rivers, April 26, 2010.

16.   $65 million figure from Natural Security, Hewes and Pitts; for more on dams and rivers, see Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature, Sandra Postel and Brian Richter, Washington, D.C., Island Press, 2003.

17.   Edwards Aquifer Authority website, at www.edwardsaquifer.org; water use from 2008 Annual Report, San Antonio Water System; the 130 gallon figure is an approximate average of recent years since per capita water use varied considerably between rainy and dry years; see the informative website of the San Antonio Water System at www.saws.org.

18.   For conservation methods and examples, see Handbook of Water Use and Conservation: Homes, Landscapes, Businesses, Industries, Farms, Amy Vickers, Amherst, MA, WaterPlow Press, 2001; Boston example from Liquid Assets, Sandra Postel and “Lessons from the Field–Boston Conservation,” Sandra Postel, National Geographic, March 2010 environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/lessons-boston-conservation

19.   USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2007 Census of Agriculture: Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey, 2008, Volume 3, Special Studies, Part I, November 2009; updated February 2010.

20.   Dietary water requirement from “Nutritional Water Productivity and Diets,” D. Renault and W.W. Wallender, Agricultural Water Management 45, 2000; calculation assumes average annual dietary water requirement drops from 1,971 cubic meters per person to 1,242; U.S. 2025 population of 358.7 million is the medium variant estimate of the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision. esa.un.org/unpp

21.   “Mapping and Modeling the Biogeochemical Cycling of Turf Grasses in the United States,” Cristina Milesi et al., Environmental Management 36, September, 2005; “Our Love Affair With Our  Lawns is Hurling the U.S. Toward Water Crisis,” Dara Colwell, AlterNet, October 2, 2009. www.alternet.org.

22.   Southern Nevada Water Authority, accessed on April 20, 2010. www.snwa.com/html/cons_wsl.html.

23.   Personal communication with Kristen Howe, Public Information Coordinator, SNWA

24.   Personal email communication with Katherine M. Yuhas, Water Conservation Officer, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Authority, Albuquerque, NM, October 12 -13, 2009.

25.    Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, U.S. Congress, 110th Cong., 1st session, 2007.

26.   “The Water Footprint of Biofuels: A Drink or Drive Issue?” R. Dominguez-Faus et al., Environmental Science & Technology, May 1, 2009.“

27.  Alternative Energy Projects Stumble on a Need for Water,” Todd Woody, The New York Times, September 30, 2009.

 

The Anne Frank Diary Fraud
by Dr. Phillip L. Kushner, Head of Mathematics Dept.

University of Texas-Austin

pkushner@math.utexas.edu
          When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she did so prompted by the highest of motives. Yet she, herself, relates the incident that when she first met Abraham Lincoln in 1863, he commented “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”

            Few will deny that the printed word in this instance fanned the flames of passion which brought about one of the bloodiest and saddest wars of American history, with brother sometimes pitted against brother, father against son. Perhaps if there had been less appeal to the emotions the problems might have resolved themselves through peaceful means. However, almost universally read at the time, few people then recognized the potency of one small book or the injustice done the South through its wide acceptance as a fair picture of slavery in the South.

             Propaganda, as a weapon of psychological warfare is in even wider use today. Communists were masters of the art. Often they used the direct approach; just as often they employed diversion tactics to focus the eyes and ears of the world in directions other than where the real conflict was being waged. For many years, through propaganda alone, the dead threat of Hitler and Nazism had been constantly held before the public in a diversion maneuver to keep attention from being directed against the live threat of Stalin, Khrushchev and Communism.

            Such has been the effect, if not the deliberate intention of many who have promoted its distribution, of a book of popular appeal-The Diary Of Anne Frank. It has been sold to the public as the actual diary of a young Jewish girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp after two years of abuse and horror.

            Many Americans have read the book or seen the movie version, and have been deeply moved by the real life drama it claims to present. But have we been misled in the belief that Anne Frank actually wrote this diary? And if so. should an author be permitted to produce a work of fiction and sell it to the world as fact, particularly one of such tremendous emotional appeal?

            The Swedish journal Frio Ord published two articles commenting on The Diary of Anne Frank. A condensation of these articles appeared in the April 15, 1959 issue of Economic Council Letter, as follows:

             “History has many examples of myths that live a longer and richer life than truth. and may become more effective than truth.

            The Western world has for some years hem made aware of a young Jewish girl through the medium of what purports to he her personally written story, “Anne Frank’s Diary.” Any informed literary inspection of this book has shown it to have been impossible as the work of a teenager.

            A noteworthy decision of the New York Supreme Court confirms this point of view, in that the well known American writer, Meyer Levin, has been awarded $50.000 to be paid him by the father of Anne Frank as an honorarium for Levin’s work on the “Anne Frank Diary.”

            Mr. Frank, in Switzerland, had promised to pay to prominent Jewish author, Meyer Levin. not less than $50,000 because he had used the literary creation of author Levin in toto, and represented it to his publisher and the public as his late daughter’s original work.

            Inquiry of the County Clerk. New York County. as to the facts of the case referred to in the Swedish press, brought a reply on April 23, 1962, giving the name of a New York firm of lawyers as “attorneys .far the respondent.” Reference was to ”The Dairy of Anne Frank 2203-58.”

            A letter to this firm brought a response on May 4, 1962 that “Although we represent Mr. Levin in other matters, we had nothing to do with the Anne Frank case.”

            On May 7, 1962, came the following reply from a member of a firm of New York lawyers to whom the original inquiry had been forwarded:

            “I was the attorney for Meyer Levin in his action against Otto Frank and others. It is true that a jury awarded Mr. Levin $50,000 in damages, as indicated in your letter. That award was later set aside by the trial justice. Hon. Samuel C. Coleman. on the ground that the damages had not been proved in the manner required by law. The action was subsequently settled between the litigating parties, while an appeal from Judge Coleman’s decision was pending.

            I am afraid that the case itself is not officially reported, so far as the trial itself, or even Judge Coleman’s decision, is concerned. Certain procedural matters were reported. both in 141 New York Supplement. Second Series 170. and in 5 Second Series 181. The correct file number in the New York County Clerk‘s office is 2241-1956 and the file is probably a large and full one which must include Judge Coleman’s decision. Unfortunately, our file is in storage and 1 cannot locate a copy of that decision as it appeared in the New York Law Journal early in the year 1960.”

            The Diary Of Anne Frank was first published in 1952 and immediately became a bestseller. It has been republished in paperback, 40 printings. It is impossible to estimate how many people have been touched and aroused by the movie production.

            Why has the trial involving the father of Anne Frank, bearing directly on the authenticity of this book, never been “officially reported”? In royalties alone, Otto Frank has profited richly from the sale of this book, purporting to depict the tragic life of his daughter. But is it fact, or is it fiction? Is it truth or is it propaganda? Or is it a combination of all of these? And to what degree does it wrongfully appeal to the emotions through a misrepresentation as to its origin?

            School publications for years have recommended this book for young people, presenting it as the work of Anne Frank. Advertising in advance of the movie showing has played up the “factual” nature of the drama being presented. Do not writers of such editorials and promoters of such advertising, “fan the flames of hate” they rightly profess to deplore?

            Many American Jews were shocked at the handling of the Eichmann case, the distortions contained in the book Exodus and its movie counterpart, but their protests have had little publicity outside of their own organ, Issues, by the American Council for Judaism. Others who have expressed the same convictions have been charged with anti-Semitism. Yet it is to be noted that both Otto Frank and his accuser Meyer Levin, were Jewish, so a similar charge would hardly be applicable in pursuing this subject to an honest conclusion..

            File number 2241-1956 in the New York County Clerk’s office should be opened to the public view and its content thoroughly publicized. Misrepresentation, exaggeration, and falsification has too often colored the judgment of good citizens. If Mr. Frank used the work of Meyer Levin to present to the world what we have been led to believe is the literary work of his daughter, wholly or in part, then the truth should be exposed.

            To label fiction as fact is never justified nor should it be condoned.

            Since actual period documentation does not exist in support of the Holocaust myth, it has always been incumbent on its supporters to create it.

            Not only is the “Anne Frank” diary now considered to be a fake, so also is “The Painted Bird” by Jerzy Kosinski. This book, which is a mass of pornographic and sadistic imagery which, had it not been taken so seriously by the Jewish community, would be merely the pathetic manifestation of a self-serving and very sick person.

            This was duly exposed as a shabby, though much revered (by the Jewish community) and quoted, fraud. When this was exposed, Kosinski committed suicide. Later, in Kosinski’s footsteps we find the next fiction entitled “Fragments, ” by a Swiss Protestant named Bruno Dosseker who spent the war in Switzerland as a young child. Dosseker posed as a very young Baltic Jewish concentration camp inmate named Binjamin Wilkomerski. This work consists of allegedly fragmented “memories” and is very difficult to read

             Dosseker became the poster boy for the Holocaust supporters and was lionized by the international Jewish community, reaping considerable profit and many in-house awards for his wonderful and moving portrayal of German brutality and sexual sadism.

            Another book, allegedly by a Hungarian doctor, concerning his deportation from Budapest in 1944 and subsequent journey by “Death Train” to Auschwitz is another fraud. There was never such a doctor in Hungary during the period involved and the alleged route of the train from Budapest to Auschwitz did not exist.

            These sort of pathetic refugees from the back wards seem to be drawn to the Holocausters…and they to them. There are now “Holocaust Survivors” as young as thirty which is an interesting anomaly because the last concentration camp was closed in 1945. Perhaps they consider the last frenzied spring sale at Bloomingdale’s department store to be what they survived.

            Next we can expect to see a book based on twenty-seven volumes of secret diaries prepared on a modern word processor within the current year by an alleged inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto, describing the Nazi slaughter of tens of millions of weeping Jews by means that would shame a modern African state.

            And, predictably, the publication of these howlers would be greeted with joy on the part of the fund raisers and fanatics, praised in the columns of the New York Times and scripted by Steven Spielberg for a heart-wrenching and guaranteed Oscar-winning film.

             Hundreds of thousands of DVD copies will be donated to American schools and the Jewish community will demand that subservient executive and legislative bodies in America create a Day of Atonement as a National Holiday to balance the terrible Christian Christmas and the wickedly Satanic Halloween.

             Conservationists must hate these books because so many otherwise beautiful and useful trees are slaughtered for their preparation

            The “original” Anne Frank diary, that reposes in a Swiss bank, has been partially written with a ball point pen, something that did not exist at the time it was alleged  the diaries to have been written.

            All in all, because of the additions, emendations and alterations to original notes, the ‘Anne Frank diary’, in the state it is presented today, is a fraud, in the same category as the “Wilkomerski” book, “Fragments” alleged to have been written by a young Jewish “Holocaust survivor.” This disconnected work, initially eagerly accepted and greatly praised by the Jewish community, was written by a Protestant Swiss, Bruno Dossekker who was never in a concentration camp and is also a fraud.

             “Holocaust” literature is studded with equally fraudulent works such as the “Painted Bird” and hundreds of other productions that, by rights ought to be in the fiction section of the libraries that carry them. 

            The sole purpose for the execution of these pathetic fictions is primarily to make money for their creators but secondarily to promote sympathy for the entire Jewish community based on pity. Unfortunately for this thesis, the subject has been artificially inflated ad nauseum to the point where most non-Jewish Americans have no interest in the grossly saturated and overdone subject.

In 1980, Otto Frank sued two Germans, Ernst Romer and Edgar Geiss, for distributing literature denouncing the diary as a forgery. The trial produced a study by official German handwriting experts that determined everything in the diary was written by the same person. The person that wrote the diaries had used a ballpoint pen throughout. Unfortunately for Herr Frank, the ballpoint pen was not available until 1951 whereas Anne was known to have died of typhus in 1944.

             Because of the lawsuit in a German court, the German state forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt [BKA] forensically examined the manuscript, which at that point in time consisted of three hardbound notebooks and 324 loose pages bound in a fourth notebook, with special forensic equipment.

            The results of tests, performed at the BKA laboratories, showed that “significant” portions of the work, especially the fourth volume, were written with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens were not available before 1951, the BKA concluded those sections must have been added subsequently.

            The BKA information, at the urgent request of the Jewish community, was redacted at the time but later inadvertently released to researchers in the United States.

.

Because of a 1980 lawsuit the diary manuscript was forensically examined
by the BKA (the German state forensic bureau) and …

            “In the end, BKA clearly determined that none of the diary handwriting matched known examples of Anne’s handwriting. The German magazine, Der Spiegel, published an account of this report alleging that (a) some editing postdated 1951; (b) an earlier expert had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus (c) the entire diary was a postwar fake. “

 

Exposed: The truth about Israel’s land grab in the West Bank

As President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet, a report reveals 42 per cent of territory is controlled by settlers

July 7, 2010

by Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem and David Usborne

The Independent/UK

Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.

The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.

Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.

             “The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank,” the report concluded.

Mr Obama’s demand for a freeze on illegal building has caused months of friction between his administration and the Israeli government. But the US president, facing mid-term elections in November, appeared eager to end the dispute with Israel yesterday.

He said the country was making “real progress” on improving conditions in the Gaza Strip and was serious about achieving peace.

The two men made a joint public appearance, carefully choreographed to convey mutual ease and friendship.

When Mr Netanyahu last visited the White House, in March, US anger at his refusal to end construction meant the Israeli premier was denied a joint appearance with Mr Obama before the cameras. This time the photo-op was granted and the two men afterwards shared a meal – although not a state dinner but a working lunch.

“Reports about the demise of the special US-Israel relationship aren’t premature, there are just flat wrong,” Mr Netanyahu said, in response to a reporter’s question about the perceived tensions. Playing to the same script, Mr Obama said that the “bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable”.

But the revelations in the B’Tselem report suggest that despite Mr Netanyahu’s stated desire for peace, his policy on settlements remains a dangerous obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and therefore to a durable peace.

They cast an uncompromising spotlight on Israeli practices in the Palestinian territories that have long drawn international criticism for establishing “facts on the ground” hampering the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

While most of the Jewish settlement activity is concentrated in 1 per cent of the West Bank, settler councils have in fact fenced off or earmarked massive tracts of land, comprising some 42 per cent of the West Bank, B’Tselem said.

And despite the outlawing by Israel of settlement expansion on private Palestinian land, settlers have seized 21 per cent of land that Israel recognises is privately-owned.

B’Tselem alleged that Israel had devised an extensive system of loopholes to requisition Palestinian land.

At the same time, Israel has built bypass roads, erected new checkpoints, and taken control of scarce water resources to the benefit of the settlers. The measures have effectively created Palestinian enclaves within the West Bank, the report said.

Under international law, any Jewish settlements built on occupied territory are illegal. These include all the settlements in the West Bank, and thousands of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the Arab-dominated sector of the city annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War. The international community still regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory. Despite firm commitments from successive Israeli governments to dismantle illegal outposts built after 2001 and to cease expansion of the settlements, Israel has provided millions of dollars worth of incentives to encourage poorer families to move into the West Bank. Some 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank.

Settlers immediately attacked the report, claiming it was timed as a spoiler to the Washington meeting.

In Washington, no concrete breakthroughs were announced but Mr Obama said that he believed the Israeli leader was ready to move towards direct talks with the Palestinians. Indirect talks began earlier this year, mediated by special US envoy George Mitchell.

Mr Netanyahu showed signs of responding to the pressure. “Peace is the best option for all of us and I think we have a unique opportunity to do it,” he said. “If we work together with [Palestinian] President [Mahmoud] Abbas then we can bring a great message of hope to our peoples, to the region and to the world.”

The Palestinians continue to refuse direct talks with Israel while new settlement construction is allowed. Settlement activity continues in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians aim to include in a new state.

With US-Israel ties already frayed, Mr Netanyahu postponed a visit to the White House last month in the aftermath of Israel’s deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian goods to Gaza.

For Mr Obama, the danger is clear that any long-lasting record of animosity towards Israel could translate into lost votes at the mid-term elections.

Blackwater Strikes Again

July 10, 2010

by Christopher Brauchli

Common Dreams

The Gods have their own rules.
-Ovid, Metamorphoses

One of the many nice things about being a United States Senator is that you can ask just about anyone in government to explain actions being taken and anticipate a response and, in many cases, a change in conduct. Here is one example of how a United States Senator was able to influence policy. It pertains to Blackwater.

On February 25, 2010 Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee sat down and wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to investigate whether Xe Services, (formerly known as Blackwater) had made false or misleading statements when it bid for an Army contract in Afghanistan. The reason for his letter was that he had just finished conducting a hearing reviewing the results of an investigation of Blackwater. In his opening statement at the hearing Senator Levin said that: “Blackwater operated in Afghanistan without sufficient oversight or supervision and with almost no consideration of the rules it was legally obligated to follow. The means by which Blackwater acquired weapons for its contractor personnel in Afghanistan showed just how little regard company personnel had for those rules.” Senator Levin did not limit his letter writing to writing the Attorney General. He also sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In the letter to Secretary Gates he said the Pentagon should consider deficiencies in Blackwater’s past performance before awarding it additional contracts. He said: “[W] e received evidence that Blackwater may have: used a front company for the contract; made false official statements and misled Department of Defense officials in its proposal documents; misappropriated government weapons and carried weapons without authorization; and hired unqualified personnel with backgrounds that included assault and battery, larceny and misappropriation of property, insubordinate conduct, and drug and alcohol abuse; and violated CENTCOM’s movement control policies.” He concluded saying the Department of Defense “should review the transcript of this hearing and consider the deficiencies in Blackwater’s performance . . . before a decision is made to award the police training work to Blackwater.”

The investigations Senator Levin requested may be ongoing. So is the awarding of lucrative contracts to Blackwater. Jeff Stein who writes “Spy Talk”, reported on June 21, 2010 that the State Department gave Xe Services a $120 million contract for providing “protective security services” at new U.S. consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Two days later he reported that the Central Intelligence Agency had hired the company to guard CIA facilities in Afghanistan and other places. Xe was not the only contractor interested in obtaining the work. In connection with both of those contracts DynCorp and Triple Canopy had bid on the jobs but lost out to Blackwater.

Senator Levin’s reaction to these awards has not been reported. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s have. They are hardly surprising. She was outraged. Her outrage was prompted by her familiarity with Blackwater and its performance. In November 2009 she learned that the government had given Blackwater an indefinite extension of a contract to provide “Aviation Services” in Iraq and said: “Given the company’s history of massive abuses and misconduct, I believe it is inappropriate for the United States government to continue doing business with this firm.” Upon hearing of the newest contracts in Afghanistan she said, speaking to ABC news: “I’m just mystified why any branch of the government would decide to hire Blackwater, such a repeat offender. We’re talking about murder . . . . A company with a horrible reputation that really jeopardizes our mission in so many different, different ways.”

For all we know, the Justice Department may be conducting an investigation of Blackwater’s conduct in both Afghanistan and Iraq in response to the letter it received from Senator Levin. For all we know the CIA may be investigating Blackwater’s prior conduct even though it has just agreed to pay the company $125 million for its services. For all we know, the State Department may be conducting its own independent investigation in response to Senator Levin’s letter. Here is what we know for sure, however. The mystery to which Ms. Schakowsky was referring has been unraveled by CIA Director Leon Panetta.

In a June 27 interview on ABC News Mr. Panetta said that in a war zone “we continue to have needs for security. . . . Unfortunately, there are a few companies that provide that kind of security. The State Department relies on them, we rely on them to a certain extent. So we bid out some of those contracts. They . . . . outbid everyone else by about $26 million. And a panel that we had said . . . that they have shaped up their act. So there really was not much choice to but accept that contract..” That explains it all. Sort of.

Christopher Brauchli can be emailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see his web page at http://humanraceandothersports.com

 The Conversations with the Crow

                When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert  T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.

             Crowley did not listen to them and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.

            Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:

http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm🙂

             Here is the eleventh  chapter:

Conversation No. 11 b

Date:  Monday, April 29, 1996

Commenced: 2:09 PM  CST

Concluded:  2:28  PM CST

GD: Back again, Robert. Are you OK for time?

RTC: I have enough time, Gregory. What is it?

GD: I had a chat with Kimmel today and I made a mistake. I had read something once about forged evidence and innocently mentioned faked fingerprint evidence used in a Federal case. He got very testy about this and tried to lecture me about minding my own business.

RTC: That would be a very sore spot with Kimmel. He has to defend his turf. Faked evidence? The Bureau has been known to stoop to that on a number of occasions. If they know, or believe you did something but can’t quite get you, why lo and behold they find your fingerprints all over something. Possibly a gun used in icing Martin Luther King or a blood stained print at the scene of a mob killing. Faking evidence and suborning perjury is nothing new for the Bureau. No one likes to talk about it because of the uproar it would cause. All kinds of lawsuits by innocent and framed convicts would follow. Kimmel is very protective of the Bureau but I think he spends more time trying to rehabilitate the Admiral. Still, I don’t know if he dirties his hands with such goings on but he surely knows about them. I certainly do

GD: Tell me something, Robert. Do you think Kimmel hooked up with you to spy on you?

RTC: Probably but I never tell him, or Bill, anything.

GD: Kimmel was mad I am talking to you. He said you were an old man and to leave you alone.

RTC: Tom can fuck himself. I’ll talk to anyone I wish, whenever I wish. All Tom thinks about is getting his grandfather the Admiral pardoned.

GD: I know. I tried to help the family out on that because of some of the documents Mueller had. I told him the Roosevelt/Churchill conversation papers came from Mueller, not you.

RTC: Thank you for that. Tom has been running around, all over Washington, trying frantically to prove you faked them. They tested the paper and checked on the typing and everything was fine but Tom won’t accept that you might be right, even though it would help his futile quest. They’re all a bunch of treacherous assholes there, believe me.

GD: Why would he get so upset about the question of fingerprints? I don’t see how you can fake these seriously.

RTC: Fingerprints? A piece of cake for the FBI. They know just how to put someone’s prints just where they want them. I could tell you about this if you kept quiet about it. If it ever got out how they fake evidence, as I just said, the appellate courts would be jammed up for years.

GD: I won’t say a word.

RTC: For your own sake, don’t. All right, here goes. If the FBI has a copy of your fingerprints, they can make molds of them and put them onto a rubber glove. It goes this way: They make a photographic negative of the prints , make a reverse negative and…do you know what a zinc is?
GD: Yes, I do. It is a metal copy of a negative. I learned this when I was getting some of my earlier books printed. They use this for rubber stamps.

RTC: Oh yes, just so. And then they get a pair of thin rubber surgeon’s gloves and paint liquid latex onto the zinc. When you peel the very thin, dried latex off of the zinc, you glue the prints down on each finger by using spirit gum. You can buy both the liquid latex and the spirit gum in any theatrical supply house right over the counter.

GD: Jesus, how simple, Robert. And you can go into a murder scene in private, say as an FBI technician, put on the gloves and touch things.

RTC:I know for a certainty that there are a significant number of people now incarcerated who are entirely innocent of a crime but whose fingerprints were found at the scene of a crime or on otherwise damning evidence. Many. Now do you see why I don’t want you talking about this?

GD: This explains Kimmel’s agitation.

RTC: Interesting because…when did he tell you this?

GD: Two days ago.

RTC: And he called me the next day to tell me you had been in a lunatic asylum and I should really stop talking to you. Makes sense. You were asking question about the prints and he knows you dig so he decided to head you off at the pass as far as I was concerned. Doing that with faked prints is easier than getting the usual perjured testimony from people facing Federal criminal charges.

GD: I suppose I ought to be careful.

RTC: Yes, what with Critchfield wanting your head because you are outing him on the subject of his hiring the head of the Gestapo and many other SS men and now Kimmel in an uproar, I would be a little careful, my boy.

GD: I thought you were going to say Kimmel had his balls in an uproar.

RTC: Strictly speaking, that would not be accurate. He lost them some time ago to cancer.

GD: Well, he can always sing soprano in his choir at church. I never discuss religion with him because he spouts Proverbs at me all the time. What is he?

RTC: Tom? I think the family is Episcopalian. His wife is Mormon but Tom hates Mormons. He probably doesn’t want to wear the hairshirt underwear.

GD: Well, old Brigham Young had about fifty wives and most of them were very, very young. Do you know what he once said? No? ‘I don’t care how you bring’em but bring’em young.’

RTC: (Laughter) Not nice at all.

GD: Did I tell you about the big bronze statue of Young and its official unveiling in Salt Lake City? God, the whole Young family was there, senators, congressmen and half the town. There were speeches made, the choir sung and then an elderly daughter pulled the rope to drop the bunting. During the night, some evil soul had hung a huge salami and two coconuts on the crotch of the figure.

RTC: (Laughter) Do tell that to Kimmel. I mean, really do tell him. He loathes you anyway so why not tromp on his corns?

GD: Not a bad idea at all. Anyway you filled me in on the Kimmel anger. And these people are supposed to be protecting all of us poor sheep.

RTC: One can dream. And one can look out the dining room window and see the Easter Bunny doing hopscotch in the back yard.

GD: And the Baby Jesus riding his tricycle over your cat.

RTC: Now, now, let’s keep religion out of this. Who knows, some Mormon FBI agent might be listening to this.

GD: One hopes. Ah the trials and tribulations of being a successful author. The chorus of outraged petty academics, and I guess, furious Jews and angry civil servants.

RTC: How do you cope with the assholes?
GD: Well, I do. I attack them, Robert, gut them and leave their stinking carcasses to rot in the sunlight. Methodology? I do not get into pissing matches with skunks. I look deeply into the personas of my detractors and when I am ready, I strike. Not always in print, either. You see, Robert, they are all very vulnerable. The can be fired from jobs, have their wives and children vanish into the night, disgusted with Daddy’s pranks, have the neighbors dump garbage on their lawns or into their swimming pools and generally have a terrible life.

RTC: And how do you accomplish those worthy goals?

GD: Oh, by various means.  An old newspaper clipping, well circulated in their circles, attributing an earlier arrest for pedophilia or torture of neighbor’s pets is a good start. A company owned by a friend turns them into a collection agency for a very large  unpaid bill is also a good move. There are literally dozens of ways to teach lessons to the small of mind and the large of mouth. People, Robert, are stuck in their very small and shabby castles. They have employers, friends, neighbors and so on. That is where you can get at any of them. How can they respond to the mass distribution of that newspaper clipping exposing their activities in that Florida motel room?  Or the earlier arrest of their mother for exposing herself at a Fourth of July parade? Oh, the permutations are endless and the victim, or the evil-does, can not respond. Colonel X a militant transvestite, arrested in drag on a turnpike in New Jersey and slugging a policeman with his purse. Funny indeed and humorous enough for a neighbor to show to his friends. Stalin once said that no matter where you toss the stone into the pond, the ripples spread. No one, and I mean no one, except perhaps for a bag lady or a nut living in a cabin deep in the woods, is safe from me when I take down my creative rifle and go out for a morning hunt. I once got a stack of terrible, pornographic magazines and I mean terrible, printed up some fake address labels and stuck them on the covers. The next step was to take a few of them down to the office of a local dentist who was making trouble for me. I stuck the magazines into the piles of old magazines in his office….

RTC: Sweet Jesus.

GD: Oh yes indeed. And I sat there reading an old Geographic and was intensely gratified when a mommy and child came in for a dental checkup. A little while later, while I was enthralled looking at the huge sagging tits of native women, I heard the small child say, ’Mommy, what is the doggy doing to the lady?’

RTC: (Laughter)

GD: Oh, and the mommy looked at the magazine and shrieked. And when she saw the one about the fat woman and the dwarf, she really let loose. And she saw the dentist’s name and address on these and I can assure you, he was soon out of practice, to make a pun.

RTC: Creative nastiness, Gregory. I observe that Wolfe is making noises about you. What would you do to him?

GD: Wolfe? What? A retired librarian, friend of the CIA? Subscribe to Playgirl magazine and send it either to his former office or, better, to his home. If his wife ever saw the naked men with large joints waving around, there would be stressful moments in the living room, believe me.

RTC: The living room? Not the bedroom?

GD: At his age? What a joke.

(Concluded at 2:28 PM CST)

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